The Armed Forces and Military Planning: Förster, Stig

Förster, Stig
The Armed Forces and Military

Planning
pp. 454-488
Lidtke, V.L. Imperial Germany : a historiological companion, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press
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Course of Study: PX2604 - First World War

Title: Imperial Germany : a historiological companion
Name of Author: Lidtke, V.L.
Name of Publisher: Greenwood Press

17
The Armed Forces and
Military Planning
Stig Förster
INTRODUCTION: THE MILITARY REVOLUTION OF

THE 1860s
The founding of the German Empire in 1871 was based on military force.
In 1864, 1866, and 1870-1871, the Prussian army achieved three stunning
victories, first over Denmark, then Austria, and finally, with the help of
allies from the other German states, over France.1 Particularly the victory
over France, which until then had been regarded as the strongest military
power in continental Europe, demonstrated the might of the Prussian
army.2 This army’s leadership, its organizational structure, the level of
education of its soldiery, and much of its equipment proved to be the best
in the world, and in the following decades the Prussian army became the
model for all other modern armies. Under these circumstances, the Prus
sian army also gained enormous prestige at home. Its victories during the
Wars of Unification had formed the basis of its prominence in German
society and politics after 1871. The development of the armed forces in
Imperial Germany cannot be understood apart from this background.
The Wars of Unification also demonstrated the new tendencies in mod
ern warfare that were to haunt Germany’s military leaders well into the
twentieth century. The character of war had already begun to change fun
damentally in technology, organization, and what might be called its phi
losophy. The development of weaponry and military equipment had been
practically stagnant from the mid-eighteenth century until well after the
Napoleonic Wars. Despite the momentous changes in tactics and strategy
during the French Revolutionary Wars, the equipment of armies and na
vies remained geared to the standards of a preindustrial age. In the 1850s,
however, the industrial revolution extended into the military field as well;
and by 1871 weaponry was revolutionized. Breech-loading rilled muskets
Supplied by the British Library 02 Sep 2020, 10:32 (BST)

The Armed Forces and Military Planning 455
and even the first machine guns dramatically increased infantry firepower.
The range of infantry fire quadrupled, and its rapidity accelerated even
more. The capabilities of artillery underwent similar changes. The fact that
cannons were now rifled, breech loading, and constructed of steel pro
duced dramatic improvements in range, accuracy, and rapidity of fire. Ex
plosive shells and shrapnel made artillery fire more deadly.3 These
technological advances made changes in tactics necessary, for improved
firepower favored defensive over offensive operations. In 1865, the chief
of the Prussian general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, recognized the impact
of these developments when he observed that new weaponry was making
frontal assaults suicidal. He concluded that attacks on the flanks and rear
of enemy forces alone promised success.4 These same developments also
portended the decline of the battlefield effectiveness of the cavalry, which
had, with its aristocratic officer corps, traditionally been regarded as the
elite arm.
Technological change produced another revolution in the field of mili
tary communications. Railroads facilitated the transportation and supply
of troops. Vast numbers of soldiers could now be moved quickly over long
distances, and armies in the field could be supplied with ammunition,
equipment, and food. Telegraphy linked commanders with their troops
over great distances. These developments, in turn, made possible a vast
increase in the size of field armies and the scope of their of operations.'
In 1871, for instance, the German armies in occupied France numbered
over 800,000, considerably more than Napoleon had mobilized for the
invasion of Russia in 1812. The German armies were much more effec
tively led and supplied than Napoleon’s. War had again become a question
of numbers.
These new opportunities were not, however, an unmixed blessing for
the military leadership of the new German Empire. The industrialization
of warfare posed new problems for the generals. The armed forces were
dependent on industrial production at home for their fighting strength.
Because capitalism was the driving force behind the industrial revolution,
the military leadership had to cooperate with big business. Gone were the
days when generals could alone manage armaments, equipment, and sup
ply. In Prussia during the 1860s, the army-owned factories could not cope
with the new demand for needle-guns, steel cannons, and the cartridges
these weapons required. Hence, despite the reservations of conservative
generals, who wanted to preserve the military’s independence, the army
was increasingly compelled to work with private companies, such as
Krupp, to obtain its weapons. This was only a beginning, but it presaged
the days when the manufacture of armaments would involve the whole of
society.6 The industrialization of warfare thus tended to deprive the mili
tary professionals of their exclusive control of their own domain and to
make them dependent on the civilians whom they otherwise despised.

456 imperial Germany
This state of affairs was aggravated by relentless technological innova

tion and the rush for greater numbers which underlay another new phe
nomenon, the industrial arms race. The prelude to the big ship-building
programs of the end of the century came in the 1850s, when modern na
vies, especially the British and French, took up the race to install armor
plating and modern guns.7 An analogous competition began among the
continental armies at roughly the same time, particularly between the
Prussian and the French armies; and it forced the military leadership in
both countries to seek the aid of industrialists. Nor was the Prussian army’s
dependence on the civilian sector limited to arms procurement and supply.
After the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon (1813-1815), the Prussian
army was no longer a purely professional force. Instead, it became Eu
rope’s first modern conscript army. Because every male citizen was, in
principle, to serve in the army, conscription gave the Prussian army a
potential numerical advantage over the professional forces of the other
European powers. But the idea of arming the people was suspect to con
servative politicians and generals, for it threatened to introduce demo
cratic principles into Prussia’s military constitution and to make the
leadership dependent on the good will of the common soldiers and thus
on the support of public opinion. In fact, during episodes of domestic
conflict, such as the Revolution of 1848, the army—and particularly the
militia-like Landwehr—had proved unreliable to Prussia’s ruling elite.
Under these circumstances, the Prussian government showed little in
terest after 1848 in strengthening the army or exploiting conscription to
the full. The Landwehr was neglected. When international tensions rose
in the late 1850s, however, Prussian politicians and generals alike recog
nized the need for thoroughgoing reform of the army. The series of re
forms that were initiated in 1859 did indeed improve Prussia’s military
power. The wartime strength of the army rose from 532,700 in 1859 to
618,000 three years later. This increase combined with organizational re
forms to provide the basis for Prussia’s victories in the Wars of Unifica
tion. At the same time, however, the reform of the army represented an
attempt by the conservative political and military leadership to tighten its
control over the army. Despite its popularity, the Landwehr was weak
ened to the advantage of the regular army, in which every conscript was
henceforth to spend his term of active service. Moreover, the term of
service was increased to three years, less in order to teach the conscripts
military skills than to allow their officers time to educate them in military,
monarchical, and ultimately conservative values. In this way, King Wil
liam I and his advisers hoped to counteract the potentially subversive ef
fects of conscription and a people in arms and to produce a reliable,
disciplined army.*
These designs were not popular with the liberal majority in the Prussian
parliament, which rejected this apparently reactionary turn in Prussia’s

military organization. Liberal politicians demanded that active service in

the army be limited to two years, and when the king rejected their de
mands, they refused to vote the revenues to finance the army reform. This
impasse produced the Prussian constitutional conflict, as the king and his
ministers introduced the reforms anyway over the parliament’s protests
against the government’s unconstitutional behavior. At the core of the
conflict lay the question of whether the king was entitled, in his role as
supreme commander, to exclusive control over the armed forces, or
whether parliament, by virtue of its budgetary powers, had the right to
intercede in military affairs.
The mood of general jubilation that accompanied the Prussian victory
over Austria in 1866 resolved the immediate conflict, as parliament agreed
to indemnify the government’s unilateral enactment of the military re
forms. But the basic questions lingered and became a constant problem
after 1871. Even though the king and his minister-president, Otto von
Bismarck, managed to convince parliament of the importance of army
reform, it had become clear that military policy could not, in the long run,
be made by ignoring the will of parliament. If they wanted to avoid an
other bruising conflict, the government and the military leadership needed
the support of a parliamentary majority. Public opinion, therefore, took
on a critical role in military affairs. Public opinion not only influenced the
willingness of parliament to support the government’s military policy; in
the armed forces, too, public opinion helped ensure the reliability of the
conscripts. Whether they liked it or not (and most often they did not),
high-ranking professional soldiers had to take public opinion into account.
The Prussian army, traditionally the conservative bastion of this military
monarchy, thus became more dependent on the civilian sector.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the policy of the Prussian monarchy
was to strengthen its powers of command against civilian intrusion. Article
46 of the Prussian constitution of 1850 guaranteed supreme command
(Oberbefehl) to the king, whose power to issue orders to the armed forces
in all military matters was unrestricted.9 This situation remained unchan
ged in Imperial Germany until 1918. However, this enormous power had
to be implemented by administrative measures. The administrative struc
ture of the military was therefore of the utmost importance to the king.
All measures in this field were designed to create an army leadership solely
responsible to the king. The civilian government, which after 1850 was
responsible to king and parliament, was, at least in theory, barred from
all influence in military matters. Herein lay the constitutional roots of the
repeated conflicts between political and military leadership, such as the
one between Bismarck and Moltke during the Franco-Prussian War. For
the same reason, the Prussian kings weakened the position of the minister
of war, since he, as a member of the government, was answerable to par
liament. In 1859, William I limited the responsibilities of the war ministry

to matters of finances and armaments. At the same time, he strengthened

the so-called Immecliatrechte of the army commanders as well as the mil
itary cabinet, the agency responsible for promotions and other personnel
matters; the changes entitled these soldiers to report directly to the king.
While this policy enhanced the king’s exclusive role as supreme com
mander, it created administrative chaos by frustrating the emergence of a
clear command structure.10 Many of Imperial Germany’s military problems
stemmed from this chaos, which made a coherent military policy difficult
to define.
The organizational disarray in the army’s leadership was also the basis
on which the general staff rose to such prominence. Until 1866, the army
lacked institutionalized leadership in times of war. The new mass army
needed highly skilled and modern leadership to fulfill its mission, but the
king was in no position to lead the army personally. The man who pro
vided this leadership was Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the general
staff in 1866. In the spring of that year, he devised a sophisticated strategic
plan for war against Austria, whereupon King William I gave him the sole
power to lead the Prussian army in this war, which Moltke brought to a
stunning success. From this time on, Moltke was Prussia’s new war hero
and, until his retirement in 1887, the army’s strategic head."
No less important than Moltke’s strategic planning was his organiza
tional work at the general staff. He was perhaps the first modern profes
sional officer in Prussia, a soldier who regarded war less as a series of
battlefield exploits than as a bureaucratic challenge in preparation and
leadership. Hence he molded the general staff into a modern bureaucratic
institution with administrative subdivisions, such as the railroad depart
ment. Timetables, transportation capabilities, and march orders became
more important elements in war than the traditional flare of Prussian corps
commanders. Above all, the army was to work like a synchronized ma
chine under the direction of the general staff. Because he required a ca
pable team, the education of staff officers became one of his first priorities.
He established branches of the general staff at army and corps headquar
ters in order to ensure that the field commanders carried out instructions.
This system did not work perfectly, but it did provide Germany with the
best military leadership in the world, as bureaucratization introduced an
element of reliability into the hazardous unpredictability of warfare.
The Prussian staff system became the pride of Germany’s military en
thusiasts and the model for all modern armies. But the aura of success
that surrounded both the general staff and the officer corps in the after-
math of the victories over Austria and France fostered a dangerous sense
of infallibility. Politicians and the general public tended to believe that the
so-called demigods of the general staff could, if called on, overcome all of
Imperial Germany’s military and strategic problems. Under these circum

