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Frontschweine and revolution: The role of front-line soldiers in the German Revolution of 1918
Stephenson, Donald S.
Stephenson, Donald S.
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Abstract
This study considers the political behavior of German soldiers returning from the trenches of the Western Front at the conclusion of the First World War. The dissertation argues that this behavior played a large but underappreciated role in the early stages of the German Revolution of 1918. The dissertation identifies six factors that shaped the response of the front-line troops to the political cataclysm that overcame their homeland in 1918. They are: exhaustion (physical and emotional), isolation (from revolutionary agitation), alienation (from all those who had not shared their experience), selection (both by soldiers themselves and the army's leadership), cohesion (referring to elements that bind soldiers together including, esprit, patriotism, and camaraderie), and management (of soldier perceptions by the officer chain of command). The study uses these six factors to explain why those who fought at the front responded to the revolution so differently from soldiers in the rear areas, the homeland garrisons, and the Eastern Front. The difference and their consequences were enormous. When selected elite units failed to obey the orders to suppress revolutionary activity, their failure left the Kaiser no option but to abdicate. Then, in the aftermath of the Armistice, while soldiers' councils elsewhere took on a radical character and overthrew the old authorities, the Field Army returned to Germany in orderly columns led by their officers. However, when the officers attempted to preserve the old formations in order to provide border security, support an orderly demobilization, and act as a counterweight to the activities of the Far Left, the front-line troops, instead, abandoned the army in order to return home as rapidly as possible. As a result, the Supreme Headquarters' plan to use elite troops to quash the Spartacist movement in Berlin miscarried as the few remaining "reliable" troops were driven out of the capital in late December. The Ebert government saw no resort but to call on ruthless volunteer formations, the Freikorps to restore order. This measure, in turn, split the Left and poisoned the political atmosphere during the early years of the Weimar Republic.
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Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Kansas, History, 2007.
Date
2007-05-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Social sciences, Front-line soldiers, German Revolution of 1918, Revolution, Soldiers, World War I