William Tyler
Towards 1914 and Hubris
William Tyler - Towards 1914 and Hubris
- Now, first of all, an apology. I’m not doing Nietzsche and the connections to Nazism this week. It simply didn’t fit in. I will do it at some point, promise. It’s in my file to do. The other two things I promised to say something about, the naval arms race and German colonists, I will be saying something about. Let’s begin then where we’ve ended really last time, the curt dismissal of the septuagenarian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by the Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890. In hindsight led to a century of self-inflicted disaster for Bismarck’s 20 year old unified Germany. No one in Europe I think could have predicted in 1871 when Germany was unified that Germany would have a disastrous century between Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890 and German reunification in 1991. It seems to me that that’s, in the future, sort of 200 years or so or more in the future, when historians look back and teach Germany, they will teach that period 1890 to 1991 as a period of disaster to Bismarck’s dream of a unified, and largely, well, indeed in his case, peaceful Germany, an advanced nation that would dominate Europe, not through arms but indeed through the cultural side of German life, whatever cultural side you wish to touch upon. Social reforms certainly, and which we met last week, cultural reforms, art reforms, all sorts of issues. But it wasn’t to be. At least it’s dominated by the politics of the century of 1890 to ‘91. Now obviously I count deal with a period as big as 1890 to 1991 in one lecture.
So we’re going on for the rest of the course to deal with that period. But what I am going to do today is to deal with the imperial part of that period. That is to say from 1890 until the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the end of the First World War in 1918. So we’re dealing with, if you like, we’re dealing with just under three decades of German history, the three decades of , of Imperial Germany, of the Second Reich, however you wish to describe it. During the Cold War, that is to say after World War II, during the Cold War many German historians, West Germans, of course, 'cause East Germany’s communist historians were doing something entirely different, during the Cold War many West German historians blamed Hitler’s Third Reich on the failures of the Imperial Second Reich. They’re saying that if Wilhelm II had only embraced change and, indeed, democracy, then Germany could have avoided the horror of Nazi Germany and the subsequent division of Germany between democratic and communist Germany after the Second World War. One contemporary German historian today has written, the West German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler, portrayed the Kaiser Reich, that is the Second Reich, the Imperial Reich, described it as a deeply flawed social and political system in which essential features, he wrote, of a pre-modern age had survived into the modern industrial era.
Imperial Germany’s constitutional structure remained autocratic in critical respects while the country’s ruling class, the landed Prussian nobility, the Junkers, not only dominated the army and the council’s of state, but also left it’s imprint on broader values and attitudes in Germany as the country underwent its economic and social modernization. That’s what we spoke about last time, and Wehler said simply this, the result of this asymmetry led to increasing domestic tension. And the commentary on Wehler’s work says, in the end, so goes the argument, Germany’s political elites resorted to war in 1914 as a strategy of survival in the hope that military victory would shore up the beleaguered fundaments of their own power. In other words, create the enemy and you unify Germany. Now that argument is no longer accepted by most historians, German and otherwise. It places too much emphasis on this belief that the German army and the German politicians of the day decided on war in order to keep the lower classes in order. I think that is, in my view, is not entirely helpful analysis and most people would agree with that. If we turn to the wonderful biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which on my blog, by Christopher Clark, it’s an excellent book and I turned to, I don’t know why I turned to the conclusion, but I did, and I’ve not used this quotation before, but it fits what I want to say.
He writes of this period 1890 to 1914 and makes a point that I want to make and he writes this, Germany’s predicament in 1914 was the backlog of block reforms, political and socioeconomic fragmentation, the disconnect between power and culture, the anomalous status of the military, uncertainty about Germany’s place in the wider world. All of this appeared grotesquely magnified by 1914. Now, what do we take from that? Well, I take one phrase, the discontinuity between power and culture. In other words, between the autocratic political system of the Kaiser and his ministers and the vibrant modern German culture of the period. The two things are out of sync and that was a major problem pre-1914 and that problem of pre-1914 carried over to the post-war Germans of the Weimar Republic up until Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933. If you remember anything from today’s talk, it is or should be that simply this discontinuity between political power and modern vibrant culture, that there was no connection or little connection between the two. First a word about the basics of the Kaiser’s autocracy, because you all know that there was a Reichstag, a parliament, and so you think in British or American terms that the autocrat, in this case the Kaiser, is controlled in the same way as the king in England had no political power worth calling political power, but it wasn’t so in Germany. And again, if I turn to Christopher Clark’s book, he writes this. Throughout the early to the mid-1890s, that’s after the dismissal of Bismarck, in other words, there was a gap between the Kaiser’s wishful absolutist rhetoric and the constrained position he occupied in reality. In other words he’s talking about autocracy at a point at which Bismarck has set in being the democratic nature of the Reichstag. You can comment about Bismarck’s conservatism if you like, but Germany was set on a road that would lead to democracy in a modern western European sense in Britain or France, the two great democracies of the period.
