2

Go-Betweens in the Great War

In September 1914 the Bavarian aristocrat Prince zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg wrote a depressed letter from the front: ‘the economic losses of this war will be enormous. It is as if a brewery owner picks a quarrel with a pub-owner and then kills him. He has won the fight, but nobody will be left to buy his beer.’¹ Such a rational verdict was only the more impressive since Löwenstein had been a friend of the murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

He was also a friend of the English Duke of Portland, who had a similar opinion: ‘The outlook is very bleak and Europe will not recover from this for two generations.’² Portland had relatives in the Netherlands and Germany. For him the war also meant that he had to cut off links with many of them.

Ideally royal and aristocratic families worked like a closed ecosystem. However, the ecosystem could get out of balance when separate elements broke off. Three main threats endangered the equilibrium: first biological failure (no male descendants); second, financial failure (bad investments); and third, unpredictable outside threats like revolutions, coups, or wars. This last threat appeared in 1914. Until then there were not many reasons to cut oneself off from the international network. It was literally a safety net. Up to 1914 it had also been in the interest of aristocratic families to extend their international contacts. The image of a wide family tree held its appeal. They were proud of the age of their tree—the older the better. But they were even keener that branches were ‘growing’ into different neighbourhoods, i.e. countries. The more branches abroad, the grander the family had become. It was blooming.

However, this was not a picture that appealed to ardent nationalists. A tree trunk that spread its branches into foreign territory was suspected of being rotten, diseased. It had to be axed to fit national demands. In August 1914 the question for international families therefore was, did kinship rank before national loyalty? Up to this point it had been possible to juggle both.

Identities are not like hats: one can wear more than one at the same time.³ European aristocrats had always done this. Increasingly, however, they encountered difficulties. They were truly international and therefore regarded as unpatriotic. Already in nineteenth-century Britain, the Queen’s husband Prince Albert was repeatedly attacked for his German background and had his loyalties questioned. In Germany, criticism of dynasties and the higher aristocracy was even broader and fiercer. Here it was not just the German middle classes who attacked the higher aristocracy, but lower German nobles joined in too. They themselves rarely had international connections and resented the rich ‘grand seigneurs’. The extreme nationalist and anti-Semitic historian Heinrich von Treitschke was one such critic.⁴ In his eyes many members of the higher aristocracy were cultivating their English connections too much which in turn westernized them. Treitschke was not alone in fearing conflicts of loyalty, even potential treason. The German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow criticized the higher aristocracy in Germany for their ‘cosy’ closeness to their ‘foreign relatives’. The insinuation was that this closeness had resulted in them becoming politically unreliable. Bülow himself was married to an Italian noble and hypocritical to the core, but he absorbed the Zeitgeist. The Deutsche Adelsblatt (a German paper for the nobility) declared it as its major aim to create a homogeneous, national German nobility. International aristocrats no longer fitted into this concept.

By the end of the nineteenth century German aristocrats were therefore confronted with two threatening new movements: nationalism and democracy. Both seemed alien to them. As Prince Rohan explained in 1929, his peer group had to make a choice since opposing both movements seemed impossible:

The formation of nationhood was naturally anti-aristocratic, it was the victory of the modern against the medieval world. Along with the national, the democratic idea, the older brother of the national, won power over Europe. The nobility faced the choice of siding with national or with democratic ideas. Since both had risen in the fight against the nobility, it had chosen the one that was easiest to adapt to its traditions.⁵

In other words aristocrats had to react pragmatically: Because the threat of democracy was so much greater—nationalism was the lesser evil. Prince Rohan would take nationalism to its greatest extreme and become a dedicated Nazi.

Since many members of the higher aristocracy were international in their roots and way of life, they had to indigenize and sell themselves as home grown ‘natives’. This was far from easy. Marie von Bunsen, for example, fretted about her ‘double’ identity for years. In the 1930s she described how much it had weighed her down: ‘since my childhood I have clearly seen the disadvantages of my extraordinary existence. Later I fought internally against my double nationality and got it under control. I tried, without losing the values of England, to gain the calm, firm line of the German national community (Volksgemeinschaft).’⁶

A further problem was that aristocrats did not fit the racial categories. This had already started during the nineteenth century when racial theories and the idea of ‘pure’ blood began to circulate. Similar to the genome today, blood was used as an overriding explanation for human behaviour. It also developed a metaphysical meaning: there were things that one had had for ‘generations in the blood’ and predestined one for one’s station in life.

The Queen of Romania, for example, wrote about herself and her sisters (Figure 3): ‘we were a strong race—the mixture of Russian and English was a strange blend, setting us somewhat apart from others, as, having strong and dominating characters we could not follow, only lead.’⁷ Others would not have agreed with such a positive interpretation. Their blood analysis of the higher aristocracy was far less benevolent. According to purists the ‘international blood’ which was common in dynasties and the higher aristocracy transferred negative qualities. Being ‘mongrels’, whether dogs or human beings, implied imperfection.

Figure 3. Four Coburg sisters who would be divided by the First World War: Princess Beatrice (Spain), Princess Victoria Melita (Russia), Princess Alexandra (Germany), and Crown Princess Marie of Romania in 1900.

In Germany the mixed blood issue was combined by critics of the aristocracy with the old argument of their immoral behaviour. A Cologne newspaper, for example, reported in 1916 in great detail about the chaos in an ‘international aristocratic home’.⁸ A divorced American, a Miss Gould, had chosen to marry the Duke of Talleyrand-Périgord. Their resulting son would have been the heir to the Silesian property of his father. But because the dissolution of the first marriage of his mother had not been recognized by the Catholic Church, the son was seen as illegitimate. The journalist used this story to analyse the pedigrees of everyone involved. The divorced American lady got surprisingly high marks because her father had started off as a hard-working miner who had made his fortune by honest means. The aristocratic son-in-law Talleyrand-Périgord, however, was portrayed as a scoundrel who was frequently sent off by his family to countries ‘where the ground was less hot than in France’. Because of his bad reputation, even his Silesian peer group refused to receive him. His son on the other hand offered hope for improvement and was recognized by the Silesian magnates. The main point of the article was not that the ‘illegitimacy’ of the boy was the problem. What was seen as shocking in 1916 was the fact that he and his immoral father were ‘sujets mixtes’, French-Germans who were allowed to live in both nations. Such ‘sujets mixtes’, were according to the newspaper:

more common among the aristocracy than one realizes. With the strong national antagonism that has surfaced in the current war, legal questions about property held beyond borders will become even more acute. In their various homelands these mixed people will feel alien and won’t fit in with the mores of their environment. This appears even less desirable with highly born people because … the well being of their subjects depends on them.⁹

Suspicion towards cosmopolitan families was of course not just a British or German phenomenon and it was not just focused on the aristocracy. It went beyond class barriers. This became evident when war broke out. The Viennese writer Karl Kraus famously captured the jingoism that gripped Austria-Hungary in 1914 in his novel The Last Days of Mankind.¹⁰ Similar outbreaks were recorded all over Europe. In Berlin, London, and Paris, foreigners were attacked on the streets. Families that had been naturalized for generations were suddenly under suspicion and proud old names became a liability. From France, the British ambassador Sir Frances Bertie reported that Princess Frederica of Hanover had been attacked at Biarritz because of her German sounding title. That she was a member of the British royal family was known only to genealogists; the average Frenchman did not care about such details.¹¹

On the other side of the ‘trenches’ in Germany, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg did not dare to leave her apartments because she had been called a ‘Russian spy’ by angry Germans. In fact, it was even more confusing as she had changed her nationality twice. Born a Russian, she had married Queen Victoria’s second son Alfred and become British. Once Alfred succeeded to the Dukedom of Coburg, she had turned into a German.

The Grand Duke of Hesse suffered from the same ‘burden’. He was a German sovereign but close to his sister Alexandra, Tsarina of Russia, and his cousin the British King George V. Added to this, his residence, the little town of Darmstadt, was in the summer of 1914 full of Russian students who were now a major target. Most of them left just in time, but the angry Darmstädters went out on a witchhunt anyway, suspecting everyone of spying for Russia and even searching under nuns’ habits. Also rumours circulated that cars were transporting gold from France via Germany to Russia, so every car in Darmstadt was being stopped by the Grand Duke’s suspicious subjects.¹²

The Grand Duke was not at home at the time and returned immediately to restore some kind of order. In fact the outbreak of the war had caught many aristocrats on their holidays abroad. The British born Princess Daisy Pless was visiting relatives in England in the summer of 1914. Her German husband ordered the chauffeur to return but did not ask his wife to come home as well. She felt rather hurt about this oversight. The couple had been estranged for some time but Prince Pless tried to apologize in a clumsy way:

I know that you are a good German in regard to your wish that we will win this war, because the future of your sons depends on it. But despite all this you will suffer from the tragedy which is looming over your old country and from which all your relatives and friends will suffer. There is no doubt that the war between England and Germany will be fought to the bitter end, and even you can only hope that the English will be vanquished decisively.¹³

Princess Pless could not follow her husband’s argument. She returned to Germany but remained unhappy. In her memoirs she described her frustration:

I had relatives and dear friends in England, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Spain, Russia, Sweden … How selfless they were, how well these best elements of the fighting nations knew each other and despite this, they had to continue killing each other.¹⁴

Prince Max von Baden, later Chancellor of Germany, empathized with her. In 1916 he wrote to Daisy Pless:

I pity all these people who haven’t been born in the country in which they live and now belong to one of the belligerent nations. It is a hard fate, especially during the war, which brings out all the bad emotions. Since my mother was Russian I can understand this especially.¹⁵

Baden did not mention to Daisy that he used his international contacts for clandestine negotiations. As will be shown later these negotiations were far from benign.

Thus birth into a ‘multinational family’ met a reversal of fortunes, became troublesome, even dangerous. This was particularly the case for aristocrats who were more visible than any other social group. After all their glamorous social engagements and international connections had been covered in the press over many years.

They soon realized they had to act if they did not want to be swallowed up by a wave of nationalism. To demonstrate loyalty seemed easier for aristocratic men than for women. Men could just put on a uniform which clearly demonstrated which country they belonged to. But even this simple act became a matter of soul searching. Some men simply did not know which army they should serve in. Even members of the famous military von Moltke family were slightly confused: ‘Count Moltke, the Danish envoy in Berlin, had once served for a short time in the French army and was therefore distrusted by the Germans.’¹⁶

The aristocratic Bentincks, a Dutch, English, and German family, seriously believed that they could continue their commuting between the countries concerned. The German officer Wilhelm Bentinck, born in the Netherlands, asked Kaiser Wilhelm II not to have to fight against England, where most of his relatives lived. When this was denied Bentinck retired and returned to Holland. His Anglophile sister Victoria supported his decision: ‘Some blame him for this … personally I am glad he acted in this way.’¹⁷ She spent the war in Britain, but not all Bentincks decided on a pro-British stance. Some had not forgotten that the German Kaiser had graciously visited their Dutch family seat Middachten in 1909. One Bentinck daughter was married to Rudolphe Frederic van Heeckeren van Wassenaer (1858–1936) who sympathized with the Central Powers and even published a pro-German newspaper in Holland. Another Bentinck would in 1918 offer his home to the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Other international families also had trouble choosing an army. Queen Victoria had financed her German relatives the Leiningens for several generations. Now they joined the German army. Prince Emich Leiningen, born in Osborne House and socialized in England, got into a bizarre situation. He looked English and when he occupied a French village in 1914 the villagers took him for an Englishman. Leiningen felt deeply uncomfortable: ‘I told them that I had been born in England but wasn’t sure whether I was still English.’¹⁸ For him this wasn’t just a legal, but also an emotional question. Even though he would distance himself from his English side during the war, he thought it could still come in handy. To his soldier-son he wrote in 1917: ‘If the English get you, don’t forget that your grandfather was a British Admiral, they might treat you better then.’¹⁹

Yet once these aristocrats had decided on a uniform they had to prove that this was not some kind of camouflage. Pure mimicry was not sufficient. A full metamorphosis was expected of them. Aristocratic women tried to help. They did their best to prove themselves by focusing on medical and charitable fields. This had been an old tradition for the aristocracy and always brought popularity. Amongst many aristocratic women there started a real race to prove themselves the leading Florence Nightingale. The competition was fierce: the bigger your hospital, the better. In Germany they particularly fought over Red Cross medals; everyone wanted to receive the new status symbol. The role model for hospital work was the royal houses, whose members visited the wounded. In Britain this was famously demonstrated by the King and Queen, who embarked on endless hospital visits. It was far from easy for them. Queen Mary simply did not like sick people. Her relative Maria of Romania, who thought of herself as a competent nurse, was quite scathing on this point: ‘Although she [Queen Mary] hates illness she is very kind to the sick and pays them stiff little visits and always sends messages of enquiry.’²⁰ Maria of Romania thought that overall the British royal couple did a pretty good job nonetheless: ‘He [King George V] and she worked in such harmony. They were like a splendidly paired couple of first-class carriage horses, stepping exactly alike.’²¹

In spite of these good works, suspicion was not dispelled. Demonstrating commitment to the war effort was not enough.

Despite her charity work, the British/German Daisy Pless became a target. In 1916 her husband informed her that he had done his best to defend her reputation:

A newspaper reported that on your birthday we had raised the English colours; it had to apologise. It was just the colours of the Wests [Daisy’s British family] red and blue, which some idiot took for the English flag.²²

The Pless family sued the newspaper. But Daisy’s problems seemed relatively minor compared to the Duke of Coburg’s.

Since his wartime experiences are essential for understanding how he developed into a go-between for Hitler, a brief look at his case will be illustrative. Coburg had spent the run-up to the war in England. On 28 June 1914 he was visiting his sister in London when he first heard about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Though it did not seem urgent at this point, he decided to return to Germany. Carl Eduard now lived in the castles of his ancestor Ernst II Duke of Coburg, who had once written that the secret motto of the Coburg family should be ‘one for all and all for one’. But such a thought seemed to be outdated.

In retrospect Carl Eduard saw the events of August 1914 as the greatest disaster of his life. After the war he wrote to his sister Alice: ‘the last time we parted [with] you going to Canada, the awful war broke out, breaking our happiness.’²³ Up to this point he had commuted effortlessly between Britain and Germany, paying visits to the royal family at Sandringham and the Kaiser in Berlin. Yet pleasing both camps was no longer possible. According to his sister Alice’s memoirs, the war ‘shattered his life, for he was denounced in Germany for being English and in England for being German. He told me once that had it not been for his wife and family he would have returned to England, had it been possible. He had to serve in the army, but refused to fight against England and was posted to the Russian front.’²⁴

As usual, Alice was being economical with the truth. Coburg had two lives—a placid one before the war and a criminal one after the First World War.

Her recollection that he was sent to the Russian front is also incorrect. He was more or a less a chocolate soldier, who spent most of his time dining at various casinos behind the front and visiting ‘his’ Coburg troops. These trips were camouflaged as ‘research trips’ and always followed the same pattern. The VIP guests were shown around a trench, photos were taken, short conversations with a few ‘ordinary soldiers’ arranged, followed by dinner with the highest ranking officers. The next morning medals were handed out. Carl Eduard, always an ardent traveller, enjoyed these trips and decorated many a soldier. Unlike his relative the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Carl Eduard never felt any shame about this ornamental role. Hesse would later accuse his dynastic peer group of using the war more or less as a series of sightseeing trips—either visiting each other or the cities Germany had just occupied. Ernst Hesse felt ashamed of this voyeurism. When he met soldiers who had experienced combat, it ‘made one feel very small’.²⁵

Carl Eduard was not known for any such reflections. He also did not hesitate when it came to publicly distancing himself from his British relatives. This was an episode his sister Alice naturally did not mention in her memoirs. For Carl Eduard it was simply a priority to assure the survival of the German branch of the House of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha. In 1914 he had announced: ‘I hereby publicly declare that I have renounced my position as chief of the Seaforth-Highlanders regiment, because I cannot be … in charge of a regiment which belongs to a country that has attacked us in the most despicable way’ (‘dessen Land uns in schändlicher Weise überfallen hat’).²⁶

In March 1917 he went a step further and signed a bill declaring that ‘members of the House of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha who belong to foreign nations will lose the right of succession if their country is at war with Germany’. His advisers had phrased the document carefully. They could not exclude all ‘foreign’ members of the house because the King of Bulgaria was a Coburger—and Bulgaria was a German ally. However, the bill was a slap in the face for the British, Belgian, and Portuguese relatives. It also showed Carl Eduard’s complete disregard for the dynastic principles he was reared in (and which he would five years later simply revert to when they became useful again). Furthermore it demonstrated indifference to his closest relative. His mother was living in London during the war and had every reason to fear reprisals. Like so many royal German relatives, she was taken in by Queen Mary and therefore elegantly removed from the public eye. Carl Eduard’s sister does not mention the event at all in her memoirs. Instead she focuses on the way the British royals changed their names in July 1917. She was now turned from a Teck into a Countess of Athlone. For Alice this was an unwelcome imposition: ‘Granpa [her husband] was furious, as he thought that kind of camouflage stupid and petty.’²⁷

Alice does not elaborate on this point, though it would have been interesting to know what exactly she felt had to be camouflaged. George V certainly had every reason to change the family name. On 13 June 1917 German planes had attacked London and killed 160 people. Anti-German feelings were stronger than ever before.

