“Incurable Megalomania” and “Fantasies of Expansion”: The German Army Reimagines Empire in Occupied Poland, 1915–1918

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-645
Author(s):  
Mark T. Kettler
Keyword(s):  
Polish Space ◽  
World War ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
German Army ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Military Command ◽  
First World

AbstractPlans for a Polish “border strip” are frequently cited to argue that the German army entered the First World War committed to pacifying conquered space through Germanization. This article contends that, in 1914, the German officer corps did not understand national homogeneity as essential for imperial security. Many influential officers insisted that Polish identity was compatible with German imperial loyalty. They supported a multinational imperial model, proposing to trade Poland its cultural and political autonomy for the acceptance of German suzerainty in foreign policy and military command. The army's preference for Germanizing space developed during the occupation of Russian Poland, as officers learned to conflate diversity with imperial fragility. Only a series of political crises after 1916 shifted military opinion against multinational imperialism. Increasingly convinced that Poland would betray the German Empire, some officers abandoned multinationalism. Others revised their plans to contain Poland and fortify Germany by annexing and Germanizing Polish space.

Designing Empire for the Civilized East: Colonialism, Polish Nationhood, and German War Aims in the First World War

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 936-952
Author(s):  
Mark T. Kettler
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Polish Space ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Union ◽  
German Empire ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Aims ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

AbstractThis article critically reexamines how Germans understood Polish national identity during World War I, and how their perceptions affected German proposals for ruling Polish territory. Recent historiography has emphasized the impact of colonial ideologies and experiences on Germans’ imperial ambitions in Poland. It has portrayed Germans as viewing Poland through a colonial lens, or favoring colonial methods to rule over Polish space. Using the wartime publications of prominent left liberal, Catholic, and conservative thinkers, this article demonstrates that many influential Germans, even those who supported colonialism in Africa, considered Poland to be a civilized nation for which colonial strategies of rule would be wholly inappropriate. These thinkers instead proposed multinational strategies of imperialism in Poland, which relied on collaboration with Polish nationalists. Specifically, they argued that Berlin should establish an autonomous Polish state, and bind it in permanent military and political union with the German Empire. The perception of Poland as a civilized nation ultimately structured Germany’s occupation policy and objectives in Poland throughout the war, much more than stereotypes of Polish primitivity.

Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-261
Author(s):  
T. Grady
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Army ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

“Complete Continence Is Wholly Possible”

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-162
Author(s):  
Andrew Byers
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Enlisted Men ◽  
War Department ◽  
American Expeditionary Forces ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
European Women

This chapter examines U.S. Army deployments to France during the First World War and the occupations of France and Germany in the aftermath of the war. At the outset of American involvement in World War I, army and War Department officials were especially concerned with how they might cope with an anticipated venereal epidemic, and how to deal with expected problems from romantic fraternization between American soldiers and the European women they would encounter while deployed. This chapter also examines uses the experiences of the American Expeditionary Forces to illuminate differing conceptions of masculinity and sexual propriety for the officer corps and enlisted men.

The German Empire and the History of the Period Preceding the First World War

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-206
Author(s):  
Klaus-Jörg Ruhl ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Empire ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

scholarly journals Managing an ‘Army of Peoples’: Identity, Command and Performance in the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1914–1918

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER WATSON
Keyword(s):  
Language Skills ◽  
First World War ◽  
Educational Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Professional Network ◽  
The First World War ◽  
And Performance ◽  
First World

AbstractThis article examines the officers who led the Habsburg Army during the First World War. It highlights the complexity of their identities, demonstrating that this went well beyond the a-national – nationalist dichotomy in much historiography. It also argues that these officers' identities had a profound impact on how their army functioned in the field. The article first studies the senior command in 1914–16, showing how its wartime learning processes were shaped by transnational attitudes. These officers had belonged in peace to an international military professional network. When disaster befell their army at the outset of the First World War, it was natural for them to seek lessons from foreign armies, at first from their major enemies, the Russians, and later their German allies. The second half of the article explores the changing loyalties of the reserve officers tasked with frontline command in the later war years. It contends that the officer corps' focus on maintaining social and educational standards resulted in an influx of middle-class junior leaders whose conditional commitment to the Empire and limited language skills greatly influenced the Habsburg Army's record of longevity but mediocre combat performance.

