calculation that men, equipment and officers were available, the professional soldier could not believe that the most rigidly soldierly army of the Continent would put such formations into the front line when there had hardly been time even to establish military routine, let alone to revive the habit of march and manoeuvre in the men.
Yet so it was. Schlieffen's ideas of mass and force, though watered down by his successor Moltke, were translated into practice. Two months later, an even more surprising move was made in the same direction the employment of troops 75% of whom were entirely untrained at the outset.
In Aug. 1914, the seven armies deployed in the W. included all the 25 active corps except the ist, i;th and 2oth, 10 out of n cavalry divisions (Gd., Bav., 2-9), and the following reserve corps: Guard Res. Corps (3 Guard Divs. made up of super- numerary active units and ist Gd. Res. Div.); 3rd Res. Corps (Sth and 6th Res. Divs.), 4th Res. Corps (yth and 22nd Res. Divs.), 5th Res. Corps (pin. and loth Res. Divs.), 6th Res. Corps(nthand I2th Res. Divs.), yth Res. Corps (i3th and i4th Res. Divs.), Sth Res. Corps (isth and i6th Res. Divs.), loth Res. Corps (igth Res. Div. of Corps area, and 2nd Gd. Res. Div. so-called 1 ), i2th Res. Corps (23rd and 24th Res. Divs., from the two Saxon Corps regions), I4th Res. Corps (26th and 28th Res. Divs. from Wurttemberg and Baden), i8th Res. Corps (2ist and 25th Res. Divs. from the two Hesse, Frankfort and Darmstadt Corps areas), and ist Bav. Res. Corps (ist and i8th Res. Divs.). After guarding the N. German coast for, some weeks the gth Res. Corps followed these (iyth and iSth Res. Divs.). In the W. also were the 33rd Res. Div. formed at Metz, and the 3oth Res. Div. formed at Strassburg, and three momentarily indepen- dent Bavarian Res. Bdes. 2
The VIII. Army in the E. consisted of the ist, I7th and 2oth active Corps, the ist Cav. Div., the ist Res. Corps (ist Res. Div. and 36th Res. Div.), the 3rd Res. Div. formed in the II. Corps district.
Thus, in the W., the theatre of the first great decision, 73^ battle divisions were gathered of which 2g} were reserve forma- tions, and in the E. (E. Prussia) six active and three reserve divisions were left to meet the attack of the Russian Vilna and Warsaw armies.
The 17 supernumerary infantry regiments also mentioned were absorbed in these reserve formations (with one exception) and the Instructional Battalion (afterwards famous as the " Lehr Regiment ") was expanded to provide the i2th active unit of the Guard. Otherwise these formations were created entirely at the moment of mobilization. Their organization was similar to those of the active army, but for want of guns they were pro- vided only with six batteries per division and had no heavy artillery of their own. In some reserve regiments machine- gun companies did not exist. In sum, and allowing for the active units incorporated, one-third of the first battle forces were reserve (though certainly not improvised) formations.
There were, however, yet other formations not so prepared in advance which found themselves fighting before the end of August. On general mobilization, the reserve, Landwehr, Ersatz reserve and trained men of Landsturm II., up to 42 years of age, had been called out. Landsturm I. the pool of untrained men of all ages -was left alone, but volunteers presented themselves in enormous numbers. There were thus far more men than the depots could accommodate, and the volunteers were for the moment only registered. Enough men remained in the trained categories and in the Ersatz reserve not only to fill the active and reserve, but create (a) Landwehr and (b) so-called Ersatz forma- tions, as well as units of Landsturm for guarding railways and other sensitive points and for the sedentary garrisons of forts.
Landwehr. Landwehr brigades were formed to carry out the secondary duties which, it had been supposed, would fall to reserve divisions. The Ersatz, and to some extent the reserve formations, having absorbed part of the resources of Landwehr I., these brigades
1 Staff was guard, but not troops.
- Other formations called " Reserve " detailed later were so only
in name.
