Germany's Septemberprogramm (1914) Nears Fulfilment

More golden calves are to be slain, and today we'll look at the long-held war aims of Germany across the 100+ years since the First World War: welcome to the background of European integration™

I recently reproduced parts of A.J.P. Taylor’s heretical™ book The Origins of the Second World War (1961), which looked at that gargantuan conflict from a way more realistic and reality-connected point of view than most historical and otherwise scholarly (sic) literature produced since (emphases and [snark] added):

As a private citizen, I think that all this striving after greatness and domination is idiotic [I share that sentiment]; and I would like my country not to take part in it. As a historian, I recognise that Powers will be Powers. My book has really little to do with Hitler. The vital question, it seems to me, concerns Great Britain and France. They were the victors of the first World war. They had the decision in their hands. It was perfectly obvious that Germany would seek to become a Great Power again; obvious after 1933 that her domination would be of a peculiarly barbaric sort [we note, in passing, that the entire German establishment for the past century (at the very least) had been rabidly Russophobic, i.e., sentiments that were quite readily shared with their counterparts in Britain and France, by the way (but not in the US)].

Read ‘more’ by checking out the posting:

A.J.P. Taylor on The Origins of the Second World War (1961)

In my bottom lines, I pointed out the following meta-historical facts:

German élites held roughly identical aims for the past 200 years, with perhaps the (partial) exceptions of Bismarck before Hitler, as well as Willy Brandt and Gerhard Schröder after 1945: Bismarck due to the reinsurance treaty with Russia and Brandt and Schröder due to their Ostpolitik, or partial turn/embrace of the eastern Power on roughly equal terms.

And today, I’ll wish to broaden and deepen this—for I did point to Klaus Thörner’s must-read volume ‘Der ganze Südosten ist unser Hinterland’: Deutsche Südosteuropapläne von 1840 bis 1945 (Ça ira, 2008), which I cannot translate for you—but I found an interview with its author on the publisher’s website, which I translate below. It’s useful and informative, as well as a quite valuable ersatz (replacement).

You could, however, access Dr. Thörner’s dissertation, defended at the University of Oldenburg in 1999, via this link. Here’s my translation of his key findings:

Klaus Thörner’s study is the first analysis to present the German concepts for South-Eastern Europe and their ideological patterns of legitimisation from the German Empire through the Weimar Republic to National Socialism in context and to examine the question of continuity in objectives and patterns of argumentation. The author concludes that Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria were considered essential areas of German expansion from the beginnings of German national economics (1840) to the National Socialist plans for a Greater German Reich. The aim was to place the states of Southeast Europe in a permanent relationship of dependency on Germany. They were assigned the function of supplying raw materials, food, and, as needed, cheap labour to Germany, while at the same time serving as a virtually monopolistic sales market for German industrial products.

Now, please consider the post-‘reunification’ trends of both German politics and the EU’s aims and ambitions in particular—my point here is summarised by these two bullet points from the above-linked posting on Taylor:

The policies of both Mr. Scholz and Mr. Merz are neither exceptional nor are they somehow un-German.

They come straight out of the same mould as nearly all German policy-élites did for 200 years.

And without much further ado, here’s my translation of Klaus Thörner’s interview, with emphases and [snark] added.

As an added feature, see how many still-relevant aspects that help further your understanding of post-1945 politicking you can identify.

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Without Independence / Sovereignty

Via Ça Ira, Dr. Thörner’s publisher [source; archived]

german-foreign-policy.com [hence gfp]: In your book on the German designs for Southeast Europe from 1840 to 1945, you explore their continuities. What is the core argument?

Dr. Klaus Thörner [hence Thörner]: The core findings suggest that continuities are foung in the fact that German politicians, economists, and scientists—starting with Friedrich List, the father of German economics—sought to downgrade Southeast Europe to the status of a German hinterland and thus prevent its independent development. The plan was to transform Southeast Europe into a region that would supply Germany with raw materials and agricultural products and to which Germany could export its industrial goods.

gfp.com: Serbia soon stood in the way of German plans. Why?

