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WAR, PEACE, AND REVOLUTION

david stevenson

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First Edition published in 2017

Impression: 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932564

ISBN 978–0–19–870238–2

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Preface and Acknowledgements

The responsibility of those who needlessly prolong such a War is not less than that of those who needlessly provoke it.

(Lord Lansdowne to the British Cabinet, November 1916)1

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

(Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration’)2

Thisbook focuses on a single year of the First World War, coinciding with the months from January to November 1917. It is one of the bestestablished benchmark dates in modern history.What follows does not cover everything that happened in these pivotal months. It centres on the war’s transformation under the impact of the Russian Revolution and American intervention: events that between them marked the most significant turning point since the opening campaigns had bogged down into stalemate in the autumn of 1914.Yet still the conflict continued, despite its having developed into something that at its outset was scarcely foreseeable or even credible. And that it did continue would have repercussions to the present.

Many paths approach the centre of this labyrinth.The main one followed here runs via an analysis of decision-making, reconstructing it in depth, placing it in national and international context, and showing how decisions interacted. Lord Lansdowne and Siegfried Sassoon began from very different vantage points: as a former Foreign Secretary practised in the ways of Whitehall and a disenchanted officer who hurled his Military Cross into the Mersey. But both perceived the First World War, and the accompanying havoc, as prolonged not by blind impersonal forces but through deliberate will. The conflict was constructed. This is not to say the decision-makers’ choices were either easy or unconstrained. They generally emerged from complex and protracted bureaucratic processes. By 1917 the debates preceding them were often fractious and left copious records. Alternatives existed,

and made responsibility more agonizing. Still, the choices taken were to prolong and escalate the violence. Even Vladimir Lenin, perhaps the war’s most visceral critic, sought to transcend it not through peace but through a life-and-death struggle against the bourgeoisie.

To focus on decision-making is to adopt an elite perspective. Historians have analysed intensively the conflict’s outbreak in summer 1914 but much less the decisions that propelled it forward and sustained its momentum.The intention is in no way to disparage the alternative—and for long unjustly neglected—approaches to the conflict’s history that in recent years have drawn so much attention. We should investigate not only why governments and high commands gave orders but also why soldiers of all ethnicities obeyed them (or by 1917 increasingly did not) and why men and women on the home fronts gave or withheld their consent. None the less, understanding how the crucial decisions were taken provides an indispensable key to also understanding why they were taken and how far they displayed incompetence or prescience. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who helped draft Sassoon’s protest, remarked ‘This war is trivial, for all its vastness. No great principle is at stake, no great human purpose is involved on either side.’3 Yet as statesmen at the time well recognized, the elite decisions really mattered, and on their outcome might turn tens of thousands of lives. By 1917, moreover, at both elite and popular levels, the war was controversial as never before. Much of what follows therefore concentrates on why costlier and riskier options were pursued instead of other courses, apparently less perilous and less painful.

A purely chronological survey of these developments might convey the whirlwind atmosphere of the time yet lack coherence. Instead the material is organized thematically, in three sections. The first, or ‘Atlantic Prologue’, starts with Germany’s decision for unrestricted submarine warfare. It was the precondition for American intervention. It gambled on the U-boats throttling Britain so quickly that US entry would not matter, but this calculation proved unfounded, in large part because Britain countered with the convoy system. The first three chapters therefore travel from Berlin via Washington to London. The second section transfers from the oceans to the Continent, and to Europe’s suicidal military and political impasse. If the submarine gamble led to Germany’s defeat and temporary eclipse, its enemies’ actions likewise scarred them for decades. Tsar Nicholas’s abdication derailed the Allies’ spring campaign, and highlighted the revolutionary threat. These warnings notwithstanding, the French persisted with the

