CHAPTER 35

America Enters the War

Before Jutland, Reinhard Scheer’s had not been the only—or even the most prominent—voice in Germany calling for resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. In the spring of 1916, before the battle, that voice had belonged to Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, but Tirpitz’s demand for ruthless use of the U-boats had been defeated by the chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, and the embittered navy minister had resigned in protest. Thereafter, the demand to unleash the U-boats was muffled but it did not go away. During June, July, and August, the submarines worked primarily with the High Seas Fleet and, except for a few merchantmen sunk under the old rules of stop-and-inspect, the campaign against merchant shipping lapsed. By autumn, however, more new U-boats were available and the navy was eager to try again. As before, the fateful question was whether releasing the U-boats would provoke America to war; and, as before, the primary opponent of taking this risk was the chancellor. This time, however, the navy had two powerful new allies. And, ironically, these two men had been placed in authority on the recommendation of Bethmann-Hollweg himself.

By the early autumn of 1916, the war on land was going badly. The attack on Verdun had become a bloodbath for both sides, the British were pressing hard on the Somme, and the Russian Brusilov offensive in the east had produced a near fatal Austrian collapse, drawing off German reserves. And then, on August 28, a new blow fell on Germany when Rumania with an army of 400,000 men joined the Allies. General von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, was summoned to a conference at Supreme Headquarters at Pless, where, despite the news from Rumania and the fact that more German troops would have to be sent to bolster the reeling Austrians, he urged resuming the offensive against Verdun. Appalled, Bethmann-Hollweg asked, “Where does incompetence end and crime begin?” and decided that the chief of staff must be replaced. The chancellor’s candidate was General Paul von Hindenburg, commander of the Eastern Front, who he believed would be more malleable. Bethmann-Hollweg’s wish became fact when the kaiser told Falkenhayn that he wished to have Hindenburg’s advice on various military matters. Stiffly, Falkenhayn replied that the kaiser had only one military adviser: himself, the Chief of the General Staff. If the kaiser insisted upon receiving Hindenburg, then he, Falkenhayn, must go. “As you wish,” William replied. Falkenhayn was gone before nightfall, on the way to the east to deal with Rumania. The new chief, the sixty-six-year-old hero of the Battle of Tannenberg, accepted office on the understanding that there would be no further attacks at Verdun. And with Hindenburg came his lieutenant, General Erich Ludendorff, who, many said, did most of the hero’s thinking. The promotion of these two generals was the costliest mistake of Bethmann-Hollweg’s career.

They made an odd couple. Shortly before Tannenberg, Hindenburg was a ponderous retired general living in Hanover. Because his credentials appealed to the kaiser (he was a Prussian nobleman, a Junker, descended from the Teutonic Knights) and to the Supreme Command (he had specialized in the study of the region of East Prussia through which the Russians were advancing) he was suddenly summoned to command the army opposing the invaders. His famous reply, the cornerstone of the towering Hindenburg legend, was “I am ready.” At three o’clock in the morning, wearing the old blue uniform in which he had retired, he went to the railway station to await the train that was to bear him into history. Ludendorff, assigned to be Hindenburg’s chief of staff, already was on the train. A man of middle-class origin whose life was the army, a brilliant General Staff officer, Ludendorff had advanced on the basis of ability, energy, and relentless determination.

The two men met in the middle of the night in the railway waiting room in Hanover. Hindenburg, his square, flat face topped by a thick brush haircut, had gained weight since his retirement, and his old tunic would no longer hook at the collar. His new chief of staff, whom he had never met, was shorter and round-headed; he wore a large mustache and had a thick, elongated trunk rising above unusually short legs. Ludendorff’s uniform was the new German army field gray and on his chest sparkled the blue and gold of the country’s highest military honor, the Ordre pour le Mérite, awarded for his part in the spectacular taking of the great Belgian fortress of Liège. Three weeks after this meeting came the victory at Tannenberg, which transformed Hindenburg into the military idol of the German people and established Ludendorff permanently at the titan’s side, where he was content to operate in the shade as long as he could supply the ideas.

William, accustomed to the elegant, sophisticated Falkenhayn, disliked them both. They were charmless, they were always busy, and they refused even to pretend to listen to his endless stories. Hindenburg loudly and publicly professed his Junker allegiance to “my emperor, my king, my master,” but Ludendorff had no time for these frivolities. The German biographer Joachim von Kurenberg described the working relationship between the monarch and the military workhorse:

When the Quartermaster General had to appear before the Kaiser to make a report . . . he spoke fast, crisply and emphatically . . . with few gestures; he looked on . . . [these meetings] as unnecessary and a waste of time. His reports seemed to exclude all possibility of misapprehension. . . . If the Kaiser asked a question, Ludendorff would clap his monocle in his eye, bend over his map, mark off distances . . . detail the names and numbers of divisions, times of attack and the objective aimed at. He would point to the arrows marked on the maps which he had drawn to show the directions of the advance planned, then hurriedly roll up the maps and await the hint to withdraw. Then he would stand by the door with the Pour le Mérite on his collar, his lips pouting, as always, and await the sign of dismissal from his War Lord. . . . [William] would keep him standing there for a few seconds just to enjoy, if only for a moment, the triumph of still being able to give orders. At last would come the signal, then there was a click of spurs, an effortless about-turn . . . and the Quartermaster General returned to his work.

To the public, Ludendorff remained essentially faceless; Hindenburg, on the other hand, was a national icon.  *66 William did not dare do without either of them. They owed their appointments to victory on the battlefield, and to prevail they had only to threaten resignation. William already had dismissed the legendary Tirpitz; for him now to dismiss the new saviors of the empire was politically impossible. As the months went by, the kaiser, nominally the Supreme War Lord, played a reduced role at Supreme Headquarters, functioning mainly as a mediator between the generals and civilian officials. Swiftly, the military pair moved to put the civilians in their place. On September 13, two weeks after his appointment, Ludendorff bluntly demanded that Bethmann-Hollweg extend the draft for military service or compulsory war production work to all men between fifteen and sixty. “Every day is important,” he barked at the chancellor. “The necessary measures must be taken immediately.”

From the beginning, Hindenburg and Ludendorff favored immediate resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. As generals, they knew better than most that Germany probably could not win the war on land. The human and material resources of the Central Powers were substantially inferior to those of the more populous and industrialized Allied coalition. In manpower, they were outnumbered on the battlefronts: 304 German, Austrian, and Turkish divisions opposed 405 Allied divisions. On the Western Front, 2.5 mil-lion German soldiers faced 3.9 million French, British, and Belgian troops equipped with more artillery, more ammunition, and more airplanes. To meet this challenge, Hindenburg and Ludendorff wished to employ every strategy and weapon likely to succeed, no matter what the risks. The most decisive appeared to be the submarine. For two years, Bethmann-Hollweg had resisted, not because he had reservations about torpedoing merchant ships, but because he feared that the torpedoing of American merchant ships would bring the United States into the war. Now the chancellor was under heavy pressure. A majority in the Reichstag and the press, Scheer and the admirals, and now Hindenburg and Ludendorff all favored unleashing the U-boats. If it was necessary to achieve this goal, they wanted the chancellor removed from office. So far, one man had saved Bethmann-Hollweg. Only the kaiser had the constitutional power to remove a chancellor and William, who had known and liked the tall, melancholy Bethmann-Hollweg since the monarch was eighteen, jealously guarded his own prerogative and refused to make a change. Accordingly, the chancellor, a widower whose eldest son had recently been killed on the Eastern Front, resisted his enemies, reminding them that his actions were not subject to parliamentary control or public opinion and that he was responsible only to the kaiser.

In opposing the U-boats, Bethmann-Hollweg had two principal allies in the bureaucracy: Gottfried von Jagow, the foreign minister, and Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington. Both men shared the chancellor’s opinion that no success resulting from submarine warfare would be worth American entry into the war. This opinion had a halfhearted and private supporter in William himself. However irritated he might be by the United States, the kaiser did not want to fight the Americans. On the other hand, he shrank from the prospect of being considered weak by his own military chiefs or by the German people. His ambivalence was made plain during the Lusitania negotiations: in the same conversation, he told the American ambassador, James Gerard, that, as a Christian ruler, he would never have permitted the torpedoing of Lusitania if he had known that there were women and children on board—and then added brusquely, “America had better look out after this war. I shall stand no nonsense from America.”

