w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 111the battlefield—that helped spur German resentment of the peace
treaty.) Despite the mixed and fl uctuating signals from the German
military high command, the German government concluded the time
had come to seek peace.
If the actual military results achieved by the AEF were modest, it
accomplished what Wilson, Baker, and Pershing had intended. Th e
U.S. Army shored up Allied lines at a critical moment during the
German spring off ensives, held quiet sectors to free up experienced
French troops for operations in other sectors, and then added to the
pressure that helped trigger German withdrawals in late summer–early
fall. Thus the AEF provided the critical edge necessary for Allied
success, even if the Americans scored no great victories. In all the AEF
fi eld operations in summer 1918, the hand of the American commander
in chief never appeared. True to his initial decision to run the war as
the anti-Lincoln, Wilson disdained “active direction” and left Pershing
to his own devices, demonstrating that a political leader could secure
wartime national objectives on the battlefi eld without close supervision
of military operations. American troops made a contribution that
friend and foe alike would have to acknowledge, letting the president
negotiate from a position of strength when the Central Powers sued for
peace.
This moment came sooner than most on the Allied side had
expected. Seeing Wilson as the best hope for reasonable terms, the
Germans reached out to him in early October 1918 about the possibility
of an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points, while pledging to
replace the government’s military leaders with civilians. Wilson replied
with a note on October 8 to confi rm that the German Army would
withdraw from all occupied territory. He did so without fi rst informing
the Allies, who, afraid that the American president would pursue a
separate peace on terms they could not support, then tried to add con-
ditions (e.g., reparations for shipping losses). Wilson himself insisted
the German government would have to be democratized—fulfi lling his
initial April 1917 demand for regime change—and made clear that the
armistice terms would have to make it impossible for the Germans to
recant later and resume fi ghting. In eff ect, the president tried to thread
his way between American wishes for peace and excessive Allied
demands. When the Germans accepted the stiffer revised terms,