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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
In August 1914 Kurt Riezler accompanied Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to the Supreme Headquarters in Koblenz and Luxembourg. His duties were not clearly defined and included a variety of things: He worked on war aims, parliamentary speeches, revolutionary movements, and domestic political questions. He helped interpret the chancellor's policies to the press, establish guidelines for censorship, and write anonymous articles supporting Bethmann Hollweg's policies. He could be called Bethmann Hollweg's assistant for political warfare.
Unlike most Germans Riezler sensed from the beginning that a German victory was not assured. On August 14, 1914, in his first diary entry after the outbreak of war, he noted that although “everybody was apparently happy to be able for once to dedicate himself unreservedly to a great cause, … no one doubts or appears to consider even for an instant what a gamble war is, especially this war.” Riezler also realized that the “ideas of 1914” would not retain their strength forever. “Just as the storm frightens the vermin out of the air—when it becomes quieter again, everything crawls out of its refuge—and emerges again in the state as well as in individual human beings.” This realization protected Riezler from the naive belief that Germany could bear a long war without an obvious effort to achieve a negotiated peace, without a new European order which at most allowed Germany indirect control, and without domestic political concessions to the German masses.
1. Riezler joined the press section of the German Foreign Office in 1907 and became one of Bethmann Hollweg's closest advisers soon after the latter became chancellor in 1909. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War Riezler, using the pseudonym J. J. Ruedorffer, wrote a widely-read book, Grundzüge der Weltpolitik in der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1914)Google Scholar, strongly supporting the chancellor's foreign policy. Riezler argued that war was neither desirable nor necessary for Germany to become a world power. For further biographical material and for an analysis of Riezler's political writings, see Thompson, Wayne C., In the Eye of the Storm: Kurt Riezler and the Crises of Modern Germany (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979).Google Scholar Riezler was in charge of preparing war aims in the Grosses Hauptquartier, and a coordinating office for war aims was set up in the Imperial Department of the Interior under Freiherr von Rechberg. For Riezler's influence on war aims, see Jarausch, Konrad H., The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1973), p. 479Google Scholar, fn. 12. On Aug. 16,1914, the Supreme Headquarters, composed of the Kaiser, the Supreme Military Command, and other high military staff officers, the chancellor, the state secretary for foreign affairs, the Prussian war minister, and parts of their staffs, moved to Koblenz. On Aug. 30, 1914, Riezler wrote to Otto Hammann that “one does not hear much more military information here than in Berlin.” Riezler suspected that his telephone conversations were being tapped by the military, so in a letter to Hammann on Aug. 22 he suggested that they work out a code so that their conversations would be more difficult to understand. “August” would signify “the soldiers, who have gone mad.” Zentrales Staatsarchiv (ZStA) Potsdam, Nr. 34, Nachlass Hammann.
2. Kurt Riezler: Tagebücher, Aufsätze, Dokumente, ed. Erdmann, Karl Dietrich (Göttingen, 1972), 08 14, 1914, p. 193.Google ScholarSchwabe, Klaus, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969), p. 39.Google ScholarFischer, Fritz, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918, 4th ed. (Düsseldorf, 1971), p. 185.Google Scholar
3. Riezler, Tagebücher, Aug. 22, 1914, p. 201. Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, p. 186. Riezler to Hammann, Aug. 29, 1914, ZStA Potsdam, Nr. 34, Nachlass Hammann. Egmont Zechlin, “Weltkriegsrisiko und defensive Kriegsziele,” in Schieder, Wolfgang, ed., Erster Weltkrieg: Ursachen, Entstehung und Kriegsziele, Neue Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek (Cologne, 1969), p. 201.Google Scholar For war aims of various German political parties, see Hans Dollinger, Der Erste Weltkrieg in Bildern und Dokumenten, 3 vols. (Munich, Vienna, and Basel, 1969), 2: 85–8.Google ScholarGutsche, Willibald, “Die Beziehungen zwischen der Regierung Bethmann Hollweg und dem Monopolkapital in den ersten Monaten des ersten Weltkrieges,” unpublished Habilitationsschrift, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1967, pp. 33–39, 48, 94.Google Scholar
