Ring of Steel

by Alexander Watson

  16.A. Watson, ‘Junior Officership in the German Army during the Great War, 1914–1918’, War in History 14(4) (November 2007), pp. 431–2, and H. Ostertag, Bildung, Ausbildung und Erziehung des Offizierkorps im deutschen Kaiserreich, 1871–1918. Eliteideal, Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), pp. 56–7. For the noble ethos of the peacetime corps and the change that it underwent during the war, see also W. Deist, ‘Zur Geschichte des preussischen Offizierkorps, 1888–1918’, in H. H. Hofmann (ed.), Das deutsche Offizierkorps, 1860–1960 (Boppard am Rhein, 1980), pp. 39–57.

  17.M. Hewitson, ‘Images of the Enemy: German Depictions of the French Military, 1890–1914’, War in History 11(1) (January 2004), pp. 13–16 and 21–3, and R. T. Foley, ‘Easy Target or Invincible Enemy? German Intelligence Assessments of France before the Great War’, The Journal of Intelligence History 5 (Winter 2005), pp. 11–12. These assessments did have some grounding in fact. See D. Porch, The March to the Marne: The French Army, 1871–1914 (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne, 1981) pp. 78–9 and 196.

  18.[Preußisches] Kriegsministerium, Felddienst-Ordnung (F.O.) (Berlin, 1908), p. 10.

  19.Watson, ‘Junior Officership’, pp. 440 and 448. For Socialists’ complaints in peacetime, see M. Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890–1914 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 182–5.

  20.‘Zum Exerzier-Reglement. Kampfschule. Allgemeines’, November 1916. BA-MA Freiburg: PH 3/28 and [Preußisches] Kriegsministerium, Felddienst-Ordnung, p. 12, Point 4. More generally, Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 115–20.

  21.E. O. Volkmann, Soziale Heeresmißstände als Mitursache des deutschen Zusammenbruches von 1918. Die Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruches im Jahre 1918. Zweite Abteilung. Der innere Zusammenbruch (12 vols., Berlin, 1929), xi(2), p. 35.

  22.Sanitätsbericht, iii, p. 12.

  23.Samuels, Command or Control?, pp. 79–80 and 224, W. Schmidt-Richberg, ‘Die Regierungszeit Wilhelms II’, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Handbuch zur deutschen Militärgeschichte, 1648–1939. Von der Entlassung Bismarcks bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (1890–1918) (10 vols., Frankfurt am Main, 1968), v, pp. 91–5; Herrmann, Arming of Europe, p. 203, and D. R. Jones, ‘Imperial Russia’s Forces at War’, in A. R. Millett and W. Murray (eds.), Military Effectiveness. Volume I: The First World War (3 vols., Boston, MA, London, Sydney and Wellington, 1988), p. 281.

  24.Hewitson, ‘Images of the Enemy’, pp. 8–10 and 24. For peacetime conscription, see Ingenlath, Mentale Aufrüstung, pp. 144–57.

  25.See L. V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during World War I (Princeton, NJ, 1994).

  26.Hewitson, ‘Images of the Enemy’, pp. 16–18 and 23, and Foley, ‘Easy Target’, p. 9.

  27.U. Frevert, A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription and Civil Society (Oxford and New York, 2004). Also G. A. Ritter and K. Tenfelde, Arbeiter im deutschen Kaiserreich, 1871 bis 1914 (Bonn, 1992), pp. 730–46, and Ziemann, Front, pp. 47–8 and 70–71.

  28.H. Strachan, ‘Ausbildung, Kampfgeist und die zwei Weltkriege’, in B. Thoß and H.-E. Volkmann (eds.), Erster Weltkrieg, Zweiter Weltkrieg. Ein Vergleich (Paderborn, 2002), p. 274.

  29.T. Zuber, The Battle of the Frontiers: Ardennes 1914 (Stroud, 2007, 2009), pp. 83–6, and, for more critical views, S. D. Jackman, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder: Close Control and “Old Prussian Drill” in German Offensive Infantry Tactics, 1871–1914’, Journal of Military History 68(1) (January 2004), pp. 73–104, and Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 206 and 237–9. For the French regulations of 1913, see Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 26–8.

  30.G. Kronenbitter, ‘Krieg im Frieden’. Die Führung der k.u.k. Armee und die Großmachtpolitik Österreichs-Ungarns, 1906–1914 (Munich, 2003), pp. 115–16.