During the early 1890s, says Clark, the Kaiser began to stretch his executive muscles, particularly in the era of appointments. In other words, as he began to feel more secure in his position after the dismissal of Bismarck, he felt able to exercise the powers that the Constitution had given him. Unwisely maybe, but he exercised them, and we’re given some example by that. In 1890 he nominated a new Bishop of Strasberg without consulting his chancellor. Sporadic interventions in diplomatic appointments during 1891 ruffled feathers in the German foreign office. In 1893 he appointed his own right treasurer, disregarding the chancellor’s own short list of candidates for the treasury. He has the right to make appointments without reference to the chancellor whom he appoints and without reference the elected members of the Reichstag. In the summer of 1894, he stepped up the intensity of his interventions, nominating his own candidates to the ministries of agriculture and of justice. His power to make appointments to an order dismissals from government and civil service was sanctioned under the Prussian and the imperial constitutions. And then the final phrase from Christopher Clark, which really emphasises the point, historians have rightly identified it as the single most important instrument of monarchical power within the German system. In other words, the appointment of ministers and the dismissal of ministers at the whim of one man does not sound like democracy.
And this in a society where the middle class are growing and the middle class are politically aware as they are in all the countries of western Europe, as they are in Britain, but in Germany they’re living under an increasing autocracy. So let’s look at this new thrusting modern German culture, this modern German middle class culture at the turn of the century. You can see it in all sorts of ways. It’s a commercial culture, one familiar to us today. Shops selling items of luxury goods, for example. But it also was a society in which large numbers of books were printed. And as we’ve noted throughout history, if you’ve been following my courses, we know that books spread and newspapers in particular in this period spread political ideas. So there’s plenty of access to ideas from outside those of the Kaiser and his Prussian group of advisors and largely Prussian nominated ministers. This led to increased criticism of the regime. So for example, satirical magazine stands, which make fun of the Kaiser and his political allies. It’s a divided society and if any of you are plotting revolution, maybe only the Americans at the moment, you’re plotting revolution and that is from the right. But if you are plotting revolution from the centre or from the left, do remember that you need the middle class. Indeed, if you’re plotting revolution from the right, you need the middle class. The middle class are the key to revolution. The working class simply make up the numbers. That’s another story for another time to talk about revolutions. One of the things that bolstered the middle class in Germany was it had the most outstanding education system in the world at the time, which we touched on last time. And in truth part of that was because they were, you would say, stereotypically, had everything organised very well. Academic, agricultural, technological.
They divided up their post-immediate school education extraordinarily well. And unlike other countries, in Britain at the moment, which is now decided every child has got to do , thank God I’m not a child in this day and age. The Germans had a much more practical approach that you gauge the children to what their abilities rather than unlike in Britain at the moment, making the children fit an educational model of vocational work that the government had decided upon. And this helped the German in every possible way. For example, the invention of mustard gas, a dreadful thing which the Germans deployed in the First World War, but the development of cars, German cars fantastic at the period, all of these advantages, German aspirins, by the way. How would we live without aspirins? The Germans are developing in all sorts of ways and they’re developing ideas, ideas which are not political ideas, which are not in tune with your autocracy of the Kaiser and cultural ideas, cultural in every possible way that you could think of, in art, that is to say painting, in sculpture, in architecture, in music, in all the arts. It’s a fantastically fruitful period in German history, but it’s all played out against this background of the increasing autocracy of the Kaiser and his ministers. It is true that they were getting increasingly worried about the, not so much the middle class, they were beginning to worry about the working class forming into unions and becoming politicised, which in the language of the day means Marxist. That is a serious threat.
If you compare Britain, we had no such serious threat. Why not? Because we’d already got a parliamentary democracy that was working. Germany had a parliamentary democracy which was stifled by the powers that were still vested by the constitution in the Kaiser and all sorts of people and groups of people now were becoming dissatisfied by this sort of rule, if you like, and we can, I can name some of them, farmers thinking they were being left behind rather like the party that’s gained so many seats in the Dutch senate recently. Farmers. Employers who really wanted to operate in a much more democratic society than that that was the Germany of the day. The Catholic Church, oh well, the Catholic Church is always petrified of the left, but it’s also petrified of the autocracy and thinks it’s in trouble. Workers that we’ve already mentioned, that is say industrial workers, urban workers who are becoming politicised, ethnic minorities, Poles in particular. Interestingly, of course, at this period, Jews have adopted a view that they are Germans who happen to be Jewish and indeed during World War I Jews served in the German army. That is not to say, definitely not to say, that the Kaiser and those around him were not anti-Semitic. They were anti-Semitic. We can never get away from that in Germany, the anti-Semitism. But the most important thing that happened was two years before war began. That is to say in 1912 when a social democratic party was formed. Always be careful when parties use terms like that. It was in a essence a Marxist party and they got elected to the Reichstag. And in 1912 became the largest party in the Reichstag.
Now, although it was a Marxist party, it has socialist elements, socialist in terms of the center-left British Labour Party. So it’s not entirely Marxist, this is not heading to a communist revolution yet. But all of these things are swimming around and if you were looking from outside, not thinking about the possibility of war, then you will come to the conclusion that Germany could not go on in this way. The old traditional autocracy of the Prussian Hohenzollern family was dated and was out of step with this new, modern, vibrant Germany. Something would give. Now it doesn’t give until the end of the First World War when civil war comes to Germany in 1918, 1919, and that gives Wehler’s argument that it was the aristocracy who went to war to keep the working classes down. I don’t accept that’s the case, but once the war is over, everything spills onto the streets of Germany. Now that’s our story next time. I want to turn now to the route to war, if you like, and in particular the adoption by the Kaiser and his advisors of a policy which in German, forgive my pronunciation, is weltpolitik, in English, translated world politics. This was the imperial foreign policy adopted by the Kaiser once Bismarck had been dismissed. What was his aim? To turn Germany into a global power. Teaching this now you can’t but help, or thinking about it now as I hope you all are, you can’t but think this sounds like China today and Marxist government in a capitalist economic system. Can it last? Well, no, it can’t. There will have to be changes. But at the same time China’s aim, note the meeting today in Moscow, is to be a major global power and a major power in Asia. That is to say, to take Taiwan, to put Japan in its place, to send the Americans back over the sea.