stances, more sober views of the military realities facing the country were
rare.
The myth of an invincible general staff also clouded the fact that military
victory had not been won easily in the Wars of Unification. In fact, these
wars demonstrated the transformation of modern warfare. The wars
against Denmark and Austria were still traditional cabinet wars, albeit
waged with modern industrial means.12 These wars did not result from
public pressure but rather from cabinet policy. They were fought in limited
campaigns for limited aims, and they left vanquished enemies room for an
honorable peace of compromise. Above all, the wars were decided in brief
campaigns by regular armies, so the political and military leadership was
spared the pressure of an overenthusiastic public opinion. In 1866, Molt-
ke’s strategic plan rejuvenated the traditional Prussian mode of warfare,
which had featured short campaigns undertaken for clearly defined, lim
ited aims.13 Making use of modern technology, particularly railroads, the
chief of the general staff led the army into a single decisive battle against
the enemy. In so doing, he enabled Bismarck to use warfare as a tool of
a conservative policy that caused little general disruption in Europe.
In 1870-1871, the situation got out of control. Moltke’s strategy of a
short, limited campaign initially worked again, and after four weeks of
fighting the regular French army had been all but destroyed. Yet this was
not to remain another cabinet war. Moltke and Bismarck themselves de
stroyed all hopes for a rapid end to the war when they demanded the
French cession of Alsace and Lorraine. Chauvinistic public opinion in Ger
many fired them on. France’s new republican government reacted by con
tinuing the war and proclaiming guerre a outrance. When the French
leaders armed the people and resorted to guerilla tactics, they introduced
a new form of warfare—industrialized people’s war. Only after six addi
tional months of intense fighting and twelve more pitched battles did the
German armies prevail.14 The second half of the Franco-Prussian War was
a portent of things to come. Short, limited campaigns were unlikely when
whole peoples, inspired by nationalism, fought to the point of exhaustion
and with all available means for the integrity of their nation. For the first
time since the French Revoltionary Wars, warfare in Europe had become
a thoroughly public affair—now, however, in the much more demanding
circumstances of industrialization.15
Technological developments, the introduction of conscription, and the
growing inlluence of parliament and public opinion forced conservative
political leaders and professional soldiers to relinquish their exclusive con
trol over military matters. In addition, war itself had changed to such a
degree that monarchs, ministers, and generals were deprived of the power
to wage war at will, or even to prevent it. The history of Imperial Ger
many’s armed forces must therefore be analyzed in the context of two
kinds of struggles over military matters; these struggles were waged, on

the one hand, between the political and military leadership and, on the
other, between these leaders and the men who mobilized and claimed to
speak in the name of public opinion.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

In many respects, the new German Reich of 1871 was indeed a “Great-
Prussian militaristic” enterprise, as Marxist-Leninist historians later la
beled it.16 Prussian institutions, ideas, and traditions became the models
for the member states of the Reich as well as for its central administration.
Imperial Germany was largely a greater Prussia.
This truth was nowhere more apparent than in Imperial Germany’s mil
itary constitution. The Prussian army had been the key instrument in the
creation of the empire, and by virtue of its prestige and constitutional
position, it became a main pillar of that state. Henceforth the emperor,
the government, and the military administration itself all regarded the
Prussian army as a major integrating factor, which would hold the empire
together and preserve its semiconstitutional structure. In this respect, the
political structure of Imperial Germany was indeed militaristic, for its rul
ers intended, if necessary, to use the army for domestic purposes, to de
fend the existing social and political order. The leadership of the new
Reich proposed to retain as many of the Prussian military traditions as
possible. The Prussian army thus became the core of Imperial Germany’s
military structure. The states were allowed to maintain some military iden
tity, as each provided its own troops for the unified German army. Würt
temberg, Saxony, and Bavaria even maintained war ministries. But in
reality, all these appearances ceded to Prussian dominance. The Prussian
war ministry had final responsibility for formulating armament policy and
representing the army in the Reichstag. The Prussian general staff, now a
centralized German institution, was exclusively responsible for operational
planning. All important decisions concerning promotions and appoint
ments to high-ranking positions lay with the Prussian military cabinet. Ar
ticle 63 of the constitution of 1871 even specified that the uniforms of all
contingents were to be modeled on the Prussians’.
Most significantly, the emperor, who was also King of Prussia, was, ac
cording to Article 63, the supreme commander of the German army in
both peace and war. He retained exclusive power to determine the nu
merical strength of the army and the shape of its administrative structure.
Because he countersigned royal orders, the chancellor had the direct au
thority to advise the emperor in these areas. By contrast, in all matters of
command—a category that included strategic planning, appointments, mil
itary education, and the deployment of troops—the emperor was entitled
to act on his own authority without submitting his orders for countersig
nature.17 The traditional role of the Prussian monarch as supreme com

mander, which had been enshrined in the Prussian constitution of 1850

and defended during the Prussian constitutional conflict of the 1860s, was
thus reaffirmed in the constitution of the new Reich.
But the emperor’s “quasi-absolutistic” reign over the army served not
only to preserve Prussian dominance over the other German states in
military matters.18 It was directed as well against civilian influence over
the army. As the head of the civilian government, the chancellor had but
a limited voice in military affairs. The Prussian triangle of leadership—the
monarch, the head of government, and the military commanders—re
mained intact. Even Bismarck was in no position to change this situation.
The army remained independent of direct political influence and became
a state within the state of Imperial Germany, for its commanders were in
direct and unsupervised contact with the emperor, who often followed
their advice. Conflicts between the political leadership and the army com
manders were a thus constant problem, particularly during wartime.iy
The main opponent of the army’s autonomy remained the parliament.
The express aim of William I, Bismarck, and the army leadership was to
limit the influence of civilian politicians in the Reichstag over military
affairs as much as possible. However, their attempt to deprive parliament
of all power by means of a fixed military budget foundered initially on the
resistance of the liberal majority in the Reichstag.211The result was a com
promise. 'Hie supreme commander’s authority to fix the peacetime
strength of the army was counterbalanced by parliament’s right to approve
the military budget as a part of the Reich’s budget.
The government and the army leadership strove to limit even this right.
Article 57 of the constitution provided that every male German was liable
to conscription, but this principle was never fully implemented, because
financial and political constraints put limits on the size of the army. Article
60 therefore provisionally fixed the peacetime strength of the army at 1
percent of the population of 1867, while it specified that the future size of
the army be fixed by law.21 In 1874, Bismarck tried to use this provision
to curtail parliament’s influence further. He introduced a law that per
manently fixed the size of the army at its current strength. This law would
have deprived parliament of all power over the peacetime strength of the
army; and a majority in the Reichstag rejected this so-called Aeternat,
which would have resulted as well in parliament’s loss of influence over
four-fifths of the budget. The ensuing struggle between Bismarck and the
parlamentarians was reminiscent of the Prussian constitutional conflict.
But because both sides wanted to avoid another such conflict, Bismarck
and Benningsen, the leader of the National Liberal Party, worked out a
compromise. The army’s peacetime strength was fixed for seven years (in
the so-called Septennat). The Reichstag thereby bound itself to the military
budget for a period longer than its own three-year term and compromised
much of its power. On the other hand, the emperor, the government, and

the military authorities accepted the parliament’s limited role in deter

mining military policy. Indeed, parliament’s influence rose during the sub
sequent arms race, because increases in the army’s strength could not be
undertaken in defiance of the Reichstag. The basic conflict thus continued,
and military policy remained a constant battleground between the military
leadership, which was striving for autonomy, and civilian parlamentarians,
who were fighting to defend and possibly enlarge the Reichstag’s consti
tutional position.22
The government’s determination to limit parliament’s influence over the
army contributed to the chaos in the military administration. The Prussian
war ministry, which continued to represent the army in the Reichstag,
remained the target of attempts to curtail its responsibilities. In 1883, Bis
marck supported a plot led by the head of the military cabinet, E. L. von
Albedyll, to deprive the war ministry of any influence in matters of per
sonnel. The military cabinet and the general staff then succeeded in re
moving questions of appointments, promotions, and strategic planning
from the competence of the war ministry and hence from all parliamentary
influence. In this fashion, the war ministry lost its role as the central ad
ministrative institution and was henceforth not even informed about basic
decisions made elsewhere in the military bureacracy. Under William II,
the war minister, although still responsible for armament policy, received
no information about the general staff’s strategic planning.23 This attempt
to strengthen the emperor’s role as supreme commander by a system of
divide and conquer hampered the formulation of military policy, as over
forty different military bodies, which rarely cooperated, turned the deci
sion-making process into administrative turmoil.24
THE ARMY AS THE PILLAR OF THE MONARCHY

