162.Führ, K.u.k. Armeeoberkommando, pp. 31–47.
163.Excerpt from Kriegsministerium document, 26 November 1914. KA Vienna: MKSM 1914: 38–2/1.
164.Führ, K.u.k. Armeeoberkommando, ch. 6 and pp. 165–7.
165.Ibid., p. 171.
6. SECURITY FOR ALL TIME
1.Quotations from Franz Joseph’s Manifesto ‘To My People’ (see ch. 2) and from Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg’s speech in the Reichstag of 4 August in New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915. Who Began the War, and Why?, Volume 1, No. 2 (New York, 1915), p. 222.
2.Wilhelm II in the Berlin Palace’s White Room on 4 August 1914, reproduced in ibid., p. 210. Also Berchtold in ibid., p. 227.
3.Bethmann’s Memorandum: ‘Provisional Notes on the Direction of Our Policy on the Conclusion of Peace’, 9 September 1914, in G. D. Feldman (ed.), German Imperialism, 1914–1918: The Development of a Historical Debate (London, Sydney and Toronto, 1972), pp. 125–6 (doc. 26).
4.P. Theiner, ‘ “Mitteleuropa”: Pläne in Wilhelminischen Deutschland’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Sonderheft 10 (1984), pp. 128–36.
5.For pre-war ideas of a European customs union and the September programme, see D. Stevenson, ‘The First World War and European Integration’, The International History Review 34(4) (December 2012), pp. 842–6, and for its use against Britain see Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, p. 196. Fischer exaggerates the continuity between pre-war and wartime German policy in general, including conceptions of a Mitteleuropa customs association. See his Germany’s Aims, pp. 98–106 and 247–56. For Longwy-Briey, see ibid., pp. 257–9.
6.Stevenson, ‘First World War and European Integration’, p. 844.
7.Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, p. 192.
8.‘Petition of the Six Economic Associations’, 20 May 1915, in Feldman (ed.), German Imperialism, pp. 16–22 (doc. 4). For the annexationist pressure groups, see esp. H. Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei. Die nationale Rechte am Ende des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf, 1997), pp. 49–72.
9.S. Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat. Die ‘Ideen von 1914’ und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2003), pp. 77–8.
10.See Fischer, Germany’s Aims, pp. 173–9.
11.Miller, Burgfrieden, pp. 75–132 and 190–239.
12.Afflerbach, Falkenhayn, pp. 198–210. For peace attempts in 1915, see Fischer, Germany’s Aims, pp. 184–214.
13.Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, pp. 209 and 216.
14.For Bethmann’s minimum war aim as a customs union, see W. C. Thompson, ‘The September Program: Reflections on the Evidence’, Central European History 11(4) (December 1978), p. 353.
15.For this and the below, see Jarausch, Enigmatic Chancellor, pp. 204–21, and Fischer, Germany’s Aims, pp. 247–56.
16.Stevenson, ‘First World War and European Integration’, pp. 847–8.
17.R. W. Kapp, ‘Divided Loyalties: The German Reich and Austria-Hungary in Austro-German Discussions of War Aims, 1914–1916’, Central European History 17(2/3) (June–September 1984), esp. pp. 124–6 and 133–5. Also Rauchensteiner, Tod des Doppeladlers, pp. 312–15.
18.R. W. Kapp, ‘Bethmann-Hollweg, Austria-Hungary and Mitteleuropa, 1914–1915’, Austrian History Yearbook 19 (1983), pp. 215–16 and 229–36.
19.Ibid., pp. 217–18 and 223.
20.A. Müller, Zwischen Annäherung und Abgrenzung. Österreich-Ungarn und die Diskussion um Mitteleuropa im Ersten Weltkrieg (Marburg, 2001), esp. pp. 195–6. Also Stevenson, ‘First World War and European Integration’, pp. 848–51. For the exchange of notes on Mitteleuropa, see S. Verosta, ‘The German Concept of Mitteleuropa, 1916–1918, and its Contemporary Critics’, in R. A. Kann, B. K. Király and P. S. Fichtner (eds.), The Habsburg Empire in World War I: Essays on the Intellectual, Military, Political and Economic Aspects of the Habsburg War Effort (Boulder, CO, and New York, 1977), pp. 209–14.
21.W. W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago and London, 1980), pp. 180–94. Also, more broadly for pre-First World War German views of the east, see V. G. Liulevičius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1–129.
22.Fischer, Germany’s Aims, pp. 132–4 and 138–41.
23.See W. Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne and Graz, 1958), pp. 60–67.
24.See, most recently, V. G. Liulevičius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne, 2000), and A. H. Sammartino, The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2010), ch. 1. The most extreme version of Fischer’s argument is developed in his War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914 (London, 1975).