On August 31, two days after being elevated to command, Hindenburg and Ludendorff met Bethmann-Hollweg, Jagow, and Admiral Holtzendorff. To fend off their talk of using the submarines, the chancellor warned that unrestricted U-boat warfare might provoke the neutrals on Germany’s border, Holland and Denmark, into declaring war on Germany. Holland alone, he declared, would be able to put more than 500,000 men into the field and either state could be used as a beachhead for British landings. Hindenburg, who was scrambling to assemble divisions to fight Germany’s new enemy, Rumania, lacked the reserves to fight on any new fronts and agreed temporarily to postpone the submarine decision. At the same time, he insisted that, sooner rather than later, unrestricted submarine warfare must come. On September 10, Ludendorff buttressed his chief’s opinion. An officer from the Naval Staff asked what the new Supreme Command wanted the navy to do. Ludendorff assured the officer that he and the field marshal intended to expand the submarine war as soon as the military position was stabilized; first, however, the army must bolster the Austrians, who were “nothing more than a sieve.” Did the general think that the neutrals would come in as the chancellor feared? the officer asked. Grimly, Ludendorff replied that it was a great pity that the civil authorities had ever been allowed a say in the matter. Submarine warfare was a purely military question; in war, it must rest entirely with military and naval authorities to decide what forces to use and how to use them.

It did not take Bethmann-Hollweg long to recognize that by bringing in the new men, he had released a genie from its bottle. On October 5, Hindenburg advised the chancellor that “the decision for an unrestricted U-boat campaign fell primarily to the Supreme Command.” Bethmann-Hollweg parried, saying that an order by the kaiser to begin unrestricted U-boat warfare would indeed be an expression of imperial authority, but that an unrestricted submarine campaign, directed not only against enemy ships but also against neutral vessels, “directly affects our relations with neutral states and thus represents an act of foreign policy . . . for which I have sole and untransferable responsibility.” Unwilling at that moment to challenge this position, the generals backed away.

Across the Atlantic, two years after the outbreak of war, the predominant opinion of the American people continued to be that the struggle was a purely European affair; Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reelection campaign was based on a single, powerful claim: “He kept us out of war.” Political and military neutrality, however, had not prevented the United States from enjoying an ever-growing volume of trade in war supplies, general cargo, and foodstuffs, which now firmly attached the American economy to the Allied war effort. In theory, U.S. commercial loans and trade in food and munitions were equally available to the Central Powers, but theory and actual usefulness to the German cause ran up against the implacable barrier of Allied control of the oceans.

In the formation of neutral opinion, the different methods of the belligerents in fighting economic war at sea weighed heavily against the Germans. The British blockade infringed on the freedom of the seas, but these incidents, sometimes infuriating, did not put lives at risk or even seriously retard the flow of goods. By contrast, unrestricted U-boat warfare, threatening and sometimes taking neutral ships and neutral lives, challenged the American government either to abandon use of the world’s oceans or take whatever steps were necessary to ensure the safety of American lives and cargoes. Twice, acts by German submarines had forced a crisis. The sinking of Lusitania in May 1915 and the sinking of Sussex in April 1916 had led each time to prolonged negotiations in which President Wilson attempted to force Germany to acknowledge American rights without invoking the ultimate threat of a war that neither he nor the American people wanted. Both times, Wilson succeeded, and all U-boats operating in the North Sea, the Channel, the eastern Atlantic, and the Mediterranean had been ordered to surface, establish the identity of the ship they had stopped, and allow neutral ships to pass.

In the autumn of 1916, an episode much closer to home caused friction between the British and American governments. At 3:00 on the afternoon of October 7, the new German submarine U-53, with four of her ballast tanks altered for carrying fuel, surfaced and anchored in the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island. The captain, Hans Rose, came ashore in his dress uniform to pay his respects to the American admiral commanding a destroyer flotilla based in Newport. Then he mailed a letter to the German ambassador and picked up local newspapers, which listed vessels in port about to sail and named their destinations. Observing protocol, the American admiral returned the visit and came on board to inspect the U-boat and admire its diesel engines. He was followed—with Rose’s permission—by many curious American naval officers, their wives, Newport civilians, reporters, and a photographer. At 5:30 p.m., observing all conventions limiting the stay of belligerent warships in neutral ports, Rose weighed anchor and put to sea. At dawn the next morning, U-53 lay on the surface in international waters off the Nantucket lightship where she began sinking ships. During the day, Rose stopped, searched, and sank seven merchant vessels: five British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian. All crew members were permitted to leave their ships before they were sunk.

No person was harmed that day and U-53 ’s behavior outside American territorial waters had been conducted according to the rules of cruiser warfare and international law. Still, in Massachusetts and surrounding states, the sinking of merchant vessels so close to home inspired a sense of terrified vulnerability. In Britain, the reaction was official and public fury. Not only were the British appalled by the fact of U-boat activity at that great distance, but they were bitterly critical of the fact that sixteen American destroyers had clustered near the Nantucket lightship, had witnessed the sinkings, and, although picking up passengers and crews from their lifeboats, had done nothing to inhibit the submarine. At one point, U-53 was so close to an American warship that the submarine had to reverse engines to avoid collision. Later in the day, another destroyer, lying near the abandoned Dutch steamer, was asked by Rose to move away so that he might sink the ship. Obligingly, the destroyer moved and U-53 fired two torpedoes, sending the ship to the bottom. For the submarine, it was a successful voyage. U-53 returned to Germany, having covered 7,550 miles without refueling and having stopped only once, for the two and a half hours in Newport. In her wake, she left huge newspaper sales along the Eastern Seaboard, urgent conferences at the State Department, angry cries in the House of Commons, and eventually a soothing speech by Sir Edward Grey, who explained to his countrymen that the American warships had had no legal right to intervene in the belligerent activities of U-53.

By mid-autumn of 1916, Woodrow Wilson believed that American relations with the Central Powers were becoming more amicable. It was true that the country still generally favored the Allies, but with Germany’s Sussex pledge still in force, most Americans wanted simply to let Europeans kill one another however they wished without American participation. Wilson, however, was unwilling to leave it at that. Repelled by the mindless slaughter at Verdun and on the Somme, he made up his mind that it was his duty—his mission—to use his position as the leader of the one great neutral state to persuade the warring powers to call a halt. In September, the Germans and Austrians as well as the British and French were told that the president would launch a mediation effort as soon as he was reelected.

In the presidential campaign, Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate, a moderate former Supreme Court Justice, was supported by the eastern, pro-Allied, interventionist wing of the electorate; Wilson had the support of most southern, midwestern, and western “stay-out-of-the-war” voters. But the election was not decided on Election Day, November 7. Hughes, accumulating early majorities in the East, surged to a lead and on November 8 The New York Times announced that “Charles E. Hughes Has Apparently Been Elected President.” Theodore Roosevelt, who hated Wilson, happily declared that “the election of Mr. Hughes is a vindication of our national honor.” Then Hughes fell back and for two days the result teetered on the returns from California. It was not until November 22 that a Hughes telegram conceding defeat finally reached Wilson—“It was a little moth-eaten when it got here,” the president observed. In the end, Wilson won California by 3,806 votes. He had a nationwide popular majority of 691,385. He carried only a single northeastern state, New Hampshire, and that by fifty-six votes. In the electoral college the votes split 277 to 254.

The election was a squeaker by most people’s count, but Wilson treated it as a landslide. The president had what he desired: absolute control of American foreign policy. He did not need to listen to Congress, his Cabinet, his own ambassadors, or ambassadors from anywhere else. He was acutely sensitive to public opinion, and only to public opinion. Now, reelected, Wilson was free to take up his mission. The carnage in Europe must be stopped; this could be done only by showing favoritism to neither side. Wilson recognized that “if Germany won, it would change the course of civilization and make the United States a military nation,” but he was also keenly aware of the derision the French and English press had directed at him when early returns had predicted the election of Hughes. Now empowered by the American people to do what he wished, Wilson began tapping out drafts of a peace mediation offer on his typewriter. His goal was a negotiated peace, to be achieved by asking each of the warring powers to submit a statement of its war aims and where it would be willing to compromise in order to make peace. Together, he and they would discover a middle ground.

