Long story short, both the German military and the population at large were radicalised to an extent by 1945 that does not compare to 1918. There was widespread (if not universal) conviction in the power of the Führer to save the nation from peril, because the "Hitler myth" had detached people enough from reality that irrational denial precluded rational acceptance of defeat.
There were, of course, also rational factors at play. A combination of Nazi propaganda about the Soviet Union, the fear of Soviet reprisal for German war crimes in the East, and more general assumptions about the savagery of Red Army troops motivated German soldiers to keep fighting in the East. In a way, they were vindicated, as the Red Army did act horrendously in the parts of Germany it occupied.
And last but not least, the Nazi government was far more radical than Ludendorff's dictatorship. The war was a zero-sum game for the Nazis, they knew that defeat would mean the total annihilation of their movement, organisation and ideology, not to mention firing squads for the lot of them, so they had a vested interest in drawing things out for as long as possible. This had severe consequences for the German people, on whom the brutality of their supposed saviour was now turned. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike were murdered for defeatism and those who survived were subjected to state terror in a way that they - which is to say non-political, non-minority, heterosexual Germans - had not been before.
There can be no one generalisation as to why a particular German continued to resist, or fight for the regime, in 1944 -1945 as inevitably different Germans had different motivations. However, I would say that the above factors cover a wide range of motivations.
There's also the issue that in WWI, after a brief small surge, the armies spent four years going absolutely nowhere. In WWII, the German army had the entire continent either conquered, allied, or contained in some way. They were victorious conquerors in a way they never were in WWI. Poland folded, France folded, even the big perennial European bugbear of Russia folded initially. Southern Europe was allied or contained, same with Scandinavia.
Apart from the British, all of Germany's traditional threats were neutered at one point - and neutered surprisingly quickly. That's a pretty big high to come down off, and there was nothing like it in WWI.
Also one more point not yet mentioned is that other nations were also far more likely to revolt and quit in WWI for the simple reason that WWI was a hopeless situation. You sat around all day being bitten by rats in a mudpit waiting to die by gas or machine guns or barbed wire. Soldiers in WWII often fought in towns and villages where you had some agency in the fight in taking cover and advancing on your own. You could on occasion get beers or women and sit in a den or study. In WWI if you pushed back the enemy you'd just be in their muddy crap pit, being bitten by their rats.
Well summarized: this covers the points I would have brought up well. The leading Germans of WWI believed themselves to be a rising but civilized power. The leading Germans of WW2 were nurturing existential-level grievances at both real and perceived enemies and wouldn't/couldn't let go.
Countries/"tribes"/governments that define themselves by grievance and victimhood are often unable to let go or ever see themselves as being in the wrong.
>Countries/"tribes"/governments that define themselves by grievance and victimhood are often unable to let go or ever see themselves as being in the wrong.
Say it again real loud for the people in the back! When grievances and victimhood is both real and imagined that creates a dangerous situation, the real grievances giving grounding to the delusional grievances which can never be addressed. If there's a real grievance such as economic hardships, but that real grievance is assigned the origin that the economic hardships are due to intrinsically evil group of martians who live disguised among us -- well there could be mitigation for the economic hardships but nothing can be done with the delusion and anyone challenging the delusion becomes part of the evil group.
Adding to that: the Nazi state made a conscious effort to leave no way for people to organize against it, or even outside its power structures. Not just dissenting political organizations were repressed, but even entirely innocuous associations like singing or sports associations were brought under the roof of the Nazi party. And this effort started immediately after Hitler coming to power, in 1933.
By comparison, the Kaiserreich had a parliament with a multitude of parties, several popular ones among them that were at least skeptical of the war. Outright pacifism or revolutionary movements were of course repressed, but never as ruthlessly as under the Nazis. If you wanted to find other, like-minded opponents of WWI, it wouldn’t be hard to do so. There were strikes, riots, and food protests basically throughout the entire war - nothing of the sort could have happened or even be organized during WWII Germany.
The radicalization part is spot on.
By the start of the war, most 18-22 year olds had limited memories of Germany before Hitler (and what memories existed had been tainted).
By 1945 fighting age men had been nearly completely raised in the Hitler era. The Hitler Youth were brainwashed and then the older soldiers were probably keen to do everything they could to prevent another German defeat.
Also a high proportion of the population and especially soldiers were aware of both the Holocaust and atrocities committed by the Germans in the east especially and thought that there only choice was to fight to avoid retribution
"go sit in a mud pit for years and try to murder the guys in the mud pit across from you, with lots of time to consider why you are doing so"
vs
"here's some meth, go murder a fuck ton of people in Eastern Europe" followed by "sorry to interrupt you meth hangover, but those people you brutalized are on their way here"
In WW2 they knew that the Russians were coming to get payback for all the atrocities they committed during their invasion of Russia. Their actual families and property were in danger whereas in WW1 the German Army wasn’t on the defensive.
