Seite - 591 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Peace Campaign of the Central Powers 591 and the war, in its final third, thus also took on a shape that would be formative for its outcome. Austria-Hungary could not even make peace of its own accord. This is highlighted by the depiction of Emerich Csáky, the envoy who was sum- moned to serve in the Foreign Ministry and was assigned to Department I led by Ambassador Kajetan von Mérey. The department had the task, among other things, of addressing all matters relating to the future peace. Although Mérey complained about an enormous work overload, he in actual fact  – as would soon become apparent  – had nothing to do, and the man allocated to him, Csáky, was also sinking in inactivity.1364 The essence of this story is : as long as Germany did not undertake any steps towards peace, nothing could be done in Vienna, either. The year 1916 was also full of crisis symptoms for the German Empire, since the failure of the encirclement at Verdun and the start of the counteroffensive by the En- tente powers at the Somme had been alarm signals, and likewise the failure of the Aus- tria-Hungarian armies in the ‘punitive expedition’ and during the Brusilov Offensive. The German leadership believed, however, to have a means at its disposal with which it could bring about a turnaround, namely submarine warfare. Austria-Hungary could not give any thought to a strategic use of submarines, since it did not have any. Tied to the question of a resumption of a large-scale submarine war, however, was the danger of an entry into the war on the part of the USA, since the latter had already in April 1916 threatened with the severance of diplomatic relations and, indirectly, with war, if the German Empire did not return to waging a submarine war in accordance with the rules of prize warfare. It cannot be discussed here whether this threat did not constitute first and foremost a massive help to Great Britain, which had declared itself unwilling to ease blockade measures against the Central Powers and instead intended to continue starving them out. Without doubt, however, the American threat had a lasting impact on German decisions and it was responsible for Germany’s hesitation in commencing unrestricted submarine warfare. In view of the fact that the land army had been unable to achieve a decisive success in either the west or the east in favour of the Central Pow- ers, and that the naval war was not to be expanded to a decisive dimension, a political solution was sought after. It was to be set in motion in the form of a peace initiative. In order to take a step towards peace, there were to all intents and purposes two pos- sibilities for the Central Powers : either they made use of the neutral states as media- tors, first and foremost the American President Woodrow Wilson, or they started their own initiative. For this, it was above all an agreement between the German Empire and Austria-Empire that was required ; Bulgaria and Turkey were to be informed and included in discussions only later. Thus, the German government sent Vienna an invita- tion to detailed talks at the Grand Headquarters in Pszczyna (Pless). The Imperial and Royal Foreign Minister, Count Burián, saw this as the opportunity to take stock and to make an assessment of the war situation. The result was remarkable. At the outset of