The reader need not fear that, overcoming my aversion to politics, I am about to plunge into the whirlpool of party strife; but if I am not to leave too many gaps in the picture which I am trying to give I cannot very well omit the remarks that follow. Is there anyone, indeed, who could succeed in giving a complete description of the times of which I write? A whole series of further questions suggest themselves after the "Why?" and "How?" There will always be gaps, as so many lips which could have given priceless information are now dumb. Nor can I fill in all the details of my picture. I can only put in a stroke here and there. It is more a character sketch than a finished painting. Arbitrarily, perhaps, I will take the East first.
"Turkey is a cipher." These words can be found in a memorandum dating from pre-war times, and it is a German memorandum, and therefore not inspired by political hatred of Turkey. A peculiar cipher, by which the Dardanelles were defended and the victory of Kut-el-Amara gained. A cipher which marched on Egypt and brought the Russian attack in the mountains of Armenia to a standstill! For us it was a valuable cipher, which, as I said before, was now tying down hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, picked troops which were nibbling at
the Turkish frontier provinces, and indeed nibbling them away, but without succeeding in devouring the whole body!
What gave this cipher its inward strength? A puzzle even to those who were now living in or had lived long in the land of the Ottoman. The masses seemed apathetic and indifferent, while a great part of the upper classes were selfish and dead to all higher national demands. As far as one could see the state was composed only of classes which were separated by deep gulfs and had no national common life. And yet this state remained in existence and gave proofs of its power. The authority of Constantinople seemed to end at the Taurus. Beyond Asia Minor Turkey seemed to have no real influence, and yet Turkish armies were maintaining themselves in distant Mesopotamia and Syria. The Arabs in those regions hated the Turks, and the Turks the Arabs. And yet Arab battalions were still fighting under Turkish standards, and did not desert in masses to the enemy, even though he not only promised them mountains of gold but actually scattered with prodigal hand the gold they so much coveted. Behind the Anglo-Indian Army, which as it thought was bringing the long-desired freedom to the Arab tribes, downtrodden and oppressed by the Turks, these very tribes rose and turned against their so-called deliverers. There must be some force here which acted as a bond of unity, and indeed a force which was not the resultant of pressure from outside but of a cohesive influence, a feeling of community of interest within. It could not be solely the authority of those in power in Turkey which supplied this centralizing force. The Arabs could easily have escaped that authority. They had only to raise their arms and walk out of their trenches towards the enemy or rise in revolt behind the Turkish Army. And yet they did not do so. Was it their faith, the relic of their ancient faith, which was the unifying influence here? Some said it was, and on good grounds, while others denied it on equally good grounds. Here was a point at which our knowledge of Ottoman psychology seemed to have reached its limits. We must leave the conflict of opinions undecided.
Thus, in spite of the heaviest afflictions, the state could not be altogether moribund. Moreover, we heard of splendid officials who, side by side with others who entirely forgot their duty, proved themselves men of great ideas and immense energy. I came to know one of them, Ismail Hakki, at Kreuznach. He was a man with many of the drawbacks of his race, who yet possessed a powerful and fertile intellect. It was a great pity that he had not sprung from a healthier soil. It was said that he never wrote anything down, but did everything in his head; and yet he had thousands of things to think about and was inspired by national views which went far beyond the horizon of the war! His principal sphere of work, and that in which he revealed his greatest powers, was the food supply of the army and Constantinople. If Ismail Hakki had been dismissed, the Turkish Army would have suffered a shortage of everything. Its privations would have even been greater than was inevitable at this stage, and Constantinople would probably have starved. Practically the whole country was going hungry, and this not because food was lacking, but because administration and transport were at a standstill and there was no means of adjusting supply to demand. No one knew how the inhabitants of the larger towns managed to exist at all. We supplied Constantinople with bread, sent corn from the Dobrudja and Rumania, and gave what help we could, in spite of our own shortage. Of course, what we delivered to Constantinople would not have gone far with our millions of mouths. If we had stopped these deliveries we should have lost Turkey, for a starving Constantinople would have revolted, no matter what autocracy might do. Was there really an autocracy in that country? I have already spoken of the Committee. But there were other influences there working against the strong men, influences which sprang from political and possibly commercial hatreds, such hatreds as create factions. Beneath the externally peaceful surface strong currents were in motion. We could often see the whirlpools when they attempted to suck the present leaders down into the depths.
