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Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg

Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg (29 November 1856 – 1 January 1921) was a German politician who was chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He oversaw the German entry into World War I and played a key role during its first three years. He was replaced as chancellor in July 1917 due in large part to opposition to his policies by leaders in the military.

Between 1884 and 1899 Bethmann Hollweg rose rapidly through positions in the Prussian government and served briefly as a member of the Reichstag in 1890. The experience left him unsympathetic to the party system and an independent for the remainder of his political life. Emperor Wilhelm II appointed him chancellor in 1909, in part because he approved of his conciliatory political style. His eight years as chancellor showed him to be cautiously supportive of some liberalization but also a firm believer that a parliamentary monarchy was the best form of government for Germany.

During World War I, Bethmann Hollweg thought that Germany was so threatened that it needed to take all necessary measures to survive. He assured Austria-Hungary of Germany's full backing and supported its aggressive demands against Serbia. He held back on German mobilization until after Russia's so that Germany would not appear to be the aggressor. Although he supported the invasion of Belgium as necessary given Germany's threatened position, he saw it from the first as an injustice that would need to be righted. He fought against the implementation of unrestricted submarine warfare but in the end bowed to pressure from the military and the conservatives in the Reichstag and approved its use. As the war progressed, many who had supported him in parliament felt that he had been in his position too long to be able to negotiate an acceptable peace. When both Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff and Chief of the General Staff Paul von Hindenburg threatened to resign if he was not replaced as chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg submitted his resignation to the Emperor.

In his Reflections on the World War that remained unfinished when he died in 1921, Bethmann Hollweg stressed Germany's difficult geographical position, admitted that the government and the Emperor had made mistakes leading up to the war and that Germany bore some of the guilt for it but that only a "common guilt" could have led to such a great catastrophe.

Family and education
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was born at Hohenfinow in Brandenburg, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia, the largest state within the German Empire. He was the son of Prussian official Felix von Bethmann Hollweg. His grandfather August von Bethmann-Hollweg had been a prominent law scholar, president of Frederick William University in Berlin and Prussian minister of culture. His great-grandfather Johann Jakob Hollweg had married a daughter of the wealthy Frankfurt am Main banking family of Bethmann. His mother, Isabella de Rougemont, was a French Swiss and his grandmother Auguste Wilhelmine Gebser came from the Prussian noble family of Gebesee.

He was educated at the Schulpforta boarding school in the Prussian province of Saxony and studied law at the Universities of Strasbourg and Leipzig and at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1875 to 1879. He then served as a one-year volunteer in the military before entering on his career path. On 17 June 1889 Bethmann Hollweg married Martha von Pfuel, the niece of Prussian Minister President Ernst von Pfuel. The marriage produced four children, one of whom died young. Their oldest son August Friedrich was killed on the eastern front on 9 December 1914.

District administrator and provincial governor
Bethmann Hollweg began his career as a royal government assessor in December 1884. The next year, after his father expressed the wish to give up his post as district administrator (Landrat), Theobald took over the office on an interim basis and in January 1886 secured it by official appointment. At the age of 29, he became the youngest district administrator in the province of Brandenburg.

While Bethmann Hollweg's father had conducted his office in the more autocratic style of the Prussian landed Junkers, Theobald drove to the villages and spoke with both landlords and workers. His work was based on the principle of voluntary participation by the bourgeoisie rather than on authoritarian instructions. The approach made him one of the most progressive district administrators of his time.

A coalition of three parties put Bethmann Hollweg forward as a joint candidate for the 1890 Reichstag election. He won by a majority of one vote, but protests by opposing candidates over alleged irregularities led to a new election in which Bethmann Hollweg did not participate. It was the end of his brief career both as a member of the Reichstag for the Free Conservative Party and as a party politician. For the remainder of his life he was an independent and unsympathetic to the party system.

In 1896, after ten years as a district administrator, he received two rapid promotions and then in 1899, at the age of 43, became the youngest provincial governor (Oberpräsident) in Prussia as the head the province of Brandenburg. His rapid professional success had been made possible by his talent for statesmanship, his grandfather's prestige, and by the intercession of Reich Chancellor Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who had been watching his rise for some time.

Prussian minister of the interior
On 21 March 1905 Bethmann Hollweg was appointed Prussian minister of the interior. He accepted the task only reluctantly, as he held views that "did not fit into Prussian schematism". Noting early on the slow drifting apart of Wilhelmine society into an increasingly nationalistic, militaristic right and an increasingly radical republican left, he tried to steer a conciliatory course in domestic policy. He wanted, as he himself often said, to find a "policy of the diagonal" between Germany's conservative and liberal-radical currents. To the newly appointed Chief of the Reich Chancellery he wrote:"The elements to be reconciled no longer have any inner relationship on which to base mutual political views. They stand with respect to each other like members of different worlds. Hopefully you will succeed in having a balancing effect, for without gradual assimilation we will arrive at conditions that are quite untenable."His focus early on was directed at the Social Democratic Party's commitment to the existing state structure. In his inaugural speech in the Prussian House of Representatives on 6 April 1905, on the subject of the left's proposal for the creation of a people's welfare office, he described public welfare as "the most important and serious task of the present day". Bethmann Hollweg promised to consider the application thoroughly and sympathetically, pointing out that "liberation from bureaucratic fetters is only possible with the free participation of all circles of the people". When the House dealt with the question of Prussia's three-class franchise that weighted votes by amount of taxes paid, Bethmann Hollweg opposed Prussia's adoption of the national Reichstag's universal manhood suffrage. He warned against "democratic egalitarianism" but praised the "tremendous aspirations of our working class".

In the same year, Polish-speaking schoolchildren in the Province of Posen, supported by the Catholic clergy, went on strike demanding that lessons be given in Polish again. The conservatives wanted to increase military presence in Posen, but Bethmann Hollweg rejected the idea. Instead he authorized that in the future religious instruction be given in Polish.

Reich state secretary of the interior
Bethmann Hollweg was appointed state secretary of the interior by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow immediately after the 1907 Reichstag elections. Bethmann Hollweg was again reluctant to take on the post, but since he viewed the appointment as an imperial order, he ultimately saw no alternative but to accept.

In October 1907 he attended the German Workers' Congress, a general meeting of Christian trade unions, where the appearance of an imperial state secretary was seen as a major step forward.

In December he opposed the creation of a Reich labor office but rejected the claim that in sociopolitical matters the government would not act. "I have never discovered even a trace of tired skepticism in this activity; in it, albeit far removed from the parliamentary arena, our present-day Germany has been formed." He felt that the "searching and groping for the new takes place among the people themselves, not among the people's representatives". It was therefore necessary to "make room for the new views that have emerged from the changed economic and social conditions".

On Bethmann Hollweg's advice, the Emperor announced electoral reform in the Kingdom of Prussia in his speech from the throne of 20 October 1908. (The Prussian electoral system was in fact not finally reformed until 12 November 1918.) Wilhelm II promised "organic further development", which he described as one of the "most important tasks of the present". Reichstag deputy Friedrich Naumann, who liked the state secretary's style, later particularly emphasized Bethmann Hollweg's positive influence on the Emperor.

Appointment and reactions
Emperor Wilhelm II appointed Bethmann Hollweg Reich chancellor on 7 July 1909. He had been deputy to Chancellor von Bülow during his time in office, and the Emperor knew Bethmann Hollweg's willingness to compromise in order to calm the rivalry between parties. His modest appearance and successes as an advisor to Wilhelm had also put him in the Emperor's good graces. Bethmann Hollweg's appointment had previously been suggested in political circles, including by Friedrich von Holstein in the Foreign Office.

Overall there was a positive response from all parties to the appointment, although the Catholic Centre Party had reservations, and for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Bethmann Hollweg represented just another chancellor loyal to the Emperor. But the benevolent neutrality of the overall party spectrum resulted from Bethmann Hollweg's many facets. He was not a Junker in the true sense of the word, which the leftists took as a positive sign. His family history made him appreciated by the National Liberals and the Centre, and his activity as an administrative official had created trust among conservatives.

The response from abroad was exclusively friendly. The French Journal des Débats spoke of a "reassuring sign" for Franco-German relations. The French ambassador in Berlin, Jules Cambon, sent the new Reich chancellor an official letter of congratulations, something that had never happened before. The German Embassy in London under Paul Wolff Metternich wrote that British King Edward VII considered the new chancellor an "important partner for the maintenance of peace".

Domestic policy
In January 1910 Bethmann Hollweg wrote that the government faced the "great task of the political education of the people, eliminating the rule of slogans and superficial evaluations". He saw the basic task of a statesman as a "kind of listening to developments". In 1910 he submitted a bill to reform Prussia's three-class electoral law, but it was rejected by the Prussian state parliament (Landtag). In the Reichstag he pushed forward the reform of the constitutional status of Alsace–Lorraine, which had been taken from France after its defeat in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War. It was given its own constitution with a bicameral parliament, the lower house of which was elected under Reichstag suffrage (universal manhood suffrage). The Reich Chancellor's bill was adopted on 23 March 1911 in the face of strong protests from conservatives and the military. Unlike in Prussia, Bethmann Hollweg was not opposed by any influential conservatives, which allowed his democratic constitutional initiative to pass.

