The German soldier was trained in time of peace to be good at marching and in attack. A resolute and aggressive spirit was cultivated by every means known to such students of the psychology of war as the Germans have always proved themselves to be. Defensive measures were almost completely ignored. The digging of trenches, for example, was practised only once or twice in a soldier’s two years of training. Long forced marches under the conditions of actual warfare were frequent, and every year a number of men died through neglecting the precautions enjoined upon them as necessary in these marches. Even accuracy in shooting was made less of than endurance on the road. The soldiers were, moreover, deliberately made to go about their duties mechanically and to acquire the habit of doing things without asking the reason why. I remember that some German soldiers were much amused when they heard that English officers gave themselves the trouble at manœuvres to explain to their men exactly what was taking place. Although this system of training was the rule, it was not universal in Germany. General von Haeseler was strongly opposed to it. Himself impatient of authority, he endeavoured to instil into his soldiers a spirit of responsibility and self-reliance. After the war broke out, the High Command saw how much better results had been achieved by French and English methods of developing the individual soldier, and Haeseler’s ideals were adopted throughout Germany. Our instructors used rather to bore us by continually harping on “individual responsibility,” and reminding us that the fate of the army depended on the private soldier’s ability to stand alone and act for himself when no officer was present.
At the beginning of the war, then, Germany had an army of good marchers, overflowing with aggressive spirit, its great masses trained to work together with mechanical perfection. She threw the bulk of the army against France and used two small portions of it to conquer Belgium and to hold the Russians in check. For the first three weeks of the war Germany was only bluffing in Belgium and Russia. Less than forty thousand men sufficed to take Liége. The town was won not so much by the big artillery as by the marching power of the infantry. Tunnels and bridges had been blown up and the line, wherever possible, destroyed. It was a race against time, in which the railway could not be used. The soldiers had to press forward by forced marches, and they described to me how, in order to lighten their steps, they threw away everything they could spare—knapsacks, bread bags, mantles, and trenching tools. Some even got rid of their tunics and marched in their shirt-sleeves. For miles and miles the roads were lined with the cast-off effects of the German soldiers. Many men could not keep up and fell fainting or dying by the wayside. Whatever opposition they encountered had to be crushed at once, regardless of cost. The slaughter was immense, one regiment being reduced to five hundred men by the time Liége was taken. In this case, at any rate, the training which the German soldier had received was justified by results. At the beginning of the war nothing seemed too wild and impossible for the German soldier to attempt. The tradition of audacity engendered in the army was always bringing in splendid prizes. At Namur, a lieutenant and four men bluffed into surrender the principal fort with its entire garrison.
BELGIUM
The system had other aspects. I do not intend to discuss the terrorization of Belgium here, except to say that the worst allegations of the Allies are fully borne out by the tales the German soldiers relate to one another. Man after man has told me how, when he was in Belgium, he used to fill Feldpostpakete with jewellery and send them home. Looting was frequent, unashamed, and not reproved by those in command. The tales of murder were just as numerous. Children knee-high were killed, women and girls driven into a house, which was then set on fire, and they were deliberately burned alive. The Germans had a peculiar liking for humiliating their victims before killing them. The condemned were nearly always made to dig their own graves. I heard one particularly touching story of a girl. She had shot a German officer; the reason was not stated, but it may be guessed. She was sentenced to be executed next morning. When she came out to her death, her face showed that she had spent the night in dreadful agony of soul. And yet the soldiers insulted her and clubbed her with their rifles before shooting her. Educated men used to feel shame at times. One such wrote home to his mother in a fit of remorse and described how, before shooting a French officer, he had made him put on his coat inside out. His mother was beside herself. “How could my son,” she said, “do a thing like that?”
Another man told me about his experiences at Louvain. I give his words exactly. “We were sitting round the table in our room. Suddenly shots fell and some bullets whizzed past our heads and buried themselves in the wall opposite. The lieutenant said, ‘Put out the light, somebody.’ This we did. ‘Go out into the street, and wherever you see a Belgian or wherever you see a light in a house, shoot.’” The tale speaks for itself. The lieutenant had not the slightest evidence that the shots had come from the Belgians. This same soldier told me that from the first they had orders to give no quarter to the English.
FRANCE
I heard similar tales of rapine, arson, and murder in France. One army corps, I think it was the tenth, was especially famous for its record in these things. Villages were burned as a matter of course, without any military reason. Sheer savage lust of destruction was the motive and nothing else. The men of this corps were proud of what they had done and were regarded by the others with envy.
It was interesting to speak with those who had been at the Marne. They were unanimous in asserting that they had not been defeated, but had retired of their own free will. Some even spoke of having spontaneously retreated ninety kilometres in one day. The general opinion in the German Army was that the failure on the Marne was due to the Saxons. They could not march so well as the Prussians. The pace had been too much for them, so they had given up and left their comrades in the lurch. Others accounted for it by saying that just in the nick of time the Italians let the French know that they need not guard the Italian frontier. Whereupon all the army corps in the South of France were suddenly thrown into the battle and their appearance turned the scale. But of Joffre as a factor that counted in the battle of the Marne there was never a word.
There were many complaints at the beginning of the war about the quality of the reserve officers. From not one but from several regiments I used to hear strange stories about the difficulties these men got their regiments into. On a certain occasion in the Vosges, the Germans had to retire, and their commander, an officer of the reserve, thought it a great thing to lead them into a kind of little pocket or basin in the forest. The French, however, knew these hills perfectly, and were well aware that that was the only place where troops could find shelter. They swept it with a storm of shell and left scarcely a man alive. In the early days the mortality among the subalterns was horrible. Later on they were not expected to lead their company to the attack, but to go behind the first line or “wave.”
We used to have rare thrills in Bonn during the great fights. Officers were able to telephone straight from the field of battle to their families at home. You might sit in your study and exchange the time of the day with a friend in the trenches. It was not allowed officially, but it was done. Officers might telegraph if there was any important business to settle. So families in Bonn were continually receiving this sort of telegram: “Buy 10,000 war stock,” “By all means sell the house.” This did not mean that the Frau Hauptmann was to engage in these transactions really; it only meant that on the date the wire was dispatched, its sender was alive and well.