In the summer of 1915, the first manifestos dropped by enemy aviators fell on our lines.
Apart from some variations in the form of its wording, the content was always the same: that misery in Germany was increasing daily; that the war would last indefinitely and that Germany’s chances of victory were diminishing; that the German people therefore longed for peace, with only “militarism” and the “Kaiser” opposing it; that the entire world, well informed of this background, was not waging war against the German people themselves, but exclusively against the sole culprit: Emperor Wilhelm II; that the struggle would not end until this enemy of peaceful humanity had been eliminated, but that the free and democratic nations would, after the war, welcome the German people into the World Peace League, which would be assured the moment Prussian “militarism” was destroyed, etc., etc.
In general, such experiments caused only hilarity among us at that time.
One aspect of this propaganda must have caught our attention.
It was the fact that on every sector of the front where Bavarians were operating, enemy flyers systematically instigated a war against Prussia, claiming, on the one hand, that Prussia was the sole culprit and responsible party for the war, and on the other, that there was not the slightest animosity toward Bavaria; but that, of course, it was impossible to provide any assistance as long as Bavaria was in the service of Prussian militarism, pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for it.
This form of influence began to produce some results as early as 1915. Anti-Prussian sentiment became apparent among the troops, but no effective counteraction was felt from the commanding levels.
From 1916 onwards, enemy propaganda had been clearly successful; the complaining letters from homes had long since had their effect.
Suggestive revelations became evident from that year on. The combatants protested and “grumbled,” showing their discontent on many fronts and even becoming rightly so. While they at the front suffered hunger and deprivation and their families at home endured all kinds of misery, elsewhere abundance and dissipation reigned. Evidently, even in the theater of operations, not everything was in order. But all the same, these things remained matters of “internal” order. The same soldier who minutes before had been cursing and grumbling now silently fulfilled his duty, and the same company that had expressed its discontent later clung to the trench it was supposed to defend, as if the future of Germany had depended on those hundred meters of muddy ditches. That was still the front of the old and glorious army of heroes!
In the last days of September 1916 my division entered into action in the Battle of the Somme.
For us, this was the first of the monstrous material battles that were to follow, and the impression of which is very difficult to describe – it was more hell than war.
On October 7th I was wounded.
Two years had passed since I’d last been home, an infinitely long period under the rigors of war. As our train approached the border, each of us felt a deep inner restlessness.
I was sent to the military hospital in Beelitz, near Berlin. What a change! From the mud of the Battle of the Somme to the white beds of that wonderful building.
Unfortunately, this environment must have been new to me in another sense as well. The unbreakable spirit of the army at the front seemed to have no place there anymore. Here, I heard for the first time something unknown at the front: the praise of one’s own cowardice.
Once I was recovered, as soon as I could walk, I was given permission to move to Berlin. Bitter poverty was evident everywhere. The city of millions suffered from hunger. Discontent prevailed. In the places frequented by soldiers, the mood was similar to that which reigned in
the hospital. One got the impression that these elements were deliberately seeking out these places to spread their pessimism.
Even more disappointing were the circumstances in Munich. I thought I’d never recognize that city again when, after leaving the Beelitz hospital, I was assigned to a reserve battalion there. Everywhere: ill-humor, dejection, and insults. Even in the battalion itself, a profound depression was noticeable. This was compounded by the excessively clumsy treatment of the evacuees by old training officers, who had never been to the front and were therefore only relatively able to harmonize with the veteran combatants, who possessed certain peculiarities acquired during their time in the theater of war, which were incomprehensible to the reserve troop commanders. On the contrary, it was natural that an officer from the front should command greater respect from those troops than a stage commander. But even apart from all this, the general mood was miserable: lying in ambush was considered almost a sign of superior intelligence, while steadfast loyalty was seen as a sign of moral weakness or stupidity. The offices were occupied by Jewish elements; almost every clerk was a Jew, and every Jew a clerk. I was amazed to see so many “combatants” of the Chosen People here and couldn’t help but compare their number with the few representatives of them at the front.
Economically, the situation was even worse, as this was where the Jewish element had become truly “indispensable.”
While the Jew was plundering and subjugating the entire nation, the Bavarian people were stirring up trouble against the “Prussians.” I saw in this agitation the Jew’s most ingenious trick to divert the general attention focused on himself.
The damned discord existing between the federal states of the Reich had become unbearable for me and I was happy at the thought of returning to the battle front, for which I had already submitted my application upon arriving in Munich.
