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East Germany World War I
Declaration of war by Germany resulted largely as the
consequence of the Schlieffen Plan--the German military strategy
prepared by Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of staff (1892-1906).
The plan was based on the idea that Franco-Russian rapprochement
made a German two-front war inevitable. Schlieffen's successor,
Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1906-14), firmly committed
himself to the plan. Thus Germany's declaration of war on Russia
(August 1, 1914), a response to Russian mobilization, was
followed immediately by its declaration of war on France (August
3). On August 4, Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente,
declared war on Germany. In 1915 Italy, which had been allied
with Germany and Austria-Hungary, switched allegiance and joined
the Triple Entente powers.
The strategy of the Schlieffen Plan conceived a swift victory
in the west in which German troops entering France via neutral
Belgium and the Netherlands would envelop the French armies,
pinning them against the Swiss border. The bulk of the German
army would then be free for combat in the east. The plan failed,
however, leaving German troops stalemated in trench warfare in
France. As a result, Moltke, who had at first altered the
Schlieffen Plan and later abandoned it, was relieved of his
executive position in September 1914 and was succeeded by Erich
von Falkenhayn. Conflict raged between Falkenhayn, who insisted
on continued efforts in the west, and the eastern command of Paul
von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who had achieved significant
advances.
Bethmann-Hollweg's September Program of 1914 set forth
Germany's war aims, which included an expanded Germany
(Mitteleuropa) with Belgium and Poland as vassal states
and German colonies in Africa. The program reflected a domestic
political climate in which the German nation had been virtually
unanimous in supporting the decision to go to war; in August
1914, even the Social Democrats voted in favor of war credits in
the Reichstag. During the first years of the war, the Reichstag
was controlled by the Kriegszielmehrheit (war aims
majority), a parliamentary bloc including delegates from the
National Liberal Party, Center Party, and Conservative Party. The
Kriegszielmehrheit had pressed for an annexationist war
aims program; influential German interest groups, such as the
Pan-German League, the army and navy, agrarian and industrial
associations, and the intelligentsia approved. The SPD alone
remained adamantly opposed to all annexationist claims.
By the spring of 1915, the war of movement envisioned by the
Schlieffen Plan had become a war of position, and political and
social disagreements, temporarily forgotten during the upsurge of
patriotic feeling, began to reappear. By late summer 1916,
chances for a definitive German victory seemed remote, and
consequently Bethmann-Hollweg considered peace negotiations. His
peace note, however, was rejected by the Triple Entente powers.
After the offer to negotiate was rejected, the Army High Command,
headed by Chief of Staff Hindenburg and his adjutant general,
Ludendorff, demanded passage of the Auxiliary Service Bill
calling for the large-scale militarization of Germany; the
Reichstag passed a considerably weakened version of the bill in
early 1917.
To cripple operations of the Triple Entente by destroying a
sufficient amount of shipping, Germany began unrestricted
submarine warfare in January 1917. In the meantime, although the
Army High Command increasingly gained control of political
decision making, pressure for a peace settlement mounted in the
Reichstag. Bethmann-Hollweg attempted to pacify the opposition in
the Reichstag with a renewed pledge of democratic reform; and
Wilhelm II, reacting to the first workers' strike in Germany,
which had been sparked by the Russian Revolution of February
1917, issued his famous Ostergeschenk (Easter present)
confirming his chancellor's promise of reform. The Social
Democrats nevertheless proceeded to issue a manifesto demanding
peace without annexations. The Army High Command, however,
remained committed to war and annexation. In April and May 1917,
Hindenburg and Ludendorff met with Wilhelm II at Kreuznach and
persuaded the emperor to draft the Kreuznach claims confirming
the goals of the September Program. Bethmann-Hollweg and the
Reichstag rejected the Kreuznach claims, however, and in July an
interparty Reichstag committee drafted a resolution demanding
peace without annexations. Hindenburg and Ludendorff expressed
their opposition by resigning their posts. Wilhelm, compelled to
choose between Bethmann-Hollweg and the Army High Command,
supported Hindenburg and Ludendorff and demanded the chancellor's
resignation. Thus Hindenburg and Ludendorff gained de facto
control of political decision making.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, Russia and
Germany began peace negotiations. In March 1918, the two
countries signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The defeat of
Russia enabled Germany to transfer troops from the eastern to the
western front. This advantage was by far outweighed, however, by
the United States declaration of war against Germany in April
1917, provoked largely by Germany's continued unrestricted
submarine warfare. In order to break the French and British lines
before the arrival of the expeditionary force from the United
States, Germany launched a large offensive in March 1918 and
succeeded in reaching the Marne River. A second large offensive
on July 15, aimed at definitively smashing the enemy, failed, and
German troops were subsequently pressed back along their extended
front. In the early fall of 1918, the Army High Command conceded
and called for an armistice. The armistice, signed on November 11
after the Social Democrats had proclaimed a republic and formed a
government, was later repudiated by the military, which, together
with the extreme right, created the myth of the "stab in the
back" that blamed defeat in World War I on left-wing elements.
German military casualties in World War I amounted to 1.6 million
dead, more than 4 million wounded, and more than 200,000 missing
in action.
The Treaty of Versailles, which was signed in June 1919,
called for German disarmament. As a result of the treaty, the
Rhineland was demilitarized and occupied by the western Allied
powers for fifteen years; Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine, the
Polish Corridor, northern Schleswig-Holstein, and all overseas
colonies; and the Allied Reparations Commission was established
and charged with deciding the total war damage payments to be
demanded of Germany. The Treaty of Versailles also included the
"war guilt clause," which, by its implicit suggestion of German
responsibility for World War I, evoked generalized German
contempt for the treaty. Historians debate Germany's
responsibility for World War I; some claim that Germany's entry
into the war was accidental and defensive, others that the war
was the result of German imperialism. It remains to be shown, in
either case, that Wilhelmine aspirations were indeed
qualitatively different from the pre-World War I imperialist
ambitions of Britain or France.
Data as of July 1987
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