Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  In the presidential campaign, Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate, a moderate former Supreme Court Justice, was supported by the eastern, pro-Allied, interventionist wing of the electorate; Wilson had the support of most southern, midwestern, and western “stay-out-of-the-war” voters. But the election was not decided on Election Day, November 7. Hughes, accumulating early majorities in the East, surged to a lead and on November 8 The New York Times announced that “Charles E. Hughes Has Apparently Been Elected President.” Theodore Roosevelt, who hated Wilson, happily declared that “the election of Mr. Hughes is a vindication of our national honor.” Then Hughes fell back and for two days the result teetered on the returns from California. It was not until November 22 that a Hughes telegram conceding defeat finally reached Wilson—“It was a little moth-eaten when it got here,” the president observed. In the end, Wilson won California by 3,806 votes. He had a nationwide popular majority of 691,385. He carried only a single northeastern state, New Hampshire, and that by fifty-six votes. In the electoral college the votes split 277 to 254.

  The election was a squeaker by most people’s count, but Wilson treated it as a landslide. The president had what he desired: absolute control of American foreign policy. He did not need to listen to Congress, his Cabinet, his own ambassadors, or ambassadors from anywhere else. He was acutely sensitive to public opinion, and only to public opinion. Now, reelected, Wilson was free to take up his mission. The carnage in Europe must be stopped; this could be done only by showing favoritism to neither side. Wilson recognized that “if Germany won, it would change the course of civilization and make the United States a military nation,” but he was also keenly aware of the derision the French and English press had directed at him when early returns had predicted the election of Hughes. Now empowered by the American people to do what he wished, Wilson began tapping out drafts of a peace mediation offer on his typewriter. His goal was a negotiated peace, to be achieved by asking each of the warring powers to submit a statement of its war aims and where it would be willing to compromise in order to make peace. Together, he and they would discover a middle ground.

  As the president typed, the belligerents’ ambassadors in Washington bent their ears to pick up what they could of the message coming from his keys. As always, they could learn nothing from Wilson himself, who would not see them, but they could learn much by talking to the little man with a receding chin who was the president’s best friend. Edward House was the one exception to the reclusive president’s rigid policy of excluding everyone from the inner world of his work and thought. House was a wealthy Texan who, in return for his support of one of the state’s governors, had been awarded the honorary title of colonel. Active and influential in Texas politics, he had gravitated toward Wilson in 1911, when the then governor of New Jersey was beginning his run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He worked effectively as an intermediary between Wilson and Bryan and, by the time of Wilson’s election, he could have been appointed to almost any position he wished in the new administration. He asked for none. This was sufficient to make him an object of intense scrutiny by a press determined to fix his place in the political firmament: “He holds no office and never has held any, but he far outweighs Cabinet officers in Washington affairs. . . . He is a figure without parallel in our political history. . . . Colonel House asks nothing for himself. He hates the limelight. . . . House is one of the small wiry men who do a great deal without any noise. He is a ball bearing personality; he moves swiftly but with never a squeak.”

  The solution to the riddle of House was that he had made himself the closest friend Woodrow Wilson ever had. The colonel did not even live in Washington—he lived with his wife in Manhattan—but he came to Washington often, and on these visits he always stayed at the White House. At the end of an evening of intimate conversation, Wilson routinely escorted House to his room to ask whether everything was properly laid out. When the president came to New York, he was always a guest in House’s small apartment on Fifty-third Street.

  Wilson valued House’s advice above all others’. “Mr. House is my second personality,” the president explained. “He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one.” To House himself, he said, “You are the only person in the world with whom I can discuss everything.” When war broke out, Europeans as well as Americans became aware of the mysterious Colonel House, who had no office and carried no title but “personal friend of the President”—which was enough to open every door in Washington, London, and Berlin. “Instead of sending Colonel House abroad,” one journalist suggested, “President Wilson should go to Europe himself to find out just what the people there think of him. Wilson could leave Colonel House here to act as president during his absence.” House became the conduit through which foreign governments and their ambassadors in Washington learned what the American president was thinking.

