Berlin — undated

… In the War Office records which the Majority Socialists open to me apparently without reserves of any kind, everything that is damaging to the “Imperial clique and the stupid High Command,” to use the language of the men of Weimar, is emphasized and spotlighted. In nearly all of them Ludendorff, who with prudence and wisdom fled to Sweden,¹ is made the scapegoat. But with due allowance for the animus behind these revelations, the conclusion is inescapable: the imperial armies on the Western Front yielded because they were stopped and then defeated in battle, and that the “dagger strokes in the back” wielded by the starving civilian population of which we hear so much today were the inevitable consequence rather than the cause of the military collapse.

One of these records of defeat and failure appeals to me as having vital, lasting value, and on this account I shall give it at length.

It should be recalled how early in 1918 the Germans were cheered by an announcement of the High Command that the Ukraine, the “granary of Europe,” had been overrun, was in complete control of the invaders, and that the good people of the Vaterland, long on short rations, would soon be able “to eat their fill.” It was even suggested by a few sentimentalists in Bonn that once the iniquitous British blockade had been broken there would be quite a little food available for the starving people of Belgium and northern France. . . .

But suddenly a rude awakening. The “Bread Peace” proved to be another illusion—an invention of the hard-pressed propaganda agencies. The countless army trains returning from Kiev (August 1918) were laden, not with breadstuffs, but with wounded and invalided soldiers, and those who had eyes could see that the plan of “economic collaboration” with the Ukrainians, preached so cynically at Brest-Litovsk, was a complete failure. At this moment of crisis Karl Helfferich the Vice-Chancellor was dispatched to Kiev (August 1918) posthaste to ascertain why the promised “Bread Peace” had proved to be such a tantalizing mirage and also why the German agents who were bringing the blessings of Kultur to the benighted inhabitants of the fertile steppes were being assassinated. And indeed Field Marshal Eichhorn, the army chief, and Count Mirbach, the diplomatic agent, had both been shot down in the midst of their guards by men the Germans called “terrorists,” although the simple peasants of the devastated land hailed them, and worshiped them, as patriots who would not stand idly by while the bread was taken from the mouths of their starving children.

Herr Helfferich did not stay long in the Ukraine, probably not more than two weeks. He returned almost immediately to Berlin because, for once in perfect agreement, the High Command and the Rada government, imposed and maintained by German bayonets, told him that his life was in danger and that they could not guarantee his safety. They both admitted that the peasants were united in opposing the “economic collaboration,” as they saw it in practice. Here are a few excerpts from the doleful report which Helfferich made to the Reichstag Committee on the Conduct of the War immediately on his return to the safety and gloom of Berlin.

“Our armies of nearly half a million men,” he said, “have not liquidated the war on the Eastern Front as was hoped, and indeed announced, and the actual situation gives no promise of liquidating it in either a military or an economic sense in the months to come. We meet, it is true, with no important mass resistance either from the peasants or from the Bolsheviki, but our losses in the Kleinkrieg (guerrilla warfare) are very heavy and the audacity of these peasant marauders and other irregulars increases with every day. The Skoropadski government which we sustain with our bayonets would collapse immediately if we withdraw, but even while we sustain it with our bayonets, with great losses in men and materiel, none of the expected ‘economic potentialities’ of this land, so often reported as fabulously rich, are realized. The government which we sustain has not fulfilled any of its promises and clearly the hoped-for ‘Bread Peace’ is an illusion. Our army is not living off the country, which was the very least we were given to expect, but is daily drawing on the meager resources of the Fatherland for its rations. True, the Ukrainian authorities we have installed are ineffective and supine, but when the army detachments have taken over the collection of grain we have had no better results. The peasants refuse to sow the rich black earth plains for the next year, and what is left over from the last harvest they hide underground and keep for their own consumption. The hetman we selected to lead his people in the paths of peace and production is profuse in his protestations of good will but he produces no food. Unfortunately, too, the oil harvest is equally negligible. By the aid of British and American technicians, the wells in the Caucasus were put out of business before we arrived, and it will be months before we can hope to see them flowing again. There is, it is true, a little oil stored and still available but the Turks, our Allies, who are living on our subsidies, have the shameless audacity to challenge our right to this supply.”

In conclusion the Vice-Chancellor urged the immediate and complete withdrawal of the armies from the Ukraine. He insisted that they be sent to the Western Front, where Ludendorff, at last realizing his critical situation, was clamoring for reserves and replacements. They were sent, but arrived too late, and they came, as the High Command reports, “with a greatly deteriorated morale—as a result of their Russian experiences.”

As one good turn deserves another, I gave the Weimar people some excerpts from President Wilson’s speech in April 1918, which reveals the contempt felt throughout the civilized world for the Herrenvolk of Berlin now controlled by submarine pirates and land robbers, as demonstrated in the Ukraine. It reads:

“I am ready to discuss a just and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia, and I cannot mistake the meaning of the answer. I accept the challenge; Germany has once more said that force and force alone shall decide whether Justice and Peace shall reign in the affairs of men. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust. …”

After reading and rereading this announcement, of which, apparently, so close had been the censorship in war days, they had never heard, the Weimar people agreed with me that far from becoming its granary, the Ukraine had proved to be the graveyard of the German Empire.

“That foray into Russia was our undoing,” was the conclusion that most of the members of the National Assembly now arrived at.²

* * *

A short and saddening meeting this afternoon in the back room of Hiller’s restaurant with Mathias Erzberger, the plenipotentiary who received the Armistice terms from Foch at Rethondes ten months ago, and after tumultuous debates forced the acceptance of the Versailles Treaty upon the bewildered members of the National Assembly in Weimar last June.

He has played a notable part in German politics under the Empire, and he most certainly is a striking contrast to old Windthorst whom he succeeded as the leader of the Center or Catholic party in the Reichstag. Windthorst, whom I met several times at the Bierabenden held in the olden days in the Chancellor’s residence, was a small, placid little man, apparently fashioned out of cotton wool and much given to prolonged and eloquent silences, while Erzberger’s speech rushes along like an Alpine torrent, sweeping everything away with it, including reason and comprehension.

The poor man has a hunted look, and well he might, as in the last three months he has but narrowly escaped three attempts to assassinate him. Among his friends, as well as with his more numerous enemies, it seems to be agreed that his days are numbered.³ In the press he is generally spoken of as Der Verderber des Reiches (“The Destroyer of the Realm”), and quite respectable people, or those who pass for such, expectorate when his name is mentioned. In my judgment, this treatment is most unjust, as in accepting the Armistice he saved what was left of the disintegrating German Army and gave the present shaky government the chance, not a very brilliant one, I admit, it has to survive. He had little to say, but he did suggest that while America had won the war it had not shaped the peace in strict accordance with the Fourteen Points. I countered with pointing to the fact that at least three great powers had contributed to the victory and that it was natural they thought they should be consulted in drawing up the peace. He agreed, and then concluded our talk with the words which have become a slogan here: “The future of the German people hangs upon Wilson and the decision that must soon be made in Washington.”