Foreign policy
In foreign policy Bethmann Hollweg from the beginning attached great importance to an understanding with Great Britain. He considered German-Austrian relations to be so problem-free that he thought it more important to prove friendly to the other powers. He appointed Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter as state secretary for foreign affairs. It was initially seen as a good appointment but later proved to be a disappointment. The impulsive Swabian contrasted with the Reich Chancellor not only in his temperament but above all in foreign policy matters. Although Wilhelm II had called for the Empire to increase its advocacy of "peaceful and friendly relations with the other powers" in his 1909 speech from the throne, Kiderlen-Waechter's diplomacy in connection with the 1911 Second Moroccan Crisis – when he sent a German gunboat to the African nation over which France had political control – was not in keeping with the Emperor's words. Bethmann Hollweg was often reproached for his passivity during the crisis. The fact that he gave Kiderlen-Waechter a free hand in spite of his misgivings about his approach can be explained by his feeling that he lacked expertise in foreign policy and did not consider himself competent to stand up to Kiderlen-Waechter on the Morocco issue.

The Morocco crisis was settled with a Franco-German agreement in which the Empire relinquished its claims to Morocco in return for New Cameroon (Neukamerun), a land extension of German Cameroon (Kamerun). Conservative Colonial State Secretary Friedrich von Lindequist protested strongly and resigned in November 1911. Instead of appointing the successor Lindequist proposed, Bethmann Hollweg chose the liberal governor of Samoa, Wilhelm Solf. Solf was one of the few foreign policy makers in the Empire to fully support Bethmann Hollweg.

German-Russian relations had moved in a positive direction before the Moroccan crisis. In 1910 Tsar Nicholas II had been in Potsdam, which Bethmann Hollweg described in a letter as a "stepping stone to an understanding with England". According to records of the Russian court, the Tsar saw a belligerent involvement with Germany as "receding into the far distance". In 1912 the Reich Chancellor took advantage of a meeting between the Emperor and the Tsar in Baltischport (now Paldiski, Estonia) for a friendly discussion. After talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov and Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov, Bethmann Hollweg wrote that he had been able to establish "trusting and friendly relations". On 25 July 1912 Walther Rathenau stayed at Hohenfinow to talk to the Chancellor about his trip to Russia. Rathenau noted in his diary that Bethmann Hollweg wanted to "maintain the modus vivendi in the Russian question as well". In foreign policy matters, Rathenau proposed to Bethmann Hollweg a European customs union, a halt to British imperialism in the Mediterranean, then an alliance with Great Britain for the purpose of understanding and colonial acquisitions for Germany. The ideas were not the Chancellor's, but he signed the list of proposals with "generally agreed".

Bethmann Hollweg's second foreign policy problem was the expansion of the German fleet that Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz wanted. The Chancellor intended to use dialogue with the United Kingdom to facilitate a cautious expansion of the fleet and at the same time to improve relations through honesty. Due to threatening speeches by German conservatives in the Reichstag and British conservatives in the Houses of Parliament, the efforts were unsuccessful.

In the 1912 Haldane Mission – an attempt by the British diplomat Richard Haldane to come to an agreement on the naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany – Bethmann Hollweg failed again to reach a settlement. Germany wanted Britain to pledge neutrality in any future war while Britain sought to slow down the two countries' race to expand their navies. Bethmann Hollweg nevertheless enjoyed a good reputation with British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey: "So long as Bethmann Hollweg is chancellor, we will cooperate with Germany for the peace of Europe." Bethmann Hollweg negotiated treaties over an eventual partition of the Portuguese colonies and the projected Berlin–Baghdad railway, the latter aimed in part at securing the Balkan countries' support for a German alliance with the Ottoman Empire.

Although Bethmann Hollweg was critical of naval expansion, in April 1912 he pushed forward a Reichstag bill providing for a buildup of the army. A year later he submitted the next defense bill which asked for a 136,000 man increase in the army and almost 1.3 billion marks in additional funds for it and for arms purchases. The SPD spoke out vigorously against the military buildup. Bethmann Hollweg combined the bill with a cover bill that provided for an "extraordinary defense contribution" from all assets over 10,000 marks. Since the SPD had always called for direct taxes on the wealthy, it agreed to the bill after a contentious debate.

The Zabern Affair and censure by the Reichstag
In late 1913 the Zabern Affair shook German politics and public opinion. In Zabern (Saverne) in Alsace, a young German lieutenant insulted Alsatians in a speech to soldiers and called for rebellious Alsatians to be stabbed. He was only minimally held to account by his colonel, and after protests by Alsatians, the military had some citizens arrested illegally.

When Bethmann Hollweg declared in the Reichstag on 3 December 1913 that the Kaiser's uniform must be respected under all circumstances, he gave the impression that he was fully behind Minister of War Erich von Falkenhayn. The parties that had hitherto supported Bethmann Hollweg because of his progressive policies – the Centre, the Progressive People's Party, the National Liberals and the Social Democrats – united in introducing a motion of censure against him. When Philipp Scheidemann (SPD) pointed to the exemplary constitutional conditions in Great Britain and the Netherlands, Bethmann Hollweg responded with dismissive, angry heckling. The Chancellor of the center seemed to have moved to the right even though he was reviled as a democrat in national-conservative circles. In his Reichstag speech, he had spoken against his convictions in order to preserve the neutrality of the government and to underpin his loyalty to the Emperor. Ultimately, though, he had given in to the military and fallen into a position of weakness. For the first time he confessed that he regretted not having a party behind him.

From the "blank check" to the outbreak of war
At the turn of the year 1913/1914, the European atmosphere had calmed, and Bethmann Hollweg felt a new optimism in foreign policy. It seemed to him that the Treaty of Bucharest, which concluded the Second Balkan War, had solved the problems in the Balkans in the medium term, and a recent exchange of letters with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov had stabilized the situation in the east. The diplomatic crisis over the 1913 German military mission to the Ottoman Empire had been overcome in spite of the pan-Slav sentiment in the Russian Empire.

The Reich Chancellor's statements from the time reveal that he was anxious to prevent a major European war. Russia's actions in northern Persia also brought Britain temporarily closer to Germany. When in the early summer of 1914 the German government learned of a British-Russian naval agreement, it cast a shadow over Bethmann Hollweg's foreign policy. Disappointed in his confidence in British Foreign Minister Edward Grey, he wrote to the German embassy in Constantinople that it was a matter of muddling through without any major conflicts. A few days later, after a disagreement with the Chief of the Army's General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, he left for a summer vacation at his home in Hohenfinow. It was abruptly ended shortly after his arrival by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on 28 June 1914.

After the assassination of the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Wilhelm II issued the famous "blank check" to László Szőgyény, Austria-Hungary's ambassador in Berlin. It affirmed that Germany would uphold its alliance obligations with Austria-Hungary and stand at its side. Bethmann Hollweg later wrote in his Reflections on the World War that "the Emperor's views coincided" with his own. On 6 July 1914, during the July Crisis that led up to the outbreak of World War I, the Reich Chancellor again assured the Austrian embassy that Germany would fight faithfully alongside its ally. Austria-Hungary's aggressive demands against Serbia thus took place with Bethmann Hollweg's backing.

At the same time, he had State Secretary of the Foreign Office Gottlieb von Jagow telegraph Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London, that "everything must be avoided that could give the appearance that we are inciting the Austrians to war". Thinking that he could localize the conflict, Bethmann Hollweg endorsed the continuation of the Emperor's absence aboard his yacht. The Chancellor gave Austria a free hand, although not without criticism, as the French ambassador in Vienna testified. His confidant Kurt Riezler noted that Bethmann Hollweg expressed early fears that if Austria adopted too expansionist a tone, the conflict could no longer be contained in the Balkans and "could lead to world war".

Even when the Foreign Office finally knew in July 1914 that Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia was to be formulated in a way that Serbia could not accept, the Chancellor let the Austrians have their way. The Reich Chancellery stated when asked, "We cannot comment on the formulation of the demands to Serbia, since it is Austria's affair." Believing in Great Britain's neutrality, Bethmann Hollweg telegraphed to the London Foreign Office: "Since Austria is safeguarding vital interests in its action, any interference by Germany as its ally is out of the question. ... Only if forced will we take up the sword."