calamitous Nivelle offensive. The Russian Provisional Government similarly authorized the Kerensky offensive, to the ruin of the country’s liberals and moderate socialists. Scarcely less dispiriting are the origins of Britain’s ill-starred Third Battle of Ypres, and those—arising also from spring and summer offensives—of Italy’s rout at Caporetto. Against this backdrop, attention returns to Austria-Hungary and Germany’s peace feelers, and to those feelers’ rejection. In the third section the horizon widens. By 1917 the conflict’s global repercussions included new war entries (not only by America but also by Greece, Brazil, Siam, and China), and Britain’s backing for ‘responsible government’ in India and a Jewish national home in Palestine. The conclusion links to developments in 1918, via Russia’s October Revolution, Germany’s decision for an all-out Western Front offensive, and America’s intensification of its war effort. These developments concluded the transition that had begun in late 1916, and opened the struggle’s endgame: in its way a simpler story, during which first the Germans and then their enemies launched culminating offensives, and the latter prevailed.

Much of this book rests on contemporary records, both published and archival. It cites them liberally. It highlights the arguments presented by contemporaries, who in 1917 were all too aware of inhabiting turbulent times. It also draws on work by fellow historians: often of the highest calibre, albeit not previously synthesized in the form adopted here. In particular Ian Kershaw’s Fateful Choices has provided a model, although the analogous period in the Second World War (1940–1) came in its opening rather than its closing months.4 Much contemporary testimony—including unsung masterpieces such as Edward Spiers’s Prelude to Victory—is also rich. I have benefited enormously from working in the International History Department at the London School of Economics & Political Science, and I am grateful to my colleagues and students as well as to the School for the sabbatical leave that made research and writing possible.Three years as Vice-Chair of the LSE Appointments Committee gave practical decision-making experience. My thanks go to Michael Hemmersdorfer and Charles Sorrie for visiting the German and French archives, and to Kevin Matthews and Andrea Heatley for hospitality in Washington. Nick Bosanquet supplied encouragement and bibliographical recommendations, and Anthony Heywood was very helpful over Russian railways. Among the libraries and archives consulted, I should make specific mention of the British and the American National Archives, the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the British Library (including its Manuscript

and Asian divisions), the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the Parliamentary Archives, Churchill College Archive Centre, the Bodleian Library Manuscripts Division, the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Service historique de la Défense, the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, and the Bundesarchiv-Lichterfeld. Many thanks go also to James Pullen of the Wylie Agency, to Jeremy Langworthy for his meticulous copy-editing, to Subramanian Vengatakrishnan for overseeing production, and to Luciana O’Flaherty, Kizzy Taylor-Richelieu, and an anonymous reader at Oxford University Press.

My final debt is to friends and family and especially, as ever, to my dear wife Sue, for her patience and forbearance and for helping clarify my thoughts. This is her book too.

London and Essex December 2016

PART I. ATLANTIC PROLOGUE

PART II. CONTINENTAL IMPASSE

PART III. GLOBAL REPERCUSSIONS

Towards 1918: Lenin’s Revolution, the Ludendorff Offensives, and Wilson’s Fourteen Points

List of Illustrations, Maps, and Table

Illustrations

1. Photograph of Imperial German Army Headquarters, 1917. From left to right: Hindenburg, Wilhelm II, Bethmann Hollweg, King Ludwig III of Bavaria, Ludendorff, and Holtzendorff 33

2. Photograph of US President Woodrow Wilson from 1917 37

3. HMHS Gloucester Castle sinking after being torpedoed by UB-32, 31 March 1917 73

4. Royal emblems thrown onto the canal ice after Nicholas II’s abdication, Fontanka Canal, Petrograd, March 1917 100

5. Photograph of Russian Emperor Nicholas II from 1917 109

6. Photograph of the Prince of Wales decorating General Robert Nivelle five days after the start of the Nivelle offensive, 21 April 1917 119