As the president typed, the belligerents’ ambassadors in Washington bent their ears to pick up what they could of the message coming from his keys. As always, they could learn nothing from Wilson himself, who would not see them, but they could learn much by talking to the little man with a receding chin who was the president’s best friend. Edward House was the one exception to the reclusive president’s rigid policy of excluding everyone from the inner world of his work and thought. House was a wealthy Texan who, in return for his support of one of the state’s governors, had been awarded the honorary title of colonel. Active and influential in Texas politics, he had gravitated toward Wilson in 1911, when the then governor of New Jersey was beginning his run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He worked effectively as an intermediary between Wilson and Bryan and, by the time of Wilson’s election, he could have been appointed to almost any position he wished in the new administration. He asked for none. This was sufficient to make him an object of intense scrutiny by a press determined to fix his place in the political firmament: “He holds no office and never has held any, but he far outweighs Cabinet officers in Washington affairs. . . . He is a figure without parallel in our political history. . . . Colonel House asks nothing for himself. He hates the limelight. . . . House is one of the small wiry men who do a great deal without any noise. He is a ball bearing personality; he moves swiftly but with never a squeak.”

The solution to the riddle of House was that he had made himself the closest friend Woodrow Wilson ever had. The colonel did not even live in Washington—he lived with his wife in Manhattan—but he came to Washington often, and on these visits he always stayed at the White House. At the end of an evening of intimate conversation, Wilson routinely escorted House to his room to ask whether everything was properly laid out. When the president came to New York, he was always a guest in House’s small apartment on Fifty-third Street.

Wilson valued House’s advice above all others’. “Mr. House is my second personality,” the president explained. “He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one.” To House himself, he said, “You are the only person in the world with whom I can discuss everything.” When war broke out, Europeans as well as Americans became aware of the mysterious Colonel House, who had no office and carried no title but “personal friend of the President”—which was enough to open every door in Washington, London, and Berlin. “Instead of sending Colonel House abroad,” one journalist suggested, “President Wilson should go to Europe himself to find out just what the people there think of him. Wilson could leave Colonel House here to act as president during his absence.” House became the conduit through which foreign governments and their ambassadors in Washington learned what the American president was thinking.

One of these ambassadors, Great Britain’s Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, was an extraordinarily poor choice. His friends, made during an earlier tour of diplomatic duty in America, were all Republicans. He wrote to Theodore Roosevelt as “My Dear Theodore,” to Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge as “My Dear Cabot,” and to the reclusive guru Henry Adams as “Uncle Henry.” He was an anti-Semite.  *67 As a negotiator, Spring-Rice was irritable and shrill; one ardently pro-Allied State Department official said that he always left Spring-Rice “feeling a sympathy for the Germans.” In Woodrow Wilson’s Washington, the ambassador uttered the wrong opinions in the wrong ears. “At one time,” he complained to Colonel House, “this country was composed of pure rock, but now it is composed of mud, sand, and some rock, and no one can predict how it will shift or in what direction.” House easily understood that Roosevelt and Wilson were being compared. On occasion, Spring-Rice had tantrums. “I would be glad if you would not mention Bernstorff’s name in my presence again,” he once hissed at House when the latter mentioned that he had just seen the German ambassador. “I do not want to talk to anyone who has just come from talking to him or to Germans.” An Anglophile himself, House discreetly wrote to Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, suggesting that “Sir Cecil’s nervous temperament sometimes does not lend itself well to the needs of the present moment.” Grey ignored the letter and the ambassador remained.

Despite Spring-Rice’s nastiness, his political analysis was useful to Grey. “There is a strong sense that our sea power is exercised in a way, not so much to injure American commerce and trade, as to hurt American pride and dignity. No one could argue for a moment that our war measures have ruined this country; America has never been so rich. But the facts are that American trade is in a way under British control.” Later he summarized by saying, “Our blockade measures are, not a wound, but a hair shirt.” In Decem-ber 1916, he tried, in a series of letters, to tell Balfour, Grey’s successor at the Foreign Office, about Woodrow Wilson: “The President rarely sees anybody. He practically never sees ambassadors and when he does, exchanges no ideas with them. Mr. Lansing is treated as a clerk who receives orders which he has to obey at once without question.” “I have been in Russia, Berlin, Constantinople and Persia which are all popularly supposed to be autocratic governments. But I have never known any government so autocratic as this. This does not mean that the president acts without consulting the popular will. On the contrary, his belief and practice is that he must not lead the people until he knows which way they want to go.” “Here [in Washington] we regard the White House rather as Vesuvius is regarded in Naples, that is, as a mysterious source of unexpected explosions.” “The president’s great talents and imposing character fit him to play a great part. He feels it and knows it. He is already a mysterious, rather Olympian personage, shrouded in darkness from which issue occasional thunderbolts.  *68 He sees nobody who could be remotely suspected of being his equal.”

Spring-Rice, like Grey, knew that without American credit, food, and munitions, the Allies could not win the war. This flow must not be interrupted; therefore, Woodrow Wilson’s sensitive, prickly nature must be appeased. Given time, the Germans could be counted on to make a mistake, and then events would proceed to an almost certain conclusion. Meanwhile, Britain must wait. “There was one mistake in diplomacy that, if it had been made, would have been fatal to the cause of the Allies,” Grey wrote later. “It was carefully avoided. This cardinal mistake would have been a breach with the United States, not necessarily a rupture, but a state of things which would have provoked American interference with the blockade, or led to an embargo on exports of munitions from the United States.” Spring-Rice’s assignment was to make certain that this mistake was avoided. His task was to be patient.

Count Johann von Bernstorff, the ambassador of Imperial Germany, could not afford to wait. Elegant, aristocratic, with blue eyes and a red mustache, he was charming, candid, and adaptable, the most popular ambassador in Washington before the war. He had been born in London, where his diplomat father had been stationed, and he had served eight years in the Prussian Guards before joining the Foreign Ministry. He married an American and now had served eight years as ambassador to the United States. He spoke impeccable English and French; he waltzed, played tennis, golf, and poker, and pretended to be interested in baseball. Socially, all doors opened to him and he instructed the doormen at the German embassy on Massachusetts Avenue to show into his office any newspaperman who cared to call. Five American universities had given him an honorary degree; these included Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Woodrow Wilson’s own Princeton.

Knowing America, Bernstorff understood the consequences of unleashing German submarines against American shipping. Month after month, behind his amiable façade, he struggled to keep his country off this ruinous path. Along with Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow, he hoped that President Wilson would intervene and stop the war. Through the summer and early fall of 1916, he pleaded with the chancellor to postpone the U-boat decision until after the American election. “If Wilson wins at the polls, for which the prospect is at present favorable,” Bernstorff told Bethmann-Hollweg on September 6, “the president will at once take steps towards mediation. He thinks in that case to be strong enough to compel a peace conference. Wilson regards it as in the interest of America that neither of the combatants should gain a decisive victory.” Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow waited eagerly for word from their ambassador. On September 26, the chancellor cabled Bernstorff: “The whole situation would change if President Wilson were to make an offer of mediation to the powers.” Wilson remained silent. On October 14, increasingly anxious, Bethmann-Hollweg cabled the ambassador, “Demand for unrestricted submarine campaign increasing here. Spontaneous appeal for peace, towards which I again ask you to encourage him, would be gladly accepted by us. You should point out Wilson’s power, and consequently his duty, to put a stop to slaughter. If he cannot make up his mind to act alone, he should get into communication with Pope, King of Spain and European neutrals.” On November 16, after Wilson’s election, Jagow pushed Bernstorff: “Desirable to know whether president willing to take steps towards mediation and if so which and when.” On November 20, Jagow cabled again: “We are thoroughly in sympathy with the peace tendencies of President Wilson. His activity in this direction is to be strongly encouraged.” Bernstorff replied, “Urge no change in submarine war until decided whether Wilson will open mediation. Consider this imminent.” Still, Wilson did not act.