At the beginning of March 1917 I was back in my regiment.
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The depression prevailing in the army seemed to have reached its peak at the end of 1917. After the Russian disaster, the entire army gained new vigor and renewed hope; but above all, the Italian defeat that occurred in the autumn of that year had a marvelous effect, for in our victory, proof could be seen of the possibility of breaking enemy resistance, not only on the Russian front. Once again, a great faith filled the hearts of millions of men, and so, filled with confidence, we awaited the spring of 1918.
But while final preparations were being made in the theater of operations to end the eternal struggle; while endless convoys transporting men and war material were heading toward the Western Front; and while, finally, the troops were receiving instructions for the great offensive, the greatest iniquity of the entire war must have occurred in Germany.
The ammunition strike had been organized!
It is true that this strike did not achieve the desired success, due to the rising cost of military equipment at the front, because it broke out prematurely, so the lack of ammunition was not so severe as to ruin the army as the organizers had foreseen. Much more disastrous, however, was the moral effect it caused.
The first question to be asked was: Why did the army continue fighting if the people themselves didn’t want victory? What, then, did the enormous sacrifices and privations lead to?
The soldier was fighting for victory, and the country was opposing him with a strike. And second: What was the impression made on the enemy’s mind?
In the winter of 1917-1918, dark clouds appeared for the first time in the skies of the Allied world. Fear and horror had infiltrated the spirit of the opposing combatants, fanatically convinced until that moment. They feared the coming spring. Because if up to that moment they hadn’t managed to break the German resistance, which was only partially concentrated on the Western Front, how could they count on victory now that all the fighting energy of the astonishingly heroic nation seemed to be accumulating for the offensive on that front?
In such circumstances war broke out in Germany.
The world was stupefied at first, but then, as if freed from a nightmare, anti-German propaganda launched itself into the open.
exploit that advantage at the supreme hour.
Suddenly, a resource had been found capable of lifting the depressed morale of the Allied troops. It would be of no use to the Germans, it was said, to obtain as many victories as they wanted, since it would not be the victorious army that would make its triumphant entry into their country, but the revolution. This was the belief that the English, French, and American press began to instill in the souls of their readers, while the action of highly skillful propaganda raised the morale of the troops at the front.
This was the result of the ammunition strike, which, in enemy villages, strengthened faith in victory, while eliminating the debilitating despair that was spreading on the Allied front and, consequently, forcing thousands of German soldiers to pay for the people’s mistake with the tribute of their blood. The instigators of this infamous strike were later none other than the aspirants to the highest public offices in the immediate Germany of the revolution.
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He had been fortunate enough to be able to take part in the first two and the last of the army’s offensives on the Western Front.
Of them I retain the deepest impressions of my life, deep precisely because in 1918 for the last time the fighting lost its defensive character and became an attack, as at the beginning of the war in 1914.
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In the summer of 1918, a heavy atmosphere pervaded the entire front. Discord reigned in the homeland. And why? Multiple rumors circulated among the various sectors of the army’s troops in the field. It was said that the war was no longer promising and that only the insane could still hope for victory; that the German people were no longer interested in maintaining resistance and that only the capitalists and the monarchy were interested in it. All this came from the homeland and was discussed at the front.
At first, the fighters reacted weakly to this propaganda.
What did we care about universal suffrage? Was that what we had fought for for four long years?
The well-tested elements of the battlefront were hardly capable of adapting to the new war aims preached by Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebknecht, and others. It was incomprehensible how, from one moment to the next, the ambushes had the right to claim state hegemony over and above the army.
My personal viewpoint was firm from the outset; I deeply hated that whole gang of miserable, swindling partisan politicians. I had long since seen clearly that the work of that group of individuals did not truly seek the well-being of the nation, but simply the goal of lining their empty pockets. And the fact that they were capable of sacrificing the entire people, and if necessary, even bringing Germany to ruin, made me consider them ripe for the gallows from then on. Giving in to their wishes meant sacrificing the interests of the working people for the benefit of a group of swindlers, and satisfying them was only possible at the price of renouncing Germany. This was the view—as I did—of the vast majority of the army in the field.
In August and September, the symptoms of dissociation increased rapidly, even though the effect of the enemy offensive could never compare with the horror of the battles of our defensive actions of yesteryear. The battles of the Somme and Flanders have thus gone down in history as unprecedented.
At the end of September, my division reoccupied for the third time the same positions that we had once assaulted with our young volunteer regiments.
