by Lloyd, Nick
Work only started on the Hermann Line on 30 September, but Second Army assured General von Boehn that within eight days artillery positions could be posted, sites selected for anti-tank guns, and dug-outs and machine-gun nests built.29 The only question was: would there be enough time to get it ready before the Allies were upon them? Fortunately, by 3 October the situation at the front seemed to be stabilizing. Cambrai remained in German hands and Crown Prince Rupprecht was pleased to discover that ‘there were only local attacks in the direction of Roselaere’ that morning. ‘On the Sixth Army’s front, all is peaceful; the enemy is edging forward only tentatively; on the Seventeenth Army’s front all is also quiet, the enemy having no further fresh reserves there. The English have massed the majority of the reserves at their disposal against the Second Army.’ Yet this was only a temporary pause in what was a merciless, irrevocable decline. When Rupprecht heard that the Chancellor was going to be replaced and that a new man (‘who had no links with the past’) would be put in charge, he was unimpressed. ‘It would have been better if this had happened in the spring when we were not yet defeated – indeed, our military position at that time was more favourable than that of our enemies.’30
Such ceaseless combat was having a dire effect on the Army and even the morale of previously excellent divisions began to crumble under the strain. The gunner Ernst Kielmayer recorded the first appearance of mutineers among the ranks on 1 October. A group of drivers refused to ride up to the front to recover their gun. ‘Can you blame them?’ he asked. ‘The fire from Tommy is murder. He must have gotten a big new supply of guns and ammunition.’ The men from Kielmayer’s battery eventually volunteered to pick it up and were all recommended for decorations, but the spectre of mutiny had been a sober reminder that the end was drawing near. ‘Our losses are great. We blame only their overwhelming majority which we have noticed lately. It is only because Americans take over some of their places and have enough men and material to squeeze together the lines against the few Germans who were faithful, standing and defending their positions against overwhelming odds. That can only be because of the immense manpower coming in from over the big sea. So with an English, American, and French combination it should not take long anymore to kill off the few Germans still remaining.’31
Amid the intensity of battle, news was fragmentary and unclear, with rumours and gossip filling in for the lack of detail. On 5 October, Leutnant Karl Uhrmacher, serving in Flanders with 208th Artillery Regiment, finally got his hands on a newspaper, although, as he told his father, ‘There was not much good news in it.’ The collapse of Bulgaria was what concerned him. Its loss boded ill for the Central Powers, which now seemed to be surrounded, more than ever, by hostile foes. He was convinced that Bulgaria was exhausted, but wondered whether their experiment with what he called ‘Parliamentarization’ would work.
There is a lot of hustle and bustle here. Every man and his dog is on the run; everything is being evacuated. Thousands of men are standing around on the streets. Their mood is of course not bright and the situation for us with so few soldiers on the ground does not really inspire confidence. This is how I imagined it the evening before a revolution . . . Obviously, we do not hear much from the outside.32
Another German soldier, Herbert Sulzbach, who was one of the fortunate few to be granted leave, was in Frankfurt when the Hindenburg Line was breached and noted the ‘dreadful, highly alarming reports’ in the newspapers, from Bulgaria, from France, from everywhere, it seemed. He had a disturbing experience one morning when he passed a soldier in the street, who did not salute him; a worrying indication of how far the Army had fallen in German society. Sulzbach lost his temper. ‘If these stupid youths back at home make a show of letting discipline go to pieces, you have to do something about it!’33
The Secretary of State, Paul von Hintze, for one, was determined to do something about it. If his ‘revolution from above’ was to work, then there needed to be a new government and a new Imperial Chancellor. It was obvious that the current incumbent, the ageing Count von Hertling (who was now seventy-five years old), would have to go. He was too close to the old regime, and too associated with the past, to be able to continue in this new age of parliamentary government. On 30 September he was invited to lunch with the Kaiser, awarded the Order of the Black Eagle, and then unceremoniously told that his resignation had been accepted.34 His replacement was the 51-year-old Prince Max, heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden. Max had spent most of the war concerned with the welfare of prisoners and was well thought of. He was a liberal yet a monarchist, a modernizer but not a radical, and it was hoped that he could hold the country together through this transitional phase. He found out about the offer of an armistice shortly after 4 p.m. on 1 October. He was ushered in to see the military liaison officer, Colonel Hans von Haeften, who told him that the situation on the Western Front had worsened and that the Supreme Command wanted to appeal to President Wilson to begin negotiations for an armistice. Max was stunned. He may have been known as a moderate, but he was not prepared for such a shocking admission. He gaped at Haeften in silence for some time before asking, urgently and angrily, whether they could not wait until the following month before making the offer. Surely this was not to be done immediately? Haeften shook his head. ‘It was absolutely necessary to give the tired army a rest,’ he replied, repeating the Supreme Command’s words and assuring Max that he was confident Wilson would see that negotiations would proceed swiftly. Max was initially of the opinion that he must decline the offer of the Chancellorship. He had no idea the situation was so poor and, in any case, their entire policy was based upon holding out, at least through the winter.35
