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German War Aims in the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Klaus Epstein
Klaus Epstein
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Type
Review Articles
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World Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , October 1962 , pp. 163 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1962

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References

1 Meyer, Henry Cord, Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815–1945 (The Hague 1955).CrossRefGoogle Scholar This standard work requires some revision in the light of Fischer's findings. Fischer shows that Mitteleuropa was more important on the official level than Meyer—without access to the Foreign Office documents—was aware. It is now clear that Meyer was that rare author who underestimates the importance of his subject matter.

2 Gatzke, Hans, Germany's Drive to the West (Baltimore 1955).Google Scholar This excellent work stands up remarkably well in the light of the new materials discovered by Fischer, though it must be supplemented on some points. To give but one example: Gatzke was puzzled by the contrast between Bethmann's moderation on Belgium in August 1914 and his acquiescence in the annexationist Delbrück-Zimmermann memorandum in December 1914 (Ch. 1). The missing link is provided by Bethmann's “September-Programm 1914” (discussed below), which Gatzke—lacking access to the Chancellery files at Potsdam—could not know.

3 Bethmann's important memorandum of September 9, 1914, has not been mentioned by any previous author, including E. O. Volkmann, who had access to many Foreign Office files while serving as an expert adviser to the Reichstag Committee of Inquiry in the 1920's. Did Volkmann know this memorandum and conceal its existence for patriotic reasons? The question—which is important in reaching any judgment about both Volkmann and the work of the Reichstag Committee—cannot be answered conclusively. Fischer found the memorandum in the Chancellery files, not the regular Foreign Office files, and it is improbable that Volkmann had access to the former. It can be proved, however, that the Foreign Office did exercise a “patriotic” censorship over what materials were made available to die Reichstag Committee. See an important unpublished letter of Consul Max Müller, Foreign Office liaison man with the Committee of Inquiry, to Senator Petersen, Chairman of the Committee, dated December 11, 1919, and a request of Müller for additional personnel because he could not cope with the work load by himself, dated December 18, 1919. (Foreign Office files, Serial 2787:D540925–927 and D540922.) The use of executive privilege to hamstring the work of parliamentary committees is, of course, a practice known in many countries and is not especially discreditable to either the Foreign Office or the Reichstag Committee. It does, however, show the indispensability of the kind of archival work done by Fischer even upon subjects covered at length by the Committee of Inquiry.

4 It may be noted that Fischer conveys a misleading impression when he occasionally implies that Germany could have had a satisfactory negotiated peace at any time if only she had forsworn annexations. He ignores the fact that Allied annexationism was equally a barrier to a negotiated peace. Fischer incidentally does not always differentiate sharply between a negotiated peace based upon the status quo ante (which a strong German leadership might have accepted) and a “Wilsonian” peace—involving the loss of Alsace and Posen—which an undefeated Germany could not possibly entertain. (The argument in Ch. 23 that Germany should simply have accepted Wilson's fourteen points in January 1918 is “unhistorical.”) Fischer is, of course, right in his insistence (see especially Ch. 9) that Germany should have offered an anti-annexationist peace at all times, if only to score a propaganda victory and embarrass the Allied war effort—but the chances that the Allies would have accepted such a peace must be considered poor.

5 Germany's promotion of revolutionary movements will be the theme of an important new book by Egmont Zechlin, Friedensbestrebungen und Revolutionierungsversuche, of which some advance chapters have appeared in the weekly Das Parlament. Zechlin is especially brilliant in comparing German efforts in 1914–1918 with Bismarck's important but little-known “flirtation” with Hungarian, Serb, and Czech revolutionary circles in 1866.

6 Fischer's statement of Germany's war aims overemphasizes their “aggressive” character and minimizes the “defensive” component that also played a role. The idea of a Central European Customs Union was, for example, stimulated in part by the experience of England's wartime blockade and genuine fear of Allied postwar economic discrimination against Germany. The stress upon military securities, guarantees, etc., came naturally to men haunted by the vision of an inevitable second world war before the first was even finished. There was some truth, moreover, in the contention that Germany had only the choice between becoming a genuine world power and being soon reduced to the status of a parochial country in Central Europe (with little influence upon the future course of world history). Fischer pays too little attention to these genuinely tragic elements in Germany's situation: the German megalomania was undoubtedly promoted by a genuine feeling of insecurity. One must further ask whether it was absolutely illegitimate for Germany to seek to become a world power in view of its formidable strength. Admitting that such a goal was beyond their resources, is it reasonable to expect the Germans of 1914 to have recognized this fact and accepted all its consequences? These questions are more easily asked than answered.

7 On this topic, see the important study by Geiss, Immanuel, Der polnische Grenzstreifen, 1914–1918 (Hamburg 1960)Google Scholar, originally a dissertation directed by Fritz Fischer.

8 It should be noted that Fischer's unfavorable picture of Bethmann as an annexationist requires pari passu a favorable judgment upon the Independent Socialists, who argued that the Majority Socialists were deceiving themselves—to use no stronger term—in maintaining that they must support the moderate Bethmann against the annexationists. If Fischer is right, the Independent Socialists were right also, and the Majority Socialists were either stupid (in failing to see that Bethmann was fighting much more than a merely defensive war) or wicked (in knowingly supporting an annexationist Chancellor contrary to their own principles).

9 Fischer, F., “Kontinuität des Irrtums,” Historische Zeitschrijt, 191 (1960), 95.Google Scholar This article is a reply to one by Hans Herzfeld, “Zur deutschen Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg,” ibid., 67–82, which criticized an earlier article of Fischer's wherein he anticipated the major theme of his book: “Deutsche Kriegsziele, Revolutionierung und Separatfrieden im Osten,” ibid., 188 (1959), 249–310.

10 Many German reviewers have bemoaned the fact that Fischer has “one-sidedly” concentrated upon German annexationist war aims and painted a false “overall picture” by not giving equal prominence to Allied annexationist war aims. The charge would be justified if Fischer had intended to write a general book on war aims in World War I, or had castigated German annexationism for being morally sui generis. His intention was, however, to analyze Germany's striving for European hegemony, and for this problem Allied war aims were quite irrelevant. Fischer is right, moreover, in his contention that Germany, and Germany alone, threatened the European equilibrium by its annexationism, thus qualitatively differentiating German annexationism from that of other powers. It should also be noted that Fischer set himself the scholarly task of exploring the German archives; others will no doubt perform the same task for the archives of the Allied Powers as they are opened to historians. Fischer naturally presents in extenso what he found in his researches without attempting to anticipate what future scholars will discover in Paris and London. He has the right to assume, moreover, that Allied war aims are well known to the reader: they were, after all, revealed by the Bolsheviks as early as 1917 in the “secret treaties,” and were largely incorporated in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

11 There have, of course, also been some outcries from the “incorrigible” elements within the German historical profession, some of whose older members have been marked for life by their passionate absorption in the campaign against the “war guilt lie” in the interwar years. A notorious example is a review by Erwin Hoelzle in Das Historisch-politische Buch, X (1962), 65–69, which scores some telling scholarly points but is deplorable in its overall tone. Fischer's “one-sided” emphasis upon German annexationism is described as approximating “the monologue of a madman,” and Hoelzle accuses him of national masochism because he forgets that “one owes justice to one's own country as well as to other nations”!

12 Dehio, Ludwig, Deutschland und die Weltpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich 1955).Google Scholar