7. Indian cavalry with lances advancing towards the Hindenburg Line, March 1917 128

8. French soldiers (September 1917) re-enact 16 April 1917 attack 141

9. Kerensky in the Cabinet room, 1917 161

10. Wilhelm II awarding Iron Crosses after defeat of Kerensky offensive, July 1917 166

11. Photograph of Sir Douglas Haig with French First Army commander, General François Anthoine 171

12. Photograph of UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George from 1917 176

13. Canadian pioneers laying tapes on the road to Passchendaele 201

14. German lorries passing through an Italian village, November 1917 228

15. Photograph of Austrian Emperor Karl I and Empress Zita from 1917 236

16. Photograph of Annie Besant from 1917 305

17. British troops by the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem 345

18. A facsimile of the Balfour Declaration (Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917) 355

19. Photograph of Lenin from 1917 366

20. Captain addressing soldiers in Kronstadt, 7 December 1917 375

21. US troops on Western Front, 1917 389

Maps

1. Europe in 1917 xxvi

2. The British Isles xxviii

3. The Eastern Front xxix

4. Petrograd xxx

5. Flanders xxxi

6. The Western Front xxxii

7. The Italian Front xxxiv

8. East and South Asia xxxvi

9. The Middle East xxxviii

Table

1. Shipping losses, 1916–17: Gross merchant shipping tonnage lost

List of Abbreviations

AA Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Ministry)

AC Austen Chamberlain papers, Cadbury Research Library, Birmingham

ADM Admiralty papers, TNA

AEF American Expeditionary Force

AFGG Les Armées françaises dans la Grande Guerre (Paris, 1922–37) [French official history]

AOK Armee Oberkommando (Austrian-Hungarian High Command)

AR Akten der Reichskanzlei, Bundesarchiv, Berlin

BA-MA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau

BEF British Expeditionary Force

BL British Library

CAB Cabinet papers, TNA

CAS Chief of Admiralty Staff

CFC Conjoint Foreign Committee

CGS Chief of the General Staff

COS Chief of Staff

CND Council of National Defense

CPI Committee on Public Information

CQG Grand quartier-général

DAMS Defensive Arming of Merchant Ships

DVP Deutsche Vaterlandspartei

EEF Egyptian Expeditionary Force

EZF English Zionist Federation

FO Foreign Office papers, TNA

FRB Federal Reserve Board

FRUS 1917 Foreign Relations of the United States 1917

FRUS LP FRUS The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920 (1939)

GAC Groupe d’armées du centre

GAN Groupe d’armèes du nord

GAR Groupe d’armées de la rupture

GHQ General Headquarters (British High Command)

GNP Gross National Product

GOI Government of India

GQG Grand Quartier-général (French High Command)

HNKY Hankey papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge

INC Indian National Congress

LGP Lloyd George papers, Parliamentary Archives, London

LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London

LOC Library of Congress, Washington

MECA Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College, Oxford

MEF Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force

MOFB James Edmonds, Military Operations, France and Belgium 1914–1918 (1933–48) [British official history]

MOI James Edmonds, Military Operations: Italy, 1915–1919 (1949)

MOM Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Macedonia (1933–5)

MRC Military-Revolutionary Committee

MT Ministry of Transport papers, TNA

NARA National Archives and Record Administration, Washington DC

NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

NMM National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

OHL Oberste Heeresleitung (German High Command)

ÖULK Edmond Glaise von Horstenau and Rudolf Kiszling (eds), Ősterreich-Ungarns Letzter Krieg, 1914–1918 (1929–35) [Austrian official history]

PRO Public Record Office papers, TNA

PSI Partito Socialista Italiano

PWW Arthur Link (ed.), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1966–94)

RMA Reichsmarineamt (German Navy Ministry)

SFIO Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (French Socialist Party)

SHAT Service historique de l’armèe de terre,Vincennes

SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Socialist Party)

TNA The National Archives, Kew

WK Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 (1925–56) [German official history]

WO War Office papers, TNA

WPC War Policy Committee

List of Principal Personalities

Unless otherwise indicated, the responsibilities indicated are those held by the relevant individual during 1917. Please refer to list of abbreviations.