It’s not so different and if you make that comparison then it’s a slightly worrying comparison to me, given that the German policy of weltpolitik led to the 1914 First World War. The Kaiser was commander-in-chief of the army. Now of course in Britain today the king is commander-in-chief, but does not have a direct role. Whereas in the 1890s, 1900s, the Kaiser had a direct role. He plays virtually no part in World War I. The man has considerable problems, not only physically but mentally. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, many contemporaries thought him mad and today we would use a perhaps a politer word, but he was certainly unbalanced. And the senior army officers in the army council by the end of the war were simply ignoring him. Ludendorff and von Hindenburg, just ignoring him. Now, accompanying this policy of weltpolitik was another policy and that policy was called a Place in the Sun. And that phrase, a Place in the Sun, was first mentioned in 1897 by the then-Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, and what Bülow told the Reichstag, quote, we do not want to put anyone into the shade, but we demand a place for ourselves in the sun. And in 1900 speaking to the North German Regatta Association, yacht clubs, the Kaiser himself repeated the phrase, and this is the Kaiser’s words.
In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession in order that the sun’s rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water. The more Germans who go out upon the waters, whether it be in races or regattas, whether it be in journeys across the ocean or in the service of the battle flag, so much better will it be for us. And the alarm bells which had begin to ring really two years before in 1898 in Britain now could not be ignored. The white hall was now fully aware of the danger of this new Germany. So let’s take two of the issues that were raised by the Kaiser in that 1900 speech to the regatta. First of all, he said, we have conquered ourselves a place in the sun. What did he mean? He meant the German colonists primarily in Africa but also in Asia. And then secondly, he said, the more Germans go out upon the waters in the service of the battle flag, so much the better it will be for us. In other words, the development of the German navy to match the already powerful German army. And that begins the whole downward slide to the war that was to come 14 years after the Kaiser made that speech. Let’s take a look at the colonial German overseas empire. Bismarck was opposed to the establishment of such an empire. Why was he so against it? Well, this is Bismarck speaking in 1868.
That’s 12 years, no, sorry, 22 years before he’s dismissed by the Kaiser and before German unification, and he said in 1868, on the one hand the benefits which one might derive from colonies for the motherland’s trade and industry are mostly illusory. Then the costs which the foundation, maintenance, and especially establishment of claims, the colonies, that are entailed very often exceed utility which the motherland gets from them. That was a position that Britain is going to find out to its cost. Entirely apart from the fact that it is difficult to justify placing significant tax burden benefit of industrial, commercial, of individual commercial and industrial interests, on the other hand is not to undertake the task of firmly protecting distant states. We can’t do it, says Bismark. Why can’t we do it? Well, if you put a profit and loss account, the profits which we make from the trade do not make up for the losses that we will incur by having to increase taxation on the German people in order to pay for it. You’ve got to have armies in these states. You’ve got to have a navy to supply them. You’ve got all sorts of problems. Costly, which of course is what happened to Britain. In brief, he said repeatedly in the Reichstag later, Bismarck, I am no man for colonies. I am no man for colonies. And yet of course the Kaiser, when coming to power, Wilhelm II is personally affronted by the fact that France and Britain have colonies, in particular Britain. Remember that the Kaiser is half British and he has a major chip on his shoulder about British power. In 1884, 6 years before he was thrown out of office, Bismarck was forced into accepting that Germany would have to gain an empire.
Why? Because France and Britain and other countries, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, were carving up the continent in Africa of what the historians called the scramble for Africa. And they couldn’t miss out. And Bismarck said this, in order to protect trade, safeguard raw materials and export markets, and to take advantages of opportunities for capital investment, we will take our colonies, our Place in the Sun of Africa. And so it isn’t the Kaiser that alone does this. Bismarck is pressured by what we would call events, the event being the carve up of Africa. One of the things that concerns the West, America and Europe, post-colonization, post-Imperial Africa is how do you prevent the Russians and the Chinese taking over influence? And those of you who follow the story of Africa know how ingrained China is, and why? Because China needs its raw materials. And we’ve looked away from Africa. That is to say France and Britain and Western Europe has looked away because we closed our colonies down and America has looked away. It’s not our problem. We don’t have that sort of interest. Well, Africa is going to be big in world affairs, maybe not today or tomorrow, but certainly in the future. And that is the position that Bismarck was placed in in 1884 with France, Britain, Belgium, as I said, all the European countries fighting for their bit. Germany then proceeded in terms of land, if not in terms of value. Germany proceeded to have the third largest European empire behind only Britain and France. But it often got the bits that France and Britain really didn’t want. For example, modern day Namibia, or as it was called then, German Southwest Africa.