4. An English translation of Riezler's entire document can be found in Feldman, Gerald D., German Imperialism 1914–1918: The Development of a Historical Debate (New York, 1972), pp. 125–26.Google Scholar Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht, pp. 112, 116–18. References to “imminent victory over France” on p. 116 and to “war aims program” on p. 113. Fischer's basic argument is that there was no essential difference between the two camps traditionally seen in German historiography as annexationists and antiannexationists. See Ritter, Gerhard, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk. Das Problem des “Militarismus” in Deutschland, 4 vols. (Munich, 1964–1968), 3:299–318.Google Scholar Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, pp. 196–98. Gutsche, “Monopolkapital,” pp. 92, 110–12. Zechlin, , “Deutschland zwischen Kabinettskrieg und Wirtschaftskrieg: Politik und Kriegführung in den ersten Monaten des Weltkriegs 1914,” Historische Zeitschrift, 199 (1964): 376–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. von Vietsch, Eberhard, Bethmann Hollweg: Staatsmann zwischen Macht und Ethos, Schriften des Bundesarchivs, vol. 18 (Boppard am Rhein, 1969), p. 209.Google Scholar For Riezler's prewar policy recommendations, see Grundzüge der Weltpolitik. Riezler had no illusions about Germany's limited ability to defeat Britain militarily. On Sept. 20, 1914, he wrote: “I believe that England will hold out—then we must construct a European constellation with a modern form of continental blockade and wait until this.… leads to a favorable conclusion.” Everything depended upon which power “had the longer breath.” To outlast the colonial and sea power, Britain, Germany had to dominate the European continent. As he wrote on Nov. 11, 1916, “the only way to overcome England is to unify Europe from the middle.” A unified continent would have been “hidden help against England.” Riezler, Tagebücher, Sept. 20, Oct. 6, Nov. 2, 1914, Nov. 11, 1916, pp. 208, 212, 223, 380. For Riezler's views on France, see Aug. 22, Oct. 11, 1914, pp. 201–2, 216. See also Ritter, , Staatskunst, 3:42.Google Scholar Also, Lamprecht, Karl, Krieg und Kultur (Leipzig, 1914), p. 60.Google Scholar
6. Letters Riezler to Hammann, Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, 1914, ZStA Potsdam, Nr. 34, Nachlass Hammann.
7. Fischer, Fritz, Krieg der Illusionen: Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914 (Düsseldorf, 1969), pp. 762–63, 767Google Scholar, and Griff nach der Weltmacht, p. 113, and “Weltmacht oder Niedergang,” in Schieder, Erster Weltkrieg, p. 95. Zechlin, “Probleme des Kriegskalküls,” in Schieder, Erster Weltkrieg, pp. 155–57. Letter Zimmermann to Delbrück, Sept. 9, 1914, ZStA Potsdam, Reichskanslei, Nr. 2476. There is considerable evidence in the ZStA Potsdam that there was no unanimity within the chancellor's circle concerning the exact demands which Germany should make. In a letter from Riezler in the Supreme Headquarters to Otto Hammann in Berlin, dated Aug. 29,1914, the chancellor's instructions regarding the “annexation fever” in Berlin were given: “… Due both to Belgium and Poland, certainly two very difficult problems, no final decisions have yet been made and, according to the chancellor, cannot be made at this time since it is improbable that we are on the brink of an impending peace with France; it is completely uncertain whether we can actually dictate conditions to England. You can well imagine that here there are the strongest currents among the incoming nobles with the rabble of soldiers for the entirely impossible out-and-out [Riezler's emphasis] annexation. On the other hand, one cannot allow the entirely devastated France to emerge in the old form; [we] may perhaps have to lay a hand on Antwerp. All well and good; however, everything is still up in the air. The same applies to Poland. An annexation of the Champagne, Burgundy, Franche-Comté is out of the question. It is a different story with the mining area (Erzgebiet). The purpose of the war is to secure ourselves in the east and west for all imaginable time through the weakening of our enemies. This weakening does not necessarily have to come through annexations. Annexations can become the source of our own weakness. The weakening of our enemies can be economic and financial, through trade agreements etc.” On Sept. 5,1914, Riezler again wrote Hammann that Bethmann “requests that the campaign of the intellectuals against the annexation fever be continued, but that the government not be exposed or placed into a vulnerable position.” Both letters above from ZStA Potsdam, Nr. 34, Nachlass Hammann.
8. Letter Imperial Chancellor to Delbrück, Sept. 19, 1914, ZStA Potsdam, Reichs-kanzlei, Nr. 2476.
9. 26. Versammlung deutscher Historiker in Berlin 1964, Beiheft zur Zeitschrift Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (Stuttgart, 1965), pp. 63–65.Google Scholar Riezler, Tagebücher, pp. 58–59. Ritter, , Staatskunst, 3: 43–44.Google Scholar Text of letter to Hammann in Vietsch, Bethmann Hollweg, pp. 326–27. See also pp. 205–6. Riezler never mentioned the “September Program” in his Tagebücher, nor did he ever refer to this document as a “program.” Final Bethmann quotation from letter Lerchenfeld to Hertling, May 29, 1916, in Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, p. 198. For Bethmann's interpretation of the “September Program,” see his letter to von Hertling, Count, 01 26, 1918Google Scholar, in Feldman, German Imperialism, pp. 129–31.