“The King of Prussia and German Emperor must at all times be in the
position to say to a Lieutenant: ‘take ten men and close down the Reichs
tag.’ ’,2S When the Conservative deputy Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau
created an uproar in the Reichstag with those words in 1910, he captured
the philosophy of the military leadership on the domestic role of the army.
Even before 1848, conservative politicians and military commanders re
garded the army as the pillar of the monarchy, “the bulwark of the state”
against subversion, anarchy, and radical change. Preserving this role dic
tated curtailing the influence of parliament in military matters. The army
was the “praetorian guard” of the monarchy; it was to be used, if neces
sary, against parliament and the general public in order to defend the
existing social and political order.26
Like Alfred von Waldersee’s plans in 1890 to stage a military coup
against the Reichstag, Oldenburg-Januschau’s words may seem extreme.
But they reflected actual policy. There was nothing novel about keeping

the army ready to intervene in domestic politics. If the situation became

temporarily less tense after 1871, as the bourgeois liberals ceased to pose
a revolutionary threat, the subsequent growth of the labor movement, the
Social Democratic Party, and the trade unions provoked increased anxi
eties among the ruling elites about popular uprisings. When the antiso
cialist laws lapsed in 1890, the political and military leadership began to
prepare for civil war. The new Kaiser, William II, publicly suggested the
character of army’s domestic role when, on 21 November 1891, he in
structed young recruits that they should be prepared, if ordered, to fire
on members of their own families.27 Secret imperial orders in 1890 had
already stipulated that the army corps in the Berlin district could be de
ployed to maintain public order in the capital. At the same time, the war
ministry ordered all corps commanders to survey Social Democratic activ
ities in their areas and to prepare to use force in order to dissolve Social
Democratic organizations and arrest their leaders.
Military planning for domestic conflict continued along these lines. In
1899, the war ministry authorized local commanders to intervene on their
own initiative in the event of domestic unrest; the massive use of force
was regarded as the best way to quell resistance. Local commanders were
also authorized to proclaim a state of siege and to suspend such consti
tutional rights as habeas corpus and the freedom of the press and assem
bly. After observing revolution in Russia in 1905, the general staff in 1907
worked out a memorandum “On Fighting in Insurgent Cities,” which de
fined the Social Democrats as the “enemy within.” To suppress violent
uprisings of the working-class movement, the general staff recommended
an immediate (if not preemptory) response, to feature the massive use of
firearms and artillery. The German parliaments, which in the eyes of the
soldiers had always been centers of revolution, were to be put under mil
itary control; journalistic “agitators” were to be incarcerated, and mem
bers of parliament arrested.28 The military authorities regarded the
working-class movement with paranoid apprehension, and they were ready
if necessary to launch a full-scale civil war. Admittedly, before 1914
German soldiers fired less frequently on striking or demonstating workers
than did their counterparts in Italy, Great Britain, or the United States.
But the potential was always there; and in the infamous Zabern-Affair in
1913 the army did use force against demonstrating civilians in Lorraine.2’
DEFENDING THE PRAETORIAN GUARD

Because the army was designed for use as a police force against the
monarchy’s domestic enemies, the political reliability of the soldiers was
a critical concern; and it occasioned some of the army leadership’s most
severe problems. How was the army, whose soldiers were conscripts and
whose officers were drawn increasingly from the middle classes, to be kept

immune to socialism and antimonarchical sentiments? How could a mass

army serve as the praetorians of the regime?
The military authorities, particularly the war ministry and the military
cabinet, attempted to mold a socially and politically homogenous army
dedicated to traditional values. They placed special emphasis on preserv
ing a conservative, monarchical spirit in the officer corps. Traditionally,
the Prussian officer corps had been the domain of the Junkers, the north-
German Protestant aristocracy. As late as 1865, 65 percent of all Prussian
officers were of noble background.“ Demographic trends after 1871 re
duced the nobility to a tiny minority of the German population, so military
authorities had no choice but to allow men of middle-class background
into the officer corps of the steadily expanding army. By 1885, only 44.1
percent of all officers were aristocrats; and by 1913 this number had dwin
dled to 30 percent. Still, in 1909, 60 percent of all generals were noblemen;
and in 1913, twenty-two of the twenty-five commanding generals were
aristocrats (the other three had been ennobled).31 In other words, on the
eve of war the principle still reigned within the German officer corps that
the higher the rank, the higher the percentage of aristocrats. The danger
remained, nonetheless, that appointing increasing numbers of non-noble
officers would lead to the spread of liberal and even democratic values
within the officer corps.
William II addressed this danger when, in spring 1890, he ordered that
not only “the nobility of birth, but the nobility of mind” would henceforth
be the criteria in the selection of candidates for the officer corps.32 This
order permitted the appointment of non-noble officers, but it made clear
that all candidates had to display conservative and monarchical values.
The order ushered in a recruitment policy that emphasized the principle
of suitable circles. Only candidates from the upper bourgeoisie, who were
conservative and could be trusted not to challenge the monarchical spirit
of the officer corps, could aspire to careers as officers, where they could
be “feudalized” by their aristocratic comrades. Liberals, most Catholics,
and all Social Democrats, as well as the sons of small businessmen and
artisans, were ineligible. The selection of officers by their regimental com
rades further ensured social and ideological homogeneity. Under these
circumstances, the officer corps remained aloof from the rest of society, a
reliable tool of the crown.
Eckart Kehr regarded the feudalization of the officer corps as the army’s
principal effect on German society, for it helped integrate the bourgeoisie
into an existing order still dominated by the aristocracy.33 In Kehr’s view,
this phenomenon was intensifed by the institution of the reserve officer.
Reserve officers, most of whom were of non-noble background, served
only one year in the army, but they were trained and selected according
to the same principles as regular officers. In civilian life, they were ex
pected to observe the spirit of the officer corps and to promote the mili

tarization of society. Recent research has shown that the recruitment of

reserve officers observed the same principle of suitable circles.34 While this
practice confined the military’s direct impact to certain sectors of the bour
geoisie, it served nonetheless to fortify the role of the officer corps, both
active and reserve, as the avant-garde of the regime.
The army paid a high price for the conservative homogeneity of its
officer corps. In defending the traditions of the Prussian officer corps, the
military leadership rejected the bourgeois ideal of education.3-' As a con
sequence, many officers were unable to keep up with the rapid scientific
and technological advances of the decades prior to 1914. The army became
increasingly confined by tradition, and it neglected opportunities offered
by economic and technological innovation.36 The general staff was the only
exception to this rule. Here professional expertise reigned supreme, and
staff officers were selected according to strictest standards of education
and achievement. A high proportion of staff officers were of non-noble
background. Efficiency and specialization informed the spirit of the gen
eral staff, which was the army’s most modern institution. But this same
spirit also resulted in the general staff’s single-minded focus on strategic
planning to the neglect of broader issues.37
Low standards of education were even more typical of noncommis
sioned officers. Since NCOs were principally responsible for training re
cruits, the military leadership took special care to safeguard their
reliability. Once again a policy of suitable circles applied, but here it pre
scribed recruiting among peasants and the petty bourgeoisie of the small
towns, which were traditionally loyal to the ruling elites. Young men
drawn from these groups could be trusted to become obedient subordi
nates. Until 1918, the social character of the noncommissioned officer
corps remained remarkably stable. Because critical thinking was discour
aged in NCOs, the authorites insisted on recruiting poorly educated men,
who were then paid well and guaranteed positions in the civilian admin
istration when they left the army.38
The principle of suitable circles even applied to the recruitment of com
mon soldiers. Since conscription was not fully implemented, recruitment
bureaus could discriminate among those men liable for service. The result
was a vast overrepresentation of conscripts of rural and small-town back
grounds. While 42 percent of the German population lived in the coun
tryside in 1911, 64.1 percent of that year’s recruits were of rural origin;
22.3 percent came from small towns, 7 percent from mid-sized cities, and
only 6 percent from big cities.3*4 The military administration preferred to
recruit common soldiers from the traditionally loyal and conservative
countryside. The aim was to avoid training members of the urban working
class in the use of firearms. Social Democrats were to be kept out of the
army. Even if urban workers made good soldiers, as the war minister Karl
von Einem admitted to the Reichstag in 1904, the loyalty of soldiers was

more important than their quality. “I prefer a monarchist and religious

soldier to a Social Democrat,” Einem insisted, “even if he is not as good
a shot.”40
However, demographic changes, increasing urbanization, and the
growth of the Social Democratic labor movement made it ever more dif
ficult to keep the army pure. The military administration resorted to var
ious means to limit Social Democratic influence in the army; these
included patriotic education for recruits, prohibiting socialist agitation, and
forming blacklists of known Social Democrats. All these measures were
of little avail. The army also lost a cherished instrument for disciplining
recruits in 1892, when, over the fierce resistance of the Kaiser and military
conservatives, the chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, agreed to shorten the
three-year active service to two as the price of parliamentary support for
his rearmament program.
The only way for the military leadership to sustain the homogeneity and
loyalty of the army at all levels was to limit its size. Only if conscription
were not fully carried out could the recruitment of officers, NCOs, and
common soldiers be restricted, at least in principle, to suitable circles. Con
servative militarism, the policy of using the army as a praetorian guard in
defense of the existing order, thus militated against a military build-up.
After the turn of the century, this issue became central in a heated battle
between the war ministry and the general staff over armament policy.
STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THE DANGER OF WAR

