The March of Folly (6 page)

By this time, indeed by the end of 1914 after the failure of the opening offensive to knock out either Russia or France, Germany’s rulers recognized that they could not win the war against the three combined Allies if they held together, but rather, as the Chief of Staff told the Chancellor, that “It was more likely that we ourselves should become exhausted.”

Political action to gain a separate peace with Russia was required, but this failed as did numerous other feelers and overtures made to or by Germany with regard to Belgium, France and even Britain during the next two years. All failed for the same reason—that Germany’s terms in each case were punitive, as if by a victor, providing for the other party to leave the war while yielding annexations and indemnities.
It was always the stick, never the carrot, and none of Germany’s opponents was tempted to betray its allies on that basis.

By the end of 1916 both sides were approaching exhaustion in resources as well as military ideas, spending literally millions of lives at Verdun and the Somme for gains or losses measured in yards. Germany was living on a diet of potatoes and conscripting fifteen-year-olds for the Army. The Allies were holding on meagerly with no means of victory in sight unless the great fresh untapped strength of America were added to their side.

During these two years, while Kiel’s shipyards were furiously turning out submarines toward a goal of 200, the Supreme High Command battled in high-level conferences over renewal of the torpedo campaign against the strongly negative advice of civilian ministers. To resume unrestricted sinkings, the civilians insisted, would, in the words of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, “inevitably cause America to join our enemies.” The High Command did not deny but discounted this possibility. Because it was plain that Germany could not win the war on land alone, their object had become to defeat Britain, already staggering under shortages, by cutting off her supplies by sea before the United States could mobilize, train and transport troops to Europe in any number sufficient to affect the outcome. They claimed this could be accomplished within three or four months. Admirals unrolled charts and graphs proving how many tons the U-boats could send to the bottom in a given time until they should have Britain “gasping in the reeds like a fish.”

The contrary voices, beginning with the Chancellor’s, countered that American belligerency would give the Allies enormous financial aid and a lift in morale encouraging them to hold out until aid in troops should arrive, besides giving them use of all the German tonnage interned in American ports and very likely bringing in other neutrals as well. Vice-Chancellor Karl Helfferich believed that releasing the U-boats would “lead to ruin.” Foreign Office officials directly concerned with American affairs were equally opposed. Two leading bankers returned from a mission to the United States to warn against underestimating the potential energies of the American people, who, they said, if aroused and convinced of a good cause, could mobilize forces and resources on an unimagined scale.

Of all the dissuaders, the most urgent was the German Ambassador to Washington, Count von Bernstorff, whose non-Prussian birth and upbringing spared him many of the delusions of his peers. Well acquainted with America, Bernstorff repeatedly warned his government
that American belligerency was certain to follow the U-boats and would lose Germany the war. As the military’s insistence grew intense, he was straining in every message home to swerve his country from the course he believed would be fatal. He had become convinced that the only way to avert that outcome would be to stop the war itself through mediation for a compromise peace which President Wilson was preparing to offer. Bethmann too was anxious for it on the theory that if the Allies rejected such a peace, as expected, while Germany accepted, she could then be justified in resuming unrestricted submarine warfare
without
provoking American belligerency.

The war party clamoring for the U-boats included the Junkers and court circle, the expansionist war-aims associations, the right-wing parties and a majority of the public, which had been taught to pin its faith on the submarine as the means to break England’s food blockade of Germany and vanquish the enemy. A few despised voices of Social Democrats in the Reichstag shouted, “The people don’t want submarine warfare but
bread
and
peace
!” but little attention was paid to them because German citizens, no matter how hungry, remained obedient. Kaiser Wilhelm II, assailed by uncertainties but unwilling to appear any less bold than his commanders, added his voice to theirs.

