Behind the German Front

I

DEEP is the gulf between history and historic truth, and perhaps never more so than in books dealing with military history. If one reason is that they are usually written by soldiers untrained as historians, and another that there is frequently some personal link, whether of acquaintance or tradition, between author and subject, a deeper reason lies in a habit of mind. For the soldier, ‘My country,’ right or wrong, must be the watchword. And this essential loyalty, whether it be to a country, to a regiment, or to comrades, is so ingrained in him that when he passes from action to reflection it is difficult for him to acquire instead the historian’s singleminded loyalty to truth.

Not that the most impartial historian is ever likely to attain truth in its entirety; but he is likely to approach it more closely if he has this single direction point. For the historian loyal to his calling it would be impossible to put forward the suggestion, such as one has heard from distinguished participants in the last war, that certain episodes might ‘best be glossed over’ in war histories. Yet these officers were men of indisputable honor, and quite unconscious that they were sinning, not only against the interests of their country’s future, but against truth, the essential foundation for honor.

But in military history there are extenuating circumstances. For the soldier who has had experience of war knows that the reality is so utterly

78 different from the customary account that he may well shrink from being a pioneer in bridging the gap. He knows so well the strain on, and the frailty of, human nature, his own included, that he is inclined toward charity. These influences operate most strongly on the regimental or divisional history, whose values become mainly as a line of pegs on which to hang memories, but as history are small.

There is a better chance of historical truth at the two extremes formed by the general history and the war diary of an individual. With the general history of a campaign the defect is that, if based exclusively on a comparison of the documents, it will miss truth, not only because such documents are often written with an eye on the subsequent historical student, but because orders and instructions are ‘soulless.’ They betray little or no hint of the discussion from which and the personal atmosphere in which the decisions recorded in them were produced. And they are so filled with the physical details of strengths, moves, and objectives that they obscure the psychological factors which, in Napoleon’s phrase, are really ‘as three to one.’

The best corrective comes from individual diaries or memoirs. These fall normally into two classes. One class comes from the responsible leaders who wish to explain or to justify their conduct. Such personal records are usually written up or revised after war, and their defect is that the authors inevitably have too close a personal interest in the verdict to be impartial and cannot help tending to color the picture accordingly.

The other class comes from those who served and saw the effects without being handicapped in recording them by responsibility for the causes. Unfortunately the bulk of this class is contributed by individuals who are only concerned with their personal experience and that of their own circle, and not with the military aspect. We have had an abundance of impressions in diary or novel form, but very few which are valuable to the military history of the war — perhaps because few have come from men who were soldiers by training and instinct. On our side, indeed, there is nothing to equal Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, which shrinks from neither criticism nor realism. But on the side of our late enemies a book has recently been published which gives the day-to-day impressions of a German poetand novelist, Rudolf Binding, who was also a trained soldier, beginning the war in command of a cavalry troop and subsequently filling various divisional staff posts. The German may ‘gloss over’ the truth in writing official histories, but, less reticent by nature than ourselves, has a passion for unburdening his soul to his diary, as our Intelligence found to its profit in the war.

In this case the author, being a poet, has been too wise to mar the literary quality of his impressions by revision. As the preface says, they ‘resist any effort to work them up, to collate or elaborate them. In recognition of their documentary value, and to conserve their spontaneity, they have not been altered from the form in which they were originally written during the war.’ Hence the military historical value of the book. But it has a threefold claim to immortality. As a picture of men at war it is one of the most

vivid and realistic books yet published, even though the scene and atmosphere are drawn from the angle of a divisional headquarters close up to the front rather than from actually inside the trenches. Binding has the imagination and the insight to span this gap, and his very detachment enables him to take a larger view. The defect of most of the loudly acclaimed war novels is that they focus attention too straitly on one small group of people in one small group of circumstances. The great war novel, so long sought, will assuredly weave all grades of experience into the narrative, from the private soldier in the trenches to the supreme commander at general headquarters and the statesman in the cabinet. One of the first books to attempt this in a measure was The Case of Sergeant Grischa.