ON TWO FRONTS
Within months of the end of the Franco-Prussian War, on 27 August
1871, Moltke completed a new operational plan for a future war. In it he
confronted for the first time the problem of a war on two fronts, against
France and Russia. The chief of the general staff was convinced that Rus
sian expansionism would sooner or later lead to military confrontation
with Austria-Hungary. Because Germany could not stand by while its
southern neighbor was crushed by superior forces, Moltke regarded a war
between Germany and Russia as an unavoidable consequence. France, he
believed, would then join Russia in order to regain its losses of 1870-1871.
In an exercise of worst-case thinking, Moltke thus defined early the prin
cipal strategic problem that occupied the German army in the decades to
come.
The danger of a war on two fronts was exacerbated by the improbability
of any rapid military decision in “the age of people’s war.” Moltke himself
noted in his operational plan that Germany “could not hope to deal
quickly with one enemy, by means of a rapid and successful offensive, and
to free itself to deal with the other enemy. We have just experienced how
difficult it was to bring the war with France to an end, even though it was

crowned with military victory.”41 In a future war, therefore, Germany

faced the danger of being crushed between two enemies whose combined
forces were far stronger than Germany’s.
Moltke desperately sought ways to overcome this problem. Twice, in
1875 and 1887, he approached Bismarck with demands for a preventive
war—first against France, then against Russia. But Bismarck rejected
these demands, which made no sense even from a military standpoint.
Moltke himself had conceded, in every strategic plan he devised between
1871 and 1887, that rapid and lasting victory against either power was
impossible, because armies had become too large to be destroyed quickly,
and not even the most crushing defeat would prevent the mobilization of
whole nations to continue the war. War was no longer a matter only for
professional soldiers; conscription and increased popular participation in
politics had made war the concern of whole peoples. In these circum
stances, the short, decisive campaigns that had marked Prussia’s traditional
mode of warfare stood little chance of success.
After he failed to find a solution to the strategic problem of war on two
fronts, Moltke concluded during his last years that war should be avoided.
In a speech to the Reichstag on 14 May 1890, he advised that in the “age
of people’s war” any military confrontation among the great powers would
turn into an unpredictable adventure, which could last thirty years and
destroy the whole of Europe. The alternative was a forceful policy of
deterrence to keep war-mongers in check. This was wise advice, but it
appeared to concede that the armed forces were no longer a useful tool
for resolving diplomatic conflicts. It thus threatened to undermine the
German army’s privileged position in society. Most historians have agreed
that Moltke’s successors did not heed his advice and that they clung in
stead to the short-war illusion. Operational planning after 1891 suggests
as much, for it was devoted to the quest for a strategic solution to the
problem of a two-front war—even to the point of following Moltke’s ear
lier counsel and advocating preventive war, which would turn a simul-
teanous war against France and Russia into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Despite recent research on the general staff and strategic planning, it is
unclear why, after the turn of the century, the general staff concluded that
a short campaign against France was feasible.42 In fact, questions have
arisen about whether leading generals ignored contemporary insight into
the likelihood of protracted war in the future. Moltke was not the only
observer who at that time was warning of the catastrophe of a long war.
In 1898, the Polish author Ivan Bloch published a work that demonstrated
the disastrous consequences of any major war; and in 1904, the Social
Democratic leader August Bebel made the same point in a powerful
speech to the Reichstag.43
The famous plan to salvage the Prussian mode of warfare bears the
name of Alfred von Schlieffen. During his tenure as chief of the general

468 Imperial Germany
staff, from 1891 to 1906, Schlieffen worked obsessively to master the prob
lem of a war on two fronts. Upon his retirement, he left a long memoran
dum to his successor that summarized the result of his work. This was the
Schlieffen Plan, the “recipe for victory” in a war against France and Rus
sia. Schlieffen proposed a short campaign, to smash the French army in
about six weeks while German forces remained on the defensive in the
east against Russia. The bulk of the army was accordingly to be concen
trated in the west, with only weak forces deployed in the east, where the
slow mobilization of the Russian army was expected to delay an attack.
Unlike Moltke, Schlieffen believed in the possibility of a rapid victory over
France if the proper strategy were employed. The German army was to
march through neutral Belgium into northern France, to encircle Paris,
and then to swing southeast until all French forces were enveloped along
the Franco-German border. Schlieffen intended to reduce the western
campaign to one immense battle that would annihilate the French army.
The German army would thereupon turn East against the Russians.44
The Schlieffen Plan was extraordinarily complicated. To make possible
its execution, Schlieffen planned almost every detail, from railroad time
tables to marching orders for individual units. The plan allowed no room
for flexibility, nor for improvisation to contend with the unpredictability
of warfare. Furthermore, it underestimated the advantages that technology
had brought to defensive warfare and obstacles that French firepower
posed to the German attack. As its foremost historian has argued, the
Schlieffen Plan was a gigantic gamble whose success depended on perfect
conditions, flawless execution, and sheer luck.45 It was also based on blind
faith in a battle of annihilation.46 Schlieffen ignored the wider dimensions
of the campaign. He disregarded the possibility that the French might fight
on after the defeat of their field armies. He overlooked the impact of a
British naval blockade, and he badly underestimated Russia’s military
strength. Still, the general staff stuck by the Schlieffen Plan, and in 1913
they dropped the alternative plan for an initial offensive against Russia.47
If the Schlieffen Plan was such a hazardous gamble, why did Imperial
Germany’s military and political leadership cling to it? Why did Schlieffen
devise such a plan in the first place? Schlieffen himself hinted at the rea
sons in an article that he published in 1910, in which he argued that a war
against Germany’s neighbors was sooner or later unavoidable. But he also
recognized that such a war could become protracted, ruin the economy,
undermine the social and political system, and perhaps lead to revolution.
In these circumstances, he believed, there was no alternative to a short,
decisive campaign.4* The Schlieffen Plan seems like an act of desperation,
a vain attempt to make the next war into a military campaign that the
generals and the political leadership could control and an effort to forestall
historical forces leading toward a “total” war, which would involve whole
nations to the point of exhaustion. Paradoxically, the Schlieffen Plan was

also a conservative strategy, which was designed to spare the regime from
the strains of modern warfare.49
Although he had doubts about the Schlieffen Plan and made critical
adjustments to it, Schlicffen’s successor, General Helmuth von Moltke the
Younger, saw no alternative to it. He defended the principles that under
lay it against attempts (few as they were) by the political leadership to
abandon the breach of Belgian neutrality.50 His success demonstrated the
power of the general staff within Imperial Germany’s ruling elites. But
Moltke also radicalized the plan when, under the prodding of his subor
dinate, Colonel Erich Ludendorff, he programmed a surprise attack on
the Belgian city of Liège. As a consequence, German troops were com
mitted to taking this important railroad junction immediately upon the
mobilization of the German forces. In any international crisis, therefore,
the German government stood in danger of losing control to the generals.
Defending the viability of the Schlieffen Plan became the obsession of
the general staff. It was critical to make the German army strong enough
to carry out the offensive against France without being overrun by the
Russians in the East. The general staff accordingly took an increasing
interest in armament policy and embarked on a course that clashed with
conservative ideas about keeping the army small and politically reliable.
THE CONFLICT OVER THE SIZE OF THE ARMY

Between 1871 and 1914, the revolution in military technology acceler
ated. The introduction of smokeless powder, advanced breech-loading ri
fles, machine guns, and heavier, more accurate, and faster-firing artillery
contributed to an enormous increase in firepower. Automobiles, zeppelins,
and the first airplanes opened new military prospects on the eve of the
war. These developments increased the dependence of the military au
thorities on the private firms that alone were capable of mass producing
the new equipment. Firms such as Krupp thus gained considerable influ
ence over military procurement. Further research is needed about the ex
tent to which the development of a “military-industrial complex” can be
traced back to this period.51
Europe’s armies were, in all events, caught up in a technological race.
The Germans and French, in particular, competed to provide their armies
with the latest equipment.52 The size of armies remained the most crucial
factor nonetheless. While technology worked to the advantage of the stra
tegic defense, many generals were confident that manpower, if available
in sufficient quantities, would overcome increased firepower. Thus the
arms race prior to 1914 was principally a rush for numbers; its dynamic
lay in the logic of conscription.51
For the military authorities in Germany, this logic implied a grave prob
lem. Conscription meant the integration of civilians into the military ma-

chine, and it led to increased demands for public participation in military

policy. Attempts to enlarge the size of the army, and hence the military
budget, threatened to strengthen the Reichstag’s influence in military af
fairs. Above all, increases in the armed forces endangered the homoge
neity of the army, insofar as they undermined the policy of social
discrimination in the recruitment of conscripts, NCOs, and officers. How
ever desirable on strategic terms, the full implementation of conscription
was politically dangerous; and it became the most contentious question in
army policy.
The history of German armament policy during Bismarck’s tenure in
office has yet to be written. It is clear, though, that before the formation
of the Franco-Russian alliance, the German military and political author
ities saw no need to implement conscription fully. Even the elder Moltke
regarded this possibility as a threat to the homogeneity of the German
army and a provocation to the country’s neighbors.54
However, as Germany’s strategic position deteriorated in the face of the
Franco-Russian rapprochement, Julius von Verdy du Vernois, the war
minister, in 1890 worked out a plan for the full institution of conscription,
which, he calculated, would increase the army’s strength by 150,000 men.
To minimize the impact of this step on the army’s political reliability, he
was determined to retain the three-year term of active service. When he
laid this program before the Reichstag, a large majority rejected it as the
parliament demonstrated for the first time its power in armament policy.
A few months later, Caprivi introduced a second army bill, which aban
doned the attempt to achieve full conscription and called for an increase
of “only” 72,032 men. In addition, the chancellor offered to lower the
term of active service for the infantry to two years and to shorten the
duration of the military budget from seven to five years. This bill, too, met
with fierce parliamentary resistance. Only after new elections and a further
reduction in the increase to fewer than 60,000 men did Caprivi get his
way. From then on, it was clear that armament policy required compro
mise with the parliament.
This pattern continued during the following years, as the Reichstag re
duced the army bills of 1899 and 1905. But these bills were small to begin
with, for the naval build-up after 1897 diverted financial resources to the
navy, and the war ministry lost interest in major increases in the army.
Conservative militarism reigned supreme in armament policy, and the war
ministry abandoned the idea of full conscription.55
The general staff, however, was meanwhile growing anxious about the
strategic situation. While the peacetime strength of the German army was
587,858 in 1904, the French had 575,000 men under arms, and the Russians
984,000.56 Beginning in 1899, Schlieffen pressed the war ministry to in
crease troop strength, but a succession of war ministers rejected his de
mand. Schlieffen refused to give in. Instead, the final version of his great