25.I. Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen, 1914–1918. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1960), pp. 43 and 70–74. Geiss deserves credit for being the first to explore these plans but is very misleading on the context in which they came about, suggesting erroneously that the German government consider a border strip after the Russians had ‘once again for the most part been pushed out of East Prussia’. Fear, not aggression, in fact drove the Germans’ interest in annexing this land.
26.K. Wicker, ‘Der Weltkrieg in Zahlen. Verluste an Blut und Boden’, in W. Jost (ed.), Was wir vom Weltkrieg nicht wissen (Leipzig, 1936), p. 521. Germany surrendered 50,730 square kilometres of territory in the east at the end of the war, including 46,150 square kilometres to Poland, 2,660 to Lithuania and 1,920 to the League of Nations enclave at Danzig.
27.Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire, pp. 129–37.
28.Geiss, Polnische Grenzstreifen, pp. 74–8.
29.I. Ihnatowicz, ‘Gospodarka na ziemiach polskich w okresie I Wojny Światowej’, in B. Zientara, A. Mączak, I. Ihnatowicz and Z. Landau, Dzieje Gospodarcze Polski do 1939 r. (Warsaw, 1965), p. 457.
30.P. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1999), pp. 3 and 211–15. Also Liulevičius, War Land, p. 17. For good first-hand descriptions of the devastation caused by the Russians, see the letters of the German soldier Reinhold Sieglerschmidt, esp. those of 10, 14 and 15 August 1915 (accessed at www.europeana1914-1918.eu on 23 October 2013).
31.Kapp, ‘Bethmann-Hollweg’, p. 230.
32.L. Höbelt, ‘ “Well-Tempered Discontent”: Austrian Domestic Politics’, in M. Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, revised and expanded edn (Exeter, 2002), p. 48.
33.Leslie, ‘Antecedents’, pp. 311, 322, 358 and 371–3.
34.May, Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, i, pp. 175–6, 185–94 and 210.
35.M. Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Elite and the Southern Slav Question, 1914–1918’, in L. Höbelt and T. G. Otte (eds.), A Living Anachronism? European Diplomacy and the Habsburg Monarchy. Festschrift für Francis Roy Bridge zum 70. Geburtstag (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar, 2010), pp. 249–53.
36.Liulevičius, War Land, p. 21.
37.Sammartino, Impossible Border, pp. 32–7. The quotation is from Bethmann Hollweg’s speech in the Reichstag of 5 April 1916.
38.Fischer, Germany’s Aims, pp. 273–9. For Sering and his plans, see R. L. Nelson, ‘From Manitoba to the Memel: Max Sering, Inner Colonization and the German East’, Social History 35(4) (2010), esp. pp. 442–53.
39.Liulevičius, War Land, p. 21.
40.E. Zechlin, ‘Ludendorff im Jahre 1915. Unveröffentlichte Briefe’, Historische Zeitschrift 211(2) (October 1970), pp. 335 and 338 (letter of 5 April 1915), 350 (letter of 10 October 1915) and 353 (letter of 29 December 1915). For exploitation as the primary purpose of Ober Ost, see Liulevičius, War Land, pp. 64–5.
41.Geiss, Polnische Grenzstreifen, pp. 78–107, and Liulevičius, War Land, pp. 95–6.
42.A. Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making
and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London, 2006), pp. 466–76.
43.Geiss, Polnische Grenzstreifen, pp. 148–9. Also see ‘Memorandum of the Supreme Command on the Polish Border Strip, July 5, 1918’, in Feldman (ed.), German Imperialism, pp. 133–7.
44.For French wartime internments, see ch. 3. For the expulsions from Alsace-Lorraine in the war’s aftermath, see Zahra, ‘The “Minority Problem” ’, Contemporary European History 17(2) (May 2008), esp. pp. 138–9 and 149–58.
45.See ch. 4.
46.N. M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2001), pp. 22–41; D. Bloxham, ‘The First World War and the Development of the Armenian Genocide’, in R. G. Suny, F. M. Göçek and N. M. Naimark (eds.), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 2011), pp. 260–75; U. Ü. Üngör, ‘Orphans, Converts, and Prostitutes: Social Consequences of War and Persecution in the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1923’, War in History 19(2) (April 2012), pp. 173–92.
47.Fischer, War Aims, pp. 189–97. For the central place of the Turkish Straits in Russia’s aims, see McMeekin, Russian Origins, pp. 30–37.
48.Stevenson, ‘French War Aims and the American Challenge’, p. 881.
49.D. Larsen, ‘War Pessimism and an American Peace in Early 1916’, The International History Review 34(4) (December 2012), pp. 796 and 801–4.
50.Miller, Burgfrieden, pp. 123 and 183–4.
