•

choices made in late 1916 on whether to continue the war

•

the study of history is analyzing choices as stories in which people confront a situation, try to make sense of it, see their problems there, try to figure out what is the best way to solve these problems, and then take action, which then leads to new situations

•

we want to discover why choices made towards the end of 1916 merged together so that the outcome would be to continue this already horrifying war

•

United States in 1916

•

Wilson's American was neutral, and was doing extremely well as a result

•

the U.S. was becoming a supplier mainly to the British and French

•

American farmers and merchants were making a huge amount of money out of the war, these were good times for American agriculture

•

Wilson does not want America to be in the war and he has a firm grip on American foreign policy: American foreign policy in 1916 is the policy of Woodrow Wilson

•

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

•

1902-1910: President of Princeton

•

1911-1913: Governor of New Jersey

•

1913-1921: U.S. President

•

high-minded intellectual

•

willful and skillful politician and a forceful orator

•

Wilson's position on war

•

had no sympathy for what the European countries were trying to achieve

•

did not strongly sympathize with any side, wanted America to stay out of the war

•

he knew if war continued, America would be pulled into it, and so he had to help stop it, he know that Germany would not tolerate for long America being the supplier of goods to only one side

•

leverage over combatants

•

he was regarded as neutral

•

leverage over Germany since if U.S. entered war, would be bad for Germany

•

although some Germans believed it would take too long for American's presence to be felt

•

leverage over British was selling them goods and lending them money, and British in turn were the financiers of the whole Allied war effort

•

Wilson tried a peace move in early 1916 but it failed because the warring sides still had their war plans to win the war in 1916, they weren't going to be interested in peace until those plans failed, which occurred in August and September 1916, but this window of opportunity closed again by the end of the year when Germany, England, and France had new leaders with renewed war interests.

•

internally, Wilson is running for reelection in the fall of 1916

•

Berlin 1916: Bethmann and the Kaiser

•

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856-1921)

•

prominent law scholar, president of Frederick William University in Berlin

•

took care of the day-to-day running of the government

•

was just a Prussian career civil servant, was not elected, "served at the whim of his crowned master"

•

feeling great strain

•

tactically their position is good: armies are in French and Belgium territory

•

strategically they can see no clear path to win the war, the one panacea they can think of is to use their submarines to cut the ties of Britain and their allies from the rest of the world, but you use the submarines would bring the United States in the war.

•

as the war goes on, Bethmann increasingly feels that if they go into this all-out submarine warfare and all-out war domestically, that Germany is going to have to become a different kind of country where the Germany will turn into a military dictatorship dedicated to trying to wage an all-out war.

•

Germans reach out looking for urgent U.S. mediation to try to end the war

•

German ambassador:

•

-"The American people are are pacifistically inclined. The American's aim in life is the peaceful acquisition of wealth. It is only when he believes that a deep injustice has been done him that he allows himself to be carried along in a hysterical war sentiment."

•

Bethmann:

•

"The fronts in Europe are holding fast, we hope to conclude this war by winter. In case no major catastrophe should occur by then, would peace mediation by Wilson be possible if we were to guarantee Belgium's unconditional restoration? Otherwise the unrestricted U-boat war will have to be carried on in dead earnest."

•

Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff (1862-1939)

•

German ambassador to the United States and Mexico from 1908 to 1917

•

later shunned by Nazis as a person who was responsible for Germany's collapse, moved to Geneva in 1930 till his death in 1939

•

Germany is anxious to end the war quickly before matters escalate, but due to the presidential election in the fall of 1916, Wilson cannot act as he would were there no election.

•

The British leadership

•

Herbert Henry Asquith (1852-1928)

•

1808-1916: Liberal prime minister

•

series of domestic reforms including social insurance

•

lead country into the First World War

•

achievements in peacetime have been overshadowed by his weaknesses in wartime

•

there were two Asquiths: the urbane and conciliatory Asquith, who was a successful peacetime leader, and the hesitant and increasingly exhausted Asquith, who practiced the politics of muddle and delay during the Great War

•

his eldest son Raymond Asquith was killed at the Somme in 1916

•

the war overwhelms him

•

Britain is under enormous strain

•

little can hide that the fact that the front is not moving significantly and the devastation is terrible

•

August 1916: asks his cabinet to ponder what the aims would be for a continuation of the war

•

David Lloyd George (1863-1945)

•

represented the Welsh miners and working class

•

sees this moment when he would become the prime minister and the war leader

•

determined that Britain has to continue, what Britain needs to plan on a knock-out blow, sells himself as the man who will do whatever is needed

•

1916-1922 prime minister

•

Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931.

•

Landsdown

•

Lloyd George referred to this as a courageous memo

•

"Our own casualties amount to 1.1 million. We've had 15,000 officers killed not including those that are missing. We are slowly killing off the best of the male population of these islands. The financial burden which we have already accumulated is almost incalculable."

•

fundamentally, Britain is about to go bankrupt

•

Britain had been the financial hub of modern capitalism and that era is coming to a close because Britain is running out of money

•

if the war continues, Britain will change in some fundamental way that it can never recover and so might the rest of the world

•

these are liberal politicians seeing the world they grew up with disappearing before their eyes with the continuation of this war

•

Why did the moment pass?

•

The United States needs to bring the war to an end in order to keep it from engulfing them and they have leverage over the two warring sides. The Germans urgently want U.S. mediation and are for their own reasons interested in getting a cessation of hostilities before the end of the year. The British are watching their country go bankrupt and are clearly looking for options to end the war as quickly as possible. So why did the moment pass? Mainly, Wilson couldn't act quickly enough because he was consumed by his reelection campaign. In Germany, they are already moving their 1917 war plans where the military will have the upper hand. In Britain, the advocate of total war David Lloyd George had already outmaneuvered his opponents in the British cabinet and his politics are going to drive the British approach. And so by December 1916, when Wilson finally was able to make his peace move, British domestic politics and German domestic politics have already closed the window of opportunity and as this window closes, World War I transitions to a new stage.

•

the leading powers have new people in charge

•

British: going for the knock-out blow at all costs

•

In France, new leader Georges Clemenceau

•

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

•

prime minister 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920

•

one of the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

•

was from a liberal party or radical party

•

a tough fellow, his nickname is the tiger, a formidable figure

•

strong advocate of liberty, opponent of the church

•

Berlin: Bethmann steps down and Ludendorff becomes effectively the military ruler of Germany

•

December 1916: United States peace move

•

as these teams move into place and delivers a peace message in December 1916, but the moment in which the leaders of the warring countries would have been open to concluding peace, had passed.

•

the United States army is not built up enough for the German military to be very frightened by it

•

German Gamble

•

yes, if we wage all-out submarine warfare, the U.S. may enter the war

•

but we will starve the British before the U.S. can slowly built up its army and make their weight felt in the battle field, and who knows if the U.S. army

•

New War

•

Revolution in Russia

•

Russia simply can't sustain the war effort anymore and the Russian people rise up and overthrow the monarchy

•

A German telegram which offered Mexico a deal that if they join the side of the Central Powers, Germany would help Mexico gain back the territory it had lost in the 1840s including Texas and California, was intercepted by British intelligence which found a way of leaking it to the American press.

•

Wilson's decision to enter the war

•

to end the war in the right way offers the only hope to save civilization and he needs to join with other countries and do what America can to make the world safe for a democratic future and American won't have any voice on the future shape of the world unless it joins in the war to be able to be at the table and contribute

•

April 1917, United States for the first time in its history, joins in a full-scale European conflict