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Overview
Showalter surveys an army at the heart of a national identity, driven by – yet also defeated by – warfare in the modern age, which struggled to capitalize on its victories and ultimately forgot the lessons of its defeat.
Exploring the internal dynamics of the German Army and detailing how the soldiers coped with the many new forms of warfare, Showalter shows how the army's institutions responded to, and how Germany itself was changed by war.
Detailing the major campaigns on the Western and Eastern fronts and the forgotten war fought in the Middle East and Africa, this comprehensive volume examines the army's operational strategy, the complexities of campaigns of movement versus static trench warfare, and the effects of changes in warfare.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781472813015 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 11/17/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 37 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Dennis Showalter was Professor of History at Colorado College, USA. He is the author of several books, including Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk, The Turning Point of World War II (2013), Patton and Rommel: Men Of War in the Twentieth Century (2005) and Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914 (1991), which won the American Historical Association's Paul M. Birdsall Prize. He was the Founding Editor of the War in History journal and Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online: Military History. Professor Showalter was also President of the Society for Military History between 1997 and 2000.
William J. Astore is Associate Provost and Dean of Students, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. With Dennis Showalter, he is the co-author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (forthcoming).
Read an Excerpt
Instrument of War
The German Army 1914-18
By Dennis Showalter
Osprey Publishing
Copyright © 2016 Dennis ShowalterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4728-1301-5
CHAPTER 1
Portents and Preliminaries
In 1898 the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, a leading popular magazine, polled its readers on the most significant events and personalities of the last hundred years. The choice of the Nineteenth Century's greatest thinker was none other than Helmuth von Moltke. In an era of philosophers like Hegel, authors like Tolstoy, and scientists like Darwin, selecting the chief of Prussia's Great General Staff in hindsight reads at best like a bad joke. Taken as a meme, it reinforces the familiar image of Imperial Germany as a society comprehensively defined by its military culture, as specifically expressed in the army. When Frank House, US President Woodrow Wilson's advisor, wrote from Berlin in April 1914 of "militarism run stark mad," he was not reacting as an innocent abroad. Germany's European neighbors might agree on little else, but by the early Twentieth Century a strong consensus had developed that even by the continent's increasingly prevalent, increasingly comprehensive standards of military planning and military posturing, Germany was in a class by itself.
I
That development was by no means irrational. At seventh and last Germany had been united by force of arms. A century's dream had been fulfilled not by politicians or philosophers, intellectuals or industrialists, but by soldiers. Moreover unification's price in lives and money had been cheap. Even during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 — 71, total deaths amounted to around 30,000. In contrast with the Crimea or the American Civil War, most had been recorded. Increasing numbers were listed on local public monuments. Unlike their Civil War and World War I counterparts, Germany's veterans developed nothing like a mythology of sacrifice and victimization. Instead the war deaths had an opposite effect, providing groups and cohorts, whether university classes or soldiers' associations, with foci for a nostalgia that increased as time passed.
Nor did unification have a high direct cost. If the South German states had their share of financial problems, Prussia had been able to underwrite victory in 1864 and 1866 by conventional means: the state treasury and the international finance market. Loans and public subscriptions carried the major burden of 1870/71, with the French indemnity coming in to balance the books. War seemed good business financially as well as psychologically. It made little difference that in fact the indemnity contributed heavily to the overheated economy and the speculative boom that in 1873 triggered two decades' worth of economic depression throughout Europe. Instead the "Promoters' Panic" was projected as the work of liberals and Jews, or internalized as a punishment for seeking profit without working for it.
Internationally too, the Wars of Unification seemed an unadulterated triumph. A Prussia that for over a century had been a great power only by the courtesy of its neighbors now stood at the apex of Europe: not a hegemon definitely, but a fulcrum with arguably more leverage to come. No longer were the Reich's lesser states clients to be bought, used, and discarded, as in the days of Louis XIV and Napoleon. An army that in 1860 had been described as embarrassing the profession of arms now set global standards for doctrine, tactics, and even uniforms, as spiked helmets appeared on the parade grounds of the American West. Small wonder that Max Weber prized his status as a reserve officer alongside his position as Germany's foremost economist.
The Wars of Unification made German geopolitically legitimate. Such once-credible alternatives as the Confederation established at the Congress of Vienna, with its joint Austro-Russian hegemony, or the German-dominated Central European Confederation advocated during the 1850s by philosopher/ politician Constantin Frantz, had neither support nor viability. In Austria, itself reconfigured in 1867, the end of the old order generated some nostalgia, but the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War was a clear sign that hopes of a Habsburg-dominated Greater Germany centered north of the Inn River no longer existed. The Wars of Unification had demonstrated to the lesser German states the advantage — arguably the necessity — of participation in a large-scale military and economic system, particularly since the federal organization of the Second Reich meant that local mores and local power structures were respected if not privileged.