Because of George V’s ‘Titles Deprivation Act’ of 1917 and the confirmation of it in 1919, Carl Eduard lost the title Duke of Albany and all rights to the dukedom of Albany and other territories attached to the title. He was officially a traitor peer. His immediate reactions to this are unknown. It was not just the British connection that he had lost, his old mentor, the Kaiser, was also no comfort. Wilhelm II had been sidelined from the beginning of the war. After General von Moltke’s nervous breakdown and General Falkenhayn’s dismissal two new leaders emerged—Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Though Carl Eduard joined the Bund der Kaisertreuen (the Kaiser Loyalists Club) to demonstrate his allegiance to Wilhelm II, he was fully aware of Wilhelm’s impotence and preferred Hindenburg. The admiration for Hindenburg crossed social and religious divides. Even Catholics developed the belief that this Protestant warrior could save Germany. Though Carl Eduard was unwell for periods of the war, the weaker he became physically, the tougher his political views were. For a while Hindenburg was his favourite but, as we will see later, he would soon be interested in much more radical options.

While Carl Eduard became an eager go-between in the inter-war years, he did not play such a role in the First World War. But other families with international connections were interested in such work. They wanted to turn their ‘hybrid’ background to advantage. This made sense at a time when official diplomatic relations between enemy states had ended. With the outbreak of war embassies had been closed down and a diplomatic blackout ensued. Representatives of neutral states were now employed to communicate on the most urgent issues between enemy countries. Yet they could not be trusted completely. They had to follow their own national interests and had to be careful not to endanger their country’s neutrality. This diplomatic vacuum made the use of go-betweens a matter of urgency.

Prince Fürstenberg’s mission

Fürstenberg was enormously satisfied that Germany had stood by its alliance partner Austria-Hungary. It was everything a good go-between could hope for. Yet, with the outbreak of war his grip on Wilhelm II started to slip. This flabbergasted Fürstenberg who had hoped to play a key liaison role between the two countries. He also had expected to join the Kaiser at army headquarters. On 3 August he wrote in his diary:

Audience with SM [Wilhelm II] who was so touchingly nice, but on Plessen’s advice he does not want me at headquarters! It was a tough moment. He embraced me repeatedly.²⁸

The Kaiser seemed to realize how upset his old friend was and sent him a warm telegram a few days later:

In the spirit of our old friendship, I shake your hand. Even though duty separates us during these hard times, everything remains the same between us. Good bye in better times!²⁹

Hans Georg von Plessen, who was running the imperial headquarters, had cunningly told the Kaiser that for Fürstenberg surely ‘the Austrian army was closer to his heart’. An invisible cordon sanitaire had been drawn around Wilhelm. To have an influential Austrian near the Kaiser was the last thing the courtiers and the German military wanted. From now on Wilhelm was shielded from the more unpleasant aspects of the war. The Kaiser’s cousin, the Grand Duke of Hesse, later claimed that this was a mistake, that Wilhelm should have been forced to face the realities of the situation. But the Kaiser’s mental state was already unbalanced. The man who had loved indulging in war games found reality unbearable.

Following Plessen’s advice, the disappointed Fürstenberg joined the Austrian army, pretending not to care about the imperial snub. Always the bon vivant, he recovered quickly. His work for the Austro-German Alliance remained paramount and he hoped that eventually he would be able to continue it. His go-between work had always been driven by economic and political motives but by now it had also become an emotional concern. Among his papers he kept a sentimental poem from 1915:

In all countries it will be admired in days to come:

Alone two brothers stood, with the world at war.

And while cities were burning and sank day by day,

the brothers did not separate but stood firm,

And fought without regret and treachery

The Nibelungen-fidelity became reality!

Over the following years, the meaning of almost every line of this poem would be reversed.

Fürstenberg had welcomed the war enthusiastically and he certainly enjoyed the fighting. The adrenalin rush reminded him of his favourite sport—hunting. During these first months in the field he wrote home cheerful letters full of hunting metaphors. Yet the cheerfulness eventually subsided. By 1915 he had realized how badly the Austro-Hungarian military was doing in comparison with its German ally. This unevenness on the battlefield also had a negative effect on Austro-German diplomatic relations. The feelings of brotherhood Fürstenberg had hoped for had always been a fantasy. With the stresses of war, the artificiality of the alliance became more and more apparent. The whole construct had been based on necessity, not sympathy, often only covered by a thin veneer of politeness. Increasingly nervy diplomats had propped up the structure, helped by a very thin Austro-German elite of which Fürstenberg was a key member. The more strained everybody’s nerves became, the more Fürstenberg was therefore needed back from the front. Like most members of his peer group he was more or less an ‘ornamental soldier’, commuting between the front and his post as vice-president of the Austrian upper house. He had kept in touch with Austro-German affairs and, as Wilhelm’s closest friend, it seemed natural for the Kaiser to ask him to take up his old go-between work again. Fürstenberg accepted gladly. Yet to be a go-between in war would be a much more strenuous job than in peacetime. During the next four years the cheerful Fürstenberg aged rapidly.

To make his mission possible, Fürstenberg left the Austrian army at the end of 1915 and officially switched to the German army. This meant he could see the Kaiser twice a month.

How bad the communication channels between the Austrian and the German leadership had become by then can be seen by the bombardment of letters Fürstenberg now received. Though his private papers are uncatalogued one can wade through a mass of correspondence from his political friends in Austria who wanted him to act as a channel to Berlin. Fürstenberg was used to this and so far had enjoyed it. But he was not used to an avalanche. The Austrian minister Josef Maria Baernreither’s long memoranda, for example, were littered with points that Fürstenberg should make to the Kaiser. Fürstenberg’s annotations illustrate that he did try to discuss these issues with Wilhelm, but he knew that this was not enough. He was well aware of the fact that the Kaiser’s power had diminished and other decision makers had to be tackled. Fürstenberg therefore liaised mainly with members of the military and the German Foreign Ministry. These files indicate how often the Austrian government—via Fürstenberg—tried to convey its views to its German allies. Issues ranged from foreign policy subjects like a future kingdom of Poland to more pressing issues like food supplies.³⁰

It was a delicate game for Fürstenberg. He had to work on two fronts—to negotiate with the German ally, and at the same time defend German policies in Vienna. He also had to please two very different courts. With the successor to the throne Franz Ferdinand gone, Fürstenberg had been without a key court contact in Vienna. He had never been close to Emperor Franz Joseph who allegedly found him too ‘flippant’. Considering the advanced age of the Austrian monarch, Fürstenberg knew that he had to bide his time. By 1916 Franz Joseph was dead and Fürstenberg’s influence at the Habsburg court improved. With his easy charm, he managed to develop a relationship with the new Emperor Karl. However, he never succeeded in becoming close to Karl’s wife Empress Zita and her powerful family, the Bourbon-Parmas. This would later turn out to represent a dangerous disadvantage for his missions.

Apart from cajoling emperors, Fürstenberg also had to keep his peer group in the upper house content. How difficult this could be can be illustrated by a session of the Austrian upper house in 1917. During a debate, the Archbishop of Lemberg, Józef Bilczewski, had attacked Germany. Fürstenberg as vice-president of the upper house rebuked him and warned ‘the Archbishop in sharp words, for which he was applauded by the whole house, even the Poles’. The Archbishop immediately played down his statements, saying that ‘he had not meant to offend’, and it was all a misunderstanding due to his inadequate German.³¹ (This was a rather feeble excuse since the Archbishop had once studied in Vienna. In the long term it worked, though, Józef Bilczewski was canonized in 2005 by a German Pope).

Despite such backpaddling Bilczewski was certainly not alone in his distrust of German policies. Many saw Fürstenberg as a German puppet.

This was not the perception of the German side. Though the German Foreign Ministry was grateful when Fürstenberg stood up for Germany in public, in private he was far more critical. The longer the war dragged on, the more Fürstenberg’s ‘begging missions’ irritated his German partners. One of Fürstenberg’s constant campaigns was to alleviate the food shortages in Austria-Hungary. The German embassy in Vienna reported as early as November 1916 that Fürstenberg had stressed that a continuation of Austrian support for the war depended on adequate nutrition for the Austrian population. He insisted that Hindenburg should be informed about this problem—having obviously given up on the Kaiser.³² It is therefore ironic that Fürstenberg’s opponent Josef Redlich accused him of being entirely in the German camp, while the German side suspected Fürstenberg of dramatizing the situation in Austria and being a tool of Austrian Foreign Minister Count Czernin. In some ways this was the natural dilemma for a go-between.

The perception that Fürstenberg was close to Czernin, the new Austrian Foreign Secretary, was, however, correct. Czernin needed Fürstenberg’s help. Both men had realized early on that the war was going badly for Austria-Hungary and that the only solution was a quick peace. Czernin was already arguing in 1916 that the war should be brought to an end. This was the only way in his opinion to stop the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire.

The main problem was that peace depended on Germany making territorial sacrifices. Czernin could not force Austria’s ally to make such a commitment. The hope was that Fürstenberg might help with the persuading. He was willing to get involved and also to initiate peace feelers. After 1918 these feelers would become an embarrassment and Fürstenberg must have destroyed some of his private correspondence relating to them. Since his papers are in a chaotic state, it is hard to tell whether letters were ‘displaced’ on purpose or accidentally. However, one of the clues for his involvement is hidden in an envelope entitled ‘Parliamentary life in 1916’.³³

The contents of that envelope are intriguing: On 24 October 1916 a meeting took place in a Viennese flat owned by Max Egon Fürstenberg. He had invited pro-German aristocrats who were united by the wish to find a way out of the war. Present were Czernin, Baernreither, Clam-Martinic, and Nostitz. All of them would a month later be given key positions by the new Emperor Karl. At the meeting this ‘band of brothers’ entirely agreed that it was vital to convey to Germany, as Clam-Martinic put it, ‘that we just can’t go on anymore’. Once the message was understood, peace talks had to start. Fürstenberg himself considered the timing ideal. He argued that the Central Powers still had the largest amount of human resources and were not yet exhausted. If a peace deal was secured now they could recover quickly and ‘pursue their plans at a later opportunity’. He never elaborated on what this ‘later opportunity’ meant and it was obvious that this was sheer face saving.

The next question was who would agree to start peace negotiations with the Central Powers. Russia and France were according to Czernin out of the question. Britain seemed easier to approach. Czernin stressed that one should try to impress the message on London that there would be no winners or losers in this war, but that one had played a ‘partie remise’ (a game postponed). His chess metaphor seemed flippant considering the exorbitant death rate, but none of his friends minded the language. Only Clam-Martinic, who would soon run Emperor Karl’s cabinet, was pessimistic, believing that Germany would never agree to a key point on which the Entente Powers would insist, giving up territory. He conceded however that it was up to Austria’s diplomatic skills to persuade its ally. The prospect of an international peace conference might impress Germany. In the end all agreed that the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII,³⁴ should be persuaded ‘to propose a peace conference in Madrid or The Hague as a result of which all nations relinquish territory and any idea of compensation’. The aim of the congress would be to recover the status quo ante bellum.

It was important that the King of Spain made this suggestion and not Austria-Hungary, otherwise she would lose face and her bargaining capacity would be lowered. To keep the whole plan secret, the Austrian ambassador to Spain should not be informed. This was not without irony, since the ambassador was Karl Emil Fürstenberg, Max Egon Fürstenberg’s younger brother. Though everyone trusted him, a leakage en route was always a possibility. Furthermore Karl Emil was not known for his acting qualities and by circumventing him he could react with genuine surprise, denying any knowledge of the offer. As Austrian ambassador he had to tread carefully in Madrid. While the Spanish King and the conservative party were considered to be pro-German, the Spanish Prime Minister Count Romanones was known to have pro-Entente sympathies.

Keeping Karl Emil Fürstenberg in the dark, however, posed another problem. If he was not used to deliver the details of the peace offers, the question arose how to get the message to the Spanish King. In the end it was decided to send a courier by submarine.³⁵

Submarines had become the latest weapons of the war. Navigation with them was still a risky business and survival rates in battle were low. Still, the plan was successfully carried out. The U-boat surfaced in Cartagena and the letter it carried was for the King’s eyes only. However, the appearance of a submarine caused the wildest speculations. Bizarre rumours now circulated about Spain’s intention of giving up her neutrality. While Count Romanones was kept in the dark, the Spanish King enjoyed the rumours. His enthusiasm for secret games was one of the reasons he had been chosen by Fürstenberg and his friends. On a note during their meeting Baernreither had written:

Why Spain? First of all because of the able representative Karl Emil and because the King is laid back.³⁶

King Alfonso was indeed ‘laid back’, a man who seemed to adapt to every political turn. He had studied in Austria and England and knew both countries well. As the son of a Habsburg princess he was a member of the Catholic network, but he also had good British links. His wife Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg had been born in Balmoral in 1887, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. In a rare move for members of the Protestant network, she had switched to Catholicism to marry Alfonso at the age of 17. Despite, or because of, the birth of seven children, the marriage had deteriorated quickly. Their temperaments were hardly compatible. Looking at photographs of Victoria and Alfonso, even their visual differences are striking. While she had an intelligent face with inquisitive eyes, her husband looked like the cliché of a shifty gigolo (a cliché he tried to live up to by producing a multitude of illegitimate children). One of his excuses seemed to be that his wife, a carrier of haemophilia, was responsible for their sons’ illnesses.³⁷ Yet despite their marital estrangement Alfonso made use of Victoria’s British contacts. Though he was a ruler only on the periphery, his Austrian/British links made him central to peace feelers, a centrality he very much enjoyed. Alfonso’s dream had always been to bring Spain into closer contact with the major European powers.³⁸ From the start of the war he had therefore offered himself to all sides for peace talks. His motives were hardly altruistic. Parallel to supporting peace attempts, he kept trying to sell Spain’s neutrality to the highest bidder. He started with this double agenda in September 1914 by first offering the French ambassador his mediation between France and Germany.³⁹ He also claimed that Germany had offered long-term compensation for Spain’s neutrality: Tangier, Portugal, and Gibraltar.⁴⁰

In the end Spain did not manage to sell itself to anyone and remained neutral throughout the war. According to the rather Freudian interpretation of the Italian ambassador this was due to the influence of Alfonso’s mother. The Austrian Marie Christine apparently encouraged her son to stick to neutrality at all costs.

But even though Alfonso gambled with Spain’s neutral status, he also wanted to help his Austrian friends. To this day the Spanish royal archives are closed and his secret modus operandi remains obscure. However, as will be shown later, Alfonso was also involved in Lady Paget’s peace mission—which took place at the same time as the Fürstenberg one.

Despite the greatest efforts, the Austrian peace feelers via Spain suddenly stopped. Fürstenberg never forgot this failure and after the war tried to reconstruct why and by whom they had been terminated. In 1919 he had a conversation with the German General Consul in The Hague, Dr von Rosen. Rosen had been in Spain in 1916 and had conducted several conversations with the Spanish King. He confirmed that Alfonso XIII had wanted to help with the peace talks and via Rosen this message had been conveyed to Berlin. The Kaiser then ‘agreed with it enthusiastically’. So why had the feelers failed? Fürstenberg and Rosen came to the conclusion that the German Foreign Ministry had vetoed the plan in the end. It might have feared that its Austrian ally could use this channel to come to a separate peace agreement with Britain. To Fürstenberg the whole story proved one thing: that his friend Wilhelm had been seriously seeking peace. This was an important conclusion for him, because by then the ‘Hang the Kaiser movement’ was in full swing and Fürstenberg needed arguments to defend the ex-Kaiser. But even though Wilhelm II had supported the Spanish mission, Fürstenberg’s analysis had its flaws. The Kaiser’s mood swings were as unpredictable as his influence on political decisions. He probably did hope for a good outcome via Spain, yet he also had a tendency to change his mind—according to the military situation—several times a day. Ignorant about the true nature of the war he vacillated between advocating a quick peace one day and dictating the strictest peace terms the next.

The Spanish peace feelers of 1916 and 1917 also failed because Austria-Hungary came with heavy German baggage. The British were by then only interested in a peace deal with Austria-Hungary alone, hoping to divide the Central Powers.

The failure of the Spanish peace initiative was just one of many frustrations the constant go-between Fürstenberg suffered during the war. By the beginning of 1918 he had become desperate. To his old friend Clam-Martinic, who was now military governor in Montenegro, he wrote:

I could write you volumes about the situation here. Suffice it to say that I, a dedicated optimist, have started to wobble. One should suppress such feelings but I am sometimes getting really scared.

Viennese life depressed him: ‘I am so fed up with the political life. A constant tilting at windmills.’⁴¹

The abilities of German politicians did not give him much hope either. In February 1918 German diplomats reported that Fürstenberg had harangued them:

Fürstenberg says that even in German circles [in Vienna] resentment against Germany is growing. The reason for this is the feeling that Austria is fighting only for German conquests and economic compromises and will in the end be left empty handed … On this basis it is no longer possible to operate. Even Emperor Karl can, despite the best of wills, no longer stand up to public opinion. The alliance is therefore standing at the crossroads.⁴²

In fact the disintegration of the Austro-German alliance seemed unstoppable. It had been Fürstenberg’s raison d’être and he saw it faltering before his eyes. Ironically, the last nail in the coffin of the alliance was a rival go-between mission that went tragically wrong: the infamous Sixtus affair. The mission was set up unbeknown to Fürstenberg and would end up ruining everything he stood for. It is a well-documented affair, but it has never been seen in the wider context of go-between missions. However, it is very useful for understanding go-between work in general, because it illustrates the unpredictable dynamics of such work and the element of danger involved in them (Figure 4).

Figure 4. A mission that ended in scandal: Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, brother of the Austrian Empress Zita.

