The relationship of politics and war is a close one. War is supposed to
be an extension of politics. It is to be the last resort, when diplomacy
has failed. But we know from recent experience that war creates its own
politics, that the relationship can be reversed. In Germany during world
war one we have a classic example of militarism dominating statecraft.
During the first two years there were few clashes between military and civilian
authorities. Moltke and Falkenhayn were too busy with military operations
to get involved in political issues, while Bethmann-Hollweg made sure never
to interfere in military matters. But this collaboration was purely accidental
and began to change once the civilian leaders faced up to the problems created
by military events in 1914 and 1915. The great battles of those years made
it plain that Germany could not attain a decisive victory as planned and
might have to end the war on unfavorable terms by negotiation.
But the concessions necessary to make negotiations feasible were unacceptable
to the High Command for strategic, political and social reasons. When Hindenburg
and Ludendorff assumed leadership of the army they did not hesitate to make
their opposition to a politically negotiated peace felt. They had their
way for some good reasons:
l) they were supported by powerful interest groups. ranging from imperialist-minded
industrialists to conservative aristocrats;#2) the public generally misinformed
and ignorant of military matters, had great confidence in their military
leadership, more so then in the civilian government.
In the rancorous political struggle, which began at the end of 1916, Hindenburg
and Ludendorff created for themselves such a prominent position of power
that this period has been referred to as the "silent dictatorship."
They were able to create and break chancellors, have private servants of
the emperor dismissed if their views differed from their own and to determine
the objectives and tactics of the Foreign Office.
Yet, despite their unprecedented power they were unable to solve the problem
created by the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. They blindly insisted on
total victory, even when the strength of the enemy made that impossible.
They sacrificed everything for military expediency and usually discovered
when it was too late that their most brilliant strikes worked to the advantage
of the Allies without bringing Germany any of the advantages which were
expected. In the end, when all hope of negotiation had vanished, they risked
everything on a desperate, ill-conceived and ill-prepared campaign. That
offensive of 1918 was not coordinated with a political move, nor was the
German public prepared for the drastic results if it should fail. The consequences
were predictable. It brought both defeat and revolution. Perhaps Clemenceau
was right after all: war is too serious a business to be left exclusively
in the hands of generals.
During the war the larger cities of Germany erected wooden statues of Hindenburg
in which donors of a small war contribution were allowed to drive nails.
It was more than a vulgar stunt. The statues of saints and kings in the
Middle Ages were made of wood. You can still see them in the cathedrals.
The people had come to look on the General Staff as an institution from
which even the impossible could be expected. These statues seemed to represent
something greater than the ordinary run of men.
In those declining years of the Hohenzollern regime, the big, broad shoulders
of the man who was the last chief of the royal Prussian General Staff did
seem to be in some way not a mere man, but an embodiment in human form of
the remaining strength of the state, a refuge to the faltering and hope
to those of little faith.
Yet Hindenburg was an anachronism. He said often that he felt most at home
in the time of Bismarck and William I. But Ludendorff was made of different
stuff. His brutal powers of work and his extraordinary organizational skill,
combined with unflinching single-mindedness, suggests the modern conception
of expert. This kind of man functions best when guided by some person of
broader, more balanced outlook. Despite the fact that Hindenburg does not
quite fit the latter category, these two men worked together fairly well,
although their partnership was less ideal than people assumed.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff had little in common except their background.
Both cams from impoverished Junker families. Hindenburg had spent his whole
life in the army, slowly moving up from lieutenant to commander of an army
corps. His world remained that of the army and the General Staff. He had
no general cultural appreciation and admitted that he had never read a decent
book except military tomes. He was characteristic of the German military,
very conscious of rank, tactful and dignified, a Christian in outlook, sober
in habit, unimaginative and marked by a certain peasant-like narrowness
of mind. He was untouched by the liberal arts and yet you would expect a
certain kind of creativity and imagination from a truly great general.
Ludendorff too went though the hard school of the cadet corps and then became
an infantry officer. At the war Academy he had an interesting instructor,
General Heckel, who had reorganized the Japanese Army. Meckel recommended
him to the General Staff, to which he became much more attached than Hindenburg.