plan in 1906 prescribed a degree of German superiority in numbers on the

Western front that simply did not exist at that time. Eight army corps,
without which the Schlieffen Plan could not succeed, were missing.57
Schlieffcn thus made it clear to his successor that full implementation of
conscription was indispensable for the general staff’s strategic plan and
that a dramatic increase in the size of the army was an matter of national
security.
As a result of departmental rivalry within the military administration,
however, the war ministry was not fully informed about the details of the
Schlieffcn Plan, and this agency continued to block attempts to increase
the army’s strength. The younger Moltke was too weak to overcome this
resistance, until pressure arose from an unexpected quarter. When the
government presented another modest army bill to the Reichstag in 1910,
Ernst Bassermann, leader of the National Liberal Party, broke with par
liamentary tradition and criticized the military leadership for evading full
conscription and neglecting the army. Less than a year later, when a storm
broke in parliament over the alleged timidity of German foreign policy
during the Agadir Crisis, representatives of other parties followed suit in
criticizing the military establishment. The chancellor, Theobald von Beth-
mann Hollweg, who feared the diplomatic consequences of another naval
bill, used this opportunity to force the reluctant war ministry to draft an
extraordinary army bill. Over the opposition of only the Social Democrats,
parliament voted an increase in the army of 38,890 men.
Behind this unexpected development lay a significant change in middle-
class public opinion. Rising international tensions eased acceptance of an
accelerated armaments policy. More important, years of imperialistic and
militaristic propaganda, from the government and elsewhere, had softened
resistance to the full implementation of conscription. The organizations of
the new right, led by the Pan-German League, had spread a new, populist
militarism, which called for a radical military build-up as the foundation
for an aggressive foreign policy. This new bourgeois militarism was at odds
with the conservative military policy of the traditional establishment. The
leaders of the political right were prepared to challenge the exclusive
power of the authorities and to take military policy into their own hands.
Thus the drive for more public participation in military affairs took a new,
more aggressive and dangerous turn.58 Bourgeois militarism found support
not only among the National Liberals, Pan-Germans, and other patriotic
organizations. In January 1912, the retired general and professional prop
agandist, August Keim, founded a new mass organization, the German
Army League, which called for full implementation of conscription in or
der to prepare for war.59 The government then came under constant fire
in the parliament and from public opinion to intensify its armament policy.
Because Bethmann Hollweg could not afford to lose the support of the
bourgeois right after Social Democratic electoral victories in 1912, the

bourgeois militarists enjoyed more influence than their numbers would

have suggested.
In this situation, the general staff decided to push for the increases that
the Schlieffen Plan seemed to require. In December 1912, the younger
Moltke demanded, again under the prodding of Ludendorff, that full con
scription be implemented. The army’s strength was to increase by the stag
gering figure of 300,000 men. The war minister, Josias von Heeringen, was
horrified and insisted that an increase of such magnitude would require
the recruitment of officers and NCOs from less suitable circles that were
open to democratic ideas. But because William II, the chancellor, and the
bourgeois militarists supported the general staff, Heeringen succeeded
only in limiting the increase to 120,000 men. The army bill of 1913 was
nevertheless the largest in the history of Imperial Germany, and once
again the Reichstag accepted it.
Full conscription was still not a reality, however. According to the new
war minister, Erich von Falkenhayn, 38,000 conscripts were not called up
from the class of 1913 alone.60 Moltke therefore demanded yet another
army bill, but this time Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn refused. After
France and Russia reacted to the German army bill of 1913 with bills of
their own, which threatened to give them a numerical superiority over the
Germans by 1917, Moltke grew increasingly anxious about a war on two
fronts. But he regarded such a war as inevitable, and during the July Crisis
in 1914 he pressed the political leadership for a preemptive strike.
But the general staff did not believe that the Schlieffen Plan represented
a fool-proof recipe for victory. Recent research has revealed a profound
pessimism among many leading generals.61 The younger Moltke himself
harbored no illusions about a short war. He repeatedly warned that even
a war against France alone would, in an age of people’s war, result in a
protracted, bloody affair, which would exhaust all winners and losers alike.
On 28 July 1914, he wrote to the chancellor that a “world war” was loom
ing that would “destroy European civilization for decades to come.”62 De
spite this prophecy, Moltke urged Bethmann to act immediately. The idea
that war was inevitable thus became a self-fulfilling prophecy.61 The gen
eral staff was not powerful enough to push through all of its armament
program, but its position was sufficiently strong to push a tottering gov
ernment over the brink of war in 1914.
The contradiction between Moltke’s realistic pessimism and his demand
for action has not yet been explained sufficiently. Perhaps he feared dam
aging the status of the officer corps should he admit that the army could
no longer guarantee victory. Moltke and many of his fellow officers were,
in addition, influenced by Social Darwinist ideologies that cast war not
only as a natural occurrence, but also as beneficial to the development of
civilization.64 In this context, the willingness to start a war whose outcome
was problematic might also be interpreted as a revolt against forces of

modernization, which threatened social institutions that the Wiihelmine

elites sought desperately to preserve. Perhaps, on the other hand, a per
verse understanding of military valor persuaded the generals to fight. The
remarks that Falkenhayn made to the horrified chancellor on 4 August
1914 could be understood in this light. “Even if we are destroyed in the
conflict,” he said, “it will have been a beautiful experience.”65 In all events,
it has become clear that the military origins of the war will have to be
redrawn to accommodate what has recently been learned about the gen
eral staff’s views of the Schlieffen plan. In the eyes of Moltke and his
entourage, this plan was not designed to engineer a short war; it repre
sented instead the first move in a long war. It was a plan for an initial
campaign in the west, which would provide the German army an advan
tageous position from which to sustain an extended conflict against at least
three major antagonists. The Schlieffen Plan thus retained an enormous
importance for Germany’s military leadership; but its significance had
changed since its original conception.
The July crisis provides perhaps the best illustration of the army’s role
in Imperial German society. The army did not dominate the social and
political system, as historians like Kelir and Wehler have argued. Instead,
it found itself pressured on all sides to allow more participation and con
trol by civilians. The general staff did not constitute the “the Reich’s true
super-leadership.”66 It was embroiled instead in administrative rivalries
that hampered the consistent formulation of military policy. But in a so
ciety and political system wrought by class tension, both the army in
general and the general staff in particular were powerful institutions none
theless, and they exerted considerable influence in decision making. Most
fatefully, they did so in July 1914, when the domestic and international
crises paralyzed the civilian government, and even the Social Democrats
were unable to resist the pressures for war.
THE NAVY IN IMPERIAL GERMANY:

THE TIRPITZ PLAN
Unlike the army, Imperial Germany’s navy was a federal institution.
Article 53 of the constitution stipulated that the Kaiser alone was to com
mand the navy. Its personnel was to be conscripted, particularly among
civilian sailors. The Reich alone was to provide the finances. There were
no state contingents, and the German princes were excluded from the
command structure.67 The navy was administered by the Imperial Naval
Office (Reichsmarineamt), which was a federal agency, and commanded
in wartime by the admiral staff, the equivalent of the army’s general staff.
To this extent, the navy appeared to be the fulfillment of the liberals’
dream during the revolution of 1848—a unified navy to serve as the in
strument of German sea power.68 The navy was untainted by Prussian

47a imperial Germany
militarist traditions, and its officer corps was predominantly bourgeois by

background.69 Consequently, the navy was more popular than the army
among the majority of the civilian public, for whom it represented the
expression of a modern spirit. However, neither the Reichstag nor the
civilian government had immediate power over the navy, for the Kaiser’s
supreme command was even more entrenched here than in the case of the
army. Only by virtue of its right to approve the budget could the Reichstag
influence the development of the navy. As in the case of the army, su
preme command and budgetary authorization clashed. Attempts to in
crease the size of the navy, too, were bound to broaden the scope of the
Reichstag’s influence.
During the first twenty-six years of its existence, the Imperial navy
played a subordinate role within the German armed forces. Prussia and
the other German states had traditionally been land powers. Although the
military revolution at sea provided an opening for the minor naval powers
to compete with the Royal Navy, as in the 1850s it ushered in a race to
install modern naval guns and armor plating, the Germans initially made
no attempt to exploit this opportunity. Until 1888, in part with British aid,
they embarked on only a small ship-building program. The navy remained
geared to coastal defense rather than to defending Germany’s overseas
interests in a major conflict. German ship building lacked any coherent
plan, as the first generation of armored ships became outdated in the 1880s
and navies experimented with new weapons, ships, tactics, and strategies.
In the 1890s, however, Germany exploited a second chance to become a
major sea power.
Establishing the German navy as a major instrument of power was the
“achievement” of the Wilhelmine era. It began when William II ascended
the throne in 1888. He was a naval enthusiast, whose slogan, “Germany’s
future lies at sea,” became a popular catchword. The idea of a major ship
building program developed in the context of the new imperialism of the
age. William and many bourgeois nationalists believed that Germany
needed a large colonial empire in order to become a world power. Hence,
they argued, a powerful navy was necessary not only to protect existing
colonies, but also to enable the Reich to compete in the ongoing partition
of the world among the colonial powers.
Before 1897, these dreams resulted in no clearly defined programs of
naval construction or foreign policy.70 On 6 June 1897, William appointed
Bernhard von Billow as foreign secretary and Alfred von Tirpitz as sec
retary of the Imperial Naval Office. These appointments marked the be
ginning of the era of Weltpolitik (world policy) and the Tirpitz Plan. They
were closely interconnected. Blilow, who in 1900 became chancellor, in
tended to compete with Great Britain for world-power status and to pres
sure this country into granting Germany “a fair share” in carving up the

less developed world.71 The navy was to provide the military basis for an
aggressive and dangerous foreign policy.
Tirpitz worked out the naval plan to go with it. His aim was to build a
licet of battleships that could challenge and eventually defeat the Royal
Navy. He calculated that a ratio of strength of 2:3 between the German
and the British fleets would give the Germans a chance for victory. He
reasoned that the Royal Navy had worldwide commitments, particularly
in the Mediterranean, while Germany could concentrate all its ships in the
North Sea, where an Anglo-German conflict at sea would doubtless take
place. A German naval threat of this magnitude, Tirpitz believed, would
force Britain to accept Germany on equal footing as a world power.72 To
achieve this goal, Tirpitz required a huge ship-building program. Even if
a new generation of battleships did bring an opportunity to narrow the
gap with the Royal Navy, the British could be expected to reply with an
armament program of their own. But Tirpitz was prepared for a naval race
with Great Britain. He believed that Germany would prevail because of
its greater economic strength and moral resolve, the better quality of
German ships, and superior reserves of manpower. There remained the
problem of a “danger zone,” as Tirpitz himself called it. The British might
be so alarmed by the German ship-building program to try a preemptive
strike, while the German navy would not be strong enough for years to
survive a confrontation with the Royal Navy. Tirpitz therefore attempted
to hide his real intentions from the public, while for the time being he
advocated a cautious German foreign policy vis-à-vis Britain. A grave de
terioration in Anglo-German relations nonetheless set in. In fact, in the
words of Volker Bcrghahn, the Tirpitz Plan marked the beginning of a
“cold war” between Germany and Britain.” More pointedly, Billow’s for
eign policy and the Tirpitz Plan constituted one of the greatest follies in
the history of Imperial Germany. They needlessly brought the Reich a
new enemy in an environment already rendered dangerous by the antag
onism with France and Russia.
Tirpitz recognized that Germany required an an uninterrupted build-up
if it were to stand a chance in the naval race against Britain. 'Hie navy
needed a systematic, long-term ship-building program to replace the cha
otic policies of the preceding decades. There was another dimension to
the problem. Tirpitz had no intention of making his building program
dependent, like the army’s armament policies, on the changing mood of
the Reichstag. If the Reichstag could be convinced to support a long-term
program, parliamentary influence in naval affairs would diminish. Con
cealing his real aims, courting the political parties, and organizing a
powerful propaganda campaign therefore became the essential elements
in his policy. The navy was to become the Empire’s great symbol, around
which patriots could rally as a block against the Social Democrats. Eckart
Kehr first laid bare the domestic dimension of the Tirpitz Plan, and Volker