Factionalism also posed no significant problems, immediate or long-term. Liberal and progressive elements felt themselves so well satisfied with the new Imperial system that by most accounts they offered too little resistance to Bismarck's political manipulations during the 1870s. Of the Reich's ethnic minorities, the Poles had nowhere else to go, since no prospects for reestablishing Polish independence existed outside the context of cataclysmic war. The integration of Alsatians into the new state was more successful for a longer period than French nationalism has been willing to concede. Jews had participated in the war enthusiastically in every capacity from riflemen to surgeons. Their behavior, while motivated primarily from conviction, reflected as well the hope that — finally — they would be recognized as fully equal citizens. They embraced the new Reich with an enthusiasm that denied an anti-Semitism the influence of which up to 1914 was in any case limited enough to seem trivial in retrospect. Catholics made up a one-third religious minority in a state the dominant ethos of which was moving towards Protestantized secularism. But even the bitter Kulturkampf of the 1870s was not enough to alienate them permanently from the Empire for which their sons too had fought. An emerging working class had almost to be driven out of the Imperial consensus by the anti-Socialist legislation of the 1880s. Social Democratic leader August Bebel asserted that the Prussian Guard, 90 percent socialist, would nevertheless shoot him dead if given the order. Bebel may have been exaggerating for effect, but there is no question in 1914 Socialists reported for duty with no significant protest, individual or collective.
The common denominator in each of these cases was that no particular element of German society, whether defined in economic, political, or ethnic terms, felt itself sufficiently excluded or sufficiently victimized to reject its chances in the system. Bismarck's demonstrated virtuosity at manipulating interest groups and creating new ones, usually described in negative terms, offered hope as well of improving one's place in the hierarchy.
The Wars of Unification provided a common symbolic structure for a German public culture that was increasingly entropic and increasingly locally focused since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, if not the Protestant Reformation. Munich's Oktoberfest, inaugurated in 1816, was a typical example. Elsewhere in Europe military plays had flourished during the Nineteenth Century. Initially intended to show the power of the post-Napoleonic state, they were evolving as well into celebrations: safe enough for children; respectable enough for families; and with no admission charges, social, religious, or financial.
In imperial Germany the occasions for these events were overwhelmingly military — less from popular belligerence than because those were the only events the new Reich had in common. Sedan Day on September 1, the Empire's defining holiday, combined contemporary celebratory patriotism designed to encourage national identity with a spectrum of local initiatives confirming local traditions. Parades, bands, and speeches by generals became part of carnivals, harvest festivals, and church consecrations in the same pattern of synergy, generally acceptable to a broad spectrum of public opinion. By 1914 even a hard-core Social Democrat might expect forgiveness from his party comrades for taking his family to the show and stopping for a beer or two.
The military system that developed after the Wars of Unification became central as well to gender self-identification — for women arguably no less than for men. The bipolar structure of male fighters and female helpmates had been affirmed and reinforced by the Wars of Unification. They had been short, and competently waged, offering limited motives for opposition based on the examples of Desdemona and Lysistrata. They had largely been fought away from homelands, providing limited opportunities for women to be thrust into the roles of victim or heroine. The low levels of loss and sacrifice created limited opportunity for women to establish status as healers and nurturers in the pattern of the American Civil War. As it developed in Germany's midcentury experience, women's function in war was to symbolize its opposite: the peace the Empire proposed to maintain indefinitely and intended to restore promptly when necessary.
The Imperial German Army was an army of mobilized civilians. Almost half the men in every active regiment at war strength were reservists; entire divisions and army corps were also composed of these hostilities-only soldiers. The Germans were far ahead of their contemporaries in accepting the martial virtues of the citizen in uniform. Unlike the French and Russians, who treated reserve formations as second-line troops suited only for garrison duty or subsidiary missions, the Germans proposed using their reserve units alongside the active ones, giving them the same tasks and assuming the same levels of proficiency.
Sustaining a conscript citizen army on the German model of "everyone a front-line combatant" had two essential prerequisites. The first was that the vast majority of men could be made into soldiers by compulsion and killers by necessity. The second was that, having passed through the crucible of modern war, these men could return to civilian life without permanent, massive psychological damage. A parallel function of the army was to establish paradigms of war-fighting that provided links with order and connections to society by channeling and controlling individual and collective energies.
Most recruits reported in early autumn, just after the harvest. Fall and winter were devoted to "The school of the soldier:" instruction in wearing and maintaining uniforms and personal equipment, close-order drilling, less with an eye to parade-ground display than to developing skill in group movements, physical training, marksmanship, and not least standards of order, cleanliness, and hygiene vital for health in barracks that were at best close and spartan quarters.
Time and patience played a much larger role in German training than familiar accounts and mythologies credit. Most conscripts remained in the companies where they were trained; the sullen and the intractable could not simply be passed along like low cards. Effectiveness as an instructor was not only a serious responsibility but a fundamental criterion of retention and promotion among both NCOs and officers. They were given wide latitude in securing results — a peacetime exercise of the individual initiative so important in German operational doctrine. Latitude, however, did not mean license. Too many black eyes and split lips on parade, too many entries in a company punishment book, and the responsible authority could usually count on an unpleasant session with his own superior, centering negatively on his career prospects if the situation continued.
