The Thanks of the Fatherland

German Veterans After the Second World War

James M. Diehl

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807857304, 9780807820773
• eBook ISBN: 9780807861035
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

An account of the problems facing German veterans after WWII and the ways in which they were addressed in the decade following Germany’s defeat. The primary focus is on the major pieces of veterans' legislation passed in the early years of the German Federal Republic. Historical context is provided by the first two chapters and the conclusion, which compares and contrasts the fate of veterans and their sociopolitical impact on German society following the two world wars.

Originally published in 1993.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

NOTES

Abbreviations

In addition to the abbreviations used in the text, the following abbreviations are used in the notes.

AdsD/FES

Archiv der sozialen Demokratie/Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn/Bad Godesberg

BAF

Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau

BAK

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

DBDr

Deutscher Bundestag. Anlagen zu den stenographischen Berichten. Drucksache

DKOV

Deutsche Kriegsopferversorgung

IfZ

Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich

NARS

National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.

OMGUS

Office of Military Government, United States

PAB

Parlamentsarchiv, Bonn

PRO

Public Record Office, Kew, England

VDB

Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestags. I. Wahlperiode 1949. Stenographische Berichte

Chapter 1

1. The unification of the state organizations in the Kyffhäuserbund followed the building of a monument celebrating German unification that had been sponsored by the veterans’ organizations. The monument, a classic example of the bombastic style of Wilhelmine public monuments, was built on the Kyffhäuser, a mountain in central Germany. According to German legend, the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick Barbarossa resided in the mountain, from which he would come to rescue Germany in time of crisis. On the early history of German veterans’ organizations and the formation of the Kyffhäuserbund, see Alfred Westphal, “Die Kriegervereine,” in Deutschland als Weltmacht. Vierzig Jahre Deutsches Reich, herausgegeben vom Kaiser-Wilhelm-Dank (Berlin, 1911), and Wilhelm Reinhard, “Der N.S.-Reichskriegerbund,” in Das Dritte Reich im Aufbau, Band 3 (Berlin, 1939). Also cf. Christopher James Elliott, “The Kriegervereine and the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 10/1 (January 1975): 1–2.

2. Eckart Kehr, “Zur Genesis des Königlich Preussischen Reserveoffiziers,” in Der Primat der Innenpolitik. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur preussisch-deutschen Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Berlin, 1965). On the conversion of the veterans’ organizations into a “bulwark against Social Democracy,” see Klaus Saul, “Der ‘Deutsche Kriegerbund.’ Zur innenpolitischen Funktion eines ‘nationalen’ Verbandes im kaiserlichen Deutschland,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 1969/1. See also Reinhard Höhn, Sozialismus und Heer, Band 3 (Bad Harzburg, 1969), and Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890–1914 (London, 1968), chapters 6–7.

3. Westphal, “Die Kriegervereine,” p. 762.

4. On the pacifist subculture and its relation to the dominant culture, see Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton, 1975). In addition to the Kriegervereine, there were other organizations that propagated antisocialist, antipacifist, and promilitary values. Two of the main ones were the German Army League (Deutscher Wehrverein) and the Young Germany League (Jungdeutschlandbund). On the former, see Marilyn S. Coetzee, The German Army League: Popular Nationalism in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 1990). On the latter see Klaus Saul, “Der Kampf um die Jugend zwischen Volksschule und Kaserne. Ein Beitrag zur ‘Jungendpflege’ im Wilhelminischen Reich, 1890–1914,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 1971/1, and Derek S. Linton, Who Has the Youth Has the Future: The Campaign to Save Toung Workers in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, 1991) .

5. Kyffhäuser-Bund der Deutschen Landeskriegerverbände, Sitzung des Vorstandes vom 30. und 31. Oktober 1915, NSDAP Hauptarchiv, folder 913. Most of the materials of the NSDAP Hauptarchiv are currently in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany (Bestand NS26). The material is also available on microfilm as part of the Hoover Institution Microfilm Collection in Stanford, California. See Grete Heinz and Agnes F. Peterson, eds., NSDAP Hauptarchiv: Guides to the Hoover Institution Microfilm Collection (Stanford, 1964). For a detailed account of the Kyffhäuserbund’s activity during the war based on these materials, see James M. Diehl, “The Organization of German Veterans, 1917–1919,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 11 (1971).

6. The terms “forces of movement” and “forces of order,” as well as the general analytical framework for their interplay during the war, are taken from Arno J. Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (New York, 1970). On the founding of the Fatherland Party, see Dirk Stegemann, “Zwischen Repression und Manipulation. Konservative Machteliten und Arbeiter- und Angestelltenbewegung, 1910–1918,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 12 (1972).

