Ring of Steel

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Ring of Steel Page 38

by Alexander Watson


  The criticism of the War Officers was also a product of the generational shift within the army. Older men were particularly averse to being placed under young, newly minted War Officers. These ‘boys of 19 years,’ they complained, ‘understand nothing of the world, already have big mouths and pocket large salaries’.26 The ‘boys’ sometimes inflamed the antagonism by acting crassly to assert their authority. Complaints that officers yelled at and, in the home army, even physically manhandled soldiers flooded into the High Command.27 Yet fortunately for the army, the tensions were far more pronounced in rear-line than in combat formations. Older men were concentrated in rear-line security, logistical and labour units, and the rations they were allocated were less than for front-line troops, inevitably exacerbating envy of their officers’ privileges. In the crucial combat units, soldiers were generally younger, rations higher and the shared danger reduced the distance between the ranks. Additionally, the casualty rates of officers in these units were much higher than those of their men, making their material privileges appear more justified. Letters sent home from the front showed that even at the war’s end, when the relations between officer and ordinary soldier had broken down completely in the rear, at the front they often remained good.28

  The Habsburg army experienced some of the same problems. Youthful War Officers and older men in the ranks also came into conflict.29 However, the force’s prime concern was national disloyalty. The educated classes from which officers could be drawn were most likely to harbour the nationalist allegiances that were anathema to the Empire’s army. Major General Alfred Krauβ, the Chief of Staff of the Southwestern Front up to 1917, explained the extreme danger posed by disloyal officers: ‘The men were everywhere superb – even the Czechs who fell into such disrepute – if they were in the right hands, if the officers were on the spot. However, where elements disloyal to the state came into leadership positions as reserve officers and where active officers were infected with national sentiment or neutralized, these conditions led to the sorriest manifestations of the war.’30 The Habsburg army was consequently cautious in selecting whom to promote. The influx of War Officers did dilute the German-dominated leadership, but at first only marginally. Germans continued to be the majority in the reserve corps, their share falling only modestly from 60.2 per cent before the war to 56.8 per cent in 1915. Hungarians and Poles, two nationalities regarded as loyal to the Empire, were beneficiaries, increasing their shares respectively from 23.7 per cent to 24.5 per cent and 2.8 per cent to 3.3 percent. The Czechs also became more numerous among reserve officers, for although regarded with suspicion they had, by Habsburg standards, a large and educated middle class. Czech speakers’ share of the reserve corps rose from 9.7 to 10.6 per cent (see Table 5).

  The force’s conservatism in its recruitment of reserve officers meant that in the first half of the war, incomprehension, far more than nationalist subversion, was a serious impediment to its performance. Unlike the pre-war polyglot professionals, reserve officers often spoke just one language. The great difference between the reserve officer corps’ ethnic background and that of the rank and file meant that many found themselves at the head of troops with whom they could barely communicate, never mind subvert. The corps itself also became less homogeneous and united. Where a regiment’s officers were of mixed ethnicity, there could be tensions. One peacetime-trained captain discovered the problem when in April 1916 he lunched with the multi-ethnic officers of the 20th Jäger. Dismayed by the political debate in the regiment’s mess, he gloomily concluded that ‘after the coming peace it will not be a jot better in the Austrian parliament’.31

  Table 5. Ethnic composition of the Austro-Hungarian army, 1915 (by language)

  Source: R. G. Plaschka, H. Haselsteiner and A. Suppan, Innere Front: Militärassistenz, Widerstand und Umsturz in der Donaumonarchie 1918. Erster Band. Zwischen Streik und Meuterei (Munich, 1974), i, p. 35.