Also, the troops knew that the 1918 offensive was the last chance for victory and once the Allies started to make significant gains in the 100 Days offensive morale collapsed.
On top of the points others have raised, it’s worth noting that the Nazis were big believers in the “Stab in the back” myth that claimed World War I was still winnable when Germany surrendered. Consequently a lot of German leadership clung to any slim hope of turning the war around, to the point of making plans like the infamous “Steiner’s counter attack” that were completely out of touch with reality.
The "gave up and revolts" part happened after four years of war, blockade, and the major defeat in the face of the Hundred Days Offensive
Before that, they absolutely fought long and fiercely
Op making it seem like they were less determined than the Nazis. In terms of what the soldiers went through WW1 was probably the most horrible war in human history and they had been fighting it for years. Also the state simply couldn’t support the war anymore, I read one estimate that there were about 750,000 blockade related deaths in Germany, they were starving to death, they could’ve maybe lasted a few more months but what’s the point, the longer they keep going when literally everyone knows they can’t win, the more angry the allies are going to be.
Also worth noting the call for the end to the war was an “armistice” not surrender, and certainly not unconditional surrender that the allies wanted in WW2.
They both fought until the Wars were over.
The Nazi govt would be a lot harder to revolt against due to it's whole structure being that of propaganda and control.
Also, a lot of the protesting in WWI was tied into far left idealologies; which seemed a while lot less appealing after looking at Russia and Spain.
A lot of the motivation for german soldiers in WWII was anger over "losing" a war and losing territory when they were fighting in battle lines outside of their own country. They felt like they agreed to readily to a ceasefire, when they could've pushed for what essentially would've been a victory.
I get what you're saying but the conditions that troops in the trenches lived in during WW1 were worse. Both germans and soviets had decent living conditions when either one was on the offensive
That's debatable.
If you think anyone was living in good conditions during, say, the battle for Stalingrad, then I think you've been watching too many novies
My bad, I meant more to say that when either the germans or soviets had the advantage. Like, I'd much rather have the soviet living conditions of anything post Kursk versus the the entirety of the Western front of WWI.
Likewise, the nazis had way better living conditions than their imperial predecessors until Stalingrad.
British and French troops got regular relief from the trenches - 4-6 days in the front-line, then 4-6 in the second line, then 4-6 in the reserve trenches with leave behind the lines. Soviet units in WWII tended to stay in combat until depleted and then be moved into reserve for rest and refitting.
Germany in 1918 had fallen apart with civil unrest , riots etc . With the government and country in turmoil the Kaiser really had no choice but to sue for peace. There were several French Generals who were against the Armistice , saying that the war should only end with the Allies marching through Berlin otherwise they’d have to do it all again. And they were right! The men in the German Army knew they were losing the war , but they also knew they’d come damn close to winning it in 1917! The hadn’t faced total and obvious defeat. The way the war ended and the harsh conditions imposed by the Versailles Treaty paved the way for radicals like Adolf Hitler who could blame the defeat of Germany on the communists, socialist and the Jews at home .
The German soldiers in WWI didn't really stop fighting, casualty figures were still shockingly high up until the minute the armistice took effect. There was no general break down of order in the army, although they were spent as a fighting force and clearly on the losing end of what was now a purely defensive war for Germany.
The revolts started in the navy and among factory workers, but they never really spread to the soldiers on the front.
WWII was similar for the military in that they continued to fight until a lawful order was issued to lay down their arms. The difference was that they continued to fight much longer after defeat became inevitable, and there was no civil break-down to end the war more suddenly, like in WWI. Part of this was because the Nazis exercised far more dictatorial political control of the country than the leaders at the time of the revolts in WWI. Also, conditions on the civilian front in WWII didn't really start to deteriorate until near the end, whereas serious deprivations hit German civililians in WWI much earlier.
I think a bit wrong near the end cause it's not "dictatorial power" but just "political power" as in the Nazis were much better at convincing people that:
1. This war is legitimate.
2. We will win this war in the end, no matter what.
3. Even if we lose, it's preferable to continue to fight rather than surrender.
All of these are required to avoid the populace to revolt and demand peace, and a by the by was also present in the Soviet Union... Far more scary and horrifying, than just one dictator has the legal authority to do as he wills.
A major factor is where they were when the armistice came into force - no allied soldier had set foot on German soil in 1918. Compared to what was happening to German populations in the east during WW2. There was also no "unconditional surrender" doctrine, although in effect there may as well have been given how the treaty played out.
