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Abstract
The state of the German Army’s morale in 1918 is central to our understanding not only of the outcome of World War I, but also of the German Revolution and, indeed, through the pernicious ‘stab-in-the-back-myth’, on Weimar politics and the rise of the Nazis, too. This article presents new evidence from the German archives, blended with statistical analysis, to show that the morale of some units held up better than previously thought almost to the end, and thus to suggest three things. First, it proposes that some historians have placed too much reliance on English-language sources alone, such as British Army intelligence reports, which have various flaws as evidence. Second, it argues that, while historians have increasingly moved away from generalisations about German morale, this process has further to run. Third, it suggests that no single tipping point can be identified, and that morale alone does not provide a sufficient explanation for battlefield defeat. Indeed, much of the data can only be explained if the tactical realities of the war in late 1918 are clearly understood.
Acknowledgements
Versions of this paper have been delivered at three conferences: ‘Waterloo to Desert Storm: New Thinking on International Conflict, 1815–1991’ (University of Glasgow, June 2010); ‘British Commission for Military History: New Research in Military History’ (University of Sussex, November 2010); and ‘Ways of War: The Society for Military History Conference’ (Lisle, Illinois, June 2011). The author is grateful to the participants in all three for their questions and suggestions, and especially to Professors Dennis Showalter and Michael Neiberg for chairing and commenting on our panel at the last. He would also like to thank: the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the research on which this article draws; Professors William Philpott, Gary Sheffield and David French for reading and commenting on earlier versions; Dr Alexander Watson also read an earlier draft of this paper and made many useful points; Tony Cowan; the anonymous readers; and the participants in the ‘Colloquium on Morale and Combat Motivation’ held at King’s College London (April 2011) for their many stimulating suggestions. Finally, the author is grateful to Cambridge University Press for allowing him to use some material which has appeared previously in his Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012).
Notes
1 Michael Geyer, ‘Insurrectionary Warfare: The German Debate about a Levee en Masse in October 1918’, Journal of Modern History 73/33 (Sept. 2001), 459–527, 464–472. German units and formations are here italicised, British ones in roman. All dates are 1918 unless otherwise specified.
2 Scott Stephenson, The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918 (Cambridge: CUP 2009), esp. Chapter 3.
3 See, for example, the Bavarian and German official histories: Bayerische Kriegsarchiv, Die Bayern im Großen Kriege 1914–1918 (Munich: Verlag des Bayerischen Kriegsarchivs 1923), 593; Reichsarchiv, Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918: Die Militärische Operationen zu Lande Band 14: Die Kriegführung an der Westfront im Jahre 1918 (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn 1944), 759–63.
4 Wilhelm Deist, ‘The Military Collapse of the German Empire: The Reality Behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’ (trans. by E.J. Feuchtwanger), War in History 3/2 (April 1996), 186–207; Geyer, ‘Insurrectionary Warfare’, 462–63.
5 Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Fahnenflucht im deutschen Heer 1914–1918’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 55/1 (1996), 93–130; Bernd Ulrich and Benjamin Ziemann (eds), German Soldiers in the Great War: Letters and Eyewitness Accounts (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword 2010), 158.
6 See, for example, Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (London: Routledge 1992), 175, 179
7 Anon., History of the 50th Infantry Brigade 1914-1919 (published privately 1919), 105.
8 British Third Army: GHQ AG War Diary, The National Archives (TNA) WO 95/26.
9 Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: CUP 2008).
10 Hew Strachan, ‘The Morale of the German Army 1917–18’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper 1996), 383–98; Christoph Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion under Deserteure im deutsche und britischen Heer 1914-1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1998).
11 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 200.
12 Deist, ‘Military Collapse’, 204; Watson, Enduring the Great War, 207–9.
13 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 168–72, 186–230.
14 Stephenson, Final Battle, Chapters 1 and 2.
15 A point Watson acknowledges and explores in the case of Alsatians: Enduring the Great War, 192–4.
16 For a fuller exploration, see Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front, 16–17 and 52–3.
17 Third Army Intelligence Summary No. 1115, 8 Aug., TNA WO 157/164.
18 Idem No. 1117, 9 Aug., TNA WO 157/164.
19 Idem No. 1131, 24 Aug., TNA WO 157/164.
20 Idem No. 1132, 25 Aug., TNA WO 157/164.
21 Idem No. 1143, 5 Sept., TNA WO 157/165.
22 Idem No. 1148, 10 Sept. and No. 1144, 6 Sept., TNA WO 157/165.
23 IV Corps Intelligence Summary, 26 Sept., TNA WO 157/381.
24 Third Army Intelligence Summary No. 1158, 20 Sept., TNA WO 157/165.
25 Idem No. 1159, 21 Sept., TNA WO 157/165.
26 Idem No. 1170, 1 Oct., TNA WO 157/166.
27 Fritz Haleck, Das Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 208 (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling 1922), 97.
