* Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg ( Germany )

* January 1 – Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Chancellor of Germany ( born 1856 )

* November 29 – Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Chancellor of Germany ( d. 1921 )

* Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, 24 June 1907-14 July 1909, also Secretary of the Interior.

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg ( 29 November 1856 – 1 January 1921 ) was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917.

Bethmann Hollwig was born in Hohenfinow, Brandenburg, the son of Prussian official Felix von Bethmann Hollweg.

His grandfather was August von Bethmann Hollweg, who had been a prominent law scholar, president of Frederick William University in Berlin, and Prussian Minister of Culture.

His great grandfather was Johann Jakob Hollweg, who had married a daughter of the Frankfurt am Main banking family of Bethmann, which attained great prosperity in the 18th century.

In 1889, Bethmann Hollweg married Martha von Pfuel, niece of Ernst von Pfuel, Prime Minister of Prussia.

From 1905 to 1907 Bethmann Hollweg served as Prussian Minister of Interior, then as Imperial State Secretary for the Interior from 1907 to 1909.

In 1909, on the resignation of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, Bethmann Hollweg was appointed to succeed him.

Despite the increase in tensions due to the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, Bethmann Hollweg did improve relations with Britain to some extent, working with British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to alleviate tensions during the Balkan Crises of 1912-1913, and negotiating treaties over an eventual partition of the Portuguese colonies and the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, Bethmann Hollweg and Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow were instrumental in assuring Austria of Germany's unconditional support regardless of Austria's actions against Serbia.

During the war, Bethmann Hollweg has usually been seen as having generally attempted to pursue a relatively moderate policy, but having been frequently outflanked by the military leaders, who played an increasingly important role in the direction of all German policy.

However, this view has been partially superseded, as the work of historian Fritz Fischer in the 1960s showed that Bethmann Hollweg made more concessions to the nationalist right than had previously been thought.

Bethmann Hollweg, all credibility and power lost, remained in office until July that year, when a Reichstag revolt, resulting in the passage of the famous Peace Resolution by an alliance of the Social Democratic, Progressive, and Center parties, forced his resignation and replacement by the political nonentity Georg Michaelis.

Dr. von Bethmann Hollweg received prominent attention throughout the world in June 1919, when he formally asked the Allied and associated powers to place him on trial instead of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Bethmann Hollweg spent the short remainder of his life in retirement, writing his memoirs.

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fr: Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg

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Kapp's pamphlet, entitled Die Nationalen Kreise und der Reichskanzler and published in the early summer of 1916, criticized German foreign and domestic policy under Bethmann Hollweg.

Thimme noted that Hillgruber relied almost entirely upon the diary of Bethmann Hollweg's aide and friend, Kurt Riezler, to support his " calculated risk " thesis, which was a dubious source because portions of Riezler's diary had been forged after the war to make German foreign policy appear less aggressive then it was in 1914.

Bethmann Hollweg in a message to the German Ambassadors in London, Paris and St. Petersburg stated that the principal aim of German foreign policy now was to make it appear that Russia had forced Germany into a war, in order to keep Britain neutral and ensure that German public opinion would back the war effort.

At a meeting in Potsdam, according to Admiral Tirpitz ’ s notes, Wilhelm “ expressed himself without reserve regarding Bethmann ’ s incompetence ” in foreign affairs.

In domestic politics, Bethmann Hollweg's record was also mixed, and his policy of the " diagonal ", which endeavoured to maneuver between the Socialists and Liberals of the left and the right-wing nationalists of the right, only succeeded in alienating most of the German political establishment.

Following the outbreak of World War I, Hertling supported the policy of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg but declined to become his successor in 1917.

At a meeting held also on the 5th at Potsdam palace, the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the Foreign Ministry ’ s State Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, the Minister of War Erich von Falkenhayn, the head of the German Imperial Military Cabinet Moritz von Lyncker, the Adjutant general Hans von Plessen, Captain Hans Zenker of the Naval General Staff, and Admiral Eduard von Capelle of the Naval State Secretariat all endorsed Wilhelm ’ s “ blank cheque ” as Germany ’ s best policy.

Bethmann Hollweg's fears about Russia led him to credit Anglo-Russian naval talks in May 1914 as the beginning of an “ encirclement ” policy against Germany that could only be broken through war.

Contrary to many similar nationalist organizations created in that period, the Ostmarkenverein had relatively close ties with the government and local administration, which made it largely successful, even though it opposed both the policy of seeking some modo vivendi with the Poles pursued by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Leo von Caprivi's policies of relaxation of anti-Polish measures.