II

A second value of Binding’s book lies in its critical judgments on the nature of war and the course of the Great War. One is struck by the parallel with C. E. Montague in its wideness and calmness of view and its acuteness of military criticism. These qualities are all the more notable because this is not a book written after the war, but consists of unaltered extracts from the author’s war letters and diaries. His prophetic vision is often startling, while the dispassionate balance he preserved in those days of passion and lies is almost miraculous.

The third value of the book is the light it sheds on the history of the war. I would sacrifice a ton of self-styled histories for such a book. And so illuminating is this aspect that to it one must here sacrifice the pleasure of bringing out its qualities as a brilliant yet profound contribution to literature. In the move through Belgium toward the Yser and Ypres, Binding writes on October 21, 1914: —

‘ Baptism of fire for three days of all sorts. We are up against English and French troops. A very tough fight, because, although we outnumber them, we are hampered by the lack of planes. So the gun positions cannot be spotted and we have to endure their fire without replying to it. . . . Great confusion. Supplies already broken down. We are so hungry that we pinch everything we can see.’

On October 25: ‘There is nothing to be done with cavalry here at present. We are lying much too far up, and it is pure luck that we have not been badly knocked about.’ And on the twentyseventh: ‘The battle, which has lasted nine times twenty-four hours without effecting a decision, has immobilized both fronts close to one another. Now forces will be massed for the attack. Our army has Ypres as its objective. There is no doubt that the English and French troops would already have been beaten by trained troops. But these young fellows we have, only just trained, are too helpless, particularly when the officers have been killed. Our light infantry battalion, almost all Marburg students, the best troops we have as regards musketry, have suffered terribly from enemy shell fire. In the next division, just such young souls, the intellectual flower of Germany, went singing into an attack on Langemarck, just as vain and just as costly.’

At the end of the month, when the battle strain appeared from the other side to be almost beyond endurance and the British front was held by a terribly frayed and thin line of troops, Binding writes: —

‘It is the thirteenth day of uninterrupted fighting at the same place. It was only on the first two days that we had something to show for our daily losses — indeed, it seems to be the case along the whole line from Belfort to the sea. I can see no strategy in this manner of conducting operations. Each of the countless divisions, like ours, is allotted a definite sector. It has to be held without consideration for the character of the ground and the inner strength of the troops, and is held to the point of senselessness. This, of course, ensures the continuity of the front, but . . . means that all the divisions are really doing nothing besides keeping their direction. . . .

‘This leaving the lie of the country out of consideration and not considering the quality of the troops both show themselves in our divisions. The country is difficult, and was not properly reconnoitred beforehand as it should have been. The troops themselves are young and are overcome by the first too powerful impression.’

These are curious side lights on that ‘perfect war machine,’ the German Army. And with prophetic insight Binding sums up: —

‘I don’t call it a success when a trench, a few hundred prisoners, are taken. They have always cost more blood than they are worth. The war has got stuck in a gigantic siege on both sides. The whole front is one endless fortified trench.’

Ten days later he reflects: —

‘War is a strange business. No one has really known it, and its methods of teaching are cruel, rough, and primitive. Human methods seem clumsy and foolish — in fact, offensively theatrical — compared with them. I can see in front of me the general who commands one of our brigades. He received a report that a small garrison was holding us up and firing busily from the White Chateau — any old shed, the simplest kind of house, as long as it is not a peasant’s habitation, is called a chateau here. He raised his arm with the gesture of a great commander and cried from his horse, pointing forward like a conqueror of the world, “Lay fire to the castle!” which seemed to settle the matter as far as he was concerned. He behaved in the same sensible manner — and thought he was doing the right thing, I am sure — when he was snowed under with reports, when his troops were having the hottest time, when they were in the most dire need of calm, clear orders . . . and he cried to his brigade major in a state of terrific excitement, “The horses, my dear L——! Come, let us fling ourselves into the battle!”’

