The Imperial Military Law

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This series of articles was written by Engels in connection with the Reichstag debates on a bill calling for an increase in the strength of the peacetime army. Known as the Septennate Law, it endorsed for the coming seven years the military budget and a 401.5-thousand-strong peacetime standing army. The law imposed the Prussian military system on the whole of Germany and reflected the growth of German militarism and aggressive aspirations of the German ruling circles concealed behind the fuss about "war danger" on the part of France.

I

[Der Volksstaat, No. 28, March 8, 1874]

It is truly comical the way the National Liberals and the men of Progress are acting in the Imperial Diet with respect to §1 of the Military Law:

“The effective strength of the army in peacetime in non-commissioned officers and soldiers shall, until the issue of further legal regulations, amount to 401,659 men.”

This paragraph, they cry, is unacceptable; it cancels out the Imperial Diet’s budgetary rights and turns the approval of military estimates into a mere farce!

Quite right, gentlemen! And precisely because this is so, because the article is unacceptable, you will accept it in its essentials. Why make so much fuss because you are expected to bend your knees once again, as you have so often done before with such grace?

The root of the whole wretched business is the re-organisation of the Prussian army. It engendered the glorious conflict. During the whole period of the conflict, the liberal opposition put into practice Manteuffel’s principle: “He who is strong gives way bravely.” After the Danish War their braveness in giving way increased considerably. Yet when Bismarck returned in triumph from Sadowa in 1866 and went so far as to apply for an indemnity for his previous unauthorised expenditure—then their giving way no longer knew any bounds.

The military estimate was immediately approved, and in Prussia what has once been approved is, according to the Prussian constitution, approved forever, for “the current” (once approved) “taxes shall continue to be raised”!

Then came the North German Imperial Diet, which debated the constitution of the Confederation. There was much talk of budgetary rights, the government proposal was declared unacceptable on the grounds of inadequate control over finances; there was much twisting and turning this way and that, and finally they swallowed the bitter pill and transferred the regulations of the Prussian constitution on the military estimate to the North German Confederation on all major points. By this measure, the strength of the army in peacetime was already raised from 200,000 to 300,000 men.

Then came the glorious war of 1870, and with it the “German Empire”. Another constituent (!) Imperial Diet and a new imperial constitution. More high-minded speeches and countless reservations on account of the budgetary rights. And what did the gentlemen decide?

The Imperial Constitution §60:

“The strength of the German army in peacetime is set until December 31, 1871, at one per cent of the population of 1867 and shall be provided pro rata in respect of the same by the individual federal states. After this date, the strength of the army in peacetime shall be laid down by means of imperial legislation.”

One per cent of the population of 1867 means 401,000 men. This effective strength has since been prolonged by decision of the Imperial Diet until December 31, 1874.

§62: “To meet the expenditure for the whole of the German army and the institutions appertaining to the same, the Emperor shall have 225 thalers multiplied by the number of men constituting the peacetime strength of the army according to §60 placed annually at his disposal until December 31, 1871. After December 31, 1871, these amounts shall continue to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer by the individual states of the Confederation. For the purpose of calculating the same, the peacetime effective strength provisionally laid down in §60 shall be retained until changed by imperial law.”

That was the third time our Nationals had knelt down before the inviolable military estimate. And when Bismarck now comes and demands that the happy provisorium be turned into an even happier definitivum, these gentlemen cry out at the infringement of the budgetary rights, which they themselves have sacrificed three times in a row!

My dear Sirs, the Nationals! Go in for "practical politics"! Make allowances for "current circumstances"! Cast your "unattainable ideals" overboard and carry on bravely "on the basis of the realities"! You have not only said A, you have already said B and C, so do not hesitate to say D! Dithering and dathering is no use here. Now is the time for another of your glorious "compromises" whereby the government gets its own way entirely and you may be pleased to get off without being kicked. Leave budgetary rights to the English, bogged down in their materialism, to the decadent French and the backward Austrians and Italians; do not cling to "foreign models", do a "genuinely German job"! Yet if you absolutely insist on having budgetary rights, then there's only one thing to do: next time elect only Social-Democrats!

