6 Crisis
From the Wrst, Ober Ost was a showcase for pathologies of power, which
caused the state to seize up just when it seemed that its rule was being
made permanent. Interlocking crises overtook the administration’s con-
tradictory functioning, the political consciousness and national identity
of natives, and the identity of Germans in the East. These emergencies
Xowed together to seriously aVect political developments in Ober Ost in
1917 and 1918, ending with the collapse of the ambitious ediWce of power
as Imperial Germany itself went down in defeat and revolution. Failure,
coming at this highest pitch of ambition, produced lasting consequences
for German views of the East.
In 1917, Ober Ost’s machinery rumbled on toward a grinding impasse,
while more insightful oYcials looked on helplessly as the administration
undermined its own goals: the way in which many policies were executed
destroying the aims they were to eVect. After Hindenburg and Luden-
dorV were elevated to the Supreme Command on August 29, 1916, the
spirit they had built into the state worked on. Chief of General StaV
Falkenhayn had Wnally been ousted after the unremitting and jealous
intrigues of the eastern generals were joined by forces in Germany’s
political leadership and parliament. By the summer of 1916, Germany’s
position was seriously embattled, everywhere on the defensive, food in
short supply as Britain’s blockade intensiWed, and its allies seeming of
little use. When Romania entered the war on the Entente side after seeing
the Brusilov oVensive’s impressive initial gains in June, this setback led to
Falkenhayn’s removal. In his place, Hindenburg was elevated to Chief of
General StaV of the Army, and soon also vested with increased power, as
he exercised the Supreme War Command for the Central Powers in the
name of the Kaiser (whose real inXuence shrank as the military heroes
ascended), disposing of 6 million men at arms, Germans, Austro-Hun-
garians, Turks, and Bulgarians.
1

becomes ever more uncomfortable for everyone involved.’’
6
Bureaucratic
conXicts between oYces grew:
On top of everything, no administrative post has real independence – each is
coruled by several others . . . and because no one has full responsibility, everyone
shirks responsibility. Thus, lower oYces proceed with greatest possible severity
according to regulations, just so that they would not be reproved from above for
their ‘‘competence’’ and thus get involved in a new mess of paperwork.
7
The state had caught not only natives in its gears, for its administrative
apparatus, ‘‘a real time-wasting machine, shirk-duty from top to bot-
tom,’’ held Germans captive as well.
8
An oYcial reXected, ‘‘I have not
spoken to a single one of our men in serious conversation who does not
admit the convoluted counter productiveness of our administrative
measures . . . but each participates in the madness, because he feels
himself helplessly clamped into the paperwork machine.’’
9
This situation,
masked by the outward appearance of military order, could perhaps have
continued for some time, but requirements of a new policy from spring
1917 revealed the accumulated contradictions. As it lurched towards a
Wnal triumph and the cementing of its rule, the state increasingly broke
down.
In 1917, new policies were needed in Ober Ost, calling for an active
role for native groups, so that they might ratify permanent German rule.
The upheavals in Russia, where the February Revolution was followed by
the Bolshevik seizure of power in ‘‘Red October,’’ failed policies toward

12
Military Administration Lithuania’s chief
reported: ‘‘The great mass of the population has reconciled itself to
German rule . . . The Lithuanian is only impressed by power. If he sees
that he will gain economic advantage through the powerful victorious
German Reich, then he will be . . . an easily steered, state-supporting
ethnic group in the new, greater Germany.’’
13
Alone among native groups, Kurland’s Baltic Germans were consider-
ed mature and reliable enough to be given oYcial posts. Von Gossler’s
reports from Kurland lauded them as ‘‘German to the core.’’
14
His policy
of ensconcing them in oYcial positions came to be called the ‘‘Gossler
system.’’ Of his district captains, only one was not Baltic German. His
cultural section was led by a born Kurlander, Ko¨nigsberg professor
Seraphim.
15
Yet taking on Baltic Germans was not without its dangers,
for in spite of claims of one German identity, their interests could rad-
ically diverge from the army’s. Their racial fury against natives, ‘‘Undeut-
schen,’’ colored the administration’s views and actions, while for their
part, Latvians could hardly see the new rulers as impartial, when they
coopted Baltic Barons. HoVmann noted that oYcials alienated Estonians
and Latvians by interacting only with Barons, adding, ‘‘For years now,
178 War Land on the Eastern Front
I’ve warned against such idiocy.’’
16
Lithuania’s chief von Heppe agreed,
regretting that German policy had been taken in tow by noble special