The German generals, however, wanted to hear no more from Bernstorff of the long-awaited mediation offer. It was clear that no peace Wilson could arrange would be acceptable to the Supreme Command. “The German people wish no peace of renunciation,” stormed Ludendorff, “and I do not intend to end being pelted by stones.” The U-boats must be unleashed, and those opposed to this decision removed from office. If, for the moment, Bethmann-Hollweg remained untouchable, at least the generals could rid themselves of another enemy, Foreign Minister von Jagow. On November 22, Jagow, who had never wanted the job and was almost incapacitated by its burdens, resigned and his vigorous undersecretary, Arthur Zimmermann, was appointed foreign minister. That day, the American chargé d’affaires, calling on the chancellor, found him “a man broken in spirit, his face deeply furrowed, his manner sad beyond words.”

Affecting the internal struggles of the German government, pressing down on the chancellor and the generals alike, was the grim weight of the British blockade. The extinction of German overseas trade had not directly affected the German army, which continued to be adequately supplied with food and ammunition, but the army’s well-being came at a cost to the civilian population. The third winter of the war was known in Germany as the turnip winter because turnips in many guises found their way into the people’s basic diet. Most recognizable foods were scarce. Milk was available to people over six years old only with a doctor’s prescription. Bread was made first from potatoes, then from turnips. Eggs, which had been limited in September to two per person per week, were doled out in December at one egg every two weeks. Pork, a staple of the traditional German diet, disappeared; in August 1914, Berlin stockyards were slaughtering 25,000 pigs every week; by September 1916, the figure was 350. Sugar and butter could be purchased only in minute quantities. The 1916 potato harvest had failed, and potato ration cards were required in hotels and restaurants. Even in June that year, three Americans had walked down Unter den Linden where every window and balcony was festooned with red, white, and black flags celebrating the “victory” at Jutland and the prospect that the blockade would soon be broken. Entering the Zollernhof restaurant, they picked up the bill of fare and for the first time read, “Boiled Crow.”

By winter, the grip of the blockade had tightened. “We are all gaunt and bony now,” wrote the English-born Princess Blücher. “We have dark shadows around our eyes and our thoughts are chiefly taken up with wondering what our next meal will be.” Coal was scarce; in Berlin only every other street light was lit. In Munich, all public halls, theaters, art galleries, museums, and cinema houses were closed for lack of heat. Women waiting in long lines to buy food were exposed to winter rain, snow, and slush. The women returned to unheated houses, where their children, having no warm clothes, had been kept in bed all day.

These privations aroused the German people to hatred. They were bitter at their own government, which had promised a short war, brilliant victories, and a greater Germany. Their rage was far greater at their enemies, primarily Britain, which had imposed the blockade. And every day they read in their newspapers that the nation possessed a weapon that could break the blockade. Week by week, throughout Germany, the clamor rose higher: Unleash the submarines! The U-boat now became a symbol not only of revenge and victory, but also of the end of the war and peace.

Bethmann-Hollweg, who had reluctantly approved of Jagow’s dismissal as a means of buying time, realized that he could no longer wait for Wilson. On December 9, when the American election had been over for a month and still nothing was heard from Washington, the chancellor resolved on a dramatic step: Germany herself would propose negotiations to end the war. It was a favorable moment; the German military position had temporarily improved. The British offensive on the Somme had been drowned in blood, the Russian Brusilov campaign had been checked, and Rumania had been crushed. The kaiser, seeing a new way to seize the limelight, supported the chancellor. “To propose to make peace is a moral act,” William wrote. “Such an act needs a monarch whose conscience is awake and who feels himself responsible to God, who acknowledges his duty to all men—even his enemies; a monarch who feels no fear because his intentions may be misinterpreted, who has in him the will to deliver the world from its agony. I have the courage to do this and I will risk it for God’s sake.”

Grudgingly, the generals and admirals agreed to delay an unrestricted submarine campaign until one last demonstration could be made to the German public and to world opinion that Germany had no other choice. Their quid pro quo was that if Bethmann-Hollweg’s attempt to bring about a peace conference should fail—as they fully expected—the U-boats would be unleashed. The new foreign minister, Zimmermann, had put it in a way the military men could accept. “Intensified submarine war toward America would certainly be facilitated,” Zimmermann said, “if we could refer to such a peace action.” Zimmermann also saw another advantage: the move would drive away an obnoxious interloper. To an off-the-record press conference, he explained that, as Germany “was threatened by a peace move by Mr. Wilson, we would fix it so this person would not have his finger in the pie.” The German peace note, circulated on December 12 and announcing that the Central Powers invited the nations at war to begin negotiations for a peaceful settlement, came as a surprise to everyone. “In a deep moral and religious sense of duty towards this nation and beyond it towards humanity, the emperor now considers that the moment has come for official action towards peace,” Bethmann-Hollweg explained to the Reichstag. William’s announcement to the army was delivered in sterner language: “Soldiers! In agreement with the sovereigns of my allies and with consciousness of victory, I have made an offer of peace to the enemy. Whether it will be accepted is uncertain. Until that moment arrives, you will fight on.”

By December 1916, the Asquith coalition government in Britain was coming apart, the central issue being the effectiveness of the prime minister himself. Asquith had always governed as a relaxed chairman of the board, hearing all arguments, then postponing decisions until consensus emerged.  *69 Now, after eight years in office, he was tired and, to make matters worse, his focus was blurred by the recent death in action of his eldest son. David Lloyd George, a Liberal colleague who had served under Asquith for many years, saw his chance. Asquith’s leadership had become “visibly flabbier, tardier, and more flaccid,” the ambitious Welshman declared; what was needed was a new War Committee of three, chaired by himself and excluding the prime minister, who would be allowed to keep that office with diminished authority. When Asquith refused this political emasculation, his government collapsed. Lloyd George resigned; then Asquith resigned, and on December 10, a new, Lloyd George government took office with Grey out as foreign secretary and Balfour shifted from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office. Two days later, the German peace note arrived. The Allies saw clearly that the peace being offered was a conqueror’s peace. Europe from the English Channel to the Black Sea was in the grip of the Central Powers; the German army occupied Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Rumania, and ten of the richest provinces of France. Now, the note suggested, the rulers of Germany would be willing to call off the war if they could keep everything they had occupied. On December 30, Lloyd George told the House of Commons that “to enter into a conference on the invitation of Germany, proclaiming herself victorious, is to put our heads in a noose.” Both Britain and France rejected the German note.

The Allies’ emphatic rejection of Bethmann-Hollweg’s peace offer fur-ther weakened the chancellor in Berlin. Admiral von Holtzendorff said, “Since I do not believe in a quick effect of the beautiful peace gesture, I am totally committed to the use of our crucial weapon—unrestricted submarine warfare.” Hindenburg insisted that “diplomatic and military preparations for an unrestricted U-boat campaign begin so that it may for certain begin at end of January.” But now came another complication—and a last opportunity for the chancellor. On December 18, the president of the United States finally issued his own peace note to the warring powers. Presenting himself as “the friend of all nations,” Wilson asked each of the belligerents to declare its war aims so that a search for middle ground could begin. “It may be,” he declared, “that peace is nearer than we know. . . . The objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated to their own peoples and to the world.” Privately, House told Bernstorff that Wilson would not hesitate to use heavy economic pressure to coerce the Allies if he thought their conditions unreasonable.

Wilson’s note was received unwillingly by all to whom it was addressed. The German reply arrived first, on December 26. It was a polite rebuff, declaring that Germany was willing to meet its enemies, but preferred to negotiate with them directly on neutral ground, without the assistance of the United States. Bernstorff pointed out to Berlin that Wilson wished only to be informed of the war aims of both sides so that the belligerents could identify their differences. He was ignored. Specifics were precisely what the German government did not wish to reveal, because such revelations would arouse in Germany a bitter struggle over what German war aims actually were. Nor did the German government wish Wilson to be present at the conference because, as Zimmermann told Bernstorff, “we do not want to run the risk of being robbed of our gains by neutral pressure.” The kaiser’s reaction was blunt: “I go to no conference. Certainly not one presided over by him.”

