Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918

by Roger Chickering

  During his tenure in office, Ludendorff put many of these precepts into practice. The Supreme Command became the dominant force in German politics, and no civilian politician could effectively oppose its authority. Beyond his claims to professional expertise and the support of the army, the principal source of Ludendorff’s power was the charismatic authority in which he partook by virtue of his association with Hindenburg. His power thus had a plebiscitary component, and it remained unchallenged as long as he could sustain the popular belief that his armies were going to win the war.

  Aspects of Ludendorff’s rule anticipated the dictatorial system of government that the Nazis installed some years later. But the similarities ought not to be overdrawn. Even the term “military dictatorship” is deceptive, for Ludendorff confronted more poles of competing authority than Hitler had to suffer.12 The power of innumerable federal, state, and local bureaucratic offices frustrated Ludendorff as much as it had his predecessors, although he soon introduced more effective control over the deputy commanding generals. He could ignore the views of neither Hindenburg nor the emperor, who remained his superiors in the chain of command. Finally, the financial powers of the Reichstag made this institution more than an annoyance, and he could not disregard its sentiments. Thus the power equation remained complicated during the last two years of the war. Even so, its dominant element was the Supreme Command; and Ludendorff was the most powerful man in Germany.

  The new Supreme Command brought an immediate sense of renewed energy to the war effort. To deal with the strategic setback that had occasioned their coming to power, Hindenburg and Ludendorff organized a brilliant offensive in the southeast. German forces joined Austrian and Bulgarian troops in the invasion of Romania in the fall of 1916. The campaign resulted in the swift defeat of the Romanian army and the occupation of Bucharest in December. The campaign also produced an irony. The leader of one of the German armies in the assault was Falkenhayn. His vindication came not only on the field of battle, for, despite the continued success of German armies in the east, Hindenburg and Ludendorff quickly converted to their predecessor’s views about Germany’s strategic priorities. A trip to the west in September, as titanic battles raged on the Somme and at Verdun, persuaded the new military leadership of the centrality of this theater to the war’s outcome.

  The trip also sobered them about the possibility of another German offensive in the west. Their attentions turned as a consequence to the prospects of resuming unrestricted submarine warfare. The commanders also decided to reinforce German positions on the western front in anticipation of an extended period of reconsolidation and defensive warfare here, before a final grand offensive could be launched. After calling off German offensive action in the Verdun sector, they accordingly began to build up troop strength in the west. They called in forces from the east and called up older men from home-front garrisons. An order in November to lower the age of conscription to eighteen made clear both the determination of the new leadership and the severity of the Germans’ plight, as it added 300,000 to the class of young men who were scheduled for induction in 1917.

  The measures that were geared to the battlefield paled in comparison to preparations taking place elsewhere. The prerequisite for military victory was the mobilization of material resources to a degree hitherto unimaginable. The Supreme Command’s plans thus prescribed a formidable agenda for the German home front.

  The Hindenburg Program

  Immediately upon taking over the Supreme Command, Hindenburg and Ludendorff announced the thoroughgoing mobilization of the German economy for war. During the next three months the generals oversaw negotiations in which the institutional framework emerged for an immense campaign of military production, which was christened the Hindenburg Program. In a series of letters to the chancellor, the war minister, and other officials, the Supreme Command called for doubling the stores of munitions, tripling the supply of artillery and machine guns, and concentrating 3 million additional workers in the arms sector. All this, they insisted, was to be accomplished by the spring of 1917.

  This colossal productive effort implied the drastic reorganization of the German industrial plant, the concentration of every available resource in the manufacture of arms and munitions. All “non-essential” industries were to be shut down – a category that comprised firms that were not directly involved in war production, as well as many smaller firms that were. Capital investment, raw materials, and manpower were to be channeled into the firms that survived this ruthless purge. The direction of the effort was finally to be lodged in a centralized agency, directed by soldiers.

  This program represented an attempt to realize Ludendorff’s vision of war. The Germans’ response to the campaigns of 1916 was to decree the total mobilization of resources, cost what it might. The campaign was conceived in images of national unity, the ultimate common exertion for the sake of victory. The realities of the situation were more complicated. The Hindenburg Program rested ultimately on fantastic premises; and the bitter disputes that surrounded its execution laid bare the material disadvantages that Germany faced, as well as social conflicts that the war had exacerbated.