II

[Der Volksstaat, No. 29, March 11, 1874]

That the Nationals are stupid—despite all their smart little Laskers—we have known for a long time, and they know it themselves. Yet we would not have believed that they were as stupid as Moltke thinks they are. The Master of Silence spoke for a whole hour in the Imperial Diet and yet remained the Master of Silence; for he withheld from his audience virtually all of what he himself thinks. Only on two issues did he frankly speak his mind: first, that the fatal §1 is absolutely necessary, and second, with the splendid words:

“What we have conquered with arms in half a year, we must guard with arms for half a century, lest it be snatched away from us again. Since our successful wars we have gained respect everywhere, love nowhere.”

Habemus confitentem reum. Here we have the guilty party brought to confession.

When Prussia came out with its annexation demands after Sedan, it claimed: the new border is determined solely by strategic necessity; we are only taking what we absolutely need to safeguard ourselves; within this new border and after the completion of our fortifications we shall be able to look forward to any attack with equanimity.—And this is certainly true, from a purely strategic point of view.

The fortified line along the Rhine, with its three major bases, Cologne, Coblenz and Mainz, had only two faults. First, it could be circumvented by way of Strasbourg; second, it lacked an advance line of fortified points giving depth to the whole position. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine eliminated both of these drawbacks. Strasbourg and Metz now form the first line; Cologne, Coblenz and Mainz, the second; all of them are first-class strongholds, with well advanced forts and capable of resisting modern rifled artillery; moreover, they are situated at such distances from one another as best to afford the colossal armies of today freedom of movement, on terrain extremely well-suited to defence. As long as the neutrality of Belgium is respected, a French attack may be easily confined to the narrow strip of land between Metz and the Vosges; it is also possible, if deemed desirable, to retreat behind the Rhine at the outset, thus forcing the French to weaken themselves before the first major battle by despatching troops to Metz, Strasbourg, Coblenz and Mainz. It is a position unequalled in strength throughout Europe; the Venetian Quadrilateral was child’s play in comparison with this almost impregnable position.

Yet precisely the capture of this almost impregnable position forces Germany, according to Moltke, to defend its conquests by arms for half a century! The strongest position does not defend itself, it needs defending; defence requires soldiers; and so the stronger the positions the more soldiers are needed, and so on, in an eternal vicious circle. In addition, the newly recovered “lost brother-tribe” in Alsace-Lorraine simply does not want anything to do with Mother Germania and the French are obliged, come what may, to attempt to liberate the Alsatians and Lorrainians from the Germanic embrace at the first opportunity. The strong position is thus outweighed by the fact that Germany has forced the French to side with anyone who wishes to attack her. In other words, this strong position contains within it the seed of a European coalition against the German Empire. No amount of three-Emperor or two-Emperor meetings and toasts alters this in the slightest, and nobody knows this better than Moltke and Bismarck; as Moltke, in fact, discreetly puts it in this melancholy sentence:

“Since our successful wars we have gained respect everywhere, love nowhere!”

So much for the truth according to Moltke. Now for his fictions

We shall waste no time discussing the sentimental sigh with which the great strategist announces his sorrow that the army is unfortunately obliged to consume such colossal sums for the good of the people, posing, as it were, as a Prussian Cincinnatus who desires nothing more ardently than to be promoted from General Field-Marshal to cabbage-farmer. Still less shall we dwell on the hackneyed theory that, on account of the poor education given to the nation by the school-master, every German must be sent to spend three years at the high-school where the sergeant-major is the professor. We are not speaking to Nationals here, as poor Moltke was obliged to do. We shall pass on at once to the staggering military tall stories that, to the universal amusement of the great General Staff, he told his astonished audience.

