EARLY LIFE
Baron Richard von Kühlmann was born in the Turkish capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) on May 3, 1873. The son of the director general of the Anatolian Railways, he entered the German foreign service in 1899… and was later posted to St. Petersburg, Tehrān, Tangier, and Washington, D.C.
From 1908 to 1914, Kühlmann was councillor of the German embassy in London. He was very active in the study of all phases of contemporary political and social life in Great Britain and even in Ireland. His reports from London may have helped persuade Berlin that Britain was unlikely to enter a continental fray.
Kühlmann may have secretly visited Ireland twice in the months before the outbreak of the Great War. Despite the question over Home Rule, Unionists in the north and Nationalists in the south were arming… with German munitions! In an account that appeared in Manchester’s Daily Despatch, Kühlmann’s London dispatches were interpreted in Berlin as evidence that Britain was so embarrassed by the Irish Question that in all probability she would be unable to participate in a war… that her hands were tied. He had gone so far to report “in all seriousness” the “solemn declaration” of “a most loyal Ulsterman” that “we would rather be ruled by the Kaiser than by the Pope.”
PLACATING THE TURKS
When the First World War began, Kühlmann was councillor of the embassy at Constantinople. In October 1914, he founded the News Bureau… which became a vehicle for German propaganda in the Ottoman Empire. Postcards of ruined Belgian churches were used to appeal to the Jihadist sentiments held by those who had participated in the Christian massacres in Constantinople in 1896.
During the Armenian Genocide, Kühlmann was initially reluctant to expose the massacres against the Armenian population. He held sympathetic beliefs toward Turkish nationalism, repeatedly used the term “alleged”, and excused the Ottoman government for the massacres. Kühlmann defended the German-Turkish World War alliance. He stated that the policies against the Armenians were a matter of “internal politics”. However, Kühlmann eventually stated:
“The destruction of the Armenians was undertaken on a massive scale. This policy of extermination will for a long time stain the name of Turkey.”
He was subsequently minister at The Hague. From September 1916 until early August 1917, Kühlmann was the ambassador at Constantinople.
BREST LITOVSK
Appointed foreign secretary on August 6, 1917, Kühlmann led the delegation that negotiated with Bolshevik Russia in ceasing hostilities on the Eastern Front. That December, he explained that the main goals of his diplomacy were to subvert and undermine the political unity of the enemy states:
“The disruption of the Entente and the subsequent creation of political combinations agreeable to us constitute the most important war aim of our diplomacy. Russia appeared to be the weakest link in the enemy chain. The task therefore was gradually to loosen it, and, when possible, to remove it. This was the purpose of the subversive activity we caused to be carried out in Russia behind the front–in the first place promotion of separatist tendencies and support of the Bolsheviks. It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic propaganda and appreciably to extend the originally narrow basis of their party. The Bolsheviks have now come to power; how long they will retain power cannot be yet foreseen. They need peace in order to strengthen their own position; on the other hand it is entirely in our interest that we should exploit the period while they are in power, which may be a short one, in order to attain firstly an armistice and then, if possible, peace.”
Kühlmann was part of the Teutonic delegation that included Major General Max Hoffmann, Austrian Foreign Minister Count Ottokar Czernin, both the Ottoman grand vizier Talaat Pasha and Foreign Minister Nassimy Bey. The Bulgarians were headed by Minister of Justice Popoff, who was later joined by Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov.
Opposite them was the Bolshevik delegation, led by Adolf Joffe. It was initially a motley group that consisted of a uncivilized peasant picked up on the road named Stashkov, a sailor, a worker, Madame Anastasia Bizenko (a Bolshevik heroine via the murder of a minister), and Admiral Vasili Altvater (the sole military figure acting as a technical adviser).
On December 2, 1917, the Bolshevik Armistice Delegation passed through the German lines at Dunaburg (Dvinsk) and continued westward to Brest Litovsk. Joffe stood by the Bolshevik view of “peace with no annexations or indemnities“. They were prepared to fight for the domain as the deposed Tsar Nicholas II had known it.