Albert I King of the Belgians

Alekseyev, Mikhail Russian CGS (until May)

Arz von Strauβenberg, Arthur Austro-Hungarian CGS

Alexander, David President, Board of Deputies of British Jews

Allenby, Sir Edmund

Alston, Beilby

Amery, Leo

British commander in Egypt/Palestine (from June)

British chargé d’affaires in China

British Unionist MP and member of the Lloyd George government

Aosta, Duke of Italian Third Army commander

Armand, Count Abel

French intelligence officer and participant in Armand–Revertera conversations

Asquith, Herbert Henry British Liberal leader; prime minister (1908–16)

Augusta Victoria, Queen Wife of Wilhelm II

Bacon, Reginald Commander, Dover Patrol

Badoglio, Pietro Commander, Italian IV Corps

Baker, Newton Diehl US war secretary

Balfour, Arthur James British Foreign Secretary

Barbosa, Ruy

Brazilian Senator

Barnes, George British Labour politician and War Cabinet member

Barrère, Camille French ambassador in Italy

Barthou, Louis French foreign minister (October–November)

Bauer, Hermann Commander of German High Seas Fleet U-boats

Bauer, Max

Beatty, Sir David

OHL representative in Berlin

Commander, British Grand Fleet

Beliaev, Mikhail Tsarist Russian war minister

Below, Otto von Commander of Austro-German Fourteenth Army

Benedict XV (Giaccomo della Chiesa) Pope

Benson, William Shepherd

US Chief of Naval Staff

Bernstorff, Joachim-Heinrich, Count von German ambassador in the United States

Besant, Annie

Head of Indian Home Rule League

Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von German chancellor (until July)

Bissolati, Leonida

Bliss, Tasker Howard

Bonar Law, Andrew

Boroević, Svetozar

Boselli, Paolo

Brandeis, Louis

Braz, Wenceslau

Briand, Aristide

Broqueville, Charles de

Brugère, Joseph

Brusilov, Aleksei

Bryan, William Jennngs

Buchanan, Sir George

Burián, Istvan

Cabot Lodge, Henry

Cadorna, Luigi

Caillaux, Joseph

Italian socialist and minister

US Army Deputy COS; then COS (from September)

British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Unionist leader

Austro-Hungarian commander on Isonzo Front

Italian premier (until October)

US Supreme Court Justice

Brazilian president

French premier (until March)

Belgian premier

Chair of Nivelle offensive inquiry commission

Commander, Russian South-West Front; then CGS (May–July)

US Secretary of State (1913–15)

British ambassador in Russia

Austro-Hungarian foreign minister (1915–16)

Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (from March)

Italian commander-in-chief

Former French premier

Cambon, Jules Secretary-general, French Foreign Ministry

Cambon, Paul

French ambassador in Britain

Capelle, Eduard von German navy secretary

Capello, Luigi

Italian Second Army commander

Carranza,Venustiano Mexican president

Carson, Sir Edward British First Lord of the Admiralty (until July)

Castelnau, Curières de French Army Group commander

Caviocchi, Alberti Commander, Italian XXVII Corps

Cecil, Lord Robert Parliamentary under-secretary, British Foreign Office

Chamberlain, Austen

British Secretary of State for India (until July)

Charteris, Sir John Chief Intelligence Officer, GHQ, BEF

Chelmsford,Viscount Viceroy of India

Chernov,Viktor

Socialist Revolutionary leader; Russian agriculture minister

Chkheidze, Nikolai Menshevik; Chair of Petrograd Soviet

Chiozza Money, Leo British Shipping Ministry official

Churchill, Winston British minister of munitions (from July)

Clemenceau, Georges

French premier and war minister (from November)

Constantine I King of Greece

Coppée, Baron Evence

Belgian industrialist, intermediary between von der Lancken and Briand

Craddock, Reginald Member of Indian Executive Council

Cramon, August von German plenipotentiary at AOK

Creel, George

Director of Committee on Public Information (United States)

Curzon, George Nathaniel Lord British War Cabinet Member

Czernin, Ottokar Count

Austro-Hungarian foreign minister

D’Alenson, Colonel Chef de cabinet to Nivelle

Dall’Olio, Alfredo Italian armaments minister

Dan, Fyodor Menshevik and leading member of Petrograd Soviet

Daniels, Josephus

US navy secretary

Davidson, Sir John BEF GHQ Chief of Operations

Delmé-Radcliffe, Charles British military attaché in Italy

Derby, Edward Stanley, Earl of British Secretary of State for War

Dering, Herbert

De Salis, John

Devonport, Lord

Dewrawangse, Prince

Diaz, Armando

Duan Qiriu

Doumergue, Gaston

Duff, Sir Alexander

Eckhardt, Heinrich von

Enver Pasha

Erzberger, Mathias

Evert, Aleksei

British minister in Siam

British minister to the Vatican

British Food Controller

Siamese foreign minister

Italian commander-in-chief (from October)

Chinese premier (previously war minister)

French colonial minister (until March)

Head of British Admiralty AntiSubmarine Division

German minister in Mexico City

Turkish war minister

Deputy leader, German Centre Party

Russian Western Front commander

Falkenhayn, Erich von German CGS (1914–16)

Feisal, Prince

Franchet d’Espérey, Louis

Franz Joseph I

Freycinet, Charles de

Galt, Edith

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand

Gasparri, Cardinal Pietro

Gatti, Angelo

Geddes, Sir Eric

George V

Gerard, James Watson

Giardino, Gaetano

Giolitti, Giovanni

Gokhale, Gopal Krishna

Golitsyn, Prince Nikolai

Goubet, Lt. Col.

Gough, Sir Hubert

Graham, Ronald

Son of Sharif Hussein

Commander, French Northern Army Group

Austro-Hungarian emperor (1848–1916)

Former French premier and minister in Briand government

Second wife of Woodrow Wilson

Indian nationalist leader

Vatican Secretary of State

Italian army staff historian

British First Lord of the Admiralty (from July)

British king

US ambassador to Germany

Italian war minister

Former Italian premier

Indian nationalist leader

Last Tsarist Russian premier

Head of French General Staff intelligence (Second Bureau)

British Fifth Army commander

British Foreign Office official

Grey, Sir Edward

British Foreign Secretary (1905–16)

Grimm, Arthur Swiss socialist

Guchkov, Aleksandr Russian Octobrist leader; war minister (March–May)

Gurko,Vasily

Acting Russian CGS (1916–17)

Haig, Sir Douglas BEF commander-in-chief

Hall, Sir Reginald British Director of Naval Intelligence

Hankey, Maurice Secretary to British War Cabinet

Harding, William Chair, US FRB Board of Governors

Hardinge, Sir Arthur British ambassador in Spain

Hardinge of Penshurst, Baron Viceroy of India (to 1916); permanent under-secretary, British Foreign Office

Harington, C. H. COS to Plumer

Helfferich, Karl German secretary for the interior (until October)

Henderson, Arthur British War Cabinet member and Labour leader

Henderson, Reginald British Admiralty official

Herbillon, Emile Liaison officer between Poincaré and GQG

Hertling, Georg von German chancellor (from September)

Hindenburg, Paul von German CGS

Hoffmann, Robert Swiss foreign minister

Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince Gottfried von Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Germany

Holtzendorff, Henning von German Chief of the Admiralty Staff

Hötzendorff, Franz Conrad von Austro-Hungarian CGS; from March commander on the Tyrol front

House, Edward Mandell Adviser to Woodrow Wilson

Houston, David Franklin US agriculture secretary

Hughes, Charles Evans Republican presidential candidate, 1916 Hussein bin Ali, Sharif Ruler of Mecca

Jagow, Gottlieb von German foreign minister (1913–16)

Jellicoe, Sir John British First Sea Lord Joffre, Joseph French CGS/commander-in-chief (1911–16)

Jusserand, Jules French ambassador in the United States

Kamenev, Lev Bolshevik Central Committee member

Karl I

Kato, Count Komei

Kerensky, Aleksandr

Khabalov, Georgi

Kiggell, Sir Launcelot

Kitchener, Lord

Knox, Alfred

Kolyschko, Josef

Kornilov, Lavr

Austrian emperor

Japanese foreign minister (1914–15)

Justice minister in first Russian Provisional Government; then (from May) premier/war minister

Commander, Petrograd Military District

BEF CGS

British Secretary of State for War (1914–16)

British liaison officer in Russia

Russian representative in talks with Erzberger

Commander, Russian Eighth Army, then commander-in-chief (July–September)

