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Documents - Germany at War, 1914-1918: Mobilization of the Home Front
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11.   The Hindenburg Program (1916)
The Hindenburg Program called for the more efficient use of scarce resources for the war effort. Not only would the number of soldiers help determine the course of the war; the domestic economy’s....
12.   German Industrial Production (1912-1918)
This table shows the lack of raw materials for German industry. After 1913, German output fell in every major production category. This development had wide-reaching implications for the German war....
13.   The Evolution of Men’s and Women’s Employment (1914-1918)
The wartime economy changed the basic composition and dynamics of labor in Germany. Able-bodied men were recruited into military service during the war, while more and more women stepped in to take....
14.   Censorship Guidelines I (1914)
Information was of the utmost strategic importance during the First World War. Here, the German government outlines its reasons for press censorship. This memorandum stresses the importance of withholding....
15.   Censorship Guidelines II (1914)
This document, an addition to the original censorship guidelines for the press, goes much further than limiting information about troop movements. The German government instructed the German press....
16.   Censorship in Practice (1914-16)
These documents show the manner in which newspaper articles were censored during the war. Note the elision of anything that could be considered critical of the war. Entire articles were banished.
17.   Bernhard vom Brocke, "'Scholarship and Militarism': The Appeal of 93 'to the Civilized World!'" (October 4, 1914)
The great majority of Germany’s leading writers, composers, and academic scholars passionately supported the war effort, which they portrayed as the defense of German culture. Manifestos that invoked....
18.   War Bonds (March 1917)
The German war effort was financed largely through war bonds, which were issued biannually throughout the war. Each time....
19.   "Patriotic Enlightenment" (May 10, 1917)
By 1917, enthusiasm for the war was waning. Fearing the spread of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), which called for an immediate peace, the German military sought to provide “enlightenment”....
20.   Werner Sombart, Merchants and Heroes [Händler und Helden] (1915)
Many German intellectuals felt moved to interpret the First World War in grandiloquent terms of competing cultures or civilizations. For the economist Werner Sombart (1863-1941), the contest pitted....
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