revealed the content of a pessimistic secret report from Austria-Hungary's Foreign Minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, to Austrian Emperor Karl I regarding the state of the war effort. The report also came into the possession of the Allies. Although it has never been proven that Erzberger was responsible, it led to the extreme right seeing him as a traitor to his country. In March 1918, Erzberger was the most influential supporter in government of the candidacy of Wilhelm, Duke of Urach, for the proposed throne of the stillborn Kingdom of Lithuania. Both were Catholics from Württemberg. He tabled a question in the Reichstag on 3 March to Groener on whether a memorandum had been prepared for the reform of the War Contracting System. Erzberger's political attempts at peace failed, but his public attack on the war effort and dissemination of information about the fragility of the German military created a climate in which the government found it increasingly difficult to maintain the belief that the war could be won. When, towards the end of the war, the German Navy mutinied at Kiel, the sailors informed their officers that what they wanted was "Erzberger", by then synonymous with "peace". Signing the Armistice On 3 October 1918, Erzberger entered the government of Prince Maximilian von Baden as a Secretary of State without a specified portfolio. On 6 November 1918, a reluctant Erzberger was sent to negotiate with the Allies in the Forest of Compiègne. Prince Maximilian supposed that Erzberger, as a Catholic civilian, would be more acceptable to the allies than a Prussian military officer; in addition, he believed that Erzberger's reputation as a man of peace was unassailable. Against hopes that Erzberger would be able to obtain better conditions from the Allies, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the chief Allied negotiator, was unwilling to make any concessions, with the exception of a slight extension of the time allotted to the German army to withdraw. Erzberger was unsure whether he should hold out for further changes in Germany's favour. On 10 November, Paul von Hindenburg himself telegraphed back that the armistice should be signed, with or without modifications, and a while later the new Chancellor, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, telegraphed Erzberger to authorize him to sign. As the head of the German delegation, he signed the armistice ending World War I at Compiègne on 11 November 1918 with the French representative, Marshal Foch. He