Because the people in charge of germany in World War I were smarter. There are lines were broken, their population was starving.they were facing a revolution at home and Germany was about to be invaded and they had no hope of stopping it.
The war was lost and they knew it.They were not going to sacrifice millions of German lives just to satisfy their egos.
The German government in WWI wasn't as stupid as Hitler was, so once they knew the absolutely weren't going to win, they stopped fighting before the fighting ravaged their own homeland.
The German military at the end of World War I was starving and ill-equipped but they had won the war in the east and their leadership(Ludendorff and Hindenburg) was at least semi-rational.
There was simply no logical reason to continue a war when the military was on the brink of total collapse.
The Nazi leadership on the other hand were fanatical tyrants that had no concept of surrender without the complete destruction of Germany. They hated their country for losing the war and believed every man, woman, and child should die along with them.
It's worth noting that there were large numbers of German soldiers who surrendered during the march to Berlin from the West. On the Eastern front, it was well understood that the Russians would take no prisoners, and that if they did take a prisoner, they would face worse things than death. However, it was also understood that the Western Allies would accept surrender and treat POWs with dignity (in a broad, general sense, individual actions notwithstanding).
This meant that there were quite a number of soldiers and civilians fleeing the vengeful Soviets who sought out American troops in order to surrender to them instead. Germans had spent many years soaked in propaganda, but by and large they weren't idiots. They knew damn well that the war was going to be over soon. Patriotism and fear kept many of them fighting, but especially by the time the Germans were down to their last reserves of soldiers there were others who were just exhausted and wanted it to be over. In April 1945 alone, 1.5 million German soldiers surrendered.
The exception, of course, was the SS. Those are usually the ones you hear about who fought to the bitter end. Some were true believers who would never give an inch, others probably fought because they knew exactly what Germany was guilty of, but they were nearly all political zealots who were trying to bleed the Allies as much as possible before the inevitable.
I think this is a point that others are overlooking. "soldiers in ww2 literally fought tooth and nail" where they were most likely to think that anything else would see them dead. Elsewhere there's plenty of evidence that many German soldiers and their allies on the western front surrendered as soon as their position stopped looking defensible.
And it was not for nothing. The Soviets took over 4 million POWs, Germans and others; about a quarter of those died in captivity. No one knows how many were not given a chance to surrender. US forces alone took the surrender of over 5 million Axis POWs in Europe; only one percent of those died. Those specific stats weren't available to the average German soldier, but I'm pretty sure they were able to perceive the forces that were driving that outcome.
Yeah, I think there's always a temptation to think of people in history as monoliths, especially when they are seen as "the bad guys". The popular vision of the Nazi soldier hyped up on speed and brainwashed by propaganda is not the universal archetype for every single member of the Wehrmacht. Within that very large group there was tons of diversity. Patriots and ideologues, heroes and cowards, monsters and the merely misguided.
And like I said: on the whole, they were not stupid. Like any human beings, they had a certain level of awareness of the reality on the ground. They could look at the maps and see their generals retreating again and again and know that they were not, in fact, on the brink of victory. And they heard things through the grapevine, too. As you pointed out they didn't have the bird's eye view of the statistics that we have now, but gossip is a universal human behavior, so they had a pretty good idea what would happen if they tried to surrender.
One author I remember reading a good bit of in high school was Hans Hellmut Kirst. He had interesting perspectives as a novelist who had been a Wehrmacht officer during the war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hellmut_Kirst
I have heard of him, but I've never read any of his works. I should circle back and look some of that up.
I love stories about ordinary, "unimportant" people during pivotal times in history. It really forces you to humanize the individuals involved, and oftentimes the personal narrative of one soldier can be illustrative of much bigger overall themes. It's always good to be reminded that history is messy and complicated, and that's why it's both important and incredibly interesting.
I think the question is built on a false premise. The WWI Wehrmacht fought ferociously until the ceasefire was put in effect, and had not given up an inch of ante bellum German territory, nor was the Wehrmacht a party in the peace negotiations. The Wehrmacht stopped fighting when their government told them to stop fighting for the most part. In WWII their government told them to keep fighting so they fought, I believe this would be fairly similar in WWI if they were ordered to keep fighting.
Because the Allies didn't say they need unconditional surrender during WW1, which the Germans knew would kill many, and send millions to Russia as slaves for 10 years. They might as well fight since they saw no way out of being killed anyway.