and position of power if the Lithuanian is helped in his eVorts to learn German.
He does not understand why the victorious German wants to force on him,
instead of German, a language which neither the German nor he understands. He
appreciates all the more the necessity of learning German, as he sees that it helps
him in his economic advancement.
20
According to Kurland’s chief, the Latvian ‘‘is a realistically minded
opportunist: whoever oVers him the best chances, he will join.’’ Latvians
were marked by ‘‘unique adaptability ...IftheLatvian sees that he gets
further with German than with Latvian, he will very quickly become
German. A Latvian Problem, causing special diYculties for Germaniz-
ation, should hardly arise – a people fragment of one and one-fourth
million is not capable of that.’’
21
The administration was convinced of the malleability of ethnicity in a
land where they found ethnic aYliation so Xuid and shifting, yet the result
179Crisis
of German policy was the opposite of what was intended. The regime’s
irrational economics embittered populations and forced natives to see the
crisis and their dire future prospects in terms of nationality and conXict-
ing cultural values. In one sphere after another, Ober Ost’s drive for
control undercut attempts at manipulation.
Another striking example of this was the policy towards religion. From
the beginning, the importance of confession in the area had been clear to
Germans, noting the high pitch of religious sentiment and observance.
Religion’s political meaning was underlined by the way in which confes-
sion intersected with national identiWcation. Authorities succeeded in
establishing amiable relations with higher clergy, but these contacts at
upper levels could hardly make up for disastrous impressions created
daily abroad in the land. Because most soldiers and oYcials were Protes-

services.
27
Lastly, natives claimed troops surrounded churches during
mass to catch men for forced labor.
28
Even at the highest levels, there were
needlessly provocative measures, such as von Isenburg’s refusal to hand
out small wheat rations for baking sacramental hosts.
29
Not surprisingly,
otherwise conservative clergymen were increasingly driven into opposi-
tion and participation in nationalist projects, many priests taking a lead-
ing role in the secret school movement. Schaulen’s military mayor com-
plained of a pastor Galdikas’ activism and explained that policies could
only be enacted if he were ‘‘transferred or deported [abgeschoben].’’
180 War Land on the Eastern Front
Numbers of the more troublesome, of diVerent confessions, were repor-
tedly deported to Germany.
30
Finally, the administration bankrupted its most minimal claim to na-
tive respect: maintenance of order. Even strict enforcement of law and
‘‘ordered circumstances,’’ allowing peasants to farm in peace, could have
been the basis for a successful occupation. Instead, the administration
itself created disorder, with arbitrary rules and requisitions. When gen-
darmes eased their Wght against banditry in 1917, natives recognized that
the administration did not even oVer them security. Robber bands oper-
ated up to the gates of cities, one oYcial reported, and by 1918 there were
nearly weekly attacks on police stations or oYcials.
31
The administration

‘‘The Russian knout hurt once in a while – the Xat of the Prussian
broadsword hurts all the time.’’
34
This was reXected in a change of native
behavior, turning to desperate and undirected resistance.
35
In the winter
of 1916/17, authorities worried whether they would be able to feed
natives after another disappointing harvest, falling short of exaggerated
181Crisis
estimates put about by agricultural experts. Hunger riots and strikes
broke out in Bialystok.
36
Troops fanned out through the countryside to
seize hidden food, scouring farms. Reports noted the worsening mood
and stiVening resistance to requisitions. Earlier characterized by wishful
thinking, they now conceded that ‘‘in the latest period, heightened unrest
and depression are visible.’’
37
After that admission, things went from bad
to worse.
38
Reports doggedly insisted that ‘‘the reasons are not political,
but economic in nature,’’ overlooking the administration’s own formula-
tion of native malleability, as if economic hardship would not eventually
be translated into political terms.
39
For the Wrst time, natives resisted
horse requisitions in a concerted manner, in Lithuania in the fall of 1917,
and troops were sent in to Raczki to force farmers to present horses.

Reports indicated
that Jews no longer showed friendliness towards Germans, as they had
earlier, and urged ‘‘serious attention’’ to their economic activity.
46
At
night, in spite of oYcial curfews, country roads teemed with movement in
the shadows. Natives Xocked to the growing bandit groups. Some ma-
rauding groups of Russian soldiers and escaped POWs began to style
themselves Bolsheviks.
47
Native resistance went beyond undirected insubordination, evolving
into a political program, as evidenced most clearly in the case of the
largest ethnic group, Lithuanians. With other forms of organization ban-
ned, oYcially sanctioned relief committees became centers for political
182 War Land on the Eastern Front
activity. Wilna’s Lithuanian Refugee Aid Committee used humanitarian
missions as covers for political work. Its executive council wrote memor-
anda of grievances to the army and civil authorities in Germany and
concentrated on schools, preparing educational materials, writing text-
books, and training teachers. In spite of restrictions on movement, it sent
spies into the countryside, establishing networks of contacts, and tried to
Wnd ties abroad to neutral countries and the Lithuanian diaspora. In the
countryside, young people organized leaXet campaigns and secret press
activity. These stirrings culminated in late 1916 in unrest in the Geisterisˇ-
kiai village, where local youths circulated proclamations printed on secret
presses, and in several instances organized armed resistance. Fearing a
wider uprising, the army apparently reacted with panicked ruthlessness,
supposedly burning several farmers to death in their homes, while others
were rounded up and sent to jail. Several youths implicated in the
activities were tortured and shot in military prisons, according to native

to 1918 he worked in the administration, censoring The Present Time, and
later in the political section. Kodatis passed important information to
183Crisis
Lithuanian activists. In 1918, he was caught and sent to prison in Tilsit.
After the war, Lithuania secured his release, and he moved there, re-
nouncing German citizenship, taking a name with German and
Lithuanian traces, Bernardas Kodatis (Kuodaitis). War and experiences
in the occupied territories recast his identity, as it did for many others.
More generally, by degrees the occupation regime’s hardships called
forth a broader nationalist reaction in Lithuanian society at large, rad-
icalizing even peasants earlier indiVerent to political programs. Ober
Ost’s clumsy attempts at ethnic puppetry and manipulation forced na-
tives to view their own predicament ever more in national terms. Their
antipathy to German occupation took on the outlines of a cultural clash,
bringing into high relief the diVerent values and assumptions held by the
occupied and occupier. As one German oYcial blandly remarked,
Lithuanian ‘‘ethical and moral concepts were fundamentally diVerent
from our own.’’
51
On the Lithuanian side, many of these values were
previously inarticulate, part of a seemingly self-evident way of life (re-
fered to as ‘‘bu das’’), but now were recast as constituent parts of a
national identity.
Fundamentally, the emerging cultural clash was visible in the contrast
between two diVerent concepts of order: German Ordnung and
Lithuanian tvarka. The German concept was incarnated in the adminis-
tration’s policies to enforce ‘‘ordered circumstances.’’ Lithuanian tvarka,
by contrast, did not have the same tie to state power. As was only natural
for a peasant people (who had not had an active role in government), the
idea of tvarka derived from the reality of the farm household. This can

and values now presented these as national consciousness. SigniWcantly,
it refered to the people as a ‘‘tauta,’’ an archaic Indo-European term. The
common translation of tauta as ‘‘nation’’ is an incomplete shorthand
rendering, missing its distinctive meaning. ‘‘Nation’’ locates identity in
birth (‘‘natio’’). Tauta, however, is diVerent, originally meaning ‘‘troop,’’
‘‘crowd,’’ or ‘‘a band of riders’’ (Indo-European ‘‘teuta’’).
54
The unifying
principle here, in contrast to ‘‘nation,’’ is from the outset voluntaristic,
pointing to a common, shared project deWning the group.
Since national identity was understood to be rooted not in birth or
‘‘blood,’’ but in common resolve, then shared consciousness had to
provide the moving spirit, underlined in nationalist exhortations to
awareness and conscious commitment, as well as emphasis on education.
Individual commitment was crucial because in these lands national ident-
ity rested so much on personal decision. At this northern European
crossroads of culture, ethnicity, language, religion, and history, there
were many possible identiWcations for individuals to accept. Radical
contingency, not clear and inexorable fatality, ruled ethnicity. The na-
tional movement’s founding intellectuals experienced this themselves in
preceding decades, arriving at avowals of Lithuanian identity in dramatic
moments of personal conversion.
This snapshot of the development of a national identity, caught in a
moment of genesis in the 1916 proclamation, illuminates the distinctive
nature of the nationalist project here. The essential point is that this was a
deliberate project, aware of itself, creating images of the past and assert-
ing continuities with that past. Western scholarship has often treated
nationalism under the rubric of ‘‘false consciousness,’’ stressing artiWce
and manipulation. This misses the dimension of awareness in the project.
In fact, models of nationalism current in western scholarship are stood on

mented that his ‘‘squadrons are dissolving more and more into large and
small businesses,’’ as they were assigned to diVerent tasks in the country-
side. In his own residence at the edge of a great forest, he recorded the
impact of isolation in his diary:
The loneliness completely dissolves me, or rather confuses me. I must bring
myself into balance in this quiet. Here the profound closeness of nature, the deep
impressions press in on me of such an immediately and gigantically receptive
landscape, which in its details is so impenetrably secretive and unknowable, while
as a whole so mightily moved and formed, chasing my senses and all my forces of
imagination into such a terrible confusion that I cannot resolve.
59
Isolated, some soldiers began to turn to the natives. Orders against
fraternization lapsed in the face of everyday reality. A hybrid life evolved
for troops, prostitution its hallmark, causing outbreaks of venereal dis-
ease.
60
Over time, ‘‘most of the soldiers became accustomed bit by bit to
this ragged life as something normal.’’
61
An oYcial’s novel portrayed the
coarsening of their natures:
In the city there were many available women. Their men had either fallen or were
in German prisons. They lived, the youngest with children born mostly after
losing their men, in poor and cramped conditions. It was no wonder than they
sought contact with the occupation troops in the city. They washed clothes for the
soldiers, mended their torn possessions and received from them foodstuVs and
Weld kitchen food for the service. The number of women who sold their love . . .
grew constantly . . . In the eyes of the soldiers, this prostitution was something so
natural that they considered it quite in order to use the opportunities oVered.
Only a few of the married men remained loyal to their wives at home. They had to

fare was ‘‘too little to live, too much to die,’’ until they felt freed from
moral constraints binding in civilian life.
65
Ober Ost increasingly became
a free-for-all of pilfering from military stores, black-market trading, and
stealing from impoverished natives. OYcials blamed this on the inXuence
of natives, for whom bribery and stealing was a way of life.
66
German unity buckled as regional identities reasserted themselves.
Prussian Poles and Prussian Lithuanians in the ranks caused problems,
while the administration’s staV was an uneasy mixture of strong Prussian
representation with Jewish oYcials. The High Command considered
Alsatians of doubtful loyalty, unreliable on the Western Front. When
regiments were transferred west, Alsatians were humiliated, separated
from the ranks and left behind. Dominik Richert, a simple Alsatian
soldier, described his resentment in an irony-laden memoir. These reac-
tions were not entirely rational, since as Wghting in the East quieted down,
chances for survival were better here than in the trenches of France. But
all the same these acts were insulting: ‘‘What swearing there was! Every-
one’s mood was exactly the same. If the Prussians had been sent where
one wished them, they would all have gone to the Devil.’’ In January
1917, as Alsatians were led away from their regiments for reassignment,
they reportedly broke out in rebellious shouts of ‘‘Vive la France!’’ and
187Crisis
sang Alsatian songs. In the spring of 1917, Alsatians were meted out the
‘‘same insult as before.’’ As a result of such high-handed policies, their
loyalty and sense of German identity were extinguished. Richert reXec-
ted, ‘‘Sometimes, when I stood thus alone in the cold night, I considered
for what or for whom I was actually standing there. In us Alsatians there
was no trace of love for the Fatherland or any stuV like that, and some-

piano and played some dance piece, while . . . uniformed oYcers moved about in
circles to the music on the Xoor, on all fours. On the back of each oYcer sat a
buck-naked girl, hitting and spurring on to a quicker pace her partner, who was no
longer a chevalier,butacheval.
69
One soldier claimed he recalled a bordello near Wilna’s cathedral with the
sign, ‘‘Only for OYcers – Not for Deputy OYcers.’’ Reportedly, soldiers
hated the German secretaries brought in after 1916 even more than
oYcers, because these women did not socialize with enlisted men, but
only with the upper ranks.
70
Open black-marketeering by oYcers
heightened the fury, building to revolutionary rage against a society which
188 War Land on the Eastern Front
allowed such conditions, while ‘‘the ordinary soldier had no choice but to
starve, scream ‘Hurrah!,’ allow himself to be tortured by lice, and let
himself be shot dead for the ‘beloved Fatherland.’’’ Political interpreta-
tions found ready ground. As the Alsatian fumed,
I had in general a secret fury against all oYcers from lieutenant on up, who all
lived better, had better food and on top of that a nice salary, while the poor soldier
had to participate in the whole misery of war, ‘‘For the Fatherland and not for
money, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,’’ as the soldier’s song went. On top of that, one
could not have one’s own opinion before an oYcer. One had to say nothing and
only obey blindly.
71
Radical socialist propaganda made ever stronger inroads. Social Demo-
cratic soldiers reportedly helped Lithuanian activists evade Verkehrspolitik
restrictions, carrying letters to sympathetic Reichstag members. German
solidarity, based on a national identity as rulers, broke down.
Among more articulate and thoughtful soldiers, the crisis of identity

should be free to develop cultures, for the universal good. Herder’s
189Crisis
romantic vision had crucial eVects on Slavs and Balts, letting them
conceive of themselves apart from dynasties and states, indeed in opposi-
tion to the state: not ‘‘national,’’ but rather as ‘‘peoples,’’ communities of
language and historical experience.
75
Herder’s Ideas Toward the Philosophy
of Human History, which galvanized eastern intellectuals, condemned the
Teutonic Knights’ crusades. In Herder’s view, culture could not be
carried by force, a conviction growing not only from instinctive dislike of
militarism, but from the certainty that the truest moral power lay in
culture itself, not in the force of arms and the state. Where Ober Ost
considered ethnicities as primitive ‘‘tribes,’’ Herder’s folk song collection
Voices of the Peoples unhesitatingly accorded them the full dignity of
Vo¨lker. Herder’s project of culture represented an alternative approach to
the East.
Among a handful of educated oYcials in Ober Ost, tensions between
state power and culture created growing unease. Writer Richard Dehmel
encountered a crisis of principle. Assigned to the book-checking oYce in
September 1916, he bore the work for only a month. The uselessness of
the administration, that ‘‘real time-wasting machine,’’ its brutal motives,
and what it was doing in the name of German order, education, and
culture were intolerable. His disappointment at this ‘‘cultural work’’ was
cruel: ‘‘Our entire comprehensive administration! My ‘Book Checking
OYce’ – God have mercy – turns out to be a suboYce of the censorship
police. I had hoped that one could at least encourage distribution of good
books here – but it is only a matter of proscribing bad books, and ‘bad’ not
in any pedagogic sense, but only from the military-bureaucratic perspec-
tive.’’ German Work was in fact only a ‘‘treadmill work’’ of cataloging

administration, working in the press section. What he saw of the regime
brought on a crisis of principle and identity, driving him to write on the
case of a condemned Russian soldier in autumn of 1917, a theme later
reworked into the great novel of the Eastern Front, The Case of Sergeant
Grischa. As Zweig explained:
Then, after two years’ work in a reinforcement battalion, I lost my belief in the
righteousness of Germany’s cause in the war, especially after getting to know life
in the occupied territories. But a conviction had remained, nourished from early
youth, that in the German army’s judicial workings, concepts of justice and
humanity were the main criteria, just as they were (as I believed then) in life
beyond the military, in state and society. Many ‘‘small’’ incidents gnawed at this
conviction, but without shaking it. This only happened when an oYcer in our
Ober Ost judicial administration told me of the case of an escaped and later
recaptured Russian prisoner of war, who was shot, even though the commanding
general of an army corps had stepped in to assert that justice and right could not
be subordinated to any political considerations in the German army ...This
report opened my eyes.
77
Seeing naked power exulting in injustice changed Zweig’s life. In desper-
ation, he committed himself to a personal socialism and a lifetime project
of writing about the Great War in utmost Wdelity to details, mounting to
an indictment of the systems of rule which ground millions of innocents
to pieces. His time in the East worked even more fundamental transform-
ations in Zweig’s national identity and understanding of his own Jewish-
ness, as he went native in his sympathies. Zweig met Ostjuden and found
in them unsuspected authenticity and integrity. His articles in Korrespon-
denz B explored their life, traditions, and legends.
78
In another book, The
Face of the Ostjuden, Zweig announced with convert fervor: ‘‘On the earth

thanked my creator that I was a German.’’ In all his life, he said, he never
felt so much a German as in this moment.
81
There were other recorded instances of such transformations, especial-
ly among the translators. The only German soldier able to write in White
Ruthenian, one oYcal claimed, started turning White Ruthenian himself.
This translator, Susemihl, ‘‘became so ardent a representative of the
White Ruthenians, as only a German idealist could be.’’ His activity ‘‘was
hard to supervise’’ and he undertook independent political initiatives.
Wilhelm Steputat, a Prussian politician of Lithuanian origins (though
von Gayl claimed he had no real ethnic ties), was Wred to ever more
passionate identiWcation with that ethnic group. Two other Prussian
Lithuanians were Wngered as traitors with double loyalties.
82
These in-
stances underlined the uncertainties of ethnic identiWcations, heightened
in war.
The most radical recorded example of internal transformation was
Victor Jungfer.
83
As an oYcer and then editor in the administration’s
public relations branch, Jungfer found himself increasingly drawn into
Lithuanian culture. Called up for service on the Eastern Front as a
student, in 1916–17, he was stationed in Lithuania, where he befriended
local pastors. Conversations with Lithuanian priests created and then
192 War Land on the Eastern Front
deepened a fascination for these lands. Sinking himself into the nature
and spirit of this place, Jungfer prepared a volume entitled Culture-
Pictures from Lithuania, published in 1918. When transferred to Kurland,
he stayed in contact with Monsignor Jase˙nas. Together they translated

which should not be put in a rosy light . . . one should learn to keep quiet about
things, which may later become painful.’’
84
The treatment of natives made Riemann and his friends ashamed of their
German uniforms and what they symbolized.
In the moment of this crisis of German identity, Riemann (and Jungfer)
discovered the natives’ world. A Lithuanian pastor encouraged Riemann
to learn their language: ‘‘Every people has its special soul, my dear
193Crisis
Lieutenant . . . Do not believe that you will Wnd only dullness and muddle
in the East. Something of a people’s nature lies in its language.’’ Follow-
ing Herder’s project, Riemann began studying Lithuanian, ‘‘without
special intent at Wrst – merely to divert himself. But the more progress he
made, the more joy he got from his studies. The beauty of sound . . .
delighted him, and through his gift for ready apprehension he attained in
a brief time an understanding of practical value to him. The people
among whom he lived grew up before his soul and took on spiritual
content.’’ As Riemann learned Lithuanian, he found himself going na-
tive. Indeed, natives accepted him, sensing that he was ‘‘not like the
others.’’ Riemann entered into their stories and songs, their animistic
sense and worldview, transported with wonder: ‘‘That is the people,
thought the young oYcer, which we call dull, for some nothing but a herd
of animals, which must be led with blows, and in whose soul nature lives
with its thousands of wonders – to whom things speak, which for us are
voiceless and dead.’’
85
Riemann discovered his true love among them, a
Lithuanian village girl named Domizella (her very name carried portents
of ‘‘home’’). At the same time, Riemann found himself losing his sense of
Germany as his home. He could not imagine returning, when so desper-