There was nothing but desert. No, no, things change. I know things change when raw materials are discovered, but at the time it had very little that the Germans wanted. They wanted land. They wanted to not only equal France and Britain, but to excel France and Britain when Kaiser Wilhelm takes the helm because it’s the weltpolitik, global power. This is a brief list 'cause I’m sure somebody will say, well, why you didn’t tell us what they had? Well, the trouble is it changes over time, and basically the German empire is lost in 1918. It’s taken away from them by France and Britain and America. They had at its peak parts of present day Burundi, Veranda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands as well as a base in China along with all the other European countries and Japan. It wasn’t a small empire, it was the third largest, but it didn’t do Germany much good because of course Bismarck was right. Bismarck would always be right in my judgement . He’s a man of stature, as we said, and he got the economics right, but they’re not bothered about economics. They don’t care about economics. They want the trappings of power. So that’s the German Place in the Sun. But in that 1900 speech of the Kaiser’s about Place in the Sun he mentioned, as we’ve seen, the whole issue, not just of the empire, but of the need to establish a large naval presence. He had a real passion for getting a navy that was bigger than the British. He wore admiral’s uniform on occasions.
He used to come to the regatta at Cannes on the Isle of Wight, which Edward VII as Prince of Wales and later as King attended because he was a great sailor himself. Lipton the grocer was one of his sailing companions. For those of you who are British, it’s an interesting link to the middle classes. Can’t imagine the Kaiser having a grocer onboard his boats. But Edward VII did. But every year the Kaiser came in a bigger and bigger yacht. And one year he came in a yacht that was so large, it dwarfed Edward VII’s yacht and he gave up. Never went again, never went again. And there is the Kaiser strutting in his British admiral uniform on his yacht. He wanted to rub British noses in it and the best way of doing that is to draw up a navy because Britain’s power, its imperial power’s based upon its navy, its history was based upon its navy, Nelson and all of that. So we enter what is called by historians the naval race, a race to get the biggest navy between Germany and Britain. The great man behind the German push was a man whose name is associated with a battleship of World War II, and that is Von Tirpitz. Von Tirpitz was the man who pushed through the policy of creating more and bigger ships, always aiming to have a fleet bigger than Britain. Now, there are two things about this. One, if Germany succeeds in having a fleet bigger than that of Britain, then if war comes it can launch an invasion. All it has to do is to deplete the British fleet at sea and then the way is open. In World War II there’s been a lot of modern argument over whether the navy was pointless and it was only the RAF that saved us in Britain from German advance across the channel. That’s now being challenged to say that no, they didn’t have command because they didn’t have command of the shipping. Forget about the RAF. So that’s an argument goes on. In World War I it doesn’t matter.
In World War I the aircraft are negligible in terms of naval warfare and all that is important is the navy. And Von Tirpitz realised that and he urged this building. But let me read you something which I think is of interest. This is on a BBC article about the naval race prior to World War I and the BBC article says, the German government’s budget went into deficit as it spent more and more money on the army, the navy, and its new colonies. The national debt grew to DM 490 billion by 1913, which will come next time to the post-war collapse of the German economy. But by the time they go into war in 1913, they’re deeply in debt. But as I said a few moments ago, they’re not bothered about the money, they’re bothered about the power, the grandeur, the glory. And after all, they’re going to win the war, are they not? So they don’t have to worry about how they pay for it, it can be paid for afterwards. Well, the naval race really took off in 1900 and lasted right through to August, 1914 when the war began. There’s a second. I said there were two things. There’s a second thing that happens. And the second thing is a new type of battleship was built first in 1906. It was called HMS Dreadnought and it gave its name to the whole of these super battle ships in all the navies of the world. The Dreadnoughts. And the former battle ships are now described as pre-Dreadnoughts. And the point of the Dreadnought was it made all other ships, battleships and cruisers, et cetera, obsolete. Why?
Because it had a ferocious armament and it could fire from a further distance than these pre-Dreadnought ships. So it could stay in complete safety, firing at the enemy at will, without the enemy shots reaching it, unless of course the enemy also has Dreadnoughts. They were also fast. They also operated on oil as well as coal. There’s one thing that has to be said, and that is the German crook guns were superior to the British. The German ammunition were superior to the British and the German armaments in terms of the armour on the ships themselves was better than the British. But when war came the British had 22 Dreadnoughts, the Germans only 15. the British had in 1914 13 further Dreadnoughts being built, well, including some that were meant for Turkey, which we never handed over because the Turks changed sides at the beginning of the war and joined Germany because it wanted to have another go at the Russians who were the allies of Britain and France. So we had 13 being built, the Germans had only five. So the Germans had together 20. 15 operational, five being built. The British had 35. 22 operational, 13 being built. And that made the difference. And who was the person behind this expansion? Because the government of the day, as we approach World War I, is a liberal government. It was perhaps the most radical government Britain’s had.
Under Asquith with Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and with Winston Churchill, who had changed sides from the conservatives to the liberals who held various posts including Home Secretary. But Churchill was made First Lord to the Admiralty in 1911. And although the liberals had been against spending on armaments because they wanted the money for social reform, Lloyd George had been somewhat two-faced about it. Churchill became having been opposed to spending on armaments. He said earlier as a liberal minister, I see little glory in an empire which can rule the waves. In other words, the navy. I can see little glory in an empire which can rule the waves and is unable to flush its sewers. Oh, that’s wonderfully Churchill. But once he becomes First Lord to the Admiralty, he changes his tune. He uses a naval yacht to travel around all the ports in which the navy is established. He inspects them all. He introduced aircraft and in order to see that they were functional he actually flew one off the East England at South End and managed to crash it. His wife, Clementine, had told him that morning, you are not, Winston, to actually go into the aircraft. Not only did he go into it, but he flew it. And not only did he fly it, but he crashed it. But Churchill was right like Bismarck. I don’t think I would ever want to gainsay people like Bismarck and Churchill.
