Total War Comes to the Fatherland: The German Home Front, 1914-1918 - Scott Stephenson

Dr. Scott Stephenson kicks off the 2017-18 John J. Pershing Great War Centennial Series with a presentation on the evolution of the German Empire, from a nation of wealth, unity, and resolve to one of despair and revolution in the aftermath of World War I.
The John J. Pershing Lecture Series is presented in partnership with the Command and General Staff College Foundation.
For more information about the National WWI Museum and Memorial visit theworldwar.org

[@RANDALLBRIGGS]

I worked with Scott Stephenson at Fort Leavenworth in the late '90s. A good guy and a fine scholar. It's great to see his lecture here.

[@gene1278]

This presentation was one of the best.

[@johnmacdonald1878]

Fascinating. One of the most interesting presenters on WW1

[@CrimeinNYCity]

Very informative and helpful, both in understanding the German experience in WWI and how that set the stage for the next war.

[@a.manuelnieves5923]

Terrific presentation and different perspective on the German WW I experience. A++

[@wstevenson4913]

Enjoyed that..thanks for your presentation

[@typxxilps]

Very impressive even for a german with a deep interest in history and the roots cause they split up before 1900 when one half of the family emigrated legally with allowance of the emperor to the United States and they still had a desire for decades to their heritage, the farm of their parents. That farm safed them before starving, but the remaining brother in germany had been killed in early battle of 1914 close to Passchendaele during the last offensice in the first week he had arrived at the front line cause he had been trained as an occupation soldier before due to the age of him and his comrades being just 40 at the edge of being a reserve soldier. 1 year older and he had continued to work on his farm. Luckily he wrote a lot of cards and letters, mostly each day after mobilisation and preparation, then train transports and so on.

[@paulbennett2929]

I don't know which is better. The informative talk that just been given or reading the KZbin comments in which various people present their pet theories.

[@gblcfc65]

Superb presentation

[@andrewallen9993]

I will bet the Kaiser, government ministers, general staff and generals never went to bed hungry once!

[@neilokeefe9647]

guy is a pretty good speaker

[@jamespratt3898]

Princess Evlynn Blucher mentioned around 10 minutes in has a wiki bio an a book "An Englishwoman in Berlin"

[@whitepanties2751]

German propaganda blamed the British naval blockade exclusively for the food shortages. The blockade did affect food supplies, both by keeping out food and also by preventing the import of guano (accumulated bird droppings) as fertiliser and so reducing the output of German agriculture. The government had failed to foresee the importance of this and had not stockpiled fertiliser before the war. However, there was also a drastic fall in the productivity of German agriculture for various reasons apart from fertiliser. Horses, used for pulling ploughs and other labour on farms, were requisitioned for the army. Also, the generals preferred troops recruited from rural areas to those from cities, as city recruits were more likely to be infected with ideas of socialism and Marxism and therefore to be less loyal and more resistant to military discipline. Consequently, they called up a higher proportion of men from the countryside. This left fewer men left working the land, thus reducing the productivity of agriculture. Also, the slaughter of animals early in the war meant that there was not only less meat and milk later in the war but also loss of their manure to fertilise the land, hence reducing the grain and vegetable crops too. I am partly relying on a book called 'Ring of Steel'. Ernst Junger, who served in the German army in the War and wrote a book about it called 'Storm of Steel' said that towards the end of the War, even in the army, which the lecturer here says was prioritised for food, their usual meal was pearl barley and swede (in British terms, I believe Americans call it rutabarga, root vegetable with pale yellow flesh). He comments that swede 'can be a good vegetable, when served with black pepper and a nice piece of pork - which this was not.' Some men from his unit were sent on a training course where they were given nothing to eat in the evening except cucumber, which they took to calling 'green sausages'. Great excitement when he captured some British gooseberry jam. However, bad as things were in Germany, in Austria they were even worse. The wonder is that they kept on fighting as long as they did.