In the autumn of 1916 the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph had died and Emperor Karl and his wife Zita succeeded him. Zita had two brothers, Sixtus and Xavier of Bourbon-Parma. The Parmas were considered to be a highly ambitious family, deeply rooted in the Catholic network. In August 1914, two years before Karl succeeded to the Habsburg throne, he had had a long conversation with Zita’s brothers. The war had just begun, and Karl and Zita felt deeply ambivalent about their German ally. They agreed with Zita’s brothers that the war could ‘increase Prussian military power which would not only be a threat to French security but also to the independence of the Habsburg Empire’.⁴³

When Karl succeeded to the throne, he (or his wife Zita) started to look for a back channel to the Parma brothers. They chose Princess Sarsina.⁴⁴ She was a member of the Habsburg network and would now start to act on behalf of Empress Zita.

Sarsina was living in Italy when war broke out. When Italy sided with the Entente powers in 1915 she moved to Switzerland in protest against ‘Italian treason’. Living in the Swiss town of Fribourg also meant that she could stay in contact with both sides of her family—she had relatives in France, Italy, and in Austria-Hungary. Though she was born in France and married to an Italian, her loyalties were completely Austrian. She was a devout Catholic and particularly close to Maria Antonia of Parma, the mother of the new Austrian Empress Zita. Because of this background she seemed a natural for a go-between mission. But her work would not go unnoticed. Sir Hugh Whittal was working for MI6 in Switzerland. One of his best sources was the Swiss political department, which passed on intelligence to him. They were aware of the importance of Sarsina’s work. In a memorandum about the ‘Fribourg conversations’ Whittal wrote:

The central person of the whole affair is Princess Sarsina. … She is on friendly terms with the Dowager Duchess Maria Antonia of Parma (nee Princess of Braganza and Infanta of Portugal) who is the mother of the Empress Zita of Austria. Princess Sarsina is also on extremely friendly terms with the Empress Zita herself, with the Emperor Charles [Karl] and with many other important and influential persons at the Court of Vienna. … Princess Sarsina’s house has been during the last three years the scene of many meetings between various members of the various branches of the house of Bourbon and many Roman Catholic dignitaries and others who have been active pacifists.⁴⁵

Most importantly the Swiss had seen (probably opened) a letter the Empress Zita had written to Princess Sarsina in early 1917: ‘the Empress Zita’s letter contained a reference to French rights in regard to Alsace-Lorraine. At the foot of this letter Emperor Charles [Karl] appended a word of greeting over his signature.’

From the intelligence report Zita emerges as the driving force. She wanted a quick peace: ‘the Empress Zita’s letter said that Austria did not desire to be ruined for the sake of saving Alsace-Lorraine for Germany.’

This was an entirely female network that only used men as a front. Behind the scenes women were dictating the agenda and the pace. That Zita and her mother were quite manipulative of the men they used even occurred to the intelligence agents: ‘the Duchess of Parma (Zita’s mother) in her great desire to bring about the conclusion of hostilities, may have misled the Emperor Charles regarding the strength of peace desires in France and Italy, and may have exaggerated the possibilities of success in bringing about a reconciliation between Vienna on the one hand and the Entente on the other.’

The Duchess of Bourbon-Parma saw negotiations with the Entente powers as a career chance for her sons, who were serving in the Belgian army. If Sixtus and Xavier could broker a peace between France and Austria-Hungary, their careers were secured. It was therefore the Duchess (with the help of Sarsina) who orchestrated a first ‘peace feeler’ meeting in Switzerland in January 1917. Everyone in this game naturally had their own complicated agendas. The Parma brothers’ first trip to Switzerland was cleared by the King of the Belgians and the French government. They realized that Sixtus and Xavier Parma were ideally placed to get in contact with Emperor Karl. The French probably also hoped that the Sixtus mission could sow discord among the Central Powers. However, they had no clear idea how ambitious the plan of the Parma family actually was. In fact Sixtus did not simply want to deliver a message—he wanted to write the message. He and his mother hoped for a big ‘scoop’, for the glory of the House of Parma. At the first meeting between the Parma brothers and their mother in Switzerland they discussed a list of demands that should be fulfilled by Austria-Hungary. In return for a peace deal with the Entente, Austria-Hungary should agree to: first making Germany return Alsace-Lorraine to France, secondly Belgium becoming sovereign again, thirdly Austria-Hungary relinquishing any interest in Constantinople, and finally giving Serbia its sovereignty back.

These demands were communicated to Emperor Karl’s private envoy, Count Thomas Erdödy. In his first reaction Emperor Karl agreed to all points apart from the last one, in a second reaction he backpedalled. Sixtus, however, kept insisting that all points had to be fulfilled. This put Emperor Karl in a dilemma. He wanted an honourable peace (which would mean including his German ally) but if that was not possible he needed to drop his ally to save his crown. Up to this point he had planned to run the Sixtus go-between mission himself, but he now realized that he needed the support of his Foreign Secretary Czernin. Czernin had to help him put pressure on their German ally. On his own Emperor Karl saw no chance of persuading the Germans to cede Alsace-Lorraine. Though Czernin was now brought in, he was not informed about all the details of the Sixtus mission. Karl simply told his Foreign Secretary that he might have found a way for peace negotiations with the French. Czernin was therefore under the wrong impression that the French had approached the imperial family, not the other way round. In fact during the whole mission Emperor Karl did not give Czernin vital details. Sixtus was his go-between and he wanted to keep it that way. To inform Czernin only ‘on a need-to-know basis’ naturally carried the risk of misinterpretations. As events would show, it would have been wiser to keep Czernin either entirely in or out.

Since Czernin worked under a misapprehension about France’s motives, he insisted on playing hardball. He wanted to achieve a peace that included Germany. Karl, pressured by his wife and the Parmas, was however now willing to drop his German ally if necessary. Since the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in March 1917, he had been in a state of panic. He kept asking his ministers the same question again and again ‘is it possible here too?’⁴⁶ Czernin could not give him much assurance, and privately he confided to his friends that ‘the Russian Revolution is having an influence. Our dynastic roots might be stronger, but in the last three years a new world has emerged.’⁴⁷

On 24 March 1917 Karl gave Sixtus a letter for the French in which he promised to do his utmost to impress on his German allies the ‘just’ French demands on Alsace-Lorraine.⁴⁸ Furthermore, Belgium should be restored and be allowed to keep its African colonies. Serbia’s sovereignty should also be restored. Karl did not want to comment on Russia, while the revolution was still ongoing.

This was good material for Sixtus to use back in France. The French President was interested in Emperor Karl’s reply, yet he was also informed about Czernin’s much less lenient stance. It was obvious to him that the Emperor had promised concessions he might not be able to deliver. Czernin and Emperor Karl now seemed to compete with each other in sending out go-betweens to France. For Emperor Karl it was important that his brother-in-law Sixtus was achieving results first. Knowing that his Foreign Secretary did not approve of a separate peace, he had every reason to keep Sixtus, i.e. his cards, close to his chest. Meanwhile it had dawned on Czernin that he was not being fully informed. He had met Sixtus but did not approve of using him as a go-between. In rivalry with the Parma brothers he therefore set up another channel to France—Count Mensdorff. Mensdorff was a former diplomat and, unlike Sixtus, had the complete trust of Czernin. To get him into the game, Czernin seized on an interesting new offer. It came from a woman. Alexandra Barton, a member of the rich Peel family, was an English lady living in Switzerland. In March 1917 she approached an Austro-Hungarian diplomat informing him that the French were interested in a meeting with a high ranking Austrian emissary. At the centre of their talks should be peace negotiations. Count Czernin quickly picked up on this offer.

Alexandra Barton-Peel seemed to be a serious go-between, well connected to British and French political circles. This made her a highly useful commodity. So far the Entente powers had never agreed jointly on one go-between. On the contrary they had been jealous and highly suspicious of any contact the other party had made. Barton, however, seemed to be trusted by both—the French and the British. That made a constructive outcome more likely. Though Czernin was satisfied with her credentials, it is not actually clear who her French contacts were. On the British side they included the former Foreign Secretary Grey and the leader of the opposition Asquith. Both men obviously hoped to achieve a political scoop that might bring them back to power.

Barton seemed too good an opportunity to miss and Mensdorff was sent on his way. Though he was not a diplomat any more he would still have attracted suspicion. Swiss hotels in Berne and Geneva were crowded with people who reported on each other. Mensdorff therefore used an appropriate cover—he claimed to be working for the Red Cross. Once established he made contact with Alexandra Barton. He was impressed by her. She was obviously not an attention seeker but highly intelligent and without a doubt employed by high ranking members of the Entente powers. But her offer was a disappointment for Mensdorff and Czernin, who still hoped to find a peace proposal that included Germany. Lady Barton kept repeating that Britain and France sought peace with Austria-Hungary alone. She explained that no one would dare to start negotiations with Germany, because the jingoistic mood in England would not allow for it. Britain aimed for a complete victory over Germany and was confident that this could be achieved.⁴⁹ Attitudes towards Austria-Hungary, however, were different. Nobody, Barton insisted, felt any hatred towards the Austrians; even Italy and Russia had no such feelings, while ‘the whole world was filled with hatred’ towards Germany. Mensdorff was taken aback by this and stressed that a separate peace with Austria-Hungary was impossible. In his memorandum to Czernin he summarized the impression Barton’s arguments had made on him:

1. They want to separate us from Germany.

2. They are eager to humiliate Germany … but there might be a possibility for an overall peace agreement if Alsace-Lorraine was returned and Belgium restored.⁵⁰

Barton must have given him a hint in this direction. Yet, by now Czernin knew that it was hopeless to get the Germans to cede Alsace-Lorraine. Mensdorff was however not willing to give up so easily. At a further meeting with Alexandra Barton on 4 April he floated a scenario in which Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia would drop out of the war and the fighting would be continued by Britain, France, and Germany.⁵¹ It was blue-sky thinking, but must have encouraged the British not to give up on their Austrian contacts.

As we will see, Barton was not the only woman who carried out such clandestine negotiations. Like many other female go-betweens, she was discretion personified. It was only in her will that she gave an ironic hint of her work—a hint that so far seems to have gone unnoticed. In 1935 she bequeathed her house in Geneva—the Villa Barton and its extensive park—to the Swiss Confederation, so it could be turned into the Graduate Institute of International Studies.⁵² Barton obviously saw her go-between work as a useful tool for international relations. Today’s students are unaware that their benefactor had once tried to help such relations in her own way.

While Alexandra Barton stayed anonymous all her life, her rival go-between Sixtus of Parma was less lucky. During the whole Sixtus mission Emperor Karl had relied on the discretion of the people involved. This was a reasonable assumption, yet in times of war, ‘trust’ had become a rare commodity. Like so many other failed peace feelers the Sixtus one might have stayed secret, at least until the end of the war. Yet indiscretion—the greatest threat to all go-between missions—changed this overnight.

It was, of all people, the experienced diplomat Count Czernin who broke the rules. Though he knew all too well that mutual trust between parties involved in go-between missions was paramount, Czernin publicly announced that the French had made peace overtures to Austria-Hungary but that his government had stood by Germany. He must have known that the press would cover his statement at length. He also should have known that the French would retaliate. In fact Czernin had triggered a disaster. His speech was so completely out of character that nobody (including Czernin himself ) could later understand the motive behind it. One explanation was that he was still under the misapprehension that the initial overture had been made by the French. He was also ignorant about the letters Karl had sent via Sixtus to the French. Another reason for his speech could have been his desire to show himself as a man who had tried everything to achieve a peace deal, indicating that this peace would have been possible if Germany had not stood in the way of resolving the Alsace-Lorraine problem. This might have been a coded hint to the German ally. Still, it does not justify the recklessness of his remarks. A more simple explanation for them is that he was not acting rationally. His mental state was by then fragile. The war had taken its toll on everyone, but Czernin had known for almost two years that it was lost. By 1918 he was completely overworked and close to a nervous breakdown. His concentration had suffered and this might have made him say things off the cuff. Whatever the reasons, the speech would become his personal suicide note.

The French were outraged and decided to return the compliment, by publishing Emperor Karl’s incriminating letters ten days later. Czernin was naturally shocked. Emperor Karl then gave Czernin his ‘word of honour’ that no more letters existed. He also claimed he had never made any commitments in regard to Alsace-Lorraine. This was an obvious lie. It was now expected that Czernin would do the ‘honourable thing’ and shield the Emperor, taking sole responsibility and resign. He refused. As a consequence he was dismissed four days later.

Czernin’s career was over and Emperor Karl’s reputation tarnished. Fürstenberg, who had never liked Zita’s ‘awful family’, the Bourbon-Parmas, was outraged. He agreed with many members of Austrian society that the Parma intrigues had been responsible for this blunder. While everyone discussed whether Karl had actually lied to his minister or not, one thing seemed clear to many now—the Habsburg dynasty was severely damaged and might not survive the war.

The Sixtus mission was a debacle on several levels. Most importantly it ended the chances for any more Franco-Austrian peace feelers. It also made Austria-Hungary even more dependent on Germany while at the same time poisoning their relationship irrevocably.

Fürstenberg’s sentimental little poem about the two faithful brothers—Austria and Germany—seemed to mock him now:

The brothers did not separate but stood firm,

And fought without regret and treachery

The Nibelungen-fidelity became reality!

There was no trace of ‘Nibelungen-fidelity’ left. It was obvious to everyone that Karl had wanted to achieve a quick peace settlement to rescue his crumbling empire, and that he would have sacrificed his German ally to achieve this.

Apart from bringing about the beginning of the end of the German–Austrian alliance, the Sixtus mission also changed the public’s perception of their leaders. Censorship and propaganda had shielded people from the truth for four years. Now they saw an ‘international clique’ at work, which was acting outside the boundaries of government and the judicial system.

The American observer George D. Herron (1862–1925) saw the affair as a decisive turn. He wrote to the Secretary of the American Legation in Berne in May 1918: ‘[This scandal] seems to be the starting point for a new and searching examination of the psychology and the validity of the present modes of government.’

Herron was a theologian who had moved to Switzerland after the outbreak of war, explaining American policy to the Entente powers. Since 1917 his main role, had been to ‘sell’ President Woodrow Wilson’s ideas for a peace agreement. Apart from this Herron also wrote private reports to Wilson about the situation in Europe. The President liked receiving information from semi-official channels and for a while Herron was one of them.⁵³ His take on the Sixtus mission was therefore important. He was well aware of how tired people had become of secret diplomacy and how much they yearned for more transparency. The Bolsheviks had by then published the secret treaties that tied the Entente together and the world had woken up to the fact that dubious negotiations had been concluded in the course of the war. The Tsar was out of action now, but the Austrian Emperor was very much in play. His handling of secret go-betweens and his lies showed how much the political classes had failed. Herron’s conclusions about the public’s outrage therefore just confirmed what Wilson had said only a few months previously. Number one of the President’s fourteen points had been to end secret diplomacy. The Sixtus scandal confirmed this. It was truly ironic that of all people Sixtus, the ambitious aristocrat, triggered a cry for democracy.

The fallout from the Sixtus mission for the Dual Alliance now became Fürstenberg’s problem. His go-between work continued, yet it had become pretty desperate. On 24 June 1918 he delivered Emperor Karl’s letter to the Kaiser, announcing that Austria would soon seek for peace. Though the war dragged on, everyone knew the situation was irrevocable. On one of his last missions Fürstenberg was sent to Wilhelm II to ‘beg’ for food supplies for the starving Viennese. The old link worked one last time. The Kaiser ruled in favour of his old friend’s country.

In October 1918 the German ambassador in Vienna reported that Fürstenberg had finally given up:

Prince Fürstenberg regards his efforts for a firm unity between the allied monarchies as having failed und has given up his political work.⁵⁴

From this moment onwards Fürstenberg was no longer a go-between. However he stayed by the Kaiser’s side during the last days of his reign. In November 1918 he travelled to the German army headquarters and was shocked by the state of his old friend. Fürstenberg’s short diary entries of November 1918 show how claustrophobic the situation had become, with the Kaiser going on endless walks and taking too many sleeping pills. In this bunker atmosphere, nobody among the imperial entourage plucked up the courage to tell Wilhelm to abdicate. Fürstenberg was not capable of it either and noted: ‘I do not have the heart.’ To the end he was complicit in sheltering his friend from reality.

Fürstenberg and Wilhelm never got over the Sixtus ‘betrayal’. After the war, in 1921 Fürstenberg wrote a long letter to the depressed ex-Kaiser. To cheer him up he told him the story of another ex-emperor, Karl. Karl and his wife Zita seemed to live in much worse circumstances. They resided in the glorified Swiss ‘castle’ of Hartenstein, which apparently resembled more a ‘run down’ hotel than an imperial palace. Fürstenberg’s brother had just visited them and reported back that the ‘castle’ was overflowing with members of Zita’s pushy family, the Bourbon-Parmas:

They all intrigue and agitate for their own ends. My brother was relieved to get out alive … He thinks no fruitful action can be taken as long as the Parmas maintain their influence. But it seems to be impossible for Emperor Karl to get rid off his horrid in-laws.⁵⁵

Wilhelm II and Fürstenberg had of course good reason to despise the Parma family for their involvement in one of the most damaging go-between missions of the war. Yet Fürstenberg’s fixation on the ‘Parmas’, i.e. Empress Zita and her mother, also shows that the aristocratic peer group often made wives responsible for the ‘bad’ decisions their husbands had taken during the war. While Empress Zita was condemned for dragging Emperor Karl into intrigues, in the case of Russia the Tsarina was posthumously made responsible for the downfall of the Romanovs while, as we will see, Queen Marie of Romania was accused of ‘manipulating’ her husband Ferdinand into war. All three women were portrayed in the manner of Lady Macbeth, employing rather doubtful methods for the survival of their house. Blaming the wives was a convenient way of exculpating the husbands. As in chess, sacrificing the Queen may be required to save the King. Consequently King Ferdinand’s, Emperor Karl’s, and Tsar Nicholas’s legacies stayed fairly intact. At least, within their peer group, they could still be portrayed as following the aristocratic code of honour. This tactic was rather misogynistic, but it also reveals another point. Queen consorts were perceived as serious players. In many cases this was a correct analysis. They could gain power, even if it was only behind the scenes.

