Social and economic history of Bavaria in the First World War

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The Kingdom of Bavaria was part of the German Empire in 1914 , and although it had special rights , it was no longer a sovereign state. At that time, for example, the government only had command of the Bavarian Army in the event of peace and also had to support the alliance obligations of the German Reich that led to the First World War .

Even before the First World War, there were a number of unsolved problems in Bavaria . These included not only the crisis of the Bavarian monarchy, which significantly reduced its acceptance among the population, but also the increasing political influence of the bureaucracy, the growth of political parties that were not considered in constitutional law at the time, and the newly emerging women's movement. The decisive factor for the upheavals that occurred after the war, however, was the disastrous economic and social situation, which increased in severity as the war continued. The trust of the people in the state apparatus was permanently shaken, which ultimately led to the fact that the monarchy in Bavaria was overthrown before the official end of the war and the Free People's State of Bavaria under Kurt Eisner was proclaimed the first Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic.

(For the economic situation of the German Empire in World War I, see main article German economic history in World War I )

prehistory

Bavaria joined the North German Confederation in 1870 . Although it had basically lost its sovereign rights, it had been granted some special rights, such as chairing the Federal Council's Foreign Affairs Committee, maintaining an independent legation and so-called reserve rights. The First World War was the first war in which the Bavarian field army was not also under its own command.

Even some time before the World War, the Bavarian monarchy was in a crisis , especially due to the weakness of the minds of its leaders ( Ludwig II , Otto I ), which not only damaged their acceptance among the population, but also weakened Bavaria's political position as a whole . Domestically, not only did the bureaucracy in Bavaria gain more influence than it was entitled to under the constitution, but also increasingly influential political parties that the constitution did not take into account. Social issues that had arisen with increasing industrialization also remained unsolved, such as how to deal with the workers' desire for more influence in society and the newly emerging women's movement.

military

The First World War was different from previous European wars in many ways. In terms of the extent of its mobilization, the conscription army in 1914 was no longer comparable to that in 1870. In addition to the reserve, the Landwehr and soon the Landsturm , i.e. those up to 45 years of age, were called up. The Bavarian army comprised by the state of peace about 87,000 men, the field army already when the war began about 278,000. How directly this first increase in the army had to have an impact on the economy can be seen even more clearly in the number of horses, which at that time was still an essential factor in the field of the economy: the peacetime level of around 19,000 was increased to over 81,000 at the beginning of the war. At the end of the war the troop strength was around 900,000 soldiers. The Bavarian Army had not only fought on the Western Front, its units had also been deployed in Hungary, Russia, Syria, Palestine and the Ukraine.

At the end of the war, around 15 to 20% of the entire population of Bavaria had passed through the field army, whereas a rate of a maximum of 3% can be assumed for earlier wars. The army's manpower requirements meant that, for example, in Augsburg, from the summer of 1917, high school education was only possible to a significantly limited extent, as the students of the lower prima had already moved in or were obliged to perform regular labor services. At the end of the war, the Bavarian army had about 200,000 fallen and from Munich alone about 13,000, from Augsburg 3,577 and from Fürth 1,835.

Consequences of the Hindenburg program

The replacement of Falkenhayn by Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg on August 29, 1916 (3rd OHL ) brought about a change in the OHL's policy towards the Bavarian Ministry of War and the economy. On August 31, 1916, Hindenburg and Ludendorff announced the Hindenburg program , which called for drastic measures to increase economic power. This program set up by Hindenburg and Ludendorff corresponded to a military dictatorship.

Even before the outbreak of war, people's confidence in the state apparatus was shaken. So it was inevitable that the consequences of the Hindenburg program , which was not only felt for the economy (especially heavy and armaments industries), but also for the soldiers and workers, did the rest. Because in order to increase production it was inevitable to draw an abundance of skilled workers from the armies. But even with that, the demand was far from being met. The employment of women in industry continued to rise. The law on the patriotic auxiliary service of December 5, 1916 established a general compulsory work. POWs and thousands of Belgian forced laborers also had to be used in the arms industry. At the same time the “War Office” was re-created under Wilhelm Groener . He was responsible for the War Resource Department / KRA (Major Koeth), the War Replacement and Labor Department, the Arms and Ammunition Procurement Office (Wumba, in which the Feldzeugmeisterei was incorporated), the Clothing Procurement Office, the Department for Imports and Exports and the Department for folk nutrition. The office thus accommodated the expansion of the war into a total war forced by Ludendorff, as well as the erosion of the Prussian War Ministry by the withdrawal of competencies.

In Bavaria on the right bank of the Rhine, the law on the declaration of a state of war of 1912, which in the event of war transferred the entire executive power to the commanding generals of the three army corps , who in turn were subordinate to the commander of the occupying army, the war minister, served as the legal basis for the state or military action . In Prussia and in the Bavarian Rhine Palatinate, laws governing the state of siege applied in the same function.

Situation of the population at the end of the First World War

Ration stamps for bread

At the communal or district office level, the communal companies were set up to ensure food and supplies, but had little control over them. On the contrary, it was they who felt the growing anger and anger of the population, especially over the inadequate supply situation. In Augsburg, for example, from mid-1917 the daily ration of bread was 170 g, milk was 125 ml and fat, potatoes and sugar were largely absent.