became Viktoras Jungferis.
Whether going native or reappraising German values, some men found
their understanding of national identity transformed by the catastrophe of
trying to carry Kultur by force, yet few articulated this lesson. Most were
simply caught dumbly in a sense of unease, which a novelist depicted:
‘‘Much began to tremble, that had seemed until then to be solid. The
dark wave of dissolution, coming from the East, surged more loudly
against the strong bulwark which habit had drawn around things, against
the structure of self-conWdent order, which one stressed and felt here even
more strongly than in the Heimat.’’
87
Radicalized, troops became unreli-
able, receptive toward Bolshevism, and could not be shifted to the West-
ern Front, away from this land of transformations.
Ironically, intersecting crises of the military state, the subject popula-
tions, and the German army, came to a head when the chance came for
Ober Ost’s rule to be made permanent. By the spring of 1917, it was clear
to the High Command that there were new requirements in the disposi-
tion of the occupied territories and decisive action had to be taken now to
secure them for Germany. Two events created the new situation: the
Central Powers’ declaration of the Polish Kingdom and Russia’s February
Revolution. The Polish declaration of November 5, 1916, made jointly by
the German and Austro-Hungarian emperors, promised a future inde-
pendent kingdom, but deWned no borders or sovereign. LudendorV urged
this step to further his dubious plans to recruit Polish soldiers. The result
was poor, as few men enlisted, while the Polish problem was exacerbated,
expectations raised. Poles scorned this manipulation, Prussian conserva-
tives were alarmed by the very idea of even limited Polish independence,
while most crucially, the door slammed on promising possibilities of
separate peace with Russia based on the prewar status quo. This has been

Wced.’’ It was now clear that ‘‘German rule in the area of Ober Ost had to
base itself on the Lithuanians and the White Ruthenians,’’ client nation-
alities forming counterweights to Poles. An important Wrst meeting took
place in Bingen on April 5, 1917, with the chancellor’s representatives.
LudendorV explained the Supreme Command’s ambitions:
The Wnal goal of the Field Marshal General and myself for the future of the lands
under the Supreme Commander in the East was a Duchy of Kurland and Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Both of them, in the mutual interest, would be most closely
bound to Germany and in personal union with His Majesty, whether as King of
Prussia or as Kaiser of Germany. Germany–Prussia would thus gain military
security against new attacks from Russia, and also land for feeding our soldiers
after the war.
90
By the time of the Kreuznach war goals conference, on April 23, 1917,
matters became even more urgent.
91
The February Revolution’s eVects
demanded clearer policy. At this meeting, Chancellor Bethmann¸
Hollweg acquiesced to the Supreme Command’s demands in drafting a
war aims’ program, all couched in terms of military necessity: in the East,
Kurland and Lithuania were to be won, with the rest of the Baltic
provinces as a further aim, while Poland remained subject to Germany.
On April 30, 1917, guiding principles were outlined: ‘‘The Germans were
to be privileged, but every appearance of a forced Germanization of all the
nationalities was to be avoided . . . Lithuanians were to be won by all
means and White Ruthenians . . . were to be brought closer to the
Lithuanians.’’
92
German management could set these new lands against
196 War Land on the Eastern Front

