No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Revising German History: Bethmann Hollweg Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Symposium: The German Empire and the First World War: A Quarter Century After the Fischer Controversy
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1988
References
1. The recent reader on Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (New York, 1982), ed. Röhl, J.C.G. and Sombart, N.Google Scholar, though rehabilitating Bernhard von Bülow, does not include an essay on Bethmann.
2. For earlier appraisals see von Vietsch, E., Bethmann Hollweg: Staatsmann zwischen Macht und Ethos (Boppard, 1969)Google Scholar; Stern, F., “Bethmann Hollweg and the War: The Limits of Responsibility,” in The Responsibility of Power (Garden City, 1967)Google Scholar; and Jarausch, K. H., The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1973).Google Scholar
3. Fletcher, R., “Recent Developments in West German Historiography,” German Studies Review 7 (1984): 451ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; J. Retallack, “Social History with a Vengeance?” ibid., 423ff.; and Moeller, R., “The Kaiserreich Recast?” Journal of Social History 17 (1984): 655f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Fletcher, R., “Introduction” to Fischer's From Kaiserreich to Third Reich (London, 1986).Google Scholar
5. E.g., Steiner, Z. S., Britain and the Origins of the First World War (New York, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Williamson, S. “Vienna and July 1914,” in his and P. Paster's Essays on World War One: Origins and Prisoners of War (New York, 1983), 9–37.Google Scholar
6. Iggers, G., The Social History of Politics: Critical Perspectives in West German Historical Writing Since 1945 (Leamington Spa, 1985).Google Scholar
7. Baron, S. and Pletsch, C., eds., Introspection in Biography (Hillsdale, N.J., 1985)Google Scholar. Bethmann's curious personality, combining pensiveness, unconventionality, and self-criticism with lethargy, distance, and pessimism, and the professional disgrace of his elder brother who escaped to Texas indicate that a psychological explanation might uncover new dimensions. Unfortunately the destruction of his papers in 1945 eliminated the necessary documentary evidence.
8. Jarausch, K. H., “Removing the Nazi Stain? The Quarrel of the German Historians,” German Studies Review 11 (1988): 285–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Gutsche, Willibald, Aufstieg und Fall eines kaiserlichen Reichskanzlers: Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 1856–1921 (Berlin, 1973), 12, 13, 24ff., 30f., 39ff., 71, 76, 97, 120–36, 236Google Scholar. For his more recent views cf. “Zur Entfesselung des ersten Weltkrieges,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 23 (1985): 779ff.Google Scholar
10. von Strandmann, H. Pogge, “Rathenau, die Gebrüder Mannesmann und die Vorgeschichte der Zweiten Marokkokrise,” in Geiss, I. and Wendt, B.-J., eds., Deutschland in der Weltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Düsseldorf, 1973), 251ffGoogle Scholar.; and “Warum die Deutschen den Krieg wollten,” Die Zeit, 11 Mar. 1988.
11. Berghahn, V. R., Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (London, 1973), 86ff., 189ff.Google Scholar
12. Kennedy, P., The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860–1914 (London, 1980), 446fGoogle Scholar. Cf. also his “The First World War and the International Power System,” International Security 9 (1984): 7ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. Röhl, J.C.G., “Die Generalprobe: Zur Geschichte und Bedeutung des ‘Kriegsrats’ vom 8. Dezember 1912,”Google Scholar in Stegmann, D., Wendt, B.-J., and Witt, P.-C., eds., Industrielle Gesellschaft und politisches System (Bonn, 1978), 357ffGoogle Scholar., and Kaiser, Hof und Staat: Wilhehm II und die deutsche Politik (Munich, 1987), 16, 191ff.Google Scholar
14. Joll, J., The Origins of the First World War (London, 1984), 21, 116f.Google Scholar
15. Evans's, R. introduction to his Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (London, 1978)Google Scholar, and Eley, G., From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (London, 1986), 100, 163.Google Scholar
16. Wehler, H.-U., Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871–1918 (Göttingen, 1973), 70Google Scholar, now finally translated as The German Empire 1871–1918 (Leamington Spa, 1985).
17. Stürmer, M., Das ruhelose Reich: Deutschland 1866–1918 (Berlin, 1983), 341ff.Google Scholar
18. Fischer, F., “Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856–1921),” in: von Sternburg, W., ed., Die deutschen Kanzler von Bismarck bis Brandt (Königstein, 1985), 92, 94, 109, 114.Google Scholar
19. Craig, G. A., Germany 1866–1945 (New York, 1978), 287–386.Google Scholar
20. Thompson, Wayne C., In the Eye of the Storm: Kurt Riezler and the Crisis of Modern Germany (Iowa City, 1980)Google Scholar, is an indispensable guide to the Riezler diaries, edited by K. D. Erdmann.
21. Schoenbaum, David, Zabern 1913: Consensus Politics in Imperial Germany (London, 1982).Google Scholar
22. Kaiser, D., “Germany and the Origins of the First World War,” Journal of Modern History 55 (1983): 442ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. fails to discriminate between hardline military-naval imperialism and Bethmann's more cautious economic-cultural expansionism.
