"The Path to Ruin: Inflexibility, Delusion, and Discord Between the Kaiser, Chancellor, and German High Command in the Great War

#History: A Journal of Student Research Volume 1 Article 1 12-2016 "The Path to Ruin: Inflexibility, Delusion, and Discord Between the Kaiser, Chancellor, and German High Command in the Great War" Nicholas Vecchio The College at Brockport Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/hashtaghistory Part of the European History Commons, and the Military History Commons Repository Citation Vecchio, Nicholas (2016) ""The Path to Ruin: Inflexibility, Delusion, and Discord Between the Kaiser, Chancellor, and German High Command in the Great War"," #History: A Journal of Student Research: Vol. 1 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/hashtaghistory/vol1/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @Brockport. It has been accepted for inclusion in #History: A Journal of Student Research by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @Brockport. For more information, please contact . THE PATH TO RUIN: INFLEXIBILITY, DELUSION, AND DISCORD BETWEEN THE KAISER, CHANCELLOR, AND GERMAN HIGH COMMAND IN THE GREAT WAR Nicholas Vecchio, The College at Brockport Abstract This paper focuses on the political and military decisions of the German High Command during the First World War. After first examining the unresolved historiographic discourse over Germany’s fifth Imperial Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, it explores the backgrounds of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, General Erich von Falkenhayn, and General Erich Ludendorff, and studies the argument within the High Command over whether Germany should focus her war efforts on the western or eastern fronts. Two central theses are argued: (1) Germany had numerous opportunities to end the war diplomatically with favorable terms once it was clear they would not be able to win militarily, but these were all thwarted due to the inability of the war leaders to cooperate and agree in any capacity. (2) Falkenhayn, Ludendorff and Bethmann-Hollweg all vied for the support of the Kaiser in key military and political decisions, but by 1917 the Kaiser was largely supplanted by Ludendorff because the Kaiser failed in his constitutional role as Supreme Warlord and mediator between civilian and military branches. [Keywords: Germany, WWI, Kaiser Wilhelm, Ludendorff, Falkenhayn, strategy] CONFLICTING INTERPRETATIONS: THEOBALD VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG The discourse over Germany’s war leaders in the First World War has been highly debated since the end of the war. Throughout the 1970s, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was scrutinized by the leading European historians of the day. In Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, Hans-Ulrich Wehler judged Bethmann-Hollweg as a “conflict shy bureaucrat, who failed in his policy of administering problems in a system that could no longer be governed.” 1 Willibald Gutsche’s Aufstieg und Fall eines kaiserlichen Reichskanzlers argued that the Chancellor’s policies were contradictory, and claims that he was a “cunning imperialist politician” who championed the German war of conquest, while at the same time merely pretending to favor pacifism.2 However, many American historians have interpreted Bethmann-Hollweg’s policies and demeanor more positively within the contextual framework of Imperial Germany. Gordon Craig claimed that Bethmann-Hollweg was “careful and energetic in his policy, but his moderate foreign policy brought about his undoing under the pressure of the egotistic military.”3 A contemporary interpretation of Bethmann-Hollweg by Mark Hewitson argued that, “despite occasional forebodings, Bethmann-Hollweg was confident that Germany could win a war of annihilation and achieve a complete surrender of France and Russia.”4 Hewitson further argued Vecchio, Nicholas. “The Path to Ruin: Inflexibility, Delusion and Discord Between the Kaiser, Chancellor, and German High Command in the Great War,” #History: A Journal of Student Research, n. 1 (December 2016). Brockport, NY: Department of History, The College at Brockport, S.U.N.Y.: 1-19. Nicholas Vecchio / “The Path to Ruin” that many of Bethmann-Hollweg’s decisions during the period immediately preceding the war were based on a policy of continental domination, and the Reich’s leaders including BethmannHollweg, were ready for an offensive war.5 Although Hewitson’s paper focused on Imperial Germany’s decisions at the beginning of the First World War, his critique of Bethmann-Hollweg implies that he was little different than any of the annexationist military leaders like Erich Ludendorff. Despite Hewitson’s more recent discussion of the Chancellor, Konrad Jarausch offers the most nuanced interpretation of Bethmann-Hollweg’s actions. Jarausch incorporated previously unused documentation to help shape his view of the Chancellor. The Jewish journalist Theodor Wolff was the editor-in-chief of the leading liberal newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, who conducted several in depth interviews with Bethmann-Hollweg in 1915. The Wolff interviews revealed that the Chancellor harbored deep enmity towards the Pan-German annexationists like Ludendorff.6 Bethmann-Hollweg wanted Germany to become the dominant country in the European continent, but he was opposed to large-scale annexations. Bethmann-Hollweg sought to establish indirect political, economic and military ties with Belgium in the west, and Poland in the east to serve as buffer zones, without directly annexing them. During the war, BethmannHollweg championed political reform and peace. However, Jarausch correctly argues that the Chancellor’s weakness was his inability to force a moderate course on Germany’s immutable military leaders.7 Bethmann-Hollweg failed to achieve a peaceful resolution to the First World War, and his efforts were undermined by the inflexibility of Germany’s military leaders. BACKGROUND AND BUILDUP TO WAR In order to understand how Kaiser Wilhelm II came to his wartime decisions, his role as the German Emperor must be evaluated in the years leading up to the war that defined his character and gave insight into how he would act once war broke out. Kaiser Wilhelm II came to power in 1888 after the premature death of his father, Frederick III. Wilhelm II had grown up with the conflicting ideologies of his progressive, liberal father and his conservative grandfather, Wilhelm I. According to Christopher Clark, Wilhelm II was raised with the some teachings of traditional, militaristic Prussian doctrine like his grandfather, Wilhelm I. However, the marriage of Wilhelm’s father to the English Princess, Victoria, and the growing rift between political factions caused Wilhelm’s upbringing and education to be pulled in two different directions. One side was Anglophile, liberal-bourgeois, and based upon the creation of civil virtues, while the other was from the old-Prussian, aristocratic school of thought which centered on the cultivation of military skills and discipline.8 The struggle between the different pedago (...truncated)