In the weeks which follow, Binding recurs frequently to the subject of leadership. One weakness of the German leading, all too well attested by post-war revelations, is indicated in this passage: —

‘Unfortunately everyone does not seem possessed with patience. The corps and army commanders see that others in other parts have obtained tangible successes — so they thirst for laurels too. It is a human weakness, but they think it is a virtue not to lag behind the others, and they do not realize that this virtue must be paid for in blood.’

As we now know’, this thirst for laurels, especially on the part of the princely commanders in Lorraine, did much to drain the original German advance in August 1914 of its vitality.

On November 27, writing at Passchendaele, that spot of later ill omen, as if its shadow’ had already cast itself three years before, Binding remarks: —

‘For five weeks the newspapers have been saying that Ypres is to be the decision of this phase of the war at least. This may have been right a few weeks ago — but a decision depends also on the time taken to effect it. Now, this part of the front is losing the character of a decisive sector. . . . Generals and colonels arc flirting with the idea that to take the crossroads of Broodseindc may mean something in the history of the world. . . . This bickering over crossroads . . . is too small a job for an army; I should say that every man sacrificed at it, on whichever side, is wasted.’

He shows, however, that the losses were not all the fault of the leaders, and incidentally sheds light on the effectiveness of British musketry, when he complains of the men’s habit of exposing themselves carelessly, not from contempt of death, but from ‘lack of discipline,’ in disregard of the most precise instructions.

His New’ Year reflections return to the question of generalship. ‘Not one of the belligerent Powers or not one of their men has as yet developed a technique of modern war — unless it is Hindenburg. To impress one’s particular stamp on a war — Napoleonic, Hannibalic, Moltke-esque, or Caesarian — that would constitute a style. . . . Every blow of Hindenburg’s army shows the impress of the same mark. One recognizes him in every one of his thrusts, as one might know a knight, close-visored, by the way he bears his lance.

‘But whose style have we to show in the West? Of course I do not speak of the Germans alone. Neither have the French or the English produced a man who imprints his personality on the war. One cannot deny that the hedgehog shows a certain originality in his manner of self-defense — but one cannot discover any particular sign of genius.

‘The French and English lack even that elementary and convincing quality which we showed at the beginning, in default of a style; at any rate, it was imposing.

‘Our first advance had a style that could be perceived. But it seems probable that it was conceived and planned by one who is now dead, and who is not on the spot to carry on the style.’

If Binding does not yet penetrate behind the mask of Hindenburg to perceive the mark of Ludendorff, which in turn, on the Eastern Front, bore the impress of that greater genius, Colonel Hoffmann, it is interesting that so early he should know, or guess, what the original German plan owed in conception to Schlieffen, and what it lost in execution by his death and replacement by the vacillating ‘younger’ Moltke. Moreover, he very early shatters the hollow façade of Mackensen, one of the last ‘leaders’ whom students of war among the Allies found out.

‘The colossal staging of the big synchronized attacks in the Balkans makes one aware of a very superior intellect. To natures like that of Seeckt it is a matter of indifference if Mackensen is acclaimed by the multitude.’

III

Later Binding was transferred for a brief while to the Russian front, and came in contact with Seeckt, now chief of staff to another dummy commander, the Archduke Charles. Personal experience heightens his high impression of this veiled but gifted figure who, when peace came, was to reconstruct the German army from the Imperial ruins. There also he met a young staff officer, Captain Geyer, from whose brain were to spring many of the tactical devices which carried the Germans repeatedly through the British and French fronts in 1918.

Always Binding is searching for the good, and is delighted to recognize it, but more often he finds evil and is equally prompt to expose it, his candor unaffected by any pseudo-patriotic or pseudo-idealistic bias.