51.V. Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae. Erinnerungen, 1881–1918, ed. W. Nowojski (2 vols., Berlin, 1996), ii, pp. 410, 426 and 448. For the Czechs, see ch. 5.
7. CRISIS AT THE FRONT
1.A. A. Nofi, ‘Comparative Divisional Strengths during World War I: East Central European Belligerents and Theaters’, in B. K. Király and N. F. Dreisziger (eds.), East European Society in World War I (Boulder, CO, and Highland Lakes, NJ, 1985), pp. 268–9.
2.For the most recent account of the Chantilly meeting, see W. Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (London, 2009), pp. 56–61.
3.R. T. Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 181–2.
4.Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, p. 172. For the French army’s campaign in 1915, see ibid., pp. 153–202.
5.D. French, ‘The Meaning of Attrition, 1914–1916’, English Historical Review 103(407) (April 1988), pp. 397–404. See also J. M. Beach, ‘British Intelligence and the German Army, 1914–1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, University College London (2005), pp. 141–4.
6.Foley, German Strategy, pp. 154–5 and 187–90. Also Afflerbach, ‘Planning Total War?’, pp. 118–22.
7.Sanitätsbericht, iii, pp. 12 and 6–8* (figure for January 1916), and Gratz and Schüller, Wirtschaftliche Zusammenbruch, p. 151.
8.Philpott, Bloody Victory, pp. 52, 193 and 624–5.
9.ÖULK, i, p. 56, and 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. 34.
10.For the killed/wounded ratio, see C. von Altrock (ed.), Vom Sterben des deutschen Offizierkorps (Berlin, 1922), tables on pp. 68 and 74. Information on Austro-Hungarian prisoners is in R. Jeřábek, ‘The Eastern Front’, in M. Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, revised and expanded edn (Exeter, 2002), p. 158. During the conflict, 61,100 Austro-Hungarian officers were held prisoner, as compared with 11,300 German officers. See A. Rachamimov, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Oxford and New York, 2002), p. 39.
11.H. Cron, The Imperial German Army, 1914–18: Organization, Structure, Orders of Battle, trans. C. F. Colton (Solihull, 2002), pp. 101–2.
12.See L. Rüdt von Collenberg, Die deutsche Armee von 1871 bis 1914 (Berlin, 1922), p. 118.
13.Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 120–22, Deák, Beyond Nationalism, pp. 193–5, and Rothenberg, Army of Francis Joseph, p. 193.
14.See W. Meteling, Ehre, Einheit, Ordnung. Preußische und französische Städte und ihre Regimenter im Krieg, 1870/71 und 1914–19 (Baden-Baden, 2010), pp. 228–9. Also F. Altrichter, Die seelischen Kräfte des deutschen Heeres im Frieden und im Weltkriege (Berlin, 1933), pp. 236–7. NCOs with only limited education could at best be promoted to an inferior officer rank, the Feldwebelleutnant. Theoretically, the rules could be waived in cases of exceptional heroism, but this was done extremely rarely.
15.I. Deák, ‘The Habsburg Army in the First and Last Days of World War I: A Comparative Analysis’, in B. K. Király and N. F. Dreisziger (eds.), East European Society in World War I (Boulder, CO, and Highland Lakes, NJ, 1985), p. 305. For NCOs, see R. Jeřábek, ‘Die Brussilowoffensive 1916. Ein Wendepunkt der Koalitionskriegführung der Mittelmächte’, 2 vols., unpublished PhD thesis, University of Vienna (1982), ii, p. 576.
16.See Sanitätsbericht, iii, pp. 12 and 15, and ÖULK, i, pp. 28–31.
17.See Sanitätsbericht, iii, pp. 15–16, and Gratz and Schüller, Wirtschaftliche Zusammenbruch, p. 158.
18.K. Weiler, Arbeit und Gesundheit. Sozialmedizinische Schriftenreihe aus dem Gebiete des Reichsministeriums. Heft 22. Nervöse und seelische Störungen bei Teilnehmern am Weltkriege, ihre ärztliche und rechtliche Beurteilung. Erster Teil: Nervöse und seelische Störungen psychogener und funktioneller Art (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 124–5, 129 and 131. Also the essays by K. Bonhoeffer, R. Gaupp and G. Aschaffenburg, in K. Bonhoeffer (ed.), Geistes- und Nervenkrankheiten (2 vols., Leipzig, 1922), i, esp. pp. 26–7, 89 and 133.
19.Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 156–8 and 161–2.
20.See Schindler, ‘Disaster on the Drina’, 192, and Jeřábek, ‘Brussilow offensive, pp. 528–9.
21.H. Kantorowicz, Der Offiziershaß im deutschen Heer (Freiburg, 1919), p. 11.