  The disappearance of professional officers from the front, the influx of new men, including many older ones who had wives and children, and the strain of heavy fighting and worsening shortages, all stamped the Central Powers’ forces with a more makeshift and less martial feel than at the outbreak of war. The civilians in uniform who filled German ranks groused about their unappetizing rations, knew they were vastly outnumbered, but fought on regardless. They sung of themselves as ‘the darling, darling jam army’. Irony was far more important than militarism in their mental armoury. The proud refrains of army anthems like ‘The soldier, the soldier, / He’s the best man in all the state’ were parodied by wartime troops as ‘Marmalade, marmalade, / That’s the only chow in all the state.’32 Civilian values and identities underpinned their resilience. When a wartime psychologist asked a sample of troops from the south-west of Germany what thoughts they found useful in coping with danger at the front, few mentioned discipline or patriotism. Humour and fatalism came higher up the list, and social emotions, the comfort of knowing trusted comrades were nearby, were the third most frequently named as helpful. However, the two most popular responses were ‘memories of home’ and, above all, ‘religious feelings’.33

  The same sentiments were expressed in troops’ diaries and letters. In the face of all-pervasive death, they turned for reassurance to the faith in which they had been raised. Gratitude to God for survival so far, the hope or belief that He would continue to act as a protector in the future, and a fatalism or calm certainty that a loving God ‘guides everything for the best’ permeated soldiers’ writings.34 Religion was most important for the predominantly Catholic Austro-Hungarian army. The multi-ethnic force could not exploit nationalist ideology to motivate its troops and so invested heavily instead in encouraging and supporting their faith. Habsburg divisions were allocated up to twenty-four chaplains, four times the number serving in German divisions. Most of the army’s manpower was rural, conservative and pious. Many Slovenian troops, for example, carried rosaries and prayer books, fervently embraced a Marian cult, and were, so one military chaplain claimed, ‘keen to say prayers . . . as often as they possibly can’.35 Piety could motivate some behaviour at odds with military effectiveness: ‘I’ve already got used to the shooting,’ one Czech soldier at the front informed his family, ‘but up to now I have not fired a shot from my rifle as I do not want to break the Fifth Commandment and have a murder on my conscience.’36 Nonetheless, faith was a powerful factor in sustaining troops through the hardship of life at the front. In German formations, the depth of belief was more variable. Men from the pious south often drew much strength from Christian faith, whereas Berlin’s atheistic industrial proletariat was indifferent. Nonetheless, even relieved non-believers were often observed after a bloody action joining in with the hymn ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ (‘Now Thank We All our God’).37

  The desire to protect their homes and families also underpinned the resilience and motivation of German and Austro-Hungarian citizen-soldiers. ‘ “Patria” is no longer the great wide German homeland with her 70 million souls’, another psychological study argued. ‘Patria is the home of each individual; it is Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Baden, etc.; in fact it is no longer even that, but less: . . . “Patria” is the home, is the family of each individual, is the wife and the children, father and mother and siblings.’38 The central place of German troops’ relatives and homes in their combat motivation revealed itself in many ways. One expression was in the songs that they sung. ‘Argonnerwald’ (‘The Argonne Forest’), one of the most popular in the war’s middle years, resonated with so many men because it combined sentimentality towards loved ones at home with a determination to hold back the enemy whatever the cost. The ballad told the story of a soldier during a night attack in one of the most bloodily contested sectors of 1915:

  Argonne Forest at midnight,

  A Pioneer stands on watch.

  A little star high in the heavens,

  Brings him a greeting from distant home.

  He has his spade in his hand,

  The way of thi
ngs demands it.

  With longing he thinks of his love,

  Will he see her still one more time?

  From the rear shoots the Artillery,

  We stand before the Infantry;

  Shells smash down around us,

  The Frenchies want to take our trench.

  Let the enemy attack us hard,

  We Germans are no more afeared.

  It does not matter what his strength,

  He will not break into our trench!39

  Sometimes men voiced their motivation openly to their families: ‘I live and fight for you,’ wrote one soldier passionately to his wife.40 Yet even when troops were more reticent, the eagerness with which they looked forward to the arrival of post betrayed the importance of home to them. The German Field Postal Service carried 28.7 billion postcards, letters and parcels between the front and home during the First World War. The times when letters were distributed were, another man explained to his family, ‘the best moments in the field . . . you should see how everyone listens intently for whether their names won’t be read’.41 The men’s concern to defend their families tied them to wider national or imperial war efforts. The sight of the front’s smashed trees and pocked earth only reinforced their determination. As one soldier concluded after surveying the devastation at Verdun, ‘We can be very glad not to have the enemy in our own land!’42