It is again a matter of justifying the large German armaments by the allegedly even larger ones of the French. And so Moltke discloses to the Imperial Diet that the French Government already has the right to call 1,200,000 men to arms for the regular army and over a million for the territorial army. In order to place these men, “indeed only a part of them”, the French had increased their cadres. They now had 152 infantry regiments (as against 116 before the war), 9 new battalions of fusiliers, 14 new cavalry regiments, 323 batteries instead of the former 164. And “these reinforcements have not yet stopped”. The peacetime effective strength of the army amounts to 40,000 men more than in 1871, now being set at 471,170. Instead of the eight army corps with which the French faced us at the outbreak of the war, France will, in future, have 18, and a nineteenth for Algiers; the national assembly is virtually imposing money for armaments on the government, the local authorities provide free training grounds and officers’ messes, and build barracks at their own expense, displaying an almost violent patriotism such as could only be wished for in Germany—in short, everyone is preparing for a great war of revenge.

Now, if the French government had done everything with which Moltke credits it, it would have been doing no more than its duty. After defeats such as those of 1870, it is the first duty of the government to build up the defences of the nation sufficiently to guard against a recurrence of such disasters. Precisely the same thing happened to the Prussians in 1806; their entire obsolete army was transported free of charge to France as prisoners of war. After the war, the Prussian government did its utmost to make the whole nation capable of bearing arms; the men were only given six months’ training, and despite Moltke’s aversion to the militia, we have Blücher’s word for it that, after the first few engagements, these “militia patteljohns”, as he expressed himself, were every bit as good as the battalions of the line. If the French government did likewise, if it devoted all its energies to making the whole nation capable of bearing arms in five or six years—it would only be doing its duty. But the opposite is the case. With the exception of the newly-formed battalions, squadrons and batteries, which, up to now, have only reached the level of the German organisation of the line, everything else exists solely on paper, and France is militarily weaker than ever.

“France,” says Moltke, “has faithfully copied all our military institutions... Above all, they have introduced universal compulsory military service, basing it on a 20-year commitment, whereas ours is for only 12 years.”

If this were really so, what does the difference between 20 years and 12 years amount to? Where is the German who would really be relieved of his militia commitment after 12 years? Is it not generally said: the 12 years only come into effect when we have enough men; until then you will have to remain in the militia for 14, 15, 16 years? And why have we exhumed the extinct Landsturm, if not to render every German who was ever in uniform liable to military service for the rest of his earthly life?

In fact, however, universal compulsory military service in France is of a rather special character. France lacks precisely the semi-feudal eastern provinces of Prussia that form the real basis of the Prussian state and the new German Empire; provinces providing recruits who obey without question, and never become much wiser afterwards, as militiamen, either. The extension of universal compulsory military service to the western provinces already showed in 1849 that one man’s meat is another man’s poison; the extension now made to the whole of Germany will create men trained in arms who will put the Moltkes and Bismarcks out of business, at the very latest by the time the twelve years so dear to Moltke are up—should the whole little scheme last that long.

In France, then, not even the basis exists for universal compulsory military service to create soldiers obedient to reaction. In France the Prussian non-commissioned officer was an obsolete concept even before the Great Revolution. Minister of War Saint-Germain introduced Prussian flogging in 1776; but the flogged soldiers shot themselves, and flogging had to be abolished the very same year. Really introduce universal compulsory military service in France, train the mass of the population in the use of arms, and where would Thiers and Mac-Mahon be? But Thiers and Mac-Mahon, although far from geniuses, are not the schoolboys Moltke makes them out to be. On paper they have set up universal compulsory military service, certainly; in reality they have been insisting with the greatest obstinacy on five-year service under the colours. Now, everyone knows that universal compulsory military service is quite incompatible even with the Prussian three-year term of service; either one must accept a peacetime effective strength for Germany of at least 600,000 men, or one must allow men to draw lots for exemption, as does happen. What peacetime effective strength would a five-year term of service yield in France under universal compulsory military service? Almost a million; but even Moltke cannot manage to impute even half this figure to the French.

The same day Moltke impressed his audience so astonishingly, the Kölnische Zeitung published a “military announcement” about the French army. These military announcements come to the Kölnische Zeitung from a very good semi-official source, and the military “swineherd” concerned will have received a first-class ticking-off for dropping this clanger at such an eminently unsuitable juncture. For the man actually tells the truth. He states that the latest official French statistics prove

“that France would scarcely be able to carry out the military goal that she has set herself in the new defence law, even by stretching her powers to the utmost”.