The dark-blue uniform, with its silver embroidered collar and the trousers
with carmine stripes symbolized social rehabilitation ha Ludenndorff--not
just a successful military career. His work was his world and he saw everything
through the eyes of a General staff officer. He was possessed by ambition,
aggressive and sublimely self-confident. On occasion he was quite willing
to violate traditions which were fundamental to that very General Staff
which had kept him spiritually confined.
After the famous battle against the Russians, he was heard to say: "When
I won the battle of Tannenberg," .... an unforgivable sin according
to the General staff code. He considered Hindenburg to a man of straw, a
serviceable symbol. Hindenburg, on the other hand, recognized the superior
technical competence of his advisor and was quite willing to be a mere symbol
for Ludendorf's prowess.#
When these two men took over the military establishment, the General Staff
was already assuming an increasingly large role in German public life. It
concerned itself with the press, films, general propaganda, armaments and
food. The emperor and the chancellor seemed to have abdicated responsibility
in many areas and made no effort to resist increasing military influence.
The Reichstag did not do much better. It had been used to docility under
Bismarck and could not shake that tradition until the very end of the war.
The leaders of the various political parties either revered the military
or did not have the courage to challenge it.
Such a situation was fertile ground for military dictatorship. Ludendorff
was certainly bursting with plans that could only be associated with dictatorial
rule. He had schemes for raising the birth rate, for reducing draft evasion,
for improving housing, for combating venereal disease, for stopping the
flight from the land, settling returning soldiers in rural areas. He wanted
pre-military training of youth, a national propaganda office to fight subversive
agitation. Above all he urged the introduction of compulsory labor for persons
between fifteen and sixty and mobilization of female labor for munitions.
Although he rejected formal military dictatorship, he was not averse to
economic dictatorship in the hands of the military. This is more or less
what happened, for the General War Office under General Groener gradually
began to control food, raw materials and munitions. The first great achievement
of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff regime was the stimulation of war-related production.
Along with that came the auxiliary service law of December 1916, which brought
a great many women into the factories. But it should not be forgotten that
this law also brought thousands of war prisoners and requisitioned laborers
from Poland and Belgium into the war-making machine.
This may not constitute outright military dictatorship, but it came close
to it. Some have called it war socialism. War socialism was sufficient to
mobilize labor, but it was not able to mobilize the spiritual forces of
the masses. All attempts at social reform, particularly the liberalization
of the Prussian franchise, were resisted, while war profiteering became
flagrant and widespread.
Ludendorff's first ventures into politics were a fiasco. He was behind the
proclamation of an independent Polish kingdom, believing that it would provide
Germany with 15 to 20 divisions to fight Russia and the allies. It did not
work and Ludendorff should have known that it would not work. He came from
Posen and must have known from personal experience the abiding hatred of
the Poles for the Germans.
His adamant insistence on unrestricted submarine warfare was a similar blunder,
as was his role in the attempt at negotiation. Be always insisted that the
language of any peace proposal be as strong as possible in order to avoid
the appearance of weakness. In the submarine issue he blindly accepted the
optimistic predictions of the navy leaders. He completely failed to understand
America and refused to take Wilson's mediation attempts as anything but
shadow-boxing.
Ludendorff soon realized that as long as Bethmann-Hollweg was chancellor,
his idea of total war could never be realized. Bethmann was too humanitarian
for that. There were many others, particularly the rabid annexationists,
who thought Bethmann too moderate and phlegmatic. They and Ludendorff wanted
a genuine war chancellor. Ludendorff was urged to take the job, but refused
and instead began to play politics to have Bethmann removed. In the end
both Hindenburg and Ludendorff threatened resignation to get Bethmann dismissed.
His successor, the unknown Food Minister, Dr. Michaelis, was approved by
the military potentates when they were told that he was a man who would
take a grip.p on things. So now the generals were determining major political
appointments.
