Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918

by Roger Chickering

  On the complexity of relations between front and home front, see Benjamin Ziemann’s excellent Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen, 1997), which is available in translation: War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914–1923 (Oxford, 2007). These relations represent one facet of Wencke Meteling’s ambitious study Ehre, Einheit, Ordnung: Preußische und französische Städte und ihre Regimenter im Krieg, 1870/71 und 1914–19 (Baden-Baden, 2010), which offers a comparison not only of a German city and a French city (Frankfurt an der Oder and Orléans) but also of two wars.

  Much of the East German scholarship has focused on the experience of class in war, particularly among industrial workers. Jürgen Kocka’s book Klassengesellschaft im Krieg: Deutsche Sozialgeschichte 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1973) (translated into English as Facing Total War: German Society, 1914–1918 [Cambridge, MA, 1984]) has defined the basic issues that have dominated these discussions outside Marxist–Leninist circles. Additional material can be found in Rudolf Meerwarth, Adolf Günther, and Waldemar Zimmermann, Die Einwirkung des Krieges auf Bevölkerungsbewegung, Einkommen und Lebenshaltung in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1932), which appeared in the Carnegie series.

  A number of studies have examined the impact of the war on women and gender relations. The older ones tended to evaluate the experience on women positively, as the prelude to political emancipation: Ursula von Gersdorff, Frauen im Kriegsdienst 1914–1945 (Stuttgart, 1969); and Stefan Baujohr, Die Hälfte der Fabrik: Geschichte der Frauenarbeit in Deutschland 1914–1945 (Marburg, 1979). More recent work, especially that of Ute Daniel, has thrown doubt on this view and introduced more nuance into the study of gender (and class) relations in war: Daniel, Arbeiterfrauen in der Kriegsgesellschaft: Beruf, Familie und Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 1989). This book is now available in English as The War from Within: German Working-Class Women in the First World War (Oxford, 1997); so is a précis, “Women’s work in industry and family: Germany, 1914–1918,” in Wall and Winter, The Upheaval of War, 267–96. The plight of soldiers’ wives in this war (and the next) is the theme of Birthe Kundrus, Kriegerfrauen, Familienpolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1995). The work of Lutz Sauerteig has illuminated the problems of venereal disease. In addition to his book Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft: Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1999), he has presented his findings about the war in English, as “Sex, medicine and morality during the First World War,” in Roger Cooter, Mark Harrison, and Steve Sturdy (eds.), War, Medicine and Modernity (Phoenix Mill, MI, 1998), 167–88. The complex connection between gender and political activism is explored in Belinda J. Davis’ Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000). Karen Hagemann, who has written extensively on the subject of war and gender relations, has joined Stefanie Schüler-Springorum in editing a valuable series of essays that deal centrally with the First World War: Home/Front: The Military, War, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (London, 2002). A classic on the subject of gender relations remains Magnus Hirschfeld’s The Sexual History of the World War (New York, 1934).

  For the effects of the war on Germany’s youth, the provocative study by Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War, Pedagogy, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, MA, 2010), offers an excellent introduction. The Carnegie studies still offer a valuable resource. The pertinent material is to be found in the essay of Wilhelm Flitner, “Der Krieg und die Jugend,” in Baumgarten, Geistige und sittliche Wirkungen. Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA, 1996), examines the evolution of this phase of social policy during the war. See also the relevant chapter in Robert Wohl’s stimulating study, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, 1979).

