On the other hand, the January strikes, which were most extensive in Berlin, reinforced perceptions of the metropolis as an unruly and unreliable place. The military command decided to limit furloughs to the city in order to prevent contamination of frontline troops. At the same time, guard units there were strengthened with an eye to snuffing out future disturbances with a whiff of grapeshot. Yet even a leader as bullheaded as Ludendorff understood that suppression alone could not contain the growing dissatisfaction; he knew that without victory in the field the discontent at home might become unmanageable. The message from Berlin in early 1918 was that if this victory did not come soon, it might not be possible at all.
Following the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, by which Soviet Russia formally left the war and ceded huge stretches of territory to Germany, Ludendorff saw fit to launch an ambitious new offensive in the West. The push was accompanied by assurances that it would finally achieve a decisive breakthrough and bring peace with honor. Evidently, many Berliners, despite all the disappointments of the past, were inclined to share this hope. As a police commissar reported, no doubt with some exaggeration: “Now that the highly promising offensive, whose success nobody here doubts, is under way, there is widespread confidence that the war is in its last stage and that peace will come this summer.”
After initial gains Ludendorff’s great March offensive faltered, as did another push in April. News of the military failures quickly dashed the springtime of hope at home. “The cessation of the offensive in the West has caused much disturbance in the Reichstag,” noted one delegate in early May. “Great expectations are replaced by deep and bitter disappointment; certainty of victory gives way to dark pessimism.” Hope flickered again in June when Berliners learned of a new thrust to the Marne. The citizenry now believed, said a police report, that victory must certainly come by fall, at the latest. Yet of course this too was an illusion. Germany’s lines were overextended and her exhausted soldiers were encountering fresh American troops for the first time. Over the course of the summer the Allies counterattacked and pushed the Germans back. Instead of imminent victory, early fall brought Berliners nothing but bad news, more food shortages, and more names with iron crosses on the tote board of death. “Berlin is indeed a gloomy place,” reported Princess Blücher in September. “The news from the front is more and more depressing, there is nothing to eat, and the methods employed to prevent the depression from gaining ground goad the people to fury. Hindenburg has forbidden anyone, whatever his personal feelings may be, to speak of the present position as being anything else than hopeful.”
Of course it proved impossible to keep the home front ignorant of what was happening on the battle front. Soldiers on leave told the unvarnished truth about Germany’s deteriorating military situation. The generals and their right-wing supporters later insisted that defeatism at home had crucially undermined morale at the front, but it would be more accurate to say that growing demoralization among the frontline troops exacerbated pessimistic sentiments at home. Still, most Germans, most Berliners, believed in the possibility of victory almost to the very end. At worst, they envisaged a negotiated settlement that would not be humiliating for the Reich.
By late September General Ludendorff, the man who had ordered soldiers shot for uttering the word “defeat,” became convinced that defeat was inevitable. He further concluded that if the fighting continued much longer, the German army might disintegrate. Backed by Hindenburg, who had reached the same conclusion, he informed the kaiser that it was necessary to appeal for an armistice. Although appalled by this turn of events, Wilhelm agreed to the armistice bid, adding that he had known all along that this was going to happen. The kaiser and his generals, however, were not about to accept personal responsibility for the defeat. They agreed that the onus of arranging an armistice should be handed to civilian politicians, who, in their eyes, had let the army and the monarchy down. As Ludendorff told the General Staff on October 1, 1918, Germany’s civilians must “now eat the soup which they have served us.” The monarch and the High Command also agreed that the new government undertaking the armistice negotiations would have to be reorganized on a more democratic basis. This would, they hoped, pull the rug out from under the radicals who were calling for a republic.
Thus on October 2, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm asked his cousin, Maximilian, Prince of Baden, a liberal, to become chancellor and to preside over a belated democratization of the Reich. This move represented a tacit acknowledgment that the four-year effort to preserve undiluted authoritarianism at home through military conquest abroad had failed. The new government hastily drew up a series of reforms making the cabinet responsible to the Reichstag and subordinating the military to civilian control. Max also appealed to President Wilson to broker an armistice based on his Fourteen Points, which, if strictly applied, would have allowed Germany to emerge from the war without losing any of her original territory. (Most Germans, from the kaiser on down, apparently believed that their attempt to steal their neighbors’ land should not oblige them to give up any of their own property, since their effort had been unsuccessful.)
Under normal conditions, the constitutional reforms introduced by Prince Max of Baden would have been heralded by progressive-minded Germans as a great breakthrough, but the shock of impending defeat, coming after four years of sacrifice and promises of victory, made the reforms seem paltry. Rather than gratitude, most Germans felt contempt for a regime whose sudden reformist ardor seemed so obviously designed to save its own skin. As for the kaiser himself, Germans understood that he was hated around the world and that his staying on the throne would constitute an impediment to a favorable peace. President Wilson had made it clear that the Allies wished to negotiate with “authentic representatives of the German people,” which did not include Wilhelm.
Berlin, which had a long history of troubles with the kaiser, was rife with calls for his ouster. Wilhelm had returned to Potsdam on October 1 to preside over the constitutional revisions. There were rumors that he was not safe in his own capital, and he apparently believed them. Toward the end of the month he left again for the front, not out of fear, but in the mistaken belief that he could convince the troops to help him keep his throne. He would not, he said, allow a few hundred Jews and several thousand workers push him from power. He further declared that after the armistice he would bring his army back to Berlin to restore order.
The reality was that he would never see his capital again. His eleventh-hour visit to the German headquarters at Spa proved to be only a way station on his flight into exile in Holland. Throughout his exile, he persisted in the belief that he owed his ouster largely to the perfidy of Berlin and its Jews. Upon the ex-kaiser’s death in 1941, Hitler sought to bring his body back to the Reich capital for a state funeral and burial, which the Führer hoped would allow him to bury the Hohenzollern Monarchy for good along with its last ruler. It turned out, however, that Wilhelm had declared in his will that he would be buried in Berlin only if the Hohenzollern Monarchy had been restored. This not being the case, the kaiser was interred at his exile residence in Doom, with the Nazi high commissioner for the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, in attendance.