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A Mixed Bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German Army, 1914–1918

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The Jewish Experience of the First World War

Abstract

The presence of subnational loyalties in the German army that fought the First World War has frequently been overlooked. With a few notable exceptions, the Kaiser’s armies have been portrayed as culturally and ethnically homogenous. This chapter seeks to address this historiographical shortcoming by placing official attitudes toward the army’s Jewish soldiers, ethnic minorities, and state-based contingents alongside one another. Before 1914, high-ranking officers possessed views of these groups that were informed by a diverse set of prejudices, ranging from intense antisemitism to a simple dislike of South German peculiarities. During the First World War, these views coalesced into an obsession with dual loyalties, a concept which, in the view of the Prussian war ministry and Supreme Command, threatened to tear the army apart from within.

An early version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Contesting Jewish Loyalties: The First World War and Beyond’ which took place at the Jewish Museum Berlin in December 2016. I am grateful to the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Central European History Society for supporting this research and to Doris Bergen, Roger Chickering, and James Retallack for providing thoughtful comments on drafts of this essay. I am equally indebted to Nisrine Rahal for ordering scans of several documents from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Leitsätze für die Aufklärungstätigkeit unter den Truppen’, July 29, 1917, in Wilhelm Deist, ed. (1970), Militär und Innenpolitik im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf, Droste Verlag), 841–846. For the military planning and preparations, see Holger H. Herwig (1997), The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (London, Arnold), 392–402. In his memoirs, Ludendorff admitted that already in the autumn of 1917 large numbers of men left the trenches during periods of fighting only to reappear after their units had been withdrawn to the rear areas. Erich Ludendorff (1920), Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914–1918 (Berlin, E.S. Mittler), 434.

  2. 2.

    Wilhelm Deist (1986), ‘Der militärische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreichs. Zur Realität der ‘Dolchstoßlegende’’, in Ursula Büttner, ed. Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, Hans Christians Verlag), 101–129. Alexander Watson disputes Deist’s claim of a ‘covert military strike’ and instead argues that from mid-1918 onwards German soldiers often took part in ‘ordered surrenders’ in which demoralized junior officers arranged for their passage into Allied captivity. Alexander Watson (2008), Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 184–231.

  3. 3.

    Rudolf Kiszling (1959), ‘Das Nationalitätenproblem in Habsburgs Wehrmacht 1848–1918’, Der Donauraum. Zeitschrift des Instituts für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa 4, 82–88; Gunther E. Rothenberg (1967), ‘The Habsburg Army and the Nationality Problem in the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914’, Austrian History Yearbook 3, 70–87; and Lawrence Sondhaus (1990), In the Service of the Emperor: Italians in the Austrian Armed Forces, 1814–1918 (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs), especially 96–103.

  4. 4.

    István Deák (1985), ‘The Habsburg Army in the First and Last Days of World War I: A Comparative Analysis’, in Béla K. Király and Nándor F. Dreisziger, eds. East Central European Society in World War I (New York, Columbia University Press), 301–312; Kiszling (1959), ‘Das Nationalitätenproblem’, 88–91. For the impact of the war on the civilian population of the empire, see Maureen Healy (2004), Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), especially 122–159.

  5. 5.

    Robert F. Baumann (1987), ‘Subject Nationalities in the Military Service of Imperial Russia: The Case of the Bashkirs’, Slavic Review 46, 489–502; Mark von Hagen (2004), ‘The Limits of Reform: The Multiethnic Imperial Army Confronts Nationalism, 1874–1917’, in David Schimmelpennick von der Oye and Bruce W. Menning, eds. Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 34–46.

  6. 6.

    Mark von Hagen (1998), ‘The Great War and the Mobilization of Ethnicity in the Russian Empire’, in Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, eds. Post-soviet Political Order: Conflict and State Building (London, Routledge), 34–57; Allan K. Wildman (1980), The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917) (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press), 103–104. For the uprising in Turkestan, see Daniel Brower (2003), Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London, Routledge), 152–175.

  7. 7.

    The German army has consistently been overlooked in the research on multiethnic armies. For example, see the essays in N.F. Dreisziger, ed. (1990), Ethnic Armies: Polyethnic Armed Forces from the Time of the Habsburgs to the Age of the Superpowers (Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid Laurier University Press). The German army is also omitted from the comparative framework in Alfred J. Rieber (2015), ‘Nationalizing Imperial Armies: A Comparative and Transnational Study of Three Empires’, in Stefan Berger and Alexei Miller, eds. Nationalizing Empires (Budapest, Central European University Press), 593–628.

  8. 8.

    For example, see Robert F. Baumann (1986), ‘Universal Service Reform and Russia’s Imperial Dilemma’, War and Society 4, 31–49; Franziska Davies (2013), ‘Eine imperiale Armee – Juden und Muslime im Dienste des Zaren’, Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 12, 151–172.

