In theory, Schlieffen sought to make the army flexible in responding to all situations.33 In practice, the enlargement of the army from 400,000 in 1870 to 864,000 by 1913 forced him to simplify tactics and standardize operations. The principles of Cannae were reduced to enveloping attack (umfassender Angriff), encirclement (Einkesselung), encircling maneuvers (Einkreisungsmanöver), and encircling pursuit (überholende Verfolgung). These were exhaustively trained for and rehearsed by the army. Schlieffen’s solution was a cyclical process of standardized basic training, war planning, mobilization rehearsals, and large-scale military exercises, implemented with every new intake of conscripts. This tortuous cycle of inducting recruits and transforming them into the cogs of a military machine was seen as instilling discipline and building military efficiency. This turned the army into either the manipulative agent of socialization described by Volker Berghan34 or the seal of the national spirit professed by veterans.35 The twelve-week basic training program culminated in massive exercises held on expansive troop training grounds. On these mock battlefields, troops were honed to perform the maneuvers of encirclement and envelopment, the reinforcement ad nauseam of Cannae, which was expected to help establish a doctrine of aggressive warfare and the coup de grace in security actions.36
The Institutions
In the eighty years after the demise of Napoleon, most armies of Europe responded to the socioeconomic challenges of the nineteenth century through technocratic professionalism. In Prussia, professionalism came from a process of regimented schooling, conscription, and training in the military academies. In time, the professionalization of the officer corps, the regimented bureaucratization of the state, and the influx of military officials defined the German military establishment over society; Christopher Dandeker has called this the militarization of government.37 The armies of Germany had been active in financing and planning the development of the states. The Prussian army endorsed the construction of state railways during the 1840s and established strong links with banks and business. When Schlieffen became chief of the Great General Staff in 1891, the full potential for a unified Imperial German Army had still to be realized. He recognized that troops could neither march to the beat of different drums nor perform the precious Cannae, unless welded into a clockwork-like army. Historians have focused on the social consequences of latent civilian militarism. The paradox of deep-seated anxieties and fears about the military came from within a society deeply dependant on the protection of the army and its regulation of law and order. The consequences of Schlieffen’s efforts were seen in 1914. The Imperial German Army entered the war on a sounder operational footing than any other army, but its rapid collapse in November 1918 indicated the underlying frailties of a militarized society.
One Prussian tradition, after 1813, was to assign older reservists to security duties. The Landwehr, a territorial militia, was the backbone of homeland defense. Although formed from reservists, the Landwehr was responsible for securing Germany’s conquests and military occupation. In the early days of the Prussian annexation of the Rhineland, Landwehr regiments were garrisoned in every town and city. In 1822, the 25th Duke of Wellington Landwehr Regiment had three battalions of infantry. The regiment was raised from men over twenty-four years old and was mustered from within the area of Aachen, Jülich, and Düren.38 The total manpower was 8,113, with the main fighting complement listed as 56 officers, 333 noncommissioned officers, and 5,859 troopers; the rest was made up of 1,848 elderly war reservists, 73 bandsmen, and 3 surgeons. Michael Howard regarded the Landwehr as critical to Prussian security operations during the Franco–Prussian War with a total deployment in excess of 110,000 men. 39 Its duties ranged from guarding railway lines and strong points to taking hostages and committing reprisals to when called on, detering franc-tireur activity. During the war, the Landwehr received frontline troops, especially the cavalry, bolstering their aggressive operational mobility.
The German military rear-area system was called the Etappen. The term originated from the French étape, meaning stages, and referred to the army’s lines of communication. The Etappen were the responsibility of the quartermaster-general (Generalquartiermeister) within the Great General Staff (grosser Generalstab). In time, the Etappen grew into a larger and more complex organization than the fighting (teeth) arms. Its mission was to support and supply offensive operations from the rear area and into the combat zone. In practice, this usually meant plundering the land as offensive operations ground forward. Its secondary mission, growing in greater importance over time, involved countering incursions by partisans or guerrillas and preventing disruption of the rear area. Operationally, the Etappen expanded and contracted, rather like an accordian, to given circumstances. At its greatest extension, the system controlled the corridors between the army’s bases in Germany and the front lines. The Etappen were erected on a cadre of professional soldiers, reservists, and civilian experts and tradesmen. They carried out a broad range of tasks including taking prisoners of war, policing, controlling civilians, and administering the occupation. When the war ended, the Etappen were reduced as an unnecessary financial burden on the state. In response to supply problems during the wars of 1866 and 1867 and the insecurity caused by francs-tireurs in 1870–71, the system was reformed and regulated under the 1872 Etappen regulations.40
