The following day, compounding the mounting sense of confusion, Hindenburg and Ludendorff held a press conference at which Germany’s military leadership publicly disowned the position of the Reich’s Foreign Secretary. The war, the military leadership insisted, could still be won by a crushing victory in the West. The issue of the SPD’s daily newspaper, Vorwärts, which had dared to publish Kühlmann’s words, was impounded. Kühlmann’s political career was over. On 9 July 1918, despite having the backing of the Reichstag majority, he was replaced by Paul von Hintze, an unswerving follower of the
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