But who were these women?

Go-betweens for two queens

In 1916 Queen Marie of Romania wrote to her British cousin King George V: ‘I never imagined that it would be the lot of our generation, we who were children together, to see this great war and in a way to have to remodel the face of Europe.’⁵⁶

Though she was wildly exaggerating her role, the first part of her observation was of course correct.

Much has been written about the dilemma faced by the most prominent grandchildren of Queen Victoria in 1914: Wilhelm II, George V, and the Tsarina found themselves on opposite sides. But they were not the only royal grandchildren who had to cope with the break-up of their international family. Queen Victoria also had grandchildren living on the periphery of the war—in neutral countries. One of her granddaughters was the Queen consort of Romania, three others the Queen consorts of Spain, Greece, and Norway. All of these countries were neutral at the beginning of the war and therefore of great interest to the belligerent powers. Luring them out of their neutrality would have been a strategic as well as a propaganda success for each side.

It took Queen Victoria’s grandchildren some time to understand the implications of their new role. They had been brought up to believe in a strong family unit. Many had made friends with their cousins who were now in the enemy camp. Belonging to a royal cohort that was born in the late nineteenth century, they had never encountered a major European war. Instead they had been reared in an extremely sheltered environment, surrounded by growth and prosperity. Many of them had been born at their grandmother’s in Windsor, Osborne House, or Balmoral. Even their marriages had been influenced by Victoria’s wishes. Whether they married into German, Russian, Spanish, or Romanian royal houses, their reference point had always remained Britain. Long after the First World War and by then scattered across the Continent, they would still reminisce about summer holidays in Balmoral. In their memories Britain became a synonym for the innocence of their youth.

These grandchildren had always been conformists. In 1914, however, they were faced with a situation that demanded a very different attitude. Some realized this earlier than others. Marie of Romania was a romantic pragmatist and her above-mentioned letter to cousin George showed that by 1916 she had adapted to the new war games. While she still reminded George of the memories of an idyllic childhood, she was also pursuing a new agenda. The ‘remodelling plans’ she mentioned to cousin George turned out to be demands for territorial gains. Romania would be willing to join the Entente, if a long shopping list of territorial concessions was agreed on. In the end Marie would be successful in using her family network to help remodel Romania. But the road to this remodelling process was an unusual one.

Officially Marie had no power. She was ‘simply’ a consort, who was expected to produce children and look beautiful. In her memoirs she wrote:

My people always considered me pretty, and were proud of me, notre belle reine. In a way it was considered one of my royal duties to please their eyes, and yet it is the only duty for which I cannot be held responsible!⁵⁷

Technically Marie’s husband was a very powerful monarch. In the First World War Romania was far from being a constitutional monarchy. In fact, King Ferdinand, together with his Prime Minister Bratianu, were the decision makers. Since Ferdinand was considered to be weak, people in the know turned to his wife Marie. She became the target of German and British go-betweens. That she was perceived by both sides as a potential ally was due to her ‘hybrid’ background.

Marie was born in England in 1875 and named after her mother the Russian Grand Duchess Marie, or Maria Alexandrovna. Her parents’ marriage had been a mistake. At least this was the opinion of Marie’s grandmother Queen Victoria. The Queen had not welcomed her second son Alfred marrying a Romanov. After the Franco-Prussian war Queen Victoria had given up the idea of playing politics by marrying off her children into foreign royal houses. Yet her son remained obstinate. He had already been forced to give up another marriage plan because of his mother’s interference and was now determined to push this one through. He also claimed to be in love with Marie Alexandrovna, though his mother doubted that he was capable of any serious feelings. Victoria was in general critical of her children, but she did have good reasons for not supporting the Romanov project. The Crimean war had deepened distrust in British society towards Russia and the Queen shared this feeling wholeheartedly. Political clashes with St Petersburg seemed likely in the future and Victoria rightly feared that a Russian daughter-in-law could become a long-term liability. Privately she thought the Romanov family itself was arrogant and full of ‘half oriental notions’.⁵⁸

Victoria was proved right; the marriage was not very successful. But a son and four daughters were born before the couple became completely estranged. Whereas the son committed suicide, the daughters would play interesting parts during the First World War—three in the allied camp, one with the Central Powers. Like Chekhov’s Three Sisters, these four daughters dreamed of nothing more than to get out into the world. One of them actually made it to Moscow—Victoria Melita (‘Ducky’)—another found a Spanish princeling, and Marie became Queen of Romania. Alexandra (Sandra) was ‘only’ married to Prince Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg, yet it would always be the unglamorous Hohenlohe the sisters turned to when unpleasantness had to be sorted out.

Growing up with her siblings in Britain and Malta, Marie thought of herself as of mixed blood—Russian and English. Her mother Marie Alexandrovna was however suspicious of the English element. When Marie had the opportunity to marry ‘back’ into the royal family, her mother blocked it. She did not want her daughter to marry the second son of King Edward VII, George (later George V). Marie Alexandrovna favoured another offer. Over the years she would gain the reputation of marrying off her children young—a habit that Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg would call a ‘mania’.⁵⁹ Following this mania, the 17-year-old Marie was quickly married to Ferdinand von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the Crown Prince of Romania. She did not enjoy the privilege at first. To move from prosperous Britain to poor Romania turned out to be a severe culture shock. Yet over the years Marie did develop into an enthusiastic Romanian. It was this newfound patriotism for Romania that explains her political work during the war, using all the family networks available to her.

In fact her involvement with go-betweens is one of the few better-documented cases of the First World War. The reason for this is that Marie was refreshingly indiscreet. Her three-volume memoirs which she published in the 1930s are—despite their flowery language and obvious self-aggrandizement—a useful source. So are her letters to friends in America, in which she gives colourful portrayals of her international relatives.

When war broke out in 1914 Marie was not yet Queen consort. Her uncle King Carol I of Romania had still three more months to live. King Carol was originally a Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who loved his ‘adopted country’ Romania. Yet adoption processes can be an emotionally draining experience and countries were not necessarily as grateful as lonely children. To adopt a country turned out to be a mixed blessing for the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family.

As a member of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen King Carol had always been pro-German. Though he was resentful that his relative Kaiser Wilhelm II had never shown much interest in or even visited Romania, when war broke out he favoured siding with Germany. King Carol mainly felt bound by treaty obligations. Despite many differences with Austria-Hungary, Romania had renewed a secret understanding with the Triple Alliance in 1913 and was therefore an ally of Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.⁶⁰

However, Romania’s ruling elite did not share the King’s enthusiasm for Germany and traditionally felt pro-French. For informed circles it was consequently no surprise that a compromise was reached and Romania declared herself neutral in 1914. It was a wise decision, but a decision the other nations did not accept. From this point onwards, the Entente as well as the Central Powers hoped to lure Romania out of its neutrality. The country became a battlefield of a different kind, with weapons that varied from threats and financial bribes to promises and flattery.

When King Carol died in October 1914, the new royal couple, Ferdinand and Marie, became the main target of diplomatic pressure from the Entente and the Central Powers to join the war.

Since the royal couple were part of an international royal network it seemed appropriate to send to them, apart from diplomats, people to whom they were related and whom they trusted. George V sent a special confidant to Romania, General Paget. The Central Powers even tried out three different go-betweens to put pressure on the royal couple: first Marie’s mother Marie Alexandrovna (by then dowager Duchess of Coburg), second, Marie’s brother-in-law Ernst Hohenlohe Langenburg, and third, King Ferdinand’s brother, Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.⁶¹

The German line was simple: the new royal couple should be reminded of their German roots and of all the money Germany had poured into Romania. Emotional blackmail should be used if appropriate. Such blackmail was best carried out by a mother. Marie of Romania’s mother Marie Alexandrovna (dowager Duchess of Coburg) consequently demanded in her letters support for Germany. These were not simply the private letters of a controlling mother. They were commissioned by the German Foreign Minister von Jagow, who wrote happily in June 1915 that the correspondence was carried out satisfactorily.⁶² But letter writing was not enough. Jagow also wanted Marie Alexandrovna to travel to Romania to increase the pressure on her daughter. Marie Alexandrovna felt too old for such a strenuous trip. She suggested to Jagow that one of her sons-in-law, Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg, should go to Bucharest instead. The Foreign Minister hesitated at first. The trip of a man like Hohenlohe would be much more visible than that of an old mother. In June 1915 Jagow therefore telegraphed to his envoy in Bucharest:

Private. Strictly confidential. What influence has the brother-in-law of the Queen, Prince Hohenlohe on the royal couple? Would his visit be perhaps viewed favourably? Duchess of Coburg [Marie Alexandrovna], who does not want to go to Bucharest herself, seems to wish the visit to take place, but it could also be based on the wish to make her son-in-law play a political role.⁶³

The reply of the German envoy was positive and Hohenlohe-Langenburg was dispatched to Bucharest.

While some members of the diplomatic service thought that one should avoid sending ‘amateurs’, others were more practical. One explanation for this was the mindset of civil servants in the German Foreign Ministry. They lived in a monarchy and were mainly aristocrats. Of the 550 diplomats who served in the German Foreign Ministry 70 per cent were members of the nobility. The decisive policy department in the Foreign Ministry, department IA, was until 1914 dominated by civil servants, 61 per cent of whom had an aristocratic background. Non-aristocratic civil servants were sidelined and ended up in less prestigious departments (economic, legal, or consular).⁶⁴ It was therefore no surprise that the aristocratic civil servants believed in the benefits that could be achieved by dynastic contacts with other countries. Since diplomats did not want such a delicate task to be carried out by anyone outside their trusted circle it seemed sensible to employ private individuals, their fellow aristocrats. After all, these ‘amateurs’ understood the cultural context and often knew the decision makers personally.⁶⁵

Once approached, members of the higher aristocracy usually agreed. Ever since the outbreak of war, they had wanted to prove their relevance and their ‘usefulness’. They had done this by getting involved in military and charitable projects. A semi-diplomatic role seemed even more prestigious.

As Jagow’s telegram shows, however, he was somewhat suspicious of Prince Hohenlohe. Jagow knew that Hohenlohe had had political ambitions in the past and might be interested in securing a return to the Foreign Ministry. Being married to one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, Hohenlohe was certainly well connected. In 1900 the family had created a job for him by appointing him Regent for the young Carl Eduard Duke of Coburg. Ernst ‘reigned’ for five years in Coburg and Gotha, a position he enjoyed tremendously. In this case his family connections had been useful, yet they hindered him five years later. His dreams of becoming German ambassador to Britain were rejected by King Edward VII for practical reasons: Hohenlohe and his wife were ‘family’ and would therefore have been entitled to precedence over the other ambassadors and their wives, something that could have caused endless rounds of embarrassment.⁶⁶ Hohenlohe had to accept this argument and turned to politics. He tried his luck as colonial secretary (1905/6) and became a member of the Reichstag. None of these experiments satisfied him and by 1913 he decided to run his estates full time.

It was the outbreak of war that helped him to reactivate his career again—not as a proper diplomat, but in a semi-official role. A successful go-between mission in Romania could have been his ticket back into the political arena. That such a success might be possible was the opinion of Prince Löwenstein. He wrote in 1915: ‘It is funny, that Ernie Langenburg could never become ambassador because his wife is an English Princess. And now that we are at war with England, in critical negotiations with Romania and she has a sister sitting in Russia, all of a sudden it works. For negotiations with Romania he will perhaps be useful.’⁶⁷

Jagow had come to the same conclusion in the end. Hohenlohe would be one of his go-betweens.

However, the most important prerequisite for a go-between mission was that it should stay secret and here secrecy was blown early on. Rumours soon circulated in the international diplomatic corps in Bucharest about the Hohenlohe visit. The German envoy in Romania reported that Prince Hohenlohe’s arrival was not welcomed by the Romanian ‘warmongers’ and was being used for anti-German agitation.⁶⁸

That his trip to Romania had become common knowledge was a blow for Hohenlohe. Officially he had been made a special envoy to Constantinople in 1915 and his ‘stop over’ in Bucharest had been portrayed as a family visit. But now that his cover was blown, pro-Entente circles were nervous. Marie of Romania, in particular, felt that Hohenlohe’s visit was a serious threat to her own agenda. In her memoirs she wrote:

I was hungry for news of everybody and everything at Coburg, and yet it was a difficult encounter, as Ernie sensed which way the tide was turning, and I well knew that his contact with Nando [her husband King Ferdinand] was not without danger. Ernie represented too evidently that German atmosphere dear and familiar to my husband, and it was but natural that Ernie should profit by his visit to further German interests; besides Ernie was a very sympathetic German agent.⁶⁹

Her husband liked Hohenlohe because he confirmed what the King believed in: the ‘invincibility’ of the German army.⁷⁰ But King Ferdinand had been under constant pressure from Francophile Romanian circles, who doubted that he was acting as a ‘good Romanian’.⁷¹ The King had coped with these accusations badly and seemed close to a nervous breakdown. Hohenlohe’s visit was now propping him up. Though Hohenlohe did not achieve spectacular results, at least Romania stayed neutral. In the eyes of Foreign Minister Jagow, Hohenlohe therefore remained a useful factor in German–Romanian relations.

Apart from Marie Alexandrovna and Hohenlohe, Jagow employed a further German go-between to King Ferdinand: Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1864–1927). Wilhelm was Ferdinand’s elder brother and the head of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Even though he lived in the sleepy little town of Sigmaringen, Wilhelm’s mental map was much bigger. Politically and financially his family had interests in Prussia, the Rhineland, southern Germany, and Romania. Though the last one was a rather unusual affiliation, it added enormous honour to the House.⁷²

Wilhelm had of course no powers comparable to those of his brother Ferdinand of Romania but he thought along traditional hierarchical lines. Since he was the head of the house and the elder brother, he felt he had to guide Ferdinand. Like the other two go-betweens he urged him to join the Central Powers. In long letters Wilhelm kept analysing the ‘misguided politics’ of Romania’s Prime Minister Bratianu and painted the dark consequences for ‘dynasty and the state’ if Ferdinand joined the Entente. This, Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen argued, would be fatal for Romania and would lead to an ‘awful break with your family and your old homeland’.⁷³

Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had a trustworthy source at the Romanian court, a secretary of the King named Baron Basset. Basset was born in Switzerland and by 1916 already 69 years old. But as the report stressed, he was agile and lucid. He had been a secretary to the deceased King Carol and was now working for his successor King Ferdinand.

Basset regularly visited Germany and informed Wilhelm about the King’s state of mind. He assured him that Ferdinand was feeling German and had in 1915—when Italy joined the Entente Powers—condemned the ‘treacherous betrayal by Italy of its treaty obligations in the sharpest way’.⁷⁴

Basset always made sure to remind Ferdinand of the testament of King Carol and to advise him to visit his uncle’s grave before making any decisions.

Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was satisfied with such reports and so was Secretary of State Jagow. His Romanian back channels were so important to him by now that he thought of various elaborate ways of sending the letters. To make sure that they would not cause any suspicion: ‘I have chosen to use the Romanian envoy to hand over [the letter] so as to avoid it looking like an official pro-German method of influencing them. This is better than the German envoy handing it over.’⁷⁵

Jagow was of the opinion that every possible back channel should be used to keep control of the Romanian situation. He did not trust the Romanian Prime Minister Bratianu, whom he described as a ‘blackmailer’.⁷⁶ Indeed Bratianu had since 1914 played off both sides against each other. Jagow summed up the situation in June 1915:

Romania doesn’t want to commit, wants to wait and see, even hesitates to state precise wishes, and wants great concessions for simply remaining neutral.⁷⁷

King Ferdinand was involved in this bargaining. He had written a private letter to the Kaiser trying to explain that in spite of his own personal feelings and sympathies, he was before all else ‘one with his people, who were clamouring for the liberation of the Romanians living under the sway of the Hungarians’. In other words he wanted the German government to put pressure on Austria-Hungary to offer Transylvania.

