would he be able to keep in check crude concepts
of military conquest?
In the plans for a peace following a German
victory which Bethmann Hollweg drew up in
September 1914, he tried to create a new Europe,
at least a new continental Europe, because he
could not conceive of defeating Britain, only of
isolating it through the defeat of Russia and
France. He said he wished to conclude a so-called
‘Bismarckian’ peace of limited annexation. On the
other hand he was convinced that France and
Russia must be so weakened that they would never
be able to threaten Germany again. Belgium, and
even a coastal strip of northern France, would
have to fall under direct or indirect German con-
trol. Through the creation of autonomous states,
carved out of the Russian Empire, but made
dependent on Germany, Russia would be pushed
far to the east. A continental economic custom
union would bring prosperity to all, and reconcile
continental Europe to German hegemony while
excluding Britain. All this he called ‘Middle
Europe’. To satisfy imperial ambitions, the
German African colonies would be augmented
with French and Belgian colonial possessions to
form German ‘Middle Africa’. The base of
Germany’s political and economic power would,
however, have lain in its domination of continen-
tal Europe. There was to be no return to the bal-
ance of power. This meant in practice the
destruction of Russia and France as great powers
and a compromise peace with Britain which would
acknowledge Germany’s continental domination
- hardly a limited Bismarckian peace!
Russian aims were both specifically territorial
and absolute. The Russian government wished to
fulfil what it regarded as Russia’s ‘historic mission’
of acquiring Constantinople and control of the
Straits. What this involved was the final destruc-
tion of Ottoman power and its replacement by a
Russian domination of the Balkans, Asia Minor
and as much of the Middle East as France and
Britain would allow.
All Allied war aims were dependent on defeat-
ing Germany. With Germany eliminated as a great
power, the reduced Habsburg Empire and the
smaller Balkan states presented no problem to
Russia. The rivalry of allies would be more serious
than the ambitions of former enemies. We can
gain a glimpse of Russian aims. According to the
French ambassador’s memoirs, the Russian
foreign minister, Sazonov, told him on 20 August
1914 that the ‘present war is not the kind of war
that ends with a political treaty after a battle of
Solferino or Sadowa’; Germany must be com-
pletely defeated.
My formula is a simple one, we must destroy
German imperialism. We can only do that by
a series of military victories so that we have a
long and very stubborn war before us... But
great political changes are essential if... the
Hohenzollern are never again to be in a posi-
tion to aspire to universal dominion. In addi-
tion to the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to
France, Poland must be restored, Belgium
enlarged, Hanover reconstituted, Slesvig
returned to Denmark, Bohemia freed, and all
the German colonies given to France, England
and Belgium, etc. It is a gigantic programme.
But I agree with you that we ought to do our
utmost to realise it if we want our work to be
lasting.
It is a commonplace to compare the peace of
Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, which the Germans
imposed on the hapless Russians, with Versailles,
and to conclude that the Germans only justly
received what they had meted out to others. The
reverse is also true. The Russians had every inten-
tion of treating the Germans as harshly as the
Germans treated Russia in defeat. When we
compare the ‘war aims’, it becomes rather haz-
ardous to pass comparative moral judgements on
them.
The French government also wanted to impose
conditions on the defeated so that they would
remain victors for all foreseeable time. The French,
alone among the great powers, were fighting the
same enemy for the second time for national sur-
vival. French territorial demands were limited to
Alsace-Lorraine and colonies. But French require-
ments went far beyond that, beyond the restora-
tion of Belgium, to the imposition of terms that as
Viviani, the French prime minister, declared to the
Chamber of Deputies in December 1914 would
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