Berghahn has elaborated this thesis.74 In some respects, the Tirpitz Plan
resembled the abortive Verdy program for the army. Both were attempts
to undercut the influence of parliament in military affairs by establishing
an automatic mechanism for expanded arms appropriations. The Tirpitz
Plan, too, represented an aspect of the ongoing conflict between the mil
itary’s quest for exclusiveness and the demand of the civilian public for
participation.
Tirpitz was initially more successful than Verdy. In 1898 and 1900, the
Reichstag agreed to a ship-building program that was to yield forty-five
ships of the line by 1920. The Conservatives accepted this program grudg
ingly, for they feared strengthening the industrialized western parts of
Germany at the expense of the rural east. On the other hand, both the
Center party, which had traditionally opposed armament measures, and
the Liberals voted for Tirpitz’s navy bills. Their support fed hopes of form
ing a bourgeois block in support of the government’s naval policy.
An extensive propaganda campaign by the Imperial Naval Office, which
had formed a special public relations bureau for this purpose, was one of
the reasons for the success.75 The navy in fact became popular among the
German bourgeoisie. The new battleships symbolized modernity and the
power of the Reich. It even became fashionable to dress one’s children as
sailors.
But there was more to this phenomenon. The ideology of imperialism
had been spreading among German patriots since the 1880s, and the idea
of building a battle fleet to be an instrument of colonial empire tapped
easily into this ideology. But the currency of this ideology was not an
unmixed blessing to the ruling establishment. Bourgeois imperialists de
manded results, and the government received their support only as long
as it could deliver. The Pan-German League undertook naval propaganda
on its own, and its demands for building warships were more radical than
Tirpitz’s plan could accommodate. To control this kind of independent
propaganda, Tirpitz supported in 1898 the founding of the German Navy
League, which, he hoped, would defer to the official line. The Navy
League rapidly became one of Germany’s largest organizations, but in
1900 it began to turn against the government, for the radical nationalists
in its leadership were not prepared to endorse conservative building pol
icies dictated from above. The debate over naval propaganda therefore
represented the beginning of the conflict between the conservative mili
tarism of the establishment and the ultranationalistic militarism of the
middle-class patriotic societies.76 Although the propaganda helped him
rally the support of the bourgeois parties in the Reichstag, Tirpitz was in
danger of losing control over the radical right-wing civilians who de
manded a voice in naval affairs.
If the naval leadership’s exclusive claims to power came under attack
in the political arena, they were nonexistent in the field of industry. Ship

building was a far more complicated, expensive, and sophisticated under

taking than equipping the army. The navy could not manage procurement
within its own shipyards. The Imperial Naval Office had instead to coop
erate with the civilians who managed heavy industry. On the whole, this
cooperation was successful. In particular, Krupp, the great arms manufac
turer, was willing to work closely with the navy, for the firm had an interest
in selling guns and armor plates, which yielded high profits despite the
heavy capital investments their production required. Krupp was also pre
pared to invest in ship building itself, although this was a less profitable
business. Krupp helped in this fashion to maintain the naval program and
to feed the demand for guns and armor plates. However, all the invest
ments in production and research demanded secure prospects for sales,
and this consideration recommended the long-term character of the Tirpitz
Plan. Were the plan to fail, the navy was threatened with the loss of its
industrial basis.77
THE FAILURE OF THE “LUXURY FLEET”

By 1901, when Tirpitz’s ship-building program was underway, the atten
dant financial problems had already become apparent. The construction
of a battleship fleet strained the Reich’s budget well beyond available
revenues. Attempts to increase revenues by reforming the financial system,
particularly by introducing direct taxes on the well-to-do, foundered on
domestic politics.78 Much of the money for the naval build-up thus had to
come from cuts in other areas. The obvious target for such cuts was the
army, whose budget comprised almost 60 percent of the Reich s expen
ditures. Supported by William II and the chancellor, the Imperial Naval
Office pressed the treasury to put financial constraints on the army to the
benefit of the navy. In July 1898, the treasury secretary. Max Freiherr von
Thielmann, wrote to the war ministry demanding that the upcoming army
bill be restricted for the sake of the next navy bill. In February 1900,
Thielmann asked the war minister once again to avoid additional expenses
in order to keep the ship-building program alloat. In fact, as Berghahn
points out, the Reich’s leadership apparently decided at this point to give
the navy financial priority over the army.79 The results spoke tor them
selves. Between 1901 and 1911, the naval budget rose from 207.8 million
Marks to 451.9 million Marks. In the same period, the navy s share of
federal expenditure increased from 17.9 to 26.5 percent, while the army s
share fell from 58.3 to 48.3 percent.*’ The war ministry made no attempt
to resist this trend, because financial retrenchment precluded significant
increases in the army’s numerical strength and helped the war ministry
protect the army’s social homogeneity. The naval build-up was thus pur
sued at the expense of Germany’s military strength on land.
Nevertheless, financial problems soon haunted the navy as well. In Feb

ruary 1906, the Royal Navy launched a new battleship, the Dreadnought.
This vessel added a new dimension to ship building. Compared to ordinary
ships of the line, its size was larger by a third and its complement of guns
was more than double. The Dreadnought reduced all existing ships of the
line to obsolescence. To the surprise of the Imperial Naval Office, the
British continued to build these new battleships at a fast pace, so the naval
race took a new turn. Henceforth not only quantity counted. Keeping pace
with new standards of quality took on the utmost importance. This de
velopment jeopardized Tirpitz’s plan for a steady, predictable building
program. To keep up with the Royal Navy, the German navy had both to
maintain its rhythm in ship building and to raise the technical quality of
its battleships to the new British standard. But the financial burdens of
this undertaking were too great. Resistance to reforming the tax system
made it impossible to find the money for such an enormous program.
Hence, in the navy bill of 1908, Tirpitz had to cut the annual rate of
battleship building from three to two. For all intents and purposes, the
naval race was lost.
To make matters worse, Billow's Weltpolitik ran aground at the same
time. The first Moroccan crisis in 1905 demonstrated Germany’s interna
tional isolation. The Anglo-Russian rapprochement of the following years
convinced Biilow that Germany could not force Britain to its knees with
military threats. In September 1908, he therefore agreed to a change in
policy. To break Germany’s isolation and to win a free hand on the Eur
opean continent, he began to pursue an agreement with Great Britain. To
this end, he was willing to sacrifice the Tirpitz Plan in order to conclude
a treaty on naval armaments with Great Britain. Although Biilow resigned
shortly later in connection with the Daily Telegraph Affair, his successor,
Bethmann Hollweg, made detente with Britain the main goal of his own
foreign policy. Tirpitz had lost his support within the political leadership.
Because of his skillful management of the parties, Tirptiz had hitherto
enjoyed the support of a majority of the Reichstag. Even after 1908, the
parliament accepted every navy bill with but few cuts. Propaganda from
the Imperial Naval Office and the Navy League kept the navy popular in
bourgeois circles until the slowing of the pace of ship building, which be
came necessary after introduction of the Dreadnought, led to an estrange
ment between the two former allies in this propaganda venture. The
radical nationalists in the Navy League refused to accept German defeat
in the naval race. Instead, they attacked Tirpitz for his timidity. Once
again, civilians sought to interfere in military policy. The Imperial Naval
Office responded in 1908 by forcing the radicals out of the Navy League,
but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Not only did it deprive the navy of the support
of influential bourgeois militarists, but the disgruntled radicals, led by Au
gust Keim, joined the Pan-German League, in which, in view of the evi
dent failure of Weltpolitik, they prepared a propaganda campaign for
increased armaments for the army.

Tirpitz felt the consequences of these developments after the Agadir

Crisis in 1911. As his ship-building program faltered, the admiral at
tempted to exploit the renewed nationalistic excitement, which accompa
nied Britain’s diplomatic intervention in this crisis, to put naval
construction back on track with a new navy bill. He had no difficulty
convincing William II of the need for such a bill, but the chancellor, who
still hoped for a diplomatic understanding with London, responded by
forcing the war ministry to introduce a new army bill, which would pre
empt the financial resources needed for an acceleration of naval arma
ments. As a result, the navy bill that actually passed in 1912 was too small
to repair the Tirpitz Plan. Bethmann’s initiative demonstrated in addition
that the navy had lost its financial priority over the army, while the found
ing of the German Army League shifted the focus of popular propaganda
from the navy to the army.
The year 1912 was a disaster for the German “luxury fleet,” as Winston
Churchill, the First Lord of the British Admiralty, referred to it."1 As the
danger of war increased, it became apparent that the navy was not ready.
On 8 December 1912, the German government received another warning
that British intervention would result if the Germans started a war on the
continent. An overexcited William II thereupon convened his top generals
and admirals in a war council, in which the emperor demanded that the
military leadership prepare for war. Moltke, the chief of the general staff,
who already favored a preemptive strike, agreed. Tirpitz confessed that
the navy could not survive a confrontation with the Royal Navy, at least
until the spring of 1914, when the canal between the North and the Baltic
Seas could be widened to accommodate the new battleships. Tirpitz
therefore counseled the general staff to content itself in the meantime with
a new army bill, and in this way the architect of the navy lent his support
to the huge army bill of 1913, which exhausted almost all of Germany’s
financial reserves. At this point, Tirpitz himself abandoned the navy’s pri
ority to the army. The Tirpitz Plan was dead.
The war broke out before the implications of the German defeat in the
naval race were played out. By 1912, it was obvious that the German navy
could no longer challenge the British even in the area of manpower. The
relationship between the navy and industry was also on the verge of break
down; the demand for warships shrank, cutting into the profits of the arms
manufacturers.82 The outbreak of war in August 1914 saved Tirpitz from
final humiliation. However, the war itself demonstrated that the build-up
of the German “luxury fleet” had been a waste.
NOTES
1. Helmert and Usczeck, Preußischdeutsche Kriege.
2. Howard, Franco-Prussian War.
3. Best, War and Society.