They normally were on the right side of the argument. And certainly Churchill was on the right side here. Would we have had a fleet as big as we had of Dreadnoughts in 1914 if it hadn’t been for Churchill? Well, arguably we wouldn’t. Well, certainly not under a liberal government. A conservative government might have been different, but there wasn’t a conservative government and there wasn’t going to be for a while. When war came in 1914 the Germans did some tentative firing from sea at the British coast. They even sent some bombers in to coastal towns on the east of Britain, but nothing major, and everyone expected a big battle. Everyone was expecting a second Trafalgar. Churchill could barely wait for it. And then in 1916, it came. The Battle of Jutland. It was not a glorious episode in the history of the Royal Navy. Some of the guns didn’t work, some of them exploded. Some of the German ammunition got through down into the hold of the British ships and exploded. The admiral in charge, Jellicoe, was somewhat of a librarian. I don’t want my ships to be damaged. It was not a glorious success is how I was taught it at school and how Britain saw it at the time. But in retrospect, it was actually a victory. Why? Because the German high fleet never took to the sea again. And indeed, in 1918, mutiny was part of the revolution that overthrew the Kaiser at the end of the war.
So the victory of Jutland, although I was always called, it was an indecisive battle, a draw, but it wasn’t really, it wasn’t really. We commanded the seas after the battle of Jutland. 1914 comes, war comes. We all know how the war started, the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist. And the dominoes go down until the two blocs, which have been forming since the beginning of the century, came to war. On one side, Germany and Austria-Hungary. On the other side, the two democracies, Britain, France, and Tsarist Russia. Not America, because America would not fight alongside Tsarist Russia for all sorts of reasons, not least that many Jews had fled from Tsarist Russia and Poland to the United States, but also because there were many Germans in the United States in essential areas of manufacturing. So it isn’t until 1917 that America comes into the war when it’s shipping is attacked by the extraordinary stupid policy of Germany of you vote warfare against anybody at sea. Now, Bismarck, Bismarck had said a long time before, in 1888, Bismarck said one day the great European war will come out of some damn foolish thing in the Balkans. So as early as 1888, 2 years before he sat, Bismarck is aware not that he wanted war. That’s not true. But Bismarck is aware that the divisions in Europe will lead to war, and it’s some damn fool thing in the Balkans that will start it, which is of course true.
Because the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke leads to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, leads to Germany coming into the side of of Austria-Hungary, leads to Russia coming into the side of Serbia, leading to France coming into the side of Russia, and eventually Britain deciding that it’d better come in as well on the basis better to fight in the fields of Northern France than in the hot fields of Kent. And so the war, which is later to be described as the War to End All Wars, begins in 1914. The Germans hoped for a quick victory. And at the beginning, as they pressed through Northern France, it looked possible. They had misinterpreted Russia’s ability to get an army in the field because of trains and the Russians actually penetrated into Holy Prussia itself. And so the Germans withdrew troops from the western front where it faced France and Britain and took them to the eastern front where it very quickly pushed the Russians back, but they’d lost the initiative. An unlike World War II and indeed the Franco-Prussian War, the Germans never took Paris. And if you think that’s because of the quality of the British and French troops, well, forget it because there were very few in comparison to the Germans. What saved the British was the Indian Army’s arrival and what saved the French were the African troops from the French African empire. And so the war was not a quick war. The Kaiser and his military advisors had a sort of view. In three weeks we will be in Paris. Instead, the war dragged on for four dreadful years.
It was a stalemate war and it was only in 1918 that the Allies broke through and they broke through because in 1917 the Tsar had been overthrown and Trotsky and Lenin had done a peace deal with Kaiser of Germany. And by that time America was in the war with its endless supply of men and munitions. And in Germany things were rough. Famine was rife because of the Allies’, that is say mainly British, blockade of Germany. And there were those who had opposed the war from the beginning who began to come out of the shadows. And the thing that I mentioned before between power and culture, well, it’s breaking apart by 1918. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were pretty well running the government. The Kaiser had basically gone to pieces and they were running the country, the military. The Social Democrats, the Marxist wing, were thinking if Russia can have a Marxist revolution, so can Germany. There’s all sorts of views. It is true that the bulk of the German people remained loyal to the Kaiser’s war in August, 1918, as they had been in August, 1914. But slowly, slowly, attitudes changed. This is Von Hindenburg on the 8th of August, 1918. And Hindenburg said this, referring to the Battle of Amiens, in the first week of August, 1918. A strong English tank attack had met with immediate success. The British were now using tanks in a proper way. They had previously used them as though they were horses and cavalry. Now they were using them integrated with the infantry. The tanks which were faster than hitherto had surprised divisional staffs in their headquarters and torn up the telephone lines which communicated with the battlefront.