But Ludendorff was not content with this arrangement and sought further
support for his wild annexationist aims in the newly-founded Fatherland
Party. This conservative and imperialist coalition was organized by Admiral
Tirpitz and Wolfgang Kapp, a Prussian official who tried to stage a military
coup in 1920. But Ludendorff's hope that this new movement, based on crude
power politics, would create a surge of patriotism and morale at the front
was sadly misplaced. It was totally alien to the masses of people. The average
man was more concerned with survival during this third year of war than
with Ludendorff's gargantuan imperialist aims.
His war aims now included strategic belts of territory in Poland, Lithuania,
Courland and Eastern France. He wanted to incorporate Belgium in the German
Empire, which would probably be followed by isolated Holland. Denmark would
have to be bound to Germany economically and an alliance was to be struck
with Japan. A compact, large colonial empire was to he created in central
Africa. Lloyd George once asked Foch what he thought of Ludendorff. General
Foch replied that he was a fine soldier. He did not say a fine general,
since Ludendorff was nothing more than a good soldier. His political perspicacity
was very limited.
In traditional tactics of open warfare the German General Staff had no equal.
This was demonstrated by Falkenhayn and Mackensen in Rumania at the end
of 1918. But in the Balkans like everywhere else the German armies were
able to push the ring of encirclement back, but nowhere were they able to
break the ring and score a decisive long-range break-through. Ludendorff's
concept of mobile defense was clever and kept the enemy from breaking through
as well, but the only result of that was attrition warfare, a relatively
stationary front line.
The Revolution in Russia and the entrance of the Americans into the war
brought no change in German military tactics or strategy. Even the novel
introduction of the tank by the British left the German generals unaffected.
Hindenburg simply said that the German infantry could get along without
such things. Only one man in the General Staff, colonel Bauer, saw the revolutionary
potential of the tank, but he got no where in persuading the generals to
build it. The British for that matter were not able to fully exploit the
new weapon either.
Ludendorff had promoted revolution in Russia and agreed to transport Lenin
to St. Petersburg with the idea of making a settlement in the East and shift
massive troops to the battle in the West. But the forcefully extracted Treaty
of Brest Litovsk took longer to extract than he anticipated. The seizure
of territory in the East, particularly the Ukraine, required more forces
than he realized. The anticipated supply of much-needed food from the Ukraine
was also a disappointment.
It was suggested that Germany give up Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine in order
to negotiate with the West in favor of a major thrust in the East, but Ludendorff
refused to countenance the idea. The attempted penetration into the Middle
East and eventually into India, also became a fading dream when Turkey collapsed,
thanks to British victories. When there was collective disobedience in the
German fleet and desertions increased, along with strikes at home, Ludendorff's
only answer was stricter discipline and drafting of strikers.
While the British and French were waiting for the Americans to arrive, Ludendorff
resorted to "buffalo" tactics, continuous violent frontal assaults.
They were unimaginative, costly and counter-productive. Ludendorff rejected
any kind of flanking movement, as in Italy for instance, and stubbornly
held to the view that only an attack on the strongest part of the front
would create moral shock and military success.#
The great final battle which the General Staff had talked about for some
time, eventually became Ludendorff's last card. He wrote to the emperor
that he could guarantee success as long as the peace would justify the cost.
He wanted this last offensive to be accompanied by a diplomatic offensive,
but that never materialized. That too was the result of his own doing. Having
intimidated the civilian government into submission, there were no men capable
enough of mounting such a concerted diplomatic offensive.
The great military offensive of 1918 turned out to be of less stellar proportions
than the amount of men and guns would have suggested. Ludendorff was utterly
without comprehension of the fact that an army that had gone through four
years of terrible battles could no longer put up the performance of the
men of 1914. He had become a typical chair-borne general, who conducted
operations from office desks. Clausewitz had designated strategy as the
art of applying available means. Ludendorff could no longer distinguish
between what was possible and what was not. Everything was possible if you
barked out the order for it in a loud, gruff tone of voice.
When the foreign minister, von Kühlmann, declared in June 1918, that
some kind of overture had to be made to the allies, since Germany could
not overwhelm the coalition lined up against her, Ludendorff and Hindenburg
had him dismissed. On the home front hunger and disillusionment spread.