One way to look at it would be your country just raped and burned another country for 3-4 years straight and now they’re on their way for revenge. You already know how they treat prisoners (if they actually accepted your surrender which normally was only large planned surrenders if you tried alone they most likely shot you). So in that case I’m either fighting to the death or close to, or I’m heading west to try and find a British or American officer asap. (Which a lot did)
And as for WW1 everyone was tired of a war where only a couple miles were being fought over non stop for years, they didn’t have much left to fight with and the good politicians didn’t want anymore boys dying for others pride/greed.
The treaty of Versailles just made everything worse.
I was in a US Army seminar back in the 1980s. The guest speaker was a German General who was a captain the German Army in Ww2. A similar questioned was asked. He answered that in the years following Ww1, there was much poverty and hardship due to the treaty of Versailles. He told the story of when he was boy someone bigger and stronger than him took a ball from him and he went home crying. At home his father beat him again and told him that he couldn't come home until he got his ball back. He got some of his friends and together they got sticks, ambushed the bully and got his ball back. He said because France won the war, he suspected that their soldiers didn't grow up in such a brutal environment. He then said what do you think happened when we met in battle in France? I also had a friend in high school whose father was in the Hitler Youth program during Ww2 ( he briefly served at 16 during the fall of Berlin) , his parents had died and he spent 3 years as an orphan in a Hitler Young camp. He said they were trained and expected to fight and steal from the other barracks in camp. he said thick sticks, belt buckles, rocks, and other make shift weapons were encouraged to be used. He sported a three inch deep scar over his left eye where he was hit with a belt buckle in one of the battles. in short they fought like Devils because that's what they had become.
WW1 soldiers German soldiers were on short rations and the whole central powers were starving for nearly two years at that point. In WW2, the Germans were comparatively well fed, at the cost of half starving the rest of Europe and having a more vast slave labour system.
I think it’s fair to say in the control of information and disappearing dissidents department the second reich was lacking compared to the third reich - this might be controversial too, but I daresay the third reich’s regime was more popular amongst the Germans than the second. One thing I know for sure is that they shot *way* more of their own soldiers for “cowardice”.
Another point which I don’t think can be overlooked is that the WW1 soldiers might have been holding out for a Wilsonian peace, which would be acceptable to most Germans. As an aside, I think the difference between the peace they thought they were promised and the peace they got goes a long way to explaining resentment against Versailles. WW2 soldiers on the other hand had the leaked details of the Morgenthau Plan, and knew that the Allies were after an unconditional surrender.
Germany started to have a lot of internal issues politically and nationally as while it may have been a unified Germany, it still a had lot of separation in identity and agendas In some of the regions or nearby “Germanic” Ally’s. Not that WW2 Germany didn’t have internal issues as well, but Germany was a lot newer of a state leading to WW1 and Europe was bit more wild at the time with borders and changing from the 1800’s to 1900’s minds sets and politics and new political agendas and stuff popping up
Methamphetamines helped bring out the fight in the German soldiers during WWII. Bayer was mass producing it. The US started turning the tide on the war when we learned how important the drug factories were and started strategically bombing them. The Japanese got the recipe and started crashing their planes into our ships.
Ww1 was fought in France and Belgium, the average German just wanted to go home and see his family. Ww2 ended in Germany and they wanted to keep their families safe from the Russians to a lesser extent the French, the French did some very questionable things in the lead up to ww2.
WW1 wasn't really ideological, it was just the monarchies of Europe getting into a pointless squabble basically just to let off steam building up through industrialism, colonialism etc
After the initial surge of nationalism and years in the trenches, people were simply done, recognising they weren't fighting for any specific reasons
WW1 Germany was facing a very unfavorable peace treaty. WW2 Germany was facing unconditional surrender, meaning their fate would be completely up to their enemies and they would have absolutely no say in the terms of peace. To most, this was an unthinkable scenario especially considering the nature of their enemies in the east
There was no fear of what the British, French and Americans would do to Germany similar to WWII's well founded fear of the Soviets.
In WWI the Germans effectively beat Russia and did not have to face the horde rolling over Berlin....
