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The German 'Landser'

At one level the experience of the German soldier ('Landser') in World War One was little different than that of the English 'Tommy' or the French 'Poilu'. The horrors of life in the front-line trenches has so often been described in lurid detail: the appalling suffering and loss of life, the fear and the monotony, the incessant artillery barrages, the rotting corpses, the damp, the cold, the mud, the rats and the lice. The debate still continues as to how men were affected by the experience: were they brutalised or ennobled; were their lives destroyed or enriched?

There can be no doubt that all who experienced the war at first hand were profoundly altered by it, and that the world to which they returned was changed forever. It was an extreme situation with which each man had to cope in his own way. Some were transformed into Ernst Jünger's 'man of steel', achieving a serene indifference towards the horrors around them. Others found solace in deep religious faith, or redefined life in terms of the absurd. Many turned their backs on the violence and became pacifists, others espoused militant socialism and longed to turn the war between nations into a war between classes. A large number failed to cope at all and suffered from what was first known as 'cowardice', for which the penalty was death, then diagnosed as 'hysteria' or 'neurasthenia', soon to become 'shell shock' and now usually labelled 'post traumatic stress disorder' (PTSD).

Defending the fatherland

A German snowman, equipped with spiked helmet and Mauser 98 rifle, winter 1914  © Soldiers experienced the war in many different ways, and with armies of several million men it is only possible to speak in sweeping generalisations. How then did the German experience of trench warfare differ from that of the Allies? The first question must surely be: what kind of a war did they imagine they were fighting? The French had no doubt that they were defending the sacred soil of France. The British were not at all sure what they were fighting for: they were there because they were there, but they were on foreign and mildly exotic soil, locked in battle against a foe who commanded respect.

The Germans initially believed that they were defending their fatherland against the Entente that encircled them and was bent on their destruction. On the Somme in 1916 they saw themselves as defending not only their own country but also French civilians against a brutal British assault. British artillery destroyed peaceful French villages which the Germans defended. They brought the civilians to safety and rebuilt their villages when the fighting died down.

The great patriotic song of 1840 'On Guard on the Rhine' (Die Wacht am Rhein) was re-written as 'Die Wacht an der Somme'. The army that had invaded France in 1914 was now fighting a purely defensive war. This is reflected in the language used in German regimental histories of the Battle of the Somme. The German Army 'strengthens its defences', 'defends a position', 'mounts an operation', or launches a 'counter-attack'. The German troops formed 'a living wall protecting the fatherland'. The British by contrast unleashed a series of 'violent offensives' and 'ferocious assaults'. Accustomed to thinking in such terms it was impossible for the majority of Germans to accept the assertion in article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles that Germany was guilty of fighting an aggressive war.

War weariness

Hindenburg, a German field marshal during World War One  © German perceptions of the war began to change radically in 1916. The German army had successfully defended French villagers and the western marches of the Reich against a brutal British attack. It was in that year that the emblematic coal-scuttle steel helmet became regulation issue - appropriate headgear for men of steel. Most important of all was the appointment of Hindenburg and Ludendorff to the High Command (OHL) at the end of August, which marked a new and radical phase in the war.

Until 1916 it was possible for the average Landser to believe that he was fighting a defensive war, given the information then available to him. Now the High Command with the vigorous support of the newly-formed Fatherland Party (Vaterlandspartei) of Admiral Tirpitz and Wolfgang Kapp proclaimed an exotic war aims programme that made a mockery of any pretension that Germany was on the defensive. As the war dragged on, more and more soldiers, including a number of high-ranking officers, called for a compromise peace based on the status quo and denounced those nationalist politicians who were prolonging the war in pursuit of unattainable goals. This was rejected out of hand by the High Command, and by the summer of 1918 disillusionment and war weariness seriously undermined the army's effectiveness.

No end in sight

Although many senior officers had known that the war was likely to be lengthy, they still promised a swift victory over France with the Schlieffen Plan. When this failed it was announced that Falkenhayn's offensive against the Fortresses of Verdun in 1916 would end the war. Disappointment was bitter when, in spite of heavy casualties, there was still no end in sight.

In the following year, unrestricted submarine warfare was trumpeted as the magic formula. This too failed and America was brought into the war. Then all hopes were pinned on the 'Michael' offensive of 1918. At first this was a huge tactical success, the British 5th Army was destroyed, the British laid plans for the evacuation of France, and the French prepared to abandon Paris. Then the offensive ground to a standstill. By the summer of 1918 most soldiers knew that the war could not be won. The number of desertions increased dramatically and by the late autumn the army began to disintegrate.