[@ewki2962]

Very informative, thank you

[@noobster4779]

For Germany and Austria, ironically speaking, WW1 was a lot more of a total war then WW2 And nazi dieology would directly be influenced by the food crisis. One of the major reasons for the "living space in the east" ideology and invading the soviet union was a direct result of this fear of a repeat of the hunger years. Gaining access to food became THE PRIORITY for german planers during WW2 and there was absolutely no holding back getting it by any means necessary. The entire taking over of the food industry of the soviet union, primarily in ukraine, which was to be turned into germanys "bread basked", was pre planned and organised to take up operations the moment the frontline had advanced enoguh and a LOT of hte german war crimes in eastern europe are direct results of the "Food for Germany first no matter what" policy. While the german army of WW1 was feed from "home", the german army of WW2 was feed from the occupied areas and the frontline with horrible results for the inhabitants dying in the millions especially in Poalnd and Ukraine. The biggest crime as part of this food policy was the mass starvation of soviet prisoners of war (up to 3 million) so no food would be "wasted" on them. THe germans were able to feed them but decided not to do it so they wouldnt have to reduce the ammount of food for the home front in any way. Despite the food shortage in WW1 the german imperial army continued to feed its prisoners of war alongside its pwn population as good as possible. The Wehrmacht refused to do this purposefully. Its the single biggest war crime of the german army and was the biggest argument why the Wehrmacht was not "clean" as the "Clean Wehrmacht myth" tried to psuh in german soviety for decades post WW2. And yeah generally speaking "it was bad for germany, but then it got worse for its allies" could be a general statemeant about everything involving the central powers during the war.

[@TheTTM1]

​@@noobster4779fantastic point

[@Doodloper]

Excellent lecture! Thank you, Scott -- PS We want more lectures from Dr Stephenson!

[@jamespratt3898]

Good presintation

[@graemer3657]

Brilliant. I wonder how much if this applies to all long wars e.g. Vietnam

[@andrewallen9993]

I beg to differ over fertilizer, Fritz Haber was not only inventing chemical weapons but his process was making nitrates for explosives and fertilizer out of thin air!

[@HotPinkst17]

Yes but this was very energy intensive and they did not have energy surpluses, so though they had a source of needed fertilizer it was far less than the demand. The infrastructure wasn't large enough for their needs even if they could afford to power it and they couldn't.

[@RemoteViewr1]

The very top of the food chain were farmers.

[@jozette-pierce]

Actually, the Serbian Intelligence head, on his "deathbed" confession said the Russian Attache to Serbia, gave weapons to and recruited and trained Anarchists in Serbia . Russian attache gave Serbian teenager the gun and ammunition and paid him to shoot the Austrian Archduke. So, if you want to know who started WW1, it was Russia. Was it also Bolshevik Russia?

[@thermionic1234567]

Germany simply consumed its capital; became brittle and hollow and could not continue the war. Fortunately we Americans learned from this and will never lose a war and will continue to be the worlds dominant economy and military power for the next thousand years.

[@LoserBroProductions]

lit

[@Gorboduc]

It's amazing how irritating it is that he refuses to read his own slides lol.

[@ecosse1982]

Anyone else here because they thought that this was part of the Empire Total War franchise?

[@Flowerz__]

Why did I think this was a new total war game or mod lol

[@tobijug]

The word is mobilelisation, not mobill isation

[@mikehaws3187]

Blockhead krauts should have made peace long before november 1918...

[@iamaspaceman8533]

Worldworwan

[@Tralala691]

Miss old Germany. Now......just shameful.

[@nunopardal2212]

The sink of the Lusitania ship , was sank by the British , to force USA in to the war . Same tactic was use , in 1968 when Israel attack the USA war boat and blame Egypt .

[@jezalb2710]

Do you know when Lusitania was sank? Do you know when USA declared war on Germany? USA declared war due to the February Revolution in Russia.