  31.N. Stone, ‘Die Mobilmachung der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee 1914’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 16(2) (1974), pp. 68–77 and 83, ÖULK, i, p. 87, and Stevenson, ‘War by Timetable?’, pp. 167–8. The largest Habsburg transports, with 49 wagons, had 100 axles and weighed 500 tons. German military trains had 110 axles and weighed 600 tons. French trains weighed 480–550 tons.

  32.N. Golovin, ‘The Russian War Plan: II. The Execution of the Plan’, The Slavonic and East European Review 15(43) (July 1936), pp. 72 and 75.

  33.Stone, ‘Army and Society’, 97–8, and G. E. Rothenberg, The Army of Francis Joseph (West Lafayette, IN, 1976, 1998), pp. 74–8.

  34.ÖULK, i, p. 27.

  35.Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, pp. 81 and 110–11.

  36.I. Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (New York and Oxford, 1990), pp. 99–102, and ÖULK, i, pp. 38–40 and 52.

  37.Deák, Beyond Nationalism, pp. 127–38, 161–3 and 169.

  38.See ibid., pp. 178–85. Part of the problem is that it is unclear what question the Austro-Hungarian army asked its officers when compiling these figures. Officers may have given the language they most often used, rather than their mother tongue(s). Statistics collected for military schools indicate a much lower proportion of Germans.

  39.Ibid., pp. 174–5. In Germany, only the Bavarian army was willing to commission Jews as reserve officers before the First World War. For German military policies towards Jews, see W. T. Angress, ‘Das deutsche Militär und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 19 (1976), pp. 77–146.

  40.Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, p. 83, and Deák, Beyond Nationalism, pp. 98 and 102–3. For the Habsburg force’s shortage of career NCOs, see ÖULK, i, p. 49, and Jones, ‘Imperial Russia’s Forces’, p. 281. For the miserable inter-rank relations in Russia’s army, see J. Buschnell, ‘The Tsarist Officer Corps, 1881–1914: Customs, Duties, Inefficiency’, The American Historical Review 86(4) (October 1981), pp. 753–80.

  41.ÖULK, i, p. 56.

  42.Compare the ratios of Field Army strengths to trained manpower in Reichsarchiv, Weltkrieg, i, pp. 38–9.

  43.C. Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten. Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer, 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1998).

  44.C. Hämmerle, ‘Die k. (u.) k. Armee als “Schule des Volkes”? Zur Geschichte der Allgemeinen Wehrpflicht in der multinationalen Habsburgermonarchie (1866–1914/18)’, in C. Jansen (ed.), Der Bürger als Soldat. Die Militärisierung europäischer Gesellschaften im langen 19. Jahrhundert: ein internationaler Vergleich (Essen, 2004), pp. 202–3 and 213. For literacy in different parts of the Empire, see D. F. Good, The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1984), p. 156.

  45.Kageneck to Moltke, 24 July 1914, quoted in G. Kronenbitter, ‘Die Macht der Illusionen. Julikrise und Kriegsausbruch 1914 aus der Sicht des deutschen Militärattachés in Wien’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilung 57(2) (1998), p. 537.

  46.Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, p. 174; J. M. B. Lyon, ‘ “A Peasant Mob”: The Serbian Army on the Eve of the Great War’, The Journal of Military History 61(3) (July 1997), p. 491, and A. K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917). Volume I (2 vols., Princeton, NJ, and Guildford, 1980), i, p. 73. The Russian total comprises forty-eight field guns in divisions and half of the twenty-four light howitzers controlled by each corps. Habsburg corps each had eight 150 mm heavy howitzers. Russian and Serb heavy guns were pooled at army level.

  47.Kronenbitter, ‘Krieg im Frieden’, pp. 189–94, Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, pp. 126–7 and 174–5, and A. Krauß, Die Ursachen unserer Niederlage. Erinnerungen und Urteile aus dem Weltkrieg, 3rd edn (Munich, 1923), pp. 94–5; also Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 285 and 995–8.

  48.Samuels, Command or Control?, p. 79, and Strachan, First World War, i, p. 206.

  49.See the introduction by T. Cave in United States War Office, Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-One Divisions of the German Army which participated in the War (London, 1920, 1989), p. iii. Also A. Gat, The Development of Military Thought
: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1992), pp. 151–4.

  50.ÖULK, i, pp. 28 and 32, and Krauß, Ursachen unserer Niederlage, pp. 90–94. For details of the march battalions’ use in action, see G. A. Tunstall, Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915 (Lawrence, KS, 2010), pp. 13, 88 and 90.

  51.Kronenbitter, ‘Krieg im Frieden’, pp. 82–99. For the French, see Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 25–9.

  52.Conrad, Aus meiner Dienstzeit, iv, pp. 290–94.

