The military commanders expanded their power into foreign and domestic policy. While the Kaiser refused in January 1918 to give them complete authority over foreign affairs and peace negotiations, they were more or less able to manipulate the foreign office through Count von Haeften, their representative there.8 In July 1918 they secured the dismissal of the Foreign Minister when he opposed their views on the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. Previously they had utilized their influence in foreign affairs to overrule civilian opinion in a number of important decisions. With the hope of adding Polish divisions to the military forces of the Central Powers they had in the fall of 1916 successfully insisted upon the creation of an independent Polish kingdom. This prevented the immediate conclusion of a peace treaty with Russia. In the winter of 1917, over Bethmann-Hollweg’s opposition, they secured the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare. By these two excursions into policy the High Command achieved the continuation in the war of one enemy and the entrance into the war of another. Throughout 1917 they insisted upon the maintenance of annexationist war goals, thereby frustrating efforts to bring about a negotiated peace. Military power was also asserted over the domestic economy. The nature of the war early required the expansion of the economic sections of the General Staff into the areas of food, materials, labor, and munitions. Subsequently, virtually no field of policy was beyond its interest. Industrial production was controlled and increased through the so-called Hindenburg Program. All the previously effective horizontal restraints upon military activity were removed as the authority of the generals penetrated into the farthest reaches of German life.
It is impossible to say to what extent the power of the High Command affected the thinking of the bulk of the officer corps. The views of the military leaders themselves, however, were drastically changed by the vision from the heights of power. The old doctrines of civilian control were abandoned. It makes little difference who is Chancellor, Ludendorff is reputed to have said, but “one thing is certain: the power must be in my hands.” Expansionist goals were adopted which contrasted markedly with the anti-imperialistic attitudes of the prewar General Staff. In 1917 the war aims of the military included acquisition of Poland, Russia’s Baltic provinces, eastern France, and all of Belgium. And even this was viewed as only the nucleus of a vast Germanic realm which would eventually draw into its system virtually all of Europe north of the Alps.
More significant than these immediate policy goals was the fundamental change in values which they reflected. These received their most typical expression, not during the war, but in the literature produced by the generals after their defeat. Blind to the extent to which military dominance had contributed to Germany’s misfortune, they argued that military power had not been given its proper scope in wartime Germany. In its effort to shift responsibility to the civilian, this theme was closely tied in with the stab-in-the-back legend. The most authoritative statement of the new doctrine was contained in General Ludendorff’s own work, Der Totale Krieg, published in 1935. Ludendorff flatly rejected the professional military tradition: “All the theories of Clausewitz should be thrown overboard.” The changes in the nature of war since the eighteenth century have made politics subservient to war rather than war to politics. The trouble with Germany in both the Franco-Prussian War and World War I was the division of authority among Kaiser, Chancellor, and Chief of Staff. Instead, at the outbreak of war the entire nation should be subordinated to the Commander in Chief. He supersedes all political leaders and his authority is “all-embracing.” Such a man can never be produced by training and experience. He is characterized by creative power, strength of character, willingness to accept responsibility, and indomitable will. He is an artist: he “is either born to his position or he is not.”9 Ludendorff thus resurrected the eighteenth-century concept of the natural military genuis. His theory, with its delusions of omnipotence, its glorification of violence, its adulation of power, and its denial of specialized competence, was a rejection of everything that nineteenth-century German military thought stood for. It was indeed the employment of the more sordid elements of Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Spengler to rationalize absolute military power. Ironically this theory, developed out of military dominance in World War I, in the end achieved its fullest realization in the complete subjection of the military by an Austrian corporal in World War II. The accurate verdict upon the earlier conflict was rendered by another soldier, General von Schoenaich, who, in 1924, concluded that “we owe our ruin to the supremacy of our military authorities over civilian authorities; and that is the very essence of militarism. In fact, German militarism simply committed suicide.”10
WEIMAR: STATE WITHIN A STATE, 1918–1926. The inauguration of the Weimar Republic saw the role of the military change from complete dominance of the state to essential support for the state. The intellectual and political climate of the Republic was most unconducive to the maintenance of professionalism. The Weimar government had a highly tenuous existence, lacking widespread acceptance and the support of many powerful social groups. Consequently, it had to turn to the army as the one stable and disciplined institution which had survived defeat and revolution and remained a concrete center of power amidst political disintegration. The government was thus absolutely dependent upon the support of the army. Yet this very fact, by confronting the army with a constitutional issue, meant that the government could never be absolutely certain of receiving that support. In 1918, Ebert, President of the Republic, in effect negotiated a treaty with the military leaders receiving the support of the army in exchange for the suppression of the extreme left. In 1920, during the Kapp Putsch, the army maintained a wait-and-see neutrality. Three years later when the government was menaced by the threat of uprisings from both the extreme right and extreme left, the army command defended republican authority, and exercised emergency power in its behalf. That the Weimar government existed as long as it did is due to army support. That support, however, was not something which could be commanded by the government; it was something which was granted by the army.