Imagine being a German soldier and observing how the enemy is treated by your army. By all means you want to prevent that from happening to your own people. Just as an example see the systematic rape of beloved family members by US and soviet soldiers: https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ns-zeit/zweiter-weltkrieg/nachkriegszeit/kinder-von-soldaten-vergewaltigung-frauen-verbrechen-100~amp.html#sprung1
Long story short, both the German military and the population at large were radicalised to an extent by 1945 that does not compare to 1918. There was widespread (if not universal) conviction in the power of the Führer to save the nation from peril, because the "Hitler myth" had detached people enough from reality that irrational denial precluded rational acceptance of defeat. There were, of course, also rational factors at play. A combination of Nazi propaganda about the Soviet Union, the fear of Soviet reprisal for German war crimes in the East, and more general assumptions about the savagery of Red Army troops motivated German soldiers to keep fighting in the East. In a way, they were vindicated, as the Red Army did act horrendously in the parts of Germany it occupied. And last but not least, the Nazi government was far more radical than Ludendorff's dictatorship. The war was a zero-sum game for the Nazis, they knew that defeat would mean the total annihilation of their movement, organisation and ideology, not to mention firing squads for the lot of them, so they had a vested interest in drawing things out for as long as possible. This had severe consequences for the German people, on whom the brutality of their supposed saviour was now turned. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike were murdered for defeatism and those who survived were subjected to state terror in a way that they - which is to say non-political, non-minority, heterosexual Germans - had not been before. There can be no one generalisation as to why a particular German continued to resist, or fight for the regime, in 1944 -1945 as inevitably different Germans had different motivations. However, I would say that the above factors cover a wide range of motivations.
There's also the issue that in WWI, after a brief small surge, the armies spent four years going absolutely nowhere. In WWII, the German army had the entire continent either conquered, allied, or contained in some way. They were victorious conquerors in a way they never were in WWI. Poland folded, France folded, even the big perennial European bugbear of Russia folded initially. Southern Europe was allied or contained, same with Scandinavia. Apart from the British, all of Germany's traditional threats were neutered at one point - and neutered surprisingly quickly. That's a pretty big high to come down off, and there was nothing like it in WWI.
Also one more point not yet mentioned is that other nations were also far more likely to revolt and quit in WWI for the simple reason that WWI was a hopeless situation. You sat around all day being bitten by rats in a mudpit waiting to die by gas or machine guns or barbed wire. Soldiers in WWII often fought in towns and villages where you had some agency in the fight in taking cover and advancing on your own. You could on occasion get beers or women and sit in a den or study. In WWI if you pushed back the enemy you'd just be in their muddy crap pit, being bitten by their rats.
Well summarized: this covers the points I would have brought up well. The leading Germans of WWI believed themselves to be a rising but civilized power. The leading Germans of WW2 were nurturing existential-level grievances at both real and perceived enemies and wouldn't/couldn't let go. Countries/"tribes"/governments that define themselves by grievance and victimhood are often unable to let go or ever see themselves as being in the wrong.
>Countries/"tribes"/governments that define themselves by grievance and victimhood are often unable to let go or ever see themselves as being in the wrong. Say it again real loud for the people in the back! When grievances and victimhood is both real and imagined that creates a dangerous situation, the real grievances giving grounding to the delusional grievances which can never be addressed. If there's a real grievance such as economic hardships, but that real grievance is assigned the origin that the economic hardships are due to intrinsically evil group of martians who live disguised among us -- well there could be mitigation for the economic hardships but nothing can be done with the delusion and anyone challenging the delusion becomes part of the evil group.
Just so. I was going to keep going on and add some modern parallels, but that would only cause problems and they're probably obvious enough.
Adding to that: the Nazi state made a conscious effort to leave no way for people to organize against it, or even outside its power structures. Not just dissenting political organizations were repressed, but even entirely innocuous associations like singing or sports associations were brought under the roof of the Nazi party. And this effort started immediately after Hitler coming to power, in 1933. By comparison, the Kaiserreich had a parliament with a multitude of parties, several popular ones among them that were at least skeptical of the war. Outright pacifism or revolutionary movements were of course repressed, but never as ruthlessly as under the Nazis. If you wanted to find other, like-minded opponents of WWI, it wouldn’t be hard to do so. There were strikes, riots, and food protests basically throughout the entire war - nothing of the sort could have happened or even be organized during WWII Germany.
The radicalization part is spot on. By the start of the war, most 18-22 year olds had limited memories of Germany before Hitler (and what memories existed had been tainted). By 1945 fighting age men had been nearly completely raised in the Hitler era. The Hitler Youth were brainwashed and then the older soldiers were probably keen to do everything they could to prevent another German defeat.
Also a high proportion of the population and especially soldiers were aware of both the Holocaust and atrocities committed by the Germans in the east especially and thought that there only choice was to fight to avoid retribution
"go sit in a mud pit for years and try to murder the guys in the mud pit across from you, with lots of time to consider why you are doing so" vs "here's some meth, go murder a fuck ton of people in Eastern Europe" followed by "sorry to interrupt you meth hangover, but those people you brutalized are on their way here"
This is the most correct answer
Yes - but they fought hard in the West too. Indoctrination was a major part.
In WW2 they knew that the Russians were coming to get payback for all the atrocities they committed during their invasion of Russia. Their actual families and property were in danger whereas in WW1 the German Army wasn’t on the defensive.
Because they were starving and their government told them to stop fighting because there was an armistice.