After 1872, this system became a fixture of the permanent military establishment. The publication of its ordinances immediately attracted British attention.41 The British noticed that responsibility for the Etappen remained within the decision-making circle of the quartermaster-general of the army. The senior field officer was the general inspector rear area of the army (Generaletappeninspektionen der Armee), who administered the operational functions and later joined with the inspector general of communications (Generalinspekteur des Etappen- und Eisenbahnwesens). To sustain the mission demanded by the new instructions, the Etappen received specialists from all branches and services of the army. The new guidelines also reflected advancing railway engineering and the growing dependency of the army on railways. Reflecting this new requirement, the army introduced the post of chief of the field railway (Chef des Feldeisenbahnwesens). Military traffic managers joined the Etappen to prevent bottlenecks in transportation and to maintain the flow of traffic along roads and railways. A railway protection regiment was raised with railway reservists; this led eventually to the military railway corps (Feldeisenbahnkorps). In theory, local military commands (Etappenkommandantur) were placed in railway junctions and towns. During occupation, they ruled local civilians by distributing work and food and imposing social control. In the surrounding hamlets and villages, a district commander (Ortskommandantur) extended this system of control. The priority task was protection, and to this end the flow of replacements could be interrupted in an emergency, forming troop-cadres (Stammtruppe) for security duties. Local rear-area departments (Etappenhauptorte) and roving special military courts (Sondergerichte) supervised military justice.42
Political considerations dictated whether the occupation system took the form of a general government or a military government. The former was staffed by civilians and administered by the army; the latter was a military state. According to Michael Rowe, the Prussian army in the Rhineland (1814) formed a working relationship between local collaboration and military administration.43 In 1870–71, this same army, with Prussian state assistance, knitted together a highly profitable and financially rewarding occupation of France. The Prussian government, through the secondment of senior public servants, tax and finance specialists, and sociopolitical experts from universities, assisted the army. Public servants or civilian commissioners, working with French mayors and local councilors, handled the civil functions of occupied France.44 German army civil-military relations policy for occupation in 1873 had crafted a subtle form of control. The complete Etappen function reflected Germany’s central position in Europe and thus threatened Russia and France. The British army review of the regulations concluded that n
o organization comparable to the Etappen existed within the armies of Europe. They were particularly struck with authority handed to the Etappen commanders, “great powers of organisation” arranged around “three perceptions”: first, providing necessities for the army in the field; second, “calming the temper of the local population”; and last, preventing enemy infiltration. The British were also interested in what they termed the duties of the communications officer during an occupation. This involved installing civil government, establishing collaboration with the indigenous population, and turning “the resources of the country to the best account for the benefit of the army.”
The final pieces in the organizational development of the German military security establishment were the field police and military intelligence. In August 1866, Bismarck promoted Baron Wilhelm Stieber as director of the Prussian State Ministry and charged him to erect a central intelligence bureau (zentrale Nachrichtenbüro) for political security and intelligence.45 The first secret field police (Geheime Feldpolizei), known as the GFP, began with fifty conscripted police officers.46 Its mission was to safeguard the senior commanders and staff officers of the high command. In 1870–71, Stieber became the chief of Field Police under the Great General Staff and commanded thirty-one administrators (Polizeibeamten) and 157 field officers.47 The military police (Feldgendarmerie) usually came from the cavalry and served with each army corps. The normal command was a cavalry captain (Rittmeister), two noncommissioned officers (Wachtmeister), and sixty military police (Feldgendarmen). For civil-military relations purposes during an occupation, they joined local commands and worked alongside the beat police (Landespolizei). Policing the occupation of France (1871–73) involved cadres of constables, collaborators, prefects, mayors, and the men from the Etappenkommandanten. In Lorraine, the chief of the local rural police (Landgendarmeriekommando) came from the Berlin police. In Rheims, the Germans employed collaborators to raise a local protection militia (Schutzmänner), used to counter the roving bands of francs-tireurs and bandits. In the 1880s, the introduction of passports and controls, primarily to administer the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, led to the founding of the Border Police (Grenzschutzpolizei), attached to the GFP. By 1914, the GFP was the central secret police agency for the army, commanded by Major und Polizei-Rat Bauer, under Oberst Nicolai. During the Great War, members of the GFP were granted the right to wear either uniforms or civilian clothing, depending on their duties.
In 1884, Major von Lettow-Vorbeck became director of military intelligence and counterintelligence for the Imperial German Army.48 Between 1900 and 1917, the intelligence services underwent a series of changes. Initially, their functions were to monitor foreign press and propaganda, censor mail, operate the border police, recruit spies, and conduct counter-espionage. After the Russo–Japanese War, reforms were introduced, and in 1906, the intelligence and security police agencies were reorganized. Developments continued to separate military intelligence from counterintelligence. In 1910, Department IIIb, the German army Abwehr was formed to handle foreign military intelligence, and in the spirit of the times, the navy established its own Abwehr branch. In 1913, IIIb came under Oberst Walter Nicolai, aged thirty-nine, chief of military intelligence of the German Supreme Command (Chef des Nachrichtendienstes der obersten Heeresleitung). Nicolai scored several successes revealing spies and traitors. He believed an iron curtain (eiserner Vorhang) had descended around Germany and her allies prior to the war, leaving only Switzerland as a small window to the outside world and thus restricting intelligence operations. The occupation and annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was soon regarded as a springboard for French espionage by the German army. Rightly or wrongly, German perceptions fixated on French revanchism, and these perceptions became connected with a deeply held suspicion of Britain.49 In 1917, the army finally decided to separate counterintelligence from foreign military intelligence. The intelligence section within IIIb became the Foreign Armies Section (Fremde Heeresabteilung). Therefore, by 1917, military policing, counterintelligence, and military intelligence were three distinct branches of the army.
