If an attempt were made to analyse German society before 1914 in terms of a class structure whose primary criterion was the ownership and control of the means of production, it would be very difficult to place salaried employees, on the one hand, and artisans and small tradesmen on the other, within such a framework. In the writings of the day these two groups-along with most peasants, civil servants, and professional people-were frequently lumped together as the 'Mittelstand' (roughly, 'middle classes') to mark them off from those above and those below, from capital and wage-labour, from the ruling classes and the proletariat. The present essay deals with the socio-economic characteristics, the ideologies, and the social alliances of these middle groups, with their wartime development and resulting changes. Up to now only tentative efforts have been made to investigate the impact of the war on Germany's economic and social structure. For all too long pride of place has been given to military, political, and constitutional problems, in which economic and social history has played at best a mere supporting role. In particular, the growing middle strata, relatively silent but hard-hit by the war, have largely escaped the attention of historians. According to the last pre-war occupational census (I907), there were about 2,000,000 salaried employees (Angestellte) as compared with I3,700,000 wage-earners (Arbeiter); i.e. for every io salaried employees there were approximately 70 wage-earners. Most of the employees (about I,00oo,ooo) were employed in the service sector, and had in fact been there (to be sure, in very