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!"