‘Now’, does the individual think that he fights for ideals? He only thinks so in the hours when he is not fighting; but when he is at tacking ... he has an elemental urge to get the other fellow . . . he strikes out so that the other will not strike; he does not flee because he is fighting in an unrighteous cause, he does not attack because his cause is just; he flees because he is the weaker, he conquers because he is the stronger or because his leader has made him feel the stronger. . . . And then: docs not the war become senseless, discordant, mendacious, when peoples fight for so-called ideals? What is the sense of saying that one fights for Kultur? I do not fight for Kultur in the least, because I hold it to be nonsense to fight for Kultur with weapons in one’s hands. I understand the stag who fights his rival for the right of the stronger to possess the doe. I understand t he man who murders his enemy. I could even understand a fight for the joy of fighting. But it is not justifiable in the eyes of a thinking man to kill Englishmen, who have done me no harm, for the sake of Kultur, for Emperor or Empire (as a concept), and for national honor. Really, the savage who wonders why people make war and kill each other without wishing to eat each other is quite right.’

He shows how the subordinate staff in rear competed and intrigued for Iron Crosses, their clamor in contrast to the ‘strangely silent folk among us. These are the men who have taken part in attacks and have lain under fire for hours and hours.’ Reveling in the quiet beauty of Bruges, he is disgusted at the type of German officer who displays ‘such a lack of understanding and reverence that I really feel happy to think that there is nothing of this kind in Halle or Bitterfeld, or wherever he may have come from.’ He reveals how the Prussian leaders would rather sacrifice ability than give a Jew a commission, and how the ‘ German N. C. O. does not know the difference between the use of influence and brutality. Whether he has to deal with a subordinate in his own capacity, or with the public in that of a policeman, or with a horse as its rider, does not matter— he illtreats it.’

Above all is his hatred of hypocrisy, from which springs his scathing contempt for the German middle classes and for whining appeals to the neutrals.

‘How can one bear it, this German shriek for sympathy to America? “Look how cruel it is! England is trying to starve millions of women and children to death!” ... As if we would not starve out all England in cold blood until the thinnest English miss fell through her skirts!’

He is the more scornful because this cry for sympathy is incongruously accompanied by the pretense that the blockade is doing no harm. His early insight into the economic factors is remarkable.

In April 1916, he takes the realistic view that ‘our conduct must depend on consideration or decision whether we are heading for starvation or hunger. If they can starve us out, any continuation of the war is criminal folly. . . . If hunger is all that we have to face . . . the momentary impossibility of effecting a decision cannot justify us in throwing up the sponge.’

And earlier still he had made the prophetic remark: ‘Perhaps wars may be won, perhaps this one may, by letters from home; I would rather not use the word “lost.”’

The historian to-day appreciates more and more how Germany’s starvation decided the war, and how ‘letters from home’ caused the decline of German military morale in 1918. With far less incentive, the tone of letters at a bad period of bread queues in England caused G. H. Q. serious alarm over the fighting will of the troops.

In June 1916, Binding says: ‘What thrills the men most in an undertaking is the prospect of loot. . . . A pot of English marmalade or a razor is more important to them than a British officer’s notebook.’ The moral effect of this inferiority of supplies is seen growing. ‘We economize in material because we have to, whereas the enemy has enough and to spare.’

Binding had been quick to appreciate the effect of England’s intervention. How different was his insight from that of the German leaders, and even some of the British, such as Sir Henry Wilson, on the value of ‘ Kitchener’s armies.’

‘What the English do they do well; they will make good soldiers. ... I do not agree with those who ask contemptuously where they will find their officers and N. C. O.’s. They will all come — the rowing Blues, the leading lights of the cricket and football teams. . . . Are the Berlin police to be compared with the English police, although most of them are Prussian N. C. O.’s? The English policeman knows how to deal with masses; he handles them perfectly.’

And nearly two years later he writes of the campaign of 1916: —

‘I believe that, its main significance for the future, and especially for our future, will be that it has brought the realization of the power of the British Empire. . . . In contrast to the old Roman and German empires, in contrast to the Napoleonic conception, it is based on facts, not on an idea. It is so simple that it must be incomprehensible to us Germans. . . . It is questionable whether this power will last forever, but I believe that it will decide our fate.’