The army too suffered from these currents, and, as I have said above, the High Command had to allow for them in their calculations and frequently to give way to them to the prejudice of the general situation. If they had not done so the army, the numerical strength of which was already being frittered away, would have been dissolved internally also. Privations and want of food were to a large extent playing havoc with the troops. The length of the war was also having a serious effect on their establishment, for with the previous wars in the Yemen and Balkans many Turkish soldiers seemed never to have stopped fighting. The longing for their homes, wives and children — such longings are not unknown even to Islam — drove thousands of men to desertion. Of the complete divisions which were entrained at Haidar-Pasha only fragments ever reached Syria or Mesopotamia. Men may go on arguing whether the number of Turkish deserters in Asia Minor was 300,000 or 500,000. In any case it was nearly as large as the total number of fighting troops in the Turkish Army. It was not an encouraging picture, and yet — Turkey still held on and loyally did her duty without a word of complaint.
Bulgaria also was suffering from scarcity. Scarcity of food in a land which usually produces more than it needs! The harvest had been only moderate, but it could have sufficed if the country had been administered like our own and available supplies could have been properly distributed between districts that had too much and those that had not enough. In reply to a suggestion to this effect a Bulgarian answered: "We don't understand such things!" A simple excuse, or rather self-accusation. The Bulgarians simply folded their hands because they had never learnt to use them. We know that as Bulgaria had passed straight from Turkish slavery to complete political freedom, she had never known the educative influence of a strong organizing authority. If I may be allowed to speak as a Prussian, she had never had a King Frederic William I, who raised the pillars of iron on which our state securely rested for so long. Bulgaria did not know what good administration was. But she had plenty of parties. 'Most of them were bitterly hostile to the government, not on the ground of its foreign policy, which promised a great future, national unity and the hegemony of the Balkans, but on account of domestic issues around which the contest went on the more fiercely. No methods, however dangerous, were despised. Neither their allies nor their own army were sacred. It was a dangerous game! The Dobrudja was always a favourite subject for party agitation. The government had conjured up menacing spectres in order to put pressure on Turkey and ourselves, and now found they could not get rid of these spectres which threatened to destroy everything, and for party purposes preached hatred of the allies and their representatives. In the autumn of 1917 it seemed to us best, for the time being, to give way on this Dobrudja question and leave its final solution until after the war. On our part it was a retreat inspired by policy, not by conviction. It was remarkable that as soon as we gave way all interest in the matter vanished in Bulgaria. The word "Dobrudja" had lost its power to excite party passions. Thus ended what had, at any rate, been a bloodless battle so far as we were concerned, but the struggle for power between the political parties continued and ruthlessly thrust a disruptive wedge into the framework of the army, and, indeed, deeper than in peacetime.
The troops showed themselves susceptible to these disintegrating influences, for they were badly supplied and already beginning to suffer from scarcity. The lack of organizing energy and ability was revealed at every end and turn. We made many proposals in the direction of far-reaching improvements. The Bulgarians recognized that these proposals were timely, but they had not the energy and disliked the bother of putting them into effect. They confined themselves to grumbling about the Germans who were occupying their country (as a matter of fact, a country which had been conquered by joint operations!) who by the terms of the compact were to be supplied by the Bulgarians themselves because they were fighting on the Macedonian frontier, not for the protection of Germany, but primarily for the protection of Bulgaria. According to the Bulgarians, the Germans ought to feed their own men, and as a matter of fact and for the sake of peace they did so, and sent cattle as well as hay from the homeland to Macedonia. It must be admitted that these unending disputes went on in the lines of communication area behind the common front, and not among the fighting troops, for these still had some self-respect. With the idea of preventing disputes we suggested the exchange of our German troops in Macedonia for Bulgarian divisions which were in Rumania. We were thus offering the Bulgarians two, or rather three, men for one; but there were immediately loud cries in Sofia about a breach of faith. We therefore confined ourselves to withdrawing only some of our troops and sending a few of our battalions to take over from the Bulgarians in Rumania. Thus the Bulgarian divisions left the northern bank of the Danube, to which they had originally crossed only with extreme reluctance.