  Cultural themes

  Many authors have analyzed the impact of war on the arts. Wolfgang Mommsen’s massive history of Imperial Germany contains a lucid survey: Bürgerstolz und Weltmachtstreben 1890–1918 (Berlin, 1995), 828–92. An English summary is available in Mommsen, “German artists, writers and intellectuals and the meaning of war, 1914–1918,” in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge, 1997), 21–38. Several other works provide introductions to this theme: Eckart Koester, Literatur und Weltkriegsideologie: Positionen und Begründungszusammenhänge des publizistischen Engagements deutscher Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Kronberg, 1977); Helmut Fries, “Deutsche Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Michalka, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 825–48; Scott D. Denham, Visions of War: Ideologies and Images of War in German Literature before and after the Great War (Berne, 1992); Martin Patrick Anthony Travers, German Novels on the First World War and the Ideological Implications, 1918–1933 (Stuttgart, 1982); Hermann Korte, Der Krieg in der Lyrik des Expressionismus: Studien zur Evolution eines literarischen Themas (Bonn, 1981); pertinent, too, is Martin Schöning’s Versprengte Gemeinschaft: Kriegsroman und intellektuelle Mobilisation in Deutschland 1914–1933 (Göttingen, 2009). Peter Jelavich’s essay on German culture during the war appears in an impressive comparative volume edited by Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites, European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 1999). Klaus Vondung has argued for the importance of apocalyptic motifs in cultural representations of the war: Die Apokalypse in Deutschland (Munich, 1988); and Vondung (ed.), Kriegserlebnis: Der Erste Weltkrieg in der literarischen Gestaltung und symbolischen Deutung der Nationen (Göttingen, 1980). Wolfgang Natter’s volume, Literature at War, 1914–1940: Representing the “Time of Greatness” in Germany (New Haven, CT, 1999), investigates the massive institutional influences that shaped the German literary depiction of the war. Modris Ecksteins offers a provocative analysis of the war’s cultural significance, in which Germany stands as a paradigmatic instance of “modernism”: Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, 1989). On the role of motion pictures in the war, see Klaus Kremeier’s study of UFA, which is now available in translation: The UFA Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945 (New York, 1996).

  Several important studies, including Wolfgang Mommsen’s survey, have investigated the way the war affected German scholarship and the men who presided over it. Klaus Schwabe has emphasized the aggressive political views of the German professoriate in Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969). Sven Papcke surveys the views of scholars in several disciplines in “Dienst am Sieg: die Sozialwissenschaften im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in his Vernunft und Chaos: Essays zur sozialen Ideengeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 125–42. On the significance of the budding discipline of cultural anthropology, see the study by Andrew D. Evans, Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany (Chicago, 2010). Kurt Flasch’s volume concentrates on the reactions of German philosophers to the war: Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2000). Steffen Bruendel has examined more broadly the debates among German scholars over war aims and domestic reform in his Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat: Die “Ideen von 1914” und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2003). Two substantial works address a notorious episode in which scholars invoked their authority on behalf of German policy: Jürgen Ungern-Sternberg von Pürkel and Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg, Der Aufruf an die Kulturwelt: Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1996); Bernhard vom Brocke, “‘Wissenschaft und Militarismus’: Der Aufruf der 93 ‘An die Kulturwelt!’ und der Zusammenbruch der internationalen Gelehrtenrepublik im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in W. M. Calder, III, Hellmut Flashar, and Theodor Lindken (eds.), Wilamowitz nach 50 Jahren (Darmstadt, 1985), 649–719.

  The history of the German churches and confessional relations
can still draw from the essays by Arnold Rademacher on the Catholic church and by Erich Foerster on the Protestant churches in the volume edited by Baumgarten, Geistige und sittliche Wirkungen. More recent studies of German Catholicism include Heinz Hürten’s “Die katholische Kirche im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Michalka, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 725–35; Richard van Dülmen, “Der deutsche Katholizismus und der Erste Weltkrieg,” Francia 2 (1974), 347–76; Heinrich Lutz, Demokratie im Zwielicht: Der Weg der deutschen Katholiken aus dem Kaiserreich in die Republik 1914–1925 (Munich, 1963); and Heinrich Missalla, “Gott mit uns”: Die deutsche katholische Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich, 1968). On the Protestant churches, see Kurt Meier, “Evangelische Kirche und Erster Weltkrieg,” in Michalka, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 691–724; Karl Hammer, “Der deutsche Protestantismus und der Erste Weltkrieg,” Francia 2 (1974), 398–414; Günter Brakelmann, Protestantische Kriegstheologie im Ersten Weltkrieg: Reinhold Seeberg als Theologe des deutschen Imperialismus (Bielefeld, 1974); and Wilhelm Pressel, Die Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 in der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands (Göttingen, 1967). On Germany’s Jews during the war, see Christard Hoffmann, “Between integration and rejection: the Jewish community in Germany, 1914–1918,” in Horne, State, Society and Mobilization, 89–104; Christian Picht, “Zwischen Vaterland und Volk: Das deutsche Judentum im Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Michalka, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 736–55; Werner E. Mosse (ed.), Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution 1914–1923 (Tübingen, 1971); and Egmont Zechlin, Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 1969). Much of this work has now been superseded by Ulrich Sieg, Jüdische Intellektuelle im Ersten Weltkrieg: Kriegserfahrungen, weltanschauliche Debatten und kulturelle Neuentwürfe (Berlin, 2001), whose scope is broader than the title implies. Several studies address the longer-term implications of the war for Germany’s Jewish soldiers: Jacob Rosenthal: “Die Ehre des jüdischen Soldaten”: Die Judenzählung im Ersten Weltkrieg und ihre Folgen (Frankfurt am Main, 2007); Greg Caplan, Wicked Sons, German Heroes: Jewish Soldiers, Veterans, and Memories of World War I in Germany (Saarbrücken, 2008); and Tim Grady, The German–Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory (Liverpool, 2012).