  53.Wagner, ‘K.(u.)k. Armee’, p. 627.

  54.T. Hadley, ‘Military Diplomacy in the Dual Alliance: German Military Attaché Reporting from Vienna, 1906–1914’, War in History 17(3) (July 2010), pp. 307–8.

  55.Förster, ‘Deutsche Generalstab’, pp. 83–95.

  56.W. Meyer, Das Infanterie-Regiment von Grolman (1. Posensches) Nr. 18 im Weltkriege (Oldenburg i. O. and Berlin, 1929), pp. 2–3.

  57.Reichsarchiv, Weltkrieg, i, p. 142, and Strachan, First World War, i, p. 207. For a description of the seven phases of German mobilization, see Herwig, First World War, pp. 56–7 and 75.

  58.This account follows Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 211–12, and Herwig, First World War, pp. 96–7.

  59.K. von Einem, Ein Armeeführer erlebt den Weltkrieg. Persönliche Aufzeichnungen des Generalobersten v. Einem, ed. J. Alter (Leipzig, 1938), p. 37 (diary entry for 11 August 1914).

  60.Soldier’s account published in Kölnische Volkszeitung, 13 August 1914, and reproduced in Buchner (ed.), Kriegsdokumente, i, p. 203 (doc. 312d).

  61.Ibid., p. 35 (letter and diary entry for 8 August 1914).

  62.J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, and London, 2001), pp. 10–23; here esp. pp. 14 and 23. For the Garde Civique, see ibid., pp. 125–9.

  63.Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 56–63, and Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 212–16.

  64.Sanitätsbericht, iii, pp. 6*, 82*, 84* and 88* (shot, stab and other wounds).

  65.See the Josephine and Clara B., ‘Kriegschronik’, 16 August–3 September 1914. DTA, Emmendingen: 898.

  66.A. Spemann, diary, 17 August 1914. HStA Stuttgart: M660/041, nr. 1; Armee-Oberkommando Strasburg, telegram to Generalkommando, XIV Reservekorps, 14 August 1914, and Generalkommando, XIV Reservekorps to Armee-Oberkommando, 6. Armee, 19 September 1914. GLA Karlsruhe: 456 F 7 nr. 165. Also more generally, C. J. Fischer, Alsace to the Alsatians? Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870–1939 (New York and Oxford, 2010), pp. 102–3, and Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, p. 22.

  67.J.-J. Becker and G. Krumeich, Der Grosse Krieg. Deutschland und Frankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg, 1914–1918 (Essen, 2010), pp. 178–9.

  68.J.-C. Farcy, Les Camps de concentration français de la première guerre mondiale (1914–1920) (Paris, 1995), pp. 51–60. Also Armeeoberkommando VII to Generalkommando XIV Reservekorps, 31 August 1914. GLA Karlsruhe: 465 F7 nr. 165.

  69.J. Bell (ed.), Völkerrecht im Weltkrieg. Dritte Reihe im Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses (5 vols., Berlin, 1927), i, pp. 161 and 167–9. See also T. Zahra, ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’, Contemporary European History 17(2) (May 2008), esp. pp. 138–9 and 149–58.

  70.Ruffey, quoted in Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, p. 75.

  71.Zuber, Battle of the Frontiers, esp. pp. 266 and 275–80; Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 218–19 and 230.

  72.M. van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge, London, New York and Melbourne, 1977), p. 135.

  73.Zuber, Battle of the Frontiers, p. 29.

  74.Sanitätsbericht, iii, p. 136. For descriptions of the exhausted troops, see P. Münch, Bürger in Uniform. Kriegserfahrungen von Hamburger Turnern 1914 bis 1918 (Freiburg i. Br., Berlin and Vienna, 2009), p. 88.

  75.E. Baier, letter to parents, 22 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: PH10II/52.

  76.Calculated from figures in Sanitätsbericht, iii, p. 36, Table 28.

  77.Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 74 and 76.

  78.Becker and Krumeich, Grosse Krieg, p. 176.

  79.Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 38–42 and 217–18.

  80.Ibid., pp. 24–32 and 42–52.

  81.Ibid., esp. pp. 175–225 and 249–61. See also R. Harris, ‘The “Child of the Barbarian”: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War’, Past & Present 141 (November 1993), pp. 170–206.

  82.J. Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven, 2007), esp. pp. 563–74.

  83.For anti-Catholicism and race (which they see as contributory rather than the sole factors behind the atrocities), see Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 104–7 and 156–8. For Catholic German soldiers, see T. Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford, 2010), p. 37, and for Kalisz, see L. Engelstein, ‘ “A Belgium of Our Own”: The Sack of Russian Kalisz, August 1914’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10(3) (Summer 2009), pp. 441–73.