Krafft von Delmensingen, Karl COS to Austro-German Fourteenth Army

Kuhl, Hermann von CGS to Rupprecht of Bavaria

Kühlmann, Richard von German foreign minister (from July)

Kuhn, Joseph Head of War College Division

Lancken-Wakenitz, Baron Oscar von der Head of the Political Department of the German occupation administration in Brussels

Lansdowne, Lord

Lansing, Robert

Unionist peer and former Foreign Secretary

US Secretary of State

Lema, Marqués de Spanish foreign minister

Long, Walter

Lenin,Vladimir

British colonial secretary

Russian Bolshevik leader

Leslie, Norman British Shipping Ministry official

Levetzow, Magnus von Chief of Operations, German High Seas Fleet

Li Yuan-hang

Chinese president

Lloyd George, David British prime minister

Lockhart, Robert Bruce

Long, Walter

British Consul General in Moscow

British colonial secretary

Loβberg, Friedrich von German Fourth Army COS

Ludendorff, Erich German First Quartermaster-General

Lvov, Prince Georgy Premier, First Russian Provisional Government

Lyautey, Hubert French war minister

McAdoo, William Gibbs US treasury secretary

MacDonough, George British Director of Military Intelligence

McKenna, Reginald British Chancellor of the Exchequer (1914–16)

MacLay, Sir Joseph British Shipping Controller

McMahon, Sir Henry British High Commissioner in Egypt

MacMullen, Norman Officer in BEF GHQ Operations Section

Mangin, Charles Commander, French Tenth Army

Margerie, Pierre de Political Director, French Foreign Ministry

Martin, William Director of Protocol, French Foreign Ministry

Maude, Sir Frederick British commander in Mesopotamia

Mazel, Olivier Commander, French Fifth Army

Mérode, Countess Pauline de Intermediary between von der Lancken and Briand

Messimy, Adolphe Former French war minister

Meston, Sir James Lieutenant Governor of United Provinces (India)

Metaxas, Ioannis Greek CGS

Michaelis, Georg German chancellor (July–September)

Micheler, Alfred Commander, French Breakthrough Army Group

Mikhail, Grand Duke Brother of Nicholas II

Milyukov, Pavel Russian Kadet leader; foreign minister (March–May)

Milner, Alfred Lord British War Cabinet member

Moltke the Younger, Helmuth von German CGS (1906–14)

Monro, Sir Charles Commander-in-chief, Indian Army

Montagu, Edwin British Secretary of State for India (from July)

Montefiore, Claude President, Anglo-Jewish Association

Motono, Baron Ichiro Japanese foreign minister

Müller, Georg von

Müller, Lauro

Murray, Sir Archibald

Neilson, J. F.

Nicholas II

Nitti, Francesco

Nivelle, Robert

Orlando,Vittorio

Pacelli, Eugenio

Page, Walter Hines

German Chief of the Naval Cabinet

Brazilian foreign minister (until May)

British commander in Egypt/Palestine (until June)

British liaison officer in Russia

Russian emperor

Italian finance minister (from October)

French commander-in-chief, Western Front (Dec. 1916–May 1917)

Italian minister of the interior; then premier (from October)

Papal nuncio in Munich

US ambassador in Britain

Payer, Friedrich von Deputy to Hertling

Paléologue, Maurice

Peçanha, Nila

French ambassador in Russia

Brazilian foreign minister (from May)

Pershing, John J. Commander, AEF

Pétain, Philippe Commander, French Army Group Centre, then CGS (April), then French commander-in-chief, Western Front (from May)

Picot, François Georges-

Plumer, Sir Herbert

Poincaré, Raymond

French diplomat and colonial lobbyist

Commander, British Second Army

French president

Polk, Frank Counsellor, US State Department

Porrò, Carl Deputy to Cadorna

Protopopov, Aleksandr

Tsarist Russian interior minister

Rama VI King of Siam

Rasputin, Grigori

Rawlinson, Sir Henry

Redfield, William Cox

Reinsch, Paul

Renouard, Georges

Revertera, Count Nikolaus

Ribot, Alexandre

Russian faith healer and mystic

Former commander of British Fourth Army

US commerce secretary

US minister to China

Head, French GQG Third Bureau

Austrian participant in Armand–Revertera conversations

French finance minister, then premier (March–September)