Thus the Bulgarian picture also was not without its shadows. But we could rely on her continued loyalty — at any rate, so long as we could and would meet her great political claims. When, however, as a result of expressions in the German Press and speeches in the German Parliament in the summer of 1917, both Sofia and the Bulgarian Army began to have doubts as to whether we would really keep our promises, they listened, holding their breath, and, what is worse, began to suspect us. The parties now began to clamor for the resignation of Radoslavoff. His foreign policy was recognised to be far-seeing and all of them still approved it, but it appeared that he was not the man to hold his own with the allies. Moreover, his home policy was disliked in many quarters. New men ought to be put at the helm, for in the opinion of Bulgaria the old had already been in power too long. They might have feathered their own nests. Moreover, everyone who had any connection whatever with Radoslavoff, from the highest official down to the village mayor, would have to depart with the government, for that alone was consistent with the parliamentary, the so-called "free" system. And this was to be done at once, even in the middle of a war!
I have little to say about Austria-Hungary. Her internal difficulties had not become less. I have already said that the attempt to reconcile the Czech elements, which were intent on the destruction of the state, by the method of toleration had utterly failed. Efforts were now being made to create a bond of unity for the different races of the Empire, or at any rate their most influential circles, by putting forward the power and authority of the Church and giving prominence to religious feeling. But neither did these efforts achieve the hoped-for result. They merely widened the lines of cleavage and provoked mistrust where had previously been devotion. The mutual aversion of the different races was intensified by inequalities in the distribution of food. Vienna was starving while Budapest had something to spare. German-Bohemia was almost dying from exhaustion while the Czechs lacked practically nothing. As ill-luck would have it, the harvest was a partial failure. This intensified the crisis and would continue to do so. As in Turkey, Austria-Hungary was not without the technical resources required to adjust matters between districts which had too much and those which had not enough. But there was no centralizing power and no all-pervading state authority. Thus the old evil of domestic feuds, with all its destructive consequences, was extended to the domain of food supply. It was hardly surprising that the longing for peace grew and that confidence in a favorable conclusion of the war began to fail. The collapse of Russia made things worse rather than better. The elimination of the danger from that side seemed to have made men indifferent rather than strengthened their resolution. Even the victory in Italy was welcome only to certain classes and circles of the nation. The masses had lost all their pride, for starvation was undoubtedly at work here and there. Moreover, much that still stood for something before the death of the old Emperor had lost its ethical significance. Thousands of Czech and other agitators trampled the honor of the state under foot. It was certain that far stronger nerves than those possessed by the governing authorities would have been required to offer further resistance to the pressure of the masses, which to a certain extent were anxious for peace at any price.
And now to our own country.
In the course of the military events of which I have been writing, far-reaching and fateful changes had been taking place in the domestic circumstances of our own Fatherland. The resignation of the Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann, showed how critical the situation had become. Although I said originally that we were at one in our views of the situation created by the war, as time went on I was bound to recognize with regret that this was no longer the case. The conduct of military operations had been entrusted to me, and for my task I needed all the resources of the Fatherland. To dissipate these resources by internal friction at a time of extreme tension, instead of concentrating them, could only lead to a diminution of our political and military power. With that in mind I could not take the responsibility of standing by and saying nothing when I saw that the sense of unity which was so essential at the front was being destroyed at home. Convinced as I was that, compared with our enemies, we were falling back in this respect and taking the opposite course to theirs, I, unfortunately, soon saw myself at loggerheads with our government. Our cooperation thereby suffered. For that reason I considered it my duty to ask my All-Highest War Lord for permission to resign, however hard such a step must be for me as a soldier. His Majesty did not approve my request. Simultaneously the Chancellor had requested to be allowed to resign as a result of a declaration of the party leaders in the Reichstag. His wish was granted.