  The Hindenburg Program was designed to restructure industrial mobilization in the interests of greater efficiency. It was directed in the first instance, however, against the War Ministry, the agency that had coordinated industrial production during the first two years of the war. While the achievements of this agency had been considerable, several areas of friction consistently troubled relations between the planners and the industrialists who were charged with carrying out the plans. One area concerned the prices that the ministry was willing to pay for weapons and munitions, as employers made no secret of their displeasure over contracted price levels that they thought too low. Another area of friction was more complex and sensitive. It had to do with industrial manpower; and the goals of the Hindenburg Program made it acute.13

  Labor was in theory but another factor of production, like investment capital, fertilizer, or magnesium, whose supply and allocation responded to market forces. The outbreak of war brought profound disruptions to the labor market, in which the supply was finite and the manpower requirements of the armed forces gorged the demand. The problem became obvious the moment in 1914 when the advance of the German armies stalled at the Marne. Many of the men who marched in these armies had left peacetime employment in war-related industries. The munitions shortage in the fall of 1914 emphasized this dilemma, which was basic to industrial warfare, and hastened the return of many of these soldiers to the workplace. The War Ministry thereupon took charge of balancing the imperious, competing claims of generals and industrialists for manpower. It established guidelines for exempting and reclaiming manpower from the armed forces for service in war industries; these guidelines were then reflected in the contracts let through the ministry’s War Materials Section. The ministry was not empowered to enforce its decisions, however, so the allocation of industrial labor became the regular object of negotiations between employers and local military authorities, who were responsible to the deputy commanding generals.

  The problem had an additional dimension. It was necessary not only to allocate labor for jobs essential to the war effort, but also to keep workers at these jobs, loyally laboring for war. Regulating and disciplining the workforce was an explosive issue, which had for decades violently unsettled industrial relations in Germany, from the Hamburg dockyards to the coal mines of the Ruhr. The issue touched on not only workers’ freedom of movement but also their rights to representation, organization, and collective bargaining. To many employers, however, the war offered an alluring solution to the problem: the prospect of punishing recalcitrant workers with the trenches. Militarizing the industrial workforce, placing workers formally in the army’s jurisdiction, would subject labor to military command, discipline – and (low) military wages.

  This brutal device did not appeal to leaders in the War Ministry, who feared that it would exacerbate long-standi
ng social tensions to the point of violence and undermine the war effort. They recognized the urgency of a loyal workforce, but they preferred gentler means of pacification. With uncommon foresight, and to the consternation of the industrial employers, they decided to enlist the trade unions as agents in the management of labor. The unions themselves had abetted this decision at the outbreak of the war, when, in the spirit of the Burgfrieden, they renounced strikes for the duration of the conflict. Union leaders thereupon became regular visitors to the War Ministry and other agencies of the government. Here officials enlisted their aid in determining guidelines for exemptions and reclamations of workers. In the belief that the unionization of labor promoted its efficiency and discipline, these officials also encouraged the unions to organize in the war industries, even in the public employment sectors, such as the railways, in which unions had long been proscribed. The same officials promoted arbitration committees to resolve grievances between employers and employees; and they were often inclined to support workers’ claims in wage disputes. The role of the unions, in turn, was to keep labor docile and to maintain industrial peace and the loyalty of the workforce.

  The strategy appeared to succeed. The first two years of the war were remarkably free of industrial strife. But the employers’ frustrations with the War Ministry festered – over prices thought too low, manpower allotments thought too small, and official policies thought to coddle the labor movement. This last category of grievance was the most disquieting, for employers feared more than the impact of generous wages on their profit margins. In their view, the ministry’s approach to workers smacked of dangerous social experimentation; it threatened to subvert the authority of employers in their own firms, to aggrandize organized labor, and to revolutionize industrial relations after the war. A factory owner could no more “permit his workers to make decisions about basic factory questions,” complained one industrialist, than could “a colonel in the trenches permit negotiations with his troops.”14 This analogy was hardly fortuitous. In the army’s leadership, the industrialists’ hymns to authority, hierarchy, and discipline had a natural resonance; and the employers had found a sympathetic response to their complaints among some of the deputy commanding generals even before Ludendorff and Hindenburg took power in 1916. Given the assurances of the leading industrialists that they needed only a proper “production policy,” that they could, in agreeable circumstances, fulfill the vast targets set by the new mobilization program, the new Supreme Command was inclined to provide them not only with the price structures and manpower allotments they wanted but also with the army’s support in their dealings with labor.

  A major institutional reshuffling in the fall of 1916 announced the new priorities. Hindenburg and Ludendorff first installed a new war minister, Hermann von Stein, a soldier of whose loyalty they could be confident. Then they prevailed on the Kaiser to empower the war minister at last to issue commands to the deputy commanding generals, at least in matters relating to economic mobilization. Finally, they created a new agency, the Supreme War Office (Kriegsamt), to oversee the entire undertaking. The head of this office was another capable and technically trained middle-class officer, Wilhelm Groener, who had with great skill overseen the Railroad Section of the General Staff.15 Groener’s new agency was located formally within the War Ministry, so he could himself claim delegated powers to command the deputy commanding generals; but he was in practice the subordinate of the Supreme Command. With branches in each of the military districts, the new War Office was supposed to plan and control all facets of economic mobilization, including the reorganization of the economy foreseen in the Hindenburg Program. To this end, the office amalgamated most of the agencies of mobilization that had reported to the war minister, including the War Materials Section and offices of military procurement, export, and labor exemptions.