Serbia's reply to the Austrian ultimatum accepted almost all of Austria-Hungary's demands. When it arrived in Berlin on 27 July 1914, the Emperor saw no need for war. He suggested that Austria should occupy Belgrade with the aim of furthering negotiations towards a permanent solution to the Balkan question. Bethmann Hollweg, seeing the threat of British entry into the war, briefly advocated the halt-in-Belgrade proposal combined with Austrian renunciation of annexation of Serbia. But he knew that it would be considered unsatisfactory by the Russians. When the Emperor "threatened to weaken again", the Chancellor and the Foreign Office undermined the proposal calling for restraint by forwarding the letter from the German ambassador in London belatedly and not entirely correctly to Vienna. The last (here italicized) sentence was deleted before it was sent:"If we rejected every attempt at mediation, the whole world would hold us responsible for the conflagration and represent us as the real warmongers. That would also make our position impossible here in Germany, where we have got to appear as though the war had been forced on us. Our position is the more difficult because Serbia seems to have given way very extensively. We cannot therefore reject the role of mediator; we have to pass the British proposal on to Vienna for consideration, especially since London and Paris are continuously using their influence on Petersburg. AIso, the whole world here is convinced, and I hear the same from my colleagues, that the key to the situation lies in Berlin, and that if Berlin seriously wants peace, it will prevent Vienna from following a foolhardy policy." At the same time, Italy, a supposed ally of the Triple Alliance, demanded compensation for Austria's actions in the Balkans. Vienna responded by offering to divide Serbia between Russia, which had not previously made any territorial claims in Serbia, and Austria. The proposal was rejected with loud protest in Berlin. For the first time Bethmann Hollweg was openly furious at the Danube monarchy and telegraphed his views to the foreign office.

British Foreign Secretary Grey warned Germany that if the conflict was not limited to Austria and Russia but also involved France and the Reich, Britain could not stand aside either. Bethmann Hollweg then informed the German ambassador in Vienna that Austria should not resist negotiations with the Russian Empire. Although Germany was prepared to fulfill its alliance obligation, it was not prepared to be "recklessly dragged ... into a world conflagration".

Meanwhile, the military of Austria-Hungary and Russia were on the move, and Chief of the General Staff Moltke called for the Chancellor to initiate German general mobilization. Austria must not be abandoned, he said. The General Staff's strategic route through Belgium (a key part of the Schlieffen Plan for the German attack on France) ultimately undermined all of Bethmann Hollweg's efforts to localize the conflict. In his memoirs, Admiral Tirpitz described the Chancellor's situation in those days as that of a "drowning man".

Outbreak
Germany declared war on Russia and began mobilization on 1 August 1914. Bethmann Hollweg, in contrast to representatives of the Prussian Ministry of War, had insisted on formal declarations in order "to have affirmation under international law". His profound desire for guidelines in the war that were always applicable was met with surprise in Berlin. He rejected the Tsar's proposal to bring the Serbian question before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague because Russian general mobilization had already taken place the day before. Waiting to mobilize until after Russia had done so allowed the German government to claim that it was the victim of Russian aggression and won it the support of the Social Democrats for most of the war.

On 3 August Bethmann Hollweg assured British Foreign Minister Grey that the Russian mobilization of 30 July was what had put Germany in such straits that it had demanded that Belgium allow its troops to pass through the country. He had tried everything, he said, to avoid the breach of international law and to prevent "the madness of the self-destruction of Europe's nations of culture [Kulturnationen]".

On 4 August German troops invaded Belgium. While awaiting the British declaration of war, Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the Reichstag to stress that Germany had not wanted the war and that the Russian military had ignited the blaze. The "injustice to Belgium" must be righted by the Empire, he said, but those who were so threatened could think only of how to cut their way through. He had a conversation with the British ambassador to Germany Sir Edward Goschen on the evening of 4 August. In tears the Chancellor poured out his soul to him. For a "scrap of paper" (meaning the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality), he said, Britain wanted to wage war against a kindred nation that wished to live in peace with it. All efforts had collapsed before his eyes like a house of cards. In the end the Reich Chancellor and ambassador are said to have been weeping in each other's arms. In his Reflections on the World War Bethmann Hollweg conceded that saying "scrap of paper" had been a faux pas (Entgleisung, lit. 'derailment'), but he held to his opinion that Belgian neutrality was as nothing compared to the approaching world war.

1914: early reactions
Bethmann Hollweg remained largely unaffected by the patriotic enthusiasm in Germany in August 1914 (the so-called "spirit of 1914"). A letter he sent to his friend Wolfgang von Oettingen on 30 August 1914 bears witness: "Work and hope have been sundered in my hands. But I feel innocent of the rivers of blood that now flow. Our people [Volk] is glorious and cannot perish."

In what would later be called the September Program, the Empire formulated concrete war aims for the first time. The program contained demands for territory in Europe directed primarily against Russia, as well as the creation of a European customs union that would smooth the way for German economic interests in neighboring countries and secure German supremacy in central Europe. Whether or not the plans originated with Bethmann Hollweg cannot be proven. His associate Kurt Riezler is generally considered to have been the author. Riezler wrote on 20 September 1914 that the Chancellor would "never do more than listen on the issue of war aims." Nevertheless, Bethmann Hollweg signed the September Program.

Bethmann Hollweg admitted in 1918 that demanding the restoration of Belgium would probably have been the best thing to do. But under the enormous pressure coming from the military, which was clamoring for annexations ("That cursed sentiment at Headquarters"), it was not possible at the time, he said, and politics, as Otto von Bismarck had remarked, was the art of the possible.

Instead the Chancellor spoke of a "pledge" (Faustpfand) to Belgium and France. For him the formulation had the advantage that it did not lead to a premature commitment, since the question of redeeming the pledge would arise only at the end of the war. It was thus a rhetorical weapon against annexationist claims. Bethmann Hollweg probably never retracted his 4 August 1914 statement admitting guilt for the "injustice to Belgium", although some historians think he did. In May 1917 he told his friend Karl von Weizsäcker that he had wanted to bind the Social Democrats to the Empire with both formulations ("pledge" and "injustice to Belgium"). Before the Weimar National Assembly's committee of inquiry on the question of war guilt in 1919, he stressed that he had never revoked the confession of wrongdoing.

At all times Bethmann Hollweg emphasized the defensive character he believed the war had. He always spoke of "securing" the Reich and, in the event of victory, of a "stronger Germany" – but never of a "larger one", as a member of the Pan-German League remarked disapprovingly. Although Bethmann Hollweg spoke at Headquarters in March 1915 of the liberation of Belgium, he could not meet the demands of the left, which was insisting on a statement of total renunciation, and still continue to be sure of the goodwill of Wilhelm II. Another problem proved to be informing the people of the military situation. As early as September 1914, Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn had called for systematic public education about the unfavorable military situation resulting from the First Battle of the Marne. On the advice of the Foreign Office, which feared unpredictable consequences abroad, and of several business associations, Bethmann Hollweg refused to allow the government to disseminate the military truth. In spite of all self-deception, he said, education could happen "only gradually through events themselves". Confidence in victory was, after all, a "moral factor of tremendous importance".

While the National Liberals, unaware of the true situation on the front, moved more and more to the right and indulged in ideas of annexations, Bethmann Hollweg noted that partisanship for major territorial demands largely coincided with opposition to suffrage reform in Prussia. Foreign policy issues had an internal political side, something that was to prove a decisive, deep-seated problem for the Chancellor and the Empire.

From the beginning of the war, the Reichstag operated under Burgfriedenspolitik, a political truce between the parties and the government. It was based in large part on the work of the Chancellor. He had rejected the plan of leading military officers such as Admiral Tirpitz to arrest the SPD executive committee at the start of the war and to dissolve the party. Bethmann Hollweg had in fact openly approached the Social Democrats in order to win them over to the Emperor and the Empire for the long term.

When he asked the SPD on 29 July 1914 what its position would be in the war, he was assured that he would not have to assume that there would be either sabotage or general strikes. After he had presented the SPD executive committee's letter to the Emperor, Wilhelm spoke in the Reichstag on 4 August, using words that were to become famous: "I no longer know any parties or denominations; today we are all German brothers and only German brothers."

In retrospect, Bethmann Hollweg saw the day the war began as one of the greatest in German history. On 4 August, he thought, the internal barriers that had prevented the country from growing together into a true nation-state had fallen. At the beginning of October 1914 he said, "The barriers must fall, a new era will begin after the war. The differences of class have receded as never before." Only in the following weeks did he begin to realize that the conservatives, "sitting there so icily", did not want to join the new community that spanned all world views.

1915–1916: annexationists and the sinking of the Lusitania
In February 1915 the government committed itself to a "reorientation" that was to include electoral reform in Prussia. Bethmann Hollweg said that Prussia's three-class franchise had "become impossible" and that it was necessary to move to equal manhood suffrage. Bethmann Hollweg was accused at the time by both the left and the right of weakness in decision-making. The lack of a political center became increasingly apparent. It would have had to rely above all on the National Liberals, who under their annexationist spokesmen Ernst Bassermann and Gustav Stresemann did not consider cooperating with the left-liberal progressives standing behind Bethmann Hollweg. Probably at the instigation of Alfred von Tirpitz, whom he admired, Frederick Augustus II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg, as a spokesman for the annexationists, suggested to King Ludwig III of Bavaria in March 1915 that he demand from Wilhelm II, on behalf of the German princes, the dismissal of Bethmann Hollweg, who in his opinion was too weak and stood in the way of a "German peace". Ludwig, who wanted to enlarge Bavaria after a victory, did not do so because Georg von Hertling, the chairman of the Bavarian Council of Ministers and future Reich chancellor (1917–1918), was able to prevent it.

