After the second battle of the Marne, Ludendorff thought he could hold, and wear out the Allies in a battle of attrition, preventing further civilian restlessness with further discipline and repression. The battle of Amiens showed that this was not going to be an option. It was agreed that Germany would seek peace after the next success in the West, and when the Austrians arrived to plead for immediate discussions on peace, the Germans refused.

In a speech on the 10th of September, Vice-Chancellor Payer hinted that Germany hoped to sacrifice their colonies and accept the status quo in the West, in exchange for remaining predominant in central and eastern Europe, while still somehow holding on to Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium. The Austrians defied Germany's wishes, and publicly appealed for discussions, which the Allies refused.

Ludendorff had something of a nervous breakdown. The full-on pressure on the Western front was unprecedented, and his already tense, workaholic personality snapped when Bulgaria requested an armistice on the 28th of September. An Allied advance could cut off the Ottoman Empire, revive the threat to A-H's southern border, and if the Allies entered Romania, Germany was faced with losing a massive source of oil (stocks used up within two months without it). Bulgaria was the straw that broke the camel's back, and with co-ordinated offensives all along the Western Front, the Allies, still growing in power and size, were overcoming Germany's best prepared positions.

The Meuse-Argonne offensive on the 26th, the British surge towards Cambrai on the 27th, the British-Belgian attack in Flanders on the 28th...up against German forces with reduced manpower and almost no reserves, with censors reporting widespread pessimism, and civilian despondency growing, and food supplies in a precarious state.

Ludendorff decided Germany must seek peace, and he found Hindenburg agreed with him. Every hope of exhausting the Allies was gone. They were looking to the future, and to preserving at least some core forces to guard against revolution (unreliable units were already being pulled out of the line, after being 'poisoned by socialist ideas'). Ludendorff believed the Fourteen Points to be vague enough to leave room for manoeuvre, and Germany could twist them to minimise damage, and if not, renew the fighting after having rested. Ludendorff underestimated the danger that asking for an armistice would provoke the unrest he feared.

Paul von Hintze and the foreign ministry saw a gap between the US and Britain and France, and hoped to exploit it. Better terms could be achieved if Germany changed its political system, so he believed the best way to do it would be carefully manage a minimum of democratization, rather than have a popular revolution. Ludendorff wanted to bring in the political left anyway, to share in the rather poisoned chalice they had helped create. Hintze didn't envisage an armistice straight away, but Hindenburg and Ludendorff convinced him of the necessity, and the three together managed to bring Wilhelm around to the idea.