The German Army Handbook of 1918.pdf

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The German A rmy H andbook of 1918
David Nash
The German Army Handbook of 1918
This edition published in 2008 by Frontline Books, an imprint of Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 47
Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS
www.frontline-books.com
New Introduction © Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2008
This edition © Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2008
9781783469666
The German Army Handbook of 1918 was originally issued by The General Staff as Handbook of the
German Army in War, April, 1918. It was republished in 1977 by Arms and Armour Press as German
Army Handbook, April 1918.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does
any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library.
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IN TRODUCTION
... Shoulder cords (officers’).—‘Field shoulder cords’ will be worn by officers on the
jacket (Bluse) and greatcoat; for officers below the rank of General they will have a
uniform width of 1¾ inches without any stiffening; they consist of a cloth strap of
various colours, corresponding to those of the shoulder straps of the rank and file (in
the infantry and Jäger the colours correspond to those of the edging of the shoulder
straps of the rank and file). This strap forms a foundation for the cords and badges,
which are ‘dull’ and of a size corresponding to the present size for captains.
In April 1918 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France was reeling from the blows
delivered by the German army in their Lys offensive. The outlook seemed gloomy, the Germans were
threatening to break through to the Channel ports, and Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the
Commander-in-Chief, felt it necessary to issue his famous ‘backs to the wall’ order imploring his
army to an even greater defensive effort. By coincidence in the same month the General Staff in
London reissued this intelligence handbook on the German army. The modern observer might ask
why, at this moment of titanic struggle, such things as ‘shoulder cords (officers’)’ of the German
army might be worthy of official record? The simple answer is that a British intelligence officer in
the path of the German offensive, seeking to identify the units to which prisoners belonged, would
need to understand the German army’s uniform distinctions; particularly if the prisoners would not
volunteer such information orally or sought to deceive him. When taken out of context the extract
quoted above seems rather absurd, but it is upon such apparently trivial things that an intelligence
system often depends. Taking a step back, it is important to realise that this handbook, in spite of its
sometimes unusual detailing, is one expression of an almost intangible phenomenon: British
intelligence’s perception of their enemy. We now have the benefit of hindsight, derived from
comparing accounts from both sides of the conflict. The modern reader can find out a great deal
about the reality of the situation on both sides of the Western Front and the danger is that this leads to
unrealistic critiques of contemporary decisions. For the actual participants their perception of the
enemy was incomplete, sometimes misleading, and constantly changing. Snippets of information
would be accrued from multiple sources and it was the unenviable task of the intelligence staffs to
collate and analyse them in order to generate an intelligence picture which would then inform
operational decision-making.
This handbook was one of the tools available to the intelligence staff in their work. It was not the
only one and it was perhaps not the most important, however it can perhaps be seen as one of the
cornerstones of the intelligence library of documents available to them. It distilled all the underlying
intelligence data concerning the German army. In modern parlance it was a compendium of ‘basic
intelligence’ over which more up-to-date ‘current intelligence’ could be overlaid. For example, an
intelligence officer might receive reports suggesting a re-organisation of certain German units. The
handbook would provide the datum against which he could judge the significance of this change. The
handbook also provided a number of useful aide memoires. At the simplest level, Appendix B would
assist in the interpretation of captured German maps. Perhaps more importantly, Chapter 1 provided
the intelligence officer with an exhaustive explanation of German manpower policy since 1914.
Therefore when the intelligence officer came to interrogate prisoners or examine their pay-books, he
would have a point of reference for such significant factors as the call-up dates of new classes of
conscripts, the re-deployment of older men, or the duration of training for new soldiers. At the BEF
level this would allow strategic judgements as to the German manpower situation, but for lower-level
intelligence officers it would contribute to their assessment of the character of the German units
opposite them in the frontline. The handbook could also assist in the induction of new intelligence
personnel. Its layout made it an ideal textbook for the Intelligence School in Harrow where officers
of the Intelligence Corps were trained. Alternatively the staff officer assigned to intelligence from
other duties could use it as a primer.
For the modern reader the handbook has many potential uses. Its most obvious utility is as a source
on the German army in the First World War. Thanks to the unwelcome attention of RAF Bomber
Command in 1945, the archival sources on the German Imperial army are not all that they could be.
Although other sources do exist in English, such as the recently-translated version of Herman Cron’s
1937 work Imperial German Army, 1914–18: Organisation, Structure, Orders of Battle (2002), the
sheer detail contained in this handbook makes it useful to a variety of historians studying the Kaiser ’s
army. As well as being written in English, it also has the advantage of being compiled
contemporaneously rather than retrospectively. As David Nash pointed out in his introduction to the
1977 reprint of the handbook, it does contain some factual errors regarding the German army but on
balance this is outweighed by the quality and quantity of the material presented. The range of material
presented is vast: from lists of recruiting districts to the average age of divisional and corps
commander; from a detailed explanation of how the army expanded after August 1914 to technical
performance data for various weapons; and from the colours that carrier pigeons were dyed for easy
recognition to the average speed of transport trains. Regarding the last point, the handbook suggests
that in the early part of the war ‘trains started for a destination, getting through as best they could,
passing from station to station as the line became clear ’. This stands in contrast to the usual
stereotypes of Teutonic efficiency in running railways.
Organisational Context
The other benefit of this handbook is what it tells us about British intelligence. Intelligence documents
reveal the interests of their creators. Their emphasis and their omissions say something about the
intelligence system that created them. The establishment of the modern British intelligence
community is usually dated to 1909 when the establishment of a ‘Secret Service Bureau’ under
Captain Vernon Kell and Commander Mansfield Cumming led to the development of the Security
Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, known colloquially as MI5 and MI6. However the military
intelligence component of the intelligence community has a much longer pedigree. Both the Royal
Navy and the British army evolved intelligence staffs in the second half of the Nineteenth Century and
by 1914 these were well rooted in the military hierarchies. In August 1914 the intelligence staff of the
War Office deployed to France and Belgium with the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the BEF. The
intelligence effort was led by Colonel (later Major-General Sir) George Macdonogh. At the end of
1915, when Haig took over command of the BEF, Macdonogh moved back to London to galvanise the
growing but still rather moribund intelligence staff at the War Office. Macdonogh was replaced at
GHQ by Brigadier-General John Charteris; a controversial figure who, it has been alleged, misled

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