Wilson’s offer of December 1916 to bring together the belligerents for negotiation of a “peace without victory” was rejected by both sides. Neither was prepared to accept a settlement without some gain to justify its suffering and sacrifice in lives, and to pay for the war. Germany was not fighting for the status quo but for German hegemony of Europe and a greater empire overseas. She wanted not a mediated but a dictated peace and had no wish, as the Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, wrote to Bernstorff, “to risk being cheated of what we hope to gain from the war” by a neutral mediator. Any settlement requiring renunciations and indemnities by Germany—the only settlement the Allies would accept—would mean the end of the Hohenzollerns and the governing class. They also had to make someone pay for the war or go bankrupt. A peace without victory would not only terminate dreams of mastery but require enormous taxes to pay for years of fighting that had grown profitless. It would mean revolution. To the throne, the military caste, the landowners, industrialists and barons of business, only a war of gain offered any hope of their survival in power.

The decision was taken at a conference of the Kaiser and Chancellor and Supreme Command on 9 January 1917. Admiral von Holtzendorff, Naval Chief of Staff, presented a 200-page compilation
of statistics on tonnage entering British ports, freight rates, cargo space, rationing systems, food prices, comparisons with last year’s harvest and everything down to the calorie content of the British breakfast, and swore that his U-boats could sink 600,000 tons a month, forcing England to capitulate before the next harvest. He said this was Germany’s last opportunity and he could see no other way to win the war “so as to guarantee our future as a world power.”

Bethmann spoke for an hour in reply, marshaling all the arguments of the advisers who warned that American belligerency would mean Germany’s defeat. Frowns and restless mutterings around the table confronted him. He knew that the Navy, deciding for itself, had already despatched the submarines. Slowly he knuckled under. True, the increased number of U-boats offered a better chance of success than before. Yes, the last harvest had been poor for the Allies. On the other hand, America … Field Marshal von Hindenburg interrupted to affirm that the Army could “take care of America,” while von Holtzendorff offered his “guarantee” that “no American will set foot on the Continent!” The melancholy Chancellor gave way. “Of course,” he said, “if success beckons, we must follow.”

He did not resign. An official who found him later slumped in his chair, looking stricken, asked in alarm if there had been bad news from the front. “No,” answered Bethmann, “but
finis Germaniae.
”

Nine months earlier, in a previous crisis over the U-boats, Kurt Riezler, Bethmann’s assistant assigned to the General Staff, had reached a similar verdict when he wrote in his diary for 24 April 1916, “Germany is like a person staggering along an abyss, wishing for nothing more fervently than to throw himself into it.”

So it proved. Although the sinkings took a terrible toll of Allied shipping before the convoy system took effect, the British, upheld by the American declaration of war, did not capitulate. Despite von Holtzendorff’s guarantee, two million American troops eventually reached Europe and within eight months of the first major American offensive, the surrender that came was Germany’s.

Was there an alternative? Given insistence on victory and refusal to admit reality, probably not. But a better outcome could have been won by accepting Wilson’s proposal, knowing it would be a dead end, thus preventing or certainly postponing the addition of American strength to the enemy. Without America, the Allies could not have held out for victory, and as victory was probably beyond Germany’s power too, both sides would have slogged to an exhausted but more or less equal peace. For the world the consequences of that unused
alternative would have changed history; no victory, no reparations, no war guilt, no Hitler, possibly no Second World War.

Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible. Character is fate, as the Greeks believed. Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment. They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement even at the risk of defeat. Riezler’s abyss summoned them.

In 1941 Japan faced a similar decision. Her plan of empire, called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with the subjugation of China at its core, was a vision of Japanese rule stretching from Manchuria through the Philippines, Netherlands Indies, Malaya, Siam, Burma to (and sometimes including, depending on the discretion of the spokesman) Australia, New Zealand and India. Japan’s appetite was in inverse proportion to her size, though not to her will. To move the forces necessary for this enterprise, access was essential to iron, oil, rubber, rice and other raw materials far beyond her own possession. The moment for accomplishment came when war broke out in Europe and the Western colonial powers, Japan’s major opponents in the region, were fighting for survival or already helpless—France defeated, the Netherlands occupied though retaining a government in exile, Britain battered by the Luftwaffe and having little to spare for action on the other side of the world.