23. Chickering, R., We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League (Boston, 1984), 289ff.Google Scholar
24. Retallack, James N., “The Road to Philippi: The Conservative Party and Bethmann Hollweg's ‘Politics of the Diagonal,’ 1909–1914,” forthcoming in Fout, John, ed., Politics, Parties and the Authoritarian State: Imperial Germany, 1871–1918, vol. 2.Google Scholar
25. Hildebrand, K., Bethmann Hollweg–der Kanzler ohne Eigenschaften? (Düsseldorf, 1970).Google Scholar See also Snyder, Jack, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” International Security 9 (1984): 108ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; and Kagan, Donald, “World War I, World War II, World War III,” Commentary 83, no. 3 (1987): 21ff.Google Scholar
26. While a number of West German historians such as H. Rothfels had advised Riezler's brother against publication, his daughter M. White allowed Fritz Stern and myself access to the typescript before it appeared in print.
27. Fritz Fellner's review of Kurtz Riezler, Tagebücher, Aufsätze, Dokumente, in: Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Institutes für Geschichte, 1973, 490ff.; and Sösemann, B., “Die Erforderlichkeit des Unmöglichen: Kritische Anmerkungen zu der Edition,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 110 (1974): 261ff.Google Scholar
28. Fischer, F., Juli 1914: Wir sind nicht hineingeschlittert: Das Staatsgeheimnis um die Riezler Tagebücher (Reinbeck, 1983), 83.Google Scholar
29. Sösemann, Bernd, “Die Tagebücher Kurt Riezlers: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Echtheit und Edition,” Historische Zeitschrift 236 (1983): 327–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30. K. D. Erdmann, “Zur Echtheit der Tagebücher Kurt Riezlers,” ibid., 371–402 as well as “Die Tagebücher Riezlers sind echt,” Die Zeit, 1983, no. 26; and Bockemühl, Michael, “Das Duell der Historiker,” Göttinger Tageblatt, 27 07 1983.Google Scholar
31. See the letters to the editor by Sösemann and others (including myself), “Dieses dunkle Geheimnis,” Die Zeit, 1983, no. 33 and Mommsen's, W. J.summary review in the Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 14 (Autumn 1983): 28–33Google Scholar.
32. Sösemann, B., ed., Theodor Wolff: Tagebücher 1914–1919., 2 vols. (Boppard, 1984), 1: 1ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Wolff, T., Der Krieg des Pontius Pilatus (Zurich, 1934), 255ffGoogle Scholar. Though it would be tempting to draw on the rich general insights of the diaries, the following remarks shall confine themselves only to first-hand material on Bethmann Hollweg.
33. Sösemann, , Wolff Tagebücher, 1: 156ffGoogle Scholar. While he admitted that Bülow's greater finesse might have found a way out, Bethmann also insisted that it would have been irresponsible to resort to more threatening rhetoric. Cf. Young, H., Prince Lichnowsky and the Great War (Athens, 1975), 128ffGoogle Scholar, and Chickering, R., We Men, 283ff.Google Scholar
34. Tagebücher, 1: 265fGoogle Scholar. The chancellor regretted that the British had not accepted the German compromise to end the naval race and maintained: “I still believe that [Grey] wanted war–not only the people around him—he himself stumbled into it.”
35. Ibid., 1: 521 and 2: 951. Cf. also Mommsen, W. J., “Domestic Factors in German Foreign Policy before 1914,” Central European History 6 (1973): 3–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36. Tagebücher, 1: 155ff. Cf.Google ScholarFischer's, F. classic, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York, 1967), 95ff.Google Scholar
37. Tagebücher, 1: 267f.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., 320ff. Cf. Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, 407ff. Bethmann wanted to control the enemy “attack routes” (Einfallstore).
39. Tagebücher, 1: 159ffGoogle Scholar. Still somewhat useful is Ritter, G., Die Tragödie der Staatskunst, 3: Bethmann Hollweg als Kriegskanzler (Munich, 1964)Google Scholar, tr. as The Tragedy of Statesmanship — Bethmann Hollweg as War Chancellor (1914–1917) (Coral Gables, Fla., 1972)Google Scholar.
40. Tagebücher, 1: 266f.Google Scholar Wolff offered his services towards France.
41. Ibid., 320f.
42. Ibid., 357f. Cf. Doerries, R., Washington-Berlin 1908/1917 (Düsseldorf, 1975)Google Scholar, on German policy and the U.S. entry into the war.
43. Tagebücher, 1: 410.Google Scholar
44. Ibid., 523.
45. Ibid., 154. Cf. Kozyk, K., Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1968).Google Scholar
46. Tagebücher, 1: 263–66.Google Scholar The struggle for world opinion has yet to be more fully investigated.
47. Ibid., 300.
48. Ibid., 320ff.
49. Ibid., 358f. Once again, he rejected open discussion of war aims, since debate would be divisive and the fighting was not yet over, rendering it “impossible to fix details.”