Because it was quite typical in this war that for the population the responsibility for the increasing economic problems lay primarily with the nearest war-born administration, that is, with the local authority, the body with which they most likely had to do. The Bavarian ministries were seen higher up, but for a large part of the population they were already far removed from Munich in the full sense of the word. The peasant and petty bourgeois population did not see or did not want to see the dependence of their situation on the major political and military constellations. The more the situation worsened, the more the blame was sought "above", whereby this "above" was personalized on the one hand and meant king and queen ("Millibauer", "Topfenresel"), and on the other hand focused on the evil Prussians who did the had forced good Bavarians into war and now robbed them of the few food they had. Ludwig III. was also seen as an obstacle to a peace process, after all, even during the First World War, he pursued interests politics in his own favor.

consequences

In the industrial city of Fürth, for example, the population fell from around 70,800 to around 55,400 from the beginning to the end of the war. More than 1,800 residents of the city were killed as soldiers.

The majority of the soldiers in the Bavarian Army remained disciplined until the end of the war, but overall the leadership of the army began to slip away from those responsible in the last weeks of the war. Particularly in replacement troops it ferment and after demobilization to some soldiers joined the Free Corps organizations to.

Less than a week (November 7, 1918) before the official end of the war, the monarchy in Bavaria was peacefully overthrown and the Free State of Bavaria (quote: Originally "Free State" meant freedom from the German Empire ... ) under Kurt Eisner was proclaimed the first Prime Minister of the Bavarian Republic . The movement's main goals were to end the war and transform Bavaria into a parliamentary democracy. Eisner campaigned against the centralized conception of the state in Berlin and wanted Bavaria to retain its previous status in the German Reich (preservation of reservation rights). However, the turmoil of the post-war period was so lasting that he was murdered before the negotiations were concluded. The subsequently proclaimed Bavarian Council Republic, however, offered no resistance to the draft of the Weimar Constitution , which had been negotiated without it , so that Bavaria was only of marginal importance in post-war Germany both in domestic and foreign policy. Until the outbreak of the Nazi dictatorship, Bavarian politicians tried unsuccessfully to make improvements, especially because the Weimar Republic was only poorly accepted by the Bavarian population.

literature

  • Gerald D. Feldman : Army, Industry and Workers in Germany 1914 to 1918. JH W Dietz, Berlin 1985.
  • Sarah Hadry, Markus Schmalzl: Munich is starving. World War and the food crisis 1916–1924. An exhibition by the Bavarian Archive School. General Directorate of the Bavarian State Archives, Munich 2012.
  • Jürgen Kocka : Class Society at War. German Society 1914–1918. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1978.
  • Roger Chickering : Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918. Cambridge University Press , 2001, ISBN 0-521-56754-8 .
  • The First World War. Effect, perception and analysis. Published by Wolfgang Michalka on behalf of the Military History Research Office . Piper, Munich 1994.
  • End of the war in 1918. Event, effect, aftermath. (= Contribution to military history. 53). Edited by Jörg Duppler and Gerhard P. Groß on behalf of the Military History Research Office. Oldenbourg, Munich 1999
  • Wolfgang Kruse (ed.): A world of enemies. The Great War 1914–1918. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997.
  • Regina Roth: State and Economy in the First World War. War societies as war economic control instruments. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997.
  • Benjamin Ziemann : Front and Home. Rural war experience in southern Bavaria 1914–1923. Klartext, Essen 1997.
  • Christoph Jahr: Ordinary soldiers. Desertion and deserters in the German and British armies 1914–1918 (= critical studies on historical science . Volume 123). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998.
  • Katja Mitze: The Ingolstadt POW camp during the First World War. Dissertation.de, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89825-098-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Treaty with Bavaria . Version dated November 23, 1870, announced January 31, 1871. In: Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt , Volume 1871, No. 5, pp. 9–26 ( Wikisource )
  2. ^ P. Henßler: Reservation rights. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . September 13, 2010, accessed October 25, 2011 .
  3. ↑ a b Kai Uwe Tapken : Demobilmachung, 1918/1919 (military). In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . March 1, 2011, accessed October 25, 2011 .
  4. ↑ a b c Everyday life in World War I - Selected aspects . City Archives Augsburg; Retrieved October 25, 2011.
  5. ^ Memorial of the fallen in Munich . Bavarian Soldiers Association; accessed on October 25, 2011
    Friedrichfranz Feeser: The Bavarian Book of World Wars 1914–1918. Stuttgart 1930, p. 183 / Bayer. War archive: “The Bavarians in the Great War 1914–1918”, Munich 1923, p. 595.
    Everyday life in World War I - selected aspects . City Archives Augsburg; Retrieved October 25, 2011
  6. ^ A b P. Frank: The Fürth war victims of the First World War 1914–1918 . (PDF) Stadtheimatpflege Fürth; Retrieved October 25, 2011.
  7. ↑ a b E. Ursel: The Bavarian rulers from Ludwig I to Ludwig III. in the judgment of the press after her death . Volumes 10–12 - Volume 11 of contributions to a historical structural analysis of Bavaria in the industrial age. Duncker & Humblot, 1974, ISBN 3-428-03160-1 , p. 168, books.google.de
  8. ↑ a b J. Merz: Free State of Bavaria. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . July 3, 2011, accessed October 25, 2011 .
  9. ^ B. Grau: Revolution, 1918/1919. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . January 17, 2011, accessed October 25, 2011 .