Ober Ost


The Area of the Commander-in-Chief in the East, also known by its German abbreviation as Ober Ost, was an occupied territory encompassing German sections of the Eastern Front, during the World War I. It was headed by the Commander-in-Chief of all German Forces in the East, one of the highest-ranking positions in the armed forces of the German Empire. Institutional development and territorial evolution of the Ober Ost was varying over the years, depending on political and military decisions related to governance over the occupied territories. After the creation of Government General of Warsaw in October 1915, the Ober Ost was encompassing former Russian provinces of Courland, Grodno, Kovno, Suwałki, and Vilna. In 1917-1918, it was expanded further towards governorates of Minsk, Livonia, Estonia, and other temporarily held regions to the east and north. It was governed in succession by field marshals Paul von Hindenburg and Leopold of Bavaria. It was abandoned after the end of World War I.

Extension

Ober Ost was set up by Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1914, initially under the command of Paul von Hindenburg, a Prussian general who had come out of retirement to achieve the German victory of the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914 and became a national hero. When the Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn was dismissed from office by the Kaiser in August 1916, Hindenburg took over at the General Staff, and Prince Leopold of Bavaria took control of the Ober Ost.
By October 1915, the Imperial German Army had advanced so far to the east that central Poland could be put under a civil administration. Accordingly, the German Empire established the Government General of Warsaw and the Austro-Hungarian Empire set up the Government General of Lublin. The military Ober Ost government from then on controlled only the conquered areas east and north of central Poland.
After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, the Ober Ost effectively spanned present-day Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, parts of Poland, and Courland, all of which had been part of the Russian Empire.

Policies

Ober Ost governed in a very strict and often cruel way. The movement policy divided the territory without regard to the existing social structures and ethnic patterns. Movement between the districts was forbidden, which destroyed the livelihood of many merchants and prevented people from visiting relatives and friends in neighboring districts. The Germans also tried to "civilize" the people in the Ober Ost-controlled lands, attempting to integrate German ideals and institutions with the existing cultures. They constructed railroads but only Germans were allowed to ride them and schools were established and staffed with German instructors.
In 1915, when large territories came under Ober Osts administration as a result of military successes on the Eastern Front, Erich Ludendorff, von Hindenburg's second-in-command, set up a system of managing the large area now under its jurisdiction. Although von Hindenburg was technically in command, Ludendorff had actual control of the administration. There were ten staff members, each with a specialty. The area was divided into the Courland District, the Lithuania District and the Bialystok-Grodno District, each overseen by a district commander. Ludendorff's plan was to make Ober Ost a colonial territory for the settlement of his troops after the war and to provide a haven for German refugees from Russia. Ludendorff quickly organized Ober Ost so that it was a self-sustaining region, growing all its own food and even exporting surpluses to Berlin. The largest resource was one that Ludendorff was unable to exploit effectively: the local population had no interest in helping obtain a German victory, as it had no say in the government and was subject to increasing requisitions and taxes.

Communication with locals

There were many problems with communication with local persons within the Ober Ost. Among the upper-class locals, the soldiers could get by with French or German, and in large villages, the Jewish population would speak German or Yiddish, "which the Germans would somehow comprehend". In the rural areas and amongst peasant populations soldiers had to rely on interpreters who spoke Lithuanian, Latvian or Polish. The language problems were not helped by the thinly-stretched administrations, which would sometimes number 100 men in areas as large as Luxembourg. The clergy at times had to be relied upon to spread messages to the masses since that was an effective way of spreading a message to people who speak a different language. A young officer-administrator named Vagts related that he listened to a sermon by a priest who told his congregation to stay off highways after nightfall, hand in firearms and not to have anything to do with Bolshevist agents, exactly as Vagts had told him to do earlier.
Under the Ober Ost administration, various policies of Germanization were also implemented. Thus from 1 June 1918, mandatory classes of German language, starting from the first grade, were introduced in all primary schools throughout the Ober Ost.

