Peace efforts during World War I were made mainly by Pope Benedict XV, US President Woodrow Wilson and, from 1916, the two main members of the Triple Alliance (Germany and Austria-Hungary) to bring the conflict to an end. European socialists, taking advantage of their relations on opposing sides through the Political International, also tried to open up the prospect of peace.
Even though the various social groups in the belligerent countries grew tired of the war after 1916 (the Battle of Verdun, which claimed more than 300,000 lives, marked a turning point in the war), peace proposals were aimed more at protecting national interests than at securing a lasting peace between the belligerents. The historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle uses the term "secret negotiations" rather than attempts at peace.
None of the attempts at peace succeeded, such as those by Austrian Emperor Charles I and mediated by Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma and all triggered waves of controversy, demonstrating their ambivalent nature. The peace demonstrations of 1918 were the last signs of the general will to make peace. Peace efforts were most often led by politicians or private individuals who were not, or were no longer, in power: Aristide Briand, in 1917, was no longer President of the Council, or Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, then serving in the Belgian army, which enabled governments and leaders to avoid losing face in the event of failure. But it was indeed Belgian King Albert I who was pushing for peace, just as Aristide Briand was doing in France. The aim was to obtain from Germany the full restoration of Belgian independence and the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France. But German intransigence dashed all hopes, as the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Czernin, a German ally, sabotaged the peace attempt by publicly revealing the existence of a letter from French Prime Minister Clemenceau. Clemenceau strongly denied this, while the Belgian Foreign Minister, Charles de Broqueville, resigned.
At the end of the war, Germany, judged by the Allies to be responsible for the war, was confronted with its responsibilities, including the failure of peace attempts, a confrontation that quickly turned into a nationalist revision. The study of peace efforts is a predominantly German field of research, within the broader scope of the war guilt question.
The first negotiations in 1915
German separate peace proposal to Serbia
In September 1915, Germany sent an envoy to propose a separate peace agreement to Serbia, with certain territorial enlargements around Durres and surrounding territories.
The first negotiations in 1916
German peace proposals
In 1916, Germany's domestic situation was becoming increasingly worrying due to supply difficulties caused by labor shortages.
Faced with the indecision of the White House, Imperial German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg decided to make his own peace proposal, seeing it as the last chance for a just peace, as the outcome of the war was, in his view, unfavorable to Germany. On December 12, 1916, once Romania had been largely conquered, Bethmann Hollweg proposed peace negotiations in the Reichstag on behalf of the Central Powers. Wilhelm II supported his chancellor, whose proposal he saw as a "moral act necessary to free the world from the burden that weighs on all.""eine sittliche Tat, die notwendig ist, um die Welt von dem auf allen lastenden Druck zu befreien" (In german). Quoted in Wilhelm II. an Bethmann Hollweg, volume 2, Berlin, p. 152 ff.
The haughty tone of the note, its contentHerbert Michaelis, Ernst Schraepler (publisher), , Volume 2: , Berlin, 1958-1959, p. 68 ff. (n° 40) and the fact that Germany showed no willingness to evacuate the occupied territories made it unacceptable to the Allies. The Allies' reply of December 30, 1916 spoke of an unconditional suggestion that was not a peace proposal, but rather a war maneuver.
In Berlin, it was thought that if the enemy refused the proposal, it would be they who would have to bear the consequences of continuing the war, especially the use of unrestricted submarine warfare. In this way, Germany attempted to absolve itself, and after the failure of this peace action, the Reich considered justified the tougher conduct of the war.
The rise of pacifism on the German left In 1916-1917, nineteen SPD deputies refused to vote for additional war funding, resulting in eighteen of them being expelled from the party. In 1917, they founded the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
Wilson's proposal
In parallel with the action of the Central Powers, US President Wilson sent a note to all the belligerents on December 18, 1916. He asked them to specify their war aims and presented himself as an intermediary between the countries. But Germany, opposed to any American mediation, also refused to specify its war aims, and rejected the proposal on December 26.
On January 7, 1917, Bethmann Hollweg threatened to introduce unrestricted submarine warfare. The warning was carried out two days later. On January 10, 1917,Frédéric Le Moal, La France et l'Italie dans les Balkans, 1914-1919 - Le contentieux adriatique, Paris, 2006, p. 176 the Entente presented its peace terms to President Wilson. Wilson considered them overly ambitious. In addition to restoring the rights of Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium, the Allies demanded the evacuation of occupied or annexed territories such as Alsace-Lorraine. Wilson then turned his attention to the project of creating an international league after the war, advocating a "peace without victory" or "compromise peace".
On January 31, 1917, the German Chancellor addressed a new note to President Wilson. For him, peace depended on accepting a policy of German annexation.