After two further days of tense deliberation, Prince Max eventually accepted the Chancellorship, but not without severe misgivings. His father had warned him that their family could become tainted with the stain of surrender, but the Prince felt that he could not ignore an appeal from the Fatherland and he was, in any case, hopeful of manoeuvring events in his favour. He repeatedly argued his case before the military officers in Berlin and in telegrams to the Supreme Command that they must wait before making such an offer. Max was of the opinion that not only did their situation not justify such a suicidal act, but it would also worsen if any concessions were made. In any case, there were better ways of going about it. As he recorded, bitterly, in his memoirs years later – perhaps remembering the fate of Richard von Kühlmann – ‘every official peace feeler up to now had horrified the Supreme Command’ because it weakened German morale and strengthened the enemy. Yet now, the generals were all for throwing down their arms while ‘the enemy pack dashed triumphantly in to the kill’. Pacing up and down in his office like a caged tiger, Max spent hours deliberating on the question, pondering why Ludendorff had made such an odd decision, reading report after report on the war and convincing himself that the Quartermaster-General had overreacted, panicked, lost his grip.36
Ludendorff was, however, not to be moved. Haeften spent over ninety minutes talking with him in the early hours of 2 October, explaining Prince Max’s concerns and appealing to him for a delay, at least until the new Government was formed. But Ludendorff remained defiant. ‘I want to save my army,’ he constantly repeated, thinking only of his worn-out troops and remaining convinced that only if an armistice was granted would he be able to restore his army’s morale and ready them for another battle. That afternoon, the Kaiser – newly arrived in Berlin with Hindenburg by his side – chaired a Crown Council meeting. When Prince Max tried to win over the Emperor and implore him not to make a peace offer, to persuade him that more time was needed to prepare the public before any negotiations should begin, the Kaiser rebuked him. ‘The Supreme Command considers it necessary; and you have not been brought here to make difficulties for the Supreme Command.’37 There would be no discussion; the decision had been made. As such, Max was isolated and there was little he could do. The other officers present, bowed and submissive before the Kaiser and the Field Marshal –
the latter as calm and as unperturbed as ever – said little; the spell of Spa remained unbroken.
Despite this show of strength and authority from the Kaiser, Ludendorff’s demand for an armistice and the beginning of negotiations with the Allies in early October was a crushing personal blow for him. By this point his health had suffered noticeably and he was often seen out walking with difficulty with a stick, complaining about his arthritis, his rheumy eyes staring into space, pondering on what had been lost. One of those who saw him often in this period was Georg von Müller, the Chief of the Naval Cabinet. On 1 October he was ordered to lunch at the Kaiser’s villa in Spa, with royal aides perhaps hoping that the guests would cheer him up. ‘His Majesty is in a very depressed state of mind,’ Müller recorded. ‘At lunch he kept clutching at straw[s] – the flu in France of which the Chancellor has given him some details.’ Four days later the Kaiser was confined to his bed with arthritis and rheumatism. He stayed there for three days, leaving the Imperial Court in a state of tense anxiety, nervously awaiting news and worried about His Majesty’s health, with aides having whispered conversations in the corridors at which the unmentionable subject of abdication was increasingly raised.38
Frantic discussions continued over the following days over the wording of the note to Wilson and the formation of a new government at home. Prince Max was so distressed at being forced into making a peace offer that he wrote to Hindenburg demanding a statement from the Supreme Command that the military situation no longer admitted of any postponement to the beginning of negotiations. The Field Marshal gruffly obliged, confirming ‘that a peace offer to our enemies [must] be issued at once . . . The German army still stands firm and successfully wards off all attacks. But the situation becomes daily more critical and may force the Supreme Command to take momentous decisions . . . Every day wasted costs thousands of brave soldiers their lives.’39 On the evening of 3 October, the new Chancellor sent the ‘First German Note’ to Wilson, requesting him ‘to take steps for the restoration of peace, to notify all belligerents of this request, and to invite them to delegate plenipotentiaries for the purpose of taking up negotiations’. The German Government accepted Wilson’s Fourteen Points ‘as a basis for the peace negotiations’, and in order to avoid further bloodshed requested measures for the ‘immediate conclusion’ of an armistice.40 Thus began the complex, delicate process of negotiating an end to the worst war in world history.
12. ‘The most desperate battle of our history’
Dante’s description of Hell was too mild for this agony.
