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German Soldiers in the Great War: Letters and Eyewitness Accounts
The first English translation of writings that capture the lives and thoughts of German soldiers fighting in the trenches and on the battlefields of WWI. German Soldiers in the Great War is a vivid selection of firsthand accounts and other wartime documents that shed new light on the experiences of German frontline soldiers during the First World War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of ordinary soldiers that have been covered up by the smokescreen of official military propaganda about “heroism” and “patriotic sacrifice.” In this essential collection of wartime correspondence, editors Benjamin Ziemann and Bernd Ulrich have gathered more than two hundred mostly archival documents, including letters, military dispatches and orders, extracts from diaries, newspaper articles and booklets, medical reports and photographs. This fascinating primary source material provides the first comprehensive insight into the German frontline experiences of the Great War, available in English for the first time in a translation by Christine Brocks.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 20, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 30, 2020
We hear the voices of German soldiers in this excellent book about World War One. Their personal stories give an insight into life in the trenches and for exposing the enormous chasm between the story propagated by Nazis and others about German soldiers’ war experience and reality. And it also shows the conflicts within the German army and its soldiers’ opposition to the war.
By the early 1930s, popular opinion in Germany about the war was that brave and patriotic soldiers, on the brink of victory, were betrayed by left-wing members of the Reichstag (legislature) who wanted an end to the war. The ‘betrayal’ became known as the “Stab in the Back” and was first used at a committee of inquiry into Germany’s military collapse. Two officers – Kronprinz Rupprecht, and Colonel Bernhard Schwertfeger – provided the two main expert opinions on the military responsibilities for the German offensives in 1918. Their “Stab in the Back” theory quickly gained popularity among right wing and anti-Semitic groups.
Ulrich and Ziemann used primary sources – soldiers’ letters, newspaper reports, and excerpts from official correspondence – to refute the myths and tell the battle stories of German soldiers whose experience and hardship were the same as that of soldiers they fought.
The soldiers’ words show the divisions in the German army on geographical and class grounds. Many soldiers from other German states hated the Prussians. And there was a chasm between the privileged proletariat officers, whose living conditions were far better than their lice-ridden, wet and hungry subordinates.
The betrayal myth took hold because of soldiers’ selective memory of what happened. Novelist Carl Zuckmayer, who volunteered in 1914, later a lieutenant on the Western Front, explains the phenomena in his autobiography: “In those days, in the short periods of rest which followed the most terrible weeks of the battle at the Somme, I learned how quickly man is able to forget. Among the troops who had just left, the mood was like one would find in a veteran’s association, although they would lie in the same mud the day after tomorrow. They had already forgotten that it was in fact mud. It was a dreadful thing. Mate, what have we gone through! Not a single word that they used to discuss or narrate what they had experienced was correct.”
This reframing intensified to the point people perceived the war as “a meaningful and even sacred event”. Historian George L. Mosse calls the perception the “Myth of the War Experience”, to “mask war” and to legitimise the experience. It had become part of the Zeitgeist by the early 1930s. One contributor to the prevailing opinion would have been findings of the eight-year parliamentary inquiry into the causes of Germany’s military collapse in 1918. The inquiry abdicated its responsibilities by producing a political document that avoided judgement about the critical issues which would have contributed to the persistence of the Stab in the Back myth.
Soldiers on both sides of the war were pawns in a game played by the military, political and economic class. One German soldier put it this way:
“Several regiments (including the 41st and 43rd East-Prussian Infantry Regiment) have refused to be sent to the Somme front and to be slaughtered for the benefit of the company Hohenzollern, Father and Son and Co. The incident had quite an unhappy ending for the persons concerned. The machine guns were stung into action and some more German proletarians died as victims of the Prussian militarism.”