  One of these ambassadors, Great Britain’s Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, was an extraordinarily poor choice. His friends, made during an earlier tour of diplomatic duty in America, were all Republicans. He wrote to Theodore Roosevelt as “My Dear Theodore,” to Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge as “My Dear Cabot,” and to the reclusive guru Henry Adams as “Uncle Henry.” He was an anti-Semite.

  [He advised Adams that he was reading “a little book by a Jew-boy” and complained to Sir Edward Grey of American “Jew bankers who show a strong preference for Germany” as well as of “Jews capturing the principal newspapers and bringing them over as much as they dare to the German side.”]

  As a negotiator, Spring-Rice was irritable and shrill; one ardently pro-Allied State Department official said that he always left Spring-Rice “feeling a sympathy for the Germans.” In Woodrow Wilson’s Washington, the ambassador uttered the wrong opinions in the wrong ears. “At one time,” he complained to Colonel House, “this country was composed of pure rock, but now it is composed of mud, sand, and some rock, and no one can predict how it will shift or in what direction.” House easily understood that Roosevelt and Wilson were being compared. On occasion, Spring-Rice had tantrums. “I would be glad if you would not mention Bernstorff’s name in my presence again,” he once hissed at House when the latter mentioned that he had just seen the German ambassador. “I do not want to talk to anyone who has just come from talking to him or to Germans.” An Anglophile himself, House discreetly wrote to Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, suggesting that “Sir Cecil’s nervous temperament sometimes does not lend itself well to the needs of the present moment.” Grey ignored the letter and the ambassador remained.

  Despite Spring-Rice’s nastiness, his political analysis was useful to Grey. “There is a strong sense that our sea power is exercised in a way, not so much to injure American commerce and trade, as to hurt American pride and dignity. No one could argue for a moment that our war measures have ruined this country; America has never been so rich. But the facts are that American trade is in a way under British control.” Later he summarized by saying, “Our blockade measures are, not a wound, but a hair shirt.” In Decem-ber 1916, he tried, in a series of letters, to tell Balfour, Grey’s successor at the Foreign Office, about Woodrow Wilson: “The President rarely sees anybody. He practically never sees ambassadors and when he does, exchanges no ideas with them. Mr. Lansing is treated as a clerk who receives orders which he has to obey at once without question.” “I have been in Russia, Berlin, Constantinople and Persia which are all popularly supposed to be autocratic governments. But I have never known any government so autocratic as this. This does not mean that the president acts without consulting the popular will. On the contrary, his belief and practice is that he must not lead the people until he knows which way they want to go.” “Here [in Washington] we regard the White House rather as Vesuvius is regarded in Naples, that is, as a mysterious source of unexpected explosions.” “The president’s great talents and imposing character fit him to play a great part. He feels it and knows it. He is already a mysterious, rather Olympian
personage, shrouded in darkness from which issue occasional thunderbolts.

  [Wilson, during these critical months, was sometimes “shrouded in darkness” for personal reasons unknown beyond his inner circle. His general health was poor and he suffered frequently from severe headaches. “There would come days,” said Edith Wilson, his wife since December 1915, “when he was incapacitated by blinding headaches that no medicine could relieve. He would give up everything and the only cure seemed to be sleep. We would make the room cool and dark and when at last merciful sleep would come, he would lie for hours in this way, apparently not even breathing. Sometimes this sleep would last five, six, or even eight hours. He would awake refreshed and able at once to take up work and go on with renewed energy.”]

  He sees nobody who could be remotely suspected of being his equal.”