The outward consequences of this retirement were regrettable. There was an end to the appearance of party peace which had hitherto been maintained. A majority party with a definite tendency towards the left came into existence. The omissions which were alleged to have distinguished our political development of earlier times were now exploited, even in the middle of a war and under the pressure of the extremely difficult situation in which the Fatherland found itself, to force further concessions from the government in the direction of a so-called parliamentary system. Along such paths our inward unity was bound to be lost. The reins of government gradually fell into the hands of the extreme parties.
Dr. Miehaelis was appointed to succeed Bethmann Hollweg. Within a very short time my relations with him were on a footing of mutual confidence. He had entered upon his difficult office undismayed, but he did not hold it for long. Circumstances were to prove too strong for him, stronger than his own good intentions.
The atmosphere of parliamentary faction was never again improved. The majority parties inclined more and more to the Left, and as far as deeds were concerned, and in spite of many fine words, began to represent the elements which were intent on the destruction of the ancient political order in the state. It became ever clearer that in the strife of party interests and party dogmas our homeland was forgetting the real seriousness of our situation, or refusing any longer to realize it. Our enemies publicly rejoiced at this and knew how to add fuel to the party flames. In these circumstances efforts were made to find an Imperial Chancellor who would be able to compose party differences by virtue of his parliamentary past. The choice fell on Count Hertling. I had met him at Pless in the company of the King of Bavaria. I still have happy recollections of the kindness which he showed when offering me his congratulations on the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross which His Majesty had just awarded me. To me it was both touching and encouraging to see how gladly the old Count dedicated the strength of his last years to the service of his Fatherland. His unshakable confidence in our cause and his hopes for our future survived the most critical situations. He handled the parliamentary parties with skill, but, compared with the seriousness of our position, was unable to effect anything really vital. Unhappily, his relations with Main Headquarters suffered from the existence of misunderstandings which were a legacy from earlier times, and this occasionally prejudiced cooperation. My respect for the Count was thereby in no way diminished. As is known, he died shortly after he resigned his thankless office.
Even apart from the misfortunes to which I have already referred, everything was far from comfortable in the homeland at the end of 1917. Nothing else could have been expected, for the war and privation were a heavy burden on a large portion of the nation and adversely affected its morale. A year of empty, or at any rate unsatisfied, stomachs prejudiced all higher impulses and tended to make men indifferent. Under the effects of insufficient physical nourishment the thoughts of the great mass among us were no better than elsewhere, even though the authority of the state and the moral resolution of the nation permeated our whole life to a greater degree. In such circumstances that life was bound to suffer, especially as no fresh intellectual and ihoral forces came into existence to revive it. We too lacked a stimulant of that kind. We met with the dangerous view that nothing more could be done against the indifference of the masses even in circles in which other opinions usually prevailed. The representatives of this view simply folded their hands and let things slide. They looked on while parties exploited the exhaustion of the nation as fertile soil for the growth of ideas which aimed at the dissolution of state order, and scattered their destructive seed which took root and flourished more and more. They would not use their hands to pluck up those weeds.
Indifference had the same effect as slothfulness. It prepared the soil for discontent. It infected not only the people at home, but also the soldiers who returned among them.
The soldiers who returned home from the front were in a position to exercise an inspiring and stimulating influence on the public. Most of them did so. But they could also have a depressing influence, and unfortunately many of them proved it, though they were not the best from our ranks. These men wanted no more war; they had a bad effect on the already poisoned soil, themselves absorbed the worst elements of that soil, and carried the demoralization of the homeland back with them into the field.
There is much that is gloomy in this picture. Not all of it was an actual consequence of the war, or at any rate need have been such a consequence. War does not only stimulate, it demoralizes. And this war had a more demoralizing influence than any previous war. It destroyed not only bodies but souls.
The enemy intensified the process of demoralization, not only by his blockade and the semi-starvation it involved, but by another method, known as "Propaganda in the Enemy's Camp." This was a new weapon, or rather a weapon which had never been employed on such a scale and so ruthlessly in the past. The enemy used it in Germany as in Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The shower of inflammatory pamphlets fell not only behind our fronts in East and West, but also behind the Turkish fronts in Irak and Syria.