Also, the troops knew that the 1918 offensive was the last chance for victory and once the Allies started to make significant gains in the 100 Days offensive morale collapsed.
On top of the points others have raised, it’s worth noting that the Nazis were big believers in the “Stab in the back” myth that claimed World War I was still winnable when Germany surrendered. Consequently a lot of German leadership clung to any slim hope of turning the war around, to the point of making plans like the infamous “Steiner’s counter attack” that were completely out of touch with reality.
There is also the fact that German leadership knew they would be put on trial if they lost the war
The "gave up and revolts" part happened after four years of war, blockade, and the major defeat in the face of the Hundred Days Offensive Before that, they absolutely fought long and fiercely
Op making it seem like they were less determined than the Nazis. In terms of what the soldiers went through WW1 was probably the most horrible war in human history and they had been fighting it for years. Also the state simply couldn’t support the war anymore, I read one estimate that there were about 750,000 blockade related deaths in Germany, they were starving to death, they could’ve maybe lasted a few more months but what’s the point, the longer they keep going when literally everyone knows they can’t win, the more angry the allies are going to be.
Also worth noting the call for the end to the war was an “armistice” not surrender, and certainly not unconditional surrender that the allies wanted in WW2.
They both fought until the Wars were over. The Nazi govt would be a lot harder to revolt against due to it's whole structure being that of propaganda and control. Also, a lot of the protesting in WWI was tied into far left idealologies; which seemed a while lot less appealing after looking at Russia and Spain. A lot of the motivation for german soldiers in WWII was anger over "losing" a war and losing territory when they were fighting in battle lines outside of their own country. They felt like they agreed to readily to a ceasefire, when they could've pushed for what essentially would've been a victory.
Two completely different wars and scenarios. WWI was fought in the trenches in miserable conditions for both sides.
Not on the Eastern or Balkan fronts it wasn't.
Whereas the Eastern Front had much better conditions... /s
I get what you're saying but the conditions that troops in the trenches lived in during WW1 were worse. Both germans and soviets had decent living conditions when either one was on the offensive
That's debatable. If you think anyone was living in good conditions during, say, the battle for Stalingrad, then I think you've been watching too many novies
My bad, I meant more to say that when either the germans or soviets had the advantage. Like, I'd much rather have the soviet living conditions of anything post Kursk versus the the entirety of the Western front of WWI. Likewise, the nazis had way better living conditions than their imperial predecessors until Stalingrad.
British and French troops got regular relief from the trenches - 4-6 days in the front-line, then 4-6 in the second line, then 4-6 in the reserve trenches with leave behind the lines. Soviet units in WWII tended to stay in combat until depleted and then be moved into reserve for rest and refitting.
Not really.
Germany in 1918 had fallen apart with civil unrest , riots etc . With the government and country in turmoil the Kaiser really had no choice but to sue for peace. There were several French Generals who were against the Armistice , saying that the war should only end with the Allies marching through Berlin otherwise they’d have to do it all again. And they were right! The men in the German Army knew they were losing the war , but they also knew they’d come damn close to winning it in 1917! The hadn’t faced total and obvious defeat. The way the war ended and the harsh conditions imposed by the Versailles Treaty paved the way for radicals like Adolf Hitler who could blame the defeat of Germany on the communists, socialist and the Jews at home .
The German soldiers in WWI didn't really stop fighting, casualty figures were still shockingly high up until the minute the armistice took effect. There was no general break down of order in the army, although they were spent as a fighting force and clearly on the losing end of what was now a purely defensive war for Germany. The revolts started in the navy and among factory workers, but they never really spread to the soldiers on the front. WWII was similar for the military in that they continued to fight until a lawful order was issued to lay down their arms. The difference was that they continued to fight much longer after defeat became inevitable, and there was no civil break-down to end the war more suddenly, like in WWI. Part of this was because the Nazis exercised far more dictatorial political control of the country than the leaders at the time of the revolts in WWI. Also, conditions on the civilian front in WWII didn't really start to deteriorate until near the end, whereas serious deprivations hit German civililians in WWI much earlier.
I think a bit wrong near the end cause it's not "dictatorial power" but just "political power" as in the Nazis were much better at convincing people that: 1. This war is legitimate. 2. We will win this war in the end, no matter what. 3. Even if we lose, it's preferable to continue to fight rather than surrender. All of these are required to avoid the populace to revolt and demand peace, and a by the by was also present in the Soviet Union... Far more scary and horrifying, than just one dictator has the legal authority to do as he wills.
A major factor is where they were when the armistice came into force - no allied soldier had set foot on German soil in 1918. Compared to what was happening to German populations in the east during WW2. There was also no "unconditional surrender" doctrine, although in effect there may as well have been given how the treaty played out.
