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2 results

  • 5 - The Gamble

  • Daniel Larsen, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Plotting for Peace
    Published online:
    26 March 2021
    Print publication:
    01 April 2021, pp 137-158

  • Summary

    Britain's great gamble began with the launch of the Somme Offensive. To extend their American assets, Asquith dislodged the spendthrift Lloyd George from the Ministry of Munitions by promoting him to War Secretary, replacing him with the more economy-minded Edwin Montagu. Startling talk of peace came from French President Raymond Poincaré, which British hardliners moved rapidly to bury. Otherwise, the question of American mediation only rumbled very quietly beneath the surface. British intelligence opened a new source of information with the discovery of the "Swedish Roundabout", unlocking the communications of the German Ambassador to the United States. The British military leadership continually reassured the government that the Somme Offensive was making great headway. As Romania moved to enter the war on the Allied side in August, the government was taken to unfamiliar heights of optimism: it finally seemed as if the Allies might be able to win the war on schedule.

Plotting for Peace
  • American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917
  • Daniel Larsen
  • Published online:
    26 March 2021
    Print publication:
    01 April 2021
  • With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battled over whether or not to seek a negotiated end to the First World War. In this riveting new account, Daniel Larsen tells the full story for the first time of how Asquith and his supporters secretly sought to end the war. He shows how they supported President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to convene a peace conference and how British intelligence, clandestinely breaking American codes, aimed to sabotage these peace efforts and aided Asquith's rivals. With Britain reading and decrypting all US diplomatic telegrams between Europe and Washington, these decrypts were used in a battle between the Treasury, which was terrified of looming financial catastrophe, and Lloyd George and the generals. This book's findings transform our understanding of British strategy and international diplomacy during the war.