The wildest rumours began to spread in our lines. It was said that of maxes of English cavalry were already far in the rear of the foremost German infantry lines. Some of the men lost their nerve. I had no illusions, said Hindenburg, 8th of August, 1918, I had no illusions about the political effects of our defeat. And James Hawes, in his book, The Shortest History of Germany, from which that quotation I’ve just read is taken, Hawes himself comments, and in August, 1918, most Germans still genuinely thought they were going to win. Even in September, 1918, the Imperial government could still raise most of its expenditure by selling allegedly guaranteed high interest war bonds to its ever trusting people. The German people might not like the Prussian Junkers, but knowing only what strict censorship allowed them to know, like Putin’s Russia today, they still believe their warlords invincible in battle. When the truth was revealed that the German army’s morale and Ludendorff’s nerves were both finished, it came like a thunder clap. On the 19th of September, 1918, Ludendorff suddenly told the Kaiser they needed to form a new government because the military catastrophe could not be put off much longer. On the 3rd of October, 1918, Hindenburg confirmed this to a shocked Reichstag. Now quite deliberately, the generals who’d run Germany for the past two years handed power to the civilians just in time for them to, as Ludendorff put it, ladle out the soup. In other words, the democratic politicians would take the blame for the loss and not the German army. And B, the German army was never defeated by the enemy, is one of the Nazi arguments. It was defeated at home by left-wing politicians and Jews. That’s the story the Nazis are going to use.
That’s their interpretation. The famous stab in the back of Nazi propaganda. We all know that the war ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918. 2 days before, on the 9th of November, 1918, the Kaiser had abdicated. He fled the following day to Holland and it was in Holland that he died in 1941, having given his support to Hitler in the hope of an imperial restoration. During the British general election in November, 1918, many politicians from across the political board in Britain wanted the Kaiser to be hanged. Hang the Kaiser became the phrase of note. Today he will be brought before the International Criminal Court, the ICC. But the ICC was only set up in 2002. That is the body that’s now dealing with the Ukrainian war and the crimes of the Russians and of Putin. And in terms of what happened in Second World War, the Allies established the Nuremberg Trials. Only subsequently, as I say in 2002, was the International Criminal Court set up on a permanent basis. But in 1918, there was no such procedures available. Now, it isn’t true that the Allies, which is to say America, France and Britain, did nothing, because at the sign when they forced Germany to sign the peace, when I say forced, the Germans were simply told sign. When the terms were written down, the Allies insisted that the first statement says that Germany was responsible for the war.
But they went on to say that Wilhelm should be tried as a war criminal. They agreed to set up a special tribunal to try Wilhelm. Now that’s, as it were, a foretaste of Nuremberg. And they charged him with the supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaty. But he’s in the Netherlands. So they asked the Netherlands to send him, but the Netherlands refused. The Netherlands had been neutral and it said that if it sent the Kaiser for trial, it would no longer be neutral. And there were lots of arguments. And in the end the Allies, in particular, I think the Americans, Woodrow Wilson, really didn’t want to pursue the issue. And Britain and France had far more problems in terms of dealing with the problems of the peace than to pursue this broken reed of a man. And so the Kaiser lived. But this was the first modern war and we had no procedures. At the end of the Second World War no procedures, but we established them. Now I want to finish, you’ll be pleased I am finishing, with just a piece from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s huge book, The World, which I’ve been using, and very often in this way to sort of summarise. Wilhelm mocked Bismarck’s alliance with Russia, which was designed by Bismarck to ensure peace and prevent the encirclement of Germany. Bismarck complained, that young man, the Kaiser, that young man wants war with Russia and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could. I shall not be party, I shall not be party to it. We’ve seen already that Bismarck said that the war will begin in the Balkans in 1888 and here in 1890 he says, I’m going to be no part of this man drawing his sword to fight with the Russians. War would come in 1914 and Germany is humiliated in 1918, and civil war breaks out in Germany. But you’ll have to wait till next Monday to find out what happens if you don’t know. Thanks ever so much for listening. I’m sure there’s lots of people with lots of questions. There are. Hang on, let’s have a go.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: No, I’m asked by Tim, what was the relationship between the German Chancellor and the Kaiser? Is it similar to the British Prime Minister and the Monarch?
A: Absolutely not. The British Prime Minister is the leader of the largest party in the lower house, in German terms, of the Reichstag. The German Chancellor is appointed by the Kaiser and can be dismissed by the Kaiser.
This is 18th century Britain, not 20th century Britain.
Q: Tim goes on, also, you may have mentioned this before, but why did the Kaiser dismiss the Chancellor?
A: Oh yeah. Simply because the chancellor, that is Bismarck, did not agree with his policies and we’ve just intimated why. They fell out. The truth of the matter is it was a young man in a hurry and this old man had to go.
Q: Yes, Michael, is there a similar disconnect in China autocracy with vibrant, largely capitalist economy?
A: Yes. That’s my analysis for what it’s worth. And I think the end result will be the same. I do not think that the Chinese empire, because empire it is even though it’s a contiguous land mass, is feasible in the long term. I think it will break apart, which I’ve always felt was the case with Russia as well. But Russia is or has, since the fall of communism, not entirely fallen apart, although that’s not something that Putin would accept. But what is going to happen now is anyone’s guess. The British press are often saying, well, he can’t survive. And that’s what most commentators think. But we’ll have to wait and see. was one of the problems caused by the anti-Semitism in the army.
Yes, that’s France and not Germany, but it’s a similar sort of problem. Exactly. That was the cause célèbre in France. Victor, the disconnect in pre-Nazi Germany could perhaps be a similar analysis for the current US situation.
