So H & L used the KRA to squeeze the economy and govern but does that make them political leaders to decide war and peace policy? IIRC H & L advised the Kaiser after battlefield defeats in August 1918 that the latest conscript class wasn't enough to prolong the war and peace should be sought. Does this make H & L akin to government ministers, replacements for Bethman?
I think the best illustration of the sort of political "control" that H-L exerted is this:
In 1918 Bethmann-Hollweg resolved to reform the Prussian franchise, as I have mentioned before. H-L did not like that at all. They tried to get the Kaiser to fire him, but Wilhelm withstood them. Bethmann then resigned, and H-L were able to at least get the Kaiser to appoint a pliant "non-entity" named Michaelis.
As nearly as I can tell, this was the form of control they exercised in non-economic matters -- they couldn't do anything on their own, but as the architects of Germany's war effort, their advice carried great weight (and I assume there would be great reluctance to ignore their advice, since in the new Total War, everything seemed to have impact on war-fighting capacity; which I guess made the military leaders seem like the subject-matter experts on nearly everything).
I haven't found,
in the materials available to me, a single instance where H-L implemented any political or domestic governing decisions on their own. Note the italics, though. Numerous writers make claims like "the authority of both the Chancellor and the Kaiser declined during the war, and the military came to dominate" (Ferguson,
The Pity of War ), but I haven't found anything to indicate that the ascendancy was anything more than a moral one. They didn't usurp authority, but instead had too great an influence on the authorities.
But if anybody has evidence otherwise, I really want to hear it! I'd hate to get it wrong in my planned TL.