  Spring-Rice, like Grey, knew that without American credit, food, and munitions, the Allies could not win the war. This flow must not be interrupted; therefore, Woodrow Wilson’s sensitive, prickly nature must be appeased. Given time, the Germans could be counted on to make a mistake, and then events would proceed to an almost certain conclusion. Meanwhile, Britain must wait. “There was one mistake in diplomacy that, if it had been made, would have been fatal to the cause of the Allies,” Grey wrote later. “It was carefully avoided. This cardinal mistake would have been a breach with the United States, not necessarily a rupture, but a state of things which would have provoked American interference with the blockade, or led to an embargo on exports of munitions from the United States.” Spring-Rice’s assignment was to make certain that this mistake was avoided. His task was to be patient.

  Count Johann von Bernstorff, the ambassador of Imperial Germany, could not afford to wait. Elegant, aristocratic, with blue eyes and a red mustache, he was charming, candid, and adaptable, the most popular ambassador in Washington before the war. He had been born in London, where his diplomat father had been stationed, and he had served eight years in the Prussian Guards before joining the Foreign Ministry. He married an American and now had served eight years as ambassador to the United States. He spoke impeccable English and French; he waltzed, played tennis, golf, and poker, and pretended to be interested in baseball. Socially, all doors opened to him and he instructed the doormen at the German embassy on Massachusetts Avenue to show into his office any newspaperman who cared to call. Five American universities had given him an honorary degree; these included Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Woodrow Wilson’s own Princeton.

  Knowing America, Bernstorff understood the consequences of unleashing German submarines against American shipping. Month after month, behind his amiable façade, he struggled to keep his country off this ruinous path. Along with Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow, he hoped that President Wilson would intervene and stop the war. Through the summer and early fall of 1916, he pleaded with the chancellor to postpone the U-boat decision until after the American election. “If Wilson wins at the polls, for which the prospect is at present favorable,” Bernstorff told Bethmann-Hollweg on September 6, “the president will at once take steps towards mediation. He thinks in that case to be strong enough to compel a peace conference. Wilson regards it as in the interest of America that neither of the combatants should gain a decisive victory.” Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow waited eagerly for word from their ambassador. On September 26, the chancellor cabled Bernstorff: “The whole situation would change if President Wilson were to make an offer of mediation to the powers.” Wilson remained silent. On October 14, increasingly anxious, Bethmann-Hollweg cabled the ambassador, “Demand for unrestricted submarine campaign increasing here. Spontaneous appeal for peace, towards which I again ask you to encourage him, would be gladly accepted by us. You should point out Wilson’s power, and consequently his duty, to put a stop to slaughter. If he cannot make up his mind to act alone, he should get into communication with Pope, King of Spain and European neutrals.” On November 16, after Wilson’s election, Jagow pushed Bernstorff: “Desirable to know whether president willing to take steps towards mediation and if so which and when.” On November 20, Jagow cabled again: “We are thoroughly in sympathy with the peace tendencies of President Wilson. His activity in this direction is to be strongly encouraged.” Bernstorff replied, “Urge no change in submarine war until decided whether Wilson will open mediation. Consider this imminent.” Still, Wilson did not act.

  The German generals, however, wanted to hear no more from Bernstorff of the long-awaited mediation offer. It was clear that no peace Wilson could arrange would be acceptable to the Supreme Command. “The German people wish no peace of renunciation,” stormed Ludendorff, “and I do not intend to end being pelted by stones.” The U-boats must be unleashed, and those opposed to this decision removed from office. If, for the moment, Bethmann-Hollweg remained untouchable, at least the generals could rid themselves of another enemy, Foreign Minister von Jagow. On November 22, Jagow, who had never wanted the job and was almost incapacitated by its burdens, resigned and his vigorous undersecretary, Arthur Zimmermann, was appointed foreign minister. That day, the American chargé d’affaires, calling on the chancellor, found him “a man broken in spirit, his face deeply furrowed, his manner sad beyond words.”