28 IV Corps Intelligence Summary, 8 Oct., TNA WO 157/382.
29 Idem, 13 Oct., TNA WO 157/382.
30 Idem, 16 Oct., TNA WO 157/382.
31 Appreciation of the Situation on the Third Army Front, GI 1098, 26 Oct., TNA WO 157/166.
32 Idem, 9 Nov., TNA WO 157/167.
33 Weekly Report on Officers’ Mail, 12 Aug., XVIII Armee-Korps, Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv Abteilung IV: Kriegsarchiv, Munich, (BKA) Heeresgruppe Kronprinz Rupprecht (HKR) Bd 150.
34 Idem, 24 Aug., Armeeoberkommando 17, BKA HKR Bd 150.
35 Morale report, 2. Garde-Reserve-Division, 24 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 150.
36 234. Infanterie-Division Mail Censorship Report, 24 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 150.
37 Weekly Censorship report, 15 Sept., XVIII Armee-Korps, BKA HKR Bd 150.
38 Weekly Report on Officers’ Mail, Armeeoberkommando 17, 14 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
39 8th Bavarian Pioneer Battalion to 4th Bavarian Division, No. 2048, 12 Sept., BKA 7. bayerische Infanterie-Brigade Bd 23.
40 Report on Morale in XVIII and II Bavarian Corps, Armeeoberkommando 17, 20 Oct., BKA HKR Bd 150.
41 Mail Censorship Report, 25 Oct., Armeeoberkommando 17, BKA HKR Bd 150.
42 Idem, 31 Oct., XVIII Armee-Korps, BKA HKR Bd 150.
43 Idem, II. bayerische Armee-Korps, 1 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
44 Idem, II. bayerische Armee-Korps, 31 Oct., BKA HKR Bd 150.
45 Bericht über Besuch bein Gen. Kdo. 54 und bei 208., 185., Deutscher Jäger-, und 9. Reserve-Division am 13.X.1918, 14 Oct., Armeeoberkommando 2 War Diary, Bundersarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg (BA-MA) PH 5 II/125; IV Corps Intelligence Report, 8 Oct., TNA WO 157/382.
46 Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Mein Kriegstagebuch (Frauholz, Eugen von, ed.) Volume II (Berlin: E.S. Mittler & Sohn 1929), 463.
47 9. bayerische Infanterie-Brigade report, 5 Nov., BKA 16. bayerische Infanterie-Division, Bd 10/7.
48 23. Infanterie-Division Ia 159, 10 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
49 113. Infanterie-Division Ia 559, 30 Oct., quoted in Untersuchungsausschuss der Deutschen Verfassunggebenden Nationalversammlung und des Deutschen Reichstages 1919–1926, Die Ursachen des Deutschen Zusammenbruchs im Jahre 1918, Vol. VI (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellchaft für Politik und Geschichte 1928), (hereafter, Ursachen VI), 338.
50 Mail Censorship Report, XIV Reserve-Korps, 15 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 150.
51 Idem, 22 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 150.
52 Idem, 30 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 150.
53 Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, Vol. II, 441.
54 Mail Censorship Report, XIV Reserve-Korps, 12 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
55 Idem, 19 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
56 Idem, XIV Reserve-Korps, 26 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
57 Curt von Morgen, Meiner Truppen Heldenkämpfe (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler 1920), 155.
58 Mail Censorship Report, XIV Reserve-Korps, 25 Oct., BKA HKR Bd 150.
59 Idem, 5 Nov., BKA HKR Bd 150.
60 Außerordentlicher Monatsbericht über August u. September, 48. Reserve-Infanterie-Division Unterrichts-Offizier Nr 601, 14 Sept., BKA HKR Bd 150.
61 Morgen, Meiner Truppen Heldenkämpfe, 160.
62 Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, Vol. II, 468.
63 Diary entry, 31 Oct., Persönliches Kriegstagebuch des General der Infanterie a.D. von Kuhl, 200, BA-MA RH 61/970. The author is grateful to Oberstleutnant Dr Christian Stachelbeck of the MGFA for help with this diary.
64 James Beach, ‘British Intelligence and the German Army, 1914-1918’, unpublished PhD thesis, Univ. College London, 2004, 28, 271.
65 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds and trans.) (Princeton University Press, 1976), 187-9. See G.D. Sheffield, Leadership in the Trenches: Officer-Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000), 180 for the importance of maintaining the distinction. A further useful discussion is in William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (London: Little, Brown 2009), 277.
66 Heeres-Sanitätsinspektion des Reichskriegsministeriums, Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer (Deutsches Feld- und Besatzungheer) im Weltkriege 1914/1918 Vol. III Die Krankenbewegung bei dem Deutschen Feld-und Besatzungsheer im Weltkriege 1914/1918 (Berlin: E.S. Mittler 1934), 7. Plausible as this explanation is, the possibility that unflattering reports were suppressed cannot be ruled out.