  9. 9.

    For the negotiations between Prussia and the smaller German states before 1871, see Otto Pflanze (1963), Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 1815–1871 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press), 348–354, 480–490.

  10. 10.

    ‘Gesetz betreffend die Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches’, in Die Stenographischen Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Reichstages, Anlagen (Berlin, 1871), 8–9.

  11. 11.

    ‘Militär-Konvention zwischen dem Norddeutschen Bund und dem Königreich Sachsen vom 7. Februar 1867’, ‘Der Bundesvertrag betreffend den Beitritt Bayerns zur Verfassung des Deutschen Bundes vom 23. November 1870’, and ‘Militärkonvention zwischen dem Norddeutschen Bunde und Württemberg vom 21./25. November 1870’, in Ernst Rudolf Huber, ed. (1986), Dokumente zur Deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte (Stuttgart, Verlag W. Kohlhammer), 292–294, 329–333, 339–342.

  12. 12.

    Because an imperial ministry of war was never created, the Prussian minister of war presented the army’s budget to the Reichstag and defended the Kaiser’s power of command, or Kommandogewalt, from civilian interference. See Gordon A. Craig (1955), The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 219–232.

  13. 13.

    Report of Major Hermann von Stülpnagel, October 16, 1872, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes [PA AA] Berlin, R 2704. Only a few months later, Stülpnagel complained that the Bavarian minister of war opposed the transfers of Bavarian officers to Prussia for ‘particularistic purposes’. Stülpnagel’s report, February 8, 1873, PA AA Berlin, R 2708.

  14. 14.

    Othmar Hackl (1999), Der bayerische Generalstab (1792–1919) (Munich, C.H. Beck), 277–279, 292–296, 326–347.

  15. 15.

    Personnel appointments consistently created tension between Prussia and the smaller kingdoms. See Harald Rüddenklau (1972), ‘Studien zur Bayerischen Militärpolitik 1871 bis 1914’ (PhD diss., Universität Regensburg); Robert T. Walker (1974), ‘Prusso-Württembergian Military Relations in the German Empire, 1870–1918’ (PhD diss., The Ohio State University).

  16. 16.

    Eva Rimmele (1996), Sprachenpolitik im Deutschen Kaiserreich vor 1914. Regierungspolitik und veröffentlichte Meinung in Elsaß-Lothringen und den östlichen Provinzen Preußens (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang), 17–22.

  17. 17.

    Robert Morier, British envoy to Bavaria, to the Foreign Office, October 21, 1872, The National Archives [TNA] Kew, FO 9/216. Before writing this report, Morier had traveled extensively throughout Alsace-Lorraine and spoken with numerous government authorities and local notables about the attitude of the region’s population.

  18. 18.

    Dan P. Silverman (1972), Reluctant Union: Alsace-Lorraine and Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press), 70–74. For the relationship between Alsace-Lorraine and the empire, see Hans-Ulrich Wehler (1970), ‘Unfähig zur Verfassungsreform. Das ‘Reichsland’ Elsaß-Lothringen von 1870 bis 1918’, in Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs 1871–1918. Studien zur deutschen Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 17–63.

  19. 19.

    Christoph Jahr (1998), Gewöhnliche Soldaten. Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 254; Alan Kramer (1997), ‘Wackes at War: Alsace-Lorraine and the Failure of German National Mobilization, 1914–1918’, in John Horne, ed. State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 110–111.

  20. 20.

    Richard Blanke (1981), Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871–1900) (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs), especially 39–86. For the percentage of Poles in Prussia’s eastern provinces, see Rimmele, Sprachenpolitik, 32–47.

  21. 21.

    Jens Boysen (2008), Preußische Armee und polnische Minderheit. Royalistische Streitkräfte im Kontext der Nationalitätenfrage des 19. Jahrhunderts (1815–1914) (Marburg, Verlag Herder-Institut), 29–46.

  22. 22.

    Diary entry for January 18, 1908, in Robert Zedlitz-Trützschler (1924), Twelve Years at the Imperial German Court (London, Nisbet), 214–218. In the spring of 1890, the Prussian envoy in Dresden was surprised to learn that the son of a wealthy Jewish banker who had recently converted to Christianity had been rejected by a Saxon cavalry regiment because of concerns that the candidate would adversely affect the behaviour and morals of the other officers. Carl von Dönhoff to the Foreign Office, April 11, 1890, PA AA Berlin, R 3236.

  23. 23.

    ‘Eine Kaiserliche Kabinettsordre über den Offizierstand’, March 29, 1890, in Gerhard A. Ritter (1992), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871–1914. Ein historisches Lesebuch (Göttingen, Vandenhöck & Ruprecht), 95–97. For the ever increasing shortage of officer candidates from aristocratic families, see Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 232–238.

