A world undone: the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (75 page)

On the other side of the Eastern Front, inside Germany and Austria-Hungary, the situation was equally grim if not quite so explosive. Here it was not only the urban centers that were in trouble. The problem was not just bad management—though there was enough of that—but a true, protracted, and by 1917 pervasive absence of the necessities of life. Neither empire had done anything to prepare for a long war, let alone for what amounted to a years-long siege, and both had begun experiencing shortages of food when the war was only a few months old. As early as October 1914 ten thousand horses were slaughtered in Vienna. The following spring, when German farmers defied a ban on feeding grain and potatoes to livestock, the Berlin bureaucracy ordered the mass butchering of all hogs. Nine million animals perished in this
Schweinemord,
and the consequences were uniformly unfortunate. After a brief collapse, pork prices rose sharply and permanently, and there was no longer enough breeding stock to replenish the supply.

A number of factors contributed to making the naval blockade as devastating as it was. The jerry-built political structures of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires made consistent central control and even coordination practically impossible; Bavaria blocked the removal of its produce to other parts of Germany, while Hungary began selling its agricultural surplus to Germany rather than sharing it with Austria. Before the war Germany had been importing two million tons of nitrate and phosphate fertilizers per year, plus six million tons of grain for fodder and a million seasonal agricultural workers. As this input dwindled, agricultural productivity fell; grain production declined by half between 1914 and 1917. Inevitably, the needs of the armies were given first priority, and these were colossal and inexorable: seventeen million pounds of meat, sixty million pounds of bread, and one hundred thirty million pounds of potatoes every week. The first food riots erupted in Vienna in May 1915, in Berlin five months later. Food prices rose 130 percent in Berlin during the first year of war, 600 percent in two years. Even for industrial workers wages did not come close to keeping pace, climbing only 78 percent for men employed in German war plants from 1914 to 1917 (women were paid substantially less) and 52 percent for men in nonmilitary factories. Profiteering was widespread, creating new millionaires whose conspicuous prosperity made them objects of popular hatred.

Heavy rains, early frost, and shortages of fertilizer and labor made the 1916 harvest a disastrous failure, and outright famine became widespread. The potato crop, increasingly essential as meat and dairy products became nearly unobtainable, fell by half in Germany and more than that in Austria-Hungary. Scores of thousands of people were lining up at soup kitchens every day. Textiles were being manufactured from paper and plant fiber, shoes from paper and wood, coffee from tree bark. Destitute war widows—Germany already had tens of thousands—spent their days waiting in long lines with their children for pathetically tiny rations. The diet of adult Germans consisted of a grotesque black “war bread” containing little real grain, fatless sausage, and a weekly allowance of three pounds of potatoes and one egg. Germans increasingly relied, for sheer survival, on one of the least appealing vegetables known to man, the humble turnip.

The bad harvest was followed by the long, cold winter of 1916–17, remembered ever after as “the turnip winter.” The chief physician at one of Berlin’s principal hospitals reported that eighty thousand children had died of starvation in 1916. In Austria families were allowed to heat only one room of their houses, which led to an epidemic of frozen and burst pipes. People were using dogs to pull their carts through the streets of Vienna—until it became necessary to eat the dogs. Even in Hungary, once rich in agricultural output, people were eating horses and dogs. German schools were closed for want of heating fuel. The average daily adult intake of calories, estimated at thirty-four hundred before the war, fell to twelve hundred. Deaths from lung disease increased from fourteen to nearly twenty-three per 100,000 women. Rickets, a deformation of bones and joints caused by malnutrition, became widespread among children.

“One of the most terrible of our sufferings was having to sit in the dark,” a German woman wrote of life during the blockade. “It became dark at four in winter. It was not light until eight. Even the children could not sleep all that time. One had to amuse them as best one could, fretful and pining as they were from under-feeding. And when they had gone to bed we were left shivering with the chill which comes from semi-starvation and which no additional clothing seems to alleviate, to sit thinking, thinking.” A German who was a schoolboy during the war would recall that “everybody seemed to be keeping rabbits because of the shortage of meat. They took us out in whole classes and sent us into the country to help the farmers. We liked that, but it meant we didn’t get much teaching. All the teachers were out as soldiers anyway, and generally the whole life of the country was becoming grimmer. There was a strong sense of people saying, ‘This war is lasting too long.’ Some became quite outspoken. The feeling was that the war was lasting too long and that Germany didn’t have much chance of winning it, because the conditions within the country were getting so very difficult.”

Even the expected bounty from the conquest of Romania made little difference, increasing the amount of grain available in Germany and Austria by barely six percent. In both countries once-prosperous city-dwellers were venturing out into the countryside to trade jewelry and prewar clothing made of authentic wool and cotton for whatever food they could find. In Vienna tens of thousands of women were trying to survive through prostitution. As governments repeatedly expanded the work week to increase factory output, strikes by workers not earning enough to feed their families grew in frequency, size, and violence. Mobs of women looted stores and government food depots.

This is the dark background against which, on the ninth day of 1917, Germany’s leaders met for a showdown over the question of submarine warfare. The kaiser was there, of course, still his empire’s All-High Warlord though increasingly passive and incapable of asserting himself. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were there as well, recently back from their inspection of the Western Front and freshly convinced that continued stalemate was the best Germany could hope for there in the coming year. Also present were the navy’s leaders, most notably Henning von Holtzendorff, chief of the navy’s general staff and a passionate advocate of the submarine as the only way of bringing Britain to its knees. Finally—last to arrive, because not invited until almost too late—was Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg.