In early May the recruits were inspected: most of them were assigned to full time duty in their original companies. The rest of the spring and summer was devoted to battalion and regimental training, then maneuvers. Most were working-day affairs at corps and division level; the showpiece was the Imperial maneuvers pitting corps against corps, observed — and under William II increasingly muddled — by the kaiser himself. In autumn another fresh class of recruits —" Hammel' (castrated sheep, or dummies) for their short haircuts and clueless bewilderment — crowded the barracks. The newly-minted reservists invested in souvenirs, checked travel schedules, and looked forward to intimidating the younger generations with peacetime war stories.
A system designed for instrumental purposes developed a wider social and cultural context as well. The German Army emerged as the nation's primary male rite of passage. Masculinity is fundamentally a social characteristic: a male is a man when he is accepted as such by other men. The criteria for that acceptance usually involve some kind of initiation process specific to the group, from dueling fraternities for university students to Wanderjahre ("journeymen years") for aspiring craftsmen. These rituals, however, were likely to carry little external weight. The drastic changes in German society since the mid-Eighteenth Century had in any case marginalized many of them. In the Second Reich military service developed as a replacement, an alternative common denominator. Going through the conscription process, even without actually being assigned to active duty, certified male adulthood. It validated claims to permanent employment, to a seat at the men's table in the Gasthaus, to think even of starting a family.
German youth was part of a society that laid significant stress on stereotyped and distinct sex roles. It was described by a contemporary sociologist as male-defined: patriarchal, rigid, militaristic — but one that also enabled the questioning of that pattern just enough to generate male societies in which the feminine element in men could be legitimately — and safely — expressed in same-sex, but not overtly sexual, situations. Old soldiers bullied the new ones, but usually in the sense of showing them their place in this new world, as opposed to the comprehensive, efflorescent brutality that characterized the Soviet Union's armed forces in the regime's final years. From the army's perspective, hazing that became more than an uncomfortable game was bad for discipline. From the old timers' point of view, hazing could be expensive in other ways. A man on the down side of his active service, someone who knew the ropes and judiciously shared them, seldom had to pay for his schnapps and cigars.
Few conscripts had not experienced something similar as boys and adolescents. In Germany, as indeed throughout Europe, for young men to be caned, slapped, and beaten by parents, teachers, clergymen, employers, and neighbors was an experience so general that even to the victims it appeared natural and necessary in the maturing process. The rigors of army initiation were further mitigated by the sure knowledge than one's own turn on top would come with the passing of time. Few thought of complaining; fewer still acted on the thought. Only a Muttersöhnchen (mama's boy, or sissy) who occasionally found himself in the barracks instead of paying for the privilege of serving one year as a volunteer and living off post, complained.
The collective and temporary experience of military service worked against conscripts forming particular friendships, but that was not essentially different from civil life. On the farm, in the factory or the shop, even the schoolroom, participants came and went with increasing frequency in an increasingly mobile society. But in the army, more than in the workplace, comradeship was generated by need. The government provided little in the way of institutionalized services. That meant a middle-class son who received generous packages from home was expected to share out. A man apprenticed as a tailor or cobbler in civilian life, a clerk who wrote legible letters home for the less articulate, a farmhand or a domestic servant able to shine leather and clean uniforms was welcome in barracks even as a recruit.
The army's place in that meme is best expressed in nicknames. The captain was "the father of the company." The Feldwebel, the first sergeant, was the "company mother." The accepted reply by a recruit asked what he wanted to become in the army was "an orphan!" But the underlying reality the images implied was more than their sarcastic dismissal in a universally familiar joke. Historian Ute Frevert, anything but an admirer of the "nation in barracks," speaks of the peacetime regiment as a family. And if its potential for nurturing individual development was limited, the same is true for all families.
Two or three years in the German active army was no easy rite of passage. Behavior by the NCOs, a boxed ear, a kicked backside, a tirade of imaginative comments on a soldier's ancestry and character, could be complemented systematically by burdensome extra duty involving kitchens, latrines, and, even in the infantry, stables. The conscripts' new world invited dissociation from emotional and behavioral traits associated with the subaltern domesticity that defined and limited young men's civilian experience. Smoking, drinking, idleness — all the things good mothers warned against — were barracks norms. Sexual talk, rigorously suppressed by parents, teachers, and pastors, was "theme number one" for previously repressed young adults. As for action, at least in Berlin it was not unusual for the girl to pay for a date — particularly if the man served in an elegantly-uniformed regiment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Instrument of War by Dennis Showalter. Copyright © 2016 Dennis Showalter. Excerpted by permission of Osprey Publishing.
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Table of Contents
Introduction and AcknowledgementsChapter I: Portents and Preliminaries
Chapter II: Autumn of Decision
Chapter III: Reevaluating
Chapter IV: Verdun and the Somme: End of an Army
Chapter V: Reconfigurations
Chapter VI: Climax and Denouement
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index