1917

by Arthur Herman, PhD

  If that wasn’t enough to make the U-boat a death trap, there was no diving gear and no way to escape if something went wrong. That made serving on a U-boat one of the deadliest posts of the First World War. Throughout that war, 10 percent of British soldiers and 17 percent of German soldiers wound up being killed in action. By contrast, the death rate for U-boat crews was 30 percent.

  At the U-boat’s prow sat its torpedo tubes, and twelve torpedoes. Even though its electric batteries could barely keep the craft submerged for more than two hours at a time, that was long enough to turn this seagoing death trap into a potentially decisive weapon of war. Its ability to sink a ship without warning while leaving that ship’s crew to die on the high seas could, if repeated often enough, strike a mortal blow to the Allied war effort.

  The German High Command knew this. That was why, on January 9, 1917, Ludendorff shoved through the decision to restart unrestricted submarine warfare, commencing on the last day of the month.

  On December 22, 1916, the chief of the German Admiralty staff, Adm. Henning von Holtzendorff, had composed a memorandum that became the pivotal document for justifying Germany’s resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare. Holtzendorff had concluded that breaking Britain’s back would require sinking six hundred thousand tons of shipping per month, a figure based on a February 1916 study by Dr. Richard Fuss. Fuss had hypothesized that if Germany sent Allied and neutral merchant shipping to the bottom of the ocean at that rate, Britain would run out of ships and be forced to sue for peace within six months—well before the Americans could intervene decisively in the war. Even if the “disorganized and undisciplined” Americans did intervene, Holtzendorff assured the Kaiser, “I give your Majesty my word as an officer, that not one American will land on the Continent.”

  The submarines were ready and waiting for the final order. As 1917 dawned, Germany had a fleet of 105 submarines ready for action: 46 with the High Seas Fleet; 23 based in Flanders; another 23 based in the Mediterranean, along with 10 in the Baltic; and 3 based with Germany’s ally Turkey, in Constantinople. Fresh construction in the shipyards at Kiel, on the North Sea, ensured that, even with moderate to heavy losses, at least 200 submarines would be available for the entirety of 1917.1

  All that was needed was the will to give the order—and on January 9, 1917, the Kaiser was ready.

  When Bethmann-Hollweg arrived at the imperial headquarters at Pless on that dark and dreary day, he found that the Kaiser had already made up his mind. On Wednesday evening, the Kaiser, “with unexpected suddenness, convinced himself that unrestricted submarine warfare was imperative and declared himself decisively in its favor, even should the chancellor refuse.” Bethmann-Hollweg, ill with a cold and deeply depressed because he would have no chance to get his boss to change his mind, bowed to the inevitable. He didn’t have the heart to point out that, even with the current restrictions, German U-boats were still sinking four hundred thousand tons of shipping a month; nor did he try to cast doubt on Admiral Holtzendorff’s latest memorandum, of January 6, which said that, thanks to poor harvests in both Britain and France, Germany could force England to the peace table in just five months, provided that “all ships are free to be sunk.”2

  After two and a half years of struggling to prevent what now seemed inevitable, Bethmann-Hollweg bowed his head and said only, “Given the chiefs of general and admirals’ staffs’ analysis of the situation, I cannot oppose unrestricted submarine warfare. That means not endorsement but acquiescence in a fait accompli,” he added weakly.

  Kaiser Wilhelm tossed his head and laughed. “By God, the man still has scruples.” Then, with a flourish, the Kaiser signed the order—not realizing that he was about to change the course of the war and the balance of power in world history forever.3

  The Kaiser has “done great damage to the dynasty,” Bethmann-Hollweg later told friends, but he also said that he would not resign. “If I resign now, the emperor will say, ‘The chancellor is deserting me in this critical hour.’ ” Besides, there was the off chance that the generals and admirals were right, that the campaign would “produce a decisive success. Therefore I ultimately consider it preferable, despite all its great danger.” His friend Rudolf von Valentini was more pessimistic—and more prescient. He wrote in his diary that the decision, and Bethmann-Hollweg’s acquiescence, meant “the end of Germany.”4

  WASHINGTON, JANUARY 31–FEBRUARY 1, 1917

  MAKING THE DECISION was one thing; implementing it was another. It would take a few weeks to get all the U-boats out to their appointed stations and for the campaign to commence. It was agreed that Germany would inform the U.S. president of the decision to resume unrestricted warfare the day before the campaign began, a chivalrous if meaningless gesture. By then, it would be too late to recall any American ships at sea or to halt the slaughter that was poised to begin.

  So, all through those crucial days in January, as President Wilson was talking peace and offering to mediate a negotiated settlement—one that, as the German ambassador urgently assured Berlin, could only work to Germany’s advantage—the Kaiser and his advisers were silently readying themselves for what they hoped would be the final decisive stroke of the war. At 5:00 p.m. on January 31, a nervous Ambassador Bernstorff presented U.S. secretary of state Robert Lansing with the official declaration of unrestricted U-boat warfare against all shipping, both Allied and neutral, in the Atlantic and eastern Mediterranean. Starting on February 1, “all ships met within the zone will be sunk.” To be brutally precise, they would be sunk without warning.

