I was talking to my Hoover colleague and noted diplomatic historian Philip Zelikow, and he mentioned this recent book of his; I asked him for a quick summary of his conclusions, and he was kind enough to put one together for me:
For five months, from August 1916 until the end of January 1917, leaders secretly struggled to end the Great War. Most of their struggle was out of public sight. It is still little understood today.
The spotlights have long been trained on how the war started. Scholars have minutely studied every move and countermove in the "July crisis" of 1914. Few have noticed or discussed why the war did not end in late 1916 and early 1917.
In many ways, these choices not to end the war are more interesting than the ones to start it. In July 1914, it was hard to see all the consequences of the choices. Time and options were extremely compressed. Between August 1916 and January 1917, the leaders had months to work and the stakes were tragically visible.
Few know that the German government secretly sought peace and pleaded for Wilson to mediate a peace conference. This was a direct move made at the top, coordinated with allies and key political figures in Germany.
Few know that Wilson entirely recognized the significance of this move and sought to act on it as quickly and emphatically as he could. He placed it at the top of his agenda as soon as he was reelected. Wilson also knew he had practically absolute leverage—mainly financial—over the Allied ability to continue the war. Given the political climate in the warring countries, much rested on the Americans, to give the peacemakers in all the warring capitals the face-saving way out.
Few know that the divided British coalition government was intensely, secretly, debating its own growing pessimism about the war and its imminent bankruptcy in the dollars to sustain it. These debates were quickened by a still deeper layer of secret knowledge. British intelligence had learned of the secret German peace move.