The Chancellor showed a clear view of the Reich's military situation in the spring of 1915 in an unusual proposal he made to the Prussian Ministry of State. He suggested that two districts in Silesia (a province of Prussia) be ceded to Austria so that it would be easier for the Danube monarchy to make territorial concessions to Italy. Bethmann Hollweg thought that it was the only way to prevent Italy from entering the war on the side of the Entente Powers, and that if it did, the war would be lost. His ministerial colleagues rejected the proposal as "un-Prussian". Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915.

On 7 May 1915 a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania off Ireland. The resulting deaths of over 120 Americans put a considerable strain on Germany's relations with the United States. The question of unrestricted submarine warfare once again came under discussion. In an interview in November 1914, Admiral Tirpitz had described submarine warfare as the only truly effective means to fight the naval blockade that the United Kingdom had imposed on Germany. Expecting that humanitarian arguments would carry little weight with the Admiralty, Bethmann Hollweg tried to avoid or at least delay unrestricted submarine warfare by asking critical questions. He doubted whether such military action aimed against the British war economy would be enough to decide the outcome of the war. He also feared early on that the United States would enter the war on the side of the Entente.

With the Lusitania sinking still a political issue, Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the Reichstag on 19 August 1915 and said, "We can use power – even externally – only in the interests of freedom." Considerations of power politics could nevertheless be more important than questions of moral principle. In the face of an increasing number of reports by German representatives in the Ottoman Empire of massacres of Armenians, and when even the ambassador in Constantinople called for intervention, the Chancellor noted, "Our only aim is to keep the Ottoman Empire at our side until the end of the war, regardless of whether Armenians perish over it or not."

In early March 1916 Bethmann Hollweg, using the threat of resignation, forced through the delay of unrestricted submarine warfare. Shortly afterwards Tirpitz tendered his own resignation, and it was accepted on 12 March. The Chancellor's greatest adversary and proponent of submarine warfare, which Bethmann Hollweg called a "crime against the German people", had been defeated.

The breakup of the SPD was to all appearances imminent in March 1916. During a Reichstag session, many Social Democrats had expressed their approval of Bethmann Hollweg. The moderate wing under Friedrich Ebert seemed to be breaking from the left wing of the party. SPD chairman Hugo Haase, who had spoken passionately in the Reichstag against the war's great bloodshed and the adoption of the emergency budget, was forced to resign and expelled from the SPD along with his supporters. Bethmann Hollweg hoped for a merger of the Social Democrats supporting his war policy and the Progressive People's Party to form a centrist party (a "party of the sensible"). Instead, the more radical and anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) was formed in April 1917 with Haase at its head.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff
In July 1916 leading industrialists as well as government figures such as Walther Rathenau argued for transferring the Supreme Army Command (OHL) from Erich von Falkenhayn to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff and giving them dictatorial powers in the civilian sphere as well. Bethmann Hollweg supported the plan by publicly saying that the name Hindenburg was the terror of the enemy and by prevailing on the Emperor to give him command of the entire eastern front. On 28 August he convinced the Emperor to dismiss Falkenhayn, and the following day Wilhelm II appointed Hindenburg Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army and Ludendorff First Quartermaster General.

Early in the war Bethmann Hollweg had supported annexing the Polish Border Strip from Congress Poland in order to strengthen Germany's eastern border against Russia. The plan included removing ethnic Poles from the area and populating it with German settlers. The new Quartermaster General Ludendorff called for the immediate establishment of a pseudo-independent Kingdom of Poland as a "breeding station for people needed for further fighting in the east". In negotiations with Austrian Foreign Minister Stephan Burián von Rajecz in August 1916, the representatives of the Central Powers agreed on an independent constitutional kingdom of Poland, but under pressure from Bethmann Hollweg, it was not to be proclaimed until after the end of the war. On 18 October 1916, following protests from Vienna, the August agreement was declared invalid, and Poland's independence was brought forward to November. On 5 November 1916 the proclamation of the Regency Kingdom of Poland was announced.

Bethmann Hollweg had succumbed to pressure from the army command and the Danube monarchy. He was able to prevent forced levies, but the fact that the military began recruiting the first volunteers for the Polish armed forces immediately after the proclamation of Polish independence revealed Ludendorff's plans. Although the Chancellor was not the driving force in the Polish question, even openly resisting the OHL, he was ultimately politically responsible.

In the fall of 1916, the OHL, which was increasingly wielding more power in the Reich, drafted a law under the Hindenburg Programme called the Auxiliary Services Act. In order to increase Germany's industrial output, especially of weapons, it sought to militarize the economy by mobilizing all resources, both material and human, through the introduction of compulsory labor. The plan, especially its inclusion of women, caused widespread resistance among labor unions and the liberal and socialist parties in the Reichstag. As a result, the OHL was forced to make concessions that included arbitration committees, the expansion of trade unions' powers and a repeal of the act at the end of the war.

At the same time, at the insistence of the OHL, the deportation of Belgian workers to the Reich began. In spite of Bethmann Hollweg's appeal to carefully consider the question of forced laborers, the coercive measures continued until February 1917.

1916–1917: peace initiatives and submarine warfare
On 7 October 1916 the Centre Party passed a resolution in which it came around to the military's position and for the first time called for unrestricted submarine warfare. Bethmann Hollweg later wrote in his Reflections that parliament had completely surrendered political power to the OHL.

In the Ministry of State on 20 October 1916, the Chancellor proposed a separate peace offer by the Central Powers, citing the absence of a tangible initiative by the United States and the support of Austrian Foreign Minister Burián. He had in mind the restoration, as far as possible, of the pre-war situation. In mid-November 1916 Bethmann Hollweg sent an inquiry to Washington through Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff about the prospect of a peace conference. But when the White House continued to show indecision, Bethmann Hollweg saw perhaps the last chance for a peace of reconciliation (Ausgleichsfrieden) in an offer of his own.

After the victory over Romania, when the military situation had changed in favor of the Empire, the Chancellor, speaking in the Reichstag on 12 December 1916, offered a negotiated peace (Verständigungsfrieden) to the Entente. He had the full support of the Emperor, who wrote in approval of Bethmann Hollweg's efforts that the peace proposal was "a moral deed necessary to relieve the world of the pressures weighing on all". The governments of the Entente states, however, viewed the initiative skeptically. On 18 December U.S. President Woodrow Wilson revealed his long-awaited peace initiative. He called for the disclosure of clearly formulated war aims – which the Empire was prepared to do – including withdrawal from Belgium. In response to demands by the pan-Germans, Wilhelm Solf made the proposal to create a contiguous German colonial empire in central Africa, annexing the Belgian Congo. By creating a German Central Africa, future peace would not be burdened by annexations in Europe. The implementation of the colonial war goal was never a priority to Bethmann Hollweg. What mattered to him and Solf was the formulation of a German war objective acceptable at home and abroad in the event of a victorious peace, something which neither politician believed in any longer.

When the Entente was unwilling to make such compromises, Bethmann Hollweg on 7 January 1917 called for immediate concessions or Germany would respond with unrestricted submarine warfare. The Chancellor's marginal note to the declaration, sent to Ambassador Bernstorff in Washington, showed his negative view of the situation: "Perhaps you know a way to avoid the break with America."

The following day the Reich Chancellor traveled to Pleß in Silesia where a meeting of the Crown Council was to make the decision on submarine warfare. After the OHL and the Reichstag had expressed their approval, the final decision lay with the Emperor. Bethmann Hollweg later wrote that Wilhelm was already completely in support of Ludendorff, who claimed that America had "no soldiers" and that if it did, submarine warfare would already have defeated France and England by the time U.S. forces arrived. Ludendorff's line of reasoning led the Emperor to ask Bethmann Hollweg why he "still had misgivings".

It is difficult to argue against Bethmann Hollweg's later statement that the U-boat war had ultimately been waged because a majority in the Reichstag, the Supreme Army Command and the German people had wanted it. The outcome led the Chancellor to thoughts of resigning. He later told Walther Rathenau that he had stayed on in order to preserve the chances of a negotiated peace in spite of the submarine warfare. To Riezler he said in 1919 that he had not wanted to give way to the "Pan-Germans' rule by the saber". According to his biographer von Vietsch, he was guided by a deep sense of loyalty to the Emperor, whom he did not want to put in a bad light by resigning. From that point on, Bethmann Hollweg was considered a failed politician in Germany.

After the decision at Pleß, Wilson on 22 January read a message to the U.S. Senate that was a precursor to his 14-point program. In it he argued for peace without victors and the right of peoples to self-determination. In March 1917 the Russian February Revolution shook the European power structure. On 29 March Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the press and, contrary to the wishes of the conservatives, declared that the Reich would not reinstate the government of the Tsar under any circumstances. The internal affairs of Russia, he said, were a matter for the Russian people. The internal political turmoil seemed to him to increase the chance of a special peace with Russia. It was also at this time that Germany expressed its support for Lenin's return from exile.

