Germany before the war

by baron Beyens

Prussian militarism raised its head once more during the war of liberation. It was the life and soul of the resistance to Napoleon, and contributed its share towards the final deliverance. Still, we must beware of overrating the part played by Blücher, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Yorck, Bülow, and the other generals of Frederick William III. in 1813 and 1814 The Corsican was vanquished by his own blunders—the exhausting war in the Peninsula, where the best blood of France was spilt to no purpose, and the ill-fated Russian campaign. During the early summer of 1813, the Russians and the Prussians, in several hard-fought battles, met with nothing but defeat. The emancipation of Germany would have been far from assured, if Austria, who had completed her preparations, had not joined hands with Russia and Prussia to overwhelm Napoleon. During the wars of the French Empire, it is the Archduke Charles and the Austrian troops, not the Prussian armies, that can claim the honour of having offered the most stubborn resistance to the great conqueror. In the same way, during the Hundred Days, old Blücher—“Marshal Forward,” as the Germans call him—is not entitled to the first place among the heroes of Waterloo. The chief glory may fairly be assigned to Wellington and to the bulldog tenacity of the British.

A long second period of decadence set in for Prussian militarism after 1815, under the peaceful reigns of Frederick William III. and William IV. Its decline was particularly apparent at the time of the inglorious Convention of Olmütz. To William I. fell the task of re-forging the chain of great Hohenzollern warrior-princes, broken at the death of Frederick the Great. Not that he himself was endowed with the talents of a commander-in-chief; when it came to actual fighting he was merely a soldier. But he had a faculty more precious in a king than the art of leading an army: he was an excellent judge of men, and could choose the most suitable tools for carrying out the plans he had sanctioned. William I. made Bismarck head of the Prussian ministry, leaving him a free hand for conducting the bold policy that was to establish the greatness of the Prussian royal house on the basis of German unity, and then gave him two indispensable fellow-workers—Roon, the reorganizer of the army, and Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff. Strictly speaking, the future Field-Marshal did not evolve any new system of strategy, but he had absorbed the teachings of Frederick the Great and the object lessons of Napoleon so thoroughly that he became in his turn a master in the art of war.

As for Prussian militarism, or, in other words, the military caste, the victories of 1866 and 1870 completely turned its head. It came to regard itself as the very embodiment of the nation. Never had it been more powerful or more domineering than in the generation preceding the present war. Woe to the civilian who ventured to criticise the army, or got in an officer’s way on the pavement, or did not cringe before the fiat of a corps commander! The recent Zabern affair showed us that the German military can allow themselves anything. On this occasion, public opinion finally gave its verdict in their favour, notwithstanding the protests (speedily silenced!) of the Reichstag.

II.

In striving to maintain the whole German army at the high level attained by the Prussian, William II. has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather. He has not, however, been so happy in his choice of men; Moltkes and Roons are hard to find at any time. During his reign, as during that of William I., the Great General Staff and the War Office have worked in close unison. The former, to which officers are appointed after a careful sifting, has to make elaborate plans for strategical operations against whatever enemy the German army may have to face; the latter’s task is to organize and improve the forces, and to introduce and defend in the Reichstag the war budget and any military measures that may be required. To these two bodies we must add a third, more secret in its workings, less easy to trace, but in certain cases a decisive factor—the Emperor’s war Cabinet. The promotion and retirement of officers is one of its most formidable functions. After the annual manœuvres, it carries out the sentences passed by the sovereign upon those who have failed through incapacity, illness, or bad luck. In the Emperor’s name it may intervene in any question that concerns the service. Its influence is even extended to foreign affairs, if the army is called upon to play a part in their shaping.

Soon after the opening of the twentieth century there began to appear, chiefly in Prussia, a steady drift of opinion in favour of fresh European conflicts. The adherents of this creed were known abroad under the comprehensive name of “war party.” They were drawn, in the first place, from the field-marshals and “colonel-generals” (Generalobersten), the generals on the active list, the aides-de-camp of the Emperor, the hotheads of the Staff, and the more ambitious officers of all grades. To these must be added the retired army men, reactionary squireens who lived on their estates, and saw the ever-growing taxation accompanied by a rise in the national wealth, in the standard of comfort and luxury, while their own incomes could not show a corresponding advance. These malcontents held that a little blood-letting would be of great service in purifying and strengthening the social body, and in restoring to the patrician caste that preponderance which was its due, and which seemed likely to be usurped by the self-made plutocrats of industry and commerce.

Apart from the military element, which naturally carried most weight, the war party included a large number of civilians—the majority of the high Prussian officials; the true-blue Conservatives in the Reichstag and the “Conservative Imperialists,” together with the members of other middle-class groups; and the patriotic writers, the journalists, the intellectual cream of the universities and schools. All these were obsessed with the vision of a Germany subjugating the world by her arms, as she thought to have already conquered it by her superior culture and her incomparable science. Their unhealthy ambitions were encouraged by a cantankerous Press, jealous of the races that embody the civilization of the past, and choosing to regard them as decadent rivals of the noble Germanic stock, which was destined to give an enslaved world the opportunity of enjoying the civilization of the future.

The war party was faithfully supported by the Wehrverein (Union of Defence), a military league which in the space of a few years spread its powerful roots over the whole of Germany. The Wehrverein did not confine itself to the task of defending the lawful interests of the army. The proposals put forward at its periodical meetings dealt not only with reforms that seemed desirable in the supply of munitions, in the organization of troops, and in the technical departments, but also with the political designs that the army would be called upon to carry out. Finally, the warlike spirit was kept alive among the lower classes by numerous associations of veterans, the Kriegsvereine (War Leagues). Their ominous name is enough to show that they strove their hardest to counteract the growing force of pacific tendencies among a nation in which the amazing development of its industry and commerce had bred a feverish desire to amass wealth.

The demands of the war party found expression in a literature that was half political, half military. The writers openly advocated a European conflict as the only means of completing the work of Bismarck—that is to say, of giving Germany her rightful place at the head of the nations. A typical product of this school is the now celebrated book by the retired cavalry general, Friedrich von Bernhardi, entitled Germany and the Next War. In spite of the lofty moral and philosophical tone that he often adopts, the author is more daring and outspoken than any of his fellow-scribes. Among all that has been published in the last few years regarding the crucial question of Germany’s future, this book of Bernhardi’s has proved the most prophetic, for war has been declared for the very reasons to which he drew attention and for the very objects which he advocated. The foreign public was unwise in not paying more attention at the time to these danger-signals. The work of the military philosopher has become a text-book for German patriots; his sophisms have poisoned the mind of the present generation.