22.M. Hobohm, Soziale Heeresmißstände als Teilursache des deutschen Zusammenbruches von 1918. Die Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruches im Jahre 1918. Zweite Abteilung. Der innere Zusammenbruch (12 vols., Berlin, 1929), xi(1), p. 373. This flawed argument has also been repeated in modern literature. See, for example, Ziemann, Front, pp. 140–63.
23.Kantorowicz, Offiziershaß, p. 13, and G. Gothein, Warum verloren wir den Krieg? (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1919), pp. 83–6.
24.See the impressively supported, albeit in its interpretations highly politicized, study by Hobohm, Soziale Heeresmißstände, xi(1). For staff hatred in the French and British armies, see Meteling, Ehre, Einheit, Ordnung, pp. 271–2, and Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 134.
25.Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 124–33.
26.Postüberwachung der 5. Armee, 12 July 1917, p. 20. BA-MA Freiburg: W-10/ 50794.
27.See the documents collected in Hobohm, Soziale Heeresmißstände, xi(1), pp. 13–79. The letter from the Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband of 12 August 1918 (doc. 27b) illustrates how widespread this resentment ultimately became, although it, like other sources, emphasizes the ‘mature’ age of the complainants. Younger troops who bore the burden of combat were much more likely to be satisfied with their commanders.
28.See Anlage 19, ‘Hilfsgutachten des Oberarchivrates Cron’, in Volkmann, Soziale Heeresmißstände, xi(2), pp. 135–7.
29.ÖULK, i, p. 54.
30.Krauß, Ursachen unserer Niederlage, p. 71.
31.H. Kollenz, diary, 5 April 1916. DTA, Emmendingen: 1844,1. More generally, OÜLK, i, p. 55.
32.Schuhmacher, Leben und Seele unseres Soldatenlieds, p. 169.
33.W. Ludwig, ‘Beiträge zur Psychologie der Furcht im Kriege’, in W. Stern and O. Lipmann (eds.), Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie. 21. Beiträge zur Psychologie des Krieges (Leipzig, 1920), pp. 125–72.
34.Watson, Enduring the Great War, pp. 93–6.
35.P. J. Houlihan, ‘Clergy in the Trenches: Catholic Military Chaplains of Germany and Austria-Hungary during
the First World War’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago (2011), pp. 75, 81 and 83, ÖULK, i, p. 39, and Bobič, War and Faith, pp. 100–102, 107 and 110–11.
36.Reservepionnier Ludwig Elšík of Sappeur-Bataillon Nr. 2, quoted in Kriegsüberwachungsamt to Armee-Oberkommando, 20 February 1915. Vienna: AOK – Op.-Abteilung 18 – Akten 1915: Op. Nr. 7389.
37.P. Göhre, Tat-Flugschriften 22. Front und Heimat. Religiöses, Politisches, Sexuelles aus dem Schützengraben (Jena, 1917), pp. 2–13, and Ziemann, Front, pp. 246–65.
38.P. Plaut, ‘Psychographie des Kriegers’, in W. Stern and O. Lipmann (eds.), Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie. 21. Beiträge zur Psychologie des Krieges (Leipzig, 1920), p. 95.
39.Schuhmacher, Leben und Seele unseres Soldatenlieds, pp. 36–7. The first four stanzas only are reproduced here.
40.E. W. Küpper, letter to his wife, 25 March 1915. BA-MA Freiburg: MSg2/5254.
41.G. Kirchner, letter to his sister, 21 October 1914. DTA, Emmendingen, 31 October 1914.
42.K. Reiter, diary, 20 June 1916. BA-MA Freiburg: MSg1/161. For the German Field Post, see B. Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen. Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit, 1914–1933 (Essen, 1997), p. 40. For other examples, see Watson, Enduring the Great War, p. 83, and for the importance of defending home for Habsburg troops, see ch. 5.
43.‘Allgemeiner Wegweiser für jede Familie’ (Wochenschrift) Jg. 1917. Berlin, 1917, reproduced in E. Johann (ed.), Innenansicht eines Krieges. Bilder, Briefe, Dokumente, 1914–1918 (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), pp. 287–8.
44.Letter to a soldier, copied out in H. Kollenz, diary, 1 September [erroneously dated August] 1916. DTA, Emmendingen: 1844,1.
45.O. Steinhilber, letter to his wife, 4 December 1915. Private Collection (Author) and H. McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (London and New York, 1999, 2001), p. 203.
46.H. O. Henel, Eros im Stacheldraht, quoted in M. Hirschfeld and A. Gaspar (eds.), Sittengeschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges (Hanau am Main, n.d.), p. 248. For prostitution and sex in the war zone, see ibid., pp. 231–332.
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