[@jozette-pierce]

The same tactic was used in Vietnam. The same tactic was used on 9/11 to suck America into senseless wars ALL OVER THE MIDDLE EAST. America the big Patsy, used and abused, time after time after time. Oh yes, a WW2 Navy cryptographer

[@manuelguzman1312]

The future leader of the Communist Party of Germany Ernst Thälmann was a soldier in World War 1 and led mutinies along the German front against France to end the war early. Many future German Communist leaders were anti-imperialists during World War 1, especially the co-founders of the Communist Party of Germany Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. This is famously chronicled in the East Germany 1950s produced movie about his life “Son of his Class.” Thälmann became leader of the KPD in the 1920s and eventually arrested and put in prison in 1933 by Hitler when he becomes Chancellor. Due to rampant worldwide anti-Communism, people around the world fail to give credit to German Communists for their historical leadership and opposition to World War 1 and 2 wars of aggression.

[@rhysnichols8608]

Braindead understanding of history.

[@arsumbris6392]

I've watched Stephenson's series of lectures, and it's remarkable the lengths he goes to give the Germans no moral quarter for any aspect of the war. It's so common for scholars his age to push this kind of anti-German bias, even to the point of offering excuses for the various Communist coups and insurgencies that blanketed Europe (30:25) and led directly to the rise of anti-communist fascist movements, including the Freikorps and NSDAP. The amount of double-think Stephenson displays in order to engineer an anti-German judgement, even while he admits that elements of the "stabbed in the back" narrative were true, that Germans were subject to exterminationist tactics like food blockades and terror bombings (bombing to start fires, then subsequent waves to kill the first responders), and even "punitive peace" being somehow a uniquely German practice ("the Germans did it first to the Russians, that's why it was ok when we did it to the Germans") are glaring examples. Every Boomer must defend the Post-War Foundation Myth that upholds neo-liberal globalism and anti-nationalism. Is it any wonder we've seen so much treachery from Boomer officers and Intelligence chiefs over the last 20 years, while they sell their nations out to globalism?

[@HotPinkst17]

Globalism is just a symptom of trade, the real problem is oligarchy. Plutocracy is bad enough, kleptocracy is worse. If billionaires weren't taking so much, the economy would be growing much faster and there would be more dynamism in the economy with a growing middle class. It is no mystery that billionaires are more common but the middle class is shrinking. Very few rich people are more powerful than any group of less than a thousand people has any right to be. Do you think a thousand rich guys should decide the fate of the world? This lecture has no anti German bias. Nationalism is an arbitrary reason to die, especially when nations come and go so readily like in Europe with the Austro Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires falling led to new and sometimes short lived nations. Nationalism is a unifying principle but a large alliance is more powerful than any nation and even more unifying. The so called punitive peace is a myth, Germany put a punitive peace on Russia before the treaty of Versailles set it right. The reparations were modest compared to something truly punitive in history. The Germans devalued their own currency just out of pride to pay back the reparations in worthless currency. This was not mandated or required and hurt the Germans more than the allies over a point of pride. Emotional drivel divorced from fact to say WW1 peace treaty was punitive. The biggest hit was simply giving Ukraine back to the soviets, not something the world needed to respect Germany's right to. If it was so punitive how did Germany rise to be the third strongest military in the world behind Russia and the USA so quickly?

[@nictamer]

Germany broke all treaties and international laws right at the beginning of the war. They invaded neutral Belgium, introduced poison despite having signed the Hague convention 10 years earlier, massacred civilians and so on. They acted like barbarians, they were treated barbarically in response. You sound like those deluded mothers of armed bank robbers who cry because their son who did nothing wrong was gunned down by police.

[@oliveoil7642]

@@HotPinkst17 Indoctrinated drivel. The war was much more complicated and nuanced than you believe!

[@donkeymung8553]

how gross is it when something purported to be history is chalk full of the ideology of a portion of modernity. " ill just drop all these loaded words and the shortcut to thinking will make me soooo cool. everonye is so stoked on me"