The Kaiserreich Factbook - An online resource of Imperial Germany and her allies in the Great War

In September of 1916, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff took over the reigns of the German war effort from General von Falkenhayn.  The war was not going as had originally been envisaged, and instead it has become a war of attrition.  Max Hoffmann, one of Germany’s leading Generals, who served under the duo of Hidenburg and Ludendorff, noted that “…signs of war-weariness and despondency began to be observable in certain quarters.”1  Times were tough, the fighting at the Somme and Verdun were still ongoing, Austria-Hungary had been through a crisis on its Galician frontier, and its offensive against Italy had faltered.  With the military situation in the balance, and the allied blockade taking its toll, Ludendorff, who had continuously agitated for total war, was finally in a position to force German society to bend to his will.  Ludendorff’s ideal of total war was to develop “the economic physical and moral strength of the fatherland to the highest degree.”2  As such, Ludendorff set himself at war with the German people to force them to participate even more in the war effort.  Through labour laws, enforced war service in industry and political repression, Ludendorf and the German High Command set themselves the task of reforming German society into the perfect war machine.

German society in late 1916 was already under the strain of two years of war.  They had been through the highs and lows of the last two years such as Verdun, Ypres, Tannenberg and the Somme.  Yet the changes that OHL, the German High Command, sort to bring in to make Germany more able to wage the war, had their origins in the expansion of the Kaiserreich eastwards into Poland, Kuland, Lithuania and Latvia.  With the Russians having fallen back from these territories, and the Germans newly arrived, Ludendorff set about dividing the newly won territories up into administrative units and “Germanising” them.  The six new administrative units were Courland, Lithuania, Vilna, Suwalki, Grodno and Bialistok, and each was placed under the command of someone personally chosen by Ludendorff.3  The picture Ludendorff paints of his new “empire” in the East is one of cooperation and benefit to the local populace.  In one instance, he describes his Governor of Courland as someone who “they still speak with gratitude and appreciation of his just and far-seeing administration.”4  Whether or not this is true is something that shall be discussed later on.  These Governors were accountable only to the Commander-in-Chief in the East, in this case Hindenburg, though in reality, Ludendorff was the one who did the day to day work.  These administrative units were concerned firstly with exploiting the economic potential of the new territories, especially with agricultural produce and materials vital for the war effort.5 From that basis, the administrations moved onto setting up legal systems, introducing police forces (made up of some of the older soldiers from the front) and taxation to the locals.  This economic exploitation was only one phase of Ludendorff’s aims for the new eastern territories, the other was to turn the inhabitants, Poles, Russians, Lithuanians and Latvians into Germans.

This process of Germanizing the local population began with the education system.  The Prussian Inspector of Schools, Major Altman, was brought in to design the schooling system, and German teachers brought in to teach it.6  The result of this was German being taught as the only language, and most classes being taught in German.  Ludendorff argues in his work that this was due to a lack of trained Lithuanian or Polish teachers that were available.  Ludendorff, though writing retrospectively in this passage in regards to school books in the occupied east, gives hints at the lack of national spirit that he perceived, which was something he would later work on when he and Hindenburg took over at OHL.

“We turned out attention to the question of school books, for various Polish school books had shown me what education can do to intensify national feeling….  The Poles and the French have by these means kept alive a strong national felling, which stands them in good stead now.  We have not pursued such an educational policy and suffer from the fact that the strong national idea has not been instilled into our youth.  Such a feeling is necessary if a country is to survive crises such as we have lived through since 1914, and now more than ever.”7

As such the people of the newly occupied eastern territories were experiencing a version of what Ludendorff and Hindenburg would later introduce into German society.  The need for greater economic sacrifice, the war propaganda, all aspects that Ludendorff would seek to somehow instill into German society.

It wasn’t until September 1916, as Falkenhayn fell from grace, that the duo of Hindenburg and Ludendorff migrated from OberOst to OHL.  It was from here that they sort to remedy the problems in Germany’s execution of the war.  As Austria-Hungary survived its Galician crisis, and its offensive on the Isonzo stalled and finally stopped, Hindenburg were faced with the ongoing bloodshed at both the Somme and Verdun.  Not only this, but as the allied blockade continued to bite deep into German supplies, they also upped their demands for more war material.  Ludendorff’s was going to run his war of attrition, and this required that the German worker, and the rest of German society be brought into line as quickly as possible.  Yet the very German society Ludendorff wanted to push harder was already under enormous strain.  Harvests were down, grain imports from Denmark, Holland and Romania were falling (Romania’s grain imports would later cease when they entered the war with the Allies), potatoes, meat, eggs, all items common before the war, were now in short supply.8  On top of these shortages, industry was increasing its outputs, new weapons were being supplied, more ammunition produced, more and newer aircraft, and more long range submarines to pursue their own blockade against England.9  Thus as OHL under Hindenburg’s auspices and Ludendorff’s personal direction put into place the “Hindenburg Programme” a set of measures and directives to increase production on the home front, the two contrasting factors of shortage and increased demand were going to take their toll on German society’s ability to sustain the war, and set the stage for Ludendorff to transform the duos position in OHL to that of a vitual dictatorship and for Ludendorff to lead an assault to reform German society.

