#materialschlacht

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Materialschlacht gegen Covid: Slowakei testet 3,6 Millionen Menschen in zwei Tagen was originally published on schunck.info

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For over a year, Germany has exerted strict price controls and rationing on almost all foodstuffs, as the allied blockade is cutting off the supply of many things taken for granted before the war. George Michaelis, the attorney and bureaucrat put in charge of the Reich Grain Agency (Reichsgetreidestelle) during January 1915, has become one of the most powerful men in the country, with responsibility for a budget of  70 million marks to oversee the issue of most of the food that German civilians eat now. And because so many foodstuffs are unavailable from abroad, the German government has introduced ersatz (substitute) products of all kinds: coffee made from chicory, acorns, herbs, or berries, bread made with more potato flour and rye but less wheat, synthetic powdered eggs, fake sausage, milk, jam, fruit preserves, cocoa, honey, and so on. Sold in the same pleasant stores as before (see above), all of this food tastes awful.

It is also less nutritious. Most Germans have already lost weight, and to date the average laborer’s daily caloric intake has been reduced by a third or more, with worse to come, impacting their productivity. A hungry coal miner cannot dig as fast as a satisfied one, so his output falls even when his hours are extended. Of course, Germany is hardly alone in suffering from the disruption of global and regional food systems this way. Famine is now spreading from Africa to the Balkans; the quality of bread is declining everywhere, even in Paris; the Italian munitions center around Turin is spiraling towards food riots in June, while breadlines have already appeared in Petrograd; sugar is tightly controlled in London, and so many British agricultural workers have enlisted to serve in combat now that the potato crop will fail in parts of Scotland and England this year. Yet Germany and Austria take the lead in suffering, and the allied press takes positive delight in reporting as much.

This month, British newspapers have begun to focus on reporting non-food substitutions advertised in German papers, such as wooden shoes to answer a leather shortage, imitation flannel and canvas fabrics, soap made with less fat but more sand, and so on. Rumors of worker food strikes are magnified into tales of mass demonstrations. But these stories are not just propaganda. In fact, the most damaging words come from German and Austrian newspapers, all of which pin the blame squarely on Berlin for letting inflation spiral out of control. Last week, the American journal The Nation quoted the Kolnische Zeitung: “It may be taken as axiomatic that in matters of supply our Government never takes the decisive step at the outset, never acts except under undue pressure, and never learns except from its own failures.”

Predictably, the German government has reacted by increasing its press censorship. After calling for a special session of the Reichstag to grapple with wartime inflation, Vorwärts, the newspaper of the Socialist Party, was shut down last week for its fiery denunciations of wartime profiteering: “We are of the opinion that the adequate provision of the people’s means of subsistence and the fight against profit-mongering should be an end to itself, not the means to an end.” Vorwärts will continue to suffer such lockdowns, usually for days at a time, until the end of the conflict.

A German government propaganda cartoon depicts pork, sausage, fats, butter, milk, and meal as characters. Note the bar of soap

The imposition of censorship follows a similar track to the halting, high-handed way that Germany has imposed price controls and rationing. In mid-January, the German Chancellor requested that Field Marshall Hindenburg to suppress the Pommersche Tagespost and Goslarsche Zeitung for reportign on internal disputes at the highest levels of government, including his own clashes with Hindenburg. But the hero of the Eastern Front refused, saying that he would not use his growing, nearly-dictatorial powers on the press “for purely political speculations.” Nevertheless, ten days later a decree ordered all stories regarding conversations with, or other communications from, Army generals to pass through the Kriegspresseamt, the counterintelligence office of the Germany Army. Later this month, all discussions of German-American relations are subjected to censorship before publication.

Three days ago, the German Publishers Association presented the government with a series of requests. Some of these dealt with the annoyances of centralization, such as the requirement that combat reports come to their newsrooms through the official wire service, the Wolff Telegraph Bureau, rather than directly. From the point of view of German newsmen and printers, however, the greatest threat to their freedom is the German government’s complicated paper distribution policy, which allocates more newsprint for those papers which have shrunk between 1913 and 1915 but less for those which have grown in sheet size. This perverse system is aimed at supporting provincial journals, which are seen as more loyal and malleable, over the urban dailies which pursue public interest stories with greater vigor. As a result, the Berliner Tageblatt is seeing greatly-increased circulation throughout the war even as the size of its pages shrinks by half.

Today, the English-language press reports on the GPA’s complaints, putting particular emphasis on their assertion that as many as 2,000 German periodicals of all types have shut down since the war began due to shortages of paper. Though much-ballyhooed as another sign of Germany’s imminent social collapse, it is an enormous exaggeration, for as with any other industry, the biggest problem publishers face is the number of reporters and editors who have left their trade to go serve at the front. Furthermore, German paper production is not really in precipitous decline; instead, paper is being used as an ersatz replacement for all sorts of other materials. Cut off from American cotton, which is a key fiber material for a wide range of products from clothing to bandages to artillery propellant, German industry has been forced to adapt cellulose, recycled rags, and crepe paper as substitutes. Indeed, during 1916 the first paper clothing fabrics will be introduced in Germany, and just like the ersatz foodstuffs, they are quite inferior to what they replace. Last but certainly not least, the Reichsbank is turning to paper money for increased liquidity, adding to the inflation problem. We must therefore assume that the increased number of uses for paper, as well as government policy, explain the scarcity of newsprint better than reduced output at paper factories.

But the paper shortage assumes a life of its own as it becomes a scapegoat. Later this month, all discussions of German-American relations are required to pass through censors, while reprinting of a book on the topic is nixed and the decision blamed on paper shortages. During March, Berlin’s leading newspapers cite their troubles when they refuse to print a speech by Karl Helferrich, the Minister of the Interior. In June, the German Army prohibits extra editions, and while the newsprint shortage is named as the culprit, their desire to suppress bad news from the front has much more to do with the decision. Matters get worse as the war drags on. During 1917, hotels and restaurants are banned from offering free newspapers to customers, while the papers are forced to stop giving away maps and war timelines as incentives for new subscribers.

The German people are fed up with being hungry; these decisions are driven less by a real shortage of paper than the need to dampen public enthusiasm for revolution.

The weekly German ration of 1918: <2 ounces of meat, 2 ounces of fat, <1 oz. of butter, 5.5 lbs of unappetizing bread, 4.4 ounces of beans, just over a half-pound of flour, 5 lbs of potatoes, 1 lb of marmalade, 1 pint of milk, all sweetened with <0.5 oz of sugar

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When Prime Minister Ivan Goremykin convinced Tsar Nicholas II to prorogue the Duma and suspend Russia’s nascent democracy last year, it was seen as the final victory of the bureaucracy. But the failures of 1915, especially the Russian Army’s ignominious retreat from Poland and continuing mproduction shortages, have knocked the autocratic government on its heels for months. Yesterday, Duma leader Mikhail Rodzianko sent Goremykin a foreboding letter to denounce his continued failure to resolve the shortages and mismanagement that still bedevil Russia on the battlefield — and have begun to seriously damage the regime’s credibility in the streets.

I am writing this while still under the impression of the data that was just discussed at the special conference for defense, and which relates to the catastrophic condition of the problems of railroad transportation. This question was raised at the last session of the special conference. The work of a special commission was devoted to it, but its solution went no further than mere discussion, proposals, and estimates. And today, the catastrophe, which was only probably then, is upon us.

The details of the conditions existing in the factories that produce munitions of war, conditions which may lead to the suspension of the operations of these factories, and the information concerning the approaching famine that threatens Petrograd and Moscow, as well as the possibility of serious popular disturbances in connection with this state of affairs, have, no doubt, been reported to you by the chairman of this conference. These facts and considerations make it quite apparent to me, as well as to other members of the conference, to what an abyss our country is rapidly moving, thanks to the complete apathy of the government, which takes no active and decisive measures for the purpose of forestalling the events that threaten us.

[…] The end of the war is rapidly approaching, while within the country, in every department of the people’s life, even in those which are concerned with the satisfaction of the prime necessities of life, complete disorder prevails and grows.

Citing ill health, Goremykin has sought to resign his post for weeks rather than surrender a morsel of his power to the people’s representatives. Today, the Tsar finally accepts it and names Boris Vladimirovich Stürmer as his replacement. From an objective view, Nicholas could not have made a worse choice. Foreign minister Sergey Sazonov regards Stürmer as “a man who had left a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post;” Rodzianko calls him “an utter nonentity.” French ambassador Maurice Paléologue, who uncovered the abysmal arms production situation in Russia more than a year ago, takes three days to gather information about the new appointment before concluding Stürmer is

Worse than a mediocrity– third rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of state business. The most that can be said for him is that he has a rather petty talent for cunning and flattery…His appointment becomes intelligible on the supposition that he has been selected solely as a tool; in other words, actually on account of his insignificance and servility.

Indeed, only from the royal court’s point of view does Stürmer’s appointment make any sense at all. A loyalist who lacks any political agenda, Stürmer is practically the only sycophant left in Petrograd who isn’t too old or inexperienced at governing for the job. Anti-democratic, he once succeeded in displacing the elected government of Tver’, which was seen as too liberating in its influence. Nicholas wants a man who will execute his policy without objection, who will not threaten to resign, who will not cooperate against him with the parliament. Yet he also needs someone who can foster better relations with the Duma while he is away from the capital at his headquarters, so who better than a flunky that he has long wanted to make Mayor of Moscow?

Left: Tsarina Alexandra, whose influence is felt in the appointment of Boris Stürmer, right

The decision is immediately seen as evidence of the rising power of Grigori Rasputin, rumored lover of the tsarina. In fact, her influence is key to Stürmer’s advancement and will be integral to his tenure as Prime Minister. At her behest, he will fire the competent managers and political advisers who displease her or her mad monk. His reputation for grift is further enhanced when, shortly after taking office, Stürmer tries to redirect 5 million rubles from the military fund to his own office. Yet he will prove unable to articulate or impose a coherent policy of any kind, often leaving meetings without having seemed to understand the topics of discussion at all, leaving ever-more of his work in the hands of Alexandra and Rasputin.

All of this would be bad enough, but Stürmer’s very name is too German for a populace steeped in conspiracy theories about enemy agents supposedly running the country, exacerbating popular discontent with the government. While Stürmer asked the Tsar to allow him to change his surname to Panin in January, Nicholas procrastinated in deference to the aristocratic Panin family; the tsarina and Rasputin have declared that no such change is necessary, further undermining the legitimacy of their chosen Prime Minister.

And Russia needs bold leadership at its center. During the month of February, state budget discussions in the Duma reveal that the deficit has exploded to 355 million rubles, accumulating at 31 million a day. Last year ended with Russian government debt standing at 8 billion rubles; it will reach eleven billion before the year’s end. Alarmed at the prospect of their chief ally running out of cash, Britain and France float emergency loans, while the Russian crown obtains loans in the United States exceeding $100 million. During the first half of 1916, Russia suffers a trade deficit of 520 million rubles due to all the imports of weaponry and munitions. Despite being “a dictator with full powers,” in the words of Rodzianko, Stürmer fails to resolve these issues, managing only to lower the threshold of income tax and further shutter the vodka trade in the misguided belief that a ‘new energy’ will fix everything.

Meanwhile, the nation’s energy supply is actually diminishing as railroads fall apart, workers experience tool shortages, and declining food systems lead to absenteeism and decreased productivity. None of these problems will be solved by the Stürmer premiership. Instead, they will all be greatly magnified.

Programming note: this blog has been suspended recently due to a combination of illness, employment changes, and server issues. We will now attempt to resume a regular schedule of programming as well as filling in backdated posts, but there may be further brief interruptions.

The sumptuous accommodations of the royal train contrast with the deteriorating Russian rail network

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Above: former ammunition bunkers at the North Weald Redoubt, one of the first defensive structures built on the ‘Twydall Profile,’ near London. 

In London today, the House of Lords holds a debate on a resolution by Viscount William Peel “That, in the opinion of this House, it is the duty of His Majesty’s Government to exercise a more effective supervision and control of naval and military expenditure.” This anodyne-sounding statement is in fact a political hit on the Asquith government, which has overseen massive public spending increases as a result of the war, and comes in reaction to a series of newspaper stories about fraud, waste, and abuse in contracting, as well as the very recent failure of some tax-raising proposals to pay for the war. Sponsoring the resolution are two veterans of the administration which oversaw the Second Boer War at the turn of the century: Lord William St. John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton, former Secretary of State for War, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Earl St. Aldwyn, a Conservative who ran the Exchequer (Treasury). Both men have seen the runaway effect of wartime emergency on the public purse before, and regard today’s motion as a patriotic act.

