Emergence of the Concept of National Service

Abstract

On November 1, 1916, two days after the conclusion of the ministerial conference, Groener was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed Chief of the War Office.¹ Groener’s appointment was a mark of recognition of his able and lifelong devotion to military service.² He had been bom in Southern Germany in 1867, the son of a noncommissioned officer in the Württemberg army. Groener seems to have been destined for a military career from childhood for; not long after he had entered the 121st Infantry Regiment in 1885, he distinguished himself by his unusual command of language, his outstanding gift for expression, and his intense application to strategic military problems involving a potential Western Front. Groener impressed his superiors so favorably that, when he was promoted to the rank of major, he also received the post of instructor at the War Academy, where he soon showed exceptional ability as a teacher and strategist. At the outbreak of war in 1914, he was promoted to colonel and appointed Chief of Military Transport. For the first two years of the war Groener devoted himself to transportation problems and to him belongs the credit for the perfect movement of German troops, guns, and supplies to and from the front lines. To this post there was soon added the direction of the War Food Office, where he showed his ability to function well in matters not exclusively military.