Negotiations with Japan
It was also during 1916 that Germany began negotiations with Japan. The aim of these negotiations was to secure a separate peace with Emperor Taishō, who had entered the war on the side of the Allies on August 23, 1914. As early as January 1915, however, Germany had tried to persuade Japan to join its cause through the German ambassador to Beijing, Paul von Hintze. Germany offered Japan freedom of action for its expansion in East Asia, even going so far as to offer financial support for the conquest of China. Between January 19 and mid-March 1916, the German ambassador to Sweden, Hellmuth von Lucius, was commissioned by Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to hold secret talks with the Japanese ambassador Uchida. The negotiations, centered on cooperation between the two countries in China, took a favorable turn: Japan agreed not to send troops to Europe but hesitated to join the German side. At the same time, Germany tried to conduct negotiations with Russia, the latter in turn informing Japan.
Negotiations in Stockholm came to a halt and resumed on March 25, 1916, between Uchida and German representatives, most notably the industrialist Hugo Stinnes. The State Secretary for the Reichsmarine, Alfred von Capelle, and the Kronprinz supported these initiatives. Japan, as an intermediary, was to lead the negotiations to achieve peace between Germany, Russia and itself. Japan soon revealed the content of the secret discussions to the United Kingdom, but continued the talks. It wanted peace with Germany in exchange for the Chinese city of Qingdao, then under German domination, but offered to mediate a peace with Russia if the Japanese-German peace was not concluded. Germany agreed to transfer its sovereignty in the Pacific to Japan, but at the price of peace with Russia.Kurt Riezler & Karl Dietrich Erdmann, , Göttingen (In German), 1972, p. 354.
By revealing the content of its discussions with Germany, Japan opened a bidding war with the Allies for even greater concessions. However, for the Allies, if Germany wished to make peace with Japan, it must also make proposals to the four great Entente powers: Great Britain, France, Russia and Japan. Negotiations between Japan and Germany continued, but failed. Lucius puts an end to negotiations on August 23. Japan signed a defense agreement with Russia in the person of Sazonov on July 3, 1916, and German suspicions, particularly those of Gottlieb von Jagow, that the Empire of the Rising Sun was playing a double game, proved justified.
The various negotiations and appeals of 1917
Charles I and the Sixtus Affair
As soon as he took office on November 21, 1916, the young Emperor-King Charles I, who had experienced the reality of the front, tried to make peace proposals to the Triple Entente, establishing further dialogues through his brothers-in-law, Princes Sixtus and Xavier of Bourbon-Parme, then officers in the Belgian army. Although the publication of secret German documents later showed otherwise, in March 1917 German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had asserted his readiness to renounce Alsace-Lorraine, then annexed to the German Empire. On March 24, Charles I wrote in a letter that he would "support France's demands for restitution of Alsace-Lorraine by using all his personal influence on his allies.", quoted in Elisabeth Kovács, Untergang oder Rettung der Donaumonarchie?, volume 2, Vienna, 2004, p. 397.
The two Princes of Bourbon-Parme took the letter to French President Raymond Poincaré, who informed King George V of the United Kingdom. A second letter followed on May 9. The Austrian Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin was informed of the peace attempt, but did not know the content of the letters. In a new proposal, Charles I was ready to put pressure on Germany to return Alsace-Lorraine to France, and to put the world to rights about Serbia occupied by Austria-Hungary. However, he refused to lose any of his empire's territories. For example, he refused to cede South Tyrol or Trentino to Italy, even though the Allies had promised Rome their support on this territorial issue
In the months that followed, Charles I's negotiations were increasingly held up by his own Foreign Minister, Count Czernin, who believed in an Austro-German military victory. On April 2, 1918, Czernin delivered a speech to the Vienna City Council in which he accused France of having prevented any peace negotiations by demanding the return of Alsace-Lorraine.Quoted in: August Demblin, , Munich, 1920, p. 60. The speech appeared on the front page of the Fremden-Blatt newspaper the following day, but as Czernin's account of the facts was untrue, Georges Clemenceau had Charles I's first letter published on April 12, 1918. The latter was then obliged to deny the concessions made to France, in particular the passages on Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium, probably under pressure from Czernin. The latter denied any knowledge of the letter, leaving his sovereign to face his allies alone. On April 16, 1918, Czernin was dismissed.
The negotiations became mired in blatant amateurism, with the United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing describing Clemenceau's approach as "a piece of the most astounding stupidity."Quoted in: Robert A. Bauer, The Austrian Solution--international Conflict and Cooperation : International, Charlottesville, 1982, p. 4. Lansing deplored the mess made by Clemenceau,François Fejtö, , Österr. Bundesverlag, Vienne, 1991, p. 284. who truly believed that peace was possible. Charles I's actions were motivated by his Catholic convictions in favor of peace, both externally: to put an end to the war; and internally: to avoid a revolution, with all its implications for the suffering of the people. The fear of revolution is reflected in his letter to Wilhelm II: "If the monarchs do not make peace, the people will." The Allies' recognition of the right of peoples to self-determination, in the fullest and most radical sense of the word, signaled the downfall of the multinational state of Austria-Hungary.
The Neuchâtel negotiations in 1917