¹ Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, vol. 111(1965) and iv (1968). The fourth volume had been completed before Ritter's death in July 1967, and has been published by his daughter, who contributes a short preface.

² Otto Hintze, for instance, in his way a great historian, used to argue in this fashion. He knew that the predominance of the army in Germany fostered militarism and deprived public life in Germany of ‘the greater freedom of movement that other peoples enjoy’; but, he said, the army was necessary to Germany in view of the world situation; therefore a liberalizing process could only come about when ‘the oppressive ring’ of Germany's enemies had been broken (seeHintze, O., Machtpolitik und Regierungsverfassung, an article of 1913, reprinted on pp. 424–56Google Scholar of a recent edition of his writings, Stoat und Verfassung, ed. G. Oestreich. Meinecke was even more confused. In the war he argued that Germany did indeed mean Might, whereas the West meant Right; but that both Might and Right were essential parts of the historical process, so that they were both equally good in the eyes of God.

³ Fischer, F., Griff track der Weltmacht (1961).Google Scholar

³ See Ritter, G., Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (1954).Google Scholar

⁵ In Historische Zeitschrift, 194(1962), 3. Heft, p.646 ff: ‘So vermagich das Buchnichtohne tiefe Traurigkeit aus der Hand zu legen: Traurigkeit und Sorge im Blick auf die kommende Generation.’

⁶ See Ritter Staatskunst, II, 305. The document is a letter of Moltke to Conrad on 19 March 1909; its archival reference is: Vienna, Kriegsarchiv, Generalstab Faszikel 89 (a), Operationsbüro Kuvert 1909x002F;VIII.

⁷ Ritter, Staatskunst, II, 294.

⁸ These problems are more fully discussed in Stone, N.,‘Moltke-Conrad’, in The Historical Journal, IX, no. 2 (1966).Google Scholar

⁹ In vol. IV, p. 276, he admits that Austria-Hungary put up an ‘ans Wunderbare grenzende politische Gesamtleistung’.

¹⁰ This was certainly the impression gained by many people in England. Ramsay Macdonald regarded the Peace Resolution as an indubitable expression of the German people's will. The Commons Debate of 26 July 1917 on the subject is interesting (see Hansard 96 H. C. Deb. 5s, 1479–1590).

¹¹ In Encounter, Nov. 1968.

¹² We know this from the celebrated Riezler diary, brilliantly discussed by Geiss, I. in Die Erforderlichkeit des Unmöglichen (Hamburger Studien, no. 2, 1965).Google Scholar The diary of Riezler, a close confident of the Chancellor, was revealed and evaluated by K. D. Erdmann, ‘Zur Beurteilung Bethmann Hollwegs’, in Geschickte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 15/9 (September 1915).

¹³ Few people care nowadays whether the German government were ‘guilty’ or otherwise in July 1914. Recently discovered material tends to bear out the theses of Albertini, L., The Origins of the War of 1914 (3 vols., 1952–1957)Google Scholar, and Schmitt, B.E., The Coming of the War, 1914 (2 vols., 1930)Google Scholar, that the German government fully expected a great war to come from their policy of encouraging Austria-Hungary to take action against Serbia. Lichnowsky, for instance, the German ambassador to England, wrote an interesting and revealing account of the last month of peace for the record, on 19 August 1914. He had seen Zimmermann in Berlin, in the Foreign Office, on 5 July, and was told that Austria-Hungary proposed an ‘energisches Vorgehen’ against Serbia; Zimmermann said that Germany would support Austria-Hungary, even if it meant war. Lichnowsky goes on, ‘Der Herr Unterstaatssekretär schien zu meinen, dass wenn der Krieg fx00FC;r uns doch unabwendbar sei, infolge der unfreundlichen Haltung Russlands es doch besser sei, ihn jetzt zu ftihren, als später’, at which Lichnowsky strongly protested, saying ‘dass ein kriegerisches Vorgehen Oesterreichs gegen Serbien zweifellos den Weltkrieg nach sich ziehen wiirde’. (This report appears in the archives of the Auswärtiges Amt, on microfilm in the Foreign Office Library, London, with the notation Der Weltkrieg Bd. 28. A version of this report appears also in Lichnowsky's memoirs, Heading for the Abyss, pp. 4–16.) The Riezler diary makes the same point. Bethmann Hollweg does not seem to have wanted war; at the same time, he did almost nothing to prevent it, merely accepting in a fatalistic way that it had to come.

¹⁴ See Geiss, I., Derpolnische Grenzstreifen 1914–1918(1960);Google Scholar on pages 23 ff. Geiss discusses the Polish problem, as it struck the Germans, in general terms. No better statement of the problem exists.

¹⁵ See Gatzke, H.W., Germany's Drive to the West (1950).Google Scholar This is a good, though somewhat heavy, account; it is now to some extent supplanted by Fishcher's work, as its author recognizes in a preface to a paperback edition (1966).

¹⁶ The generals never forgave Kühlmann for his supposed weakness over the Roumanian peace. Count Herding had to defend Kühlmann again and again, saying that the alliance with Austria-Hungary would not have survived if Germany had tried to annex parts of Roumania. This argument did not out ice with the generals, who, if anything, would have welcomed annexations’ in Roumania on that count alone. Ludendorff emerges from Ritter's volumes, no doubt correctly, as a very stupid man. He did not appreciate that, to keep going such an artificial system as Bismarck's Prussian-dominated ‘Little Germany’, the Germans had to maintain the even more contrived existence, of the Habsburg Monarchy. In a Greater German context, Ludendorff and his like would cease, with Old Prussia, to have any meaning or relevance—and so indeed it proved. Ritter provided some interesting instances of the generals’ harrying of Kühlmann. Hindenburg complained to the Kaiser that Kühlmann ‘wastes his time with an American game of chance, by the name of Poker’— apparently Kühlmann played poker with the Bulgarian and Turkish delegates in the intervals of negotiating the Treaty of Bucharest. He was also criticized for duck-shooting with Czernin in the Danube Delta; his chauffeurs were bribed by the soldiers to tell tales, and a Major Kessler complained that Kühlmann amused himself in ways ‘other than is customary among Prussian officers and civil servants’. In the end, Ktihlmann fought a libel action against a nationalist newspaper that repeated these tales (Ritter, IV, 231 f.).

¹⁷ See Auswärtiges Amt Oesterreich, 95 geheim, Bd. 5 (Denkschrift of 22 April 1918 by Wedel for Herding). Wedel's predecessor, Tschirschky, said much the same (cf. A.A. Wk. 20c, geh., Bd. 1a: Tschirschky to Jagow, 29 Oct. 1915). The army leaders were certainly against taking in the Austrian Germans, Hindenburg remarking, in October 1917, ‘Das Deutschtum in Oesterreich ist nichts wert’ (Ritter, IV, 190). Fear of Greater Germany was certainly an important theme.