Hindenburg program
The armaments and economic program of the Third Supreme Army Command during the First World War from 1916 became known under the name of the Hindenburg Program .
The same focus of all resources on war goods was used again in World War II ( total war ).
The production of the German war economy was no longer able to cope with the material battles of 1916 ( Somme , Verdun ). Arms production therefore had to be organized more efficiently. The declining number of combat-ready soldiers was to be compensated for by technical superiority.
Just two days after taking over the military leadership and replacing Erich von Falkenhayn , Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff presented an extensive list of demands on August 31, 1916 to expand armaments production.
The draft of the Hindenburg program, although it bears Hindenburg's name, goes back to Lieutenant Colonel Max Bauer , who on the one hand enjoyed Ludendorff's trust and on the other had close ties to heavy industry.
The aim of the program was to double the production of ammunition by the spring of 1917 , as well as the production of mine throwers . The gun and machine gun production was even to be tripled. To support this, powder production should increase from 6,000 tons to 12,000 tons per month. The increase in aircraft production and the production of material for the fortification was also planned.
This goal could only be achieved with a comprehensive mobilization of the scarce workforce. This also included the closure of so-called “non-war operations” in order to free their workers for use in accordance with the Hindenburg program.
For the central management of the war economy in cooperation with the economy and the OHL, the War Office under the direction of General Wilhelm Groener was subordinated to the War Ministry as a new authority .
In practice, however, the Hindenburg program could not be implemented. The requirements turned out to be unenforceable, as the factors labor, transport potential and food situation were not taken into account in the planning, but could hinder the implementation of the Hindenburg program.
The fact that the Hindenburg program was placed on a broad legal basis with the law on the patriotic auxiliary service (in short: auxiliary service law) with binding work obligations for all men between the ages of 17 and 60 did not fulfill the hopes of the initiators. Originally, the entire population, including women and children, was supposed to be mobilized, which the government rejected in this form.
The interaction of the utopian demands of the Hindenburg Program and the bureaucratic overload of the Auxiliary Service Act created a number of new problems for the German Reich that would not have arisen without the Hindenburg Program and the Auxiliary Service Act, and which ultimately hampered rather than promoted economic efficiency.
The planned production figures could not even come close to being achieved, and in some areas even sank because the front withdrew too many workers and means of transport.
A similar program, from the same point of view, was the Scheer program for the Imperial Navy , initiated in 1917 , which placed the emphasis on a one-sided focus on the trade war with submarines and the significant increase in the number of submarines required for the unrestricted submarine war demanded.
literature
- Wilhelm Deist : Military and domestic politics in World War 1914-1918 . (Sources on the history of parliamentarism and political parties) 2 volumes, Düsseldorf 1970.
- Gerald D. Feldman : Army, Industry and Workers in Germany 1914-1918 . Dietz, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-8012-0110-4 .
- Erich Ludendorff : Certificates from the Supreme Army Command on their activities in 1916/18 . Berlin 1920.