HIST 2509 A History of Germany

Lecture W2-2

The War Experience

Today’s Main Themes

• Turn-of-the-century insecurity.• Clashing ambitions.• Why war?• Impact?

III. Militarism and National Prestige

1) civil society -- militarization of society-bourgeoisie’s sense of patriotism (1913 “Aus groesser Zeit”)

-reverence for uniforms, cults of personality

-veterans associations

III. Militarism and National Prestigeb) nation in arms policies

c) imperial greatness

d) Social Darwinism

e) nationalism

-militarism -- colonial, domestic, and social policy

-everyday masculinity

-romanticization of warfare

**cleanse body politic of ills of modernity

William II and sons, 1. January 1913

Pre 1914

Woodrow Wilson’s advisor, 1914: “It is militarism run stark mad.”

Eduard BernsteinSPD member, theoretician: “climate of hostility; a cold war”

IV. The First Cold War

a. competing alliances/clashing ambitions

IV. The First Cold War

b. the politics of imperial might

-Mitteleuropa -- German encirclement

-breakdown of the Ottoman Empire

-saber rattling, ethnic nationalism, annexation

V. Why War?

What was at stake in July 1914?

a) long-term causes

b) medium causes

c) short-term causes

V. Why War?What was at stake in July 1914?

a) long-term causes

-alliances

-arms race

-willingness to use aggressive tactics

- “sabre rattling” and brinkmanship

V. Why War?What was at stake in July 1914?

b. medium causes

-rise of Germany

-growing nationalism

-militarism in general, official and popular

-domestic disturbances (threat from left)

V. Why War?What was at stake in July 1914?

c. short-term causes

-instability in the Balkans, 1912, 1914

-assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie

-blank cheque 1914

-Russian mobilization

Why War in 1914?

What made it more likely?

Why was the assassination a cause for war and not just business as usual?

I. German Responsibility: why provoke war?

-Fischer and his opponents

-powder keg? slippery slope?

-an offensive war, a defensive war, nationalistic frenzy, calculated risk?

Whose a Militarist?

II. Deutschland über Alles? domestic politics during the war

a. Burgfrieden

-Wilhelm II’s Balcony Address August 4, 1914

-Jewish soldiers and sacrifice

Jewish Sacrifice

“Now we’ll fight our way out of quarter-citizenship…to full citizenship. Now we can and will show that we love our Fatherland no less passionately than anyone else; now we will prove that we possess no less strength, courage and willingness to sacrifice”

Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer on mood of volunteers in August 1914 in Christhard Hoffmann, “The Jewish Community in Germany, 1914-1918” in John Horne, ed. State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe (1997)

Women’s support for the war

Kaiser and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg vs.Hindenburg and Ludendorf’s War Cabinet

III.    Opposition and the Question of Reform

-war credits, strikes, and the creation of the USPD

-divided public opinion; Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

-constitutional crisis and reform

IV. The War Experience

a. from the trenches

-the generation of 1914

-trench warfare, gas

-the Bryce Report

-propaganda

-letters home

Germania

Friedrich August von Kaulbach 1914

IV. The War Experience

b. home fires burning

-total war

-industrial refashioning

-scarcity, blockade, and urban unrest

-the stab in the back thesis

(Dolchstosslegende)