Thörner: Serbia was recognised as an independent state by the great powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. During this period, in the 1870s—the German nation-state had just been founded—the construction of railways towards Southeast Europe and the Middle East began, which became known as the ‘Baghdad Railway’. The Baghdad Railway project, led by Deutsche Bank [oh, look who’s named: one of the ECB’s primary dealers—what a surprise (not)], was aimed at the economic penetration of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East by the German business. The German Empire wanted to use it to establish its own hinterland, accessible via a land bridge through the Balkans, in opposition to the other major powers, which were strong naval powers—Great Britain, France, and later also the USA [i.e., the coalitions of both world wars: how coincidental™]. Serbia attempted to nationalise this railway line to the extent that it ran through its territory [another continuity to the present; Serbia from its de facto independence from the Ottomans was torn between the pro-Austria/German Obrenović vs. the pro-Russian Karađorđević dynasties whose rule over Serbia changed repeatedly from the early 19th century onwards]. This would have severed the expansion line from Berlin to the Persian Gulf—which was intended to extend to Basra [Serbia’s refusal to join the EU repeats this stance to this day]. Starting in 1913, German scholars, including Friedrich Naumann, the great role model of the FDP [that would be the liberals™ in Germany] and the namesake of its party foundation, explicitly spoke of the ‘Serbian barrier’, which stood in the way of German expansion planned under the slogan ‘Central Europe’. This, as I explain in my book, was the essential background for the German-Austrian attack on Serbia in 1914 and thus for the First World War.¹

gfp.com: What role did Russia play at that time?

Thörner: Since the 1870s, Serbia and Russia shared the common goal of gaining access to the Mediterranean. This was one of the motives for the alliance between Serbia and Russia. All other trade routes ran through Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, making them dependent on these states. Having their own port on the Adriatic would have enabled Serbia and Russia to pursue their own independent European economic policies via the Mediterranean. But this was precisely what the German Empire and Austria-Hungary wanted to prevent from the outset. They achieved this, among other things, by proclaiming the state of Albania at the London Conference in December 1912, as they had previously demanded. The only concession granted there was handing Kosovo to Serbia’s Russian ally [coming out of the lands the Ottomans were forced to cede].

gfp.com: German aggression against Belgrade continued even after the First World War…

Thörner: A key conclusion drawn by the German military from the First World War was that famine in the German Reich had to be avoided at all costs in a future war, as hunger had caused great discontent and was ultimately a motive for the November Revolution of 1918 [hence disproving, easily, the far-right/Hitlerite trope of ‘ze Joos’ stabbing the German Empire in the back] This meant the designation of Southeastern Europe into a strategic focus as a food base, as a ‘resupply area’ [orig. Ergänzungsraum], as it was repeatedly referred to in the Greater Regional Plans. German planners were convinced they could only launch an attack on the Soviet Union if they had secured Southeastern Europe as a food base. Romania and Bulgaria were brought under German control in late 1940 and early 1941 through forced accession to the Tripartite Pact. Yugoslavia also initially signed the pact in March 1941. This guaranteed Berlin the ability to attack the Soviet Union as early as the spring of 1941 and defeat it in a Blitzkrieg. However, the Yugoslav population protested against the pact, leading to the overthrow of the government and the withdrawal of the signature. Berlin then launched the attack on Yugoslavia, bombing Belgrade and breaking Yugoslavia into several fragments.

gfp.com: In your book, you describe continuities from 1840 to 1945. Did the continuities stop in 1945?

Thörner: No, not at all. Of course, the founding of Yugoslavia [after WW2] put a stop to Germany’s expansionist drive—a similar stop to the one the Paris Peace Treaties had already created after the First World War, namely with the founding of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia was even stronger after the Second World War than it had been after [WW1]. However, there was no break at the planning level in the Federal Republic of Germany. Key planners, such as scientists like Hermann Gross, who had worked for IG Farben during the Second World War, remained active, for example at the Southeast European Institute [orig. Südosteuropa-Institut] in Munich. In leading positions, they continued to hold the view that Southeast Europe could not operate independently and could only be understood as dependent on the German economy. Such views are still held today. Since the 1960s at the latest, attempts have been made again to break up Yugoslavia and to break away from Yugoslavia the economically lucrative regions for Germany, Croatia and Slovenia [that also explains quite easily why, despite earlier assertions to the contrary, both FDP foreign minister Genscher (W Germany) and Austria recognising the unilateral declarations of independence by both Slovenia and Croatia in autumn 1991, dragging their EC ‘partners’ along²]. This was attempted not only by recruiting guest workers, but above all through intelligence activities, leveraging old contacts with former Ustaše allies. The ‘Croatian Spring’, the first major protests against the continued existence of Yugoslavia in the late 1960s, for example, was supported by the German foreign intelligence service [aren’t you surprised (not)?]

gfp.com: Do you see parallels between current German Southeast European policy and earlier phases of German expansion?