Prompted by the changed circumstances and the declaration of war by the United States against Germany on 6 April, Wilhelm II initiated the 23 April Kreuznach Conference on War Objectives. Bethmann Hollweg proposed renouncing all annexations, but the idea was rejected in principle by the OHL. Everyone involved saw that Bethmann Hollweg then agreed to the OHL's war aims only because he thought that they would never be carried out. He noted, "I do not allow myself to be bound in any way by the protocol. If opportunities for peace open up anywhere, I pursue them."

Prussian electoral law reform
At that time the long postponed electoral law reform in Prussia reappeared on the political agenda. On 27 February 1917 Bethmann Hollweg came before the Reichstag and in a speech that he later called his "most significant" said that he saw the typically German expression of a liberal form of government in a monarchy based "on the broad shoulders of the free man". A progressive, social "people's empire" seemed to him acceptable to right and left, and therefore the long term solution to domestic problems.

But this form of government had no appeal to the outside world, especially the USA. Bethmann Hollweg's intellectual limitation to German idealism made him misjudge its international impact. In the last months of his term, the Chancellor pursued the goal of a parliamentary monarchy and reform of Prussia's electoral system. On 9 March the conservatives moved even further away from the center and rejected the "whole liberal and parliamentary idea". To avoid a break with them, the Chancellor – who was also Prussian minister president – again avoided general constitutional theory in his remarks to the Prussian House of Lords. But he clearly rejected an insistence on three-class suffrage and said that his preference was to reform the electoral law as soon as possible. He nevertheless pointed out that rushing the issue could have "fatal" consequences and uttered words that were to echo widely:"Woe to the statesman who does not recognize the signs of the times, woe to the statesman who believes that after a catastrophe such as the world has never before seen, we could simply pick up where we left off."Although Bethmann Hollweg had wanted to avoid any rupture by using imprecise formulations, the right took the speech as an expression of anti-state sentiment. The reactionary wing of the conservatives insulted him as a "henchman of the Jews and Social Democrats". The progressive Conrad Haußmann (DVP), on the other hand, spoke of a "historic event" because the Chancellor had openly placed himself on the left. On 31 March 1917 Bethmann Hollweg appointed a commission to draft an emperor's message that would explicitly mention equal suffrage. The tired and spent chancellor then mustered all his remaining resolve and traveled to Bad Homburg to see Wilhelm II. In deference to conservative circles, the Emperor refused to make direct reference to equal (manhood) suffrage. Bethmann Hollweg agitatedly explained to him that it was impossible for him to advocate a bill under which a "worker adorned with the Iron Cross First Class would have to go to the polls next to a well-off draft dodger from the same village" with unequal voting rights. In the end Wilhelm II agreed to the wording of the Easter message and thus to the democratization of Prussia. Ludendorff described the Easter Message of 7 April, which promised the abolition of three-class suffrage, as "kowtowing to revolution".

The SPD called for a clear commitment from the German government to peace without annexations. There was hope for the peace initiative of Pope Benedict XV, who had offered to mediate between the warring parties. The Chancellor and Wilhelm II agreed with the Pope's efforts and were prepared to release Belgium and cede Alsace–Lorraine. The nuncio in Munich, Eugenio Pacelli, later said confidentially that the prospects for peace would have been good if Bethmann Hollweg had remained chancellor.

It was at that time that Matthias Erzberger of the Centre Party put his Reichstag Peace Resolution before the main parliamentary committee. The efforts, which in their radicalism were also directed against the Chancellor, astonished Bethmann Hollweg, since the position of the broad Reichstag majority had always been with him.

Resignation and retirement
Ludendorff then saw an opportunity to have the Reichstag accomplish his goal of deposing Bethmann Hollweg. At the forefront of his thinking was the National Liberal Gustav Stresemann, who held annexationist positions and declared the Chancellor unsuitable for a negotiated peace. "A Reich chancellor must be able to assert himself; if he cannot, he must draw the consequences." In his reply, Bethmann Hollweg spoke of the "overwhelming achievements of the people in the war". He was convinced that equal manhood suffrage would bring "no impairment, but an extraordinary strengthening and consolidation of the monarchical idea." The words led Emperor Wilhelm II to say to his chief of cabinet von Valentini, "And I am to dismiss the man who towers above all others by a head!"

Two days after the Chancellor's speech, the Emperor published his "July Message" in which he pledged that "the next elections can be held under the new, equal [manhood] suffrage law". Wilhelm Solf later called this a "complete victory for the idea of a social emperor". In response, Colonel Max Bauer, OHL commissioner, spread the word that Ludendorff thought the war was lost if the Chancellor stayed. Crown Prince Wilhelm suggested to his father that representatives of the Reichstag parties be consulted about the Chancellor's staying. The deputies Kuno von Westarp (German National People's Party), Gustav Stresemann (German People's Party), and Erich Mertin (Free Conservative Party) spoke in favor of the Chancellor's dismissal, and only Friedrich von Payer (Progressive People's Party) and Eduard David (SPD) spoke in favor of his remaining in office.

In their efforts to achieve a negotiated peace, the majority parties in the Reichstag saw Bethmann Hollweg as an unacceptable negotiator because he had been in the position too long and, in their view, was too weak in his dealings with the Supreme Army Command. He was too willing to compromise with them even though he had held out the prospect of internal reforms.

In a letter to the Emperor dated 12 July 1917, Ludendorff threatened to resign, and Hindenburg joined in the ultimatum. To spare the Emperor and himself the embarrassment of a dismissal, Bethmann Hollweg submitted his resignation. The Emperor yielded to pressure from the military leadership and agreed to the request. On 13 July 1917 Bethmann Hollweg resigned.

The reactions to Bethmann Hollweg's resignation were as varied as the assessments of his activities during his term in office. He himself wrote that he could resign without bitterness but with pain at the spectacle Germany was offering the "listening enemy". His successor, Georg Michaelis, whose name was put forward by the OHL, prevented the papal peace initiative from advancing when he withdrew concessions, including withdrawal from Belgium. Michaelis was succeeded on 1 November 1917 by Georg von Hertling, a conservative southern German whom Bethmann Hollweg from the beginning had wanted as his successor. Hertling nevertheless admitted that he disliked Bethmann's views, "which leaned very far to the left".

The former chancellor retired to his Hohenfinow estate and devoted himself to agriculture. He called the revolution that broke out in Germany in November 1918 a "désastre". He thought that the result of the world war should have been a genuine league of nations, but now only a "sham league built on imperialist orgies" would be the result. Whether they liked it or not, they were standing "on the threshold of a new era, and a democratic one at that".

In May 1919 the first part of Bethmann Hollweg's Reflections on the World War was published. In retrospect he viewed Germany's part in the start of the war as follows:"We were burdened in the heaviest way by 1870/1871 [the Franco-Prussian War] and by our central geographical position. After the Emperor came to power, we often did the opposite of what we could have done to make the burden bearable. Admittedly, world imperialism would have prevailed even without our intervention, and it remains very doubtful whether we could have prevented the natural French, Russian, and British antagonisms from uniting against us, even if we had acted reasonably. Guilt we have brought upon ourselves, but only all-round and common guilt could have given rise to the world catastrophe." Bethmann Hollweg received prominent attention throughout the world in June 1919 when he formally asked the Allied and Associated Powers to place him on trial instead of the Emperor. The Supreme War Council decided to ignore his request. He was often mentioned as among those who might be tried by Allies for political offences in connection with the origin of the war.

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg died of acute pneumonia on 1 January 1921 without having been able to complete the second part of his reflections. On the gravestone of the former Reich chancellor is a Bible verse of his own choosing: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" (Matthew 5:6).

Political legacy and historical assessment
None of Bethmann Hollweg's circle of friends achieved significant influence during the Weimar Republic. The only politician whose worldview was related to Bethmann Hollweg's was Gustav Stresemann. But it was he who, as a National Liberal member of the Reichstag, had railed against Bethmann Hollweg.

Adolf Hitler was hostile towards the Reich chancellor's personality in his book Mein Kampf. He lamented the "miserable attitude and weakness of this philosophizing weakling". He called his Reichstag speeches a "helpless stammering". Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz condemned the "leaning of our intellectuals toward Western culture".

Bethmann Hollweg's dealings with the Social Democrats influenced the course of the party's history. As a result of Burgfriedenspolitik, the SPD became "electable" for large sections of the middle classes and, as a people's party, was able to exert great influence on the constitution of the Weimar Republic as well as on that of the Federal Republic of Germany. According to historian Eberhard von Vietsch, the SPD's development into a bourgeois people's party to the left of center would have been more difficult without Bethmann Hollweg's initiative to integrate the SPD into the political system.

