Great Battle Day

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The term " Großkampftag" appears to have been used officially for the first time on October 2, 1916 in the Army Report of the General Headquarters on the Western Theater of War. Nor does the war pocket book, published in 1916 - a reference dictionary on the world war, know either this term or that of the day of the fight.

Since the battles and battles of earlier wars rarely lasted more than a day, the German military passports only certified the battles and skirmishes in which the respective soldier had participated. Only sieges that could extend over longer periods of time and were entered as sieges on the military pass were excluded from this framework . The higher command authorities kept their own diaries, from which they could see the load on the individual units . Only in the course of the First World War was this information no longer sufficient to be able to reliably assess the operational capability of the regiments . In the trenches at the front there were daily fire attacks by the enemy artillery and minor skirmishes by the position troops, which, however, could not yet claim to be called a battle . Therefore, the counting of the days of combat was introduced in order to continue to have a basis for judging whether a force could remain at the front or had to be pulled out of it to recover.

The concept of the Great day of struggle must as, unthinkable in previous wars, propaganda increasing the hitherto somewhat marked for internal use by the command echelons concept day of struggle are considered. Already on the occasion of the battle at Langemarck (November 10, 1914), " the otherwise harsh Ludendorff , who was the first quartermaster general of the field army to issue the army reports, (...) said that simple phrases like" Langemarck was held or is lost "would not have satisfied anyone . “(Schweinitz, language of the German army). In the constant uncertainty as to whether a fight, be it a big one, would develop into a battle in the further course, one resorted to this newly coined term. Apart from the fact that battles are only referred to with a name in retrospect, this term - in addition to the propagandistic effect - was able to address combat activities on the front that were out of the ordinary.

As early as the Weimar Republic , the terms battle day and large-scale battle day were used more and more often to emphasize political or internal party events and to exaggerate them in a martial manner. Today the concept of the day of major combat is used in almost every context to denote increased exertion or increased effort.

literature

  • Georg Cardinal von Widdern: Manual for troop command and command drafting , Gera 1879
  • Ulrich Steindorff (Hrsg.): War pocket book - a reference dictionary about the world war , Leipzig and Berlin 1916
  • Kurt Graf von Schweinitz: The Language of the German Army , Osnabrück 1989

Web links

  • [1] The German Army Report: October 2, 1916, Great Headquarters, Western Theater of War