51. Ibid., 522f.
52. Ibid., 159ff. These comments foreshadowing the moves towards Prussian suffrage reform and better cooperation with parliament are a surprisingly early and complete statement.
53. Ibid., 267, 321, 357: “The people have a right that the responsible leaders not let themselves be pressured into impulsive political and military actions.”
54. Ibid., 428ff, interview with Undersecretary of the Chancellery Arnold Wahnschaffe, 20 Sept. 1916.
55. Ibid., 520ff.
56. Ibid., 109, 124, 229, 234, 239, et. seq.
57. Ibid., 139, 197, 229, 440. These quotations are only a small sample of the dozens of statements about Bethmann which could not be adduced due to space limitations.
58. Ibid., 300f, detailing a relaxed chat about the French government crisis in October 1915. For some further material on Bethmann Hollweg, such as drafts of two memoir chapters and other partly inaccessible documents, see the recent re-edition of his memoirs by Düllfer, J., Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg: Betrachtungen zum Weltkriege (Essen, 1989).Google Scholar
59. Jarausch, K. H., “Statesmen versus Structures: Germany's Role in the Outbreak of World War One Reexamined,” Laurentian University Review 5 (1973): 133ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Stern, F., “Introduction” to Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, and Cecil's, L.Wilhelm II: Prince and Emperor, 1859–1900 (Chapel Hill, 1989).Google Scholar
60. Calleo, D., The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Blackbourn, D. and Eley, G., Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
61. Evans, R., ed., Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Dukes, J. and Remak, J., eds., The Other Germany (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Blackbourn, D., Populists and Patricians (London, 1987).Google Scholar
62. Williamson, S. R., “The Origins of the First World War,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (1988): 795–818CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the strategic literature cited there.
63. E.g., Stürmer, M., Dissonanzen des Fortschritts: Essays über und Politik in Deutschland (Munich, 1986), 151ffGoogle Scholar.; Nipperdey, Th., Nachdenken über die deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1986), 172ffGoogle Scholar.; Graml, H., ed., Nach Hitler: Der schwierige Umgang mit unserer Geschichte: Beiträge von Martin Broszat (Munich, 1987).Google Scholar
64. Bethmann also had a streak of secretiveness (“I don't want to put my cards on the table!”) which reinforced ambiguity. Wolff, , Tagebücher, 1: 384.Google Scholar
65. For the latest round see Wehler's concessions in “Wie bürgerlich war das deutsche Kaiserreich?” in Kocka, J., ed., Bürger und Bürgerüchkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1987)Google Scholar, and Eley's, G. “Introduction” to From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (Boston, 1986).Google Scholar
66. Tagebücher, 1: 301Google Scholar; Retallack, “The Road to Philippi,” passim. Cf. vom Bruch, R., Wissenschaft, Politik und öffentliche Meinung: Gelehrtenpolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (Husum, 1980).Google Scholar
67. The thesis of “silent parliamentarization” therefore remains unconvincing. Rauh, M., Die Parlamentarisierung des Deutschen Reiches (Düsseldorf, 1977).Google Scholar
68. Fischer, F., Der Erste Weltkrieg und das deutsche Geschichtsbild: Beiträge zur Bewältigung eines historischen Tabus (Düsseldorf, 1977)Google Scholar, and Bündnis der Eliten: Zur Kontinuitüt der Machtstrukturen in Deutschland 1871–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1979)Google Scholar, now translated as From Kaiserreich to Third Reich, versus Hillgruber, A., Die gescheiterte Grossmacht: Eine Skizze des Deutschen Reichs 1871–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1980)Google Scholar, and “Die Deutsche Politik in der Julikrise 1914,” Quellen und Forschungen ausitalienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 61 (1981): 191ff.Google Scholar
69. Tagebücher, 1: 384f.Google Scholar Numerous other conversations with Lichnowsky, Bülow, Ballin, etc., also touch upon the outbreak of the war, but since the speakers were further removed from the chancellor, their explanations must be treated with skepticism.
70. Williamson, “The Origins of the First World War,” passim. The incompleteness of documentation on the consultations among Serbians, Russians, or French will probably render a full appraisal of their actions in the crisis impossible, thereby leaving crucial decisions in the dark. Cf. also Schöllgen, G., Das Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Munich, 1986), 141ff.Google Scholar
71. Tagebücher, 1: 523.Google Scholar By covering such decisions as unrestricted submarine warfare with his moral authority, he became an accomplice to irresponsible policies which he opposed. This pervasive sense of guilt explains his compensatory interest in the Neuorientierung. Ibid., 479, 490f.
72. Best, H., “Politische Modernisierung und Parlamentarische Führungsgruppen in Deutschland 1867–1918,” Historical Social Research 13 (1988): 5–74Google Scholar, and Retallack, J. N., Notables of the Right: The Conservative Party and Political Mobilization in Germany (Boston, 1988), 2–10.Google Scholar
73. Jarausch, Bruno, “Deutschlands schwerer Kampf” and “Unser Hindenburg,” German themes on 29 10. and 10 Dec. 1914Google Scholar, in the possession of the author. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (Boston, 1943), 275, 476f.Google Scholar