Planned states

Provisional nature of the Ober Ost administration in occupied regions did not imply annexation or secession, nor did German government formally implemented such solutions, until the outbreak of Russian Revolution in March 1917. Since the Berlin Conference of Central Powers in August 1917, German authorities intensified various political steps and initiatives aimed to define new geopolitical realities, based on planned client states, within German-dominated Mitteleuropa.
Such plans plans were already implemented in Poland, and similar efforts were intensified in Ober Ost regions after the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917. Relying mainly on native Baltic German nobility and various conservative groups of other peoples in occupied regions, Germany allowed the proclamation of a Lithuanian state, and continued to pressure the newly created Soviet Russia to accept emerging political realities. By February 1918, Germany conducted a successful offensive and captured entire Livonia and Estonia, and also large parts of Belarus and Ukraine, thus expanding Ober Ost towards north and east.
Already on 3 March 1918, under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Soviet Russia was forced to accept the loss of all regions to the west of the agreed demarcation line, thus effectively relinquishing all claims on Poland, Lithuania and Courland, and also accepted that various other regions - to the east of the demarcation line will remain under provisional German occupation until the conclusion of the general peace in Europe.
Thus, new geopolitical realities were defined, allowing political leaders of Baltic Germans to proclaim the Duchy of Courland as an independent state on 8 March 1918, that was formally recognized by Germany on 15 March. Following that example, local German and other conservative leaders in Latvia and Estonia decided on 12 April to proclaim the independence of Livonia-Estonia. Both newly created states were fully dependent on Germany, and thus "independent" only by name, since effective power in those lands continued to be exercised through Ober Ost administration. On 22 September 1918, Germany recognized independence of Livonia-Estonia, and on 5 November those lands were merged with Courland into the newly proclaimed United Baltic Duchy, that collapsed by 28 November of the same year, since German government in Berlin and pro-German leaders in eastern lands were forced to accept emergence of new and independent national states.

Reorganization

Already by the end of 1917, the question of possible separation of military and civilian administrations in the Ober Ost territories was discussed on several occasions in the highest, both military and political circles of the German Empire, but those issues were postponed for the future.
Finally in August-September 1918, the scope of Ober Ost responsibilities was reduced to military affairs only, while civilian administration was detached from its formal jurisdiction and reorganized, by setting up two distinctive administrations, one for the Baltic lands, and the other for Lithuania. Since both territories were still occupied by German armies, the newly created administrations were effectively set up as transitional, and tasked with implementation of new policies, formally aimed on the creation of permanent civilian administrative structures. In the norther section, German politician Alfred von Gossler was appointed governor of the Baltic lands, while his deputy was Hans Joachim von Brockhusen, a son-in-law of field marshal Hindenburg. Under Gossler′s jurisdiction were three provincial administrators: von Zahn, von Both, Küster, and a city administrator Hopf.

Administrative divisions

The administrative division of Ober Ost was structured on several levels. The main administrative units were provinces, or Verwaltungsgebiete. Each was, like Germany proper, subdivided into Kreise ; Landkreise and Stadtkreise. Since jurisdiction and territorial scope of Ober Ost was evolving in time, its administrative organization was also changing, in accordance with current military and political needs. Initially, in the autumn of 1915, the entire Ober Ost territory was divided into six provinces, each of them headed by a German provincial administrator : Alfred von Gossler in Courland, Franz-Joseph zu Isenburg-Birstein in northwestern Lithuania, von Beckerath in Vilnius, Rüdiger von Haugwitz in Suwalki, Theodor von Heppe in Grodno, and von Bockelberg in Bialystok.
In March 1917, regional administration was reorganized, dividing Ober Ost into three provinces: Courland, Lithuania District, and Bialystok-Grodno District. Under that division, the following districts existed in 1917:
Bialystok-GrodnoKurland
AlekszyceBauske
Bialystok, StadtkreisDoblen
Bialystok, LandkreisGoldingen
BielskGrobin
Grodno, StadtkreisHasenpot
Grodno, LandkreisLibau, Stadtkreis
Lida, StadtkreisMitau, Landkreis
OstTalsen
PlantyTuckum
RadunWindau
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Swislocz-
Wasilischky-
Wolkowysk-

The total area was, containing a population of 2,909,935.