The Germans supported this, but they could not make the decision alone. Their Austro-Hungarian ally would have to make the greatest territorial concessions to Romania. And they were far from willing. Queen Marie wrongly assumed it to be Germany’s fault: ‘The Kaiser paid little heed to his cousin’s letter [Ferdinand’s], and adopted a high-handed manner towards us, little conducive to encouraging good feelings.’⁷⁸

The Germans guessed that it was difficult to win the Queen over. Though she loved flattery, she did not fall for the charms of Count Czernin or any other Austrian or German emissary sent to her. In her memoirs she would state: ‘It is true that I had never felt German but English, though much of what was German was sympathetic to me, and that I was always eager to promote any understanding between England and Roumania; but England never showed any particular interest in my adopted country, which I often regretted.’⁷⁹ Despite all the money Germany poured into Romania, the Queen was of the opinion that the majority of the Romanian people favoured France. To achieve such a deal for Romania, Marie now used her family network:

The Emperor of Russia and the King of England being both of them my first cousins, it was easy for me to keep in touch with them unofficially, and of course I was ready to serve my country in every way. Being entirely trusted by both the King and the Prime Minister, I was more initiated into State affairs and secrets than is usual for Queens. I was considered a valuable asset and therefore expected to do my share.⁸⁰

Though she had missed out on the chance of marrying ‘back into’ the British royal family, she had maintained a close relationship with her cousin George V: ‘George has always kept a special affection for me. I stimulate him, my uncrushable vitality makes the blood course more quickly through the veins.’⁸¹ Emotionally they were worlds apart and the highly flamboyant Marie was very aware of this, ‘he has no special personality … is stiff and conventional’.⁸² But despite this accurate portrait, she hoped he might bring about a solution for Romania. In March 1915 she wrote a personal letter to George V signalling interest in an alliance:

it is quite clear that public feeling is turning more and more towards the side where my heart really is. … I for one am of course delighted to see England at last take some interest in Roumania.⁸³

In a second letter she described in detail what territorial gains Romania was hoping ‘for its security and development. … The frontiers of the Danube to the Theiss, as well as that of the Pruth in Bucovina are essential conditions.’ She went on for several pages, though she was sure her cousin George had problems in following her detailed description:

In our youth, we had played ‘geographical’ games together under my Mamma’s critical eyes. I knew that European geography had not been George’s strong point. Mamma had been very withering in her criticisms of our ignorance … I could almost see George’s wrinkled brow whilst labouring through it.⁸⁴

The person who helped Marie of Romania to stay in touch with George was a British go-between. His name was General Sir Arthur Paget. Paget was a military man, who up to this point had had a rather mixed career. He was married to an American heiress and had served with great brutality during the Boer War and later in Ireland. In books on South Africa he is usually described as lazy and incompetent. He was known to despise politicians whom he called ‘swine’. According to Victor Bonham-Carter, Sir Arthur was ‘a stupid, arrogant, quick-tempered man’. This did not alienate him from the King, however. George V used him (most probably after consultation with the government) as a go-between with Romania. It was Paget who helped Marie of Romania and Prime Minister Bratianu to eventually get a deal struck with Britain. Paget delivered letters and probably also the verbatim replies by George V to Marie. Paget’s role in all of this has never been written about; the only clue to it is an appreciatory remark by Marie. ‘In March 1915, General Arthur Paget … came on a mission to our part of the world … to me it was a great relief to be able at last to speak to an Englishman, and I explained our difficult situation and also gave him a letter for King George.’⁸⁵ The episode sheds new light on the General—arrogant he might have been, but hardly stupid. As will be shown later there seems to have been a certain tradition within the Paget family to work as go-betweens. His relative Lady [Walburga] Paget tried her hand at it as well.

Marie did not only inform ‘cousin George’ about Romania’s territorial wishes, she wrote a similar letter to the Tsar. Her relationship with ‘Nicky’ was, however, more complex. She had visited the Russian royal family in the spring of 1914, when there had been a vague plan for her eldest son to marry one of the Tsar’s daughters (a plan Marie claimed to dread since it would bring haemophilia into her family).⁸⁶ She was fond of her Russian cousin though: ‘from Nicky one never felt estranged, but neither did one get any nearer. He seemed to live in a sort of imperial mist.’⁸⁷ Such imperial mist was alien to Marie who was more down to earth. But she had been flattered when the Russian royal family paid a return visit to Romania in June 1914. It was the last time she saw them.

To contact the Tsar, she now used an intermediary from her female network, the Grand Duchess Vladimir. According to Marie, the Grand Duchess was ideal because she was ‘very eager that we should come in on the Russian side’.⁸⁸

The Grand Duchess Vladimir (1854–1920) was born in Germany as Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She had married the third son of Tsar Alexander II and was by 1914 the most influential hostess in St Petersburg. She was always trying to get involved in politics and had great ambitions for her son the Grand Duke Kirill. So had her daughter-in-law—Victoria Melita (‘Ducky’). Ducky happened to be a sister of Marie of Romania and worked closely with the Grand Duchess Vladimir on the advancement of Kirill.

All three women—‘Ducky’, the Duchess Vladimir, and Marie of Romania now tried to help along a Romanian–Russian alliance. From autumn 1914 Marie used her correspondence with Ducky to signal interest in closer ties with Russia. In August 1915 she wrote to her: ‘But I can only tell you one thing: here, in spite of German successes and the non-success of the Entente our people still have absolute confidence in the Entente’s victory.’⁸⁹

She quite rightly assumed that this would be passed on. Ducky and the Grand Duchess Vladimir did their best to ‘help’. From 1915 onwards the Grand Duchess delivered Queen Marie’s letters ‘to the right people’ and sent back the replies under her name.⁹⁰ She was not simply a glorified messenger. She also got involved herself. To Marie she wrote:

after reading your letter I spoke to Sazonov [the Russian Foreign Minister] and pleaded your cause. I have the impression that both he and Nicky are sincerely willing to come to a good understanding with Romania, and to bring about a satisfactory alliance with you, making certain concessions.⁹¹

Marie’s negotiations with the Entente were now increasingly successful and the German go-betweens fell behind. They were well aware of it.

In June 1916, shortly before Romania sided with the Entente, Jagow planned to try and influence King Ferdinand one last time. He wrote to Ernst Hohenlohe-Langenburg begging him to urge the King ‘to stick it out’. Hohenlohe should use the advantageous military position of Germany as one argument. It was decisive now to warn Ferdinand ‘not to be taken in by his dodgy ministers’.⁹²

The pro-Russian atmosphere in Romanian society certainly alarmed the Germans. Basset reported to Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen that this atmosphere had affected the King, who had started to ‘sway and lose energy’. Furthermore Queen Marie had managed to suppress all the pro-German voices at court. Basset described Marie of Romania quite rightly as the leader of a ‘parallel government’, which supported Bratianu’s policy.

Despite these warnings from Basset, the events during the summer of 1916 came as a shock to everyone in Germany, including Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. When on 27 August 1916 the arrival of his trusted intermediary Basset was announced, he suspected nothing serious:

I thought the King [of Romania] might want me to talk to the Kaiser to get his support in case he had to maintain neutrality against the will of the Romanian government.⁹³

Instead, Basset informed him that the situation had deteriorated and everything possible should be done to stop King Ferdinand from committing the ‘mad deed’. Basset gave Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen a blow-by-blow account of what had happened during the recent days. On 24 August the King had suddenly asked Basset to deliver a letter to his brother in Sigmaringen. Basset thought it odd that shortly afterwards the Queen of Romania also wanted him to deliver a letter to her mother Marie Alexandrovna, the dowager Duchess of Coburg. Basset now handed over King Ferdinand’s letter which Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen read immediately. It was an apology, saying that the King had to ‘follow the will of his people’ and side with the Entente. This meant that King Ferdinand had already decided to go to war on 24 August. Basset was of the opinion that the culprit for this was the ‘old fox Bratianu who had bought the press. The main fault was with the Queen, who felt like an Englishwoman and had also become Russophile.’ Basset thought that 80 per cent of the Romanian public was totally indifferent as to which side to fight on and that the Social Democratic Party in Romania was still in its infancy. The Romanian officers were in general ‘pro-French, superficial and hedonistic’.⁹⁴

Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen reacted immediately to this letter, still hoping to stop his brother. He drafted a telegram to Bucharest. Its contents were close to emotional blackmail. This telegram is an interesting source because it illustrates the psychological methods that were used in aristocratic and royal houses to keep family members in line. As we have seen earlier, to keep a house united meant to take emotional aspects into account. A manipulation of feelings was necessary so that everyone would fulfil their duty to the house. One method of keeping family members under control was to remind them constantly of their ancestors’ heroism and sacrifices. Family honour was paramount and had to remain untarnished. Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen therefore used an amalgam of such arguments in his telegram to King Ferdinand:

I want to warn you for the last time against complacency and fateful weakness, stay firm and strong in your belief in God. Rather follow the ultimate logic of your beliefs and abdicate instead of jumping hand in hand with Bratianu into the dark abyss. This would expose your house and your country to doom and ridicule. Think in these difficult moments of our deceased uncle [Ferdinand’s predecessor King Carol I. of Romania] and loyal ancestors. Grandfather and father are looking down on you from heaven. I believe in your understanding and loyalty. May God be with you! Wilhelm.⁹⁵

The telegram was never sent because the following morning, Austria-Hungary declared war on Romania.

In the early modern period family members who disobeyed the head of the house had to fear economic and social sanctions.⁹⁶ Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen acted in this tradition. He could hardly punish his brother financially, but he excluded him from the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Other relatives reacted in a similar way; the dowager Duchess of Coburg terminated contact with her daughter, Marie of Romania.⁹⁷ So did Marie’s German sister Alexandra.

The German press was outraged about the ‘Romanian’ betrayal. To be related to the Romanian royal family was now a social stigma and Wilhelm Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was insulted in the streets as ‘the brother of a traitor’. He silenced speculation about his patriotism by officially distancing himself from King Ferdinand in a press release.

However, the shock waves ran deeply through German aristocratic circles. Ernst Hohenlohe Langenburg had to cope with his upset mother-in-law and his scared wife Alexandra. In his diary he noted ‘bad news’ from Coburg. There had been agitation against the family, i.e. his mother-in-law and his wife.⁹⁸

Hohenlohe’s aunt Grand Duchess Luise von Baden was not personally attacked but felt outraged anyway. A Hohenzollern by birth, she could not comprehend how a fellow Hohenzollern like the King of Romania could bring such shame on his own house.⁹⁹ Ernst Hohenlohe tried to explain the events in a letter to her:

How intensely I can identify with what you are feeling now. That a Hohenzollern is playing such a role one would never have thought possible in the old days. Even if he could not take the pressure any more, the only thinkable solution would have been abdication. … I can only assume that behind Nando’s [King Ferdinand’s] back Bratianu was silently working to join the Entente and at the last moment confronted Nando with a fait accompli. Since shortly before the declaration of war, Nando gave his assurances he would stay neutral, I cannot think that he was not telling the truth. He is not very intelligent and also weak but as far as I know he is not capable of such a lie. My poor mother in law [the dowager Duchess of Coburg Marie Alexandrovna] who in this war feels and thinks so much like a German Princess is outraged about this breach of loyalty.¹⁰⁰

Out of tact, Ernst did not mention Queen Marie of Romania’s role, he merely expressed grief that she had lost her youngest son at this time of crisis. Though Ernest tried to play down the role of Marie, over the following months the general line in Germany became that Marie of Romania was responsible for the ‘mess’: poor Ferdinand of Romania had acted under the influence of his ‘dreadful wife’ and could not be made responsible for his deed.

In defence, Ernst Hohenlohe quoted from a letter Marie had written to her mother shortly before Romania joined the war. In it she had expressed the ‘sincere’ wish that Romania would stay neutral but also stressed that the pressure on ‘Nando’ was immense. Hohenlohe therefore claimed that: ‘this letter is upright and it confirms my belief that the accusations against my sister in law as a warmonger are unfounded. It was the Entente and Bratianu that forced poor Nando with bribery and promises into the war.’¹⁰¹ He did not mention that he himself had once indulged in similar tactics to win over ‘Nando’. He had other things to cope with now; his wife and mother-in-law were close to a nervous breakdown: ‘they are suffering from it badly. Both reject the Romanian policy sharply. My mother-in- law has always warned in her letters to her daughter [Queen Marie] of the Entente intrigues and always begged and pleaded to her not be taken in by them. But even though she is outraged by Romania’s stance the fate of her daughter who has just lost her youngest son, has been thrown out of her house and now faces an insecure future is affecting her heart.’¹⁰²

After the events of August 1916 it would have been natural to assume that go-betweens like Hohenlohe and Prince Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen had lost their usefulness for the German Foreign Ministry. Yet even though their employer Jagow eventually resigned, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen stayed an adviser on Romanian affairs. A secret memorandum about a conversation between Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen from 5 October 1916 shows that the German government had not given up its dynastic schemes for Romania. They were now planning to ‘save’ the throne in the long term for the (so far) untarnished Romanian Crown Prince, Carol. Since surprisingly little was known in Germany about young Carol, the German Chancellor needed a character analysis by Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and so he was called in. According to his summary, the conversation with Bethman-Hollweg became quite emotional:

We talked about Romania’s treason … and the future of Romania. In Berlin it had been expected that King Ferdinand would stick to the beliefs of King Carol, that he would stand up for neutrality and because of his German origins would never approve of Romania fighting against his ‘old allies’. It had been thought that this breach of promise, this unfaithfulness, this shameful treason would mean the abdication of King Ferdinand. However, the fact that a Hohenzollern supports such a shameful policy, that [Ferdinand] has drawn his sword against his own fatherland against his own tribe of the Zollern, that has hurt and truly outraged the German Emperor and the government.

Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg told Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen that Ferdinand:

had brought disaster and shame to his country. The Oberste Heeresleitung [German High Command] is now determined to demonstrate to Romania what it means to provoke German anger. The Romanian crusade will be decided quickly. Of course Romania will suffer heavy losses. Romanians will awaken from their nice dream of an enlarged country and will sink low, politically and geographically. In a future Romania, King Ferdinand can of course no longer be a ruler. He and the ‘power-crazed’ and intriguing Queen Marie of Romania will have to leave forever.¹⁰³

It was therefore ‘natural’ to turn to Crown Prince Carol as a successor. Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen fully supported this idea, thereby hoping to save the Romanian branch of his house. In the following days he had several conversations about the future of Romania and the idea came up that Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen should travel to the Romanian front and report his impressions back to Berlin.¹⁰⁴ He obeyed but found his trip to Romania emotionally upsetting:

to step on Romanian soil under these circumstances, a soil that I had so often visited as a welcome guest, made a deep impression on me. Full of sorrow and tormented by pain I looked at this beautiful Romania which I had learnt to love. Wistfully I thought of the fate of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

It was a confusing situation. He still felt close to his brother but had to suppress such emotions and talk to his brother’s new enemies—Falkenhayn and the Austrian heir presumptive Karl. He gave them general information about Romania, its army and society. And he had to volunteer ideas on how to overthrow Ferdinand.

The decision to side with the Entente would bring two years of turmoil to Romania. The country was quickly overrun by the Austro-Hungarian and German armies, and the Romanian royal family had to flee. By September 1916 Marie of Romania was desperate. To her cousin Nicky she wrote: ‘It is as a woman and as a Queen that I make my appeal to you, to the man and to the Emperor! Send us the help we ask for at once.’¹⁰⁵

But the Romanovs had their own problems. The war was not going well for them either. In March 1917 Marie wrote in her diary:

A revolution has broken out in Petersburg … I hope Ducky [her sister] is not in danger, I hope the fire will not spread, it would be dreadful for our cause, and, oh, what a disaster in every way!¹⁰⁶

It was not just a family disaster for Marie of Romania but also a political disaster. Despite their poor performance, the Russians were the Romanians’ closest allies; if they dropped out of the war, Romania could no longer survive. To the Romanian Queen it seemed evident who was responsible for the outbreak of the revolution. As usual she saw politics in dynastic terms: for her the Tsarina, her cousin Alix, was the main culprit.

In her memoirs, Marie of Romania wrote that many, including her sister Ducky, had tried to warn the Tsarina:

Ducky, who had a difficult position, being her [Tsarina Alexandra’s] ex-sister-in-law, had the courage to go to her and warn her about the smouldering discontent, showing her how she was taking the wrong turning, how she was gradually losing the love of high and low. Courageously Ducky told her the whole dreadful truth, but in vain.¹⁰⁷

Now that the revolution had broken out Marie was convinced of Alix’s guilt:

What an hour for that woman, who because of her fanaticism has brought about this crisis; she who would listen to no one except Rasputin, and separated herself little by little from all the members of the family, then from the whole of society, never showing herself anywhere any more … surrounding herself with quite unknown people who had a disastrous influence upon her, and whom she imposed on the Emperor. Into the bargain, she was passionately ambitious, absolutely convinced that her judgement was infallible, that she alone understood Russia, and the need of the country and people … Blinded by her faith in herself and advised by Rasputin, she believed she alone was rightly informed, that she alone understood the situation. She was worse than blind, she was a fanatic, and her husband was as clay in her hands! And this is what she has brought upon him and her children and her country.¹⁰⁸

To blame the Tsarina for the outbreak of the revolution was something that only Marie of Romania dared to do in print by the 1930s. After the murder of the Tsar’s family, such criticism became a taboo subject in monarchical and aristocratic circles.

Behind closed doors, however, the majority of Marie’s relatives had always agreed that Alix was a social disaster.¹⁰⁹ From the start she had been highly unpopular amongst her international relatives, who thought that she ‘did not pull her weight’. Already the German Empress ‘Vicky’, after all an aunt of the Tsarina Alexandra, was scathing: ‘[Alexandra] is a beautiful woman … but with a cold heart. Everything washes over her without leaving any trace. She is very egotistical, does not make the slightest effort and has nothing of the sensitivity of her husband and the warmheartedness of her mother Alice.’¹¹⁰

It was mainly the Tsarina’s brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, who made sure after 1918 that her reputation was defended. Hesse claimed in his memoirs that she had been a victim of circumstances. The Russian court had always vilified her, calling her ‘cette raide anglaise’, and made her life impossible.¹¹¹ Hesse was also very critical of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s reaction to the Russian Revolution. In Hesse’s opinion the Kaiser seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in the downfall of the Tsarina. Indeed Wilhelm II had phoned the Grand Duke of Hesse on 13 March 1917, the Grand Duke’s jubilee day. Matter of factly he told him that a revolution had broken out in Russia and that the Tsar and his family had been taken prisoner. Without a word of sympathy he added, ‘happy anniversary,’ and put down the phone. The Grand Duke was outraged about the way the news had been broken to him. He had always despised Wilhelm II, but thought this to be the height of cruelty. Two months later, in May 1917, a telegram from the Kaiser’s headquarters arrived for Hesse, bluntly stating that the Tsar’s family had now been murdered. In fact this was a false rumour, the family was killed later, in July 1918.¹¹²

That Germany was not much interested in the fate of the Tsar, and had actually encouraged the revolution by permitting Lenin’s passage to Petrograd, was not surprising from a strategic point of view. However, feelings should have been different among the Entente powers. Russia was after all Romania’s and Britain’s ally and one would have expected at least some sympathy from these royal houses. That solidarity had become a rare commodity among Victoria’s grandchildren became blatantly clear in 1917: Marie of Romania cared little for her cousin Alexandra while George V famously turned down the idea of giving the Tsar asylum in Britain. His failure to render assistance was not that unusual, though, if one puts it into a longer historical context. Traditionally the monarchical system had seldom treated its exiled cousins well. Whether a dynasty survived or not had more to do with international relations than with family ties or the concept of legitimacy. Giving asylum to a dethroned monarch was always a political and often a financial burden reigning monarchs dreaded.¹¹³ Particularly after the press attacks on them as ‘hybrids’ in 1914 monarchs had to do their utmost to make sure that their image was a purely national one.

One effort to help the Tsar was made by the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII. He saw the Russian Revolution as a chance to end the war. As has been shown earlier, Alfonso offered himself for peace talks repeatedly. He also approached his German contacts as well as Buckingham Palace to rescue the Tsar. In the end his efforts came too late; the Tsar had been killed.¹¹⁴

While the members of the Tsar’s family were about to lose their lives, Marie of Romania barely managed to stay alive herself. Her decision to side with the Entente had turned into a disaster. In March 1918 peace was dictated to the Romanians by Germany and Austria-Hungary.  The Austrian Foreign Secretary, Marie’s old acquaintance Count Czernin, arrived together with his German opposite number Kühlmann. Marie recorded in her diary: ‘they demand everything with smiles and politeness and the iron hand.’ She was against her husband signing the peace agreement: ‘I prefer war à outrance.’¹¹⁵ She did not have to wait long for her revenge. Eight months later, with the victory of the Entente, Romania turned the tables on Germany. In 1919 it would become one of the great beneficiaries of the Paris Peace Conference.

Of course the reasons why Romania had given up its neutrality in 1916 had been complex and mainly driven by the hope of making territorial gains—gains that Germany could not offer because they concerned the territory of its ally Austria-Hungary. Yet strangely enough one of the conclusions the German Foreign Ministry came to after the Romanian debacle was that it had not worked hard enough on a personal level.

There had always existed hope in the German Foreign Ministry that another neutral country could be won over: Sweden. The country was important because it protected the German army from the north, and because it offered access to world markets. Thanks to Sweden Germany still received iron ore supplies.

To win over Sweden, aristocratic go-betweens were employed again. At the outset their mission seemed not as difficult as the Romanian one: Germany and Sweden had a close relationship. After German unification in 1871 Sweden had turned increasingly to its southern neighbour. There existed a feeling of cultural kinship. The Swedish upper classes in particular were known to be traditionally pro-German. This was also due to close business contacts that had been established (a fact that Göring would exploit for his go-between missions during the Second World War).

In 1914 vocal conservative and military circles in Stockholm wanted to side with Germany. To lure Sweden out of its neutrality therefore seemed feasible. To achieve this, every avenue had to be explored, including the dynastic one. This looked particularly promising since Queen Victoria of Sweden was German. Though she was ‘only’ a Queen consort, her husband was, thanks to the Swedish political system, quite influential. Until the 1917 elections the Swedish monarch’s powers were substantial.

Victoria was the daughter of Luise von Baden and therefore a granddaughter of Emperor Wilhelm I. Her close relationship with her cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II formed part of her political influence in Sweden. She was known to visit the Kaiser often and to support his politics. This also included a friendship with Wilhelm’s ‘favourite’ Count Eulenburg. How close they were is shown by a letter Victoria wrote to Eulenburg in 1894: ‘Please believe me I am doing everything to feel at home. I am doing my best to feel Swedish and Norwegian.’¹¹⁶ (Sweden and Norway were in a personal union until 1905.)

Victoria’s critics in Sweden did not believe in such assurances. They saw her as a little ‘Prussian soldier’, strongly conservative and a disciplinarian. This was certainly true and it had its effects on her husband the Swedish King. Though their marriage was not considered a success (King Gustav was homosexual), when it came to German affairs Victoria seems to have had influence over her husband. Her private papers are still embargoed by the Swedish royal family, but it is obvious that Gustav became very pro-German. He continued this stance long after his wife’s death in 1930. His enthusiastic letters to Hitler will play a part later on.

The couple certainly shared a fear of ‘radical elements’ on the left. Since the great strike of 1909, they were worried that revolutionaries would take over Sweden. They therefore supported the conservative party and tried everything in their power to prevent the rise of the Swedish socialists. Sweden was not only divided in its domestic politics, but also in its foreign policy. When war broke out, the Swedish felt torn between the Entente and the Central Powers. On the one hand they saw themselves as part of the ‘Nordic race’ and had close ties to Germany. On the other hand Britain was important for Swedish business, and the royal navy was a strong presence in the Baltic.

Victoria made it clear that she wanted Sweden to join the Central Powers. She showed her commitment by giving every man in Sweden who volunteered to fight for Germany a special present. During the war she continued to visit her German relatives, Wilhelm II and her mother Luise von Baden. To her mother she complained about her difficult position in Sweden: ‘where the brutal pressure of England weighed heavily on the neutrals.’¹¹⁷ She also talked to her cousin Prince Max von Baden. He immediately realized that there was an opening here that could also further his career. He wanted to become a go-between to Sweden (Figure 5).

Until 2004 Max von Baden was portrayed as a positive figure in German history—he was the ‘liberal’ Chancellor who in 1918 turned Germany into a republic. Newly discovered records have changed this view entirely. The Max von Baden who emerged in an article in the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte was anti-Semitic and an admirer of Russian autocracy. His aim during the war was to fight against England ‘à outrance’.¹¹⁸ Privately he had expressed the view that the ‘western’ model of parliamentarism would not work in Germany. In a correspondence with the reactionary Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was at the heart of the anti-Semitic Wagner circle in Bayreuth, Max wrote in 1917 that he was ‘burning’ to resist the ‘democratic infiltration which has been spread by England and America with its tricks, hypocrisy and defamation’. His letters to Chamberlain show that Max von Baden was far from being a German ‘Whig’, but a much more complex, torn personality—or, to choose an uncharitable interpretation, an opportunist.¹¹⁹ During the war he was playing the autocratic and democratic cards simultaneously to get ahead in politics. His young adviser and ghost writer Kurt Hahn would later create an idealized image of him as a liberal modernizer. Contemporaries like the diplomat von Rosen had however realized that all these ‘modern ideas’ were Hahn’s alone: ‘Nihil est in Max quod non antea fuerit in Kurt.’¹²⁰

Figure 5. Failed go-between Prince Max von Baden with his cousin Queen Victoria of Sweden and her husband Gustav V King of Sweden before the Great War.

In his memoirs, which were published in the 1920s, Baden did not mention his negotiations with Sweden. There were two reasons for this: first of all, they failed and, second, mentioning them would have caused his cousin Queen Victoria great embarrassment. After the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II she had lost most of her influence in Sweden and had to tread carefully.

Max von Baden was not the first go-between the German Foreign Ministry used in Sweden. Before him, Count Ludvig Douglas (1849–1916) had been involved in negotiations. Douglas worked for Victoria of Sweden and was a true sujet mixte. He had once served as Swedish Foreign Minister but was at the same time an aristocratic landowner in southern Germany. Apart from him, German bankers had been drawn into negotiations as well. The Hamburg banker Max Warburg had contacted his Swedish opposite number Marcus Wallenberg, who was a brother of the Swedish Foreign Minister Knut Wallenberg (the influential Wallenberg family would again play a major part in the Second World War). These back channels were of high quality but had not achieved much yet.

Now Max von Baden got involved. He was ‘encouraged’ by the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to write a personal letter to his friend King Gustav V of Sweden. Max felt close to Gustav because they were both homosexuals and suffered from the various problems arising from this. Max certainly thought that he had over the years developed a special relationship with the King. In his letter to Gustav, he now argued that Germany and Sweden had common interests against Russia. The King replied immediately in a ‘warm tone’, but did not refer to the Russia argument. Max von Baden did not give up. He wrote to the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, that Germany should continue to make Sweden cooperate. ‘The King is the decisive factor … and he was pleased about my recent letter.’¹²¹

So was his cousin Queen Victoria of Sweden. To keep in contact with her, he offered to travel to Sweden. Max von Baden was so persistent in urging that this royal channel should be used that he even moved into the Hotel Adlon in Berlin in August 1915 to stay in close contact with the German Foreign Minister. He finally received his instructions to go to Sweden in November 1915. As a camouflage he used his official role as a welfare officer for prisoners of war (Kriegsgefangenenfürsorge). This was ironic, because the trip was far from being of a peaceful nature. For two weeks Max stayed at the royal castle Drottningholm, talking to the royal couple. Victoria had instructed him that these ‘German/Swedish political and military talks should be motivated by negotiations regarding the German-Russian war’.¹²²

While at Drottningholm, Max did not just talk to the King but also to the Swedish Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. The King was leaning towards war, but the Swedish government decided in the end that the advantages of neutrality were greater for the country. The talks had failed, Max von Baden’s mission was over.

Though Max later tried to erase this whole go-between episode, the Swedish diplomatic historian W. N. Carlgren resurrected parts of it. Carlgren thinks that Max von Baden got involved in the whole mission because he ‘wanted to make his name as a great political negotiator’.¹²³ Since the House of Baden has closed its archive, Max’s motives are not entirely clear. That he was highly ambitious was certainly true. His aim must have been to move from successful clandestine missions to an official position of power. He would indeed achieve this in the end by becoming German Chancellor in October 1918.

The Swedish failure upset Max von Baden. He later claimed it was a mission he was forced to carry out: ‘my military instructions in Stockholm were against my inner convictions in regard to what was useful for Germany.’¹²⁴

Unlike the Queen of Romania, the Swedish Queen did not manage to get her country into war. But the communication channels to Germany continued. To her delight, Queen Victoria’s second cousin Victor of Wied became a member of the German embassy in 1919. The closeness between members of the German and Swedish aristocratic families remained strong during the inter-war period and was used by the Nazis.¹²⁵ Wied in particular became a great asset and a personal friend of Göring. As we will see later, King Gustav would help the Nazis as much as possible.

Though Max von Baden ‘forgot’ to mention his Swedish go-between work in his memoirs, he did mention that he made contact with his Russian relatives during the war. This was relatively easy for him due to his mother’s family tree. Maria von Baden (1841–1914) was a granddaughter of Tsar Nicolas I and in her widowhood had moved back to St Petersburg. Because of these family connections, Max had visited Russia frequently before the war and had conversations with Tsar Nicholas II.¹²⁶ Furthermore Max’s wife Maria Louise (1879–1948) was a niece of Maria Fyodorovna (1847–1928), the Tsar’s mother. Max therefore felt close to the ‘female Russian network’. He now dreamt of a peace deal with Russia. In his memoirs he writes cryptically: ‘Originally it was my intention to find out via the Russian ladies whether the situation at the Tsar’s court was ripe for the decisive step.’¹²⁷ He was more explicit in private, when he claimed a peace with Russia was paramount ‘so that we can get even with England, France and Italy’.

Still it is unclear what Max von Baden was exactly up to. There existed two aristocratic factions in Russia at the time: one was close to the Tsarist court and ultraconservative, the other was critical of the Tsar and played with ideas of reform.¹²⁸

Max must have been aware of the split within the Russian elite. Whether he tried to gain from it will not be possible to verify. That a critical group within the Russian aristocracy provided an opening for the German Foreign Ministry is, however, evident. Supporting revolutionary developments of any kind in Russia was an important goal for Germany. To offer Lenin safe passage was not the only method they had in mind. Whether Max von Baden was thinking along similar lines is unclear.¹²⁹

The only ‘Russian lady’ he mentions by name is Marie Alexandrovna, the dowager Duchess of Coburg. She had already been involved in the Romanian case and was therefore seen as a useful link by the German Foreign Ministry. In March 1917 Max visited her in Coburg to discuss a letter to the Tsar and to ask her ‘for advice and mediation’.¹³⁰ However, the timing was extremely bad—that very day he heard of Nicholas II’s abdication. From then on, Max stated, ‘the thread was broken’.¹³¹

When he wrote his selective memoirs in the 1920s, the Tsar had been murdered and it had become a social taboo to mention any anti-Tsarist support. Max von Baden would not have dared to write whether he had had contacts with the anti-Tsarist faction of the aristocracy.

In the end, he was not forgiven by his peer group for a completely different deed: In 1918 he become the ‘traitor’ who made Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicate. Wilhelm II never got over this betrayal. In one of his rants the ex-Kaiser indirectly referred to Max’s go-between work. In 1922, he stated that one reason why Max von Baden had been made Chancellor was his ‘valuable connections abroad’. The Kaiser added that when he returned to power in Germany one day, Max would have to leave the country within 24 hours otherwise he would be hanged. A bullet was ‘too good for that man’.¹³²

Operating from London

Max von Baden could not have carried out his missions without the help of women. Women therefore played an important part in enabling back channel work. But were they also active go-betweens or had Princess Sarsina and Lady Barton been exceptions?

Officially aristocratic women were mentioned in newspapers only three times during their lifetime—when they were born, when they got married, and when they died: ‘Hatch, match, and dispatch.’ Though women’s influence was not acknowledged in public, in many families it existed behind the scenes. To this day, the parts aristocratic women actually played in Protestant and Catholic networks have not been properly researched. Officially men dominated aristocratic families, yet the gender roles were less polarized than in other classes. Compared to their bourgeois or working-class counterparts, aristocratic women—once married—could have an unusual amount of freedom. One reason for this was that they had greater financial security guaranteed by marriage contracts.¹³³ Marrying into another aristocratic family meant that this family was now responsible for a woman’s upkeep. Since a bride had to be from an equal background it was also part of the aristocratic social code that she should be treated respectfully by the family she married into. Of course this was an ideal and there were many cases of maltreated wives, yet the aristocratic community tried to minimize this by socially ostracizing the male culprits. It was important that a wife was well integrated and cooperated with her husband and his family because she could not be replaced so easily. Separation and divorce were becoming more common in the late nineteenth century, but they were seen as a social disgrace that could easily damage a house’s reputation. The ideal was therefore that the wife felt included. Her status and power within the house rose when she produced male children. Once heirs had been born, more options opened up.

Aristocratic women were certainly not ‘Noras’ who stayed in their doll’s house. The German historian Monika Kubrova has recently analysed autobiographies by German aristocratic women from a variety of backgrounds—from the lowest rank (e.g. women who were gentry level) to the highest (crown princesses). The memoirs were published after 1900 and therefore looked back on their lives in the second half of the nineteenth century.¹³⁴ The surprising result was that these autobiographies were written like a career report. Even though the first aim of an aristocratic woman was to bring up a family, she did not see herself solely as a wife and mother (a description bourgeois women used for themselves). Aristocratic women thought of themselves as wife, mother, manager of a larger household, and society lady. The last of these gave them a role outside the house, and this could mean influence if they wanted to use it. These women often described themselves as active co-workers when it came to their husbands’ careers. In general they were a team that had to work closely together to enlarge their house’s success and therefore the chances for their children. These wives ran the estate when their husbands were absent or helped socially to enhance their careers in the military or diplomatic service. In fact they completely identified with these services. An example of this is a diplomat’s wife, Mary Isabella von Bunsen, writing in her memoirs in the first person plural, meaning not just her husband but the whole Prussian diplomatic corps. She talks about: ‘our new colleagues’ and ‘our chief’ and ‘our embassy’. These women did not live segregated lives. They were included in their husband’s world: at court, at their country seat, in the radius of the military or civil service worlds. They therefore were what one would call today ‘incorporated wives’, playing a public role and at the same time increasing the social relations of their family.

As important ‘news agencies’ they made sure that a variety of contacts with other aristocratic houses were maintained, which in the long run was useful for the marriage and career advancements of their children. It was these female news agencies which became important for go-between missions.

That aristocratic women could play a part as go-betweens in the First World War is surprising because nowadays women are unlikely to have such opportunities. In fact female negotiators in war situations are extremely rare. Within the UN there is a ‘glaring deficit’: ‘in 2005, of the United Nations Secretary General’s 61 special and personal representatives and envoys and their deputies engaged on specifically peace-related work, there are four women. … Research and anecdote suggest that women have been considerably and powerfully more active at the grassroots.’¹³⁵

Though grassroots work is certainly very honourable, it is seldom as effective as high-level contacts. In this respect aristocratic women were more privileged than women working for the UN today.

An important requirement for a go-between mission is instant access to decision makers. During the war it was naturally much more difficult to get such access than in peacetime. Aristocratic women had, however, several advantages. Many had built the aforementioned wide-ranging network of female friends in reigning houses. They were either distantly related to a consort or had served as ladies-in-waiting. Furthermore, by 1914 another network opened up: female aristocrats took on ornamental positions in hospitals or prisoners of war work. These positions brought them closer to high ranking civil servants, members of the military, and politicians. Since these ladies were now doing ‘important war work’, they had to be listened to.

To make sure that they were indeed listened to, they also took advantage of the courtesy rules of the aristocracy. These rules made access to decision makers easier: a high born lady had to be received whatever the time pressure, turning her away was seen as ungallant and amounted to a social taboo. Her request had to be taken seriously otherwise she would spread her displeasure across her wide communication network. Aristocratic men had also been brought up to avoid disagreement with women of their own class. The only tolerated mode was icy politeness but even that could become risky. In general one had at least to pretend to make an effort.