Bethmann Hollweg's domestic opponents accused him of being a "defeatist" who wanted to cheat the "people of the fruits of victory" with a "rotten peace". The assessment was preserved by national parties in the Weimar Republic until it finally became official with the victory of the Nazi Party. After 1945 Bethmann Hollweg was considered a "chancellor without qualities", an "indecisive Hamlet who doubted himself".

In Hohenfinow today, only the weathered and partially destroyed grave of the former Reich chancellor remains. He is the only Reich chancellor of the German Empire after whom no street was named.

Orders and decorations
• undefined:

• * Knight of the Black Eagle, with Collar and in Brilliants

• * Knight of the Red Eagle, 3rd Class with Bow and Crown

• * Knight of the Crown Order, 2nd Class

• * Grand Commander's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern

• * Red Cross Medal, 3rd Class

• * Landwehr Service Medal, 2nd Class

•  Hohenzollern: Cross of Honour of the Princely House Order of Hohenzollern, 1st Class

•  Anhalt: Grand Cross of the Order of Albert the Bear

•  Baden:

• * Grand Cross of the Zähringer Lion, with Oak Leaves, 1908

• * Knight of the House Order of Fidelity

•  undefined:

• * Knight of St. Hubert, 1909

• * Grand Cross of Merit of the Bavarian Crown

•  Brunswick: Grand Cross of the Order of Henry the Lion

•    Ernestine duchies: Grand Cross of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order

•  Grand Duchy of Hesse:

• * Grand Cross of the Merit Order of Philip the Magnanimous, 21 November 1908

• * Grand Cross of the Ludwig Order, 25 November 1910

•  Mecklenburg:

• * Grand Cross of the Wendish Crown, with Golden Crown

• * Grand Cross of the Griffon

•  undefined:

• * Knight of the Rue Crown

• * Grand Cross of the Albert Order, with Golden Star

•  Schaumburg-Lippe: Cross of Honour of the House Order of Schaumburg-Lippe, 1st Class

•  Württemberg: Grand Cross of the Württemberg Crown

•   Austria-Hungary: Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of St. Stephen, 1909; in Brilliants, 1917

• 🇧🇪 Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold

•  undefined: Grand Cross of St. Alexander, with Collar

• 🇩🇰 Denmark:

• * Grand Cross of the Dannebrog, 19 November 1906

• * Knight of the Elephant, 25 February 1913

•  undefined:

• * Knight of the Annunciation, 22 March 1910

• * Grand Cross of the Crown of Italy

•  Ottoman Empire: Order of Osmanieh, 1st Class in Brilliants

•  Persia: Order of the Lion and the Sun, 1st Class in Brilliants

•  undefined: Grand Cross of the Crown of Romania

•  undefined: Knight of St. Andrew, 1910

•  undefined: Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, 2 November 1905

• 🇸🇪 Sweden: Commander Grand Cross of the North Star, 1908

•  undefined: Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order

Military appointments

 * Major general à la suite of the Prussian Army

In English

 * Jarausch, Konrad Hugo. "Revising German History: Bethmann Hollweg Revisited." Central European History 21#3 (1988): 224–243, historiography in JSTOR
 * Jarausch, Konrad H. "The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914." Central European History 2.1 (1969): 48-76. online
 * Langdon, John W. "Emerging from Fischer's shadow: recent examinations of the crisis of July 1914." History Teacher 20.1 (1986): 63–86, historiography in JSTOR
 * Langdon, John W. "Emerging from Fischer's shadow: recent examinations of the crisis of July 1914." History Teacher 20.1 (1986): 63–86, historiography in JSTOR

In German

 * Bethmann Hollweg (1919–1921). Betrachtungen zum Weltkriege. Berlin: Hobbing.
 * Vol. 1: Vor dem Kriege [Before the War]
 * Vol. 2: Während des Krieges [During the War]
 * von Vietsch, Eberhard (1969). Bethmann Hollweg. Staatsmann zwischen Macht und Ethos [Bethmann Hollweg. Statesman Between Power and Ethos] Boppard: Boldt.
 * Zmarzlik, Hans G. (1957): Bethmann Hollweg als Reichskanzler, 1909–1914. Studien zu Möglichkeiten und Grenzen seiner innerpolitischen Machtstellung [Bethmann Hollweg as Reich Chancellor, 1909–1914. Studies on the Possibilities and Limits of his Domestic Power Position] ). Düsseldorf: Droste.
 * Zmarzlik, Hans G. (1957): Bethmann Hollweg als Reichskanzler, 1909–1914. Studien zu Möglichkeiten und Grenzen seiner innerpolitischen Machtstellung [Bethmann Hollweg as Reich Chancellor, 1909–1914. Studies on the Possibilities and Limits of his Domestic Power Position] ). Düsseldorf: Droste.

title: Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg


text:
Eurico Gaspar Dutra

Eurico Gaspar Dutra (18 May 1883 – 11 June 1974) was a Brazilian military leader and politician who served as the 16th president of Brazil from 1946 to 1951. He was the first president of the Fourth Brazilian Republic, which followed the Vargas Regime.

Biography
Dutra was born in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso. He later falsified his birth year to 1885, at age 19, so that he would have a physical compatible with the age, in order to facilitate his entry into the Army. He studied at the Preparatory and Tactical School of Rio Grande do Sul (1902–1904) and at the Military Academy of Brazil (Military School of ‘’Praia Vermelha’’ in Rio de Janeiro) in 1904, of which he was expelled for taking part in an uprising that same year, related to the Vaccine Revolt, but pardoned, returned to school, now based in Realengo, completing the course in 1906. He was also a student of the School of War in Porto Alegre (1906), the School of Artillery and Engineering, where perfected in mechanics, ballistics and metallurgy (1908–1910), and the School of General Staff, where he graduated as the 1st in class and received the rare mention "très bien" (1922), acting shortly after, in the repression of the São Paulo Revolution of 1924.

Helped found the National Defense magazine in 1918, fought the uprising known as the "18 Fort" in 1922, in Rio de Janeiro, and participated, integrating the North Detachment, under the command of General Mena Barreto, of the fighting against an insurgency erupted in Manaus that radiated to Pará. By having fought the Revolution of 1930, he was sent to the command of the 11th Cavalry Independent Regiment in Ponta Porã.

Promoted to colonel, Dutra took command of the 4th Cavalry Divisional Regiment (1931–1933) in Três Corações, where he fought the Constitutionalist Revolution in São Paulo in 1932. Defended the government of President Washington Luís against the rebels of 1930s, but already in 1932, fought the Constitutionalist Revolution in São Paulo. Appointed commander of the 1st Military Region (1935–1936), stood out in reaction to the communist movement in 1935, episode known as “Intentona Comunista”, occupying the post of Minister of War (1936–1945).

Minister of War
During World War II, he was among the Brazilian military leaders who were against an alignment with allies and a deeper involvement of the country in the conflict. With, although modest, Brazil's participation in the war on the Allied side, and the growing pressure from civil society for democratization of the country, Dutra formally adhered to the idea of the end of the regime that started in 1930, participating in the following deposition of Getúlio Vargas in October 1945, continuing the interventionist doctrine, practiced at the time by the Brazilian army.

1945 election
In this context, the deposed leader announced the following month his support for Dutra, the candidate of the Army, at the expense of the candidate of the Air Force, Eduardo Gomes, in the elections that followed.

Presidency
On 18 September 1946, the fifth constitution of Brazil was enacted, marking the country's return to democratic rule. Later that year, the government created the Social Service of Industry (SESI) and Social Service of Commerce (SESC), and the General Staff, the future General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMFA). The same year, the president ordered the closing of casinos and prohibited gambling in the country.

In 1947, he registered the appointment of Osvaldo Aranha delegate of Brazil to the United Nations (UN), the forfeiture of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), breaking off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (USSR) and achieved, in Petrópolis, the Inter-American Conference of Peacekeeping and Security of the Continent, which was attended by the U.S. president, Harry Truman. Closer relations with the Americans was evidenced also in the formation of the Joint Commission Brazil-United States, known as Abbink Mission, headed by John Abbink and Minister Octavio Gouveia de Bouillon. Assignment was to diagnose the main problems of the Brazilian economy and, as a special recommendation, the use of external resources in the oil sector.

Still in 1947 was the intervention of the Ministry of Labour in many unions, continuing the guardianship of the state over union activities guaranteed by ordinance in 9.070 of March 1946, a regulation to limit the right to strike.

Concomitant with the union repression and wage restraint, economic policy has gone through two phases: the former was liberal and sought to break with previous forms of intervention in the economy. However, imports of goods led to a rapid depletion of the country's foreign exchange reserves. In 1947, under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) a second phase, in which the exchange control was retaken, kept the Brazilian cruzeiro at high levels compared to the U.S. currency. This policy discouraged exports, encouraging, on the other hand, the import of equipment, machinery and other inputs, excluding consumer goods, and favored the expansion of the manufacturing sector.

