History of Germany during World War I
During World War I, the German Empire was one of the Central Powers that ultimately lost the war. It began participation with the conflict after the declaration of war against Serbia by its ally, Austria-Hungary. German forces fought the Allies on both the eastern and western fronts, although German territory itself remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the war, except for a brief period in 1914 when East Prussia was invaded. A tight blockade imposed by the British Navy caused severe food shortages in the cities, especially in the winter of 1916-1917 known as the turnip winter.
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[edit] Overview
Germans responded to the beginning of war during 1914 with the same general enthusiasm as did many people of other countries of Europe; this enthusiasm is known as the Spirit of 1914. The German government, dominated by the Junkers, thought of the war as a way to end Germany's disputes with neighbors and rivals like France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The beginning of war was presented in authoritarian Germany as the chance for the nation to secure "our place under the sun" as the Kaiser Wilhelm II put it, which was readily supported by prevalent nationalism among the public. The Kaiser and the German establishment hoped the war would unite the public behind the monarchy, and lessen the threat posed by the dramatic growth of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which had been the most vocal critic of the Kaiser in the Reichstag before the war. Despite its membership in the Second International, the Social Democratic Party of Germany ended its differences with the Imperial government and abandoned its principles of internationalism to support the war effort.
It soon became apparent that Germany was not prepared for a war lasting more than a few months. At first, little was done to regulate the economy for a wartime footing, and the German war economy would remain badly organized throughout the war. Germany depended on imports of food and raw materials, which were stopped by the British blockade of Germany. Food prices were first limited, then rationing was introduced. The winter of 1916/17 was called "turnip winter". During the war, about 750,000 German civilians died from malnutrition.[1] Even more died after the war, as the Allied blockade was not ended until June 1919.
[edit] 1914-15
The German army opened the war on the Western Front with a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border. The Belgians fought back, and sabotaged their rail system to delay the Germans. The Germans did not expect this and were delayed, and responded with systematic reprisals on civilians, killing nearly 6,000 Belgian noncombatants, including women and children, and burning 25,000 houses and buildings.[2] The plan called for the right flank of the German advance to converge on Paris and initially, the Germans were very successful, particularly in the Battle of the Frontiers (14–24 August). By 12 September, the French with assistance from the British forces halted the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September). The last days of this battle signified the end of mobile warfare in the west. The French offensive into Germany launched on 7 August with the Battle of Mulhouse had limited success.[3]
In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in this region it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September), but this diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance from rail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff. The Central Powers were thereby denied a quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of obtaining an early victory.
[edit] 1916-17
Enthusiasm faded as the enormous numbers of casualties began returning from the first battles. As the human cost increased during battles at the Marne, Verdun, the Somme, and at Ypres in the west, and in Poland and Galicia in the East, a grimmer and grimmer attitude began to prevail amongst the general population. Morale was helped by victories against Serbia, Greece, Italy, and Russia which made great gains for the Central Powers. Morale was at its greatest since 1914 at the end of 1917 and beginning of 1918 with the defeat of Russia following her rise into revolution, and the German people braced for what Ludendorff said would be the "Peace Offensive" in the west.
[edit] 1918
In one of the bloodiest series of battles in history from March to August, 1918, Ludendorff's plans were thwarted by the combined Allied efforts and Germany's last chance to win the war was lost.
By September 1918, the Central Powers were exhausted from fighting, and the Allies had won the support of American forces. Even though the eastern front was hundreds of miles away from the borders of the Reich, an invasion of the Rhineland on the western front was possible. The hunger and popular dissatisfaction with the war precipitated uprisings and an attempted revolution throughout Germany, deposing the Kaiser and creating the historical motive for far-right German nationalists to later develop the Dolchstoßlegende. By the end of 1918 Germany had signed the Armistice, the Kaiser had abdicated, and the Empire had been replaced by the Weimar Republic.
[edit] Home front
The concept of "total war" in World War I, meant that supplies had to be redirected towards the armed forces and, with German commerce being stopped by the British naval blockade, German civilians were forced to live in increasingly meager conditions. Food prices were first limited, then rationing was introduced in 1917 but apart from Berlin it never worked well.[4] Hundreds of thousands of civilians died from malnutrition--usually from a disease their weakened body could not resist.[5]
Conditions deteriorated rapidly on the home front, with severe food shortages reported in all urban areas. The causes involved the transfer of so many farmers and food workers into the military, combined with the overburdened railroad system, shortages of coal, and the British blockade that cut off imports from abroad. The winter of 1916-1917 was known as the "turnip winter," because that hardly-edible vegetable, usually fed to livestock, was used by people as a substitute for potatoes and meat, which were increasingly scarce. Thousands of soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry people, who grumbled that the farmers were keeping the food for themselves. Even the army had to cut the rations for soldiers.[6] Morale of both civilians and soldiers continued to sink.
[edit] Defeat and revolt
Many Germans wanted an end to the war and increasing numbers of Germans began to associate with the political left, such as the Social Democratic Party and the more radical Independent Social Democratic Party which demanded an end to the war. The third reason was the entry of the United States into the war in April 1917, which changed the long-run balance of power in favor of the Allies.