urgent to gain a Wnal clarity about our aims in the occupied territories of
the East. Slogans, created by enemy propaganda, of ‘peace without
annexations’ and the right to self-determination of small nations, were
suited to produce a solution to the Lithuanian question which contradic-
ted German interests.’’ By July’s end, the Supreme Command reached
agreement with the government on politics to be pursued in the area,
approving LudendorV’s ‘‘suggestion, to pursue a nationality policy in
Kurland and Lithuania, and in Lithuania an emphatically Lithuanian
policy. We strove after Wnal realization of our ideas for Kurland and
Lithuania.’’
94
In each land, Ober Ost would call into being a Landesrat,
regional council, to provide cover for annexation.
Great, comprehensive visions of a new order in the East motivated
LudendorV’s plans: a formidable wall of German client states, new lands
197Crisis
split oV from the Russian empire. Moreover, this new colonial land
oVered ground for settlement, an agricultural reserve, and new popula-
tions for German armies. LudendorV explained, ‘‘Kurland and
Lithuania would make our food supply possibilities better, if we were
again thrown back on ourselves in a later war . . . This new ordering of
the eastern border achieved what seemed necessary for Germany’s mili-
tary and economic security.’’ His ultimate motives were even more ex-
pansive: ‘‘My hopes went a step further. The inhabitants of Kurland and
Lithuania would give Germany new manpower. Every day of this war, I
felt that people were power. The great superiority of the Entente lay in its
masses of people. Populations of those territories could retain their na-
tionality under the German Reich’s protection.’’
95
To the south, mean-

tok-Grodno, who replaced the hated Prince Isenburg, LudendorV’s aim
in this reorganization was to ensure that none of this area fell to the future
Poland.
100
On August 1, 1918 the whole area because ‘‘Military Govern-
ment Lithuania.’’ At long last, Ober Ost was centralized, leaving two large
units, Kurland and Lithuania. As Russia’s war eVort weakened with
internal disintegration, after the heroic but ultimately tragic Kerensky
oVensive spent its force, German armies pushed forward again, storming
Riga on September 3, 1917. By mid October, German army and naval
198 War Land on the Eastern Front
forces took the Baltic islands of Oesel, Dago¨, and Moon. The sphere of
German rule in the East had expanded further.
Projections for the future culminated in plans for this ‘‘Neuland,’’
organized by the administration by fall 1917, detailing possibilities for the
area’s development over coming decades.
101
Each administrative depart-
ment sent in reports on future prospects in its area of activity. Escherich’s
forestry administration outlined ‘‘The SigniWcance of the Primeval Forest
Bialowies for the German National Economy.’’
102
After solving technical
problems of Verkehr and Wnding workers, the forestry department
achieved an exploitation of this forest which it would be crucial to
continue after the war, when this resource would be even more important
to Germany as it recovered economically, yet could still expect to be cut
oV from resources overseas by the economic wiles of its former oppo-
nents. Germany’s own forests would not suYce, and thus Bialowies must
be kept, for it was ‘‘the only and last opportunity’’ to gain stockpiles of

future activity and expenditures. In view of the natives’ desire for educa-
tion, establishment of new schools seemed inevitable, and over the long
term, the report noted, while ‘‘at Wrst it will perhaps be possible to repel
the demands for establishment of universities,’’ it would later be necess-
ary to open an academy in Wilna. In general, the report noted, only the
‘‘most primitive cultural scale’’ of improvements was anticipated over the
next decade.
109
As planning for the future progressed, it was necessary to have natives
ratify the annexations. In Kurland, under von Gossler, matters moved
199Crisis
smoothly. Ignoring other natives, the administration focused on Baltic
Barons, for whom German control was crucial, if they were to preserve
their traditional privileges.
110
A ceremonial meeting of the Land Assem-
bly convened in Mitau’s old Knights’ House on September 18, 1917 and
resolved to call an expanded Land Assembly. Three days later, the
expanded Land Assembly of eighty representatives met in Mitau’s palace
throne hall, called on the Kaiser for protection, and approved formation
of a Landesrat, a land council to speak for the country.
111
By contrast, attempts at political puppetry and manipulation in
Lithuania were troubled from the start. In Lithuania, on June 2, 1917, the
Supreme Commander in the East announced formation of a ‘‘ConWden-
tial Council’’ (Vertrauensrat), intended as a collaborationist organ which
would simply approve annexation. As a portent of future diYculties, no
Lithuanians agreed to participate, though German authorities ap-
proached prominent Lithuanians: Samogitia’s Bishop Karevicˇius, Dr.
Jonas Basanavicˇius, ‘‘father of the Lithuanian national movement,’’ and