The development strategy of the government included the “Salte Plan”, named for an emphasis on Health, Food, Transportation and Energy. Proposed in 1947, it aimed at the management of public spending and investment in key sectors in the country but only began to receive funding from the budget in 1949, being forgotten in 1951. During this period measurements the country's economic growth by calculating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) were first regularly published. The average annual growth of the Brazilian economy under his administration was 7.6%.

During the Dutra government construction of the hydroelectric plant of Paulo Afonso, Bahia, and the President Dutra highway linking Rio to São Paulo was initiated. In October 1948 his government set up the Superior School of War (ESG), with American support.

Later life
Upon leaving the presidency, he remained active in politics until he ran again for president in the indirect elections for president of 1964. Facing a difficult election against military-backed General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, Dutra received only 0.55% of the vote.

He died away from public life in Rio de Janeiro on 11 June 1974, at 91. His body was buried in the São João Batista Cemetery.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eurico Gaspar Dutra


text:
Bubble memory

Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as bubbles or domains, each storing one bit of data. The material is arranged to form a series of parallel tracks that the bubbles can move along under the action of an external magnetic field. The bubbles are read by moving them to the edge of the material, where they can be read by a conventional magnetic pickup, and then rewritten on the far edge to keep the memory cycling through the material. In operation, bubble memories are similar to delay-line memory systems.

Bubble memory started out as a promising technology in the 1970s, offering performance similar to core memory, memory density similar to hard drives, and no moving parts. This led many to consider it a contender for a "universal memory" that could be used for all storage needs. The introduction of dramatically faster semiconductor memory chips in the early 1970s pushed bubble into the slow end of the scale and it began to be considered mostly as a replacement for disks. The equally dramatic improvements in hard-drive capacity through the early 1980s made it uncompetitive in price terms for mass storage.

Bubble memory was used for some time in the 1970s and 1980s in applications where its non-moving nature was desirable for maintenance or shock-proofing reasons. The introduction of flash storage and similar technologies rendered even this niche uncompetitive, and bubble disappeared entirely by the late 1980s.

Precursors
Bubble memory is largely the brainchild of a single person, Andrew Bobeck. Bobeck had worked on many kinds of magnetics-related projects through the 1960s, and two of his projects put him in a particularly good position for the development of bubble memory. The first was the development of the first magnetic-core memory system driven by a transistor-based controller, and the second was the development of twistor memory.

Twistor is essentially a version of core memory that replaces the "cores" with a piece of magnetic tape. The main advantage of twistor is its ability to be assembled by automated machines, as opposed to core, which was almost entirely manual. AT&T had great hopes for twistor, believing that it would greatly reduce the cost of computer memory and put them in an industry leading position. Instead, DRAM memories came onto the market in the early 1970s and rapidly replaced all previous random-access memory systems. Twistor ended up being used only in a few applications, many of them AT&T's own computers.

One interesting side effect of the twistor concept was noticed in production: under certain conditions, passing a current through one of the electrical wires running inside the tape would cause the magnetic fields on the tape to move in the direction of the current. If used properly, it allowed the stored bits to be pushed down the tape and pop off the end, forming a type of delay-line memory, but one where the propagation of the fields was under computer control, as opposed to automatically advancing at a set rate defined by the materials used. However, such a system had few advantages over twistor, especially as it did not allow random access.

Development

In 1967, Bobeck joined a team at Bell Labs and started work on improving twistor. The memory density of twistor was a function of the size of the wires; the length of any one wire determined how many bits it held, and many such wires were laid side-by-side to produce a larger memory system.

Conventional magnetic materials, like the magnetic tape used in twistor, allowed the magnetic signal to be placed at any location and to move in any direction. Paul Charles Michaelis working with permalloy magnetic thin films discovered that it was possible to move magnetic signals in orthogonal directions within the film. This seminal work led to a patent application. The memory device and method of propagation were described in a paper presented at the 13th Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, Boston, Massachusetts, 15 September 1967. The device used anisotropic thin magnetic films that required different magnetic pulse combinations for orthogonal propagation directions. The propagation velocity was also dependent on the hard and easy magnetic axes. This difference suggested that an isotropic magnetic medium would be desirable.

This led to the possibility of making a memory system similar to the moving-domain twistor concept, but using a single block of magnetic material instead of many twistor wires. Starting work extending this concept using orthoferrite, Bobeck noticed an additional interesting effect. With the magnetic tape materials used in twistor, the data had to be stored on relatively large patches known as domains. Attempts to magnetize smaller areas would fail. With orthoferrite, if the patch was written and then a magnetic field was applied to the entire material, the patch would shrink down into a tiny circle, which he called a bubble. These bubbles were much smaller than the domains of normal media like tape, which suggested that very high area densities were possible.

Five significant discoveries took place at Bell Labs:

 * 1) The controlled two-dimensional motion of single wall domains in permalloy films
 * 2) The application of orthoferrites
 * 3) The discovery of the stable cylindrical domain
 * 4) The invention of the field access mode of operation
 * 5) The discovery of growth-induced uniaxial anisotropy in the garnet system and the realization that garnets would be a practical material

The bubble system cannot be described by any single invention, but in terms of the above discoveries. Andy Bobeck was the sole discoverer of (4) and (5) and co-discoverer of (2) and (3); (1) was performed by P. Michaelis in P. Bonyhard's group. At one point, over 60 scientists were working on the project at Bell Labs, many of whom have earned recognition in this field. For instance, in September 1974, H.E.D. Scovil, P.C. Michaelis and Bobeck were awarded the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award by the IEEE with the following citation: For the concept and development of single-walled magnetic domains (magnetic bubbles), and for recognition of their importance to memory technology.

It took some time to find the perfect material, but it was discovered that some garnets had the correct properties. Bubbles would easily form in the material and could be pushed along it fairly easily. The next problem was to make them move to the proper location where they could be read back out: twistor was a wire and there was only one place to go, but in a 2D sheet things would not be so easy. Unlike the original experiments, the garnet did not constrain the bubbles to move only in one direction, but its bubble properties were too advantageous to ignore.

The solution was to imprint a pattern of tiny magnetic bars onto the surface of the garnet, called propagation elements. When a small magnetic field was applied, they would become magnetized, and the bubbles would "stick" to one end. By then reversing the field they would be attracted to the far end, moving down the surface. Another reversal would pop them off the end of the bar to the next bar in the line, and so on, controlling or guiding the direction of travel of the bubbles. T bars/guides, shaped like the letters, were used in early bubble memory designs, but were later replaced by other shapes such as asymmetrical chevrons. In practice the magnetic field rotates and is provided by a pair of coils, that produce a rotating magnetic field in the X and Z axes, it is this rotating magnetic field that moves the bubbles in the memory.

Amorphous magnetic films were also considered as they had greater potential for improvement of bubble memories vs garnet magnetic films, however the existing experience with garnet films meant that they did not gain a foothold. Garnet films have the same or better magnetic properties than orthoferrite films which were considered less promising by comparison. Garnet materials (as films on top of a substrate) could allow for higher propagation speeds of the bubbles (bubble speed) than orthoferrites. Hard bubbles are slower and more erratic than normal bubbles, a problem that is often overcome by ion-implantation of the garnet magnetic film with neon, and can also be done by coating the garnet magnetic film with permalloy.

A memory device is formed by lining up tiny electromagnets at one end with detectors at the other end. Bubbles written in would be slowly pushed to the other, forming a sheet of twistors lined up beside each other. Attaching the output from the detector back to the electromagnets turns the sheet into a series of loops, which can hold the information as long as needed.

Bubble memory is a non-volatile memory. Even when power was removed, the bubbles remained, just as the patterns do on the surface of a disk drive. Better yet, bubble memory devices needed no moving parts: the field that pushed the bubbles along the surface was generated electrically, whereas media like tape and disk drives required mechanical movement. Finally, because of the small size of the bubbles, the density was in theory much higher than existing magnetic storage devices. The only downside was performance; the bubbles had to cycle to the far end of the sheet before they could be read.

A bubble memory device consists of a case, that houses a PCB with connections to one or more bubble memory chips which may be translucent. The area around the chips on the PCB is surrounded by two windings made of copper wire or other electrically conductive material, that mostly wrap the area, leaving some space for the PCB to pass through the windings and connect to the chips. The windings are wound in directions opposite to each other, for example one winding has wires oriented along the X axis and the other winding has wires along the Z axis. The windings, in turn, are surrounded by two permanent magnets, one below and another above the windings. This forms an assembly that is housed inside the case which acts as a magnetic shield and forms a magnetic return path for the magnetic field from the magnets. The permanent magnets are critical; they create a static (DC, direct current) magnetic field, used as a bias field that enables the contents of the memory to be retained, in other words they allow bubble memories to be non-volatile. If the magnets are removed, all bubbles will disappear and thus all contents will be deleted. The windings create a rotating magnetic field parallel to the orientation of the bubble memory, at around 100 to 200 kHz. This will move or drive the bubbles in the magnetic film in a somewhat circular fashion, guided or restrained by the propagation elements. For example, the rotating magnetic field can force the bubbles to constantly circulate around loops, which may be elongated and are defined by the locations of the guiding elements.