The Allied reply came two weeks later. Despite their exhaustion, the Allies believed they were winning the war and regarded Wilson’s mediation offer as an effort, witting or unwitting, to rescue their enemies from the consequences of defeat. They wanted no compromises that would leave Germany in a position to renew the struggle later. Lloyd George actively resented Wilson’s effort to “butt in,” as he put it. At the end of September, before becoming prime minister, he had made clear his disdain for any American mediation efforts. “There had been no such intervention when we were being hammered though the first two years, as yet untrained and ill-equipped,” he told an American newspaperman. “Now the whole world—including humanitarians with the best of motives—must know that there can be no outside interference at this stage. Britain will tolerate no interference until Prussian military despotism is broken beyond repair.” Wilson’s phrase, equating the war aims of the opposing sides as “virtually the same” and thus seeming to exonerate Germany and ignore or cheapen the sacrifices of the Allies, appeared less neutral than mischievous. The American ambassador, Walter Page, reported that King George V had wept when the subject came up at lunch. On January 12, 1917, the governments of Britain and France firmly rejected peace talks. The sole cause of war, they declared, was the brutal, unprovoked aggression of Germany and Austria-Hungary. German misdeeds were set forth at length and specific Allied war aims were listed, including evacuation of all occupied territories and enormous reparations and indemnities. Until this was achieved and Germany so reduced that fear of another war did not hang over them, they would continue to fight. France, especially, felt that never again would she be supported by as strong a combination of powers and have as good a chance of beating Germany to her knees. In Washington, however, the negative Allied response produced exactly the reaction Spring-Rice had feared: a resentful president who decided that the two sides, equally intractable, were equally guilty. His peace initiative momentarily thwarted, Wilson decided that the other pillar of his foreign policy, American neutrality, must be buttressed. “There will be no war,” he told House. “This country does not intend to become entangled in this war. It would be a crime against civilization if we entered it.”

Wilson’s peace move was of no interest to the German Supreme Command. Ludendorff already had declared “ Ich pfeife auf Amerika” (I don’t give a damn about America) and had informed the American military attaché that the United States could do no greater harm to Germany by declaring war than it already was doing by supplying the Allies. For months, stories about American war munitions and foodstuffs flowing across the Atlantic had appeared in German newspapers. “If it were not for American ammunition, the war would have been finished long ago” became a nationwide refrain. A copy of an advertisement by the Cleveland Automatic Tool Company depicting a new artillery shell and printed in The American Machinist was laid on every desk in the Reichstag. A drawing distributed throughout Germany depicted a freighter in an American port ready to take on a cargo of ammunition. Massed in the background were three groups of German soldiers doomed to become casualties of this single cargo: “30,000 killed, 40,000 seriously wounded, 40,000 lightly wounded.” Not surprisingly, the German public supported a U-boat effort intended to cut this transatlantic supply line and preserve the lives of their husbands, sons, and brothers.

James Gerard, the American ambassador to Germany, bore the brunt of this hostility. Gerard, a former justice of the New York State Supreme Court, had come to Berlin in 1913; in May 1914, he had believed that war between Germany and the United States was unthinkable. Beginning in August 1914, however, Gerard was denied contact with the head of the state to which he was accredited. “An ambassador is supposed to have the right to demand an audience with the kaiser at any time,” Gerard later wrote, “[but] on each occasion my request was refused. I was not even permitted to go to the railway station to bid him goodbye when he left for the front.” Nine months later, Gerard asked the American military attaché “to tell the kaiser that I had not seen him for so long a time that I had forgotten what he looked like.” Through the attaché, the kaiser retorted, “I have nothing against Mr. Gerard personally, but I will not see the ambassador of a country which furnishes arms and ammunition to the enemies of Germany.” Another five months passed, until finally, in September 1915, Gerard wrote to Bethmann-Hollweg: “Your Excellency: Some time ago I requested you to arrange an audience for me with His Majesty. Please take no further trouble about this matter. Yours sincerely.” Immediately, Gerard was granted an audience.

The ambassador was summoned again six months later, after the settlement of the Sussex affair. This time Gerard was escorted to Supreme Headquarters in the French town of Charleville-Mézières, fifty miles behind the western battlefront. Before seeing the kaiser, he was asked condescendingly by William’s staff what America could do if Germany recommenced unrestricted submarine warfare. “I said that nearly all great inventions used in war were made by Americans: barbed wire, the airplane, the telephone, the telegraph—and the submarine. I believed that if forced into it, we would come up with something else.” The Germans replied, “While you might invent something and will furnish money and supplies to the Allies, the public sentiment of your country is such that you will not be able to raise an army large enough to make an impression.”

On May 1, 1916, Gerard was taken to see Kaiser William, strolling in a garden. “Do you come bearing peace or war?” the kaiser asked, and then launched into a monologue: Americans, he said, had “charged Germany with barbarism in warfare, but that as emperor and head of the church, he had wished to carry on war in knightly manner. He then referred to the British blockade and said that before he allowed his family and grandchildren to starve he would blow up Windsor Castle and the whole Royal Family of England. . . . The submarine had come to stay . . . and a person traveling on an enemy merchant ship was like a man traveling in a cart behind the battle lines—he had no just cause for complaint if injured.” The kaiser then asked why America had complained about the Lusitania but had done nothing to break the British blockade.

Gerard put his answer into metaphor: “If two men entered my house and one stepped on my flowerbeds and the other killed my sister, I should probably pursue the murderer first. [As for] those traveling on the seas in belligerent merchant ships, it was different from those traveling in a cart behind enemy lines because the travelers on land were on belligerent territory while those on the sea were on territory which, beyond the three-mile limit, was free.” The kaiser argued that Lusitania ’s passengers had been warned before the ship sailed. Gerard replied, “If the chancellor warns me not to go out on the Wilhelmsplatz, where I have a perfect right to go, the fact that he gave me the warning does not justify him in killing me if I disregarded his warning.”

Gerard’s meeting with the emperor did not diminish the widespread antagonism he met in Berlin. Caricatures of Uncle Sam and President Wilson appeared daily in German newspapers. At one point, Gerard was obliged to deny in print a story that his wife had pinned a German decoration he had received on the collar of the family dog. In January 1916, a large wreath with an American flag draped in mourning was placed at the base of the statue of Frederick the Great near the royal palace on Unter den Linden. A silk banner was inscribed, “Wilson and his press are not America.” For four months, Gerard protested, but the police refused to act. Then Gerard announced that he would go with his own photographer and himself remove the wreath. Instantly, it disappeared. Subsequently, Gerard and his staff were in a concert box when a man in the next box began shouting that people in the hall were speaking English. Told that it was the American ambassador, the man shouted that Americans were worse than the English. Finally, in January 1917, a few weeks before the ambassador left Berlin, the heavyset Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin planted himself in front of Gerard. “ ‘You are the American ambassador and I want to tell you that the conduct of America in furnishing arms and ammunition to the enemies of Germany is stamped deep on the German heart, that we will never forget it and some day we will have our revenge.’ He spoke in a voice so loud and slapped his chest so hard that everyone in the room stopped their conversation in order to hear. He wore on his breast the orders of the Black Eagle, the Red Eagle, the Elephant and the Seraphim and when he struck all this menagerie, the rattle was quite loud.” Gerard reminded him that American behavior was legal under the Hague Convention. “We care nothing for treaties,” bellowed the nobleman, and stalked away.