But Kühlmann wanted a peace of conciliation, which was at odds with the German High Command. Erich Ludendorff (the First Quartermaster General) wanted Poland as an eastern buffer zone, with Kurland and Lithuania becoming Grand Duchies and lieges of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Meanwhile, Count Czernin wanted peace on almost any terms, as his country was starving. He was prepared to deal with the Bolsheviks independently… until Kühlmann and Hoffmann threatened to recall the twenty-five German divisions that were stiffening the Austrian front!
After a one-month armistice was signed on December 15, 1917, the sessions were broken off to give the delegates one week to report to their home governments. Four days later at Kreuznach, the Crown Council (the Kaiser, Kühlmann, Ludendorff, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and the aged Chancellor Georg von Hertling) met… and with differing opinions. With Ludendorff and Kühlmann debating the final terms of the agreement, the Kaiser fluttered back and forth between the two men… unable to make up his mind! In the end, Kühlmann conceded to Ludendorff, but the former returned to Brest Litovsk uninstructed on how to proceed.
When it soon became clear to the Bolsheviks that “peace with no annexations or indemnities” was not in the Teutonic interest, Joffe threatened to dissolve the conference. But in mid-January 1918, the Bolshevik delegation was now headed by Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky. Unfortunately, his rhetoric could not sway the intransigent German High Command.
Trotsky felt the Germans could not make war on a land that declared itself at peace. So he made the declaration of “no war, no peace” with Germany… and (along with the other Bolshevik delegates) left Brest Litovsk.
It was quickly apparent that the move was naive thinking. On February 18, 1918, Hoffmann (with Ludendorff’s stamp of approval) resumed the war in the East. The Germans began the long thrust toward the Urals with no armed resistance.
Both Lenin and Trotsky were now wanting to sign an immediate agreement “in order to save the revolution”… while some of the old diehard Bolsheviks were shouting that it was time to fight. On February 26, 1918, the Bolshevik acceptance of the peace terms was announced to an excited Reichstag in Berlin. But Hoffmann’s armies would not stop their advance until the paper were signed.
The Treaty of Brest Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918. Under the terms of the agreement:
1. Russia lost 34% of her population, 32% of her farmland, half of her industrial holdings, and 90% of her coal mines to Imperial Germany.
2. Finland, the Baltics, Russian Poland, White Russia, and the Caucasus were under German control.
3. The Ukraine (via a secret agreement two months earlier) was to be independent under German tutelage; the rich farmlands were to help feed the starving peoples of the Central Powers.
In one stroke of the pen, Russia lost all the conquests the tsars had made in the last two hundred years!
But the one million German troops employed to occupy these newly-acquired lands were soon lost divisions. These men were soon thoroughly subverted by Communist propaganda… so much so that Ludendorff refused to bring them to the West.
RUMANIA AND RESIGNATION
Kühlmann also negotiated the May 7, 1918 Peace of Bucharest with Rumania. In the treaty negotiations, Kühlmann again encountered opposition from the German High Command! According to its terms:
1. Rumania had to return southern Dobruja to Bulgaria.
2. Rumania had to give Austria-Hungary control of the passes in the Carpathian Mountains.
3. Rumania had to lease its own oil wells to Germany for ninety years.
In light of the diminishing hopes on the Western Front in the early summer of 1918, Kühlmann delivered a speech in the Reichstag on the general situation in Germany. He declared that the war could not be ended by arms alone, implying that it would require diplomacy to secure peace. This utterance was misinterpreted, and the Army High Command was drawn into the controversy which arose over it. Tensions became so unbearable that Kühlmann’s position became untenable. He was practically thrown overboard by Chancellor von Hertling in a speech intended to explain his statement. After an interview with the Kaiser at the front, Kühlmann tendered his resignation on July 9, 1918. He was replaced by Paul von Hintze.
Richard von Kühlmann would survive two World Wars before dying on February 16, 1948 in Ohlstadt, West Germany. He was seventy-five years old.