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Updated: May 31, 2025
Hollweg quotes this sentence on page 23: "Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken, als ein Schrecken ohne Ende." "We are conducting to-day a war against enemy merchant vessels different from the methods of former wars only in part by ordinary warships. The chief method is by submarines based upon the fundamentals of international law as dictated by German prize court regulations.
This, says Bethmann Hollweg, had been the theme of English policy since the end of the days of "splendid isolation," and it remained so until the war broke out.
I have translated this passage from the book because I think it is instructive in its disclosure of uneasy self-consciousness on the part of the author. Obviously, the Emperor made his quiet-loving Minister at times uncomfortable. I do not doubt that the Emperor really desired peace, just as Herr von Bethmann Hollweg tells us.
I shall have more to say about these incidents later on when I come to Admiral von Tirpitz's account of them. My criticism of Herr von Bethmann Hollweg is in no case founded on any doubt at all as to his veracity. I formed, in the course of my dealings with him, a high opinion of his integrity.
On page 160 Hollweg says: "And now in discussing the question of the legal position of the submarine as a warship I cite here the statements of the German authority on international law, Professor Dr. Niemeyer, who said: 'There can be absolutely no question but that the submarine is permitted. It is a means of war similar to every other one.
The necessity of not withdrawing the English battleships from the North Sea prevented England from using a more powerful unit at Constantinople. To this extent the German battle fleet was not without influence in the victory for the defender of Constantinople. That is 'distance effect." On page 187 Hollweg declares: "England not only does not make money to-day by war but she is losing.
The head of the Prussian Ministry, Manteuffel, had been dismissed, and a "new era," with ministers of more liberal tendencies, among them von Bethmann Hollweg, an ancestor of the present Chancellor, had begun. General von Roon was Minister of War and Marine, offices at that time united in one department.
Germany has been building up her spy system forty years, and it is ingenious beyond imagination. Her codes are the most difficult in the world. It took the French three years and a half to decipher a code despatch from Von Bethmann Hollweg to Baron von Schoen. By the time they had it deciphered in Paris the Germans had discovered what they were doing and had changed the code.
On page 31 Admiral Hollweg speaks of the fact that at the beginning of the war many Germans, especially those in banking and business circles, felt that Germany was so indispensable to England in peace time that England would not conduct a war to "knock out" Germany. But Hollweg says the situation has now changed.
By this time, old age apart, he had done very well for himself, having not only buried a wife, but married another; having not only seen three sons out into the world and become a grandfather twice over; but having had also, by his second wife, whose name was Hollweg, a daughter, and an estate of Bathbrink which could be hers by and by, if he so pleased.
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