  24. 24.

    Martin Kitchen (1968), The German Officer Corps, 1890–1914 (Oxford, Oxford Univesity Press), 37–43; Manfred Messerschmidt (1984), ‘Juden im preußisch-deutschen Heer’, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, ed. Deutsche Jüdische Soldaten 1914–1945. Katalog zur Wanderausstellung des Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes (Bonn, E.S. Mittler), 116–117; Derek J. Penslar (2013), Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press), 88–91.

  25. 25.

    Wolfgang Schmidt (1996), ‘Die Juden in der Bayerischen Armee’, in Frank Nägler, ed. Deutsche Jüdische Soldaten. Von der Epoche der Emanzipation bis zum Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Hamburg, E.S. Mittler), 71–79. For the tension between popular and official attitudes towards Jews in Bavaria, see James Harris (1994), The People Speak! Anti-semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press).

  26. 26.

    Colonel Ludwig von Gebsattel to the Bavarian ministry of war, January 14, 1907, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv [BayHStA] Munich, Abteilung IV Kriegsarchiv [IV KA], MKr 43.

  27. 27.

    Werner T. Angress (1972), ‘Prussia’s Army and the Jewish Reserve Officer Controversy Before World War I’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 17, 19–42. For Jewish attempts at greater integration and the Christian response more generally, see Uriel Tal (1975), Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press).

  28. 28.

    David Engel (1986), ‘Patriotism as a Shield: The Liberal Jewish Defence Against Antisemitism in Germany During the First World War’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 31, 152–153; Christhard Hoffmann (1997), ‘Between Integration and Rejection: The Jewish Community in Germany, 1914–1918’, in John Horne, ed. State, Society and Mobilization, 92–95.

  29. 29.

    Circular of the Prussian ministry of war, November 9, 1914, and the memorandum of the staff of the VII Army Corps district, June 1915, in Deist, Militär und Innenpolitik, 1:81–83, 95–98. For the declaration of the Burgfrieden, see Wilhelm II’s speech from the throne, August 4, 1914, in Stenographische Berichte (Berlin, 1916), 1–2.

  30. 30.

    Executive committee of the VddJ to the deputy command of the Prussian Guard Corps, June 17, 1915, and the deputy command’s reply, July 20, 1915, Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv [BA MA] Freiburg, PH 7, file 27.

  31. 31.

    Jahr, Gewöhnliche Soldaten, 255–260; Kramer, ‘Wackes at War’, 108–111.

  32. 32.

    Decree of the Prussian ministry of war, January 11, 1916, and a second clarification to the deputy command of the XV Army Corps, February 2, 1916, BA MA Freiburg, PH 1, file 8. For the earlier measures against the Alsatians, see Jahr (1998), Gewöhnliche Soldaten, 260–263; Benjamin Ziemann (1996), ‘Fahnenflucht im deutschen Heer 1914–1918’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 55, 122.

  33. 33.

    Alexander Watson (2010), ‘Fighting for Another Fatherland: The Polish Minority in the German Army, 1914–1918’, English Historical Review 126, 1144–1151; Ziemann, ‘Fahnenflucht’, 124.

  34. 34.

    Gerald D. Feldman (1996), Army, Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914–1918 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press), 149–249; Herwig, The First World War, 244–266.

  35. 35.

    Panikos Panayi (1993), ‘Dominant Societies and Minorities in the Two World Wars’, in Panikos Panayi, ed. Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia During the Two World War (Providence, RI, Berg), 3–23.

  36. 36.

    See the essays by Saul Friedländer, ‘Die politischen Veränderungen der Kriegszeit und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Judenfrage’, and Werner Jochmann, ‘Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus’, in Werner E. Mosse (1971), Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution 1916–1923 (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck), 27–65, 409–510. For the revival of antisemitism in the officer corps during the war, see Messerschmidt, ‘Juden im preußisch-deutschen Heer’, 119–120.

  37. 37.

    Werner T. Angress (1978), ‘The German Army’s ‘Judenzählung’ of 1916: Genesis—Consequences—Significance’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 23, 121–125. For the census instructions, see the copy of the order of the Prussian ministry of war, October 11, 1916, BayHStA Munich, IV KA, MKr 10791.

  38. 38.

    For example, Armeeoberkommando A to the Prussian ministry of war, April 28, 1917, Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Hauptstaatsarchiv [HStA] Stuttgart, M 30/1, file 107. For a similar census initiated by the 8th Bavarian Reserve Division in April 1916, see Ziemann, ‘Fahnenflucht im deutschen Heer 1914–1918’, 122–123.

  39. 39.