I don’t know. Victor, you’ll know more about the current American situation, but from outside it has parallels in Britain, which are not quite as dramatic, but where you have a society of two political parties and not multi-party politics. We have in Britain basically a two-party system, certainly neighbour, and you in America, in the States have Democrats and Republicans. Basically, that’s it. Now, if one of those parties ceases, if one of those paths moves from the centre to an extreme position, then it’s a threat to the whole of society. Now clearly the Republicans under Trump have moved significantly away from centre right. I know it’s difficult in American terms, but it’s moved. Everyone would agree that it’s move further away. They would say that the Democrats had also moved further away towards the left. Outside of America we don’t read it like that. In Britain we had the Labour Party that moved decidedly to the left under Corbyn, which has been brought back to centre left under Starmer. But we have a Conservative Party that Johnson took decidedly to the right and this is a problem for liberal democracy at the moment and it isn’t. The truth of the matter is neither the America democratic system, based upon 17th century British views, nor the British democratic system, based on the same views but coming with different answers, neither look entirely fit for purpose. And I’m talking constitutionally, neither fit for purpose in the 21st century. Now, lots of you will disagree, you don’t have to agree. But one of the things that worries lawyers of my generation, whether American lawyers, Canadian lawyers or British lawyers and Australian lawyers, is the political attacks made on lawyers. If you do that you are chopping away at one of the main struts of a liberal democracy. We’ve got to be very careful to protect the independence of the legal system.
Q: How did the naval Dreadnought race, says Jonathan, between Germany and Britain affect the historical outcome?
A: I think I probably said that or said as much as I wanted to, that it enabled Britain to defend itself against a planned German invasion and thus is one of the reasons that Germany lost the war. Britain won the war. The naval Dreadnought situation, other countries began building them. America, France, Japan. Every country began building Dreadnoughts.
Yes, people thought the Kaiser was mad.
Admiral Fisher. Oh yes, yes. Well, yeah. Admiral Fisher is an extraordinary figure in First Sea Lord, who was also behind the Dreadnought. He went completely nuts during the First World War. He thought he was a representative of a lost tribe of Israel. Oh, he went completely nuts at one point, and they couldn’t find him for two days during the war. And Churchill was in the admiralty and he was asked by the Prime Minister, Asquith, where is the First Sea Lord? And Churchill replied, I really don’t know, perhaps he’s in Berlin. And Asquith had to go and change his underwear he was so shocked. He wasn’t. He’d holed up in a hotel next to a main railway station in London. He completely lost it.
And you are right, Jonathan, Dreadnought by Robert Massey is an excellent book on the naval race. All of Robert Massey’s books are excellent. The Dreadnought is probably, in my view, the best.
Thank you, Rita, you’ve given the connection for people to follow.
Yeah, no, a racist agreement. Not a racist agreement, Nicholas. There were agreements about proportions that nations could have. Britain and America and Japan. Germany didn’t accept. There wasn’t anything racist about it at all. It was about alliances. Remember, Japan was ally to us in World War I.
Churchill was responsible for Gallipoli, says Carol, and was a devastating disaster in . It’s not quite as straightforward as that, but I’m not going to talk about Churchill and Gallipoli. The Americans were isolationist, said Pearl. Absolutely. Well, let’s take that more carefully. The Americans were isolationist as regards Europe. They were not isolationist as regards to the Pacific. And that has been the American position in the 20th century. But they had to forego the isolationism in Europe because of World War I. They isolated themselves during the interwar period. They obviously came into the Second World War, interestingly because their interests in the Pacific were being attacked. And having got involved in Europe, they couldn’t withdraw from Europe. And so today, from a European perspective, it’s clear that NATO couldn’t exist without American arms and American money and American commitment. Now was for instance Trump to be elected president again, which I don’t think is possible, but if somebody like Trump was to be elected and America was to come out of NATO, then everything collapses. American isolationism is a worry because it’s become an issue again. Well, it became an issue under Trump, as we know, and there is clear moves that America doesn’t want to get involved. Ukraine, well, I’m not sure that’s a good example to take.
Hang on. I must go back to, yeah. Sorry, Pearl that’s as good an answer as I can give quickly.
May I suggest the excellent book Dreadnought, which we’ve mentioned?
Irv Kushner says, in 1914, Jews were not influential in the USA. Well, it was a concern of the, I think there was some political concern over it. It’s true that they were not as influential as in World War II. Canada participated well in World War I, Pearl. Of course it did because it’s part of the empire. And indeed the number of Dreadnoughts included Australian Dreadnoughts in the British fleet. And both Canadian and Australian troops were here in Britain and on the western front. And indeed in other places too. In fact there’s an interesting argument in terms of the best Allied general, and it usually goes to the Australian Monash and the British wouldn’t, those of you who are American and like to think of the British being terribly racist.
Q: Monash should have been appointed commander-in-chief instead of Haig. He was not. Why not?
A: Because he wasn’t a professional soldier. He was a dentist, I believe, before the war. Moreover, Monash was, as they said at the time, a colonial. In other words an Australian and they would not have an Australian in charge of the British army. And Monash is, I like Monash. I’ll talk about Monash if I have an opportunity sometime, but is not relevant here.
Q: Was the Zimmerman Telegram not the key reason?
A: Not the key reason. It’s part of the reason. This is the thought that Mexico would invade the southern states. That’s true. But it’s also the sinking of American supply ships.
