Never in Finer Company by Edward G. Lengel

Author:Edward G. Lengel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2018-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

Lieutenant General Richard Wellmann was an old-school Prussian army officer. He had spent over forty of his fifty-nine years in the army, beginning in 1877 as a second lieutenant and working his way up by merit (for he lacked aristocratic blood). He commanded an infantry brigade during the invasion of France in the summer of 1914, and subsequently led troops during nonstop service on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. Wellmann witnessed it all, from the infernos of the Somme and Passchendaele in 1916–1917 to the icy steppes of Russia and the Baltics. His dedication was total, along with his willingness to sacrifice: two of his three sons were killed in combat, but he never questioned the cause for which they fought. His assignment to command the 1st Reserve Corps in the Argonne Forest in August 1918, soon to face the attack of the 77th Division, presented another challenge, that was all.

By October Wellmann, his officers, and men knew they had lost the war. The German spring and summer offensives had definitely failed. Germany’s allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire verged on disintegration, and former ally Bulgaria had already dropped out of the war. Their instability and Russia’s fall to the Bolsheviks fed the flames of revolution through central and eastern Europe and the Middle East. The German people, meanwhile, faced starvation thanks to the British naval blockade. What if they too rose up in rebellion?

The German army had lost about two million dead and twice that number wounded. The surviving troops were exhausted from years of combat almost without letup, and in the summer they had begun suffering from the ravages of the growing influenza epidemic. And now here came the Americans, by the millions—untrained, to be sure, but quick learners, aggressive, brave, and healthy to boot.

Why continue to fight? Many German soldiers chose not to. By the autumn of 1918, German military authorities tried to make up for their horrendous losses by packing the army with elderly reservists and teenagers barely past puberty. These were just fillers. Field officers assumed that they would surrender quickly, and they did, creating a false impression that the German army was disintegrating. Contrary to the picture of wholesale demoralization and despair later portrayed in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front, a hard veteran core remained determined to fight on to the end.

Some of it was pride—in their nation, in their army, in their units, in themselves. Germans also had no way of knowing, despite President Wilson’s much ballyhooed Fourteen Points, what sort of peace terms the Allies would seek to impose. Perhaps they would be draconian; perhaps (as many British, French, and even Americans in fact advocated) they would try to dismantle and occupy all of Germany. The best way to prevent that from happening, to the ruin of their families and themselves, was to fight on until they could struggle no more, inflicting such casualties on their enemies that they would think twice before trying to impose a humiliating peace.

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