By the early 1930s, popular opinion in Germany about the war was that brave and patriotic soldiers, on the brink of victory, were betrayed by left-wing members of the Reichstag (legislature) who wanted an end to the war. The ‘betrayal’ became known as the “Stab in the Back” and was first used at a committee of inquiry into Germany’s military collapse. Two officers – Kronprinz Rupprecht, and Colonel Bernhard Schwertfeger – provided the two main expert opinions on the military responsibilities for the German offensives in 1918. Their “Stab in the Back” theory quickly gained popularity among right wing and anti-Semitic groups.
Ulrich and Ziemann used primary sources – soldiers’ letters, newspaper reports, and excerpts from official correspondence – to refute the myths and tell the battle stories of German soldiers whose experience and hardship were the same as that of soldiers they fought.
The soldiers’ words show the divisions in the German army on geographical and class grounds. Many soldiers from other German states hated the Prussians. And there was a chasm between the privileged proletariat officers, whose living conditions were far better than their lice-ridden, wet and hungry subordinates.
The betrayal myth took hold because of soldiers’ selective memory of what happened. Novelist Carl Zuckmayer, who volunteered in 1914, later a lieutenant on the Western Front, explains the phenomena in his autobiography: “In those days, in the short periods of rest which followed the most terrible weeks of the battle at the Somme, I learned how quickly man is able to forget. Among the troops who had just left, the mood was like one would find in a veteran’s association, although they would lie in the same mud the day after tomorrow. They had already forgotten that it was in fact mud. It was a dreadful thing. Mate, what have we gone through! Not a single word that they used to discuss or narrate what they had experienced was correct.”
This reframing intensified to the point people perceived the war as “a meaningful and even sacred event”. Historian George L. Mosse calls the perception the “Myth of the War Experience”, to “mask war” and to legitimise the experience. It had become part of the Zeitgeist by the early 1930s. One contributor to the prevailing opinion would have been findings of the eight-year parliamentary inquiry into the causes of Germany’s military collapse in 1918. The inquiry abdicated its responsibilities by producing a political document that avoided judgement about the critical issues which would have contributed to the persistence of the Stab in the Back myth.
Soldiers on both sides of the war were pawns in a game played by the military, political and economic class. One German soldier put it this way:
“Several regiments (including the 41st and 43rd East-Prussian Infantry Regiment) have refused to be sent to the Somme front and to be slaughtered for the benefit of the company Hohenzollern, Father and Son and Co. The incident had quite an unhappy ending for the persons concerned. The machine guns were stung into action and some more German proletarians died as victims of the Prussian militarism.”
January 1, 2019
This is an interesting read but it seemed somewhat incomplete. The views expressed by the soldiers — mostly in letters to family members from troops on the Western Front — were very critical of their NCO’s and officers, who were often brutal in their treatment of the fighting men. For example, men were sometimes punished by being tied to a tree for several hours. How demeaning is that? They were also very critical of the war effort as being for the benefit of the “capitalists” and the ruling class. Especially interesting to me was the antipathy the Bavarian troops felt toward the Prussians, who were portrayed as haughty and arrogant. It seemed that many of the Bavarian troops whose letters were included in the book were willing to have the war end without any territorial gains for Germany and they criticized the Prussians for insisting on land annexations, which, in their view, prolonged the war and the suffering. You cannot help but feel sorry for the misery and the agony and the deprivations the front line soldiers had to endure. I have read about this elsewhere but it is more striking, direct and heart-felt when you read it in their own words to family members. Despite these many points of interest, the book seemed incomplete because it ends rather suddenly, without a final chapter in which the authors attempt to provide a synthesis or at least an analysis of what was said in the letters and reports. That is why I give it only three stars.
February 11, 2024
Whatever about history being written by winners. If it is to be accepted that history either as passion or discipline is an exercise of vicarious experience than it is through the lens of others, those eyes of war, to whom we should truly turn! This is solemn reading. The passion and brutality, the horror of the reality. Young souls perishing for that greater good. To write word to page about this horror whilst amidst it defies comment. These are humans whose experience cannot be shared others, unless they too have shared the experience. The battlefield, though clearly an imperative theatre throughout human existence, is a scary place indeed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews