A NOTE ON SOURCES

Historians of the German armies in World War I for decades were restricted to archives accessible in the Federal Republic of Germany. These mainly centered on documentary records for the federal armies of Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, housed at Karlsruhe, Munich, and Stuttgart, respectively. Unlike those of the Prussian army at Potsdam, they were not destroyed by the Allied bombing offensives of World War II and hence witnessed a great deal of first-class research. I began by working through these materials.

For XIV Army Corps of the Grand Duchy of Baden, which provided most of the units fighting in Alsace, I consulted its war diary (Kriegstagebuch, or KTB) at the Generallandesarchiv at Karlsruhe (GLA). Deputy Commander Hans Gaede’s XIV Corps reports to Grand Duke Friedrich II are in 59 Weltkrieg 1914—Schriftwechsel Gaede 316. A summary of fortress shelling is in 59 Denkschrift der Beschiessungen der Forts 1914, General v. Bailer 365. Brigade commands are in 456 F58 Brigadebefehle 27. A special collection of war letters and diaries was most useful: S Kriegsbriefe und Kriegstagebücher 52, 53. Of greatest value were the war diaries of the various regiments and their battalions in Alsace, under the general file 456: F37 Inf. Regt. 111; F38 Inf. Regt. 112; F39 Inf. Regt. 113; F42 Inf. Regt. 169; F43 Inf. Regt. 170; and F58 Inf. Regt. 40. All service records were cross-checked in the regimental muster rolls: 456 D Kriegsrangliste. At the military-political level, the reports by Baden’s acting military plenipotentiary to the Army Supreme Command (OHL) were most useful: 222 Politische Berichte des Großherzogl. Gesandten in Berlin und München über den Kriegsausbruch 34816.

One of the richest veins for historians is the military records of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth Army at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, IV, Kriegsarchiv (BHStA-KA), Munich. Bavarian forces were initially deployed in Lorraine and then shunted to the right flank of the German armies in Picardy, Artois, and Flanders. Critical files consulted included its war diary: Armeeoberkommando 6, Kriegstagebuch der 6. Armee 2.8.14– 14.3.1915; as well as its prewar mobilization orders in Folder 369, Gedanken über die ersten Operationen der 6. und 7. Armee and Aufmarsch-Anweisungen. The Sixth Army KTB was then checked against the war diaries of the General Commands of the various Bavarian Army Corps: Generalkommando I AK, KTB 31.7.14–28.2.15; Ge. Kdo. II. bayer. AK, KTB 1.8.1914–31.12.1914; Generalkommando III AK, Kriegstagebuch 29.7.14–31.12.1914; and the war diary for Bavarian I Reserve Army Corps, Auszug aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Generals d. Inftr. Ritter von Fasbender, komd. General I.b.R.K. Extremely valuable was the rich war diary of Sixth Army’s chief of staff, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen: KTB 1914, Nachlaß Krafft von Dellmensingen 145; and the (albeit fragmentary) diary of one of his brightest staff officers in Nachlaß Rudolf von Xylander 12, Kriegstagebuch 1914/18. An incomplete list of Bavarian war dead for 1914 is in AOK 6, Feldzug 1914, Verlustliste. The reports of the Bavarian military plenipotentiary to the OHL are at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv-Ministerium des Äußeren: MA 3076–3085 Militärbevollmächtigter Berlin, Tagebuch Karl von Wenninger. Most critically, I AM indebted to Dr. Gerhard Immler for garnering permission from HRH Prince Luitpold, head of the House of Wittelsbach, for me to research Crown Prince Rupprecht’s war diary: Tagebuch Rupprecht, Nachlaß Kronprinz Rupprecht 699, at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, III, Geheimes Hausarchiv (BHStA-GH).

Over the past three decades, I researched fragments of personal files pertaining to leading figures of the General Staff and senior military commanders at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) in Freiburg: Beseler (N 30); Boetticher (N 323); Dommes (N 512); Einem (N 324); Groener (N 46); Haeften (N 35); Kluck (N 550); Moltke (N 78); Schlieffen (N 43); Tappen (N 56); and Wild v. Hohenborn (N 44). A very few prewar records from the Prussian army also exist in PH 3, Großer Generalstab: 256 Aufmarsch und operative Absichten der Franzosen in einem zukünftigen deutsch-französischen Kriege; 443 Mobilmachungsplan für das deutsche Heer zum 1. April 1914; 663 Große Generalstabsreise 1905/06; and 6546 Berichte über fremde Armeen, 1907–1911. Data on general officers were gleaned from the roughly twenty-volume collection MSg 109. Soldiers’ letters came from several files, including MSg 2/3112 and 2/4537.

While it was widely assumed by Western historians that the Royal Air Force’s bombings of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt on 14 February 1945 and of the Reichsarchiv on 14 April 1945 (both at Potsdam) had totally destroyed the archives of the Prussian army, that in fact was not the case. Although East German officials steadfastly maintained for half a century that as a “peaceful socialist country” they maintained no “military archives,” a great number of files from the former Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt had escaped the bombing and been taken to Moscow by the Red Army. In 1988 the Soviet Union returned forty tons of documents—including some three thousand Prussian and German army files—to the Militärarchiv der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, also at Potsdam.

To both the surprise and the delight of scholars, in 1994 these documents were removed to the BA-MA in Freiburg, where they were initially deposited as Special Collection W-10 and where they are now being recataloged as RH 61: Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres, Teil 1, Teil 2. The unfortunate outcome is a confusing crescendo of old “W-10” and new “RH 61” file numbers. For prewar planning by the Prussian General Staff, the most important collections include: 96 Aufmarschanweisungen für die Jahre 1893/94 bis 1914/15; 406 Die militärpolitische Lage Deutschlands in den letzten 5 Jahren vor dem Kriege; and 50315 Gemeinsame Kriegsvorbereitungen Deutschland-Österreich-Ungarn. Frage eines gemeinsamen Oberbefehls im Kriege. As well, much of Alfred von Schlieffen’s war planning survived in N 323/9, Nachlaß Boetticher, Gr. Generlstabsreise 1905.

Fragmentary documentary records for the first year of the war in general and for the Battle of the Marne in particular are in a series of compilations in RH 61: 83 Vorgänge im Großen Hauptquartier des Generalstabes 1914–1915; 84 Beurteilung der Lage zwischen den Flügeln der 1. und 2. Armee AM 9.9.1914; 161 Die Fahrten Moltkes, Dommes, Steins und Tappens zur Front AM 11., 12., 13. und 14.9.1914; 948 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916; 50443 Die Finanzierung des ersten Kriegsjahres 1914/15; 50603 Kriegsverluste, Verstärkungen, Munitionsverbrauch und Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg; 50631 Tagebücher Beseler; 50634 Generaloberst v. Einem; 50635 Falkenhayn-Tagebuch; 50652 Kriegserinnerungen von General v. Kuhl; 50656 Tagebuch v. Plessen; 50661 Kriegserinnerungen und Kriegstagebuch des Generalleutnants v. [sic] Tappen; 50676 Der Krieg im Westen 1914–1916; 50677 Auszüge aus Feldbriefen von Januar 1914—November 1918; 50730 Der Chef des Generalstabes von Moltke; 50739 Generalleutnant von Stein, der Generalquartiermeister der sechs ersten Kriegs-wochen; 50775 Die Verluste an Pferden 1914–1918; 50850 Die Tätigkeit der Feldfliegerverbände der 1. und 2. Armee 2.-9. September 1914; and 51060–064 Die OHL und die Marne-Schlacht vom 4.–9.9.1914. Countless others are to be found in the chapter notes.

During the 1920s, the senior commanders of especially the Bavarian and Prussian armies conducted a vitriolic paper war concerning both roles and responsibilities for the campaign in the west in 1914. A great many of their personal papers were circulated to fellow officers and to the Reichsarchiv at Potsdam. The result was a plethora of war diaries copied and annotated by postwar investigators. Wherever possible, I used only the original war diaries.

The major documentary collections that I have worked through over the past three decades in Great Britain are mostly at the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), Kew. They include the files of the Foreign Office: 800/49 Various Ministers’ and Officials’ Papers Grey, France 1905–1906; 800/87 Admiralty 1905–1913; 800/94 Foreign Office, memoranda 1912–1914; 800/100 Prime Minister 1909–1916. Also, those of the Cabinet: CAB 2 Committee of Imperial Defence and Standing Defence Subcommittee, Minutes 1902–1936; CAB 4 Committee of Imperial Defence, Miscellaneous Memoranda 1903–1938; and CAB 42 War Council and Successors 1914–1916. Of special interest in the latter group were the files pertaining to Despatch of the British Expeditionary Force (CAB 42/1/3) and to Home Defence (CAB 42/1/4). CAB 2/2 includes the minutes of the critical meeting on strategy of the CID on 23 August 1911. Of value at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, are the Papers of Herbert Henry Asquith 1892–1928, especially A.2 Cabinet letters: Copies of Asquith’s cabinet letters to the King, 1908–16.

For France, Dr. Stephanie Cousineau of the University of Northern British Columbia conducted research at the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD), formerly the Service historique de l’armée de terre, at the Château de Vincennes. Its vast holdings include the formal correspondence between the War Ministry (Messimy, Millerand) and the Grand quartier général (Joffre), as well as that for the military governor of Paris (Galliéni) for August and September 1914. Specifically, the personal collections researched were K 79 boxes 1 and 2, K 88 box 1, K 93 box 1, K 97 boxes 1, 2, 4, and 5, K 268 box 1, and K 802 box 1; the general collections included 5 N 66, 6 N 9, 7 N 4, 16 N 1551 as well as 1552 and 1674, 19 N 1142 and 1539, 21 N 15, 22 N 99 and 420, and 24 N 385 and 468. A good deal of the this material was published between 1922 and 1937 in the French official history, Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre (see below). Most important for this book were the narrative volumes (1, 2, and 3) of tome 1, the single annex of documents for volume 1, the two annexes for volume 2, and the four annexes for volume 3. SHD at Vincennes also houses a vast treasure trove of private papiers of many of the commanding generals of 1914. The most important are those for Fabry, Ferry, Foch, Grasset, Joffre, Journée, Regnault, Pétain, Pierrefeu, Pugens, and Ruffey; as well, there is the George Collection dealing with the Battle of Mulhouse; the Papiers Sauve (170th Infantry Regiment) in the Archives de Castelnau; and the Papiers Ferry (Grand Couronné). It is a mixed bag at best: some are repetitious, others mere summaries of battle orders, and many are postwar self-justifications and scurrilous attacks on Joffre.

Of course, military historians for a long time have had access to official as well as semiofficial histories of the Great War undertaken by the warring nations after 1918. These include:

Baden. Die Badener im Weltkrieg 1914/1918, ed. Wilhelm Müller-Loebnitz (Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1935).

Bavaria. Die Bayern im Großen Krieg 1914–1918. Auf Grund der amtlichen Kriegsakten dargestellt (Munich: Verlag des Bayerischen Kriegsarchivs, 1923), 3 vols.

——. Das Bayernbuch vom Weltkriege 1914–1918. Ein Volksbuch, ed. Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (Stuttgart: Chr. Belser, 1930), 2 vols.

——. Die Schlacht in Lothringen und in den Vogesen. Die Feuertaufe der Bayerischen Armee, ed. Karl Deuringer (Munich: Max Schick, 1929), 2 vols.

Belgium. La campagne de l’armée belge (31 juillet 1914–1er janvier 1915) d’après les documents officials (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1915). In English: The War of 1914: Military Operations of Belgium in Defence of the Country and to Uphold Her Neutrality: Report Compiled by the Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian Army, for the Period July 31st to December 31st, 1914 (London: W. H. & L. Collingridge, 1915).

France. Armée. Service historique. Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre (Paris: Imprimerie nationale 1922–37), 11 tomes and 111 annexes.

Germany. Marine-Archiv. Der Krieg in der Nordsee (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1921–37), 6 vols.

——. Reichsarchiv. Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Die militärischen Operationen zu Lande (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1925–56), 14 vols.

——. Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918. Kriegsrüstung und Kriegswirtschaft (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1930), 2 vols.

——. Schlachten des Weltkrieges in Einzeldarstellungen (Oldenburg and Berlin: Gerhard Stalling, 1921–33), 38 vols.

——. Der Sanitätsdienst im Gefechts-und Schlachtenverlauf im Weltkriege 1914/1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1934–38), vol. 2.

——. Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer im Weltkriege 1914/1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1934), vol. 3.

——. Great Britain. History of the Great War: Military Operations, ed. J. E. Edmonds (London: Macmillan, 1922–48), 23 vols.

——. History of the Great War: Naval Operations, eds. J. Corbett and H. Newbolt (London: Longmans, Green, 1920–31), 5 vols.

——. Saxony. Sachsen in großer Zeit. Gemeinverständliche sächsische Kriegsgeschichte und vaterländisches Gedenkwerk des Weltkrieges, ed. Johann Edmund Hottenroth (Leipzig: R. Max Lippold, 1923), 3 vols.

——. Die Marneschlacht insbesondere auf der Front der deutschen dritten Armee, ed. Artur Baumgarten-Crusius (Leipzig: Lippold, 1919).

Württemberg. Württembergs Heer im Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Berger, 1939), 20 vols.

Additionally, some contemporary documents were published in the United States: Source Records of the Great War, ed. Charles F. Horne (USA: National Alumni, 1923), 7 vols. Two compilations stand out for France: Histoire illustrée de la guerre de 1914, ed. Gabriel Hanotaux (Paris: Gounouilhou, 1915–24), 17 vols.; and La grande guerre sur le front occidental, ed. Barthélemy Edmond Palat (Paris: Chapelot, 1917–29), 14 vols.

Britain’s statesmen and soldiers likewise did not spare with their reminiscences. Important collections include John French, 1914 (London: Constable, 1919), 2 vols.; Douglas Haig, War Diaries and Letters, 1914–1918, eds. Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005); David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 1914–1918 (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1933–36), 6 vols.; Archibald Murray, Sir Archibald Murray’s Despatches (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent, 1920); Horace L. Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years’ Service (London: J. Murray, 1925); Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, ed. C. E. Callwell (London: Cassell, 1927), 2 vols.; Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis (New York: Scribner, 1923–31), 6 vols.; and H. H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, eds. Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

For France, the most important works on military matters include Yvon Dubail, Quatre années de commandement, 1914–18: Journal de campagne (Paris: Fournier, 1920); Louis Conneau, Historique des corps de cavalerie commandés par le général Conneau du 13 août 1914 au 2 mars 1917 (Paris: Plon, 1924); Émile Fayolle, Cahiers secrets de la grande guerre (Paris: Plon, 1964); Ferdinand Foch, Mémoires pour server à l’histoire de la guerre de 1914–1918 (Paris: Plon, 1931), 2 vols.; Joseph Galliéni, Mémoires du maréchal Galliéni: défense du Paris (25 août–11 septembre 1914) (Paris: Payot, 1920); Charles Julien Huguet, Britain and the War: A French Indictment (London: Cassell, 1928); Joseph Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (1910–1917) (Paris: Plon, 1932), 2 vols.; Fernand de Langle de Cary, Souvenirs de commandement, 1914–1916 (Paris, Payot, 1935); Charles Lanrezac, Le plan de campagne français et le premier mois de la guerre (2 août–3 septembre 1914) (Paris: Payot, 1921); Charles Mangin, Lettres de guerre, 1914–1918 (Paris: Fayard, 1950); Adolphe Messimy, Mes souvenirs (Paris: Plon, 1937); Raymond Poincaré, Au service de la France—neuf années de souvenirs (Paris: Plon, 1926–33), 10 vols.; and Poincaré, Comment fut déclarée la guerre de 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1939).

German commanders spent much of the decade of the 1920s writing memoirs to justify their actions during the war in general, and during the campaign of 1914 in particular. Those of the chiefs of the General Staff include the (posthumously published) recollections of Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke. Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente, 1877–1916. Ein Bild vom Kriegsausbruch, erster Kriegsführung und Persönlichkeit des ersten militärischen Führers des Krieges, ed. Eliza von Moltke (Stuttgart: Der Kommende Tag, 1922); Helmuth von Moltke, 1848–1916. Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Wirken, ed. Thomas Meyer (Basel: Perseus Verlag, 1993), 2 vols.; and Erich von Falkenhayn, Die Oberste Heeresleitung, 1914–1916, in ihren wichtigsten Entschliessungen (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1920).