Rehearsals for War
Between 1870 and 1912, security warfare became an integral part of the German way of war. A supremo of security was not elected during the Franco–Prussian War. The only Feldherr was Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. The francs-tireurs were a serious security problem for only a brief time. The military governments, the extent of the Etappen, and the number of security operations did not fall to a single commanding officer of an occupation security army. Security was a common responsibility accepted as a regular military routine. The rise of security warfare and the first dubious contests of its Feldherr followed the institutional changes of 1872 and surfaced within Germany’s colonial conflicts. When Schlieffen became chief of the general staff in 1891, he inherited a military and national political disaster. In July, the governor of German East Africa (Tanzania) ordered Emil von Zelewski, the commander of the local militia (Schutztruppen), to quell an uprising of the Wehehe tribe, in the south of the country.50 Zelewski led a force of fourteen “European” officers and men with 362 locally recruited Schutztruppen through the bush and mountain range. They came under repeated hit-and-run attacks, primarily because their marching order lacked discipline. On August 17, one of the German officers took a shot at an eagle flying overhead. This precipitated the Wehehe’s signal for attack. The ensuing Battle of Rugaro turned into Germany’s Little Big Horn, and Zelewski, like George Armstrong Custer, suffered the ignominy of defeat, by a band of tribesmen. In the ensuing chaos, the Schutztruppen fled, and a sixteen-year-old boy speared Zelewski to death. Only three Europeans survived, and 250 out of 320 Askaris were killed. News of the debacle, according to Jan-Bart Gewalt, arrived in Berlin by telegram announcing that Zelewski’s corps had been “shattered” (aufgerieben).51 Erick Mann thought much of what was later written about Emil von Zelewski absolved him. However, consciousness of the disaster became deeply rooted in the consciousness of German officer corps.52
This inauspicious beginning spurred Schlieffen to institute performance standards for all aspects of operations. It is often assumed that colonial wars played no part in European warfare and that Schlieffen was not involved in these operations, but this was not the case. He ensured that military expeditions were fully planned, organized, and commanded by professional officers. He also observed colonial conflicts as putative testing grounds for his operational ideas. Fate, however, interrupted his plans with the first major international incident. The Boxer Rebellion (1900) might have served his purpose had Kaiser Wilhelm II not intervened. The kaiser agreed to send a military expedition to join the great powers under the command of Field Marshal Count Alfred von Waldersee, a notorious political intriguer and racist.53 The expedition embarked on July 27, 1900, under the kaiser’s orders to neither show mercy nor take prisoners.54 Encirclement failed in China. A youthful Leutnant Franz Ritter von Epp of the Ninth Bavarian Infantry Regiment volunteered for the China expedition in the hope of achieving the cherished opportunity of a baptism of fire. In April 1901, Epp took part in an operation near the Great Wall of China. Although the security operation was sanctioned by the great powers commission, the tactical details were left to the Germans. The German commander, not surprisingly, opted for encirclement, which he attempted twice against both the left and right flanks of the Boxer force, reputed to be more than one thousand soldiers strong. The Germans managed to kill two hundred, while the rest escaped. The failure of the first attempt at encirclement was blamed on the poor geographical position; the second remains less clear, although almost certainly it reflected a tactical failure by the Germans.55
Pursuit and Bandenbekämpfung also failed in China. On March 19, 1901, Epp’s company received word of the murder of two German soldiers. That afternoon, Epp’s 6th Company received orders to conduct a search for the men. In the dusk, they conducted a house-to-house search and interrogated the locals looking for the two men. Epp had detailed collection carts a
nd coffins for the bodies prior to setting off, certain that the men were dead. During the search, there was obviously some kind of incident, although not clarified, but that evening the Germans camped outside the village. They had set the village on fire and held thirty Chinese as prisoners. One prisoner apparently choked through the night, without relief, the consequences of a chest wound. They found no trace of the missing soldiers except for their guns, which been thrown down a well.56 After arriving in China, the German troops participated in more than fifty operations. Years later, the fighting in the rebellion was recorded in the German infantry handbook as operations against Chinese “bandits” (Banden).57 The German performance in China came under severe political scrutiny from the Social Democratic Party. On January 11, 1902, August Bebel, the leader of the SPD, accused the army of excesses based on the evidence received from soldiers’ letters. One soldier told his parents that when the Chinese refused to give up food, he “hit them on the skulls” with a lance, and when several tried to protect themselves, he ran them through. The Germans invoked penalties on villages that did not conform to their rule; fines were as high as 30,000 Marks. Epp returned to Germany and reflected on the wider implications of the campaign. He thought Bebel’s accusations exaggerated or invented and believed the army had behaved bravely and humanely. Epp did agree that the drinking and general unruly behavior of the troops remained a problem in China.
Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe Page 4