What memories!
Now, in the autumn of 1918, the men had changed: politics was being waged among the troops. The poison coming from the rear began to have its poisonous effect here, as everywhere else. The new reserves failed completely—they came from the rear!
On the night of October 13-14, the British began to launch gas grenades on the southern front of the Ypres sector. They were using “yellow cross” gas, the effects of which were not yet known to us from our own experience. I must have experienced them that night as well.
By midnight, part of our troops were already disabled, and some comrades were lost forever. At dawn, I too was seized by terrible pains that grew more intense by the quarter hour. At 7 a.m., stumbling and staggering, I made my way to the rear, still carrying my last war report from the battlefield.
A few hours later my eyes were like glowing embers and darkness reigned around me.
In these conditions I was transferred to the hospital in Pasewalk, in Pomeramia, where I was to spend the time of the revolution.
Unfavorable rumors often came from naval circles, where it was said that tempers were running high. But all this seemed to me to be more the product of a few people’s fantasies than a matter of consequence. It’s true that in the hospital itself, everyone was talking about a long-awaited speedy end to the war, but no one imagined that this conclusion would come suddenly. I was unable to read newspapers.
In November, the general excitement increased.
And one day, catastrophe struck suddenly. The sailors arrived in trucks, proclaiming the revolution. A few Jewish youths were the leaders of this struggle for the “freedom, beauty, and dignity” of our people’s existence. Not one of them had been in the line of fire!
My health had improved over the past season. The stabbing pain in my eye sockets was disappearing, and little by little I could once again vaguely distinguish the outlines of objects. I was encouraged by the hope of regaining my sight, thinking that at least I would be able to practice some profession. Naturally, I had lost hope of ever being able to draw again as I had in my youth. I was, therefore, on the way to recovery when that terrible thing happened.
On November 10, the Pastor of the Hospital came to address us a few words; it was then that we learned everything. The venerable old man seemed to tremble intensely as he informed us that the House of Hohenzollern had ceased to wear the German imperial crown and that the Reich had been erected into a “republic.” But when he went on to inform us that we had been forced to end the long struggle, that our homeland, having lost the war and now being at the mercy of the
victor, I was exposed to grave humiliation in the future; that the armistice had to be accepted trusting in the generosity of our former enemies—then I could bear it no longer. My eyes clouded, and I groped my way back to the sickroom, where I sank down onto my bed, burying my bewildered head in the pillows.
From the day I stood before my mother’s grave, I had never wept. When, in my youth, fate struck me mercilessly, my spirit was comforted; when, during the long years of the war, death snatched beloved companions and comrades from my side, it would have seemed almost a sin to sob—they were dying for Germany! And when, finally, in the last days of the terrible conflict, the gas, imperceptibly slipping in, began to corrode my eyes, and I, faced with the horrible thought of losing my sight forever, was about to despair—the voice of conscience cried out within me: Unhappy man! Weep while thousands of comrades suffer a hundred times more than you?
And I endured my fate in silence. But now it was different, because all material suffering disappeared in the face of the country’s misfortune!
Everything had been in vain, then; all the sacrifices and all the privations in vain; the torments of hunger and thirst, for endless months, in vain; also in vain, all those hours in which, in the grip of death, we carried out our duty despite everything; fruitless, in short, the sacrifice of two million lives. Had the soldiers of August and September 1914 died for this, and had the brave young volunteer regiments followed their example that same autumn? Had those 17-year-old boys fallen in the land of Flanders for this?
Could this have been the reason for the sacrifice offered to the homeland by German mothers, when with bleeding hearts they said goodbye to their most beloved children, never to see them again?
Did all this have to happen so that a bunch of wretches could now take over the country?
The more I tried, at that moment, to find an explanation for the phenomenon that had occurred, the more shame and indignation filled me. What did all the physical torment mean to me compared to the national tragedy?
What followed were days of horrible uncertainty and even worse nights – I knew that all was lost. To trust in the generosity of the enemy could only be the work of madmen or liars or
criminals. During those vigils, hatred for the perpetrators of the disaster germinated in me.
Wilhelm II had been the first, as German emperor, to extend a conciliatory hand to the leaders of Marxism, without realizing that villains know no honor.
While in their right hand they held the Emperor’s hand, with their left they reached for the dagger.
There is no room for compromise with Jews; when dealing with them, there is only a resounding “yes” or “no.”
I had decided to go into politics!