were constituted with the remainder and principally with Landwehr II., that is, trained men up to the age of 385. Each army corps dis- trict, according to the resources of the region and also according to its output of " Ersatz " formation, 3 produced two or three Landwehr brigades, nearly all with a proportion of artillery and cavalry and engineers attached. In all, 99 regiments and some other units, mak- ing 314 battalions in all, mobilized in early Aug. 1914. Of these, 30 brigades were assigned to the W. to follow the various armies or to constitute the garrisons of fortresses (Metz, Strassburg, upper Rhine defences). Nearly all the remainder (about 17 brigades and several regiments as well), in the E., formed fortress garrisons and frontier guards which were very quickly drawn into the battles indeed one whole corps, the Landwehr Corps (3rd and 4th Landwehr Divs.), was constituted as a field formation at the outset, and others also were formed into divisions. In connexion with these brigades and their coming into line, it should be added that just as they had relieved field troops of the necessity of occupying territory and guard- ing communications, so in turn they were after a short time'relieved by Landsturm battalions, formed all over the empire from what remained of Landwehr II. and from the trained men of Landsturm II. up to 42 years of age.
Ersatz. The term " ersatz " (replacement or substitute) was confined hi normal usage to the category of reservists who were simply registered, not (as a rule) trained, and kept at call to fill gaps in the active army. It was, further, the official designation of the depot battalions which were formed on mobilization to provide drafts for active reserve or Landwehr units on service. But the resources of Ersatz battalions at the moment of mobilization were such that, in addition to allocating drafts for the field units, it was possible to create new units on a large scale. The principle followed in the case of the infantry which was applied to other arms with suitable modifications was for the Ersatz battalion of each regimental dis- trict to form and equip two service companies. Thus each brigade district was able to produce a battalion (known as a brigade Ersatz battalion), and the sum of these " B.E.Bs." with analogous units of the other arms, appeared in the field in the last days of Aug. 1914 as " Ersatz Divisions " (Guard, 4th, 8th, loth, igth and Bavarian). These divisions had an irregular organization ; they consisted of two to four mixed brigades, each brigade having four or five battalions, four batteries, a half squadron of cavalry and an engineer unit. 4 In addition, the Ersatz battalions of a few reserve and Landwehr regi- ments also constituted B.E.Bs., and those of the reserve were grouped in two mixed brigades (Res. Ersatz Bdes.).
The six divisions cited above all took part in the western campaign after the first few days of battle. They were provided wholly by the Ersatz battalions of the western and central corps regions. In the E. a different system was followed.
It has been mentioned that three active corps, one and a half reserve corps and about 17 Landwehr brigades had been assigned to the eastern theatre. But in the alarm created by the Russian advance on E. Prussia, an instant augmentation became necessary. The formation of " B.E.Bs." was not attempted in the I., XX. and XVII. regions and only partially and temporarily tried in the V. and VI. Instead, the Ersatz battalions themselves were mobilized, every man who could be equipped being sent into the field, and only the surplus remaining behind to form the nucleus of new draft- finding battalions. The German general staff, in this as in all other cases, took great risks in improvising formations in the east. Not only Landwehr and Ersatz battalions but the most diverse units of all categories were put together in provisional regiments, brigades and divisions, first as mobile fortress garrisons but soon as field troops. 6 It was no doubt considered that racial passion would give such forces a military value as against the Russians that would compensate for their deficiencies of training equipment. These miscellaneous eastern formations constituted the Thorn, Breslau, Graudenz, Posen and Konigsberg " Reserves " or " Corps," of which the two last named were equivalent to two divisions each, the others to one each. The formation of the Silesian Landwehr Corps of two divisions has already been mentioned. Further, one so-called " re- serve " division, the (original) 35th, was created from the readiest elements of the Thorn mobile garrison, and yet another division was thrown off before the Thorn reserve as such became fixed as a division. The five fortresses named in fact were so to say volcanoes from which in various pulsations regiments, brigades, and divisions were successively discharged.
By the end of Aug., therefore, the German forces in the field consisted of several categories the active divisions of peace- time, the reserve divisions nearly equivalent to the active in
3 No Guard Landwehr infantry regiments were formed.
4 Most Landwehr brigades were also constituted as mixed bri- gades in their case two regiments with troops of other arms attached.
6 As an example, Runge's regiment of Griepenkerl's detachment, Thorn Corps, which in the winter of 1914-5 seems to have consisted of half a mobile Ersatz battalion from the XVII. Corps region, half a mobile Ersatz battalion from the II. region, the mobile Ersatz battalions of the lOlst and lO7th Saxons and parts of three Land- sturm battalions from Posen province and Alsace.