  War aims and international relations

  This aspect of the war has inspired almost as much interest as the military dimension. David Stevenson’s masterful survey, The First World War and International Politics (Oxford, 1988), provides an introduction to the diplomacy of the war. An older work by Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (Cleveland, 1959), offers a provocative conceptual framework, while John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (London, 1938) remains the best introduction to this topic. See also Werner Hahlweg (ed.), Der Friede von Brest-Litovsk: Ein unveröffentlichter Band aus dem Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses der Deutschen Verfassungsgebenden Nationalversammlung und des Deutschen Reichstages (Düsseldorf, 1971).

  Germany’s relations with its allies (or erstwhile allies) are treated in Gary W. Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy: Austria–Hungary and the German Alliance, 1914–1918 (New York, 1985); Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918 (Princeton, NJ, 1968); Frank G. Weber, Eagles on the Crescent: Germany, Austria–Hungary, and the Turkish Alliance, 1914–1918 (Ithaca, NY, 1970); Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich, Bulgarien und die Mächte 1913–1915: Ein Beitrag zur Weltkriegs- und Imperialismusgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1985); and Alberto Monticone, Deutschland und die Neutralität Italiens 1914–1915 (Wiesbaden, 1982).

  The question of German war aims has dominated the literature on wartime foreign policy, particularly after Fritz Fischer’s provocation in Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutsch-land 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf, 1961) (translated into English as Germany’s Aims in the First World War [New York, 1967]). On the controversy, see John A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (New York, 1975). The collection of essays edited by Ernst W. Graf von Lynar, Deutsche Kriegsziele 1914–1918 (Darmstadt, 1964), provides an introduction to the major issues originally at stake. Two older studies are still relevant to the debate: Hans Gatzke, Germany’s Drive to the West (Drang nach Westen): A Study of Germany’s Western War Aims during the First World War (Baltimore, 1950); Henry Cord Meyer, Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815–1945 (The Hague, 1955). In the wake of Fischer’s book, a number of dissertations and other studies appeared – some by Fischer’s students – on the planning and execution of German war aims. Prominent among these are: Immanuel Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen 1914–1918: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck, 1960); Peter Borowsky, Deutsche Ukrainepolitik 1918: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wirtschaftsfragen (Lübeck, 1970); Karl-Heinz Janssen, Macht und Verblendung: Kriegszielpolitik der deutschen Bundesstaaten 1914/18 (Göttingen, 1963); Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die deutsche Baltikumpolitik zwischen Brest-Litovsk und Compiègne: Ein Beitrag zur “Kriegszieldiskussion” (Cologne, 1970); Winfried Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918: Von Brest-Litovsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 1966); and Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1971).