Furthermore, aristocratic women usually did not suffer from a lack of self-confidence. The pre-war generation seems to have been particularly confident and did not let anyone get away with excuses. Lady [Walburga] Paget, who became a go-between, thought of herself as a political asset:

I know that nowadays [1917] it is not the fashion for women to interest themselves in politics but I still belong to the old school of Cavour, Dizzy [Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield] who did make use of women’s brains. Lord Beaconsfield told me himself how much he relied on women’s help and in my long life I have done many bits nobody knows anything about.¹³⁶

Lady Paget’s generation of women, who had run their own salons, clearly considered themselves as part of the political scene.

It is interesting, however, that Lady Paget thought such an involvement was on the decline. At a time when suffragettes were actually fighting for women to play a part in politics this seems a contradiction. One explanation for Lady Paget’s argument is the professionalization of the political parties in Britain. Until the 1890s parties had been dominated by a small group of Tory and Whig grandees with wives who were discreetly involved in politics. But with the emergence of a broader, more professionally organized party system this intimate club had lost power. Politics were no longer run from a lady’s drawing room. The same was true of the diplomatic service. In Lady Paget’s time embassies had still been run as a family embassy, with a thin line between the private and public worlds. An intelligent ‘ambassadoress’ could play much more than a social role. In the nineteenth century Count Alvensleben’s political successes in St Petersburg were helped along by his wife’s charm, and Prince Radolin had in Paris a mother-in-law who was a Talleyrand—an obvious asset.

The professionalization of the diplomatic service slowly changed this. The irony therefore was that in a parallel development women at the top lost their unofficial influence and shrank more and more into the background, at the same time that suffragettes fought for official, legal rights.

Still, some aristocratic women continued to be influential well into the inter-war years. To persuade them to carry out go-between missions was not difficult. An appeal to their aristocratic code of honour was often sufficient. Apart from that, women had lots of other reasons to get involved. Their children had often married abroad, and the war now threatened to break up the family unity (and endanger the family fortune as well). International connections also made some aristocratic women more immune to war propaganda. Because they had lived in several countries, they tried to see the political situation from multiple angles.

One of these women was the aforementioned Lady Paget. She wanted nothing more than to become a go-between for peace.

Lady Paget was not the only member of the Paget clan who worked as a go-between. As has been shown earlier, General Paget was highly successful in Romania, helping the Romanian Queen to strike a deal with the British. The General was related to Lady Paget’s husband but more importantly his daughter had married Lady Paget’s son Ralph. Since they were cousins, this was rather incestuous, but in a way mirrors well the mental maps of go-betweens. Everyone was somehow related to everyone else. Lady Paget might not have known about General Paget’s mission, but as an intelligent woman she probably guessed that his journeys to Romania in wartime were not holiday trips.

Today Lady Paget’s mission has been forgotten because it was unsuccessful and people associated with it eventually distanced themselves, trying to leave no traces behind. What remained was the picture of Lady Paget as a well-meaning yet eccentric loner. It did not help that she was known for an interest in spiritualism. Her go-between mission, however, had been a very serious effort. She had official support and was taken seriously by the country she approached—Austria-Hungary.

Walburga Paget’s international background certainly predestined her for the mission. She was born Countess Hohenthal-Püchau in 1839 in Saxony, the daughter of a rich landowner. Her maternal grandfather was the famous Field Marshal August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, a hero of Waterloo. Thanks to this pedigree Paget became in 1858 lady-in-waiting to the young Princess Victoria ‘Vicky’ (the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria). She identified with the English born Princess, and over the years Paget would become, like Vicky, a critic of Bismarck. It was the connection with Princess Victoria and her mother Queen Victoria that introduced Paget to work as a go-between.

In 1917 Lady Paget informed the mother of the King of Spain about her longstanding credentials for such work:

I may say that Queen Victoria several times entrusted me with secret and difficult missions and always honoured me with her confidence.¹³⁷

Apart from dealing in this grey area, Paget also knew the official side of diplomacy well. Her marriage in 1860 to the diplomat Sir Augustus Paget had shown her the inner workings of embassies: her husband was posted to Copenhagen, Lisbon, Florence, Rome, and Vienna.¹³⁸ Her time in Vienna had left a particular impression on Paget. She became an admirer of everything Viennese and this had turned her into a passionate go-between for the Austrian cause. The main reason why she loved Austria seems to have been that it was the opposite of Prussia. Her aversion to Prussia had hardened during the war of 1866 when her native Saxony fought the Prussians. It increased when one of her brothers was fatally wounded in the war of 1870/1.

To prefer Catholic Austria-Hungary to Protestant Prussia was surprisingly common in Foreign Office circles, as Lady Paget’s son Ralph acknowledged during the First World War: ‘the feeling in England towards Austria was not the same as towards Germany and [Austria’s] advances would meet with a sympathetic hearing.’¹³⁹

This atmosphere was the starting point for Lady Paget’s special kind of war work. In 1914 she was already 75 years old but completely lucid and very much part of the diplomatic scene. After her husband had died, her son Ralph had introduced her to a new generation of Foreign Office officials. Sir Ralph Paget had been Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Serbia from 1910 to 1913 and maintained a lifelong interest in the Balkans. During the First World War he had been posted to Copenhagen. Lady Paget did not just take a motherly interest in her son’s work. She also used his information for her go-between mission. Though she would later protect her sources and in particular defend her son it was obvious that he had helped her. Sir Edward Grey was another of her backers. He had a reputation for using conspiratorial methods: ‘secretiveness and a preference for discreet, behind-the-scenes dealing remained a hallmark of his style.’¹⁴⁰ Lady Paget’s role reflected that style.

Grey had been Foreign Secretary until December 1916. During his time in office he had tried to recruit neutral countries to support the Entente—a method that worked well in regard to Italy and Romania. Separating Austria-Hungary from its German ally would of course have been the ultimate coup and Grey realized Lady Paget’s usefulness for such an endeavour. Apart from Grey, Lady Paget also mentioned a mystery adviser who ‘suggested several ways and means’,¹⁴¹ and who was particularly knowledgeable about the Habsburg dynasty: ‘Help and information flowed to me tho’ I cannot tell you from whom, but it was from several sources.’¹⁴²

Whoever were Lady Paget’s ‘employers’, they also ‘encouraged’ several people to write pro-Austrian articles in magazines ‘like the Fortnightly, the 19^th century and other Reviews’.¹⁴³ That governmental circles ‘inspired’ the press was of course not a new method. Lady Paget was one of several people ‘inspired’ and she wrote two pro-Austrian articles in the magazine Nineteenth Century: ‘Austria’s Doom’ in March 1917 and ‘Austria and Prussia’ two months later.

Despite the fact that she knew the Prussian court so well (or perhaps because of this), she blamed Germany for the outbreak of war. She argued that the Habsburg monarchy had become just another Prussian vassal, serving German war aims. The new Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl should save his crown by making a separate peace with the Entente.

Her articles filtered into Austria and were quoted in a Viennese newspaper. She knew they had had an effect and this spurred her on: ‘I kept on hearing things from Austria through all sorts of channels which showed how desirous they were of making peace with us.’ This could be vital for Britain: ‘unless we separate Austria from Prussia, we cannot and never will crush the latter.’¹⁴⁴ In her opinion a strong, independent Austria-Hungary was the only balance against Germany dominating the Continent.

Following her arguments, the next natural step would have been to actually approach the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl. Since Paget knew of the power of female go-betweens from past experience, the idea seemed not unusual to her. To set up such a meeting, she counted on the support of two influential women. On the Austrian side she hoped that Maria Josepha, the mother of the Emperor Karl, could influence her son in the matter. Maria Josepha was, like Paget, originally from Saxony and very critical of Prussia. Paget saw a bond here. In her articles she had not only praised the Austrians, but also the Saxons. To her they were the embodiment of true German culture—having produced Bach and Wagner (while the Prussians had nothing to offer but ‘iron’).

The other lady she targeted was the Queen dowager of Spain, Maria Christine. She was an Austrian Archduchess by birth and Paget had already known her mother.¹⁴⁵

Paget’s idea was that it would be best to approach the Austrian Emperor via neutral Spain. In her first letter to the Queen dowager of Spain on 24 March 1917 she proposed that a high ranking British politician (she did not name him) should come to Switzerland for peace talks and meet a delegate of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. She asked Maria Christine to support this idea and pass on the letter to the right people.

It is very likely that Paget did not write the letter herself. Though she might have had the original idea, others ‘channelled’ it and used her as the go-between. This is substantiated by the circumstances in which the letter was delivered. Paget handed ‘her’ letter to Sir Eric Barrington, formerly private secretary of Lord Salisbury and Lord Lansdowne. Barrington was already retired (which meant that, if the mission became public, it could not damage his career). He made it possible for the letter to be handed over to the Queen dowager of Spain by a member of the British embassy in Madrid, therefore giving it respectability. It was also accompanied by a note from the British ambassador in Madrid, Sir Arthur Hardinge. This made the communication semi-official and for this reason the Queen dowager and the King himself took Lady Paget seriously from the start.

However, the Queen dowager was dithering over what to do with Paget’s letter, she feared that—if her involvement became public—Spain could be accused of supporting an anti-German peace deal. This might have serious implications for her country. Germany could argue that Spain had behaved in an aggressive way and consequently was no longer entitled to its neutral status.

The Queen therefore chose to reinterpret the letter, arguing that it was meant as an indirect way of getting in contact with Germany as well. This was not the intention of the letter at all, but it helped the Spanish to keep face. On 30 July 1917 the Queen finally invited the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Spain for a private conversation. His name was Karl Fürstenberg, brother of Emperor Wilhelm’s closest friend Max Egon Fürstenberg. Because of this closeness the Queen thought she had to tread particularly carefully. She did not want to be seen as anti-German. This caution was not necessary. Karl Fürstenberg was not as loyal to Germany as one might expect. After the meeting with the Queen, he sent a telegram about their conversation. To be on the safe side, he used a courier to deliver Lady Paget’s original letter separately. The addressee was a private individual, his brother Max, who then handed the letter over to the Austrian Foreign Minister Czernin. This complicated route ensured that the letter stayed outside the usual diplomatic channels.

As we saw earlier, Czernin was involved in several back channels and hoped to create the status quo ante bellum.¹⁴⁶ It is very likely that Lady Paget had heard from her many Austrian contacts of Vienna’s interest in talks.

Czernin had used Spain before and the Paget signals were therefore convenient for him. Before he replied, however, he contacted his ambassador in Berlin. The ambassador was instructed to inform the German Chancellor about the offer and make clear to him how easily the British could use it as a propaganda coup. If this offer became public many Austrians would hope for a quick peace. If the offer was, however, not even seriously discussed it would turn the Austrian public against Germany. The German Chancellor understood this argument and encouraged the Austrians to give a positive reply. They should stress that they were not interested in a separate peace agreement but that England should comment on a general one.¹⁴⁷ Czernin therefore replied to Spain that Vienna was aiming for ‘an honourable peace’ that would not exclude Germany.

Lady Paget never received this version. The message was changed again by King Alfonso XIII. In the final reply that reached Paget six months after her initial letter, the Spanish King now asked her for more details of the British peace proposals. This new version was due to the fact that the situation had changed again. In the meantime the French had approached Alfonso XIII and confirmed that the Entente was indeed interested in a separate peace treaty with Austria-Hungary. Alfonso thought that one should take advantage of this keenness and bargain.

Lady Paget did not know about these parallel negotiations, of course. She was surprised and relieved to receive an encouraging reply from Spain. After so many months she had almost given up hope. She now asked her son Sir Ralph and Lord Milner for advice. They encouraged her to continue the conversation and she replied to the Queen dowager in October. Her suggestion was that Emperor Karl should agree to an informal meeting.¹⁴⁸

She also praised the Queen dowager for her help and made it clear that it was not safe to leave go-between work to men since they had handled good opportunities badly in the past. In her letter Lady Paget mentioned that one incident in particular had triggered her determination to play a role. From her Foreign Office contacts she had heard that in February 1917 the Austro-Hungarian ambassador Count Mensdorff had met Sir Francis Hopwood for secret negotiations. The meeting was a disaster, in Lady Paget’s eyes:

Austria has in the past year taken a step for a separate peace, which was met by us by sending somebody to meet [the Austrian envoy] on neutral ground. So badly chosen were these persons, so ungeschickt [clumsy], that neither would speak first and they separated without a word! It seems impossible to believe. Such a thing as this could never happen if Your Majesty and Your august son would take Austria’s cause and that of peace in hand and the meeting could take place under Your Majesties’ influence. … I must now implore Your Majesty to trust your intuition, as I trust in your greatness of heart.¹⁴⁹

Lady Paget was appealing here not only to a former member of the Habsburg dynasty, but also to a woman and mother. In her opinion it was women who had to keep families together in times of war. The idea that they should work together to end wars dated back to Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata. Of course Lady Paget could hardly mention to a devout Catholic like the Queen dowager of Spain a risqué Greek play in which women withheld sexual privileges to force their men to end war. Yet she could appeal to ‘sentiments’. She also wanted to emphasize how important it was to save Austria-Hungary before the Central Powers collapsed: ‘England is now in a far stronger position than she ever was and feels sure of victory, and with the American millions to help and their thousands of aeroplanes which will be ruthlessly used, few doubt that a peace will be signed in Berlin.’¹⁵⁰

For this letter, however, Lady Paget had to use the postal route. It was obvious that her work was no longer supported by people inside the Foreign Office.¹⁵¹

The reason why she was dropped seems to have been that other channels had become available and one did not want wires crossed. What was more decisive was the hope of getting an even better peace settlement, including Germany.

Lady Paget was now dropped in a highly hypocritical way. The permanent undersecretary of foreign affairs Lord Charles Hardinge of Penshurst got involved. He claimed that Lady Paget’s second letter to the Queen dowager of Spain had been stopped by censors and landed on his desk. He pretended to be shocked by it. This seems odd because the Paget mission could not have been a surprise to him. Hardinge’s cousin was the ambassador to Spain Sir Arthur Hardinge. Sir Arthur had helped Lady Paget from the beginning and he was rumoured to be well informed about intelligence networks in and around Spain. It would have been very odd if he had not informed his cousin and superior about such an important overture. Whatever his reasons the permanent undersecretary claimed to be outraged about the whole affair. He now reprimanded Lady Paget’s son for supporting her work and ordered her to write to the Queen dowager of Spain that the ‘present moment is not opportune’.¹⁵²

He also claimed that the Foreign Office had no desire to talk to the enemy. This of course was not true and shows that Hardinge just wanted to shut down this channel while other talks were in full swing.

Everyone now deserted Lady Paget, and her son feared for his career. It was known that on her instructions he had visited Lord Milner asking for advice. In fact it is very likely that Paget had supported his mother’s work from the start. If she had been successful it would also have given him a career boost. Instead it had almost ended his career and Sir Ralph even offered his resignation. Hardinge did not accept it. That he knew of go-between missions in general became obvious, however:

we have had considerable experience of unofficial action in these matters and it generally contains an element of danger, however sound the motive.¹⁵³

Lady Paget’s mission had not been misguided, though. She had been a good choice and had done well. The ease with which she had made contact with Czernin and the Emperor remains impressive. Furthermore her mission triggered other missions.

What the Paget case also illustrates is that she had read the signs correctly. The Austrian side was yearning for peace and hoped the Pope’s peace plan in August 1917 might be successful. On 9 October 1917 The Times published a speech that Prince Liechtenstein, a member of the Austro-Hungarian upper house, had given:

A Vienna telegram says that an impressive peace demonstration by the Christian Social party took place yesterday in Vienna, at which many thousands of people were present. Prince Liechtenstein said ‘we have come together to express our heartfelt thanks to the Pope and the Emperor. We want a peace by agreement, general disarmament, and arbitration.’¹⁵⁴

The year 1917 was a decisive one in world history and it was also a decisive year for go-betweens. Never before had so many of them been so busy. For the chess players amongst the politicians the board seemed suddenly to offer new combinations. With Russia imploding and America getting involved in the war, every nation reconsidered its next moves. It seemed an ideal time for peace missions and from the Pope downwards many illustrious players got involved. Yet in the end their efforts came to nothing.

All Austro-Hungarian peace feelers were hindered by their German ally. A similar picture emerges from the Anglo-French relationship—allies blocked each other. As Winston Churchill so aptly put it: ‘there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.’

The work for a peace agreement was also blocked by emotions. After making enormous sacrifices, governments were simply scared of offering their people a peace without victory. Good money was thrown after bad. Rather than writing off the losses and coming to a quick peace deal, more senseless deaths were accepted.

The First World War had been a frustrating experience for go-betweens. Apart from General Paget’s mission to Romania, all other go-betweens had failed. Worse, the very method had been discredited by the Sixtus mission. Go-betweens were now seen as traitors.

Ghost missions

The angry reactions to the Sixtus affair illustrate that by the spring of 1918 deference to the ruling classes was in steep decline. The longer the war and the higher the death toll, the more intense the search for culprits had become. Somebody had to be made responsible. Apart from the enemy, hatred was also directed towards the ‘corrupt’ ruling classes.

Since 1914 the suspicion about ‘aristocratic hybrids’ had never gone away. The upper classes with their ‘international friends’ and ‘loose morals’ remained a target. Even in Britain where deference towards the establishment had been fairly strong, the Sixtus affair triggered rumours about dangerous go-between missions. That people thought such missions were undertaken against the national interest illustrates the level of distrust. Secret diplomacy and its methods were now discussed and seen as one factor responsible for the war going wrong. In this climate of suspicion, even an imagined mission could become political dynamite.

