According to bargaining models of war, war reveals private information about resolve and power, to which decision-makers respond rationally by increasing or lowering their reservation price for settling. Germany during World War I presents a puzzle for this baseline rationalist expectation, and theoretical accounts offer three reasons by which leaders in a losing situation might nevertheless rationally continue to fight. If others cannot be expected to abide by any peace settlement, a commitment problem arises that makes fighting on rational. Even exploring diplomatic settlement could reveal private information about a lack of resolve. Self-interested leaders fearing that defeat will result in domestic turmoil, revolution, and the loss of their elite prerogatives might have incentives to “gamble for resurrection.” I argue instead that are all more parsimoniously accounted for through a focus on morality, the expression of the ethics of German nationalists. The nationalist understanding of adversaries as lacking ethical restraint generates the perception of a commitment problem that makes anything else than victory unacceptable. Even peace overtures are dangerous. The German right scorned demands for further democratization during the war as selfish class politics, a betrayal indicating that the country was not unified enough for this existential struggle.

Binding morality is responsible for the collapse of Germany at the end of World War I. Rationalist account maintains that self-serving elites, even while losing, might inflate their war aims precisely as the battlefield and home front situation are turning against them in an effort to buy off the ordinary public for their sacrifices. This chapter shows instead that as the war dragged on and Germany’s troubles accumulated, the German military, a bulwark of binding morality, raised its wartime aspirations so as to justify the costs of the conflict, adequately compensating the country for the loyal sacrifices of its soldiers. This irrationality is best seen in relief, by comparing the nationalist right not only to the German left but also to the consequentialist and realist ethics of the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, who was eventually swept aside by conservative forces precisely for being willing to concede to reality. A survey panel experiment, conducted on a sample of the Russian public, induces the same inflation dynamics. Those who identify as binding moralists persist for much longer in a theoretical war. Those who stay in the conflict until the very end increase their reservation price over time, even as the Russians are suffering disproportional casualties.