  The announcement hit Wilson like a bombshell. Bernstorff tried to mitigate the message by passing along his government’s claim that if the campaign was successful, it would mean “a speedy end of the horrible and useless bloodshed” that had occurred since 1914. He also said that his government had “complete confidence in the President” and would continue to work with him on developing a formula for a negotiated peace—although Berlin was not prepared to say what terms it would accept. But once the Allies accepted Germany’s December 12 offer, the ambassador would be happy to inform Wilson of Germany’s terms personally.5

  Wilson was not fooled by these flimsy fictions, or by the claim that this resumption of submarine attacks was somehow in retaliation for Britain’s naval blockade of Germany. He knew that the Germans’ decision was a rebuke to his hopes for peace, and a direct challenge to the United States and its declared stance of neutrality. That evening, Lansing recommended an immediate severing of relations with Germany. Yet, even now, Wilson still hesitated. He told his secretary of state that “he was willing to go to any lengths rather than to have the nation actually involved in the conflict.” He had other, racialist reasons for trying to steer clear of the cataclysm sweeping Europe. White civilization’s ability to dominate the world “rested largely on our ability to keep this country intact,” he told Lansing. How would the defeat of Germany, which would be the result if America entered the war on the Entente’s side, affect that racial balance of power? “What effect would the depletion of German power have upon the relations of the white and yellow races,” he wondered aloud in a Cabinet meeting two days later. “Would the yellow races take advantage of it and attempt to subjugate the white races?”6

  It was a strange twist of mind even for a man as fascinated by race as Wilson and other Progressives of the era. It also suggests a man struggling to come to grips with a reality very different from the one he had imagined his January 22 speech would bring into being. The next day, February 1, he sat in his office “sad and depressed,” his aide Colonel House related. “I feel as if the world had suddenly reversed itself, and after going from east to west, it has begun to go from west to east and I can’t get my balance.”7

  Yet, in the end, there was only one decision to be made. When Lansing showed up that afternoon, the three men agreed: it was time to sever relations with Germany, starting immediately.

  Wilson assembled Congress for an uncharacteristically brief statement. H
e read aloud the German declaration, and then told Congress, “I have directed the Secretary of State to announce to His Excellency the German ambassador that all diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany are severed . . .”

  He added, “I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they feel at liberty to do . . . Only overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.”

  However, if American ships and American lives were lost “in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and obvious dictates of humanity,” then Wilson promised he would return to ask Congress to take all necessary steps to protect Americans on the high seas. “I can do nothing less.”

  He added at the end that “we do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government.” Indeed, “we wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles” that made America outstanding among nations, with the “right to liberty and justice and unmolested life.

  “These are the bases of peace, not war,” Wilson concluded. “God grant that we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of willful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany.”8

  With that, he left the Capitol and returned to the White House. A few hours later, Ambassador Bernstorff was asked to hand over his passport, and a few hours after that, he was headed back to Berlin.

  There it was. America had taken the first important step toward choosing sides in the Great War that was devastating Europe. How the Allies themselves chose to react would go a long way toward determining how many more steps America (and Woodrow Wilson) would be willing to take before it became the ally that could finally tip the war on the Allied side.

  Certainly, the reaction among the Allies’ friends in America, including Theodore Roosevelt, was one of delight. Roosevelt gave his full public support to the president, and even offered to raise a full division of volunteers for military service. Yet the former Rough Rider’s pleasure was mingled with apprehension. He convinced himself German barbarism was moving Wilson, entirely against his will, more and more into Roosevelt’s camp. But if American ships were sunk, and American lives lost, would Wilson have the guts to take the plunge and declare war on Germany? Henry Cabot Lodge, for one, didn’t think so. “His one desire is to avoid war at any cost,” he wrote to Roosevelt, “simply because he is afraid. He can bully Congressmen”—he was thinking of Wilson’s relentless pushing of his domestic agenda—“but he flinches in the face of danger, physical, and moral.”

  Roosevelt’s view was even blunter. “I do not believe Wilson will go to war unless Germany kicks him into it.”9

  The view in Berlin was not much different. That same evening, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, James Gerard, and his wife dined with Germany’s newly installed foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann.

  A strongly built, handsome man with a magnificent brush mustache, Zimmermann had studied law at the University of Leipzig before entering the German Foreign Service and knew America well, or believed he did. In 1900, he was recalled from his post in China (where he had witnessed the Boxer Rebellion firsthand) and returned to Germany after a cross-country train trip from San Francisco to New York. That trip sixteen years earlier was his claim to expertise on all things American, and the one thing he was most certain and expert about was that America would never go to war, especially under Woodrow Wilson.

  “You will see,” Zimmermann reassured the American ambassador Gerard, “everything will be all right. America will do nothing because Wilson is for peace and nothing else. Everything will go on as before.”