Because of this dispassionate realism, there is special significance in his varying view at different periods on the quality of the British forces.

In the winter of 1915-16 the morale of the British troops is pictured as being high, even though Binding is badly impressed with the physique of some of the city-bred prisoners compared with ‘the first regular troops that we fought against in 1914. . . . The officer contrasted favorably with his men.’

In the first fortnight of the Somme battle, July 1916, the quality of the English troops is considered ‘superior to ours.’ But the opinion falls six months later: ‘The English shells are not too dangerous. We hardly even duck to them now, so many of them are duds. All is not well, either, with the enemy. But it appears that they are now using against us those monsters which can crawl anywhere over the deepest shell holes like great tortoises, and shoot at the infantry in the trenches from close to with machine guns and light cannon. These enormities approach in the dark over all obstacles and open fire in the morning on the garrison of the trenches before our guns can even find them.’ The tanks evidently created an uncomfortable impression!

Then the success of the March withdrawal to the Hindenburg line brings about another change of atmosphere. The English ‘seem to know everything, but cannot do anything serious to stop us. ... It is an eternal shame to the English that this operation cost us no losses. It was a safe calculation to assume that the immensity of the facts would leave Sir Douglas Haig entirely without inspiration.’ This calculation had apparently been inspired by reading‘Haig’s report on the Somme battle. . . . It is almost deliberate and studied in its mediocrity . . . a dummy filled with sawdust, without any life, without any soul, without the least creative spirit.’ But the early days of the spring offensive at Arras bring renewed depression, and impression: ‘On the whole I should not be surprised if the English, backed by an unused American army, came out on top at last. . . . If the German war correspondents find our troops marvelous, I don’t know whether they have any experience of the English troops.’ The Mcssines battle in June even brings a tribute to English leadership. But, as the Passchendaele struggle wears on, ‘Tommy over yonder has lost some of his keenness.’ The impression of British fighting power seems to wane thenceforward, and both then and in 1918 it is the incessant attacks from the air which seem, in Binding’s record, to wear dowm the German spirit of resistance, far more than action on the ground.

IV

With confidence renewed, even ‘unbounded,’ the Germans came to deliver their great 1918 offensive. His testimony to this psychological condition of the German troops should be read in conjunction with his observations three years earlier: ‘We have been attacking again; success nil; heavy losses. . . . The men see that they are not out for a big purpose, only for a trench; and they are no longer willing to sacrifice themselves for that.’

The dominant impression after the break-through is of the treasure revealed behind the English lines. ‘Our cars now run on the best English rubber tires, we smoke none but English cigarettes, and plaster our boots with lovely English boot polish — all unheard-of things which belong to a fairyland of long ago.’

Binding meets an immaculate English brigade commander whom he calls ‘General Dawson, an equerry to the King.’ This is a mistake. The brigadier genera! referred to was not the well-known Sir Douglas Dawson, but F. S. Dawson, commanding the South African Brigade, in the Ninth Division, who was one of the many A. D. C.’s to the King.

‘The sight of all this English cloth and leather made me more conscious than ever of the shortcomings of my own outfit, and I felt an inward temptation to call out to him, “Kindly undress at once”; for a desire for an English general’s equipment . . . had arisen in me, shameless and patent. . . . By way of being polite, I said with intention, “You have given us a lot of trouble. . . To which he replied: “Trouble! Why, we have been running for five days and five nights!” It appeared that when he could no longer get his brigade to stand he had taken charge of a machine gun himself, to set an example to his retreating men. . . .

‘Now we are already in the English back areas, at least rest areas, a land flowing with milk and honey. Marvelous people these, who will only equip themselves with the very best that the earth produces. Our men are hardly to be distinguished from English soldiers. Everyone wears at least a leather jerkin, a waterproof . . . English boots, or some other beautiful thing. The horses are feasting on masses of oats and gorgeous food-cake . . . and there is no doubt the army is looting with some zest.’

