Therefore, he declared, it was necessary to accept, immediately and unconditionally, any sort of armistice, no matter how hard its conditions might be; the army was no longer to be trusted and revolution was imminent behind the front.
On the morning of the 9th of November,[9] the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, caused me to be informed again--as he had already done on the 7th--that the Social Democrats, and also the Social Democratic Secretaries of State, demanded my abdication; that the rest of the members of the Government, who had stood out so far against it, were now in favor of it, and that the same was true of the majority parties in the Reichstag. For these reasons, he continued, he requested me to abdicate immediately, since, otherwise, extensive street fighting attended by bloodshed would take place in Berlin; it had already started on a small scale.
I immediately summoned Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the Quartermaster General, General Gröner. General Gröner again announced that the army could fight no longer and wished rest above all else, and that, therefore, any sort of armistice must be unconditionally accepted; that the armistice must be concluded as soon as possible, since the army had supplies for only six to eight days more and was cut off from all further supplies by the rebels, who had occupied all the supply storehouses and Rhine bridges; that, for some unexplained reason, the armistice commission sent to France--consisting of Erzberger, Ambassador Count Oberndorff, and General von Winterfeldt--which had crossed the French lines two evenings before, had sent no report as to the nature of the conditions.
The Crown Prince also appeared, with his Chief of Staff, Count Schulenburg, and took part in the conference. During our conversation several telephone inquiries came from the Imperial Chancellor, which, pointing out that the Social Democrats had left the Government and that delay was dangerous, became most insistent. The Minister of War reported uncertainty among part of the troops in Berlin--4th Jägers, Second Company of Alexander Regiment, Second Battery, Jüterbog, gone over to the rebels--no street fighting.
I wished to spare my people civil war. If my abdication was indeed the only way to prevent bloodshed, I was willing to _renounce the Imperial throne, but not to abdicate as King of Prussia_; I would remain, as such, with my troops, since the military leaders had declared that the officers would leave in crowds if I abdicated entirely, and the army would then pour back, without leaders, into the fatherland, damage it, and place it in peril.