Germany
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
1856–1921 Chancellor of Germany, 1909–1917
A career civil servant of cultivated, melancholy character, Bethmann Hollweg tried to steer between the Kaiser, the generals and the Reichstag. He wanted better relations with Britain, but in July 1914 he backed the blank check and gambled that a localized Austro-Serbian war was possible, privately calling the policy a leap in the dark (so says the diary of his secretary Kurt Riezler, whose authenticity is disputed). When Britain entered the war he lamented, in front of its ambassador, that it had gone to war for a scrap of paper. He was forced out in July 1917 by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. After the war he wrote memoirs in which he acknowledged a share of responsibility for what had happened. He died in 1921.