While the furious battles in France were depleting German reserves, Ludendorff
called for 200,000 more men. But they could not be found. On the 8th of
August the British General Rawlinson delivered a severe defeat to the Germans
with six or seven divisions completely overrun. It was the beginning of
the end. Retreating German soldiers received new replacements. with the
cry of "strike-breaker." It was the revolt of desperate men who
had given their last once of strength. Allied superiority in tanks and aircraft
were becoming irresistible.
Ludendorff called the 8th of August the blackest day of the German Army,
but that appellation should have been applied to the military leadership
and not the rank and file. On the l3th of August a conference was held at
Spa with Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Hertling, the new chancellor, Hintze, the
new foreign minister, and the emperor present. Ludendorff called for a vigorous
defense and held on to Belgium. Hindenburg agreed to send out unofficial
peace feelers, although a formal offer of peace was to wait until a military
victory of one kind or another. Apparently Ludendorff was only looking for
a respite and some inkling of what the Allies would propose, and then finally
mount the last blow. He could not conceive of any peace except a victorious
and dictated one.
By September the Balkan front collapsed beginning with Marshal d'Esperey's
break-out from Salonika. The Austrian emperor petitioned for peace and the
Bulgarian army mutinied. The news from the Balkans created a sudden wave
of pessimism in the German High Command and Ludendorff startled everyone
by demanding an immediate armistice. He was even willing at this stage to
negotiate on the basis of Wilson's 14 Points. The last-ditch battle now
was reserved only for an extreme eventuality. He still held on to the notion
that negotiations could save the conquered territory in the east. But hostilities
had to be broken off. Both Hindenburg and Ludendorff thought it below their
honor to have anything to do personally with the armistice.
Meanwhile Hertling resigned and the liberal-minded Prince Max of Baden was
called in to handle an almost impossible job: introducing a last-minute
parliamentary constitution under the threat of revolution and meeting Ludendorff's
impatient demand for an immediate armistice under threat of a total collapse
of the Western Front.
In the meantime while the battle continued, Wilson's conditions for an armistice
became clear. When Ludendorff realized that the American president's terms
meant virtual surrender of all military means of defense he balked and appealed
to the Army over Hindenburg's signature to reject the offer and fight on.
Prince Max considered this to be an obvious disavowal of his authority and
demanded that Ludendorff withdraw the appeal. The latter then had no choice
but to resign. Hindenburg, however, stayed on and resolved not to interfere
anymore with the armistice arrangements.
The emperor eventually resigned too under pressure from Wilson. In theory
the demise of the monarchy also meant the end of the Prussian Army, the
General Staff and the military cabinet, as well as all other extra-constitutional
elements directly dependent on the monarch. Strangely enough some continuity
was maintained with the continuance of the army which found the way to adjust
to a new era. When the request was made to determine whether the troops
would fight to preserve the monarchy or to crush the threatening revolution,
the replies were very ambivalent. The emperor made reference to the soldier's
oath, but General Groener, Ludenforff's successor told him, that under present
circumstances that oath was a myth. With those words the world of Prussia
and its army was shattered, although the General Staff did not disintegrate.
The Social Democratic deputy Scheidemann proclaimed the Republic after the
chancellor announced the abdication of the emperor. The Center Party deputy
Erzberger headed the armistice delegation because it was thought that the
Allies would prefer to deal with civilians. In this way the ground was laid
for the legend that the army had not capitulated and that victory had been
snatched from it by weak-kneed civilian politicians.
Ludendorff was in a Berlin boarding house when he heard the news. His reaction
was one of rage and moody introspection. He began to look for mystical powers
which had brought about the collapse. He thought he found them in Jews,
Freemasons and Jesuits. When an English general visited him, he ranted and
raved about the government and people who had left him in the lurch. The
English general asked: ''Are you endeavoring to tell me general, that you
were stabbed in the hack? Ludendorff replied with alacrity: "That's
it! They gave me a stab in the back--a stab in the back!"
Send comments and questions to Professor
Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.