Ludendorff had very strong ideas about how the war had affected German society, and about how German society should react to it.  In discussing the future operations of the German armed forces in the war, retrospectively looking at about late 1916, he wrote the following,

The war called on us to gather together and throw into the scale the last ounce of our strength…. Each citizen could only serve his country in one post, but in some way his strength should be used to that end.  Service to the State was the important thing.10

For Ludendorff, the war was about Germany pulling together, about forgetting differences, political, social or otherwise and everyone fighting for the same cause.  It was certainly this want for national unity, and national discipline that would lead Ludendorff to the Völkisch circles in Germany following the war, and indeed to his close affiliation with Hitler until their leadership struggle following the Munich Putsch.  It was also precisely this need for a national community to fight for one and all which was to lead Ludendorff, using Hindenburg’s name and prestiege, to begun forcing German society into line with his plans.  Ludendorff’s first aim was to ensure that every German who could be brought into the war effort was brought into it, and to do this, enforced labour was the policy tool he deployed.  Ludendorff demanded to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, that every German man from 15 to 60 be called up to serve in vital industries, and that women too could be encouraged to participate as well.11  Ludendorff’s vision for this new Germany marching in line with the Kaiser and OHL is made clear in his memoirs,

The introduction of compulsion for war services was of the greatest moral importance, placing as it did every German at the service of the State in these anxious times, in accordance with the oldest principles of German law.12

Again Ludendorff stressed these ideas of nationalism, service to the state, willingness to sacrifice for the states benefit at war times.  German society for him was not doing enough, German society was not moral enough, it wasn’t serving enough, and it was doomed to fail if it did not serve enough.

Ludendorff foresaw that this would lead to “involve far-reaching interference with administration, trade, and private life.”13 To this end the Auxilliary Service Bill was passed on the 2^nd of December, and while not being as far reaching as Ludendorff would have liked.  Yet Ludendorff was not the only one leading this assault on Labour and its participation in the war effort.  Figures such as the heavy industrialist Hugo Stinnes, and head of Section 11 at OHL, Colonel Bauer, were advocating a greater involvement of Government in the war economy.14  Hindenburg and Ludendorff had also already been courted by industrial giants such as Krupp and Rathenau as soon as they had arrived at OHL in Pless.15  Industry as well as the Hindenburg/Ludendorff duo wanted society to well and truly get in line behind the war effort.  Industry had learnt massive profits could be made from the war, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff saw it as part of a national duty towards serving the fatherland.  Hindenburg in writing to Bauer wanted to see industry reorganised to focus solely on the war effort, regardless of the consequences to non-vital industries.  Specialists were to retain their jobs, but those who were not required could be sent to the front.  The State of Siege Law which had been passed to give OHL greater influence on the home front was a tool that could be used to quash any dissent from these new tough demands on German society.  Hindenburg and Ludendorff had the power, and the backing of industry to take German society even closer to the militaristic ideal which they believed was the ultimate utopia for Germany.16  Kitchen argues in his work, The Silent Dictatorship, that “The ‘Hindenburg Programme’ was thus a serious threat to the working class”.17

Yet Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was not ready to give into the dictatorial duo, and neither was his War Minister, General Wild von  Hohenborn.  General von Hohenborn tried to circumvent Ludendorff by creating a new munitions procurement office, which was a move received warmly by industrialists, yet they attacked his attempts to prevent the militarising of the German economy, and thus in turn, German society, something they labelled as “social experiments”.18  Kitchen described the conflict between the OHL/Industrialists and Bethmann-Hollweg and von Hohenborn as

Economically it was a struggle between monopoly capitalism and economic liberalism, politically a struggle between authoritarian etatism and liberal conservatism, and historically part of a long conflict between the general staff and the war ministry, as well as between the civilians and the military.19

Hindenburg and Ludendorff had now set themselves against Bethmann-Hollweg and Wild von Hohenborn, yet it was even more a contest of the army against society.  Ludendorff was intent on forcing German society into his vision of total war, regardless of the economic, political and social problems it would create.  Problems which would ultimately lead to his downfall.

