A transitory phenomenon: German commanders and chiefs of staff, 1866–1918

This article examines the relationship between commanders and chiefs of staff during the period of the Wars of German Unification and the entirety of the Kaiserreich. The practice of pairing up a commander and a chief of staff was one that was specific to Germany. Traditional scholarship holds that in many cases, it was really the chief of staff who did all the thinking, while the commander was nothing more than a front man. The primary example of this was the relationship between Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. The problem is that unthinking historians have projected relationship of this particular duo on the rest of the imperial German army. One of the reasons for this was the presence of members of German royal families in high command positions. This article suggests that first, commanders, including royal family members, were far more influential than their chiefs of staff. In addition, the power wielded by chiefs of staff also reflected the nagging problem of battlefield communications, especially given the limitations of telephone and early wireless radio. Once these difficulties were eliminated by the collapse of the imperial regime, and the development of radio, the power of chiefs of staff was severely curbed by 1939. Thus, the relationship between commanders and chiefs of staff was at best a transitory phenomenon.

Dennis Showalter and the study of the First World War

Dennis Showalter’s influence on the scholarship of the First World War is unmatched among American historians. His work is especially important for two reasons. First, it studies the German Army using primary sources and original research, a particularly valuable contribution given the mythic and just plain false associations that many amateur scholars place on the German military. Second, Dennis’s career involved long stretches of teaching cadets and military officers. His work thus combined an appreciation of the problems of the past with the challenges of the present day. The second half of this essay renders homage to that tradition by examining patterns in Dennis’s writings of the First World War that remain relevant to an understanding of war in our own time.

RIGHT-WING RADICAL STATE OF MIND IN THE BUNDESWEHR: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

The article deals with analysis of right-wing radical state of mind among the German armed forces soldiers. The author describes the most significant incidents in German army, which relate to right-wing radicalism, within the last several years, goes into details regarding senior lieutenant Franco A. case as well as uncovering right-wing cell in KSK special force unit. Among the analysis of particular cases the article contains sociological analysis of right-wing radical minds in society in general and in the army. The researcher enlists main characteristics of such feeling in the society and armed forces, as well as main markers of right-wing radicalism. Based on the attempt to forecast actions of the state to prevent further cases of political extremism in Bundeswehr prospects of situation in this sphere are evaluated.

„Mordercy? To byli ci z SS.” O micie niewinnego Wehrmachtu na marginesie powieści Ulli Hahn Unscharfe Bilder (,Nieostre zdjęcia’, 2003)

This article looks at the idea of the “Clean Wehrmacht”, as opposed to the SS, who were implicated in the mass executions of Jews and other civilians in the East. This narrative is proven wrong in Ulla Hahn’s Unscharfe Bilder wherein an exhibition on the Wehrmacht exposes the crimes of its soldiers. The main protagonist in Ulla Hahn’s novel Unscharfe Bilder recognizes in one of the photos a character strikingly similar to her father, and so she starts questioning him about his past. He insists that the Wehrmacht was a regular German army and tries to put individual cases into perspective. It turns out that the historical of the Wehrmacht is not so clear.

Three Publications about Archaeology of a Segment of the First World War's Forgotten Eastern Front

While the horrors of the trench warfare on the Western Front in Belgium and France are part of the European cultural memory, to some degree the much more extensive and mobile Eastern Front of the 1914–1918 conflict has become the forgotten front (Die vergessene Front). Although for just over eleven months in 1914/15, the central part of a major front, some 1000 km long on which three million people died ran through the middle of what is now Poland, for a number of reasons the memory of this has there been all but erased from memory and from the cultural landscape. The reviewed three volumes are the result of a project that has attempted to address the poor state of historical memory of the momentous events and human drama that took place a century earlier on the segment of the front, 55 km west of Warsaw. Here, from mid-December 1914, the Russian Imperial army tried to hold back the eastward advance of the German troops on defences built along the Bzura and Rawka rivers. For the next seven months, the fighting here took the form of the same type of prolonged static trench warfare more familiar on the Western Front (the only place in the eastern sphere of war that this happened). The German army made every effort (including mining and several major gas attacks), to advance on Warsaw but failed to break through. It was only after the Great Retreat of the Russian army in the summer of 1915 that these defences were overrun and Warsaw fell.