The end of October 1918, in Kiel, in northern Germany, saw the beginning of the German Revolution of 1918–19. Civilian dock workers led a revolt and convinced many sailors to join them; the revolt quickly spread to other cities. Meanwhile, Hindenburg and the senior generals lost confidence in the Kaiser and his government.
In November 1918, with internal revolution, a stalemated war, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire suing for peace, Austria-Hungary falling apart from multiple ethnic tensions, and pressure from the German high command, the Kaiser and all German ruling princes abdicated. On 9 November 1918, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a Republic, in cooperation with the business and middle classes, not the revolting workers. The new government led by the German Social Democrats called for and received an armistice on 11 November 1918; in practice it was a surrender, and the Allies kept up the food blockade to guarantee an upper hand. The war was over; the history books closed on the German Empire. It was succeeded by the democratic, yet flawed, Weimar Republic.[7]
Seven million soldiers and sailors were quickly demobilized, and they became a conservative voice that drowned out the radical left in cities such as Kiel and Berlin. The radicals formed the Spartakusbund and later the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
Germany lost the war because it was decisively defeated by a stronger military power; it was out of soldiers and ideas, and was losing ground every day by October 1918. Nevertheless it was still in France when the war ended on Nov. 11 giving die-hard nationalists the chance to blame the civilians back home for betraying the army and surrendering. This was the false "Stab-in-the-back legend" that soured German politics in the 1920s and caused a distrust of democracy and the Weimar government.[8]
[edit] War deaths
Out of a population of 65 million, Germany suffered 2.1 million military deaths and 430,000 civilian deaths due to wartime causes (especially the food blockade), plus about 17,000 killed in Africa and the other overseas colonies.[9]
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk1/wirtschaft/versorgung/index.html
- ^ Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (2007)
- ^ Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (1962)
- ^ Keith Allen, "Sharing scarcity: Bread rationing and the First World War in Berlin, 1914-1923," Journal of Social History, Winter 1998, Vol. 32 Issue 2, pp 371-93
- ^ N. P. Howard, "The Social and Political Consequences of the Allied Food Blockade of Germany, 1918-19," German History, April 1993, Vol. 11 Issue 2, pp 161-188,
- ^ Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918 (2004) p. 141-42
- ^ A. J. Ryder, The German Revolution of 1918: A Study of German Socialism in War and Revolt (2008)
- ^ Wilhelm Diest and E. J. Feuchtwanger, "The Military Collapse of the German Empire: the Reality Behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth," War in History, April 1996, Vol. 3 Issue 2, pp 186-207
- ^ Leo Grebler and Wilhelm Winkler, The Cost of the World War to Germany and Austria-Hungary (Yale University Press, 1940)
[edit] Bibliography
- Broadberry, Stephen and Mark Harrison, eds. The Economics of World War I (2005) ISBN 0-521-85212-9. Covers France, UK, USA, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands
- Cecil, Lamar (1996), Wilhelm II: Emperor and Exile, 1900-1941, II, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 176, ISBN 0807822833, OCLC 186744003
- Chickering, Roger, et al. eds. Great War, Total War : Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Publications of the German Historical Institute) (2000). ISBN 0521773520. 584 pgs.
- Cowin, Hugh W. German and Austrian Aviation of World War I: A Pictorial Chronicle of the Airmen and Aircraft That Forged German Airpower (2000). Osprey Pub Co. ISBN 1841760692. 96 pgs.
- Cross, Wilbur (1991), Zeppelins of World War I, ISBN 1-55778-382-9
- Donson, Andrew. "Why did German youth become fascists? Nationalist males born 1900 to 1908 in war and revolution," Social History, Aug2006, Vol. 31 Issue 3, pp 337-358
- Dobson, Sean. Authority and Upheaval in Leipzig, 1910–1920 (2000).
- Ferguson, Niall The Pity of War (1999), cultural and economic themes
- Fischer, Fritz (1967), Germany's Aims in the First World War, New York: Norton, OCLC 1558559 (original German title "Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18")
- Fromkin, D. Europe's Last Summer. Who started the Great War in 1914? (2004), popular
- Hardach, Gerd. The First World War 1914-1918 (1977), economics
- Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (1996)
- Herwig, Holger H (1996), The First World War: Germany and Austria–Hungary 1914–1918, London: Arnold, ISBN 0340573481, OCLC 60154404
- Hubatsch, Walther; Backus, Oswald P (1963), Germany and the Central Powers in the World War, 1914–1918, Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas, OCLC 250441891
- Morrow, John. German Air Power in World War I. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Contains design and production figures, as well as economic influences.
- Osborne, Eric. Britain's Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914-1919 (2004)
- Sheldon, Jack (2005). The German Army on the Somme: 1914 - 1916. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books Ltd.. ISBN 1-84415-269-3.
- Tuchman, Barbara. The Guns of August (1962), tells of the opening diplomatic and military manoeuvres.
- Winter, J. M. Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914-1919 (1999)
- Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995),
[edit] External links
- (German) WWI at German Historic Museum online
- WWI German military cemeteries in Belarus modern photos by Andrey Dybowski (rus).