The general political weakness of the Republic was supplemented by new constitutional difficulties in establishing civilian control. First, under the imperial regime, all officers had sworn obedience to the Emperor. They had little opportunity for doubt as to when and whom they should obey. In the Republic, however, they swore allegiance to the constitution, a lengthy document not entirely clear of ambiguities. The officers might frequently be called upon to determine when obedience to particular individuals constituted obedience to the constitution. This problem was aggravated by a second factor: the division of authority over the military among a large number of civilian institutions. The President was the Supreme Commander of the armed forces, appointing and dismissing all the high officers. The Chancellor, however, was the head of the government, and all the actions of the President with respect to the military had to be approved either by him or by the Minister of Defense. Both Chancellor and Minister of Defense were responsible to the Reichstag, which had full authority over military policy in general and the military budget in particular. In contrast, thirdly, to this civilian disunity was the new unity of the military. Not only were the armies of the various states of the German Empire consolidated into a single national force, but all the headquarters organizations were now brought under a single military chief. This furnishing of the military with a single spokesman contributed, fourthly, to the undermining of the efforts to reduce the level of military authority. Theoretically, the embryonic general staff (Truppenamt) was under the Chief of the Army Command who was under the Minister of Defense. Thus, presumably, the right of Immediatstellung had been lost by the military. In actuality, however, the increased power of the army commander brought about through his complete control over the military machine made him virtually independent of the Minister of Defense. The first two Ministers of Defense — Noske and Gessler — were spokesmen for military interests, and the last two — Gröner and Schleicher — were generals.
The officer corps in the Weimar Republic retreated from the ideology of military dictatorship in the direction of the old imperial military ethic. The dominant figure in the Reichswehr from 1919 until 1926 was General von Seeckt who typified the professional soldier and who was thoroughly committed to a nonpolitical army. Seeckt picked his officers according to their capabilities and trained them carefully so as to develop the highest level of professional competence. Seeckt claimed to have the professional hatred for war: “The soldier, having experience of war, fears it far more than the doctrinaire who, being ignorant of war, talks only of peace.”11 In his advice on policy to the republican government, he was guided generally by a proper concern for the military security of the state. Within the army he was adamant in emphasizing the military virtues, in excluding adventurers and opportunists, and in insisting upon correct, nonpolitical behavior. “As for the soldier,” he said, “it is not for him to seek to know more or to do better than his commanders: his duty consists in obedience . . . A Reichswehr into which the cancer of political discord has entered will be shattered in the hour of danger.”12
The one deficient element in Seeckt’s formulation of the military ethic was a certain haziness as to where the ultimate loyalty of the army lay. This reflected the ambiguity of the Weimar constitution and the political weakness of the republican government. Seeckt’s description of the place of the army was contained in the formula: “The Army serves the State; it is above parties.” Accordingly,
The Army should become a State within the State, but it should be merged in the State through service, in fact it should itself become the purest image of the State.13
This was fine as far as it went. But it left undefined the relationship of the military to the government. It was a state within a state, not a professional guild serving a government. If the government were the representative or the embodiment of the state, then the army should obey the government and all would be well. But if the existence of the government and the nature of its constitution were issues of party controversy, then presumably the army would remain aloof. In reality the government of the Weimar Republic fitted both these categories and so, consequently, the attitude of the military toward it, as defined by Seeckt, was a curiously dual one. What this meant in practice was well illustrated during the 1923 crisis when Ebert asked Seeckt where the Reichswehr stood. “The Reichswehr, Mr. President,” replied the latter, “stands behind me.”14 And there were no general principles which defined where Seeckt stood. At times he seriously considered assuming sovereign power himself. By refusing to accept the Weimar Republic as the permanent embodiment of the German state, the leaders of the Reichswehr were required to make political judgments at any moment of acute crisis.
WEIMAR: FACTION AMONG FACTIONS, 1926–1933. After Seeckt’s retirement, his successor, Colonel General Heye, and other generals such as Groner attempted to carry on his policies. This became increasingly difficult, however, and the last years of the Weimar Republic saw quite a different pattern of civil-military relations from that which had existed previously. Under Seeckt the army had been called upon to make political decisions only when there was an acute constitutional crisis. After his departure it became more and more involved in the day to day affairs and maneuverings of party politics. This involvement was brought about not by any change in the structure of authority but simply by the willingness of the military leadership to apply the political power of the army to immediate political ends.