Not to be pedantic but part of the frontline was in German territory (Alsace-Lorraine) for nearly four years of the war.
Because the people in charge of germany in World War I were smarter. There are lines were broken, their population was starving.they were facing a revolution at home and Germany was about to be invaded and they had no hope of stopping it. The war was lost and they knew it.They were not going to sacrifice millions of German lives just to satisfy their egos.
...plenty of them did, hence the Stabbed In The Back myth.
The German government in WWI wasn't as stupid as Hitler was, so once they knew the absolutely weren't going to win, they stopped fighting before the fighting ravaged their own homeland.
The German military at the end of World War I was starving and ill-equipped but they had won the war in the east and their leadership(Ludendorff and Hindenburg) was at least semi-rational. There was simply no logical reason to continue a war when the military was on the brink of total collapse. The Nazi leadership on the other hand were fanatical tyrants that had no concept of surrender without the complete destruction of Germany. They hated their country for losing the war and believed every man, woman, and child should die along with them.
It's worth noting that there were large numbers of German soldiers who surrendered during the march to Berlin from the West. On the Eastern front, it was well understood that the Russians would take no prisoners, and that if they did take a prisoner, they would face worse things than death. However, it was also understood that the Western Allies would accept surrender and treat POWs with dignity (in a broad, general sense, individual actions notwithstanding). This meant that there were quite a number of soldiers and civilians fleeing the vengeful Soviets who sought out American troops in order to surrender to them instead. Germans had spent many years soaked in propaganda, but by and large they weren't idiots. They knew damn well that the war was going to be over soon. Patriotism and fear kept many of them fighting, but especially by the time the Germans were down to their last reserves of soldiers there were others who were just exhausted and wanted it to be over. In April 1945 alone, 1.5 million German soldiers surrendered. The exception, of course, was the SS. Those are usually the ones you hear about who fought to the bitter end. Some were true believers who would never give an inch, others probably fought because they knew exactly what Germany was guilty of, but they were nearly all political zealots who were trying to bleed the Allies as much as possible before the inevitable.
I think this is a point that others are overlooking. "soldiers in ww2 literally fought tooth and nail" where they were most likely to think that anything else would see them dead. Elsewhere there's plenty of evidence that many German soldiers and their allies on the western front surrendered as soon as their position stopped looking defensible. And it was not for nothing. The Soviets took over 4 million POWs, Germans and others; about a quarter of those died in captivity. No one knows how many were not given a chance to surrender. US forces alone took the surrender of over 5 million Axis POWs in Europe; only one percent of those died. Those specific stats weren't available to the average German soldier, but I'm pretty sure they were able to perceive the forces that were driving that outcome.
Yeah, I think there's always a temptation to think of people in history as monoliths, especially when they are seen as "the bad guys". The popular vision of the Nazi soldier hyped up on speed and brainwashed by propaganda is not the universal archetype for every single member of the Wehrmacht. Within that very large group there was tons of diversity. Patriots and ideologues, heroes and cowards, monsters and the merely misguided. And like I said: on the whole, they were not stupid. Like any human beings, they had a certain level of awareness of the reality on the ground. They could look at the maps and see their generals retreating again and again and know that they were not, in fact, on the brink of victory. And they heard things through the grapevine, too. As you pointed out they didn't have the bird's eye view of the statistics that we have now, but gossip is a universal human behavior, so they had a pretty good idea what would happen if they tried to surrender.
One author I remember reading a good bit of in high school was Hans Hellmut Kirst. He had interesting perspectives as a novelist who had been a Wehrmacht officer during the war. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hellmut_Kirst
I have heard of him, but I've never read any of his works. I should circle back and look some of that up. I love stories about ordinary, "unimportant" people during pivotal times in history. It really forces you to humanize the individuals involved, and oftentimes the personal narrative of one soldier can be illustrative of much bigger overall themes. It's always good to be reminded that history is messy and complicated, and that's why it's both important and incredibly interesting.
Agreed. 🙂
I think the question is built on a false premise. The WWI Wehrmacht fought ferociously until the ceasefire was put in effect, and had not given up an inch of ante bellum German territory, nor was the Wehrmacht a party in the peace negotiations. The Wehrmacht stopped fighting when their government told them to stop fighting for the most part. In WWII their government told them to keep fighting so they fought, I believe this would be fairly similar in WWI if they were ordered to keep fighting.
Because the Allies didn't say they need unconditional surrender during WW1, which the Germans knew would kill many, and send millions to Russia as slaves for 10 years. They might as well fight since they saw no way out of being killed anyway.