  84.R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992). For the cognitive processes behind atrocities, see K. E. Taylor, ‘Intergroup Atrocities in War: A Neuroscientific Perspective’, Medicine, Conflict and Survival 22(3) (July–September 2006), pp. 230–44.

  85.M. R. Stoneman, ‘The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–71: A Cultural Interpretation’, War in History 8(3) (July 2001), p. 272, and Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 141–2.

  86.E. Baier, letter to parents, 10 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: PH10–II/52. The word he used was ‘Freischärler’. For similar comments, see W. Jacobson, Z armią Klucka na Paryż (Toruń, 1934), p. 14.

  87.Newspaper extracts from 9–18 August 1914 in Buchner (ed.), Kriegsdokumente, i, p. 203 (docs. 312a, b, c, d and h).

  88.E. Baier, letter to parents, 13 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: PH10–II/52.

  89.W. Schweiger, diary, 17 August 1914. DTA, Emmendingen: 1386.

  90.Ibid., 20 August 1914.

  91.I. V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2005), pp. 119–26.

  92.Article 2 of the Annex entitled ‘Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land’ to ‘Convention Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. 2d Peace Conference, The Hague, 18 Oct. 1907. IV’, in Conventions and Declarations between the Powers Concerning War, Arbitration and Neutrality (Declaration of Paris, 1856–of St Petersburg, 1868–of The Hague, 1899–Convention of Geneva, 1906–2d Peace Conference, The Hague, 1907–Declaration of London, 1909). English–French–German (The Hague, 1915). Also G. Best, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflicts (London, 1980), pp. 145–6, 180–81, 185 and 190–200, and Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 144–5. The interpretation of the 1907 Hague Convention here follows A. Alexander, ‘The Genesis of the Civilian’, Leiden Journal of International Law 20(2) (June 2007), esp. pp. 360–65.

  93.See Showalter, ‘Deterrence to Doomsday Machine’, esp. p. 690.

  94.J. Horne and A. Kramer, ‘German “Atrocities” and Franco-German Opinion, 1914: The Evidence of German Soldiers’ Diaries’, The Journal of Modern History 66(1) (March 1994), esp. p. 16, and Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, p. 132.

  95.Alexander, ‘Genesis’, p. 365.

  96.See Article 50 of the Annex to ‘Convention Concerning the Laws and Customs of War’.

  97.Generalleutnant Kosch, postcard to wife, 20 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: N 754/1.

  98.Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 18 and 162–7.

  99.S. de Schaepdrijver, ‘Belgium’, in J. Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I (Malden, MA, Oxford and Chichester, 2010), p. 388.

  100.An estimate for the population of the territories invaded in August and early September 1914 derived from figures in the Ministère de l’Intérieur, Annuaire statistique de la Belgique et du
Congo belge. Quarante-deuxième année–1911. Tome XLII (Brussels, 1912), p. 4, and M. Huber, La Population de la France pendant la Guerre (Paris and New Haven, CT, 1931), pp. 381, 390 and 394, and maps in Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 10 and 182. For the quotation and a different interpretation, see also ibid., pp. 165 and 419–31.

  101.For Napoleonic massacres, see P. G. Dwyer, ‘ “It Still Makes Me Shudder”: Memories of Massacres and Atrocities during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’, War in History 16(4) (November 2009), pp. 381–405. Lipkes’ Rehearsals attempts most explicitly to connect the atrocities of 1914 with Germans’ genocidal violence thirty years later, but the implication is also present in Horne and Kramer’s German Atrocities and Hull’s Absolute Destruction. The literature on the Holocaust and atrocities on the Eastern Front in the Second World War is too extensive to be given here, but especially relevant to the above argument is O. Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1992). For comparisons with other contemporary armies’ violence, see the following sections and the next chapter.

  102.See the chart and commentary in Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 77–8.

  103.See, for example, not only Einem’s comments above but also Generalleutnant Kosch, letter to his wife, 25 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: N 754/1.

  104.Generalleutnant Kosch, letter to his wife, 26 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: N 754/1. For 10th Division’s atrocities, see Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, pp. 58–60.

  105.Strachan, First World War, i, pp. 224–31 and 242–50; Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 76–82.

  106.Van Creveld, Supplying War, pp. 113, 116–17, 126, 129–32 and 137.

  107.E. Baier, letters to parents, 29 and 30 August 1914. BA-MA Freiburg: PH10–II/52. For the distance covered by First Army units, see Münch, Bürger in Uniform, p. 88.