Thörner: Absolutely. Of course, there are differences: Southeastern Europe certainly serves a different function today than it did in the past, serving less as a food source than as a supplier to German industry, with competitive companies being deliberately eliminated—consider, for example, the former Yugoslav arms industry, which was destroyed during the wars of the 1990s, or the destruction of the Zastava factory by NATO bombing in 1999, which ended the attempt to maintain an independent Southeastern European automotive industry. But the parallels are strong. [line break added]

This is how Germany succeeded in breaking up Yugoslavia, beginning with its first political solo effort after World War II, the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in December 1991, and ending with the secession of Kosovo in February 2008. Incidentally, as with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the spring of 1918, German policy also aimed to undermine the previously paramount principle of respect for the territorial integrity of states in international law through the German principle of separation from the right of self-determination of peoples—a dangerous precedent [now we can observe the hypocrisy of Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz, and Friedrich Merz to paint Russia! Russia! Russia! as the old-new aggressor as Moscow, too, uses these methods].

The breakup of the country may not yet be over: a [further] division of Bosnia-Herzegovina can be ruled out, nor can the separation of Vojvodina. Thus, Germany has achieved the goal it pursued in the First and especially in the Second World War: the complete filleting of Yugoslavia. If you will, the war aims program of September 1914 is also more or less a reality. Its main goal was the creation of a ‘Central European Economic Area’—formally with equal rights for all members, but informally under German leadership. This is not far removed from the situation we have in the EU today: a tariff-free area in which dependent states are united, officially on equal terms, but de facto under strict German economic control.

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Bottom Lines

Dr. Thörner wrote/explained this almost a quarter-century ago, and in our present moment, it’s easy to understand just how spot-on his reading was: it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the ‘Western Balkans’ (meaning: former Yugoslavia) or ‘East-Central Europe’ (meaning Ukraine).

Here’s a rendering of Germany’s war aims from WW1—Bethmann Hollweg’s infamous Septemberprogram:

Isn’t it odd that there’s barely Belarus and parts of Ukraine (speaking in present-day borders) that are ‘missing’ from the ultimate realisation of these aims? These were, according to the Wikipedia write-up:

• France should cede some northern territory, such as the iron-ore mines at Briey to Germany and possibly a coastal strip running from Dunkirk to Boulogne-sur-Mer, to Belgium or Germany [not really necessary nowadays to joint Franco-German armaments cartels, such as Airbus and the heavy tank joint venture KNDS].

• France should pay a war indemnity high enough to prevent French rearmament for the next couple of decades. Additionally, a commercial treaty would make the French economy dependent on Germany and exclude trade between France and the British Empire [that empire is long gone, and Brexit kinda put the latter firmly into the EU/Germany’s orbit in terms of trade and commerce].

• France would partially disarm by demolishing its northern forts [irrelevant].

• Belgium should become a vassal state and cede eastern parts and possibly Antwerp to Germany and give Germany military and naval bases [no longer that important as direct control has been replaced by ‘soft’ power].

• Luxembourg should become a member state of the German Empire [same].

• Buffer states would be created in territory carved out of the western Russian Empire, such as Poland [add the Baltic states, Finland, Moldova].

• Germany would create a Mitteleuropa economic association, ostensibly egalitarian but actually dominated by Germany. Members would be France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and possibly Italy, Sweden, and Norway.^[3] [we’ll probably discuss the underlying ideas next, but that idea looks suspiciously like the EU/EEC, eh?!]

• The German colonial empire would be expanded. The German possessions in Africa would be enlarged to create a contiguous German colony across central Africa known as Mittelafrika, at the expense of the French and Belgian colonies. Presumably to leave open future negotiations with Britain, no British colonies were to be taken, but Britain’s ‘intolerable hegemony^{[citation needed]}’ in world affairs was to end [I find that segment hilariously hare-brained in light of what happened in the 20th century].

• The Netherlands should be brought into a closer relationship to Germany while avoiding any appearance of coercion [replace ‘the Netherlands’ with the other EU/EEC member-states].