  The effort to parry the charges of Fischer and other critics has focused on German efforts to secure a negotiated peace with one or more of the Entente powers. In a series of massive documentary collections, disciples of Gerhard Ritter have argued the case that these efforts were genuine: Wolfgang Steglich (ed.), Die Friedenspolitik der Mittelmächte 1917/18 (Stuttgart, 1964); Steglich (ed.), Die Friedensversuche der kriegführenden Mächte im Sommer und Herbst 1917 (Stuttgart, 1984); Steglich (ed.), Der Friedensappell Papst Benedikts XV vom 1. August 1917 und die Mittelmächte (Stuttgart, 1970); and Wilhelm Ernst Winterhager (ed.), Mission für den Frieden: Europäische Mächtepolitik und dänische Friedensvermittlung im Ersten Weltkrieg, vom August 1914 bis zum italienischen Kriegseintritt Mai 1915 (Stuttgart, 1984). More critical is the documentary collection of André Scherer and Jacques Grunewald (eds.), L’Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix pendant la première guerre mondiale: Documents extraits des archives de l’Office allemand des affaires étrangères (3 vols., Paris, 1966–76). See also Karl E. Birnbaum, Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare: A Study of Imperial Germany’s Policy towards the United States, April 18, 1916–January 9, 1917 (Uppsala, 1958); and Lancelot L. Farrar, Jr., Divide and Conquer: German Efforts to Conclude a Separate Peace, 1914–1918 (New York, 1978). For an attempt at synthesis, see Roger Chickering, “Strategy, politics, and the quest for a negotiated peace: the German case, 1914–1918,” in Holger Afflerbach (ed.), “Der Sinn des Krieges”: Politische Ziele und militärische Instrumente der kriegführenden Parteien von 1914–1918 (Munich, 2014).

  Questions of foreign policy and war aims are difficult to disentangle from the history of German-occupied Europe. The most recent scholarship is on display in the special issue, edited by Sophie de Schaepdrijver and entitled “Military occupations in First World War Europe,” of First World War Studies (volume 4, issue 1: March 2013). The older study by Ludwig von Köhler in the Carnegie series analyzes the administration of Belgium: Die Staatsverwaltung der besetzten Gebiete: Belgien (Stuttgart, 1927). Frank Wende, Die belgische Frage in der deutschen Politik des Ersten Weltkrieges (Hamburg, 1969), looks as well at debates over the issue in Germany, while Brigitte Hattke, Hugo Stinnes und die drei deutsch-belgischen Gesellschaften von 1916 (Stuttgart, 1990), examines the modes of economic exploitation. The best overall survey is now Sophie de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre Mondiale (Berne, 2004), but see also Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York, 2004). The German occupation of northern France is well treated in Philippe Nivet, La France occupée 1914–1918 (Paris, 2011); Annette Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre: Humanitaire et culture de guerre, populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris, 1998); the same author’s Les cicatrices rouges 14–18:
France et la Belgique occupées (Paris, 2010); and Helen McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (London, 1999). On German policy in the Baltic lands, the place to start is the fascinating study by Vejas Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000), as well as Aba Strazhas, Deutsche Ostpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg: Der Fall Ober Ost 1914–1917 (Wiesbaden, 1993). On the German occupation of Russian Poland, see, in addition to Geiss’ study on the “border strip,” Werner Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Graz, 1958); Werner Basler, Deutsche Annexionspolitik in Polen und im Baltikum 1914–1918 (East Berlin, 1962); Martin Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik (Munich, 1963); and the chapters in Egmont Zechlin’s book Die deutsche Politik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 1969) that deal with German policy towards the eastern European Jews. For the state-building dimension of German rule in Russian Poland, see the work of Jesse Kaufman, “Warsaw University under German occupation: state building and nation Bildung in Poland during the Great War,” First World War Studies 4 (2013), 65–79. On the German occupation of Romania, see now Lisa Mayerhofer, Zwischen Freund und Feind: Deutsche Besatzung in Rumänien 1916–1918 (Munich, 2010). German efforts to exploit forced labor in eastern and western Europe have been thoroughly analyzed in Jens Thiel, “Menschenbassin Belgien”: Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg (Essen, 2007); and Christian Westerhoff, Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg: Deutsche Arbeitskräftepolitik im besetzten Polen und Litauen 1914–1918 (Paderborn, 2011). On a less prominent but nonetheless essential facet of German occupation policy, see Reinhold Zilch, Okkupation und Währung im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Belgien und Russisch-Polen 1914–1918 (Goldbach, 1994), as well as David Hamlin, “‘Dummes Geld’: money, grains and the occupation of Romania in World War I,” Central European History 42 (2009), 451–71.