4. Moltke, “Bemerkungen über den Einfluß.”

5. Showalter, Railroads and Rifles.
6. Hallgarten, Wettrüsten, 15.
7. Kennedy, British Naval Mastery.
8. Ritter, Staatskunst, 1: 159-205; Kehr, Primat, 57, 97-98.
9. Huber, Dokumente, 1; 501-14.
10. Ritter, Staatskunst, 1: 231—43; Busch, Oberbefehl.
11. Kessel, Moltke, 222-458.
12. Moltke, “Über den angeblichen Kriegsrath.”
13. Showalter, “German Grand Strategy,” 76-78.
14. Howard, Franco-Prussian War; Moltke, “Geschichte des deutsch
französischen Krieges.”
15. Förster, “Facing ‘People’s War.’ ”
16. Bartel and Engelberg, Die großpreußische Reichsgründung.
17. Born, “Reichsgründung,” 227.
18. Wehler, Kaiserreich, 150.
19. Ritter, Staatskunst, 1: 238-328.
20. Messerschmidt, Militär und Politik, 35-39.
21. Huber, Dokumente, 2: 398.
22. Craig, Politics o f the Prussian Army, 218.
23. Ritter, Staatskunst, 2: 150-53.
24. Deist, “Armee in Staat und Gesellschaft,” 316.
25. Quoted in Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 175.
26. Kehr, Primat, 97.
27. Höhn, Sozialismus und Heer, 3: 63-64.
28. Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 192.
29. Wehler, “Symbol”; Schoenbaum, Zabern.
31. Bald, “Sozialgeschichte der Rekrutierung,” 40; Demeter, Offizierkorps, 27.
32. Craig, 236.
33. Kehr, Primat, 57-60.
34. John, Reserveoffizierkorps.
35. Bald, Kaiserheer zur Bundeswehr, 9-10.
36. Schulte, Die deutsche Armee, 314-15.
37. Bald, Generalstab, 46-47.
38. Bald, Kaiserheer zur Bundeswehr, 48-74.
40. Quoted in Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 111.
41. Schmerfeld, Graf Moltke, 4-14.
42. Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning.
43. Bloch, Krieg. For an assessment see Storz, Kriegsbild, 43-51.
44. Reichsarchiv, Weltkrieg, 1,1: 49-66.
45. Ritter, Schlieffenplan, 68.
46. Wallach, Dogma der Vernichtungsschlacht, 93-96.
47. Gasser, “Entschluß.”
48. Schlieffen, “ Krieg der Gegenwart.”
49. Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 161-65.
50. Fischer, Krieg der Illusionen, 566-67.

51. Berghahn, Rüstung und Machtpolitik.
52. Meier-Wclcker and Grote, Handbuch, 5: 164-65.
53. Geyer, Rüstungspolitik, 12-13; Storz, Kriegsbild.
54. Kessel, 704-48.
55. Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 91-108, 129-43,
56. Rüdt von Collenberg, Deutsche Armee, 61.
57. Wallach, 94.
58. Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 226-33.
59. Chickering, "Deutscher Wehrverein”; Coetzee, Army League.
60. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandhungen des Reichstages, 294: 8455.
61. Förster, “Der deutsche Generalstab und die Illusion des kurzen Krieges.”
62. Moltke, Erinnerungen, 3-7.
63. Joll, Origins, 58-75, 201-6.
64. Storz, 79-91.
65. Afflcrbach, Ealkenhayn, 170.
66. Gasser, “Hegemonialkrieg,” 313-15.
67. Huber, Dokumente, 2: 396.
68. Duppler, Juniorpartner, 17-22.
69. Herwig, Naval Officer Corps, 37-153.
70. Lambi, The Navy and German Rower Politics, 31-39.
71. Winzen, Billows Weltmachtkonzept, 63-81.
72. Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, 197-200; cf. Steinberg, Yesterday's Deterrent;
Schüssler, Weltmachtstreben und Elottenbau.
73. Berghahn, Rüstung und Machtpolitik.
74. Kehr, Schlachtflottenbau; Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, esp. 117-22.
75. Deist, Flottenpolitik und Flottenpropaganda.
76. Förster, Doppelter Militarismus, 86-91; Eley, Reshaping.
77. Epkenhans, “Patriotismus und Geschäftsinteresse.”
78. Witt, Finanzpolitik, 58-315.
79. Berghahn, Tirpitz-Plan, 249-57.
80. Witt, Finanzpolitik, 380-81.
81. Herwig, "Luxury" Fleet, 5.
82. Epkenhans, Wilhelminische Flottenrüstung, 366-90,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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---------. Vom Kaiserheer zur Bundeswehr: Sozialstruktur des Militärs. Politik der
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-------- . "Zur sozialen Herkunft des Offiziers.” In Sozialgeschichte der Rekru-

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articles that should not be ignored.
Berghahn, Volker R. Der Tirpitz-Plan: Genesis und Verfall einer innenpolitischen
Krisenstrategie unter Wilhelm II. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971. A path-breaking
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gram. Its only drawback is its overstatement of its main thesis.
---------. Rüstung und Machtpolitik: Zur Anatomie des “kalten Krieges” vor 1914.
Düsseldorf: Droste, 1973. More than in his book on the Tirpitz Plan, Berg
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ship-building program after 1897.
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modern and worthwile reading.
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Busch, Eckart. Der Oberbefehl: Seine rechtliche Stellung in Preußen und Deutsch
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Coetzee, Marilyn Shevin. The German Army League: Popular Nationalism in Wil
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Craig, Gordon A. The Politics o f the Prussian Army, 1640-1945. Oxford: Oxford
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interesting, but recent research has superseded many of its findings.
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---------. Flottenpolitik und Flottenpropaganda: Das Nachrichtenbureau des Reichs-
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---------. “Zur Geschichte des preußischen Offizierkorps 1888-1918.” In Das deut
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2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Bernard & Graefe, 1962. The first and still useful
analysis of the social composition and attitudes of the German officer corps.
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navy until 1890. But the analysis is a little superficial.
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among the first to recognize the independent role of the radical nationalists
within the Navy League and the Pan-German League. However, as subse
quent research has demonstrated, some of his allegations about bourgeois
self-mobilization went too far.
Epkenhans, Michael. Die wilhelminische Flottenrüstung 1908-1914: Weltmachtstre
ben, industrieller Fortschritt, soziale Integration. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991.
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Plan stopped. It follows the development of German naval armaments until
1914 and investigates the relationship between the navy and big business.
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tries to prove too many conflicting theories at once.
---------. “Zwischen Patriotismus und Geschäftsinteresse: F. A. Krupp und die An
fänge des deutschen Schlachtflottenbaus.” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 15
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and the German navy, but it underestimates Krupp’s business interests in
emphasizing his patriotic zeal.
Fischer, Fritz. Krieg der Illusionen: Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914. 2nd ed.
Düsseldorf: Droste, 1969. One of Fischer’s two pathbreaking books on the
origins of World War I. It still makes fascinating reading, but many of its
more extreme allegations about Germany’s role in the origins of the war
have been superseded.
Förster, Stig. “Der deutsche Generalstab und die Illusion des kurzen Krieges
1871-1914: Metakritik eines Mythos.” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 54
(1995) forthcoming. A new interpretation of the thinking of German gen
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the short-war illusion.
---------. Der doppelte Militarismus. Die deutsche HeeresriLstungspolitik zwischen

Status-quo-Sicherung und Aggression 1890-1913. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag,

1985. An analysis of the domestic factors in Imperial Germany’s armaments
policy as well as a study of the problem of militarism.
--------- . “Facing ‘People’s War’: Moltke the Elder and Germany’s Military Options
after 1871.” The Journal o f Strategic Studies 10 (1987): 209-30. An analysis
of Moltke’s reaction to the experience of modern warfare.
Gasser, Adolf. “ Der deutsche Hegemonialkrieg von 1914.” In Deutschland in der
Weltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: Festschrift für Fritz Fischer zum
65. Geburtstag, ed. Imanuel Geiss and Bernd-Jürgen Wendt. Düsseldorf:
Droste, 1973. 307-40. Gasser takes the oversimplifying view that after 1912
the German leadership systematically planned for war.
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Festgabe für Edgar Bonjour, ed. Marc Sieber. Basel: Helbing und Lichten-
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1984. In this book, Michael Geyer, one of the foremost authorities on
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1871: Militärischer Verlauf. 5th ed. Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR, 1984.
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Herwig, Holger H. The German Naval Officer Corps: A Social and Political His
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German naval officer corps.
---------. “Luxury" Fleet: The Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918. London: Allen &
Unwin, 1980. Herwig’s more general analysis of the German navy has sim
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Höhn, Reinhard. Sozialismus und Heer. 3 vols. Berlin: Gehlen, 1956-1969. A de
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1870-71. 4th ed. London: Granada, 1968. In spite of its age, this book is
still by far the best on the war of 1870-1871. Howard provides a skillful
and consise analysis of the origins and course of this war and of the reasons
for the German victory. Moreover, this book is an excellent example of
modern historiography on war; it deals not only with the military and tech
nological aspects, but it also incorporates the social, economic, and political
background of military operations.
Huber, Ernst Rudolf, ed. Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte. 3 vols.
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1978. Contains sources relevant to Germany's con
stitutional development.