As a follow-up, if I may: who won™ both world wars?

We note that German policies have remained remarkably constant across the entire 20th century, and that by the early 21st century, Berlin looks poised to realise its long-held aims. This time, previous opponents in London, Paris, and Washington are more or less on Germany’s side, too.

Personally, I think that more and more people realise the true nature of the EU and the underlying aims: the EU’s leadership cadre is more and more openly German: apart from Von der Leyen, there’s Martin Selmayr, the chief-of-staff of the EU Commission, and then there’s also the desired increased military footprint of the Bundeswehr abroad.

I doubt it’ll work out this time, for it’s clear that the lessons of both world wars is actually this: Germany may be strong enough to knock out, albeit ‘only’ temporarily, major powers that are half-heartedly supported by at least another Great Power (think: Russia in WW1 and France in WW2), but if two or more of the world’s other Great Powers combine (both world wars), Berlin’s not strong enough.

This is, in my view, the true meaning behind the possible American-Russian détente: the Germans know this, the French are kinda tied to Berlin however much they like it or not (with the smaller powers in Europe playing the role of more or less insufferable sidekicks); the British are more or less incapacitated due to massive Islamic immigration and rising anti-union sentiments (see Scotland); and the M&Ms (Merz&Macron) of the world are increasingly desperate to prevent any kind of understanding between Washington and Moscow for it would foil, once more, the wet dreams of European™—that is, Berlin-Paris-led—axis.

Third time’s a charm, I suppose.

1. I don’t wish to distract from Klaus Thörner’s findings, but I feel it’s important to note the following as quoted from Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers (London, 2012), 456-7; here and in the following, emphases mine:

It would certainly be misleading to think of the Austrian note [the ultimatum to Serbia delivered on 28 July 1914] as an anomalous regression into a barbaric and bygone era before the rise of sovereign states. The Austrian note was a great deal milder, for example, than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the form of the Rambouillet Agreement drawn up in February and March 1999 to force the Serbs into complying with NATO policy in Kosovo. Its provisions included the following:

‘NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access through the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, manoeuvre, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.’

Henry Kissinger was doubtless right when he described Rambouillet as ‘a provocation, an excuse to start bombing’, whose terms were unacceptable even to the most moderate Serbian. The demands of the Austrian note pale by comparison.

These three paragraphs go a long way towards showing how much/far the Western powers (UK, France, US) and their camp followers (the smaller nations, such as Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands) have basically joined the German ‘cause’, although the enemy is no longer the Berlin-Vienna axis—but a similarly land-based integration-seeking Russia. Then as now, the small nations of East Central Europe are considered expendable—the plight of Serbia in the First World War (and during the Second World War) mirrors, in my view, to a large extent what will eventually befall Ukraine.

2. This is from Tomás Zipfel’s article ‘Germany and the recognition of the sovereignty of Slovenia and Croatia’, Perspectives, 6-7 (1996): 137-46, at 139 (emphases mine):

[while EC leaders were focused on finalising the Maastricht Treaty] the political elites in Germany stepped up their pressure on Kohl and Genscher, asking them in more radical terms to advocate recognition [of Slovenia and Croatia], and in this the elites had the support of public opinion. Genscher definitely began to look for support for joint diplomatic recognition. Early in December Kohl promised Tudjman and Kucan that Croatia and Slovenia would be recognized by a maximum number of other EC states by Christmas 1991. On 8 December, Germany announced that it was now in the process of recognizing Croatia and Slovenia, and that it had the support of Sweden, Italy, Austria and Hungary. Germany now seemed to abandon efforts at coordinating European foreign policy, and to resign from the discussion of borders and human rights. Attempts to put a stop to these German moves were launched one week earlier in a letter from Lord Carrington, the main EC negotiator at the peace conference, addressed to Hans van den Broek, the Dutch Foreign Minister, who chaired the EC at the time. The letter contained a warning against Germany breaking up the Hague Conference. Recognition of independence, it was argued, would make Croatia and Slovenia lose interest in negotiations and this step would, at the same time, also encourage the Serbs to leave the negotiations. France, Britain and the United States supported the recognition of the individual Republics only as part of a broader peace settlement for all the region of the former Yugoslav Federation.

I omitted the references, but you can clearly spot the enduring meta-political aims here.