In a letter to Grey, Bethmann Hollweg stated that Germany “ could not summon Austria before a European court of justice in her case with Serbia ”.

Fischer notes that the telegram reporting these " vague " assurances arrived 12 minutes before the despatch of the suspending telegram and that Bethmann himself justified the cancellation that way, while acknowledging that before then Bethmann had already prepared, but not yet sent, a telegram to Vienna explaining that he had " cancelled execution of instructions in No. 200, because the General Staff has just informed me that military measures of our neighbors, especially in the east, compel speedy decision if we are not to be taken by surprise.

After Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff replaced the more ineffectual Erich von Falkenhayn at the General Staff in the summer of 1916, his hopes for American President Woodrow Wilson's mediation at the end of 1916 came to nothing, and, over Bethmann Hollweg's objections, Hindenburg and Ludendorff forced the adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare in March 1917, which led to the United States's entry into the war the next month.

Informed by the British ambassador that Britain would go to war with Germany over the latter's violation of Belgian neutrality, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg exclaimed that he could not believe that Britain and Germany would be going to war over a mere ' scrap of paper ' ().

In addition, the government of Imperial Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg threatened to outlaw all parties in case of war.

As acting secretary he had also taken part in the so-called Kronrat, the deliberations in 1914, with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, in which the decision was taken to support Austria-Hungary after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria at Sarajevo, which ultimately was to lead to the outbreak of war.

Likewise, in reference to the order by Dr. Bethmann Hollweg to Count Roedern, the State Secretary for Alsace-Lorraine, to put a stop to Francophobic remarks in the German-language press in Alsace, Ritter claimed it was proof of Germany's desire not to have a wider war in 1914 ; Ritter accordingly claimed also that Fischer's contrary interpretation of Dr. Bethmann Hollweg's order was not supported by the facts.

Contrary to Fisher's interpretation, Ritter maintained that Bethmann Hollweg's warnings to Vienna were meant to stop a war, and were not window dressing intended to distract historical attention from German responsibility for the war.

Ritter claimed that Fisher's interpretation of Bethmann Hollweg's meeting with the British Ambassador Sir Edward Goschen was mistaken since in Ritter's opinion, if Bethmann Hollweg was serious about securing British neutrality it made no sense for expressing the imperialistic war aims to Goschen that Fischer attibutes to him.

Rather than a conscious decision to wage an aggressive war as Fischer argued, Ritter's claim was that news of Russia's mobilization led the German generals into persuading a reluctant Bethmann Hollweg to activate the Schlieffen Plan.

In Hillgruber's opinion, the " calculated risk " gambit was a highly dangerous and foolish one, as Bethmann Hollweg and the rest of the German leadership gratuitously failed to anticipate what the most likely Russian reaction to an Austro-Serbian war would be, and that therefore the German leadership of 1914 was extremely irresponsible in trying to use the " calculated risk " of an Austro-Serbian war as a diplomatic device to break the Triple Entente.

In Hillgruber's opinion, after the war had begun, a split occurred within the German leadership between the moderate imperialism of the Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who wished for territorial gains if they could be obtained, but was prepared to settle for a peace based on the pre-1914 status quo, and a more radical group centered around General Erich Ludendorff and the rest of the Third Supreme Command who wanted total victory over all of Germany's enemies, no matter what the cost, and very wide-ranging annexations in Europe, Asia and Africa.

In this way, Hillgruber largely followed the distinction first made by Gerhard Ritter between a moderate civilian group in the German leadership centred around Bethmann Hollweg who, while not eschewing territorial expansionism, did not insist on it as a precondition for making peace, and the more radical group in the military centered around Ludendorff, who would settle for nothing less than a war ending in making Germany the world's greatest power.

Although Bethmann Hollweg stated that the decision for war or peace was in Austria ’ s hands, he strongly advised that Austria choose the former.

On July 7, Bethmann Hollweg told his aide and close friend Kurt Riezler that “ An action against Serbia can lead to a world war ”.

Riezler went to write in his diary that Bethmann Hollweg painted a “ devastating picture ” with Russia building rail-roads in Congress Poland that allow Russia to mobilize faster once the Great Military Programme was finished in 1917, and that an Austro-Serbian war would probably cause a world war, “... which would lead to an overthrow of the existing order ”, but since the “ existing order was lifeless and void of ideas ”, such a war could only be welcomed as a blessing to Germany.