On the next day follows a highly significant extract: —

‘To-day the advance of our infantry suddenly stopped near Albert. Nobody could understand why. Our airmen had reported no enemy between Albert and Amiens. . . . I jumped into a car with orders to find out what was causing the stoppage in front. Our division was right in front of the advance and could not possibly be tired out. It was quite fresh. . . .

‘As soon as I got near the town I began to sec curious sights. Strange figures, which looked very little like soldiers, and certainly showed no sign of advancing, were making their way back out of the town. There were men driving cows . . . others who carried a hen under one arm and a box of notepaper under the other. . . . Men staggering. Men who could hardly walk . . . the streets were running with wine.’

It proved hopeless and the officers powerless to collect the troops that day, and the sequel Binding records was that ‘the troops which moved out of Albert next day cheered with wine . . . were mown down straight away on the railway embankment by a few English machine guns. . . .’

But the intoxication due to loot was even greater and more general than that due to wine, and the fundamental cause of both was ‘the general sense of years of privation.’ A staff officer even stops a car, when on an urgent mission, to pick up an English waterproof from the ditch. And in this intoxication the Germans not only lose their chance of reaching Amiens, but ruin sources of supply invaluable to their own advance — wrecking waterworks for the sake of the brass taps. The cause of this senseless craving is revealed in the impression they had that ‘the English made everything out of either rubber or brass, since these were the two materials which we had not seen for the longest time.’

‘The madness, stupidity, and indiscipline of the German troops is shown in other things as well. . . . Any useless toy or trifle they seize and load into their packs; anything useful which they cannot carry away they destroy.’

Once this plunder was exhausted, the reaction was all the greater, and the contrast of their own paucity with the enemy’s plenty the more depressing. For a time hopes of the German offensive struggle with these fears of the enemy’s economic strength: —

‘If we can reach the sea before the Americans reach the land we shall have struck the decisive blow. To capture Paris itself would not be sufficient. . . . Nevertheless I do not count on either England or America giving up the war; they have no need to.’ A fortnight later ‘everything seems at a standstill. I do not believe that we shall ever get our hands free again. The American army is there — a million strong. That is too much.’

When in late July hopes of military success disappear, and with them the hope of ever again nourishing their stomachs, and souls, on the enemy’s supplies, nemesis is swift.

In early August ‘one hears men say, “Why not give them this b——y Alsace-Lorraine?” (This from men who are by no means the worst, even from the stoutest fighting men.) Their manhood has been sapped in such a way that there is no way of stiffening it. Our division is one of the few possible exceptions. Carelessness and callousness are spreading like plagues.’

No recovery could come to men whose stomachs were both empty and sick, fed on bread that was ‘as damp as a sponge’ and on ‘green potatoes’ dug up ‘out of the fields,’ while ‘for days the horses have not had a grain of oats.’ The story of the Confederate collapse in 1865 was being repeated. Anyone with personal experience of war knows how the thought of food and of civilized comfort fills the horizon of the intellectual equally with that of the ordinary man. How far was Germany’s military decline, itself the fruit of a rapid and unmistakable loss of morale in the late summer, due not only to increasing hunger and ‘letters from home,’ but to the eyeopening conviction of the enemy’s greater power of economic endurance? Propaganda and the censorship could hide the difference so long as the front remained an inviolate partition wall. But when the Germans broke through the British lines and into their back areas the truth was revealed to the German troops.

Is the historical verdict, penetrating beneath the surface of military acreage and statistics to the psychological foundation, to be that the disaster of March 1918 was a stroke of fortune for those who suffered it? If so, it seems a pity we did not try the solution earlier! Instead of conducting unwilling ‘frocks’ round our front, we might have arranged tours for Germans round our back areas — that ‘ land flowing with milk and honey.’ Or at the least we might have released a proportion of our prisoners after they had been suitably entertained! Such a policy would certainly have supplied the imagination which Binding, and others, found so lacking in our leadership.