Standing to speak in support of the resolution is George Clark, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe, who was secretary of the Colonial Defense Committee more than two decades ago and has impeccable cost-cutting credentials. After seeing Turkish success defending Plevna from the Russians and Romanians for almost six months in 1877 using earthworks and modern rifles, making a personal inspection of the site five years later, Clark was the most important advocate in Britain for instituting the ‘Twydall Profile’ of small, cheap forts with dirt slopes and entrenchment rather than a classic moat-and-wall system, which was more vulnerable to modern high explosives. While the program had a radical effect on the design of new fortresses throughout Europe, the current state of trench warfare has certainly validated his ideas on an unimagined scale.

Departments have undertaken work for which they were distinctly not qualified. The chartering of ships and their economical employment was beyond the capacity of any Department as it was constituted in peace time. If at the outset of war all the great Departments which were to control the expenditure of these vast sums had called to their assistance experts who could have helped them, who would have been ready and willing to help them, much of the expenditure we deplore might have been saved. The noble Duke has said that shipping questions are going to be looked into, and I am certain that economy in that respect can be obtained. But surely that ought to have been done a long time ago, at the very outset of the war. At the War Office everything seems to have been centralized, and wasteful expenditure of all kinds has occurred wholly through a want of guidance. The Reconstitution Committee of 1904 made an earnest effort to decentralize War Office finance. But all those efforts seem to have been swept aside, and the War Office took to giving out immense direct contracts for hutting even when they had experienced officers on the spot who could have advised.

Few men in England better understand the risks created by constructing thousands of temporary buildings for the war (‘hutting’) that inevitably become ugly, semi-permanent structures — a consistent feature of both world wars. In fact, Sydenham-Clark was a prominent member of the Reconstitution Committee of 1904, which recommended reforms at the War Office and the creation of a General Staff in order to fix bureaucratic inefficiencies and modernize the Army. But then he turns his wrath on the unnamed Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George.

(I)t cannot be an economical Department. In the first place its Head has not a record for economy. In the second place, the salaries and wages it is giving seem to be exorbitant. More than that, I understand that the great spending Departments order what they like from the Munitions Department. If that is so, it means that the expenditure will not fall on their budgets and one inducement to economy will be removed. On the other hand, the Munitions Department itself is placing orders to the extent of hundreds of millions literally, and is not in a position to make the spending Departments show cause—that is, explain whether the orders they give are based upon definite estimates of real requirements or on guesses inspired by the natural wish to have an enormous margin. From the point of economy, the difference between those two points of view must be very great indeed.

But Lloyd George’s massive increases in production of heavy artillery tubes and machine guns will absolutely be vindicated in the course of the conflict. What seems thrift to Sydenham-Clark is actually parsimony, if not sanctimony, for the changes that he helped usher onto the modern battlefield are exactly what make these extreme scales of production necessary for victory.

Left: George Clark, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe. He will leave Liberal politics and end his days promoting fascism. Right: John Phillips, 1st Viscount St. Davids. Both of his sons will be killed in combat during the Great War

William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne rises to answer the critics. Instrumental in the successful formation of the South African Union, he is President of the Board of Agriculture and a Liberal member of the Asquith cabinet. Among other points, Selborne-Palmer explains that military personnel are not accustomed to being bookkeepers, especially in a system where civilians normally control the purse-strings.

(D)uring the greater part of his professional career the naval or military officer acts in a groove out of which he never can emerge, and he seldom or never has any financial responsibility of his own. When war comes men who have never been allowed any kind of discretion in the expenditure of small sums suddenly find themselves in charge of untold sums of money, and with no check upon their expenditure, and they really are incapable of bearing the burden. All these stories one hears of extraordinary extravagance in military administration almost always come down to the incapacity of some individual officer to be the spender of considerable sums of money.

