The German-American "dialogue" of October 1918: an attempt at rethinking

On October 5, 1918, the German Empire sent a request to the United States for a truce. But the truce will be signed only on November 11. The author once again turns to the analysis of the reasons for more than a month delay with the end of the Great War, as well as its consequences. The exchange of 7 notes between the German and US authorities in the period of October 5th - October 27th can be named after S. Huffner not only "the most amazing of all that ever preceded the conclusion of an armistice", but also resembling the academic debate of specialists belonging to various scientific schools. It is difficult to say what exactly Wilson sought from the German authorities. The "political" condition for the beginning of peaceful negotiations in each of his three notes can be interpreted as a demand for the abdication of Wilhelm II, as a demand for the reduction of the imperial power to zero and even as a demand for the abolition of the monarchy in general. On the eve of sending his third note to Chancellor Max Baden, the President confessed to the ministers that he was afraid of Bolshevism in Germany. To block Bolshevism, he said, this country needed an emperor on the throne. Nevertheless, little thought about the consequences of his actions, Wilson did not soften the tone of his note. In our opinion, the main role in delaying the war was played not by the German generals, but by the fact that Wilson actually demanded to change the political regime of the German Empire, declaring his reluctance to deal "with military gentlemen and monarchical autocrats". Copying Abraham Lincoln, Wilson, unlike him, did not give all his energy to the cause of an early end to the war. In a situation where Europeans thirsted for peace, he continued to view the war almost as a crusade for the Anglo-Saxon type of democracy and intended to implant it as a "fanatical sectarian." In Germany, where the liquidation of the monarchy was not required even by the Marxist Social-democratic party, the American demand for the elimination of "arbitrary power" was regarded by the elite initially as a requirement of merely limiting the powers of the monarch. But by the time the US agreed to a truce, the "crisis of renunciation" that had erupted in Germany under the influence of Wilson's third note of October 23rd, was no longer developed in one dimension or even in two, but rather in three: it affected not only the ruling elite and the public, but also the masses. Since the figures of authoritarian monarchs became the main obstacle to peace, the rising lower society posed a logical question: why are they needed? And in the course of actions on November 3rd - November 9th, the demand for republic, virtually absent earlier, sounded everywhere. On November 9th, the German Empire was proclaimed republic. The Weimar Republic, however, turned out to be "a democracy without democrats". Very soon, instead of the emperor in Germany ersatz-Kaiser Hindenburg appeared, and then "leader" Hitler and "great German madness." The author considers that the US president, whose intervention interrupted the evolutionary constitutional process in Wilhelm's empire, was also to some extent responsible for such development of German history.

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