An example for such a ghost mission in Britain involved Alice Keppel, the former mistress of Edward VII. It is interesting to look at this case, because it illustrates the fact that as a reaction to years of war propaganda and censorship, conspiracy theories had sprung up everywhere. At a time when there was no proper information available, it was simply made up.

Shortly after the Sixtus letter had become public, in May and June 1918 a bizarre court case took place in London.¹⁵⁵ Ostensibly it was about the lost honour of an erotic dancer, but the real targets were prime ministers, peers, and London society.¹⁵⁶ The case was initiated by a man who had the charisma of a ‘great’ leader. Noel Pemberton Billing was in some ways a forerunner of Oswald Mosley and could, if he had handled his case better, have developed into a leading member of the radical right. He was an eloquent speaker, good looking, energetic, and equipped with an intuitive understanding of the prejudices of the average Englishman. He had been an actor, journalist, and inventor before he turned to politics in 1916.

As an independent MP for East Hertfordshire, he fought for a stronger air force (he built aeroplanes himself). Other items on his agenda included the fight against ‘a German-Jewish infiltration’ and ‘sodomites’, i.e. homosexuals, who were in his opinion soiling British society. Billing was an ardent opponent of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Like many others on the radical right, he feared that Lloyd George could make a compromise peace with the Germans. Billing therefore fought in Parliament against a ‘Peace without victory’—demanding the total surrender of the Central Powers. In Pemberton Billing’s eyes, even thinking of negotiations with the enemy bordered on treason.

According to his theory, such treason had already been committed by many members of the British upper classes. He believed there existed a secret society, the Unseen Hand, run from Berlin with the sole aim of undermining British institutions. High ranking members of these institutions had been recruited secretly by the Germans and Billing had identified two reasons for their treachery—first of all their ‘mixed blood’ and secondly their ‘perverse’ love life for which they were being blackmailed.

In 1918 Pemberton Billing found a chance to give publicity to his theory.

Apart from building aeroplanes and being an MP, Billing also published a little newspaper called the Imperialist—a mixture of anti-German, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic ideas. In January 1918 he ran an article in which he claimed that a German prince was in the possession of a secret black book with the names of 47,000 British men and women. Among them were cabinet ministers, diplomats, newspaper proprietors, authors, and courtiers. All these people had been blackmailed because of their sexual preferences. Since 1914 they had been working as German agents. Billing’s source for this story was a Captain Harold Sherwood Spencer, an American who claimed that he had seen the black book himself. Sherwood Spencer had become a friend of Billing and shared his politics wholeheartedly.

Nobody read the Imperialist and the article therefore had no effect. Naturally Pemberton Billing was disappointed, yet he did not give up. At the time he was also running a small, radical right wing group called the Vigilantes and he now changed the name of his newspaper into Vigilante. In it he published an even more sensational piece, which finally got attention. Under the headline ‘The Cult of the Clitoris’ he announced that a deeply amoral dance spectacle was about to be performed in London, based on Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. The title role would be played by the dancer Maud Allen, a woman with a dark secret.

Maud Allen had performed her version of Salome in Britain before the war and Edward VII had attended one of her performances. She was famous for her voluptuous body and lack of costume. It was also rumoured that she had had an affair with Margot Asquith, the wife of the former Prime Minister. (Billing would later publish a poem written by Lord Alfred Douglas which referred to Lady Asquith as ‘merry Margot, bound With Lesbian fillets’.¹⁵⁷ The Vigilante also accused wives of Cabinet ministers of lesbianism.¹⁵⁸)

For Pemberton Billing, Allen was the ideal target. He could not call her a lesbian in print, though. Instead he chose what was, in his eyes, a medical description by calling her sexual orientation the ‘cult of the clitoris’. His sensational article went on to say that if Scotland Yard wanted to find out the names of the British traitors listed in the black book, they should simply attend one of the private performances of Maud Allen and take a close look at the audience.

It took Allen and her producer Jack Grein some time to find out what the ‘black book’ was actually referring to. Once they had realized it, they decided to sue Pemberton Billing for libel.

To this day libel laws in Britain are extremely strict. Pemberton Billing therefore had to prove (a) that Maud Allen was a lesbian and (b) that a black book listing British traitors actually existed. He decided against hiring a lawyer and represented himself—though behind the scenes his anonymous supporters probably paid for legal advice. Apart from being a self-publicist, his main aim was to use the court case to attack the establishment. Over the following weeks this was allowed up to a point, but stopped abruptly when Billing claimed he could uncover a British go-between mission.

First of all Billing did his best to ruin the reputation of Maud Allen and her director Jack Grein. Grein was a Dutch Jew, a naturalized alien, who before 1914 had received a German decoration for his cultural work. People who had had connections with enemy countries before the war were natural suspects and Billing succeeded in insinuating that Grein was in the pay of the Germans. He was also highly successful in ‘exposing’ Maud Allen’s past. This wasn’t so difficult since she had a rather unusual family background. Originally a Canadian, her family had moved to America, where her mad brother had been executed for murder. Despite the scandal, Maud Allen had managed to reinvent herself and become celebrated for her unusual dances all over Europe and America. Her close friendships with society ladies, however, seemed to be of an ‘improper nature’. This insinuation was shocking enough for the audience at the Old Bailey. But Pemberton Billing also managed to persuade his listeners that Grein and Allen had chosen to perform Salome for one particular reason—to corrupt the British public. The play, he argued, was highly subversive and immoral, written by the infamous sodomite Wilde. To prove this point Pemberton Billing even managed to call Oscar Wilde’s former lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) into the witness box.

Bosie had been a literature groupie when he first met Wilde in 1891. Within four years the fan had thoroughly ruined the author’s life in an amour fatale. Wilde died in 1900 in poverty. In the meantime Bosie had conveniently broken with his homosexual past. As Billing’s star witness he enthusiastically confirmed that Salome had been written by Wilde to corrupt his audience and was littered with ‘sodomite’ references.

Thanks to Bosie, Billing had succeeded in giving the impression that a Sodom and Gomorrah gang of artists was trying to undermine the war effort. Bosie also confirmed that Wilde’s work had been influenced by German literature on sodomites. The German link was useful for Pemberton Billing’s general argument. He himself had a wife of German descent, something he successfully tried to hide during the court case. He was on firmer ground, though, when it came to his sexual orientation. Being an ardent heterosexual, Billing was naturally immune to blackmail by the enemies of Britain—or so his admirers thought. But this was not entirely true. One of Billing’s next star witnesses was Eileen Villiers-Stuart, a lady with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Villiers-Stuart was a femme savante with an impressive network of male friends. Though from a humble background she had become a ‘companion’ of politicians and high ranking members of the military. How much she was paid for her companionship was unknown. It was also unknown whether she had been sent to Billing as an agent provocatrice as she later claimed. According to her story she was so impressed by the rectitude of his crusade that she switched sides. Whether lapsed agent provocatrice or not, one thing was for sure, though: she started an affair with Billing and lied for him in court.

Her acting qualities were certainly impressive. Cross-examined by Billing she stated that her friend Neil Primrose had shown her and another friend, Major Evelyn Rothschild, the black book. Unfortunately both men had been later killed in action and could not verify this story. According to Villiers-Stuart, Primrose had not fallen in battle, but had been murdered because he knew too much. Billing now wanted to know the names listed in the black book. That day the judge had already called him to order several times and an angry Billing now demanded to hear all the names. It was an impressive show, and Villiers-Stuart, played her part brilliantly. She dramatically ‘revealed’ the shocking truth—that apart from the Asquiths, Lord Haldane, and Jack Grein, the judge’s name was also listed in the book. This stunned the judge into silence.

It was now left to Maud Allen’s lawyer Ellis Hume-Williams to try to undermine this bizarre story. If Primrose, who was a politician after all, had been in possession of this book why had he not done something about it? Villiers-Stuart said that he had planned to reveal all after the war. However, she had been more courageous and told several high ranking people about it. Among these people had been Hume-Williams himself. She reminded him that they had met at a ‘tea party’ and he had listened to her ‘intently’. This was another unexpected twist. It turned out that Villiers-Stuart and Hume-Williams knew each other. It was quite an embarrassing moment for the lawyer and he handled it badly. They were probably more than superficial acquaintances from a ‘tea party’ and Hume-Williams rightly recognized that she was making a subtle threat. From then on he gave up questioning her story.

Other people had less to lose. At first members of the upper classes had made jokes about the trial. The Earl of Albermarle had quipped: ‘Who is that Greek Clitoris? I haven’t been introduced.’ Not everyone thought Billing and his witnesses funny though. The former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery was outraged about the case. He was the father of the deceased Neil Primrose and feared his family’s reputation had been damaged. That his son should have been in possession of such a book was an insult to his memory. After Lord Rosebery exerted political pressure, the War Cabinet discussed the trial on 4 June. It was debated whether the press articles on the case should be censored. Also the idea of establishing an inquiry was discussed and dropped. The Home Secretary argued that they should not interfere while the case was ongoing. He was in the possession of reports from plain clothes policemen who had attended meetings of Billing’s Vigilante group as early as March 1918. The upshot seemed to be that this was an anti-Semitic group whose members suffered from paranoid tendencies. In fact one group member who was suffering from paranoia was Captain Spencer.

He was Billing’s next star witness. Spencer stated he had definitely seen the black book. At the beginning of 1914 he had been adjutant to the King of Albania, the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied. Among many secret papers he had come across the black book and had reported it to the British authorities. However, they had not taken any interest in the case.

Like Villiers-Stuart, Spencer also ‘remembered’ the names of several German agents: Lord Haldane, the Asquiths, and Alice Keppel, the former mistress of King Edward VII. The last name was a new revelation. According to Spencer, Keppel had been involved in secret negotiations with the Germans. Her contact was none other than the German Foreign Secretary Kühlmann whom she had met in the Netherlands.

The mentioning of Alice Keppel’s name had the desired effect. Especially to well-informed circles this story must have sounded highly plausible. Keppel had the experience and the opportunity to carry out such a mission.

Up to Edward VII’s death in 1911 Alice Keppel had been one of the best-connected ladies in London. She had accumulated ample experience of behind the scenes work, sorting out ‘misunderstandings’ between the Foreign Office and the King. Lord Hardinge of Penhurst, though he had terminated Lady Paget’s aforementioned go-between mission, had been an admirer of Mrs Keppel’s work:

I was able, through her, to advise the king with a view to the policy of Government being accepted … It would have been difficult to have found any other lady who would have filled the part of friend to King Edward with the same loyalty and discretion.¹⁵⁹

Discretion was vital to her position and she was upset when people made her influence public. When Margot Asquith mentioned in her memoirs that Alice Keppel had been a political adviser to the King, Mrs Keppel was far from pleased.

Keppel was also well known for having German friends, including the German born financier Sir Ernest Cassel. He had been helpful in increasing her personal portfolio and made her wealthy. It is also true that Alice Keppel knew Germany well. She had sent her daughters to Munich before the war to learn German and she often visited the Netherlands, where her friend Daisy, Baroness de Brienen, had a castle.¹⁶⁰ Whether she had travelled there during the war cannot be verified. In the spring of 1916 she had been to Paris for a rather frivolous reason—to buy clothes for her daughter’s birthday party. This was an odd journey to make in wartime, but whether there was more to this trip than shopping cannot be proven either.¹⁶¹

It was also true that Keppel knew the German diplomat Kühlmann, who had been posted to London from 1908 onwards. Though Kühlmann had only been the number two at the German embassy at the time, he had been highly popular in society circles and was known for his tireless work for a better Anglo-German understanding. In 1914 he had been devastated by the outbreak of war. When he was made German Foreign Secretary in August 1917, he did try to approach Britain with peace feelers. In German circles Kühlmann was seen as extremely pro-British. Wilhelm von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen noted after a conversation with him in October 1918, ‘this man is highly intelligent, but I am convinced that he is a great friend of England which might have a negative effect on our foreign policy’.¹⁶²

Since Kühlmann had many old contacts in London and consequently many discreet channels available, it is not known whether he actually activated Alice Keppel. Kühlmann’s private papers were partly destroyed in the Second World War and in his memoirs he is cautious about naming names. Therefore we do not know whether he met Alice Keppel again. In the inter-war years she continued to cultivate her German contacts, though. The celebrated novelist Virginia Woolf met her in 1932 and gave a scathing portrayal: ‘[she has] the extensive, jolly, brazen surface of the old courtesan … immense superficial knowledge, going off to Berlin to hear Hitler speak.’¹⁶³ By then Keppel lived in Italy and was interested in dictators.

In 1918, however, she denied any contact with Germany. Still, that Spencer and Billing knew of Kühlmann’s communication with the British is surprising. It can’t have been simple guesswork because they were also informed that the contacts took place via the Netherlands. Like Spain and Sweden, the neutral Netherlands were used repeatedly for secret peace feelers. The last one took place after Billing’s trial, in the summer of 1918. Kühlmann then met Sir William Tyrrell (head of the Political Intelligence Department). Yet, like so many other Anglo-German peace feelers before, this came to nothing.

The explanation must therefore be that Spencer and Billing had been given insider information about secret negotiations. These insiders were probably critics of Lloyd George. By May 1918 Lloyd George was close to being ousted. The situation in France had deteriorated and the Prime Minister was made responsible for it. He expected the war to last at least until 1919 or 1920 and had therefore indeed played with the idea of peace negotiations. As a consequence he faced an intrigue by the military, under the leadership of General Maurice. It was probably Maurice’s circle that fed Pemberton Billing with information. And Billing and his star witness Spencer could immediately demonstrate how the public would react to such a ‘peace without victory’. There was outrage at the Old Bailey when Spencer claimed that the upper classes were making secret deals with the enemy and that one of the go-betweens for such a deal was Alice Keppel.¹⁶⁴

But was she really a go-between? Conspiracy theories can only work when they include a certain degree of plausibility. And Alice Keppel was a very plausible go-between. She was close to members of the Foreign Office and could offer them private channels abroad. She had experience in sorting out ‘misunderstandings’. She had the opportunity and legitimate reasons to travel to France (where she ‘helped’ run a hospital) and the Netherlands at a time when travelling was difficult. But since Pemberton Billing could not actually prove that she had done anything like that, she remained a ghost go-between.

In fact it would have been very risky for Mrs Keppel to be involved in such a go-between mission. Hatred of Germany was strong in Britain and to be seen as pro-German could make one a complete social outcast.

Mrs Keppel therefore reacted forcefully. Her lawyer contacted the judge in the Billing trial. Mrs Keppel was willing to swear under oath that she had not been to Holland since the outbreak of war. The judge dismissed this by stating that she and other people who had been mentioned during the trial had to endure similar allegations; after all he himself was also supposed to be in the black book.

In his completely irrelevant closing statement, Billing won over the jury. He stressed again that mysterious influences were undermining the war effort. If his allegations were wrong, why had nobody brought in witnesses to prove him wrong? The truth was that German Jews were protected while honest Englishmen lost everything. The judge completely failed to give the jury useful instructions. He was either intimidated about being seen as biased or he had made a deal with the authorities to let Billing walk free. To the public’s great satisfaction that was exactly what happened. Maud Allen lost her case. Noel Pemberton Billing triumphantly left the court room with his wife and Mrs Villiers-Stuart. The cheers of his supporters were deafening.

Not everyone felt jubilant. Cynthia Asquith, daughter-in-law of former Prime Minister Asquith, who had been vilified by Billing, wrote in her diary: ‘Papa came in and announced that the monster maniac Billing had won his case. Damn him! It is such an awful triumph for the unreasonable, such a tonic to the microbe of suspicion which is spreading through the country.’¹⁶⁵

The British establishment was well aware of the potential dangers this court case exposed. The novelist Hugh Walpole, who had had first hand experience of the Russian Revolution as head of the Anglo-Russian Propaganda Bureau, saw Billing’s aquittal as the beginning of ‘an English revolution’.

It might have been, if the war had been lost. Yet Billing’s popularity subsided once the news from the front improved. Furthermore his demands that foreigners should wear signs on their clothes so they could be identified seemed ‘slightly’ over the top. Also his subsequent idea that people with a German parent should be imprisoned seemed not to go down well either. After all, members of the royal family would have ended up behind bars.

It was in the aftermath of the trial that the government took its revenge on Billing. The authorities now revealed a few facts about him (e.g. that his wife was of German descent). They also exposed his star witness and mistress. It turned out that Eileen Villiers-Stuart’s first husband had not died at the front (as she had hoped and claimed) but was still alive driving an ambulance, which made her a bigamist. Faced with a long prison sentence she admitted that she had lied during the trial. It was also revealed that the other star witness, Captain Spencer, had been kicked out of the army for his repeated attacks of paranoia. As a result Billing did not become a leader of the radical right and was not the new Oswald Mosley. Instead he concentrated once more on his aeroplanes.

Today it seems obvious that Billing used two classical ingredients of conspiracy theories: he identified first the ‘enemy within’ the nation, the sodomites who had wormed their way to the top. He then merged this with the idea of an ‘enemy above’, the upper classes.¹⁶⁶ Together this mixture was irresistible.

Detecting potential go-betweens, he certainly had come close to the truth. His court case and the scandal of the Sixtus letter had made the method of go-between missions public. People on both sides of the trenches were outraged that such figures existed at all and that they belonged to the upper echelons of society.

Now a different age had dawned. President Wilson promised a new diplomacy and new transparency in international relations. It would become a pious wish. The appearance of a common enemy changed everything again. Communism would give go-betweens a new lease of life.