had been in a state of internal dissension. Conflicts between political power and military power became more and more acute, and they led to differences between Berlin and Vienna. Bethmann-Hollweg realized that tactically Vienna was in the right, and that a more moderate policy would have been in the interests of the German Empire, but Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the heads of the German Admiralty refused to give way. These disputes were complicated by an analogous struggle in Parliament. The whole of German policy was oscillating between two diametrically opposite tendencies. There was a moderate section which desired early peace negotiations, in which Germany would be satisfied to compromise, while the military authorities and the nationalistic politicians of the Right aimed at nothing less than a military victory which would enforce heavy peace terms upon their opponents.
The adherents of the former tendency, the most prominent representative of which was Erzberger with his group, started open Parliamentary warfare at the beginning of July 1917 against the military authorities and also against Bethmann-Hollweg, their objection to him being that he went too far in his concessions to the Chauvinists. In the middle of July 1917 Bethmann-Hollweg fell, and nobody in Germany was sorry for him, as he was equally disliked by the Chauvinists. Vienna alone attempted to save him, fearing that his successor might be even more dependent upon the supreme military command.
This proved to be the case, as the tactics of Michaelis soon showed. On July 19th, for the first time, the Reichstag passed a resolution that Germany desired peace, concluded by an agreement between the two belligerent parties. Michaelis, however, had not the courage, in the face of the military authorities and the reactionary parties, to give the Pope any definite assurance on the subject of Belgium when he was preparing his peace note in June and July. Kühlmann was in the same predicament with regard to the German reply to Benedict’s note on September 19, 1917. In this internal struggle Vienna and the Vatican gave all possible assistance to the moderate tendencies, and in fact the whole of Erzberger’s action had been carried out in agreement with them. It did not produce any substantial results, even when Michaelis also had to retire and was replaced on November 1, 1917, by Count Hertling, the Bavarian Prime Minister. Hertling also soon succumbed to the influence of the Supreme Command, and this final victory of the German