The two key figures in this change were Hindenburg and General Kurt von Schleicher. The former was elected President of the Republic in 1925. The army now defined loyalty to the state as loyalty to the field marshal and national hero. This would not have had serious consequences if the President had been above party politics as Seeckt had been. Such, however, was not the case. Instead, Hindenburg as president furnished a fulcrum for military politicians such as Schleicher, just as during the war as Chief of the General Staff he had furnished a fulcrum for Ludendorff. Schleicher had been appointed head of the political department of the Defense Ministry in 1926. Trading upon his influence with Hindenburg and negotiating and dealing with party politicians of all stripes, he became a key figure in the government, making and unmaking cabinets with wanton abandon. In 1927, Schleicher eased out the Defense Minister, Gessler, who had appointed him, and had Gröner put in this post. Subsequently, in 1930, he brought about the fall of the cabinet of Chancellor Müller and the replacement of the latter by Heinrich Brüning. Two years later he torpedoed Brüning and Gröner and secured the appointment of von Papen as Chancellor. He himself took over the post of Defense Minister. Late in autumn of 1932, Papen was disposed of; and in December, Schleicher became Chancellor. Generals now occupied the two highest posts in the government. His enemies soon combined against Schleicher, however, and, at the end of January 1933, Hitler succeeded him at the head of a cabinet of Nazis and nationalists. Under Schleicher the Reichswehr had ceased to be a state within the state and had become a faction among factions. The generals had entered into the competition of politics and they had lost. A year and a half later Schleicher paid the price of failure in totalitarian politics when he was assassinated in the Nazi purge of June 30, 1934.
THE THIRD REICH: CIVILIANISM TRIUMPHANT, 1933–1945. The consolidation of power by the Nazis depended upon an informal understanding with the military. The latter would withdraw from politics, leave this field to the Nazis, and in return the Nazis would push an expanded rearmament program and guarantee the army a monopoly of the military function and autonomy within its own sphere. This arrangement received explicit sanction in the spring of 1934 when the army agreed to support Hitler for President; the latter acquiesced in the suppression of Röhm and the S.A., who had dreams of replacing the Reichswehr with a mass, ideologically oriented, people’s army. Civil-military relations during the first years of the Nazi regime bore certain resemblances to those of the first years of the Weimar Republic. The army was exempted from much of the Nazi legislation, the authority of the civil courts over its members was abolished, the influence of the party hierarchy and the Gestapo was rigorously excluded. As one after another of the major institutions of German society succumbed before the Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung, the army remained an isolated center of health, relatively uncontaminated by the virus of National Socialism. Here the German who wished to escape from the onslaught of the totalitarian state might find refuge in professional patterns of discipline, expertise, duty, and integrity. It is little wonder that there was rush of former officers back to the colors in what came to be described as “the aristocratic way of emigration.”
Military Professionalism. The officer corps during these years was dominated by a professional military viewpoint. After the giddy Schleicher episode about which the great bulk of the corps had never been happy, much comfort was to be found in a purely professional role. The officers welcomed the opportunity to eschew politics and to concentrate upon the training and discipline of their steadily growing forces. Military adherence to civilian control was reaffirmed. For instance, in his volume on The Art of Modern Warfare, Colonel Foertsch restated the classical doctrine of the subordination of war to politics and the soldier to the statesman, and took Ludendorff to task for challenging Clausewitz. Ludendorff’s book itself was rejected by the General Staff “root and branch.”15 Despite the temporary coincidence of Nazi and military views with respect to rearming and civilian control in the early thirties, a fundamental conflict nonetheless existed between the values of the two groups. Eventually this conflict had to manifest itself. The German military ideals of obedience, loyalty, honor, intellectual integrity, realism, reason could hardly be further removed from the complete unscrupulousness, amorality, and irrationalism of the Nazis.* The latter had little use for the “accursed objectivity” of the General Staff which Hitler described as “just a club of intellectuals.”16
The conflict between the military approach and the Nazi approach was most sharply focused
in foreign policy. The attitude of the German generals was virtually a perfect expression of the military ethic. They wanted to rebuild Germany’s armed might, but they wanted to do so slowly, and not in order to wage war but to protect German security. It was necessary to expand the armament industry, build up a trained reserve, equip the army with modern weapons, construct defensive fortifications, and accomplish many other things before Germany would be ready to fight. This date in their calculations seemed to recede continuously into the future. There were many who thought that a war could never be fought on terms favorable to Germany because of her geographical vulnerability. If Germany started a war, they argued, she would eventually be confronted by a coalition of powers which would utterly destroy her. In contrast to the sober views of the military, the Nazis wished to rush mobilization, ignore or brush aside obstacles, and embark upon an adventuristic and aggressive foreign policy. The fundamental opposition between the two outlooks was well summed up by one general after the war:
The Soldier and the State Page 14