ARNO'S WAR: A RESEARCH MASTERCLASS

GUEST AUTHOR: ANDREW LUCAS

I have to keep this introduction short, so allow me to open it with a mindblowing revelation:

The Imperial German Army of the First World War never existed!

There, I said it! Now that you have regained your seat and the palpatations have ceased, let me briefly explain. The German Army, or the Deutsches Heer, was a federal force that comprised armies of the four kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg, together with representatives across the twenty-one minor states of the Deutsches Reich. So, while there was a Kaiserlich Deutsche Marine, an Imperial German Navy, the Army wasn’t kaiserlich, or imperial. This piece of information will supply you with enough ‘in fact you will find’ and ‘did you know?’ moments to last a lifetime.

Two cherished colleagues of mine, Mr. Andrew Lucas and Herr Jürgen Schmieschek, have dedicated their impressive set of skills to research the history of the Royal Saxon Army. So far the result of their research has been a number of excellent books and a wonderful website, on which Andrew has just published the wartime story of his great grandfather Arno. A true masterclass in how to research a soldier using all available means.

Like Christstollen and Eierschecke (proper Saxons): Andrew (left) and Jürgen

AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW LUCAS (ROYALSAXONARMY.CO.UK)

Little survives today to attest to my great grandfather’s service in the First World War. A dozen or so photos, a couple of cryptic postcards, fleeting appearances in the paperwork of his unit 3. Batterie / Kgl. Sächs. 4. Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 48 and the distant recollections of his daughter - my late grandmother - were seemingly the only traces left of his four years as an artilleryman. Even his medals had long disappeared together with his Militärpass and Soldbuch by the time I began my attempts to uncover the truth behind the remaining fragments. Of these, only a few of the pictures were initially known to my family in England - enough at least to inspire the fascinating early realisation that our ancestral relationship with the Great War was rather different from that of my straightforwardly British classmates.

The path which led to the writing of these articles was a very long and circuitous one, during which study of Arno’s unit from German sources quickly developed into a broader obsession with the Königlich Sächsische Armee (Royal Saxon Army) of the First World War in its entirety. To my great frustration, this proved to be a subject which had barely been addressed in English. Despite this, the passing references I found in British primary sources clearly demonstrated not only an awareness of the Saxons as a distinct contingent, but also a curiously affectionate characterisation of them. It seemed that they had once been the most familiar of Germans to the English, but had since become among the most remote (in large part due to isolation beyond the Iron Curtain). In my efforts to bridge this gap I met the Dresden-based photo collector Jürgen Schmieschek, with whom I formed a firm friendship and ultimately a writing partnership. This ultimately resulted in our becoming co-authors of the first English-language books devoted to the Royal Saxon Army, Fighting the Kaiser’s War: The Saxons in Flanders 1914-1918 and For King and Kaiser: Scenes From Saxony’s War in Flanders 1914-1918 (plus a German-language version of the latter). Most ironically FAR 48 is almost entirely absent from both volumes, due to our decision to focus on the Flanders front, where neither Arno nor his regiment were ever employed.

I finally came back to my great-grandfather’s story in 2020, when circumstances gave me increased free time and reduced scope to spend it outside the house. Having committed to weekly articles for Colonel Joe Robinson’s highly recommended WW1 German History group on Facebook, I had the perfect opportunity to bring my research full circle and re-examine the available evidence of Arno’s war with the benefit of experience. Most significantly, I also had the benefit of a visit to the Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden in 2016, during which I had combed through the personnel-related paperwork of the regiment for any mention of him - with some success. What had originally been intended as a three-part series ultimately expanded into six, mainly due to my efforts to describe the increasing involvement of Arno’s battery and regiment in complex major battles in 1917-1918. Ironically, this is the same period for which we have no photos and Feldpost whatsoever from my great-grandfather. We know he was there and that he survived; unless unexpected new evidence comes to light, we must content ourselves with that.

The most colourful elements of Arno’s story are not directly connected with his military service. Born into a middle class Saxon family in 1889, his pre-war white collar career as a bookkeeper and manager included two years with the Woermann company in the German colony of Kamerun. Had he not tired of Africa after a year running a trading post in the interior, he would likely still have been there when the war broke out. Instead he was in Finland, and evaded Russian internment to return home and volunteer for the artillery in Dresden. He initially served on the Aisne north of Reims, where the Saxon 23. Infanterie-Division / XII. Armeekorps had dug in at the onset of trench warfare. His surviving photos were all taken on this relatively quiet front, which his regiment finally left for the Somme in autumn 1916. At the end of that year FAR 48 was transferred to the new Saxon 241. Infanterie-Division, which would spend the entirety of 1917 in the east. Having gained valuable experience of mobile warfare in the victorious campaign against the Russians, the young 241.ID had the misfortune to be earmarked as an ‘attack division’ for the 1918 offensives in the west. This would eventually result in the near-obliteration of both FAR 48 and 241.ID west of Soissons on 18th July 1918. Having rebuilt and licked its wounds, they spent the remainder of the war retreating and fighting increasingly desperate holding actions, culminating in a second and even greater catastrophe north of St. Quentin in the first days of October.

We have every reason to believe that my great-grandfather must have fought tanks on multiple occasions, witnessed British cavalry attack the Saxon gunline and very likely been forced to defend his battery’s positions with rifle and hand grenades. Statistically he was relatively lucky to come through largely unscathed, since FAR 48 suffered the most grievous losses of any Saxon field artillery regiment - overwhelmingly due to the two great disasters of its final six months of existence. He was of course not wholly untouched - since, besides whatever unspoken psychological scars he may have carried, he was certainly burdened with the hearing impairment which afflicted his entire generation of artillerymen. 

Arno’s post-war career was just as unusual as his pre-war one. After a brief stint helping to sell off the demobilised Saxon Army’s massive stockpile of motor vehicles, he embarked on a career as a trade union official with the white collar and conservative DHV (Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband). This involved direct and possibly violent conflict with communist and (much later) Nazi entryists, as well as Polish nationalists in Upper Silesia. By the time the Nazi seizure of power put an end to independent unions he was the head of the Saxon DHV, giving him political connections which subsequently entangled him in the desperate plans of the conservative resistance. According to the signed testimony of Jakob Kaiser (founder of the CDU in post-WW2 West Germany), Arno would have had a role in the provisional civilian government which was intended to assume power after the assassination of Hitler. He was therefore very lucky indeed to have escaped the purge following the events of 20th July 1944, and subsequently eschewed politics in favour of a quiet career in insurance until his peaceful death in 1957.

You can find the entire fascinating story of Arno’s War (and much more) by clicking on the image below: