The German Question, Part Eighty-Four

"The Aftermath of the Great War & The Weimar Republic"
Part I, "The Staggering Toll"

Technically, the war with Germany did not end on November 11, 1918, as this was only an armistice, although the idea that Germany could go back to war with the Allies was more than a little absurd. The actual treaty ending the war with Germany was not signed until June of 1919 at Versailles, France.* Germany's reputation suffered serious damage during the war over cases of brutality and murder against civilians, some documented, others only sketchily so, especially in Belgium, and for their invasion of Belgium in the first place, as Belgium was a neutral country.

With war on such a scale, it is difficult to determine the actual casualties. Further, civilian, and even military, deaths in some countries continued after the war, but these deaths were certainly attributable to the war. On the German side here is what I have come up with: the German military suffered some 2 million dead and more than 4 million wounded, and I believe these figures to be pretty accurate. German civilian deaths are very difficult to determine, but it seems somewhere between 425,000 and more than 750,000 died from starvation, mainly as a direct result of the highly effective naval blockade of Germany.** Austria-Hungary suffered about a million military deaths, and more than 400,000 civilian deaths, mainly from starvation and disease.***

By comparison, the United States suffered some 117,000 military deaths in the war, with 53,400 being given as combat deaths. France lost between 1,300,000-1,400,000 military dead and 250,000-300,000 civilian dead. The United Kingdom suffered nearly 900,000 military dead. Italy suffered about 650,000 military deaths and about 500,000 civilian deaths, mainly from starvation. Russia, that is, the Russian Empire, seems to have suffered 1,800,000 military deaths and some 1.5 million civilian deaths, again mainly from disease and starvation. These numbers are not given to lessen the deaths and suffering of other nations, but purely to provide some comparisons. (A Word History is below the notes)

* Germany's allies signed separate treaties with the victorious powers. Interestingly, both Austria and Hungary signed separate treaties, since by that time, there was no longer a unified Austria-Hungary (see Note ***, below).

** There was not much fighting on German soil during the war, except during the first few weeks, and that was in the northeastern area of Germany known as East Prussia. So civilian deaths from direct military operations were limited.

*** It was not until near the very end of the war that Austria and Hungary formally separated into individual countries, but the war had actually been fought as "Austria-Hungary," which encompassed many different ethnic and nationality groups. Since this series is about Germans, one later estimate put the German part of Austria-Hungary; that is, Austria, as having suffered about 150,000 military dead and about 25,000 civilian deaths from starvation and disease.

WORD HISTORY:
Haversack-I will only deal with the overall history of the "haver" part of this compound here; "sack" will follow in the next installment of the "German Question" series. The ultimate origin of "haver" is unknown, and some sources noted that it may not be of Indo European derivation. In Old Germanic "habra/habro(n)" seems to have meant "goat." Latin had "caper," which also meant "goat," and indeed, modern Italian has "capra" as its name for this animal, obviously derived from the Latin form. Most sources seem to believe that Germanic "habra/habro(n)" and Latin "caper" come from the same source, which has led some to speculate the original word was "khabro/khabra(n)," with Latin emphasizing the "k" (spelled "c" in Latin) beginning sound, but Germanic emphasizing the "h" sound as a beginning. Latin is an Indo European language akin to English, but somewhat further down the family tree. Anyway, in Germanic the theory is, the "goat" meaning eventually transferred to the food often eaten by goats; that is, "oats," as that became the meaning of the Germanic form. The Old Germanic form then gave Old High German "habero," which later became "haber(e)." Meanwhile, the Low German dialects had "haver," and this pronunciation influenced the High German form, which became "haver(e)," and then modern "Hafer" (modern German nouns are capitalized), although "Haber" is still commonly present in some German dialects. Apparently Anglo-Saxon did not have a form of this word originally, but in some of the northern English dialects, "haver" is still present to this day as a word for "oats." This was a borrowing in the 1300s from Old Norse "hafri," as the Danes had a substantial influence upon northern English terms, where the Danes raided and settled. Old Norse is a Germanic language from the North Germanic branch of the family, which includes modern Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. French borrowed the term "havresac" from German in the latter part of the 1600s. The German form simply meant an "oat sack," and these bags were carried by cavalrymen and then slipped over the heads of their mounts to feed them. English acquired the term from French in the mid 1700s. The term eventually came to mean "a bag that was slipped over the shoulder to carry a soldier's provisions."