Even as the two peace initiatives, German and American, were failing, events were moving rapidly. At the end of December, a French counterattack at Verdun recovered most of the ground lost earlier in the year. Austria told Berlin that she was near the end of her resources and could not last another winter. The Emperor Franz Joseph had died in November at the age of eighty-six and been succeeded by his thirty-year-old great-nephew Karl, who told William imploringly, “We are fighting against a new enemy which is more dangerous than the Entente—against international revolution which finds its strongest ally in general starvation.” William ignored him. Hindenburg told Bethmann-Hollweg, “We must resume torpedoing armed enemy merchantmen without notice. We received a slap in the face from all their parliaments. [In August] you said I should choose the time, depending on the military situation. That moment will be the end of January.” Bethmann-Hollweg reminded the field marshal that unrestricted submarine warfare affecting neutral ships and Germany’s relations with neutral states both were aspects of foreign policy, “for which I alone bear the responsibility. The question must be cleared up with America [Germany’s Sussex pledge was still in force]. Many people in neutral countries already believed that our peace offer was in bad faith and indeed only stated at all as a starting point for the unrestricted submarine campaign. We must do everything possible to avoid intensifying that impression.” Hindenburg wished to waste no time on “clearing up questions” with America. “Unfortunately, our military situation makes it impossible that negotiations of any kind should be allowed to postpone military measures which have been recognized as essential, and thus paralyze the energy of our operations,” the field marshal told the chancellor. “I must adhere to that view in no uncertain manner. It goes without saying that I myself shall never cease to insist with all my might and in the fullest sense of responsibility for the victorious outcome of the war, that everything of a military nature shall be done which I regard as necessary.”

Meanwhile, a significant member of the military high command had changed sides. Admiral von Holtzendorff, the Chief of the Naval Staff, who in the spring of 1916 had supported Bethmann-Hollweg and opposed Tirpitz’s insistence on unrestricted submarine warfare, had been told by Scheer that because the U-boats were still tethered, the fleet was losing confidence in the Naval Staff. On December 22, Holtzendorff sent Hindenburg and the Supreme Command a 200-page memorandum in which he advocated unleashing the U-boats. This document laid out figures and charts of shipping tonnage available to Great Britain, with comprehensive calculations of such factors as world grain prices, cargo space, freight rates, shipping insurance rates, and shortages in England of cotton, iron and other metals, wood, wool, and petroleum. All these numbers then marched with mathematical precision to the conclusion that the U-boats could break Britain’s power to resist within six months. “A decision must be reached before the autumn of 1917,” Holtzendorff wrote, “if the war is not to end in the exhaustion of all parties and consequently disastrously for us. Of our enemies, Italy and France are economically so hard hit that it is only by the energy and force of England that they are still kept on their feet. If we can break England’s back, the war will immediately be decided in our favor.” Holtzendorff stressed that the unrestricted submarine campaign was to be directed, not merely, or even primarily, at ships carrying munitions, but against all imports necessary to life in the British Isles; it was to strike at the general economic capacity of the British to continue the war. “The backbone of England consists in her shipping which brings to the British Isles the necessary supplies of food and materials for war industries.” Success would be reflected not only in rising freight rates and insurance rates for ocean cargoes, but in higher prices of bread and other foodstuffs in the British Isles.

Holtzendorff calculated that 10.75 million tons of British and neutral shipping was required to keep Britain fed and supplied. Once unleashed, he argued, the submarines should be able to sink at least 600,000 tons of shipping every month; another million tons of neutral shipping would be frightened away. “We may reckon that in five months, shipping to and from England will be reduced by thirty-nine percent. England would not be able to stand that. I do not hesitate to assert that, as matters now stand, we can force England to make peace in five months by an unrestricted U-boat campaign. But this holds good only for a really unrestricted U-boat campaign.”

The admiral’s argument and the statistics supplied in the Naval Staff memorandum were not enough. As long as Bethmann-Hollweg refused to agree, the kaiser would not give permission for unrestricted warfare. On January 8, the chancellor, fighting for time, told the Chief of the Naval Staff that even if unrestricted warfare must begin, he still needed an interval to prepare the neutrals. Then, suddenly, Admiral von Müller, a Bethmann-Hollweg ally who had always supported the chancellor, defected. “After our peace feelers and their curt rejection by the Allies, circumstances warrant the use of this weapon which offers a reasonable chance of success,” Müller wrote in his diary on January 8. “I told Holtzendorff he could rely on my support.” Müller’s entry was written at the castle of Pless in Silesia where he, the kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Holtzendorff had gathered. That night, Bethmann-Hollweg, suffering from severe bronchitis, boarded a train in Berlin. It would take him to Pless, and to a meeting that would seal the fate of Imperial Germany.

Since the day in October 1915 when impertinent French aviators dropped a bomb near the kaiser’s “frontline” villa in Charleville in France, German Supreme Headquarters had been moved to the more secure and comfortable site of Prince Hans von Pless’s white, 300-room castle near Breslau, in Silesia. Prince Hans, William’s bosom companion, possessed one of the great fortunes in Germany, based on Silesian coal and thousands of acres of land. The prince was also married to one of the kaiser’s favorite women, the beautiful English-born Daisy Cornwallis-West.  *70 “Oh, I am most unhappy. I am always misunderstood,” the unhappy emperor had said to Daisy one night before the war, dropping a tear onto his cigar. Now that war had come, Daisy stayed mostly out of sight, keeping to her own apartments at Pless and having nothing to do with that grim military pair, Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

In fact, the decision was made while the chancellor was still on the train. On the evening of January 8, the military and naval leaders of Germany suddenly heard the kaiser announce that he would support unrestricted U-boat warfare, “even if the chancellor is opposed.” Further, Müller wrote in his diary, “His Majesty voiced the very curious viewpoint that the U-boat war was a purely military affair which did not concern the chancellor in any way.” Early the next morning, Müller met Bethmann-Hollweg at the station to warn him that everything was already settled. Driving to the castle, Müller explained his own defection and begged the “agitated and depressed” Bethmann-Hollweg to come along. “For two years,” Müller contended, “I have always been for moderation, but now, in the altered circumstances, I consider unrestricted warfare to be necessary and that it has a reasonable chance of success.” The chancellor remained silent. At six o’clock that evening, Bethmann-Hollweg entered the palace’s red damask reception hall with tall French windows overlooking a terrace and a park set with lakes, lawns, flower gardens, and giant chestnut trees now covered with winter frost. Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Holtzendorff, Müller, and others were waiting. The kaiser, pale and fidgety, stood by a great chair, his right hand resting on the table. Next to his hand was a copy of Holtzendorff’s memorandum.

The chancellor, despite knowing that the decision had been made, spoke for an hour. He cited Bernstorff’s opinion that America’s entrance into the war would mean Germany’s defeat. He reiterated the ambassador’s conviction, and his own belief, that Wilson’s peace offer was genuine and should be pursued. Bernstorff had been assured that the president meant to press his mediation hard and would coerce the Allies if they resisted his diplomacy. William grunted with impatience and Bethmann-Hollweg halted; he was speaking in a vacuum. The chancellor realized that if he forced William to choose between himself and Hindenburg, the field marshal would win. He surrendered: “If the military authorities consider the U-boat war necessary, I am not in position to oppose them.”

Admiral von Holtzendorff then repeated the argument in his memorandum: unrestricted warfare, “in the course of which every enemy and neutral ship found in the war zone will be sunk without warning,” would allow his U-boats to sink 600,000 tons a month and thus force England to capitulate. He went further: “I pledge on my word as a naval officer that no American will set foot on continental soil.” Hindenburg added, “We are in a position to meet all eventualities against America. We need the most energetic and ruthless action possible. We must begin.” Defeated, Bethmann-Hollweg nodded and said, “Of course, if victory beckons, we must act.”

No more was required. The kaiser signed a document already prepared: “I command that unrestricted submarine warfare shall begin on February 1 in full force.” Then, followed by his generals and admirals, he left the room. The chancellor remained behind, hunched in a chair. Baron von Reischach, a court official, entered and, seeing the lonely figure, asked, “Have we lost a battle?” “No,” said Bethmann-Hollweg, “but finis Germaniae. ” “You should resign,” said Reischach. Bethmann-Hollweg did not resign. Instead, wrapping himself in a traditional Prussian cloak of duty to his king, he remained, politically enfeebled, for another six months. In July 1917, when Ludendorff demanded that the kaiser choose between himself and Bethmann-Hollweg, the chancellor, who had been in office for eight years, resigned. He was replaced by Dr. Georg Michaelis, a nonentity who had been assistant state secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Food. Michaelis lasted for one hundred days.