“I do not believe there is a man living who can spend £1,000,000,000, or even half of it, without enormous waste,” Selborne says. Nevertheless, he points to fat-trimming efforts now underway within the War Office and the Ministry of Munitions, then answers a debate proposal to appoint a new board with oversight and discretionary powers over spending in both departments.

Imagine such a Board or Commission, make it of the strongest men; let it be composed, we will say, of the two noble Lords opposite, Lord Midleton and Lord St. Aldwyn. You put them into the War Office to-morrow with this wide and all-important function and with the responsibility of reporting direct to Parliament. Is it conceivable that the time would not come, and come soon, when Lord Kitchener would say to the Cabinet, “There is an authority in my Office which makes it impossible for me to carry out my war policy”? Every one of your Lordships must agree that there would be the gravest danger of such a result.

[…] (W)hen you take a man like Lord Kitchener in a crisis and put him in an Office like the War Office, you must leave him to do his work in his own way. It is not possible to ask such a man to do such a task, and then for his colleagues to be frequently jogging his elbow and asking him to do his work in a manner different from that in which he is doing it.

The critics have cited anecdotal evidence of workers receiving outrageous wage boosts by moving into munitions work, bureaucrats taking immense salaries, and other signs of waste, so Selborne sets them straight.

I speak for my own Department only, but I have no reason to suppose that it is in any degree exceptional. A very large number of men have gone from my Department to the War and to the Munitions Department, and only a small proportion of their places has been filled. Those who remain are doing, as their war contribution, the work of two men. In all respects I have endeavored to put my Department on a war footing, and in so doing I have had the most cordial and loyal support of all my colleagues of every grade.

Earl Peel ends the debate by agreeing to drop the word “more” from the motion, thus striking all criticism from it. But first, John Phillips, 1st Viscount St. Davids rises to admonish the Lords for undermining public confidence in the British treasury — and makes a strikingly prescient argument that public debts simply do not matter in the present circumstances.

It has been said in this House that the country is heading for bankruptcy. That ought not to be said—first, because it is not true; and, secondly, because it would prejudice our attempts to raise money abroad. We have raised money in America and we shall almost certainly have to raise more there. How do you think you can send a representative to America for this purpose if members of this House, noble Lords who ought to have a higher sense of responsibility, get up and say that the country is heading for bankruptcy?

It is quite true, and everybody connected with finance knows it, that the Government may have very great difficulty in raising the sums they require. But that is because our financial system has not been mobilised for war, and before the war is over it will probably need to be mobilised for war. But I want to put an extreme case. Supposing this war were to go on for three years longer and during that period, in addition to what we have borrowed already, we borrowed £4,000,000,000. You would have difficulty in raising it, but you would have no serious difficulty in paying the interest on it; and as long as you can pay the interest there is no chance whatever of your being bankrupt. When we began this war our taxation—I am speaking in round figures for simplicity—was about £200,000,000 a year. When the changes of taxation that are now being carried out are completed we shall be raising nearly £400,000,000 a Year. Does anybody think that this country could not raise an additional £200,000,000, and would not gladly do so, rather than that the country should go bankrupt? That £200,000,000 a year additional taxation which you could raise would pay the interest on £4,000,000,000, and you could carry on the war for three years longer at the same extravagant rate. I say that in the face of those figures, which are undoubted, no member of this House or of the other House ought to get up and say that the country is heading for bankruptcy. The thing is absolutely out of the question.

Indeed, the war will end in exactly three years to the day, and during that time St. Davids will be proven completely correct about American credit and the country’s ability to service the resulting debt. Wars are becoming more expensive ’emergencies’ than ever before in 1915, and the sheer scale of war spending is outstripping the human institutions which might otherwise check the wastage. Generations of technological and doctrinal change have only made war more expensive, removing it even farther from civilian control, while even in ‘peacetime,’ generals and admirals can fritter away sums that make the Lords’ debate seem petty to us now. It is never cheap to erect a ‘war machine,’ or to maintain it in a state of readiness. Even when the products of military spending become obsolete — like, say, Sydenham’s fortresses — we still continue to pay for them.

Left: Arthur Peel, 2nd Viscount Peel. Right: William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne

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Materialschlacht