This method of propaganda is known as "Enlightening the Enemy," but it ought to be called "Concealing the Truth," or even "Poisoning the Enemy's Character." It is the result of the adversary's conviction that he is no longer strong enough to defeat his enemy in open and honourable fight and conquer his moral resolution merely by the victory of his triumphant sword.
And now let us try and secure a peep into the heart of the states hostile to us. I say "try" advisedly. For during a war there could be no question of anything more. Not only our economic intercourse, but every other kind of intercourse with foreign countries was cut off by the blockade. The fact that to a certain extent we had neutral States on our frontiers hardly affects this statement at all. Our spy service produced only miserable results. In this sphere even German gold succumbed in the struggle between our enemies and ourselves.
We knew that on the far side of the Western Front a government was in power which was personally inspired by thoughts of hatred and revenge, and incessantly whipped up the inmost passions of the nation. Whenever Clemenceau spoke the burden of his words was: "Woe to our ancient conqueror." France was bleeding from a thousand wounds. If we had not known it, the public declarations of her dictator would have told us so. But France was going to fight on. There was not a word, not a suggestion, of concession. The moment a crack appeared in the structure of the state — which was held together with iron chains — the government intervened, and intervened ruthlessly. It achieved its purpose. The majority of the nation may have longed for peace, but if any public expression was given to such a feeling in the land of republican freedom, it was cold-bloodedly stamped into the ground, and the nation received a further dose of liberal phrases. Even before the outbreak of war, in the so-called anti-militarist France the words "humanity" and "pacifism" were branded as: "dangerous narcotics with which the doctrinaire advocates of peace wished to corrupt the manliness of the nation. Pacifism has proved this at all times. Its proper name is cowardice, and it means the exaggerated self-love of the individual who takes care to avoid every personal risk which does not bring him direct advantage." These were the words of men in "peace-loving France." Was it surprising that the ideals of "France at War" were just as ruthless, and that every man who ever dared to speak of peace was branded as a traitor to his country?
We could not doubt that even at the end of 1917 the French nation was better fed than the German. In the first place Paris received special attention. As far as possible it was spared from scarcity and consoled by every conceivable kind of pleasure. It seemed to us doubtful whether the Gaul would endure the privations of daily life with the same devotion and for so long as his German adversary. But, in any case, we might be certain that even a starving France would have to go on fighting for as long as England wished, even if she thereby succumbed altogether.
The French prisoners certainly told us of the miseries of war and the scarcity which was making itself felt at home. But their own appearance did not indicate any shortage. All of them were longing for the end of the war, but no one thought that it would come so long as "the others wanted to go on fighting."
How was it with England?
The Motherland found her economic and world position faced with an immense peril. But no one there ventured to say so. There was only one way out: Victory! In the course of the last year England had survived a "fit of weakness." For a time it had looked as if the national resolution had begun to crumble and England's war aims to become more modest. The voice of Lord Lansdowne was beard. However, it died away under the oppressive weight of an autocratic power which held out the prospect of an approaching end of the war. After the economic and political morale of the nation had sunk to a low level in the summer, the public had once more scented the air of approaching victory, though until the end of 1917 we did not know why. As we found out later, that air had its origin in the political sink of corruption in Central Europe. Thoughts of approaching victory once more restored the unity of the whole nation. It was once again willing to bear the loss of its pleasures and found it easier to give up its old habits and political freedom in the hope of realizing its anticipation that after the successful conclusion of this war every individual Englishman would be richer. The political self-discipline of the Englishman reinforced his commercial selfishness. And so here, too, nothing was said about peace so long as the war did not cost too much. English prisoners at the end of 1917 spoke in the same tone as those of the end of 1914. No one had any stomach for fighting. Yet no one asked any questions in that country. The state demanded, and its demands were satisfied.
The condition of affairs in Italy appeared to be otherwise than in France and England. In the campaign of the previous autumn many thousands of Italian soldiers had laid down their arms without any urgent military necessity, not from a lack of courage, but from disgust at what seemed to them senseless slaughter. They looked happy enough on their journey into our country and greeted the familiar workshops with German songs. But even if the enthusiasm for the war, both in the army and in the country itself, had dwindled to nothing, the nation was not wholly paralyzed. They knew that they would otherwise starve and freeze. The will of Italy had still to bow to that of the foreigner. That was her bitter fate from the start, and she only found it tolerable thanks to the prospects of great and alluring booty.