Holtzendorff immediately forwarded the imperial command to Scheer. In order to achieve maximum psychological impact, the new campaign was not to be announced until the evening of January 31, a few hours before the first torpedoes would be fired. Thereafter, submarines would waste no warning shots and send no boarding parties to examine papers and cargo. Hospital ships were to be spared, except in the English Channel, where Ludendorff believed the Red Cross was being used to mask troop transports. Ships clearly identified as neutral steamers, Belgian relief ships, and passenger liners were to be given one week to reach port safely. Then they, too, were to be sunk without warning.

In Washington, neither Wilson nor Bernstorff was aware that the submarine decision had been made. Both men continued working—for peace if that was still possible; for American neutrality, if not. To the ambassador, the critical thing was to keep the talk going in Berlin; as long as that continued, he believed that Bethmann-Hollweg could hold back the submarines. To facilitate Bernstorff’s contact with Zimmermann in Berlin, Wilson authorized the German foreign minister to send messages in German code to his ambassador in Washington over the State Department cable. Lansing bitterly opposed this breach of diplomatic practice, but Wilson, believing that the nobility of his ends justified these unprecedented means, overrode his secretary of state. At the president’s insistence, Bernstorff had promised to use the cable only for transmitting and discussion of peace offers.

At first, the cable hummed exclusively with messages on the intended subject although they were not of a nature for which either the president or the ambassador had hoped. On January 10—the day after the decisive conference at Pless—Zimmermann informed Bernstorff that “American intervention for definite peace negotiations is entirely undesirable.” Frantically, Bernstorff cabled back: “This government [the United States] must be given time. As everything is decided by Wilson, discussion with Lansing is mere formality. It is my duty to state clearly that I consider a rupture with the United States inevitable if action [releasing the submarines] is taken.” On January 19, Bernstorff was belatedly informed of the Pless decision to start the unrestricted U-boat campaign on February 1—and ordered to say nothing about it until the day before. Immediately, he cabled Zimmermann asking for a one-month grace period for neutral merchantmen and to give Wilson’s peace efforts some extra time. Otherwise, he said, “war inevitable.” The kaiser saw this telegram and wrote in its margin, “I do not care.”

Now, only Wilson remained hopeful. Weighing the replies to his peace initiative, he had concluded that the war aims of the Allies were as grasping as those of the Germans. His approach now was so even-handed that Bernstorff reported to Berlin, “Remarkable as this may sound to German ears, Wilson is regarded here very generally as pro-German.” On January 22, the president made his historic “peace without victory” speech to the Senate. “Victory would mean a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished,” he said. “It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.” The reaction in America was mixed. Some applauded the idealism of the president’s words: Theodore Roosevelt jeered, “Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight.” Bernstorff, hearing the speech and harboring the secret of a policy repugnant to him, decided not to give up. On January 27, he cabled Zimmermann:

House suddenly invited me to visit him. . . . If only we had confidence in him, the president was convinced that he would be able to bring about peace conferences. He would be particularly pleased if Your Excellency were at the same time to declare that we are prepared to enter peace conference on the basis of his appeal. . . . If the U-boat campaign is opened now without further ado, the president will regard this as a smack in the face and war with the United States will be inevitable. . . . On the other hand, if we acquiesce in Wilson’s proposal and plans come to grief on the stubbornness of our enemies, it would be very hard for the president to come into the war against us even if by that time we begin unrestricted submarine war. It is only a matter of postponing the declaration for a little while. . . . I am of the opinion that we shall obtain a better peace now by means of conferences, than we should if the United States joined the ranks of our enemies.

Bethmann-Hollweg, seeing this message, asked the navy to wait. He was told it was too late; twenty-one U-boats had already put to sea. On Janu-ary 29, the chancellor cabled Bernstorff: “Please thank the president. If his offer had only reached us a few days earlier, we should have been able to postpone opening of the new U-boat war. Now, however, in spite of the best will in the world, it is, owing to technical reasons, unfortunately too late. Extensive military preparations have already been made which cannot be undone and U-boats have already sailed with new instructions.” The kaiser made no apologies; the die having been cast, he returned to bluster: “Agreed, reject. . . . Now, once for all, an end to negotiations with America. If Wilson wants war, let him make it, and let him then have it!”

At ten minutes past four on the afternoon of January 31, 1917, a hapless Ambassador Bernstorff formally called on Secretary of State Lansing to announce that Germany would begin unrestricted submarine warfare that night at midnight. A single exception to the submarine blockade would be allowed: once a week, one U.S. passenger ship would be permitted to pass provided that it carried no contraband and docked only at Falmouth, only on Sundays. For identification, the vessel must be painted with meter-wide alternating red and white vertical stripes and must fly a large checkered white and red flag on every mast—“striped like a barber’s pole and a flag like a kitchen tablecloth,” fumed an indignant American historian.

After Lansing had read the German note, Bernstorff said, “I know it is very serious, very, and I deeply regret that it is necessary.”

“I believe you do regret it,” Lansing replied, “for you know what the result will be. But I am not blaming you personally.”

“You should not,” said Bernstorff. “You know how constantly I have worked for peace.”

“I do know it,” said Lansing and, seeing the ambassador’s eyes blurred with tears, took his extended hand. Then Bernstorff bowed, Lansing said, “Good afternoon,” and the meeting was over.  *71

To Lansing, an interventionist who believed that a German victory would be intolerable and that sooner or later the United States must enter the war to support the Allies, there was a positive side to Bernstorff’s announcement. To Wilson, however, it came as a blow to the foundations of his beliefs and policy. Before Lansing could reach the White House, an Associated Press bulletin announcing the German government’s decision was placed in the hands of Joseph Tumulty, the president’s secretary. Tumulty entered the Oval Office. “He looked up from his writing,” the secretary said. “Without comment, I laid the fateful slip of paper on his desk and silently watched the expressions that raced across his strong features: first, blank amazement, then incredulity, then gravity and sternness, a sudden grayness of color, a compression of the lips and the familiar locking of the jaw which always characterized him in moments of supreme resolution. Handing the paper back to me, he said in quiet tones: ‘This means war.’ ”

In Berlin, Zimmermann, dry-eyed, almost cheerful, was informing Gerard. “You will see, everything will be all right,” he told the ambassador. “America will do nothing, for President Wilson is for peace and nothing else. Everything will go on as before. I have arranged for you to go to General Headquarters and see the kaiser next week and everything will be all right.” Gerard then cabled Washington that Germans felt “contempt and hatred for America” as “a fat, rich race without a sense of honour and ready to stand for anything in order to keep out of war.” At Pless that night after dinner, the kaiser read aloud to the company a long academic essay on the eagle as an heraldic beast. The evening, Müller wrote in his diary, was “gruesome.”

On the day following Bernstorff’s visit to Lansing, Colonel House came to the White House to find Wilson pacing the floor of his library, nervously rearranging his books. Mrs. Wilson suggested golf. House said that he thought that people might consider this trivial at such a time. The president suggested a private game of pool, which the two men played. Wilson’s anguish stemmed from the fact that his freedom of action had been stripped away. Repeatedly over two and a half years, he had said that the United States would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare. To yield now on the principle of freedom of the seas would stain American honor and make his own word meaningless. He had no choice. He must break diplomatic relations. On February 3, he ordered that Bernstorff be given his passports and that Gerard be recalled from Berlin. But even these actions did not mean that the United States intended to declare war. The president still found it unthinkable that the German government would deliberately destroy American and other neutral ships. Announcing the diplomatic rupture to Congress, he said, “I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they feel at liberty to do. . . . Only overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.” In taking this position, Wilson once again captured the high ground in American public opinion. Spring-Rice, writing to Balfour, counseled patience, warning that although the diplomatic situation was brightening for the Allies, the strongest influence in the country remained the desire to remain neutral and too much should not be expected right away. “The main point is whether and how far the United States government is willing and able to defend its rights,” he said. “Many people here think that it may be willing (although that is doubtful) but that it is not able. There is no doubt that the temper of the Congress is pacific.”