7. Robert W. Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), chapters 6–7. For a contemporary comparative survey, see Edward T. Devine, Disabled Soldiers and Sailors Pensions and Training (New York, 1919).

8. For a concrete and crucial example of the importance of soldiers and the efforts of contending political factions to win their allegiance in Russia, see Alexander Rabinowitch, “The Petrograd Garrison and the Bolshevik Seizure of Power,” in Revolution and Politics in Russia: Essays in Memory of B.I. Nicolaevsky, edited by Alexander Rabinowitch and Janet Rabinowitch (Bloomington, 1972). For a comparative overview, see Stephen R. Ward, ed., The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War (Port Washington, N.Y., 1975).

9. Although elections to Germany’s national parliamentary body, the Reichstag, were based on universal suffrage, those to the Prussian diet, the Landtag, were still held on the basis of an antiquated and undemocratic three-class suffrage system that had been introduced during the wave of reaction that followed the abortive revolution of 1848. Based on the principle that representation should be proportional to the amount of direct taxes paid to the state, the Prussian three-class system gave enormous power to the wealthy while virtually disenfranchising the poorer members of society. In the 1898 elections to the Prussian Landtag, for example, two-thirds of the representatives were elected by less than 15 percent of the population. In 1913, although they polled nearly 30 percent of the vote, the Social Democrats won only 10 seats, while the Conservatives, who polled less than 15 percent, won 143. The manifest inequity of the three-class system was further compounded by indirect and public voting procedures as well as extensive gerrymandering.

10. On Kuttner, see Whalen, Bitter Wounds, pp. 121–24, 191.

11. Vorwärts, 31 December 1916.

12. Ibid., 3 April 1917. Bericht des Bundesvorstandes mit Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 2. Reichsbundestages, Würzburg, 11.–15. Mai, herausgegeben vom Reichsbund der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegsteilnehmer, und Kriegshinterbliebenen (Berlin, [1920]), p. 18. See also Whalen, Bitter Wounds, pp. 119–21.

13. Vorwärts, 4 June 1917.

14. For details, see Diehl, “Organization,” and “Germany: Veterans’ Politics under Three Flags,” in The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, edited by Stephen R. Ward (Port Washington, N.Y., 1975).

15. In this regard, it is interesting to note that shortly before the end of the war Westphal and other leaders of the Kyffhäuserbund were taken for a tour by the Supreme Command through the recently conquered areas in the Baltic and Ukraine. Diehl, “Organization,” p. 171.

16. The percentage of nondisabled veterans in the Reichsbund was only slightly over 12 percent; the increased emphasis on the problems of the survivors of those killed in the war was made evident when shortly after the end of the war the organization’s name was changed to the National League of War-Disabled, War Veterans, and Survivors (Reichsbund der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegsteilnehmer, und Kriegshinterbliebenen).

17. On the wartime demands of the Kriegsopfer, see Diehl, “Organization,” and Whalen, Bitter Wounds, chapter 8. For details on the changes in the system, see Helmut Rühland, “Entwicklung, heutige Gestaltung und Problematik der Kriegsopferversorgung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (Inaugural dissertation, Universität Köln, 1957), pp. 37–61, and Whalen, Bitter Wounds, chapters 9–10.

18. On the hardships suffered by German war widows, see, in addition to Whalen, Bitter Wounds, Karin Hausen, “The German Nation’s Obligations to the Heroes’ Widows of World War I,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al. (New Haven, 1987).

19. Michael Geyer, “Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrtsstaates: Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Grossbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9/2 (1983): 252, 255; Whalen, Bitter Wounds, pp. 133–36.

20. Political conflict was avoided, but the war victims did not necessarily gain as a result; above all, they failed to achieve one of their major wartime objectives: to be colegislators and not merely the objects of postwar legislation dealing with war victims. On the whole, as Michael Geyer has noted, the nature of the RVG served to diminish rather than to enhance the political position of German war victims. Geyer, “Vorbote,” pp. 248–49, 255–58.

21. Ibid., pp. 237–41, 256.

22. For more on these omissi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• THE THANKS OF THE FATHERLAND
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• ONE WORLD WAR I, VETERANS, AND THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
• TWO VETERANS IN THE THIRD REICH
• THREE THE AFTERMATH OF WAR: THE OCCUPATION YEARS
• FOUR EARLY AND PROVISIONAL LEGISLATION
• FIVE THE FEDERAL WAR VICTIMS’ BENEFITS LAW
• SIX THE 131 LAW
• SEVEN THE PRICE OF SUCCESS: THE SEARCH FOR NEW MISSIONS
• EIGHT THE VERBAND DEUTSCHER SOLDATEN
• CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX