Roger Chickering - Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918

This book explores the impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany and examines military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, politics, and industrial mobilization of wartime Germany. Including maps, tables, and illustrations, it also offers a rich portrait of life on the home front the wars pervasive effects on rich and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. It analyzes the growing burdens of war and the translation of hardship into political opposition. The new edition incorporates the latest scholarship and expands the coverage to include military action outside Europe, military occupation, prisoners of war, and the memory of war. This survey represents the most comprehensive history of Germany during the First World War. It will be of interest to all students of German and European history, as well as the history of war and society.

ROGER CHICKERING is Professor Emeritus of History in the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University, where he taught from 1993 to 2010. His recent publications include The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 19141918 (2007) and, with Dennis Showalter and Hans van de Ven, The Cambridge History of War: War in the Modern World (2012).

New Approaches to European History is an important textbook series, which provides concise but authoritative surveys of major themes and problems in European history since the Renaissance. Written at a level and length accessible to advanced school students and undergraduates, each book in the series addresses topics or themes that students of European history encounter daily: the series embraces both some of the more traditional subjects of study and those cultural and social issues to which increasing numbers of school and college courses are devoted. A particular effort is made to consider the wider international implications of the subject under scrutiny.

To aid the student reader, scholarly apparatus and annotation is light, but each work has full supplementary bibliographies and notes for further reading: where appropriate, chronologies, maps, diagrams, and other illustrative material are also provided.

For a complete list of titles published in the series, please see:

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Imperial Germany and the Great War, 19141918

Third Edition

Roger Chickering

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107691520

Roger Chickering 2014

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1998

Second edition 2004

Third edition 2014

Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Chickering, Roger, 1942

Imperial Germany and the Great War, 19141918 / Roger Chickering. Third edition.

pages cm. (New approaches to European history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-03768-7 (hardback)

1. World War, 19141918 Germany. 2. World War, 19141918 Social aspects Germany. 3. War and society Germany. I. Title.

DD228.8.C48 2014

940.343 dc23 2014010190

ISBN 978-1-107-03768-7 Hardback

ISBN 978-1-107-69152-0 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Kyle

When I view the radiant valleys of our fatherland which spread out here at our feet, I can only wish: may the day never come when the hordes of war rage through them. And may the day also never come when we are forced to carry war to the valleys of a foreign people.

This book originated in another project, which is at once broader in scope and much narrower in focus. In deference to the principle that total war requires total history, I have been studying the comprehensive impact of the First World War in a single mid-sized German city. In conjunction with this project, I decided several years ago to explore the history of the war and German society with a class of undergraduate students at the University of Oregon. I discovered that there was no suitable text for such a course. The present volume grew directly out of discussions with students in that class. It is conceived in the first instance for readers like them, but it is also intended for others who are interested in the modern history of Germany and Europe, as well as the history of war and society. The scholarly apparatus is designed for those whom the text entices into further reading.

It is now a pleasure to repay my many intellectual debts with public gratitude. My thanks go first to my students in Oregon, my former home, for contributions that pervade the volume. In addition, I owe great thanks to a number of scholars who have offered comments on the manuscript as it progressed. They include Gerald Feldman, Wilhelm Deist, Belinda Davis, Stig Frster, and Richard Stites, who is now my colleague at Georgetown. My friend Bruce Wonder, who counts himself in the category of informed general reader, has also offered invaluable suggestions for the manuscripts improvement. My research assistant, David Freudenwald, provided much-needed help in my dealings with a number of libraries. Several institutions have also supported the manuscript in various stages of its gestation. My gratitude goes to the Gerda Henkel Foundation, which supported a years research in Europe in 19912, the Graduate School at Georgetown University, which made possible several subsequent trips to Europe, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, which provided me with the opportunity to complete the work in a stimulating atmosphere of intellectual exchange.

When I began to work on the First World War in the late 1980s, I had no idea that I would still be writing about it on the occasion of its centenary. A lot has happened in the meantime. This volume has now gone through two English-language editions, as well as a German translation. The other project that provided the stimulus for the first edition was published several years ago as a kind of pendant in microcosm to this volume.