During the first month following the break in diplomatic relations, the nation’s attitude and behavior were disjointed. The president continued to wait, partly to see what the Germans would do and partly for public opinion to crystallize. Congress debated large appropriations for the army and navy. Two American merchant ships, the Housatonic and the Lyman M. Law, were torpedoed with no loss of life. Meanwhile, the German threat to sink all merchant ships on sight had a dragging effect on the economy. Nervous American shipowners were reluctant to send their ships to sea, and harbors on the Eastern Seaboard were clogged with anchored vessels. As the ships jammed together, the paralysis spread inland along the railways; thousands of freight cars, unable to unload, the foodstuffs inside them spoiling, were parked on sidings. With the economy slumping, chambers of commerce demanded action, pacifists rallied to demand that American ships stay out of war zones, and interventionists shouted for the arming of merchant ships with orders to shoot on sight. Theodore Roosevelt, purple with indignation, shouted, “He is endeavoring to sneak out of war. He is yellow all through.” On February 26, Wilson reluctantly requested Congress to authorize the arming of American merchantmen to protect them “in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the seas.” While he was speaking, news arrived that the small Cunard liner Laconia had been torpedoed without warning. Twelve civilian passengers, including two Americans, both women, were dead.  *72

Arthur Zimmermann, the new foreign minister of the German empire, was “a very jolly sort of large German,” said Ambassador Gerard. Zimmermann once had crossed America by train, spending two days in San Francisco and three days in New York. In Berlin, this qualified him as an expert on American affairs equivalent to Bernstorff, who had spent eight years in the United States. The former chancellor Bernhard von Bülow was unimpressed by his newly promoted countryman. Zimmermann, he said, “is filled with the best of intentions, one of those Germans who mean well, whose industry is unquestionable, whose virtues are solid and apparent, an excellent fellow who would have done very good and useful work had he stayed in the consular service. He might have done even better as a public prosecutor. People would have greeted him on all sides as he came every morning to take his aperitif at the local hotel, ‘Good morning. Good health, Your Honor.’ ”

In Berlin, Zimmermann liked to speak bluntly. During the Lusitania crisis, when he was still Jagow’s deputy, he reminded Gerard of the large German-American population in the United States. “The United States does not dare to do anything against Germany because we have five hundred thousand German reservists in America who will rise in arms against your government if it should dare to take any action against Germany,” he said, striking the table with his fist. “I told him,” the ambassador replied, “that we have five hundred and one thousand lamp posts in America and that is where the German reservists would find themselves if they tried any uprising.” During the Sussex affair, Zimmermann said to a group of German reporters, “Gentlemen, there is no use wasting words about Mr. Wilson’s shamelessness and impudence, but we have torn the mask from his face.” Now, confronting another submarine crisis, Zimmermann was confident that he could handle the Americans. Germany, he assured Gerard, would not begin unrestricted submarine warfare without first reaching an understanding with America. At a grand dinner on January 6, assembled at the Hotel Adlon by the American Chamber of Commerce to honor Ambassador Gerard, the ambassador told the guests that “relations between the two countries had never been better” and that “so long as such men as . . . Hindenburg and Ludendorff . . . Müller . . . Holtzendorff and State Secretary Zimmermann are at the head of the civil, military and naval services in Germany, it will undoubtedly be possible to keep these good relations intact.”

Behind his mask of bonhomie, however, the jolly Zimmermann was concocting something unpleasant for his American friend. During the weeks following the Pless decision, the foreign minister looked for ways to contribute to the coming submarine campaign. He came up with an extraordinary scheme designed to keep America occupied on her own side of the Atlantic once the U-boats began sinking American ships. On the chance that war might come between the United States and Germany, he proposed to arrange in advance a Mexican-German alliance that would pledge Mexico to invade the United States. Mexico was to be lured into this folly by the assurance that following a German victory she would be restored her lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In addition, Mexico was to work diligently to persuade Japan to join the alliance. To assure rapid, secure communication with Mexico City, Zimmermann decided to make use of the State Department cable that Wilson had made available to Bernstorff for communicating American peace proposals to Berlin. Bernstorff, of course, had promised that this channel would be used only for this purpose, but Zimmermann saw no need to honor the ambassador’s word. On January 16, the German foreign minister sent a coded message on the American cable through Washington to German minister Eckhardt in Mexico:

We intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on the first of February. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.

You will inform the president [of Mexico] of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.

Please call the [Mexican] president’s attention to the fact that the unrestricted employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace within a few months. Zimmermann.

The telegram arrived at the Department of State in Washington on January 17 and was delivered, still in code, to Bernstorff at the German embassy. Bernstorff decoded and read his information copy and, having no choice, forwarded the original to Mexico. Meanwhile, the telegram, promptly decoded, was also in the hands of Room 40.

For nineteen days, the Zimmermann telegram lay in an Admiralty safe, awaiting the moment when it could be discreetly handed to the Americans. The problem was how to present the telegram without revealing to the Americans—and thereby, through leaks, perhaps informing the Germans—that Britain had broken the German code. On February 5, two days after the American diplomatic rupture with Germany, Admiral William Reginald Hall, Room 40’s chief, decided he could wait no longer and took the decoded telegram to the Foreign Office. Balfour read it and knew that the Allied cause had been blessed. On February 23, the British foreign secretary formally presented the Zimmermann telegram to Walter Page, the American ambassador, who transmitted it to Washington. When Lansing, who had sensed all along that the Germans could not be trusted, told the president how the Zimmermann telegram had been sent, Wilson clutched his head and cried out, “Good Lord! Good Lord!”

The president held the telegram only a single day. On February 28, while a bill authorizing the arming of American merchant ships was being debated in the House of Representatives, he gave it to the press. Next day, March 1, The New York Times announced, “Germany Seeks Alliance Against U.S.: Asks Japan and Mexico to Join Her.” The news that the German government was conniving to slice off and give away pieces of the United States enraged the American public and in a surge of patriotic emotion the armed merchant-ship bill passed the House, 403–13. Even so, eleven pacifist senators, led by Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, filibustered and on March 4, Congress adjourned without passing the legislation. Wilson immediately did what he could have done weeks before: he used his executive authority to issue an order to arm American merchantmen. The question of the telegram’s authenticity was resolved on March 3 when Zimmermann, believing by now that it made no difference whether America was hostile, freely acknowledged authorship.

For another month, Wilson and the country awaited the “overt act.” On March 12, the American steamer Algonquin was sunk by gunfire; the crew escaped and reached land after twenty-seven hours in open boats. On March 18, three American merchant ships, the Illinois, City of Memphis, and Vigilancia, were torpedoed without warning; fifteen members of Vigilancia ’s crew were lost. “If he does not go to war,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote privately to Henry Cabot Lodge, “I shall skin him alive.” Still, for another two weeks, the president waited. At a Cabinet meeting on March 20, he went around the table, asking each member for advice. The unanimous recommendation was war, but Wilson gave no hint of his own opinion. The following day, he summoned Congress to a special session on April 2 to hear “a communication concerning grave matters of national policy.”

It was raining in Washington that evening when the president drove to the Capitol. His car was surrounded by a squadron of cavalry provided at the insistence of Lansing and the Attorney General, who worried that a “fanatical pro-German, [an] anarchist or pacifist” might attempt an assassination. “I shall never forget it,” wrote Ambassador Spring-Rice. “The Capitol was illuminated from below—white against a black sky. I sat on the floor of Congress. The president came in, and in a perfectly calm, deliberate voice, he recited by word and deed what Germany had said and done.” “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” Wilson said. “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission.” He asked formal acknowledgment that “the status of belligerent has been thrust upon us,” and then went on to say, “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. But the right is more precious than peace. The world must be made safe for democracy. The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth. God helping her, she can do no other.” Congress debated and on April 4, the Senate voted for war, 82–6. On April 6, the House confirmed the decision, 373–50.

It had happened as the American president, the German chancellor, and the German ambassador to Washington had feared: the decision to begin a new unrestricted submarine campaign had brought America into the war.