The obstacle in Japan’s way was the United States, which persistently refused to recognize her progressive conquests in China and was increasingly disinclined to make available the materials to fuel further Japanese adventure. Atrocities in China, attack on the United States gunboat
Panay
and other provocations were factors in American opinion. In 1940 Japan concluded the Tripartite Treaty making herself a partner of the Axis powers and moved into French Indochina when France succumbed in Europe. The United States, in response, froze Japanese assets and embargoed the sale of scrap iron, oil and aviation gasoline. Prolonged diplomatic exchanges through 1940 and 1941 in the effort to reach a ground of agreement proved futile. Despite isolationist sentiment, America would not acquiesce in Japanese control of China while Japan would accept no limitations there or restraints on her freedom of movement elsewhere in Asia.

Responsible Japanese leaders, as distinct from the military extremists and political hotheads, did not want war with the United States. What they wanted was to keep America quiescent while they moved forward
to gain the empire of Asia. They believed this could be managed by sheer insistence, augmented by bluster, fierce and pretentious demands, and intimidation implicit in partnership with the Axis. When these methods seemed only to stiffen American non-acquiescence, the Japanese became convinced, on too little examination, that if they moved to gain their first objective, the vital resources of the Netherlands Indies, the United States would go to war against them. How to achieve one without provoking the other was the problem that tortured them through 1940–41.

Strategy demanded that in order to seize the Indies and transport its raw materials to Japan, it was necessary to protect the Japanese flank from any threat of United States naval action in the Southwest Pacific. Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor strike, knew that Japan had no hope of ultimate victory over the United States. As he told Premier Konoye, “I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year.” Since he believed that operations against the Netherlands Indies “will lead to an early commencement of war with America,” his plan was to force the issue and knock the United States out by a “fatal blow.” Then, by conquering Southeast Asia, Japan could acquire the resources necessary for a protracted war to establish her hegemony over the Co-Prosperity Sphere. And so he proposed that Japan should “fiercely attack and destroy the United States main fleet at the outset of the war so that the morale of the United States Navy and her people [would] sink to an extent that it could not be recovered.” This curious estimate came from a man who was not unacquainted with America, having attended Harvard and served as naval attaché in Washington.

Planning for the supremely audacious blow to smash the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor began in January 1941 while the ultimate decision continued to be the subject of intense maneuvering between the government and armed services throughout the year. Advocates of the preemptive strike promised, none too confidently, that it would remove the United States from all possibility of interference and, it was hoped, from further hostilities altogether. And if it did not, asked the doubtful, what then? They argued that Japan could not win a prolonged war against the United States, that the life of their nation was being staked on a gamble. At no time during the discussions were warning voices silent. The Prime Minister, Prince Konoye, resigned, commanders were at odds, advisers hesitant and reluctant, the Emperor glum. When he asked if the surprise attack would win as great a victory as the surprise attack on Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese
War, Admiral Nagano, Chief of Naval General Staff, replied that it was doubtful that Japan would win at all. (It is possible that in speaking to the Emperor, this could have been a ritual bow of oriental self-disparagement, but at so serious a moment that would seem uncalled for.)

In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless yielding like Bethmann’s by the civilians to the military. Further, the grandiose mood of the fascist powers in which no conquest seemed impossible, must be taken into account. Japan had mobilized a military will of terrible force which was in fact to accomplish extraordinary triumphs, among them the capture of Singapore and the blow on Pearl Harbor itself, which brought the United States close to panic. Fundamentally the reason Japan took the risk was that she had either to go forward or content herself with the status quo, which no one was willing or could politically afford to suggest. Over a generation, pressure from the aggressive army in China and from its partisans at home had fused Japan to the goal of an impossible empire from which she could not now retreat. She had become a prisoner of her oversize ambitions.