Riezler, Kurt Secretary to Bethmann Hollweg

Rittikh, Aleksandr Tsarist Russian agriculture minister

Robertson, Sir William British CIGS

Rodd, Sir Rennell British ambassador in Italy

Rodzianko, Mikhail Speaker of Russian Duma

Rothschild, Baron Walter British banker and Zionist supporter

Runciman, Walter President of the British Board of Trade (to December 1916)

Rupprecht of Bavaria, Crown Prince German Army Group commander

Ruszky, Nikolai Russian Northern Front commander

Sacher, Harry Manchester-based journalist and Zionist

Sakharov,Vladimir Russian Romanian Front commander

Samuel, Sir Herbert President of the British Local Government Board (1914–15)

Sarrail, Maurice Commander, Allied armies in Macedonia

Sassoon, Siegfried British army officer

Scheer, Reinhard Commander, German High Seas Fleet

Schlieffen, Alfred von German CGS (1890–1905)

Schulenburg, Friedrich Count von der COS to Crown Prince Wilhelm

Scott, Charles Prestwich Editor, The Manchester Guardian

Scott, Hugh US CGS

Sims, William

Head of US naval mission to UK

Sixte de Bourbon, Prince Intermediary in spring 1917 peace contacts

Smuts, Jan-Christiaan

Former South African defence minister; British War Cabinet member

Sokolow, Nahum Zionist activist, based in London

Sonnino, Sidney Italian foreign minister

Spiers (from 1918 Spears), Edward British liaison officer in France

Spring-Rice, Sir Cecil British ambassador in the United States

Stone, William Chair, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (to March)

Stürmer, Boris Russian premier and foreign minister (1916)

Sun Yat-sen Chinese nationalist leader

Sykes, Sir Mark British MP, officer, and diplomat

Taft, William Howard

Tchlenov, Yehiel

Tereschchenko, Mikhail

Thomas, Albert

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar

Tirpitz, Alfred von

Trepov, Aleksandr

Trotsky, Leon

Tsereteli, Irakli

Tumulty, Joseph

Valentini, Rudolf von

Venizelos, Eleutherios

Verkhovsky, Aleksandr

Villa, Pancho

Villalobar, Marqués de

Vittorio Emmanuel III

Waldstätten, Alfred von

Webb, Sir Richard

Weizmann, Chaim

Wetzell, Georg

Wilhelm, Crown Prince

Wilhelm II

Wilson, Woodrow

Wise, Rabbi Stephen

Wiseman, William

Wolf, Lucien

Xavier de Bourbon, Prince

Yrigoyen, Hipólito

Yuan Shikai

US president (1909–13)

Russian Zionist leader

Russian foreign minister (May–November)

French socialist; armaments minister

Indian nationalist leader

German Navy Secretary (1897–1916)

Penultimate tsarist Russian premier

Chair of Military-Revolutionary Committee (September–November)

Menshevik; Russian minister of posts and telecommunications (May–August)

Secretary to Woodrow Wilson

German Chief of Civil Cabinet

Greek premier (from June)

Russian Provisional Government war minister

Mexican revolutionary leader

Spanish representative in the Low Countries

King of Italy

CGS to Arz von Strauβenberg

Director of British Admiralty Trade Division

President of the English Zionist Federation

German OHL Chief of Operations

Son of Wilhelm II; German Army Group commander

German emperor

US president

US Zionist leader

British secret service agent in the United States

Secretary to the Conjoint Foreign Committee

Brother of Sixte de Bourbon

Argentinian president

Chinese president (to 1916)

Zaimis, Alexandros Greek premier (until June)

Zimmermann, Arthur German foreign minister (November 1916–July 1917)

Zinoviev, Grigori Bolshevik Central Committee member

Zita, Empress Wife of Karl I