Strategy and Unlimited Warfare in Germany

Abstract

In his chapter in this book, Roger Chickering studies the British and German experiences in World War I in order to suggest the advantages of using the “narrative” of total war as a “developmental model.” This concept seems especially appropriate to Germany's experience of this war. During the first months of World War I, the German military leadership had no concept whatsoever of managing a total war, despite the fact that universal conscription had facilitated the mobilization of the nations resources - in a way that was foreign to the British experience. Walther Rathenau's initiative in organizing the mobilization of war-related industrial materials came as a surprise to the Prussian War Ministry's leading officers, whereas the military administration was not even prepared to deal with the large numbers of volunteers. In fact, the question is still open as to whether the German nation as a whole ever experienced total war during this conflict. Just as problematic as total war is the term strategy: It is used vaguely today, even in the historical literature. Some authors have discerned strategy in simple operational plans, even in tactical maneuvers; Anglo-Saxon writers have distinguished, sometimes carelessly, between strategy and grand strategy. The late Andreas Hillgruber, who wrote on Hitler's strategy, offered a definition that is, I believe, applicable to this century's world wars. Strategy, he argued, is “the integration of domestic and foreign policy, of military and psychological planning, and the administration of the economy and armaments by the top-level leadership of a state, in order to carry out a comprehensive ideological and political design.” Carried to its logical end, this characterization offers a useful definition of strategy in total war. The definition provides a perspective from which some of the turning points in Germany's conduct of World War I can be analyzed.