The Russian revolution sent shockwaves through German political circles; the same revolution that had broken out in Russia could also break out in Germany as well.  Asprey notes that the average German citizen was subsisting on 1,200 calories a day, the winter of 1917 was to be known as the “turnip winter.”20  German society was already under a massive amount of strain simply from the dietry privations placed on them due to poor harvests, cold winters, and the British blockade.  Coupled with a failure to exploit the eastern territories successfully meant that tough times in Germany were only going to get worse.  German society had lost any sense of willingness for the war to go on, people were tired and hungry and growing lists of casualties plagued the public mind.  Asprey’s work places the figure at one million dead, and four million wounded by April 1917, which together with the already mentioned factors, meant a German society that was meant to be marching in line with Ludendorff was rapidly getting ready to give him quite the opposite to what he desired.  Ludendorff’s Auxilliary Service Law, and the Kriegsamt, War Office, that had been set up to administer the reorganisation of labour to different parts of the war industry was creating resentment among those who were caught up in its work.  The district corps commanders, in which all of Germany was divided up to at the start of the war, also clashed with the civilian Government, causing even more tension and division.  The stable, loyal, state serving ideal German society that Ludendorff had been pushing for was under an immense amount of strain.21  Ludendorff was worried by the expansion of the franchise that occurred in April 1917, he was also worried by the peace debate that raged in Germany at the same time.22  To him these were signs of weakness of central government, and that by displaying this weakness they would only encourage their enemies, both within and aboard to only step up their campaigns against the German government.  Ludendorff felt that his fears of the display of weakness were confirmed with strikes later that April, and that the franchise expansion had only encouraged these elements.23 Ludendorff’s utopian vision was slowly being shaken apart, yet even as the cracks began to appear, both he and Hindenburg made appeals for the nation to pull together before the damage was irreparable.  He asserted that,

A revival of our internal strength would be the most potent means of persuading our enemies of the futility of prolonging the war… every complaint of disappointed hopes, every sign of exhaustion and longing for peace on our part… can only have the effect of prolonging the war.24

Again, Hindenburg and Ludendorff sought to encourage the internal unity of German society, that upholding the notion of the citizen serving the state was the only way to avoid a total collapse of Germany.  Ludendorff attacked those who he saw as betraying the morale of the nation, the Independent Social Democrats, Labour unions, anyone who was avoiding the Auxilliary Service Law or being called up into the army.  Increasingly Ludendorff sought to put the burden of blame on the German people for not being behind the war effort, rather than his own programme of repression and coercion against them.  While Ludendorff was writing after the war, his attacks on people such as the Independent Social Democrats show how important Ludendorff felt it was for German society to pull together, or else be completely destroyed in the war.

Ludendorff’s campaign was not just centred against the economic aspects of German society, but also focused on the morale side of it as well.  For Ludendorff, the morale situation in Germany was not at all good in 1917, aside from the economic costs the war had had on German society, the society itself was struggling to cope with such large changes to itself, and war weariness was settling in.  Morale in the army was holding, but the home front needed to be shored up, especially as they watched the situation deteriorate in Russia.  In September of 1917, the job of propaganda was handed over to the military districts that governed Germany during the war.25  The aim being that the Government had not provided adequate “patriotic instruction” to the people, and thus Ludendorff, through the military districts, would be able to provide this far better.  Ludendorff also worried about the influence that political parties would have on his “patriotic instruction” and worked to ensure that their own political papers were suppressed in order to maintain morale.  Having taken control of propaganda from the Government, Ludendorff then sought to get the Government involved again to support his propaganda, something that the Reichstag, in the throes of a peace movement, was not interested at all in participating in.  Ludendorff and his attempts to push a war-weary public to even greater sacrifices, were ultimately failing.

The ultimate result of Ludendorff’s assault on German society was the complete breakdown of morale in both the army and on the home front in October of 1918.  With his all of nothing offensives having failed in the summer to knock the French out of the war, Ludendorff was no longer able to offer Germany any light at the end of the tunnel.  All the tools that Ludendorff had used to make German society into his ideal Germans were now simply just another reason to end the war, and break free of the chains of the war.  It is not surprising, given the repression and force that Ludendorff used to ensure that German society remained in the war, that revolution broke out in Germany, leading to the abdication of the Kaiser, and Communist governments establishing themselves, albeit briefly, in Berlin and Munich.  From his exploitation of the occupied territories, Ludendorff was able to apply similar techniques on the German people to get the most out of their productivity to continue the war at their expense.  Ludendorff’s ultimate failing was that he could not see war weariness for what it really was, instead viewing it as something propagated by unloyal elements within German society, rather than the honest frustration with the sacrifices and material conditions that the war had enforced on German society.  In pitting himself against German society, Ludendorff did not realise that his most likely result was revolution.  Rather than trying to cooperate, as had previously been attempted by the Government, Ludendorff with his nearly dictatorial powers, he simply tried to bully society into helping the war effort.  It was a method that was doomed to lead to revolution.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Ludendorff, E., My War Memories, Volume I, London, 1919

Ludendorff, E., My War Memories, Volume II, London, 1919

Secondary Sources

Asprey, R., The German High Command at War, Hindenburg and Ludendorff Conduct World War 1, New York, 1991

Kitchen, M., The Silent Dictatorship:  the politics of the German high command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916-1918, London, 1976

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, A., The war and German society; the testament of a liberal, United States, 1937

Berghahn, V. R., Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 : economy, society, culture, and politics, United States, 1994