  Nonetheless, men’s capacity to endure was eroded as war dragged on interminably. Whether wallowing in Flanders mud, shivering on an Alpine mountain top or languishing in the wide spaces of the east, men hoped for an end to the ordeal. The news from home in 1916, where civilians were struggling with food shortages far more serious than those in the armies, also worsened, and families became a source not just of strength but of worry. The admonitions of authorities to civilians to write cheerfully to soldiers at the front, and make every letter a ‘talisman’ radiating ‘strength and determination’, were in vain.43 With most troops permitted only one annual leave of a fortnight, relationships became strained and sometimes broke down. One can imagine the misery of the Austrian soldier who received the following letter while fighting in the mountains on the Italian Front:

  My dear, good Josef,

  I am writing to tell you that I have made a mistake. I can’t do anything about it now. Forgive me for all that I tell you. I was caught up by another . . . He talked me around and said you’re not going to come back from the front. And he used my hours of weakness. You’re aware of feminine weakness and can do nothing better than forgive me. It’s already done and I thought that something must have happened to you, as for three weeks you hadn’t written. I was very shocked when I received your letter and [found that] you’re still alive. Perhaps the child will die, then everything will be good again. I don’t like the fellow any more, as you are still alive. Here everything is very expensive and it’s good that you’re away at the front. There at least the food costs nothing. The money that you send me is very much needed. Now I shall close my letter as there’s no more space. With sincere greetings, your Frieda.44

  Infidelity was of course not limited to women. In fact, soldiers had more opportunity and were threatened with much less societal disapproval if they slept around. Some formed relations with enemy civilians in the rear. When Otto Steinhilber, an NCO in Bavarian Infantry Regiment 12 on the Western Front, feared that his wife Lina was getting rather too friendly with their local blacksmith, he warned her that he might retaliate by finding himself ‘a strapping French girl’. The threat in his case was empty, but not outlandish: ‘some women here have a soldier with whom they live as with their husbands,’ he told her. ‘Several of them are also already pregnant.’ Whether through stable relationships or, more commonly, casual liaisons, some 10,000 children were born in occupied France to German soldier-fathers.45

  Sex was a commodity in the war zone. Women sold themselves to feed themselves in the occupied territories, especially in Russian Poland and the Baltic which, unlike Belgium and north-eastern France, received no food aid from neutral powers. Fearing an epidemic of venereal disease, the armies attempted to force the trade into officially sanctioned brothels, where prostitutes underwent regular gynaecological checks. These were strange and disturbing places. Disciplinary considerations (no officer wanted to be caught by his men with his pants down) dictated that there must be a strict separation between brothels for officers only and those for the rank and file. For soldiers, the girls in the officers’ houses were yet another privilege contributing to the ‘Officer Hate’. The rumour was that they were the most attractive and they certainly earned far more; up to twenty times as much as workers in the regular military brothels. These latter were squalid. The women received little, often just a couple of marks per client, had to pay their madam sometimes as much as twenty marks per day for food and lodging, and were not permitted to leave the premises. The men queued up, watched by sentries tasked with keeping order, outside the house. A medic was sometimes stationed on the ground floor to check the troops for VD and hand out protective ointment or gut and rubber condoms. A soldier gave a description of what typically followed:

  We had expected to find a brothel here like in the big cities, where one chooses the girl, who then assents, in a salon. But there was nothing like that here. After we had received instructions that no woman might be detained for longer than ten minutes, we had to wait in a room and from time to time came the cry: ‘next!’

  After three-quarters of an hour waiting it was my turn.

  ‘Room number six!’ shouted the corporal after me and I stumbled up the steps. Half shaking with conflicted feelings I opened the door.