  Even the news two days later that Wilson had cut off diplomatic relations with Germany did not faze the confident Zimmermann. “At last we have gotten rid of this person as peace mediator” was the way he put it to the German media. Ever since the Sussex affair of the previous spring, when the German government, on the heels of sinking a French liner, signed a pledge agreeing to give adequate warning before sinking merchant or passenger ships, Zimmermann was quite convinced he knew Wilson inside out. He saw the American president as a lying hypocrite who “feels and thinks English” and was steeped in “shamelessness and impudence,” but lacked the guts to do anything but talk.

  Besides, Americans couldn’t go to war: with 1.3 million German immigrants living in the United States, Zimmermann was fond of pointing out, plus another 10 million Americans of German descent, any military move against Germany would trigger a national uprising.

  “In case of trouble,” he had once warned Gerard half seriously, “there are half a million trained Germans in America who will join the Irish and start a revolution.” Gerard retorted, “In that case there are half a million lamp posts to hang them on”—words that would have horrific resonance in less than a year.10

  In any case, Zimmermann was not worried. His confidence remained unshaken even as he said good-bye to Ambassador Gerard, now recalled to Washington, and it remained unshaken even as, two weeks before their final meeting, Zimmermann took specific steps that ensured America would indeed enter the war with a fury and a finality that would change the course of the conflict—and Germany’s fate.

  There was one man on the Allied side who knew all too well what Zimmermann had done, and what it could mean. He was Adm. William “Blinker” Hall, head of British Naval Intelligence and custodian of Room 40. He was the man to whom Nigel de Grey, the beloved Door Mouse, had first brought the decoded telegram Zimmermann sent on January 17. He was also the first to hear, from the British naval attaché in Washington, Capt. Guy Gaunt, the news of Wilson’s severing relations with Germany. When he did, Hall rushed at once to the residence of the American ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Hines Page, and threw Gaunt’s telegram onto Page’s desk.

  “Bernstorff goes home,” it read; “I get drunk.”

  Hall smiled at Page. “Thank God!” he exclaimed. Hall knew Page sympathized with Britain and wanted the United States to be its ally. But Hall had other reasons to smile. What he was about to reveal to Page in a few days would put the final touches on Germany’s blunder over submarine warfare, and would inaugurate an alliance between Britain and America that would change everything.11

  PETROGRAD, JANUARY 31–FEBRUARY 21

  THE SAME DAY that Ambassador Bernstorff delivered Germany’s note to President Wilson, British, French, and Italian delegates were meeting at the imperial palace at Tsarskoye Selo, outside a snowy, frozen Petrograd. They were there to work out a common Allied strategy for the coming year. The discussion over the next two weeks would turn out to be rather one-sided. The other Allies soon realized that the Russians were sadly out of touch with events, including those along their own front with the Germans, and that they were more preoccupied with problems closer to home: particularly the imminent threat of revolution in the streets.

  As the French ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paléologue, wrote in his diary, the opening meeting was not propitious. Czar Nicholas was friendly and sincere, but uncomfortable and clearly unsure of what to say; he seemed more at ease with the guests of lower rank than with the more distinguished visitors. With Gen. Édouard de Curières de Castelnau, he proved a disaster. Of Castelnau, one of France’s heroes from the early weeks of the war, who had sacrificed no fewer than three sons in the fighting, Paléologue would write, “[T]he nobility of his character and his greatness of soul cast a kind of halo round his brows.” The czar, however, seemed unaware of his guest’s brilliant record; he asked vaguely whether this was Castelnau’s first visit to Russia, and he made no mention of the loss of his sons. Paléologue was fond of the czar, but reflected afterward, “I could not help thinking to myself to what good use a monarch who really knew his business . . . would have put such an event.”12

  The next day, the discussion among the delegates “was animated and candid,” but the British, French, and Italian attendees soon realized that the Russians were there
largely to make excuses about why they couldn’t do more for a coordinated war effort. They astonished their allies by asking, “Are the campaigns of 1917 to have a decisive character? Or must we now abandon the hope of obtaining definitive results this year?”

  The British and French replied at once that it was essential that strong coordinated offensives be launched on both fronts “at the earliest possible moment.”

  That was when the Russians began ticking off their list of excuses. Russia’s former prime minister Alexander Trepov “spoke very frankly of the dangers of the internal crisis through which Russia was passing,” which in many ways the death of Rasputin had made worse. Russian general Joseph Gourko informed the other delegates that another sixty divisions would be needed before Russia could launch any serious new offensive; that would require months, possibly a year, of preparation. In the meantime, “the Russian army can only undertake minor operations,” although General Gourko did promise they would try to pin down as many German divisions as they could during the course of the year.

  This was not what the other Allies had expected. They were forced to sit stone-faced while the Russian delegation raised a number of other minor issues, including Greece, Serbia, the Scandinavian countries, and even Japan—the Russians wondered if the Japanese couldn’t be convinced to do more for the overall war effort, to take pressure off Russia. From time to time, Lord Milner would turn to the French foreign minister, Gaston Doumergue, and hiss, “This is wasting time!” Doumergue had to agree.13