The German Question, Part Seventy-Nine

"Kaiser Wilhelm & World War I" Part Two/I "The Germans At War"

"German Morale Sinks; Public & Military"

During August and September 1918 the Allies, now with full engagement by the Americans, pushed the Germans back. General Ludendorff, knowing the end was near, tried to get a peace deal through the Americans, rather than the French and British, fearing these two would be much tougher on Germany. When that direct approach didn't work, he turned matters over to a new civilian government,* which continued to negotiate for an end to the war, while trying to get the least severe consequences for Germany. Ludendorff, distraught by the military and civilian situation, suffered bouts of depression, with some saying he suffered a breakdown.

Besides the military situation, the German home front was disintegrating. With the German leaders having staked almost everything on a quick victory during the 1914, the nation was ill prepared for a long-term war effort. The production of consumer goods, like clothing and shoes, dropped dramatically as the nation shifted to the production of military items, and scarce natural resources were strictly controlled by the government to give military production the highest priority. The British blockade kept many resources scarce throughout the war. Remember, in those times, the production of many, if not most, items, were much more labor intense than today, and with so many skilled male laborers taken into the military, their places had to be taken by women or older men to do jobs they had not been trained to do. This, and the scarcity of many raw materials, brought a drop in production. Further, with so many people drawn into the production process, there weren't enough people to work the agricultural sector, and food production declined. Here too, the British blockade kept formerly imported foodstuffs, including from American farmers (obviously until America entered the war), from reaching Germany. Winters became especially brutal, as coal, wood, and food were all in extremely short supply. With the war in stalemate for so long, and then with the failure of the 1918 offensives, German morale plummeted. The two revolutions in Russia showed German anti-war and anti-imperialist groups that it was not impossible to overthrow a monarchist regime.**

* Remember, Ludendorff especially, and Field Marshall von Hindenburg, had really been running Germany for about two years.

** The first revolution in March of 1917 forced the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and thus ended the Romanov monarchy. The Bolsheviks then overthrew that replacement government later that year, although it took them several years to truly get control of the vast country. 

WORD HISTORY:
Kinder(garten)-This will only be for the "kinder" part of the compound; "garten" will be in the next installment. The compound itself means "children's garden." "Kinder" (short "i" sound) is the plural of the German word "Kind" ("child"), and in the case of "Kindergarten," "Kinder" is also the possessive form (all German nouns are capitalized, thus the capital "K"). Notice that English has kept the German pronunciation, with the short "i," as opposed to the long "i" pronunciation of "kinder," as in, "she is kinder than her brother." "Kind" goes back to the Indo European root "gen," with the notion of "produce, give birth, give life." Its Germanic derivative also gave English "kin" (sort of literally "produce of relatives or family members"), "kind," with a long "i" ("types of product or produce;" as in, "He has another kind of personality"). "Generate," a word borrowed by English from Latin, is also from the same Indo European source. (Latin is an Indo European language related to English further down the family tree.) The Indo European base gave Old Germanic "kintha," which then gave Old High German "kind," and then later in Middle High German "kint," before returning to "kind," the modern spelling. The actual pronunciation in modern German is that Middle High German form "kint," with a short "i," and the "d" pronounced as a "t." In 1840, German Friedrich Fröbel used the term "Kindergarten" in reference to his ideas and schooling methods for educating young children. So he was the founder of the "Kindergarten." The word came into English shortly thereafter, as his method and schools were taken to England by German Bertha Ronge, and the word "Kindergarten" was used in English without translation. The first "Kindergarten" in America was established in 1856, in Wisconsin.