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

Plans 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.

« Conspuez l’espion ! C’est l’Allemand qu’il nous faut ! » : Fausses nouvelles et fabrique de l’espion dans l’Ouest de la France durant la Première Guerre mondiale

During the war, the accumulation of tensions, anguish and collective traumas form a "breeding ground" most conducive to the birth and proliferation of false news, rumors and legends. The first of them, spy mania, explodes in the first hours of the conflict. The home front becomes the scene of a veritable jingoistic outburst, leading many civilians to relentlessly hunt down this "enemy from within" demonized by propaganda focusing on German barbarism. In Brittany, this psychosis was cleverly prepared by pre-war publications denouncing the presence on the coast of a "vanguard of the German army". In this context, rumors and fantastic gossip abound and create suspicion towards anything that seems strange. These elements of false news, sometimes relayed by newspapers, are mainly spread orally, through wounded soldiers on leave or even refugees. They generally pass through the main communication crossroads, especially train stations. Thus, fed with rumors and legends, the population of the home front is actively involved in the hunt for spies, often degenerating into vengeful and irrational popular violence all the more embarrassing for the authorities that, as in this case, these spies are simply imaginary.

Commodity Exchange in the First Months of Soviet Power with Participation of Consumer Cooperation (January – April, 1918)

The food crisis in Russia arose during the years of the First World War. The tsarist government and the Provisional Government tried to solve this problem, but to no avail. The food crisis, as it was by inheritance, passed to the Soviet regime. All authorities had to solve the food problem in the conditions of constant military and revolutionary upheavals, and this problem, from the socio-economic, passed into the political sphere. Famine predetermined revolutionary upheaval in the country. The article covers the period from January to April, 1918. At this time the Austro-German army advances in southern Russia. The military, political, and socio-economic situation of the new government was extremely difficult. The Soviet government had to support the grain monopoly introduced by the tsarist and confirmed by the Provisional Governments, although it was not officially confirmed and even introduced by the new government. To strengthen its position, the Soviet government took a number of measures to resolve the food problem. The most important, even the main one was the exchange of goods between the city and the village. It was necessary to save the urban population from hunger, to supply the army with food. It should be noted that the initial measures including in the exchange policy of the Soviet government were not of a violent nature. The country had industrial reserves for commodity exchange in the country: manu- factory, high-grade iron, etc. remaining from tsarism. Everything was sent to the village. There is an opinion that the Soviet government gave industrial products to the peasantry for nothing and that was true. But commodity exchange made it possible to alleviate the food crisis in the cities, feed the army, and politically strengthen the Soviet power. For the exchange of goods, it was necessary to attract various regulatory bodies of the country that were engaged in the procurement and distribution of bread. This article highlights the role of consumer cooperation, which was underexplored in the historical literature, in the commodity exchange. Specific examples, facts and figures are given for the bread producing provinces in southern Russia.

Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe

Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe examines Zionist activism during the years of war, occupation, revolution, the collapse of empires and the formation of nation states in the years 1914 to 1920. Before the background of the Great War, its brutal aftermath and consequent violence, the day-to-day encounters between Zionist activists and the Jewish communities in the region gave the movement credibility, allowed it to win support, and to establish itself as a leading force in Jewish political and social life for decades to come. Through activists’ efforts, Zionism came to mean something new. Rather than being concerned with debates over Jewish nationhood and pioneering efforts in Palestine, it came to be about aiding starving populations, organizing soup-kitchens, establishing orphanages, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals, negotiating with the authorities, and organizing self-defence against violence. It was in this context that the Zionist movement evolved from often marginalized, predominantly bourgeois groups into a mass movement that attracted and inspired tens of thousands of Jews throughout the region. The book approaches the major European events of the period from the dual perspectives of Jewish communities and the Zionist activists on the ground, demonstrating how war, revolution, empire and nation held very different meanings to people, depending on their local circumstances. During the war and its aftermath, the territories of the Habsburg Empire and formerly Russian-ruled regions conquered by the German army saw a large-scale nation-building project by Zionist activists who fought to lead their communities and shape for them a national future.