From the United States even fewer voices reached us than from Europe. What we ascertained confirmed our suspicions. Her brilliant, if pitiless, war industry had entered the service of patriotism and had not failed it. Under the compulsion of military necessity a ruthless autocracy was at work, and rightly, even in this land at the portals of which the Statue of Liberty flashes its blinding light across the seas. They understood war. Weaker voices had to be silent until the hard task had been done. Only then might the spirit of freedom make itself heard again for the good of humanity. For the time being it must be silenced for the good of the state. All creeds and races felt themselves at one in this battle for an ideal, and in cases where conviction or the call of the blood did not speak in favor of the poor Anglo-Saxon on the verge of ruin, gold was thrown into the scale of understanding.
I need say no more about Russia. We could look into her heart as into an open furnace. She would be utterly consumed, perhaps, but in any case she lay prostrate on the ground, and her Rumanian Ally had been involved in her fall.
Such was our view of the situation at the end of 1917.
Many a man in those days asked himself the significant question: "How is it that our enemies abate nothing of their ruthless political demands upon us, in spite of their many military failures in the year 1917, the disappearance of Russia as a factor from the war, the unquestionably far-reaching effects of the U-boat warfare, and the corresponding uncertainty as to whether the great American reinforcements could ever be brought to the European theater? How could Wilson, with the approval of the enemy governments, in January 1918, propose conditions for a peace such as might be dictated to a completely beaten adversary, but which could not be put before a foe who had hitherto been victorious and whose armies were practically everywhere on enemy soil?
This was my answer then, and it is still my answer:
While we were defeating our enemy's armies their governments and peoples directed their gaze steadfastly at the development of the domestic situation of our Fatherland and those of our allies. The weaknesses which I have already described could not be concealed from them. It was those weaknesses which reinforced what seemed to us such incomprehensible hopes and resolution.
It was not only the enemy's intelligence service, though it worked under the most favorable circumstances imaginable, which gave the enemy the glance he so much desired at our home situation. Our people and their political representatives did nothing whatever to conceal our domestic troubles from the enemy's eyes. The German proved that he was not yet politically educated to the point of exercising self-control. He had to give utterance to his thoughts, however disastrous the effect might be at the moment. He thought he could only satisfy his vanity by publishing what he knew and felt to the whole world. Thanks to the vague cosmopolitan sentiments by which he was largely swayed, he regarded it as a secondary matter whether this behavior on his part advantaged or injured the Fatherland. He was convinced that what he had said was right and clever, was himself perfectly satisfied in the matter, and assumed that his audience would be so too. The affair was then closed so far as he was concerned.
This failing has done us even more injury in the great conflict for our national existence than military misfortunes. To the lack of the political discipline which is second nature with the Englishman and that patriotism free from cosmopolitan crazes which distinguishes the Freneh, I attribute in the last resource the German "Peace Resolution," which received the approval of the Reichstag on July 19, 1917, the very day on which the military power of Russia palpably received its death blow. I know well enough that beneath the objective reasons which were then put forward as paramount for this Resolution the great disappointment at the course of military events and the visible results of our U-boat campaign played a large part. Different views may be held about the justification for such doubts about our position. As is known, I considered it fairly favorable, but I was convinced that the method of approaching such a step from the parliamentary side was a hopeless mistake. We shouted our longings for peace into the ears of our enemies at the very moment when a proper political attitude on the part of the Germans would perhaps have made them only too glad to be able to detect even the slightest inclination to peace in the pulse of our people. The phraseology in which we tried to clothe the step was much too threadbare to have deceived anyone in the enemy camp. Among us Clemenceau's battle cry, "I make war!" found the echo, "We seek peace!"
I therefore opposed this Peace Resolution not from the standpoint of human feeling, but from that of soldierly instinct. I foresaw what it would cost us and expressed it thus: "Another year of war at least!" Another year of war in the serious situation in which both we and our allies found ourselves!