67 Sanitätsbericht Vol. III, Part II, 42.
68 Sanitätsbericht Vol. III, Part II, 10–23.
69 Sanitätsbericht Vol. III, Part I, 121–3.
70 Sanitätsbericht Vol. III, Part I, 88. The high levels of winter 1914/15 can presumably be largely explained by the poor conditions attendant on the move to trench warfare.
71 Ursachen VI, 4.
72 Report by Leutnant d.L. Holshausen, 18 Oct., BKA HKR Bd 157/311.
73 Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch, Vol. II, 468.
74 Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten, 166–7.
75 Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten, 150.
76 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 207-9. See also Anne Lipp, Meinungslenkung im Krieg: Kriegserfahrungen deutscher Soldaten und inhre Deutung 1914–1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2002), 130-1.
77 Ursachen VI, 16.
78 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 230.
79 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War: 1914–1920 (London HMSO 1922), 632.
80 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 215, 175, 145.
81 Data from Zusammenstellung der Gesamtstärke an Offz., Uoffz. und Mannschaften der Armeen, BKA HKR Bd 112.
82 Appendix B, VI Corps General Staff War Diary Oct.—Nov., TNA WO 95/775.
83 Alan Kramer calls these ‘unforced’ and ‘forced’ surrender: Alan Kramer, ‘Surrender of Soldiers in World War I’ in Holger Afflerbach and Hew Strachan (eds), How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (Oxford: OUP 2012), 265–78, 265. The author is grateful to Professor Kramer for discussing these issues with him.
84 Annexe to Third Army Intelligence Summary No. 1140, 2 Sept., TNA WO 157/165.
85 Lipp, Meinungslenkung im Krieg, 143–5.
86 Bernhard Werner, Das Königlich Preußische Inf.-Rgt. Prinz Louis Ferdinand von Preußen (2. Magdeb.) Nr. 27 im Weltkriege 1914–1918 (Berlin: Bernard & Graefe 1933).
87 Source: Zusammenstellung der Gesamtstärke an Offz., Uoffz. und Mannschafter der Armeen, relevant dates, BKA HKR Bd 112. Note that the Feb.figure of 807 is the average battalion strength in Army Group Rupprecht, the others figures are for Seventeenth Army specifically: Ersatzlage der Heeresgruppe Kronprinz Rupprecht, 27 Aug., BKA HKR Bd 39.
88 BKA HKR Bd 27.
89 AAR, 21 Aug.-2 Sept., Ia 10548, 13 October, BKA 4. bayerische Infanterie-Division, Bd 22.
90 For three perspectives on this, see: Niall Ferguson, ‘Prisoner Taking and Prisoner killing in the Age of Total War: towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat’, War in History 11/2 (April 2004), 148–92; Tim Cook, ‘The Politics of Surrender: Canadian Soldiers and the Killing of Prisoners in the Great War’, Journal of Military History 70/3 (July 2006), 637–66; Brian K. Feltman, ‘Tolerance as a Crime? The British Treatment of German Prisoners of War on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, War in History 17/4 (Nov. 2010), 435–58.
91 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 145.
92 VI Corps General Staff War Diary, TNA WO 95/774-5; VI Corps AQMG War Diary, TNA WO 95/781.
93 POW data is generally unavailable in sufficient detail to be useful. Of course, not all MIA became POWs, although it seems reasonable to assume that a higher proportion did in mobile than in static warfare.
94 These figures are for the whole BEF, and for the Germans opposite the British as supplied by the Reichsarchiv: War Office, Statistics, 359–62. See Watson, Enduring the Great War, 144, 151 for similar graphs.
95 BKA HKR Bd 27.
96 Stephenson, Final Battle, 47–50. The author is grateful to Dr Alexander Watson for bringing this point to his attention.
97 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 209.
98 Again, the author is grateful to Dr Alexander Watson for raising this point.
99 Jonathan Boff, ‘Combined Arms during the Hundred Days Campaign, August-November 1918’, War in History 17/4 (Nov. 2010), 459–78.
100 Benjamin Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany 1914–1923 (Alex Skinner, trans.), (Oxford: Berg 2007), 68–71; Christian Stachelbeck, Militärische Effektivität im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die 11. Bayerische Infanteriedivision 1915 bis 1918 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2010), 311–12.
101 Watson, Enduring the Great War, 232.
102 Jay Winter, ‘The Breaking Point: Surrender 1918’, in Holger Afflerbach and Hew Strachan (eds), How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (Oxford: OUP 2012), 299–309, 309.
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Jonathan Boff
Dr Jonathan Boff is Lecturer in History at the University of Birmingham, where he convenes, amongst other programmes, the MA in First World War Studies. His monograph, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany, 1918 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. He is currently working on a major study of the German army on the Western Front through a military biography of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.