  Groener’s office was also designed to administer the most controversial feature of the Hindenburg Program. The Supreme Command was determined to mobilize every able-bodied man in Germany for war-related service. The means was to be a civilian draft. The decision to ask the Reichstag to approve this dramatic measure was a sign not only of the importance that Ludendorff and Hindenburg attached to the step but also of their desire to enact it amid a demonstration of popular unity and resolve. They soon had reason to regret their decision. The Reichstag had become home to every manner of discontent over the privations of war, from food shortages to censorship; and the labor movement had representatives not only in the SPD but also in the Catholic and Progressive parties. The government nonetheless submitted the so-called Auxiliary Service Law to the Reichstag in November. The bill provided for the conscription of all men between the ages of seventeen and sixty for war service, and it drastically restricted the freedom of workers to change jobs. Given prevailing thinking about gender roles in Germany, the absence of women from the bill’s provisions proved less controversial than the question of how – and by whom – the civilian draft was to be administered. The bitter struggle that ensued revealed the growing recalcitrance of the parliament, which transformed the bill to the great benefit of organized labor. The Reichstag approved civilian conscription and the restriction of workers’ mobility, but it accorded labor an essential role in the administration of its own fate. Representatives of labor sat on the committees that in each military district assigned workers to firms, determined exemptions, and arbitrated the claims of workers who sought to change jobs. In all firms with more than fifty workers, the law also established joint committees of labor and management, which were charged with settling disputes over wages and conditions of employment. Finally, the unions won the right to organize in war industries, and, for the first time in German history, collective bargaining agreements were given the force of law.

  The passage of the Auxiliary Service Law on these terms was a gesture to the burdens brought by the war to the home front. The law had far-reaching implications for the position of both the Reichstag and organized labor in Germany. It marked a significant amplification of parliament’s voice in the prosecution of the war; and it encouraged the loyal support of the unions for the duration of the conflict.

  The act was also the most important – and unintended – consequence of the Hindenburg Program, which otherwise disappointed the extravagant expectations of those who had conceived and promoted it. The addition of the Supreme War Office to the bureaucratic network of mobilization in many ways compounded the confusion.16 Issues of responsibility continued to cloud relations between the deputy commanding generals and the local branches of Groener’s office. Questions of closing down “non-essential” industries resulted in an administrative nightmare: the mobilization of an army of advocates – from local chambers of commerce to members of the state and federal parliaments – who pressed the claims of imperiled firms at every level of bureaucracy. Finally, frictions plagued relations between Groener’s office and the industrialists over questions of profits and the allocation and administration of manpower. Groener was critical of soaring industrial profits, and he revealed progressive social views of his own in his dealings with labor. His attitudes were anathema to the employers and their allies, including his own military superiors. He was fired in August 1917.

  By this time the failure of the Hindenburg Program was difficult to deny. Quotas were not being met. Despite its lucrative inducements, German industry produced less steel in February 1917 than it had six months earlier, on the eve of Falkenhayn’s dismissal. The reasons for the failure had to do with both the bureaucratic chaos and the simple limits of Germany’s industrial resources. These limits drew the war’s imperious appetites into the household and other private places. In the effort to mobilize materials for conversion to war use, pewter plates and cups yielded up their tin, lightning rods and roofing their copper, bicycle tires their rubber; churches sacrificed their organ pipes for brass and their bells for bronze. The Auxiliary Service Law failed to mobilize much additional labor, for there was little additional (male) labo
r to mobilize – except from the army. In keeping with the dictates of the Hindenburg Program, thousands of soldiers thus returned from the front for service in industry. While their transfer home boosted industrial output, it emphasized the limits of Germany’s resources, for it weakened the field strength of the army and further tied up the country’s overtaxed railroads.

  Other than manpower, the most difficult problem was coal, the principal source of industrial energy in this war. The coal supply had long been a source of anxiety, before shortages became critical during the hard winter of 1916–17, in part because the transfer of workers from the pits to the trenches had bred disrepair in the mines. The guidelines of the Hindenburg Program, which called for constructing new plants to produce arms and munitions, brought additional strains to the coal supply and the transportation network, whose locomotives themselves consumed this precious resource even as the trains distributed it. Coal was the lifeblood of the German war effort, and rationing it became the War Office’s most effective means of shutting down non-essential industries.