Longing to go on the offensive

The Germans captured well-stocked British dumps and gorged themselves on supplies  © Until the late summer of 1918, morale in the German army was remarkably high under the circumstances. The effects of the Allied blockade were such that the soldiers were exceedingly poorly fed. They were staggered at the rich supplies of food, drink and tobacco they found when they seized British positions in 1918. The Allies also had an overwhelming superiority in artillery, tanks and mechanised transport and their equipment was greatly superior.

To counter this the Germans had to rely on their superior skill, and this in turn was a source of considerable pride. The German army had highly trained officers and experienced NCOs who, when they became casualties, were not automatically replaced by hastily trained and inexperienced men. The number of officers in a battalion was thus reduced dramatically during the war, sergeants and corporals often taking over tasks normally performed by officers. Many units were battle-hardened and experienced, a tightly-knit group of comrades that developed its own tactics and was not called upon to bend to the will of an inexperienced and raw young officer or blindly follow orders from on high.

They were not saddled with a top-down command structure like the British or the French. Commanders at the front down to the lowliest corporal were allowed a considerable degree of discretion to act as they saw appropriate. As a result the Germans were tactically unsurpassed, as was shown in the offensives of 1918, but operationally deficient and strategically inept. Most front-line soldiers had confidence in their units, but as the war dragged on they became keenly aware of operational shortcomings. With this emphasis on individual initiative there was very little of the grousing about incompetent staff officers that was characteristic of the British army.

Even though German defensive tactics were far superior to those of the Allies, and their trenches and dugouts much more sturdily constructed, the Germans unlike the British with their justifiable fear of 'going over the top' longed to go on the offensive. Cowering in their bunkers under a storm of steel they felt themselves to be utterly helpless objects. On the offensive they were autonomous subjects with their destiny in their own hands. Highly trained storm troopers, confident in their own skills and in their leadership, dreaded the time when the offensive was called off and the order given to take up defensive positions. Disappointment that the great offensives of 1918 had not brought the war to an end were thus compounded by the realisation that the army would now have to undergo the numbing, terrifying and nerve-wracking experience of defensive warfare for the foreseeable future.

'Stabbed in the back'

In Field Marshal Hindenburg's order of the day of 12 November 1918, the day after the armistice, he proudly announced: 'You have kept the enemy from crossing our frontiers and you have saved your country from the miseries and disasters of war... We end the struggle proudly and with our heads held high where we have stood for four years in the face of a world full of enemies.' Although this was manifestly untrue, this was the official version and one that was widely believed. The German army was undefeated, 'stabbed in the back' by the Home Front, by the civilians and by treacherous politicians.

For the British the war was best summed up by the image of the Somme: the frightful loss of life in a sea of mud; plucky soldiers sent to a youthful death by bone-headed generals safely ensconced miles behind the front. For the French it was Verdun where the 'poilus' made a heroic sacrifice by standing up valiantly against a ferocious enemy; but it was a horror that should never be allowed to happen again.

The key German experience was highly ambiguous. At Langemarck in October 1914, during the First Battle of Ypres, some 1,500 young Germans were killed in a frontal assault on a strong Allied position. For some this was represented as a heroic sacrifice by the flower of German youth, and as an inspiring example to the young men waiting to serve their country. For others it was a slaughter of the innocents (Kindermord), a ghastly reminder of the horrors and insanity of war.

This ambiguity lived on as memory was constructed after the war. On the one hand there were those who took pride in the army's achievements and who attributed its defeat to the enemy's superiority in numbers and armaments, particularly the tanks, as well as the poor quality of Germany's allies. Others claimed that the army had been betrayed. It was a profound tragedy that the latter group prevailed and by perpetrating the legend of the 'stab in the back' (Dolchstoß) contributed significantly to the rise of National Socialism and to the unleashing of another world war.

Find out more

Books

The German Offensives of 1918 by Martin Kitchen (Tempus Publishing, 2001)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, translated by Brian Murdoch (Vintage, 1996)

The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the First World War by Robert B Asprey (Time Warner Paperbacks, 1994)

Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 by Bruce I Gudmunddsson (Greenwood Press, 1995)

Links

An online edition of Manfred von Richthofen's 1917 book Der Rote Kampfflieger, based on the English language version originally translated by J Ellis Barker and published in 1918 under the name The Red Battle Flyer. Captain von Richthofen, famously known as The Red Baron, did not survive the war.

About the author

Martin Kitchen is professor of history at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Among his many books are: The German Offensives of 1918, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command, 1916-1918, A Military History of Germany: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day and The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914.