To allow the bubbles to move around the bubble chips and to guide them through the chip, the chips have some sort of pattern made of ferromagnetic metal that can include for example asymmetrical chevrons. For example, the bubbles can move around the edges of the chevrons. The patterns can be called propagation elements as they allow the bubbles to move or propagate across it. They define pathways for the bubbles to be stored and retrieved for reading and the rotating magnetic field moves the bubbles along these paths. For bubble memory, a material like Gadolinium Gallium Garnet is used as the substrate in the chips. On top of the substrate is a magnetic film (bubble host or bubble film/layer) such as a Gadolinium-containing garnet or more often, single crystal substituted yttrium iron garnet which holds the magnetic bubbles, that is grown epitaxially with liquid-phase epitaxy with lead oxide flux as the liquid with yttrium oxide and other oxides, and then the film is doped with ion-implantation of one or several elements, to reduce undesirable characteristics. The epitaxy process would be carried out with a platinum crucible and wafer holder. The chevrons and other parts are built on top of the film. The propagation elements, including the chevrons, can be made of a material such as Nickel-Iron permalloy. The materials in bubble memories are chosen mainly for their magnetic properties. Gadolinium Gallium Garnet is used as a substrate because it can support the epitaxial growth of magnetic garnet films, and is nonmagnetic, although some bubble memories used Nickel-Cobalt substrates instead.

The use of propagation elements formed by ion implantation instead of permalloy, was proposed to increase the capacity of bubble memory to 16 Mbit/cm2.

Commercialization

Bobeck's team soon had 1 cm square memories that stored 4,096 bits, the same as a then-standard plane of core memory. This sparked considerable interest in the industry. Not only could bubble memories replace core but it seemed that they could replace tapes and disks as well. In fact, it seemed that bubble memory would soon be the only form of memory used in the vast majority of applications, with the high-performance market being the only one they could not serve.

The technology was included in experimental devices from Bell Labs in 1974. By the mid-1970s, practically every large electronics company had teams working on bubble memory. Texas Instruments introduced the first commercial product that incorporated bubble memory in 1977, and introduced the first commercially available bubble memory, the TIB 0103 with 92 kilobit capacity. By the late 1970s several products were on the market, and Intel released their own 1-megabit version, the 7110, in 1979. By the early 1980s, however, bubble memory technology became a dead end with the introduction of hard disk systems offering higher storage densities, higher access speeds, and lower costs. In 1981 major companies working on the technology closed their bubble memory operations, notably Rockwell, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and Plessey, leaving a "big five" group of companies still pursuing "second-generation bubble" by 1984: Intel, Motorola, Hitachi, SAGEM and Fujitsu. 4-megabit bubble memories such as the Intel 7114, were introduced in 1983  and 16-megabit bubble memory was developed.

Bubble memory found uses in niche markets through the 1980s in systems needing to avoid the higher rates of mechanical failures of disk drives, and in systems operating in high vibration or harsh environments. This application became obsolete too with the development of flash storage, which also brought performance, density, and cost benefits.

One application was Konami's Bubble System arcade video game system, introduced in 1984. It featured interchangeable bubble memory cartridges on a 68000-based board. The Bubble System required a "warm-up" time of about 85 seconds (prompted by a timer on the screen when switched on) before the game was loaded, as bubble memory needs to be heated to around 30 to 40 °C to operate properly. Fujitsu used bubble memory on their FM-8 in 1981 and Sharp used it in their PC 5000 series, a laptop-like portable computer from 1983. Nicolet used bubble memory modules for saving waveforms in their Model 3091 oscilloscope, as did HP who offered a $1595 bubble memory option that extended the memory on their model 3561A digital signal analyzer. GRiD Systems Corporation used it in their early laptops. TIE communication used it in the early development of digital phone systems in order to lower their MTBF rates and produce a non-volatile telephone system's central processor. Bubble memory was also used on the Quantel Mirage DVM8000/1 VFX system.

To store the bubbles, the propagation elements are in pairs and side to side, and are arranged in rows called loops to store the bubbles, thus they are storage loops since the bubbles that are stored in a loop will constantly circulate around it, forced by the rotating magnetic field that can also move the bubbles elsewhere. Bubble memories have extra spare loops to allow for increased yield during manufacturing as they replace defective loops. The list of defective loops is programmed onto the memory, on a special, separate loop called a boot loop, and it is also often printed on the label of the memory. A bubble memory controller will read the boot loop every time a bubble memory system is powered on, during initialization the controller will put the boot loop data in a boot loop register. Writing into a bubble memory is done by a formatter within the memory controller and signals from bits read in the bubble memory are amplified by the sense amplifier of the controller and they will reference the boot loop register to avoid overwriting, or further reading of the data in the boot loop.

The bubbles are created (the memory is written) with a seed bubble that is constantly split or cut by a hairpin-shaped piece of electrically conductive wire (such as aluminum-copper alloy) using a current strong enough to locally overcome and reverse the magnetic bias field generated by the magnets, thus the hairpin-shaped piece of wire acts as a small electromagnet. The seed bubble regains its original size quickly after cutting. The seed bubble circulates under a circular permalloy patch which keeps it from moving elsewhere. After generation, the bubbles then circulate into an "input track" and then into a storage loop. Old bubbles could be moved out of the loop into an "output track" for destruction later. The space left behind by the old bubbles would then be available for new ones. If the seed bubble is ever lost, a new one can be nucleated via special signals sent to the bubble memory and a current 2 to 4 times higher than necessary for cutting of bubbles from the seed bubble.

The bubbles in a storage loop (and empty spaces for bubbles) constantly circulate around it. To read a bubble, it would be "replicated" by moving it to a larger propagation element to stretch the bubble, then it would be passed under a hairpin-shaped conductor to cut it into two with a current pulse which lasts 1/4 of a hertz and is shaped as a spike waveform with a long trailing edge, this would split the bubble in two, one of which would continue circulating in the storage loop, keeping the bubble and thus data safe in case of power failure. The other bubble would be moved to an output track to move it to a detector which is a magnetoresistive bridge, made of a column of interconnected permalloy chevrons where the chevrons are one behind the other, and before it there are similar columns of chevrons that are not interconnected. These stretch the bubbles to generate a larger output at the detector. The detector has a constant electric current, and when bubbles pass under it, they change slightly the electrical resistance and thus current in the detector, and the movement of the bubbles creates a voltage in the order of millivolts, and this is read as either a 1 or a 0. Because the bubble must be moved to a specific area to be read, there are latency constraints. After the detector the bubbles are run into a guard rail to destroy them. A 1 is represented by a bubble, and a 0 is represented by the absence of a bubble.

The gadolinium gallium garnet wafers used as substrates for the bubble chips, were 3 inches in diameter and cost $100 each in 1982 as their production required the use of iridium crucibles.

Further applications
In 2007, the idea of using microfluidic bubbles as logic (rather than memory) was proposed by MIT researchers. The bubble logic would use nanotechnology and has been demonstrated to have access times of 7 ms, which is faster than the 10 ms access times that contemporary hard drives had, though it is slower than the access time of traditional RAM and of traditional logic circuits, making the proposal not commercially practical.

IBM's 2008 work on racetrack memory is essentially a 1-dimensional version of bubble, bearing an even closer relationship to the original serial twistor concept.

title: Bubble memory


text:
Talk:2001 in music

Noted absence in the albums list
I missed the release of B.R.M.C. by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in the album's list. Anyone else noticed? -- diegomrosa

Votes for 'years in music' event
(I note that as of 2002-12-30, neither the two events listed in "years in music" is in 2001 itself! -- SGBailey)
 * Death of George Harrison -- SGBailey
 * Ditto, death of George Harrison. -- nknight

What are the criteria for "top hits"? -- Zoe

Personally I've been using "Did it hit #1?". I think it's probably semi-safe. That said, I don't have a freakin' clue what the top hits for 2001 were :) nknight 03:35 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)
 * I've been thinking Top Ten or so. I also think that, at least prior to 1965 or so, we allow songs that weren't necessarily top-sellers, as most artists' LPs were just collection of singles and filler anyway -- I haven't written much beyond the top hits listed in allmusic, but some relatively low-selling singles probably deserved to be mentioned. Tokerboy

I was wondering why JeLuF keeps reverting the change made originally by Michaelese to add Wonders of the World by the Long Beach Dub Allstars? Although I'm not familiar with the artist myself, they are an actual band and this addition is not a joke or frivolous edit. -- Lexor 01:36 17 May 2003 (UTC)
 * Hi, Michael/Weezer/No-FX etc pp is a banned user. He keeps on coming back under different names. He repeatedly adds factual wrong data to articles. Since he is undermining bans against him by creating new accounts, all his edits are undone. It's very enerving checking them one-by-one. If you've checked this bit and re-insert it, I will not remove it. -- JeLuF 20:40 18 May 2003 (UTC)~

Get the Party Started
I didn't see Get the Party Started in the list. 98.249.71.56 (talk) 12:57, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:2001 in music