    For example, see the report of the 8th Bavarian Infantry Brigade to the 14th Bavarian Infantry Division, February 21, 1917, and the brigade’s subsequent statistical compilation of military justice cases dated March 15, 1917, BayHStA Munich, IV KA, Infanterie-Divisionen (WK) 5932.

  40. 40.

    Prussian ministry of war to the Prussian ministry of the interior, November 1915, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz [GStA PK] Berlin-Dahlem, I. Hauptabteilung [HA], Rep. 90A, file 3748. For the increasing concerns about the reliability of Polish soldiers in units from Posen and West Prussia, see the report of the 155th Infantry Regiment to the 77th Infantry Brigade, September 11, 1915, GStA PK Berlin-Dahlem, I. HA, Rep. 90A, file 3748. See also Watson, ‘Fighting for Another Fatherland’, 1156–1158; Ziemann (1998), ‘Fahnenflucht’, 124–125.

  41. 41.

    Order of the Supreme Command, December 2, 1917, HStA Stuttgart, M 30/1, file 107.

  42. 42.

    Reports of Carl-Georg von Treutler, Prussian envoy in Munich, to the Foreign Office, June 23, 1916 and November 2, 1916, PA AA Berlin, R 2736.

  43. 43.

    General Karl von Nagel zu Aichberg, Bavarian military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, to the Bavarian minister of war, August 25, 1916, BayHStA Munich, IV KA, MKr 1830. For the incident in the 14th Bavarian Infantry Division, see the order of the Bavarian ministry of war, October 12, 1916, BayHStA Munich, IV KA, MilBev Berlin 93.

  44. 44.

    Tony Cowan (2014), ‘A Picture of German Unity? Federal Contingents in the German Army, 1916–17’, in Jonathan Krause, ed. The Greater War: Other Combatants and Other Fronts, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan), 147–148. In September 1914, the Bavarian minister of war angrily observed that no one had even notified him that Bavarian officers had been transferred to non-Bavarian units. General Otto Kreß von Kressenstein to the Bavarian military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, September 24, 1914, BayHStA Munich, IV KA, MilBev Berlin 89.

  45. 45.

    Reports of General Traugott Leuckart von Weißdorf, Saxon military plenipotentiary in General Headquarters, to the Saxon minister of war, August 25, 1916 and September 10, 1916, Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv [SHStA] Dresden, Bestand 11250, file 54; General Friedrich von Graevenitz, Württemberg’s military plenipotentiary, to the Württemberg minister of war, October 1, 1916, HStA Stuttgart, M 1/2, file 114.

  46. 46.

    Order of the Supreme Command, October 6, 1916, HStA Stuttgart, M 1/11, file 351. See also Cowan, ‘A Picture of German Unity?’ 148.

  47. 47.

    Claus Bundgård Christensen (2012), ‘Fighting for the Kaiser: The Danish Minority in the German Army, 1914–18’, in Claes Ahlund, ed. Scandinavia in the First World War: Studies in the War Experience of the Northern Neutrals (Lund, Nordic Academic Press), 267–282. For the perceived loyalty of the Masurians, see Watson, ‘Fighting for Another Fatherland’, 1150–1151.

  48. 48.

    Postwar report of Colonel Max Holland, April 6, 1919, HStA Stuttgart, M 1/2, file 245. In his memoirs, Ludendorff praised the Württembergers, whose units, in his opinion, were consistently some of the best in the entire army. Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, 204.

  49. 49.

    Wilhelm Groener (1972), Lebenserinnerungen. Jugend, Generalstab, Weltkrieg (Osnabrück, Biblio Verlag), 442–443. Although he implied that the Alsatians and Poles in the division were responsible for this incident, Groener conceded that the ‘influences of the Heimat’ were more generally to blame for the army’s deteriorating morale.

  50. 50.

    The statistics collected by the Prussian ministry of war in the autumn of 1916, together with most of the documentary material relating to the ‘Jewish census’, were destroyed in the spring of 1945 when an Allied bombing raid struck the Heeresarchiv in Potsdam. Angress, ‘The German Army’s ‘Judenzählung’ of 1916’, 124–125. For the postwar evolution of the ‘stab-in-the-back myth’, see Boris Barth (2003), Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf, Droste Verlag).

  51. 51.

    Peter Holquist argues that Russian civilian and military authorities had engaged in ‘population politics’ from the late nineteenth century onwards. See Holquist (2001), ‘To Count, To Extract, To Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia’, in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds. A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 111–144.

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  1. Department of History, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Gavin Wiens

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  1. Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    Edward Madigan

  2. Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK

    Gideon Reuveni

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Wiens, G. (2019). A Mixed Bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German Army, 1914–1918. In: Madigan, E., Reuveni, G. (eds) The Jewish Experience of the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54896-2_7

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