  Affecting the internal struggles of the German government, pressing down on the chancellor and the generals alike, was the grim weight of the British blockade. The extinction of German overseas trade had not directly affected the German army, which continued to be adequately supplied with food and ammunition, but the army’s well-being came at a cost to the civilian population. The third winter of the war was known in Germany as the turnip winter because turnips in many guises found their way into the people’s basic diet. Most recognizable foods were scarce. Milk was available to people over six years old only with a doctor’s prescription. Bread was made first from potatoes, then from turnips. Eggs, which had been limited in September to two per person per week, were doled out in December at one egg every two weeks. Pork, a staple of the traditional German diet, disappeared; in August 1914, Berlin stockyards were slaughtering 25,000 pigs every week; by September 1916, the figure was 350. Sugar and butter could be purchased only in minute quantities. The 1916 potato harvest had failed, and potato ration cards were required in hotels and restaurants. Even in June that year, three Americans had walked down Unter den Linden where every window and balcony was festooned with red, white, and black flags celebrating the “victory” at Jutland and the prospect that the blockade would soon be broken. Entering the Zollernhof restaurant, they picked up the bill of fare and for the first time read, “Boiled Crow.”

  By winter, the grip of the blockade had tightened. “We are all gaunt and bony now,” wrote the English-born Princess Blücher. “We have dark shadows around our eyes and our thoughts are chiefly taken up with wondering what our next meal will be.” Coal was scarce; in Berlin only every other street light was lit. In Munich, all public halls, theaters, art galleries, museums, and cinema houses were closed for lack of heat. Women waiting in long lines to buy food were exposed to winter rain, snow, and slush. The women returned to unheated houses, where their children, having no warm clothes, had been kept in bed all day.

  These privations aroused the German people to hatred. They were bitter at their own government, which had promised a short war, brilliant victories, and a greater Germany. Their rage was far greater at their enemies, primarily Britain, which had imposed the blockade. And every day they read in their newspapers that the nation possessed a weapon that could break the blockade. Week by week, throughout Germany, the clamor rose higher: Unleash the submarines! The U-boat now became a symbol not only of revenge and victory, but also of the end of the war and peace.

  Bethmann-Hollweg, who had reluctantly approved of Jagow’s dismissal as a means of buying time, realized that he could no longer wait for Wilson. On December 9, when the American election had been over for a month and still nothing was heard from Washington, the chancellor resolved on a dramatic step: Germany herself
would propose negotiations to end the war. It was a favorable moment; the German military position had temporarily improved. The British offensive on the Somme had been drowned in blood, the Russian Brusilov campaign had been checked, and Rumania had been crushed. The kaiser, seeing a new way to seize the limelight, supported the chancellor. “To propose to make peace is a moral act,” William wrote. “Such an act needs a monarch whose conscience is awake and who feels himself responsible to God, who acknowledges his duty to all men—even his enemies; a monarch who feels no fear because his intentions may be misinterpreted, who has in him the will to deliver the world from its agony. I have the courage to do this and I will risk it for God’s sake.”

  Grudgingly, the generals and admirals agreed to delay an unrestricted submarine campaign until one last demonstration could be made to the German public and to world opinion that Germany had no other choice. Their quid pro quo was that if Bethmann-Hollweg’s attempt to bring about a peace conference should fail—as they fully expected—the U-boats would be unleashed. The new foreign minister, Zimmermann, had put it in a way the military men could accept. “Intensified submarine war toward America would certainly be facilitated,” Zimmermann said, “if we could refer to such a peace action.” Zimmermann also saw another advantage: the move would drive away an obnoxious interloper. To an off-the-record press conference, he explained that, as Germany “was threatened by a peace move by Mr. Wilson, we would fix it so this person would not have his finger in the pie.” The German peace note, circulated on December 12 and announcing that the Central Powers invited the nations at war to begin negotiations for a peaceful settlement, came as a surprise to everyone. “In a deep moral and religious sense of duty towards this nation and beyond it towards humanity, the emperor now considers that the moment has come for official action towards peace,” Bethmann-Hollweg explained to the Reichstag. William’s announcement to the army was delivered in sterner language: “Soldiers! In agreement with the sovereigns of my allies and with consciousness of victory, I have made an offer of peace to the enemy. Whether it will be accepted is uncertain. Until that moment arrives, you will fight on.”