John, Hartmut. Das Reserveoffizierkorps im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914: Ein

sozialgeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Untersuchung der gesellschaftlichen Mili
tarisierung im Wilhelminischen Deutschland. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1981. In
this useful book, John sets out to prove Kehr right, but he succeeds only
in demonstrating the limits of Kehr’s theory of “the feudalization of the
German bourgeoisie.”
Joll, James. The Origins o f the First World War. London: Longman, 1984. The best
and most balanced study of the origins of Europe’s seminal catastrophe in
the twentieth century. Without letting the other powers off the hook, Joll
puts most of the blame on the German leadership, particularly on the gen
eral staff.
Kehr, Eckart. Der Primat der Innenpolitik: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur preußisch
deutschen Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans-Ulrich
Wehler. 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein, 1970. This collection of articles
contains some of Kehr’s most remarkable and influential research. By the
standards of the 1920s and early 1930s, when these articles were first pub
lished, Kehr’s approach was extremely modern. In the 1960s and 1970s,
Kehr’s combination of social and political history became the basis of an
important school of German historians, which included H.-U. Wehler, H.
J. Puhle, J. Kocka, and others. Some of Kehr’s provocative theories are
nonetheless somewhat outdated today.
--------- . Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894-1901: Versuch eines Querschnittes
durch die innenpolitischen, sozialen und ideologischen Voraussetzungen des
deutschen Imperialismus. Berlin: E. Ebering, 1930. This was the path
breaking analysis of the domestic dimensions of the Tirpitz Plan. It did not
sit well with contemporary German historians, but in the 1960s and 1970s
it became extremely influential with a new generation.
Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall o f British Naval Mastery. 2nd ed. London:
Macmillan, 1983. A useful handbook on Britain’s naval power, the decline
of which had much to do with the arms race against the Kaiser’s (lect.
Kessel, Eberhard. Moltke. Stuttgart: Koehler, 1957. The most useful biography of
Moltke the Elder.
Lambi, Ivo Nikolai. The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862-1914. Boston:
Allen & Unwin, 1984. In contrast to Kehr and Berghahn, Lambi concen
trates on the foreign-political and military aspects of Germany’s naval pol
icy. This book provides a useful supplement to the domestic interpretation
of the Tirpitz Plan.
Messerschmidt, Manfred. Militär und Politik in der Bismarckzeit und im Wilhel
minischen Deutschland. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgescllschaft,
1975. A short but informative overview of the older literature on the armed
forces in Imperial Germany.
Meier-Welcker, Hans and Wolfgang von Grote, eds. Handbuch zur deutschen Mi
litärgeschichte 1648-1939. 5 vols. München: Bernard & Graefe, 1979. A use
ful but slightly outdated survey that still provides the best information on
such little investigated areas as military technology of the army before 1914,
Moltke, Helmuth von. "Über den angeblichen Kriegsrath in den Kriegen König
Wilhelms I (1880-81).” In Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des
General Feldmarschalls Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, ed. Stanislaus von

Leszcynski. 8 vols. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1880-1881. 3: 417-28. Moltke’s

fierce attack on Bismarck’s mystification of the Wars of Unification also
provides insight into Moltke’s own ideas about these wars.
--------- . “Bemerkungen liber den Einfluß der verbesserten Feuerwaffen auf die
Taktik (1865).” ln Moltkes militärische Werke, ed. Großer Generalstab,
Kriegsgeschichtliche Abteilung I. 4 vols. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1892—
1912. 2: 49-65. Moltke’s pathbreaking article on the impact of modern fire
arms. Few contemporary generals heeded Moitke’s advice.
--------- . Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente 1877-1916: Ein Bild vom Kriegsaus
bruch, erster Kriegsführung und Persönlichkeit des ersten militärischen Füh
rers des Krieges. Ed. Eliza von Moltke. Stuttgart: Der kommende Tag, 1922.
A Compilation of papers and personal documents, this volume represents
his wife’s attempt to salvage his tarnished reputation.
--------- . “Geschichte des deutsch-französischen Krieges von 1870-71 (1888).” In
Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1880-1881. 3: 1-413. A
rather dull piece of conventional military historiography, this description of
the Franco-Prussian War nonetheless contains some of Moltke’s most re
markable observations on the principles of modern warfare.
Nipperdey, Thomas. Deutsche Geschichte 1800-1866: Bürgerwelt und starker Staat.
Munich: Bcck, 1983. This is one of the best books yet on German history
in this period.
Obermann, Emil. Soldaten, Bürger, Militaristen. Militär und Demokratie in
Deutschland. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1958. More a journalistic essay than serious
research, but still useful.
Reichsarchiv. Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918. 25 vols. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1925-1930.
The official German history of World War I. It contains not only detailed
descriptions of battles and campaigns but also a useful analysis of strategic
planning before the war. Perhaps the most important parts are the two final
volumes on German armament policy from 1871 to 1914. One of these
volumes contains many of the documents on armament policy that were
lost during World War II.
Ritter, Gerhard. Der Schlieffenplan: Kritik eines Mythos. Munich: Oldenbourg,
1956. Still the definitive book on the Schlieffen Plan. It contains a copy of
Schlieffen’s memorandum of January 1906, the original of which was lost
in World War II.
Ritter, Gerhard. Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: Das Problem des “Militarismus”
in Deutschland. 4 vols. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1954—1968. Despite a conser
vative and outdated approach, Ritter’s masterpiece on German military his
tory from Frederick the Great until 1918 still provides basic reading for any
scholar of German history in this period.
Rüdt von Collenberg, Ludwig Freiherr. Die deutsche Armee von 1871 bis 1914.
Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1922. Written shortly after defeat in World War
One, this book provides an apologetic account of the history of Imperial
Germany’s army. But because it relies on sources that have since been lost,
it is still useful.
Schlieffen, Alfred Graf von. "Der Krieg der Gegenwart.” In Gesammelte Schriften.

2 vols. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1913. 1: 11-22. This article is critical to an
understanding not only of Schlieffen’s strategic planning but Imperial Ger
many’s military policy prior to 1914.
Schmerfeld, Ferdinand von. Graf Moltke: Die Aufmarschpläne 1871-1890. Berlin:
Mittler & Sohn, 1929. This is an important but little used compilation of
documents on Moltke’s strategic planning up to 1890.
Schoenbaum, David. Zabern 1913: Consensus Politics in Imperial Germany. Lon
don: Allen & Unwin, 1982. A detailed analysis that underestimates the
impact of the Zabern Affair.
Schlissler, Wilhelm, ed. Weltmachtstreben und Flottenbau. Witten/Ruhr: Luther-
Verlag, 1956. An example of pre-Berghahn research on the German navy,
interesting in detail but wanting in depth.
Schulte, Bernd-Felix. Die deutsche Armee 1900-1914: Zwischen Beharren und Ver
ändern. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1977. A useful book although it suffers from a
one-sided choice of sources and bouts of overinterpretation.
Showalter, Dennis E. “German Grand Strategy: A Contradiction in Terms?” Mi-
litärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 48, 2 (1990): 65-102. Sometimes a little
heavy in its interpretation, but innovative and thoughtful.
---------. Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification o f Germany.
Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975. The best analysis of the technological
background to the German Wars of Unification.
Steinberg, Jonathan. Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth o f the German
Battle Fleet. New York: MacMillan, 1965. The standard account until the
publication of Berghahn’s book on the Tirpitz Plan.
Storz, Dieter. Kriegsbild und Rüstung vor 1914: Europäische Landstreitkräftc vor
dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Herford: Mittler & Sohn, 1992. An unsuccessful at
tempt to detach military history from its political context. This otherwise
useful comparison among the European armies fails to ask the right ques
tions.
Wallach, Jehuda L. Das Dogma der Vernichtungsschlacht: Die Lehren von Clau-
sewitz und Schlieffen und ihre Wirkungen in zwei Weltkriegen. Frankfurt
a.M.: Bernard & Graefe, 1967. A classic on German strategic thought and
practice, although it tends to oversimplify and is wrong about Clausewitz.
Welder, Hans-Ulrich. Das deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871-1918. Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. Welder’s influential book still makes for interest
ing and stimulating reading. In some respects, though, it has been
superseded by more recent research.
---------. “Symbol des halbabsolutistischen Herrschaftssystems: Der Fall Zabern
von 1913/14 als Verfassungskrise des Wilhelminischen Kaiserreichs.” Kri
senherde des Kaiserreichs 1871-1918: Studien zur deutschen Sozial- und Ver
fassungsgeschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. 565-83. A
“classic” Wehler with stimulating if sometimes overdramatic argumenta
tion.
Winzen, Peter. Biilows Weltmachtkonzept: Untersuchungen zur Frühphase seiner
Außenpolitik 1897-1901. Boppard: Boldt, 1977. Winzen provides the best
analysis so far on the origins and aims of BUIow’s Weltpolitik.

Witt, Peter-Christian. Die Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1903 bis 1913:
Eine Studie zur Innenpolitik des Wilhelminischen Deutschland. Lübeck:
Matthiesen Verlag, 1970. Witt’s book provides an extremely satisfying ex
amination of Wilhelmine financial policy and its background in domestic
politics.

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Förster, Stig

The Armed Forces and Military

Course of Study: PX2604 - First World War

Name of Publisher: Greenwood Press

INTRODUCTION: THE MILITARY REVOLUTION OF

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This state of affairs was aggravated by relentless technological innova­

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military organization. Liberal politicians demanded that active service in

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to matters of finances and armaments. At the same time, he strengthened

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

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mander, which had been enshrined in the Prussian constitution of 1850

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the military authorities accepted the parliament’s limited role in deter­

THE ARMY AS THE PILLAR OF THE MONARCHY

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the army ready to intervene in domestic politics. If the situation became

DEFENDING THE PRAETORIAN GUARD

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immune to socialism and antimonarchical sentiments? How could a mass

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tarization of society. Recent research has shown that the recruitment of

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more important than their quality. “I prefer a monarchist and religious

STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THE DANGER OF WAR

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crowned with military victory.”41 In a future war, therefore, Germany

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THE CONFLICT OVER THE SIZE OF THE ARMY

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chine, and it led to increased demands for public participation in military

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plan in 1906 prescribed a degree of German superiority in numbers on the

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bourgeois militarists enjoyed more influence than their numbers would

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modernization, which threatened social institutions that the Wiihelmine

THE NAVY IN IMPERIAL GERMANY:

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militarist traditions, and its officer corps was predominantly bourgeois by

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building was a far more complicated, expensive, and sophisticated under­

THE FAILURE OF THE “LUXURY FLEET”

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Tirpitz felt the consequences of these developments after the Agadir

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4. Moltke, “Bemerkungen über den Einfluß.”

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Status-quo-Sicherung und Aggression 1890-1913. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag,

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John, Hartmut. Das Reserveoffizierkorps im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914: Ein

This state of affairs was aggravated by relentless technological innova

the military authorities accepted the parliament’s limited role in deter

building was a far more complicated, expensive, and sophisticated under