According to him, “the strength of the army for this year has been set at 442,014 men”. First, however, the Republican “the strength of the army for this year has been set at 442,014 men”. First, however, the Republican Gendarmerie Guard of 27,500 must be deducted from this figure; “yet according to the budget figures given for the individual services the actual strength of the army, in fact, amounts to only 389,965 men”. From this must be subtracted

“recruited troops (the Foreign Legion and native Algerian units), administrative troop bodies and cadres of non-commissioned officers and re-enlisted soldiers, which were fixed at 120,000 men, according to the earlier authentic French figures. However, even estimating the real effective strength of the same at only 80,000 men, there only remains—with regard to recruitment—an actual army strength of 309,000 men, consisting of five annual intakes of the first contingent and one of the second (reserve) contingent The one annual intake of the second contingent consists of 30,000 men, and thus the annual enlisted intake of the first contingent and annual recruit intake of the same may be calculated as 55,800 men each. If we then add to this the 30,000 men of the second contingent, the largest annual recruitment to the French army would still be only 99,714 men”.

Thus: the French call up about 60,000 men annually for five years’ service, making 1,200,000 men in 20 years, and if we deduct such wastage as actually occurs in the Prussian militia, a maximum of 800,000 men. Further, 30,000 men for one year’s service—worthless militiamen, according to Moltke—makes 600,000 men in 20 years, after deductions for wastage 400,000 men at the most. Thus, when the French have, undisturbed for 20 years, indulged the patriotism so praised by Moltke, they will eventually be able to confront the Germans, not with Moltke’s 2,200,000 men, but at the most with 800,000 trained soldiers and 400,000 militiamen, whereas Moltke can already easily mobilise one and a half million fully trained German soldiers at any time. It is against these facts that one should weigh the amusement that Moltke’s speech—greeted with astonishment by the Imperial Diet—produced among the General Staff.

One must allow this to Moltke: As long as he was dealing with naive adversaries like Benedek and Louis Napoleon, he engaged in thoroughly honest warfare. He followed the strategic rules discovered by Napoleon I to the letter, meticulously and scrupulously. No enemy could reproach him with ever having employed surprise, secrecy, or any other vulgar ruse of war. Consequently it could be doubted whether Moltke really was a genius. This doubt has been removed since Moltke has had to fight opponents who are his equals—the geniuses of the Imperial Diet. In confrontation with the latter he has demonstrated that he can outfool his opponents if necessary. There is no longer any doubt of it: Moltke is a genius.

But what may we suppose Moltke really thinks of the French armaments? Here, too, we have a number of indications to help us.—Moltke and Bismarck were under no illusions about the fact that, just as the victories of 1866 could not fail to elicit a cry for revenge for Sadowa from official circles in France, neither could the successes of 1870 fail to impose “revenge for Sedan“ on official Russia. Hitherto the obedient servant of Russia, Prussia had suddenly revealed itself as the foremost military power of Europe; such an immense shift in the European situation to the detriment of Russia was tantamount to a defeat for Russian policy; the cry for revenge ran g out loud enough in Russia. Under the circumstances, Berlin thought it better to settle the matter as soon and as rapidly as possible, without leaving the Russians any time to arm. The measures taken at the time by the Prussians to prepare for war against Russia we shall perhaps discuss on another occasion; suffice it to say that, in the summer of 1872, they were more or less ready, particularly with the plan of campaign, which this time did not aim to be a “blow to the heart”. Then Tsar Alexander of Russia came uninvited on an imperial visit to Berlin, presenting “in an authoritative place” certain documents that brought the little plan to nothing. The renewed Holy Alliance, directed, to begin with, against Turkey, replaced for the time being the ultimately inevitable war against Russia.

This little plan naturally also provided for the eventuality of France’s allying herself with Russia against Prussia. In this event, it was decided to remain on the defensive against France. And how many men were then considered sufficient to repel all French attacks?

An army of two hundred and fifty thousand men!