scholarly journals "Honderden keren probeerden de Walen ons ervan te overtuigen dat er geen Vlamingen meer waren …" De 'zaak-Buisset' en de Duitse oorlogspropaganda (1914-1915)

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Bruno Yammine
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Empire ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Dutch Language ◽  
Witch Hunt ◽  
First World ◽  
Member Of Parliament

Voor het voeren van zijn Flamenpolitik tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog, deed het Duitse Rijk beroep op een omvangrijke propaganda. Daarmee wilde het de Vlaamsgezinden er onder andere van overtuigen dat er in het buitenland een anti-Vlaamse hetze woedde. In vrijwel de hele literatuur over Flamenpolitik en activisme werd (en wordt) het aangenomen dat de wallingant Buisset, een liberale volksvertegenwoordiger uit Henegouwen, al bij de eerste gouverneur-generaal was gaan aandringen op de afschaffing van het Nederlands. Nader onderzoek leert ons echter dat het verhaal over Buisset op een Duitse propagandafabel berust, ons vooral overgeleverd via een bewuste Hineinterpretierung van oud-activist A.L. Faingnaert. Het verhaal moet ook in samenhang gezien worden met de propaganda van de Duitse stromannen in Nederland die medio 1915 de Flamenpolitik een versnelling hoger deden schakelen.________“The Walloons tried to convince us hundreds of times that there were no more Flemings left …” The story about Buisset and the German propaganda (1914-1915)During the First World War, the German Empire called upon an extensive propaganda for the propagation of its Flamenpolitik. In this way, it tried to convince the Pro-Flemish among other things of the existence of an anti-Flemish witch-hunt abroad. Practically the entire literature about the Flamenpolitik and activism assumed (and still assumes) that the wallingant Buisset, a liberal Member of Parliament from Hainault, had already approached the first governor-general to urge the abolishment of the Dutch language. However, further research indicates that the story about Buisset is based on German propaganda fiction, and has in particular been handed down by an intentional Hineinterpretierung by former activist A.L. Faingnaert. The story also needs to be viewed in context with the propaganda of the German front men in the Netherlands who cranked up the Flamenpolitik around the middle of 1915.

1871-1918

2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-211
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Army ◽  
British Military ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Photographic Essay ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

Zusammenfassung Peter Walkenhorst, Nation – Volk – Rasse. Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914 (Bruno Thoß ) André Tiebel, Die Entstehung der Schutztruppengesetze für die deutschen Schutzgebiete Deutsch-Ostafrika, Deutsch-Südwestafrika und Kamerun (1884-1898) (Christian Senne) Eberhardt Kettlitz, Afrikanische Soldaten aus deutscher Sicht seit 1871 (Ulrich van der Heyden) Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita. »Farbige« Söldner in den deutschen Kolonien (Winfried Speitkamp) Matthew S. Seligmann, Spies in Uniform. British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (Stephen Schröder) Naval Intelligence from Germany. The Reports of the British Naval Attachés in Berlin, 1906-1914. Ed. by Matthew S. Seligmann (Nicolas Wolz) Michael B. Barrett, Operation Albion. The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (Gerhard P. Groß) Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals. The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Martin Moll) Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Christian Stachelbeck) Christine Brocks, Die bunte Welt des Krieges. Bildpostkarten aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg 1914-1918 (Christoph Nübel) Anton Holzer, Das Lächeln der Henker. Der unbekannte Krieg gegen die Zivilbevölkerung 1914-1918 (Markus Pöhlmann) David C. Homsher, American Battlefields of World War I, Château-Thierry – Then and Now. A Guidebook, Anthology and Photographic Essay (Heiner Bröckermann) Der Erste Weltkrieg in der populären Erinnerungskultur. Hrsg. von Barbara Korte, Sylvia Paletschek und Wolfgang Hochbruck (Hiram Kümper)

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