  A nasty smell of mercuric chloride and patchouli hit me. I saw from the outline of the body under the black negligee that a woman stood in the half darkness of the room with her face to the window. With a composed movement she turned around and simply let herself fall onto the edge of the bed, the negligee gathered up . . .46

  Despite issuing prophylactics, ordering men to disinfect their genitals after intercourse, lecturing them on the perils of venereal disease and attempting to control prostitution, armies were unable to stamp out venereal infections. German military doctors treated 713,491 cases; a little over 5 per cent of the force’s soldiers. The highest rates were registered in home units, however, rather than those at the front. The Habsburg military had even greater problems, registering 1,275,885 cases in the first three years of war. Hungarian troops were twice as likely as Austrians to be infected. Lax preventative measures partly account for the Habsburg army’s high rate. So too do the territories in which it fought, for venereal disease was rife on the Balkan and Eastern Fronts.47

  While the Central Powers’ armies had been buffeted by wartime strains, they had also acquired from their experiences valuable new lessons for combat. Since 1914, the crucial importance of firepower had been recognized and weaponry upgraded. The Germans had greatly expanded their heavy artillery, which had proved itself a battle-winning weapon, from 148 batteries at the outbreak of war to 1,380 in August 1916. The Habsburg artillery had almost tripled from 2,790 to 8,300 guns. Both armies had also invested heavily in machine guns. Every German infantry battalion had its own machine-gun company in 1916, and the Austrians had increased production by one-third over the course of 1915 to a monthly output of 400 automatic weapons.48 New weapons, such as gas, and some older reinvented ones, such as mortars and hand grenades, had become important in the Central Powers’ armouries. There was also tactical progress. The Germans and, by the start of 1916, Habsburg forces had finessed the art of siege warfare, using well-prepared fortifications as a strength-multiplier. Three lines of defences, deep dugouts and a conviction that the front line should at all costs be held characterized both armies’ tactical ideal. More radical experimentation was underway in the German army. During 1915 the storm troop had evolved; a new type of soldier who instead of fighting in line under supervision operated in small self-supporting squads equipped with a mix of weaponry and tr
ained in tactics centred on individual initiative, flexibility and close teamwork. In 1916 these new combat methods were still confined to a small group of specialists and some units that had developed similar tactics independently. The experience of facing the might of the Entente’s combined great offensive would hasten their dissemination and acceptance as official doctrine. The German army and at least parts of its Austro-Hungarian ally would be transformed by a tactical revolution.49

  The Central Powers’ armies were still solid at the beginning of 1916. The German force, despite the devastation of its professional officer corps and the depletion of its career NCOs, remained a formidable opponent. The Habsburg military had undergone a remarkable regeneration after its early defeats. Both armies were larger and better equipped than in 1914. Nonetheless, they were also showing the strain of one and a half years of hard fighting. The manpower of both forces had changed, raising new problems and tying morale more closely than ever before to the suffering home fronts. Their combat formations, which had the greatest turnover, were more hastily trained than at the outbreak of war. Neither force had yet fully adapted to the new, challenging conditions of the modern battlefield. Their ability to endure, let alone win, the intense ‘material battles’ planned for the coming year was far from a certainty. In 1916, German and Habsburg survival would hang in the balance, dependent on the skills of their armies’ remaining professionals and the resilience and resolution of their vastly outnumbered citizen-soldiers.

  VERDUN

  The start of 1916 offered the Central Powers a chance to grasp the initiative, and Falkenhayn did so by settling on the French city and fortress complex of Verdun as the site of his gambit to bring a quick and favourable end to the war. The place was well chosen. For two and a half centuries Verdun, situated in the Meuse department in the north-east, had been a bastion guaranteeing France against invasion. It had been besieged in the Thirty Years War, again a hundred years later during the Revolutionary Wars, and in 1870 it had been the last of the great French fortresses to capitulate. In 1914 it was one of the most modern and formidable defensive complexes in Europe. With twenty major and forty smaller forts arranged in concentric belts and built on the crests of the undulating ground, it presented a frightening obstacle. Yet, although Verdun was essential early in hostilities as a pivot for the Entente counter-offensive on the Marne, the French High Command had subsequently condemned the concrete defences as obsolete and had stripped them of all moveable armaments. In 1915 the equivalent of forty-three heavy and eleven field artillery batteries, along with 128,000 rounds, had been transferred to the Field Army. None of this was made public, however, and the complex remained a powerful symbol of French national security. To lose it when the north-east of the country was already under German occupation would have been a devastating blow to state prestige and public morale.50

 

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