2 - The military utopia

Summary

After unexpected conquests and the first impact of disorientation, the German army rushed to make over the land and peoples in the territories taken by the end of the great advances in fall 1915, seeking to establish facts on the ground which would justify keeping the area forever. General Ludendorff eagerly devoted himself to the task of ruling Ober Ost's territories, with the “firm resolution, to create something whole.” After Poland was wrested from the control of the Supreme Commander in the East in August 1915 with the creation of a separate civil Government General of Warsaw, Ludendorff resolved that this would not happen with his lands to the northeast. Instead, he announced, “since they have taken Poland from me, I must find another kingdom for myself” in Lithuania and Kurland. These lands were to remain a preserve for the military, where the army would build up a state, an expression of the military as a creative institution, in fact the quintessential German institution, with a mission in the East: civilizing, modernizing, carrying Kultur. These ambitions were fused into a utopian vision, which was the moving spirit behind the building of the Ober Ost state and yet also produced within it fatal contradictions.