In response to pressure from the United States, Germany had been keeping its submarine fleet in check since September 1915, when unrestricted operations were brought to an end. Bethmann had insisted on this measure, and though the kaiser supported him, most of the generals and admirals were furious at him for refusing to lift restrictions. Their estimates of what a renewed campaign could accomplish, however, had changed with the passage of time. At the beginning of 1915, in urging the removal of all restrictions, the admirals had said that such a step would put Britain in serious trouble within six weeks. Now, with the submarine fleet considerably expanded, Holtzendorff was saying that the job could be done in six months. Bethmann was horrified. He remained certain that what Holtzendorff was proposing would bring the United States into the war, and he dreaded the consequences. The kaiser asked Holtzendorff for his view. “I will give Your Majesty my word as an officer,” the admiral replied, “that not one American will land on the Continent.”

Ludendorff’s views on the subject were no secret to anyone. Two weeks earlier he had sent Bethmann a telegram stating that a U-boat campaign was “the only means of carrying the war to a rapid conclusion,” and that “the military position does not allow us to postpone.” Though Kaiser Wilhelm shared Bethmann’s fears, a far stronger ruler than he would have found it difficult to resist the demands of his officers. Virtually the entire German nation was clamoring for an end to restrictions on U-boat operations. Industry, the armed forces, the population at large—all were experiencing the ruinous effects of the blockade, and all had come to see submarine warfare not only as justified morally and legally but as absolutely necessary in practical terms. The Reichstag passed a series of resolutions opposing the limits that Bethmann was now nearly alone in trying to maintain.

The issue was quickly settled. Bethmann dutifully restated his reasons for opposing any change. But then, having done so, he withdrew his opposition. “I declared myself incompetent to criticize the judgment of the military experts who insisted that the war could not be won on land alone,” he wrote later. “In view of these facts and of the declared readiness of Headquarters to risk war with the United States, I could not advise His Majesty to do other than to accept the opinion of his military advisers.” In yielding as he did, Bethmann removed whatever basis the kaiser might still have had for resisting. He surrendered the last barrier to an unrestricted submarine campaign—very nearly the last barrier to America’s entry into the war. More than one fateful page was turned. Control of German policy passed conclusively out of the hands of the kaiser, out of the hands of the kaiser’s government, and into those of Erich Ludendorff.

The ultimate tragedy, from the German perspective, is that the decision taken on January 9 arose out of profoundly mistaken assumptions. Holtzendorff was wrong in his appraisal of the submarines’ effects, and of America’s military potential; this would become clear soon enough. Ludendorff was equally wrong in believing that Russia remained capable of offensive operations on the Eastern Front. If the U-boat decision had been deferred by just a few months, the truth about Russia’s collapse would have made it unnecessary. Washington’s principal grievance against Germany would have been removed.

The decision having been made, the Germans had no time to waste. It seemed essential, in order to demonstrate that if the war continued the British would starve as Germany was starving, to cut off British imports before the 1917 harvest was brought in. This meant before August 1, which in turn meant—Holtzendorff having predicted that the U-boats would need six months—starting by February 1. These calculations were as sound as they were simple, but the conclusions drawn from them were pure wishful thinking. Holtzendorff estimated that the submarines could sink six hundred thousand tons of shipping monthly from February through May, four hundred thousand monthly thereafter. He believed that losses of this magnitude would discourage many neutral shippers from trying to reach Britain, whose ability to continue the war would thereby come to an end.

These forecasts were accurate enough in the near term. Even in January, while still allowing American merchantmen to pass by unharmed, the U-boats would sink one hundred and eighty thousand ships totaling more than three hundred thousand tons. The lifting of restrictions became effective on February 1, and in that month five hundred and forty thousand tons would be sunk—well over half of them British. This total was followed by five hundred and ninety-three thousand tons in March, eight hundred and eighty-one thousand in April, five hundred and ninety-six thousand in May, and six hundred and eighty-seven thousand in June.

Homeward bound
U-boats returning to port at the end of a North Atlantic hunting expedition.

The German public rejoiced over the start of the campaign and the deliverance that it seemed to offer. But there was no deliverance. Life became more difficult in Britain but never nearly as difficult as in Germany and Austria. The flow of imports slowed for a time but never came close to stopping. The British and Americans put into service many of the German freighters that they had impounded in ports around the world at the outbreak of the war. As they became more adept both at sinking German submarines and at eluding them, it became obvious that the U-boats were going to deliver none of the things that Holtzendorff had promised, and that American entry into the war was going to be anything but unimportant.

Holtzendorff, who had been so terribly wrong, would nevertheless keep his job. Ludendorff, who had supported Holtzendorff with every political weapon at his disposal, not only kept his job but became de facto autocrat of Germany. Only Bethmann Hollweg would be purged.

Background

CONSUMING THE FUTURE

UNDER PRODDING FROM ERICH LUDENDORFF, THE REICHS
tag late in 1916 approved an Auxiliary Service Law that carried the concept of total war to a level previously unimagined. It put every German male between the ages of seventeen and sixty at the government’s disposal. Anyone not sent to the war could be assigned to a munitions factory, to agricultural labor, to a desk in the bureaucracy—to whatever the war ministry decided. Once in an assignment, no one could quit without permission. Those who disobeyed could be jailed for a year and fined.