Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek

Their susceptibility to alcohol must have drawn special attention to the gravity of the problem. However, there definitely appeared no [negative] attitude towards them. After the introduction of harsh discipline, Poles quickly manifested their military penchant: commitment to duty, extraordinary endurance in long marches, and loyalty to superiors. Hence, we praise them highly.¹⁰

At the time, the duty was still quite different from the one in the second half of the nineteenth century, after von Moltke’s reforms. An ordinary member of the ←12 | 13→22nd Infantry Regiment received a monthly salary of 2 Prussian thalers, 16 silver groschen, and 6 pfennigs with 12 silver groschen and 6 pfennigs as food benefit (Viktualienzuschuß), because he was supposed to buy everything on his own in the garrison. Non-commissioned officers received an additional benefit of 3 silver groschen. As a comparison, the wages of professional officers were much higher: the commandant of the same regiment received 2500 thalers per year, staff officers 1800 thalers, captains 800–600 thalers, lieutenants 200–300 thalers. They also received food benefits and benefits for their military decorations, especially for the Iron Cross (one thaler per month).¹¹ Meanwhile, in the 1860s, a typical textile industry worker earned about 120 thalers per year and a qualified worker in the highest paid metallurgical industry could receive even over 300 thalers.¹²

      There were no communal kitchens in the regiment, so meal preparation became a form of training. Everyone still received soup in the morning (for 10 pfennigs) but they had to prepare the rest of the meals on their own. The selected soldier would go shopping to the city market with lieutenant supervision:

Most of the recruits were not able to do this, they did not know the value of money or the prices of vegetables or meat, let alone the knowledge of spices. Many of the newcomers had to learn how to properly eat meat. However, later they cooked very well and clever soldiers began after a short time to comment on the effects of the gastronomic art. Colonel von Goszicki soon discovered that he did not need women to improve the living standards of the local population! The opposite sex could do it. After two or three years of duty, a soldier was able to prepare a tasty meal for a relatively small amount of money, keep his place clean and orderly, and regularly clean his uniform and shoes; but he also used comb, brush, soap, and hand towel on a daily basis, which became his second nature. Later, he would teach his wife how to do these things.¹³

Nevertheless, the main focus was military training, especially drills, marches with full load, and shooting. The most outstanding soldiers in this duty moved to special three-grade military schools that operated within the regimental framework, after which they could obtain ranks of non-commissioned officers. The lectures at the school were led by former professional non-commissioned officers along with full-time and over time (“one-year volunteers”) officers. Classes began on October 1 and ended in spring. For Polish recruits, these schools also served as places of complementary education in elementary subjects, such as reading ←13 | 14→and writing in German: “out of uneducated Polish recruits, the lessons produced gifted non-commissioned officers and minor officials.”¹⁴ Uneducated recruits testified to the negligence of public education which, since the Frederician times, was theoretically universal. There was still a very low turnout in folk schools, particularly in the countryside, which resulted in very high levels of illiteracy until the mid-nineteenth century.

Even after 1848, many non-commissioned officers recruited from the inhabitants of the Opole district, were not able to read or write what made it very difficult to fulfill the official duties. They coped with the situation in an astonishing way: “Many of them were illiterate. An individual that after many years of duty sometimes obtained the rank of company lieutenant, wrote orders with his own signs that resembled letters, that is, he actually shorthanded it according to his own system of signs, but later read it convincingly and confidently.”¹⁵

After the Unification of Germany

The military reform in Prussia was completed by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, appointed the Head of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, later the author of Prussian victories over Austria in 1866 – essential for the unification of Germany – and France in 1871, after the unification. Due to the fact that the former kingdoms in the south of the German Reich partially retained separate institutions, the German Emperor formally took leadership of four military contingents after 1871: Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, and Württembergian.¹⁶ However, von Moltke improved the functioning of the German Army everywhere, uniformly commanding from the General Staff. Apart from the radical changes related to the increase in firepower, including both firearms and field artillery, von Moltke especially concentrated on the development of a precise mobilization system that was constantly improved until the outbreak of the First World War. The system based on territorial division and enabled a rapid concentration of military units in particular areas of warfare by the use of railway, the fastest and most modern means of transportation that rapidly developed in the German Empire. The number of railway passengers in Germany increased ←14 | 15→tenfold in 1870–1914.¹⁷ The corps was the basic military unit responsible for mobilization – coordinated by the General Staff – for which it prepared detailed plans and recruited new people. Thanks to these actions, in the case of military conflict, the corps could deliver equipment and firearms to soldiers in line regiments in an organized and quick manner – according to the sequence of actions that was planned with the accuracy of an hour – not to mention the reservists who gradually strengthened the rapidly developing regiments. The delivery of regiments to designated sties based on the “schedule” determined by the staffs. The reform of the General Staff – which began to play the key role since the mid-nineteenth century in the Prussian and later in the German Army – was possible thanks to constant rearrangements of this complicated schedule. It was important not only to determine such a schedule but also to constantly improve and rearrange it due to the changing strength and armament of the army, the relocation of troops, and the development of railway.¹⁸

Logistic problems multiplied with the growing strength of the Prussian Army. The increasing expenses for the army, approved by the German Parliament (Reichstag), resulted also in the growing number of soldiers and officers in active duty: from less than 100 thousand to more than 400 thousand in 1880. The duration of time spent in the military training area increased to eighteen weeks per assignment.¹⁹ The army constantly grew to number almost 700 thousand people the brink of the First World War, after the decisions of the German Parliament.²⁰

      However, universal military duty before 1914 never applied to all men. In 1909, only a little more than half of men in military age formed the ranks of regiments, that is, 230 thousand recruits out of 422 thousand available men. The reasons for this state of affairs were not financial but political and ideological. Part of the officer corps was not eager to call up whole year groups as they feared the agitation of German social democrats, whose influence steadily grew among the increasing number of the working class. Even right before the First World War, in the 1913 conscription, the military called up only 60 percent of the available pool. As a result, when 1914 required the mobilization of a multi-million-strong army, 5.4 million of conscripts out of the total of 10.4 million had no ←15 | 16→previous military training. Thus, they required preparation before going to the frontlines.

After the