Second-Lieutenant Harold Woehl1
4–15 October 1918
On 4 July 1918, the US President, Woodrow Wilson, had given a speech at the tomb of George Washington in Virginia. Wilson, with his sharp, bird-like manners and thin, clear voice, a pince-nez clipped to his nose, elaborated on the reasons why America was fighting in France and confirmed the idealistic underpinning of US involvement. He reiterated his desire for the ‘destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world’. He wanted ‘the settlement of every question, whether of territory or sovereignty, of economic arrangement or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned’. Thirdly, he outlined his wish for the ‘establishment of an organization of peace’ – what would become the League of Nations in 1920 – that would uphold justice in the world and provide international security. ‘These great objects can be put into a single sentence – What we seek is the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind . . . And I stand here to speak – speak proudly and with confident hope of the spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the great stage of the world itself.’2
Wilson had talked of his ideas about a kind of new world order before. On 8 January he had outlined to Congress his so-called Fourteen Points, when he claimed that America had entered the war because ‘violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once and for all against their recurrence’. He demanded a ‘programme of the world’s peace’, based upon partnership, justice and fair dealing against ‘force and selfish aggression’. This would be based upon freedom of the seas, equality of trade, and a general association of nations that would investigate disputes and make impartial judgements upon them.3 Wilson may have been an idealist, but his view of human nature was shaped by growing up in a South that had been devastated by the Civil War and by the fierce, uncompromising Protestant ethos of his father, Joseph. Wilson believed that his ideas would reshape the world; a wind of change from the west that would revitalize and renew the promise of Europe, and spread freedom and liberation across the globe. The only problem was persuading his allies.
Whenever Wilson talked of his beloved Fourteen Points, the British and French Premiers, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, would undoubtedly have rolled their eyes or shrugged their shoulders. They had seen too much death and slaughter to be impressed by Wilson’s rhetoric and too much of the reality of Great Power politics to believe that it could be wished away. In any case, they did not agree with many of his ideas, seeing them as impractical and unrealistic, even dangerous. For the British, they had certainly not fought the war for ‘absolute freedom of navigation on the seas’, nor for the ‘adjustment’ of their colonial empire on the lines of self-determination. Neither had the French. Clemenceau – old warrior that he was – did not think much of the idea of ‘open covenants of peace’; his idea of open diplomacy was whatever resulted in a weakened Germany that would never be able to threaten France again. Yet for all the simmering tension between the Allies, and even if America remained only an ‘associate power’, they shared a common goal of breaking the German Army and ensuring that, in the west at least, she would lose the war. Now all their hard work seemed to be getting somewhere.
Prince Max’s telegram arrived at the White House through a communiqué from the Swiss Government on 6 October. After two days of frantic discussion, during which Wilson was persuaded to issue a stronger note than he had originally intended – requesting guarantees that certain conditions would be fulfilled4 – the President’s response reached Berlin on the evening of 9 October. Wilson was understandably wary of saying too much and requested further clarification on the ‘exact meaning’ of the note from the Imperial Chancellor. In particular, he was concerned whether the German Government accepted his Fourteen Points fully and whether any discussions over them would only be about ‘the practical details of their application’. He also asked whether Prince Max was ‘speaking merely for the constituted authorities of the Empire who have so far conducted the war’; an understandable question reflecting his distrust of the men who had held power in Germany for so long.5
In Berlin the response to Wilson’s note had been better than expected and was one of cautious optimism, Prince Max noting that it ‘spoke in a different tone from the howl of rage to which the yellow press of the Allies had given vent’. He met Ludendorff on 9 October in what was a difficult and tense meeting. Neither was impressed with the other, the Quartermaster-General noting that ‘We had not much in common’, while Prince Max acidly reminded Ludendorff where the armistice demand had originated from. Despite the frostiness between them, they discussed the options available to Germany: to agree to both an evacuation of occupied territory and to accept the Fourteen Points unconditionally; or to consent to one of these but not the other. It would have been too difficult to repudiate all the Fourteen Points at this stage, so Ludendorff was asked about the military situation and whether it was possible to begin an evacuation of the Western Front. To Prince Max’s frustration, Ludendorff – who ‘did not give the impression of being shaken in health’ – admitted that the Army was holding on. The situation was certainly better than it had been at the beginning of the month, but his men desperatel
y needed a breathing space. He was convinced that if they could retreat in good order, he would be able to hold a line along the German frontier.6
The second German note was eventually despatched three days later:
The German Government has accepted the terms laid down by President Wilson in his Address of the 8th January and in his subsequent addresses as the foundation of a permanent peace of justice. It declares itself absolutely ready to comply with the parts of the President’s note regarding evacuation. The German Government suggests that the President call a meeting of a mixed commission for making the necessary arrangements concerning evacuation.7
Prince Max knew that Germany had to agree to an evacuation in principle – to prevent Wilson from breaking off negotiations – but there needed to be some guarantee that the Allies would also keep to the Fourteen Points. When Germany’s reply was being drafted, the Supreme Command pressed for an addition that presumed the Allied governments were also bound by these terms, something that they believed would help in Germany’s search for ‘justice’.8 During the drafting of the second note Prince Max was also keen to assuage Wilson’s concerns about whether he could trust those in charge. ‘The present German Government which has taken this step towards peace, has been formed by a large majority in the Reichstag,’ it noted. Furthermore, ‘The Chancellor is supported by the will of this majority, and speaks in the name of the German Government and of the German people.’ But whether this would be enough remained an open question for several days as Prince Max waited for Wilson’s response, a period of ‘suspense and apprehension’ that one cabinet member described as ‘the worst I have ever lived through’.9