My father, Robert, I can’t read what you’ve said. It sounds interesting, have you, I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I think it’s not come out. What you intended to type I don’t think has come out.
[Judi] He’s got it further down. He’s got it further down.
Oh, has he? Oh, bless you, mate.
Q: The modern world is still feeling the effects of the fallout from the First World War, Michael. Absolutely correct. 110% correct. Not least in the Middle East. Did South Africa play a part?
A: Yes. Yes it did. And you rightly say there’s the war in southwest Africa, Namibia, which becomes British after the war is over. The Kaiser’s son, well, the monarchy was dead and buried by 1918 to be honest. There isn’t any comeback.
He was succeeded as chancellor but they were poor fish compared to Bismarck. Who asked that? Peter. He was, there were other chancellors, but they became more and more the puppets of the Kaiser. Bismarck put the fear of God in Wilhelm II. Yes, yes. There is thought that Putin may attend in South Africa and they won’t hand him over to the ICC rather like the Dutch not handing over the Kaiser in 1918.
Oh, Simon, that’s a good question. No, I mean, all the questions are good, but this is a good question because it doesn’t have a straightforward answer.
Q: Was the aim of world politics, weltpolitik, to be a world power or the world power?
A: Well, that’s difficult to say. We know in Hitler’s thought processes it was to be the power and that was never spelt out in the Kaiser’s Germany. But I think you could assume that the way that the war was fought by 1914, they were thinking about the world power.
Oh, is this Robert? Thank you. My father, born a Jew in Tsarist Russia in 1898, brought to America, US, in early 1900s, served in the US Expedition Force in trenches in France, and came home saying Europe was a continent of misery and strongly anti-German the rest of his life, referring to them as the damned , a very British expression. Wow. Yeah, that’s not surprising. It was a continent of misery compared to America. Food was in very short supply. America had a better standard of living. That’s absolutely true and it would’ve appeared to Americans to be backward. That’s true and what he saw fighting would’ve underlined that. What system of law? Well, they basically used what Napoleon had introduced, basically the same continental Napoleonic code adjusted, but it’s not a German code. Well, it’s a German code, but it’s based upon the Napoleonic code.
Q: Why was he anti-British?
A: Well, he hated his mother for a start, Vicki. And he thought that the British looked down upon him. He had this withered arm, which he, sorry, this one, left arm, which he’d got at birth. And he blamed a British doctor. Oh, he was just so jealous of British power, and the social position of the British royal family. He never understood and grasped that the British royal family had almost no political power. No, Vicky was not able in any way to influence her son. He wouldn’t have anything to do with her. The War That Ended Peace by Margaret McMillan is excellent. And she’s a Canadian.
Denise, wonderful. Yes, she is a fantastic historian. Anything written by Margaret McMillan is more than worth reading.
Monash was a Jew. Barbara, you’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten that. He was also Jewish.
Adrienne, oh, my parents, I think you mean, were from the Prussian part of Poland and were German speaking. Yes, yes. All the empire fought. Jonathan, Margaret McMillan is the great-granddaughter of Lloyd George. I’m tempted to say above or below the blanket. No, I didn’t say that.
Oh yes, my grandfather’s World War I medal is dated 1914-1919. That’s because they didn’t get round to coming home until 1919 and they put 1919 and you’ll find that on some war memorials. You’ll also find dates like 1920 and that’s because people died of the flu and they put their names on. General Curie of Canada was also considered as replacement for Haig by Lloyd George. Lloyd George hated Haig. And when the British and the French, never the Americans, the Americans refused to come in, the American command always remained separate. But the French and British decided they would have a commander-in-chief and Lloyd George is apparently said he was even prepared to have a Frenchman, which of course has happened. Lloyd George said he was prepared to have a Frenchman if it meant that he didn’t have to have Haig. Haig was stuck up and, well, there were other things about Haig, which is there’s a lot of rumours about Haig. Let’s us simply say, if you were a young male officer, you’d be advised to have a meeting with Haig with somebody else present.
Oh, Pearl, what a lovely thing to say. Winnie the Pooh is the result of World War I. Canadian troops from Winnipeg came over with a bear cub. They left him at the London Zoo where A.A. Milne and his son saw him. When asked where he was from, they were told Winnie, ergo Winnie the Pooh. I did not know that. Gosh. I love being being told new things by you. Pearl, that is brilliant. You are a Pearl without compare. How lovely.
I’m sorry, , the giraffe has been given me by my children. It’s by the grandchildren. It’s simply there. I’m sorry. I’ll move it. Yeah, Foreman is also a good historian. Yes, there are lots of excellent books of this period, and my blog has just a scattering of books. I’ve not gone into World War I. I did not want to go through battle by battle. That would take a long time and I think a lot of people will be bored by that. You know the story, if you want to read about it, there are endless books about the First World War from all sorts of points of view, even German points of view and I’m everlastingly fascinated because for Britain it is the poetry of the First World War that is so moving and I always read one of those poems if I’m teaching on Armistice Day. And now I think I’ve actually come to the end.
Thank you so much again for your questions, which are so interesting, and for your information, which is always, always desirable by me. I learned so much from you all. It’s wonderful. Thanks ever so much. Next week we will look at the civil war and the Weimar Republic and it all ends in disaster as everybody knows. Thanks for listening tonight.