Did the 20th century really belong to America?

In his book Germany’s Aims in the First World War, historian Fritz Fischer reveals a different aspect of his country’s participation to the one that Adam Tooze depicts in his article. Tooze portrays Germany’s wartime Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg as seeking peace in 1917, whereas Fischer argues that the Chancellor was being deceitful.

In 1916 the German navy was still bullish about the outcome of the war. Navy Minister Alfred von Tirpitz maintained that a return to unrestricted submarine warfare—targeting merchant ships, for example—would force Britain to surrender within four months. But the Chancellor was worried about what neutral countries might do if he took such a step. So he sent his ambassador to newly re-elected Woodrow Wilson asking the American president to issue a peace initiative.

But it was a ruse—the Chancellor had previously told his generals: “If Wilson can be got to do this, the probable rejection of the appeal by England and her Allies, while we accept it, would give us a moral justification in the eyes of the world, and in particular of the European neutrals, for withdrawing our promise to America [on submarine warfare].”

Wilson was excited by the idea of issuing a peace initiative. He seized on the belief that the tall, aristocratic and silver-haired Bethmann-Hollweg desired an end to the war. But the Chancellor refused to make any concrete peace proposals, which ultimately led to a breakdown in the talks and the failure of Wilson’s plea. Nonetheless, the Chancellor achieved a propaganda success among the neutral nations—he had portrayed Germany as an essentially peace-loving country, one now forced into a global struggle.

Germany returned to unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917. This did not produce the victory in the west that its war-weary civilians had been promised, but German finance and subversion eventually helped the Bolsheviks achieve power on the eastern front. The German militarist regime would eventually secure enormous concessions and a huge indemnity from the Russians under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the supplementary treaty in August 1918.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany lost its eastern empire. But a “resentful” Congress, to use the word of Adam Tooze, repudiated the treaty and so its economic terms proved largely unenforceable. In the 1920s, Germany reassured the United States that it was a bulwark against communism. At the same time, the German militarists renewed their ties with the friendless Bolsheviks and the German army and air force trained secretly on the Russian steppes.

President Woodrow Wilson’s liberal principles have inspired many generations since 1917. However, the last hundred years perhaps should be called the German century rather than the American one. Before the First World War the Pan-German League coveted a large area of Europe which it termed Mitteleuropa. Now Germany is dominating an area larger than the Pan-Germans ever dreamed of.

Mitteleuropa was initially to be accomplished by means of a customs union, which would have prepared the way for community-wide legal and political institutions. Eventually, to unify Mitteleuropa, the Pan-Germans envisaged that force might have to be used. However, that force would have to be disguised as a punishment against a ruthless foreign aggressor. The Pan-Germans believed that fear of such an aggressor would frighten the nations in the customs union into accepting the loss of their sovereignty.

In 2017, Germany has one of the world’s largest defence industries. It is unhappy with Nato and pressing for the EU to build up its own army as a safeguard against Russian aggression, even though it continues to do a lot of trade with the country. A new Cold War is threatened. Fortunately for the world, Wilson’s pacifist principles still have an immense influence in the EU and especially in Germany. Let us hope that they continue to influence Germany’s leaders and that the European Union survives on love rather than fear.