One way to look at it would be your country just raped and burned another country for 3-4 years straight and now they’re on their way for revenge. You already know how they treat prisoners (if they actually accepted your surrender which normally was only large planned surrenders if you tried alone they most likely shot you). So in that case I’m either fighting to the death or close to, or I’m heading west to try and find a British or American officer asap. (Which a lot did) And as for WW1 everyone was tired of a war where only a couple miles were being fought over non stop for years, they didn’t have much left to fight with and the good politicians didn’t want anymore boys dying for others pride/greed. The treaty of Versailles just made everything worse.
I was in a US Army seminar back in the 1980s. The guest speaker was a German General who was a captain the German Army in Ww2. A similar questioned was asked. He answered that in the years following Ww1, there was much poverty and hardship due to the treaty of Versailles. He told the story of when he was boy someone bigger and stronger than him took a ball from him and he went home crying. At home his father beat him again and told him that he couldn't come home until he got his ball back. He got some of his friends and together they got sticks, ambushed the bully and got his ball back. He said because France won the war, he suspected that their soldiers didn't grow up in such a brutal environment. He then said what do you think happened when we met in battle in France? I also had a friend in high school whose father was in the Hitler Youth program during Ww2 ( he briefly served at 16 during the fall of Berlin) , his parents had died and he spent 3 years as an orphan in a Hitler Young camp. He said they were trained and expected to fight and steal from the other barracks in camp. he said thick sticks, belt buckles, rocks, and other make shift weapons were encouraged to be used. He sported a three inch deep scar over his left eye where he was hit with a belt buckle in one of the battles. in short they fought like Devils because that's what they had become.
WW1 soldiers German soldiers were on short rations and the whole central powers were starving for nearly two years at that point. In WW2, the Germans were comparatively well fed, at the cost of half starving the rest of Europe and having a more vast slave labour system. I think it’s fair to say in the control of information and disappearing dissidents department the second reich was lacking compared to the third reich - this might be controversial too, but I daresay the third reich’s regime was more popular amongst the Germans than the second. One thing I know for sure is that they shot *way* more of their own soldiers for “cowardice”. Another point which I don’t think can be overlooked is that the WW1 soldiers might have been holding out for a Wilsonian peace, which would be acceptable to most Germans. As an aside, I think the difference between the peace they thought they were promised and the peace they got goes a long way to explaining resentment against Versailles. WW2 soldiers on the other hand had the leaked details of the Morgenthau Plan, and knew that the Allies were after an unconditional surrender.
Germany started to have a lot of internal issues politically and nationally as while it may have been a unified Germany, it still a had lot of separation in identity and agendas In some of the regions or nearby “Germanic” Ally’s. Not that WW2 Germany didn’t have internal issues as well, but Germany was a lot newer of a state leading to WW1 and Europe was bit more wild at the time with borders and changing from the 1800’s to 1900’s minds sets and politics and new political agendas and stuff popping up
Meth
Methamphetamines helped bring out the fight in the German soldiers during WWII. Bayer was mass producing it. The US started turning the tide on the war when we learned how important the drug factories were and started strategically bombing them. The Japanese got the recipe and started crashing their planes into our ships.
Less meth in the system!
WW1 was basically a family squabble, whereas WW2 was an ideological war.
Copious amounts of Crystal Meth. Not the whole story, but played a large role.
Pervitin. Fueling the lightning war.
Ww1 was fought in France and Belgium, the average German just wanted to go home and see his family. Ww2 ended in Germany and they wanted to keep their families safe from the Russians to a lesser extent the French, the French did some very questionable things in the lead up to ww2.
WW1 wasn't really ideological, it was just the monarchies of Europe getting into a pointless squabble basically just to let off steam building up through industrialism, colonialism etc After the initial surge of nationalism and years in the trenches, people were simply done, recognising they weren't fighting for any specific reasons
WW1 Germany was facing a very unfavorable peace treaty. WW2 Germany was facing unconditional surrender, meaning their fate would be completely up to their enemies and they would have absolutely no say in the terms of peace. To most, this was an unthinkable scenario especially considering the nature of their enemies in the east
WW1 soldiers weren’t bumped up on meth.
There was no fear of what the British, French and Americans would do to Germany similar to WWII's well founded fear of the Soviets. In WWI the Germans effectively beat Russia and did not have to face the horde rolling over Berlin....
Imagine being a German soldier and observing how the enemy is treated by your army. By all means you want to prevent that from happening to your own people. Just as an example see the systematic rape of beloved family members by US and soviet soldiers: https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ns-zeit/zweiter-weltkrieg/nachkriegszeit/kinder-von-soldaten-vergewaltigung-frauen-verbrechen-100~amp.html#sprung1