From Kaiserreich to Third Reich by Fischer Fritz;Fletcher Roger;

Author:Fischer, Fritz;Fletcher, Roger; [Fischer, Fritz;Fletcher, Roger;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367028138
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Illusions Remain

Everything assumed a different aspect after the lost battle of the Marne and the heavy defeat of the Austrians in Galicia. The expectations of the ‘fruits’ of victory over France and Russia collapsed with the failure of the German attack before Paris in mid-September 1914, to be finally abandoned with the failure of the German offensives in Flanders, at Langemarck. It is open to question whether the idea of eliminating France with one blow was a realistic one. Even if the question is answered in the negative, the crucial facts are that the German military and political leaders considered it possible and that both the outcome of the entire war and the realization of German war aims were dependent on this decision. Also worthy of consideration is the fact that it was a war of coalitions after the London Agreement of 5 September 1914 converted the loose Entente into a wartime alliance precluding a separate peace. It should further be borne in mind that the real resources of the Allies exceeded those of the Germans, particularly if Italy and the USA were counted as being in the enemy camp, which the Germans did not reckon with prior to 1914 because the one was regarded as an ally while the other was deemed a friendly neutral. Soviet research sees this as the factor which ultimately decided the war. For the purposes of this investigation, however, we are concerned exclusively with German expectations and the German image of war prior to the outbreak of the conflict. It is true, no doubt, that a line of continuity can nevertheless be traced to the Second World War in that here, under very similar circumstances, the problem of these decisive military factors again presented itself.

In the autumn of 1914 the new Chief of the General Staff-cum-War Minister Falkenhayn told the Reichstag deputy Erzberger that after the battle of the Marne the war was ‘actually lost’.61 In early December, in a discussion with the Imperial Chancellor, he called the German army ‘a ruined instrument’. In fact, the army had lost 50 per cent of its complement and, following its heavy losses in the officer corps and cadres, was effectively recast as a ‘militia army’, as the official history of the First World War edited by the Imperial Archives noted at the close of 1914. With each passing day, the war conceived as a ‘Blitzkrieg’ and designed to last for two campaigns turned into a war of attrition in which the limits of German material and manpower resources began to tell. This transformation was not made known to the German people, overwhelmed as it was by the euphoria of the outbreak of the war and the initial successes in Belgium and France, by Tannenberg and U-boat 9. Indeed, the change was deliberately concealed through manipulation of military bulletins and by the Imperial Chancellor’s decision, taken against the conviction of Falkenhayn, to allow no public reference to it for fear of precipitating a collapse in the morale of the German people.

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