Stein becomes Prussian minister of war

At the end of October 1916 General Hermann von Stein became Prussian minister of war. He replaced General Adolf Wild von Hohenborn, who had headed the ministry since January 1915. The British chronology of the war gives the date as 30 October, whereas German biographies of both generals indicate that Wild von Hohenborn held office until 29 October and Stein took over the ministry the same day. The ministry was formally subordinate to the government of the Kingdom of Prussia, but it was responsible for the great majority of the German army, its replacements, armament and supply.

Wild von Hohenborn was Falkenhayn’s man. When at the end of August Hindenburg and Ludendorff took over the Supreme Army Command, his position began to weaken. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff demanded a drastic increase in the production of arms and ammunition, the so-called Hindenburg Programme, and universal compulsory labour for men not called up to the army. Wild von Hohenborn was particularly critical of the latter idea and was regarded at headquarters as an obstacle. According to German studies, it was Hindenburg who brought about his dismissal by the Kaiser. One of Wild’s last decisions at the ministry was the order of 11 October requiring a census of soldiers of the Jewish faith to be carried out in the army, the so-called Judenzählung. It was justified by complaints that Jews were allegedly evading front-line service. Jewish soldiers felt it as a humiliation. Wild von Hohenborn then took command of the XVI Army Corps in the Argonne.

The new minister was 62. The son of a pastor from Wedderstedt in the Province of Saxony and an artilleryman, he had served for many years on the Great General Staff, where he rose to the post of Oberquartiermeister. From 1912 he commanded the 41st Division at Deutsch Eylau, and in 1913 he was ennobled. At the beginning of the war, in August and September 1914, as Generalquartiermeister he drafted the official communiqués of the German command. From mid-September 1914 he commanded the XIV Reserve Corps, which during the Race to the Sea took up position in the area of Bapaume. In the summer of 1916 his corps found itself at the very centre of the Battle of the Somme. Among other sectors it defended the one at Thiepval, which the British attacked on 1 July. Stein handed the corps over to his successor on 28 October, the day before he took over the ministry. He thus came to Berlin straight from the front where the Allied superiority in artillery and ammunition was felt most keenly.

The change of minister was linked to a reorganisation of the whole war economy. On 1 November the War Office (Kriegsamt) was set up within the ministry of war; under General Wilhelm Groener it was to direct matters of raw materials, arms, ammunition and labour. Formally it was subordinate to the minister; in practice it carried out the instructions of the Supreme Army Command. At the beginning of December the Reichstag passed the Auxiliary Patriotic Service Law, which imposed compulsory labour on men aged 17 to 60 who had not been called up to the army. For two years Stein tried to reconcile the demands of Hindenburg and Ludendorff with the interests of big industry, the trade unions and an increasingly assertive Reichstag. He resigned on 9 October 1918 under pressure from the new chancellor, Prince Max of Baden.