Ober Ost
The Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East (German: Oberbefehlshaber der gesamten Deutschen Streitkräfte im Osten), also known by its German abbreviation as Ober Ost, was both a high-ranking position in the armed forces of the German Empire as well as the name given to the occupied territories on the German section of the Eastern Front of World War I, with the exception of Poland.[a] It encompassed the former Russian governorates of Courland, Grodno, Vilna, Kovno and Suwałki. It was governed in succession by Paul von Hindenburg and Prince Leopold of Bavaria. It was abandoned after the end of World War I.
Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the EastOberbefehlshaber der gesamten Deutschen Streitkräfte im Osten (German)
Military occupation authority of the German Empire
Königsberg (HQ, 1919)
1914
3 March 1918
11 November 1918
1919
Extension[edit]
Ober Ost was set up by Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1914, initially came 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 German Empire effectively controlled Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, parts of Poland, and Courland, all of which had been part of the Russian Empire.[1] Ober Ost itself controlled present-day Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Poland, and Courland.
Communication with locals[edit]
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".[4] In the rural areas and amongst peasant populations soldiers had to rely on interpreters who spoke Lithuanian, Latvian or Polish.[4] The language problems were not helped by the thinly-stretched administrations, which would sometimes number 100 men in areas as large as Luxembourg.[4] 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.[4] A young officer-administrator named Vagts related that he listened (through a translator) 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.[4]
Russian Revolution[edit]
The uncertain situation caused by the Russian October Revolution in 1917 and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 made some indigenes elect Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg as head of the United Baltic Duchy and the second duke of Urach as king of Lithuania, but those plans collapsed in November 1918.
With the end of the war and collapse of the empire, the Germans started to withdraw, sometimes in a piecemeal and disorganized way, from Ober Ost around late 1918 and early 1919.[7] In the vacuum left by their retreat, conflicts arose as various former occupied nations declared independence, clashing with the various factions of the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, and with each other. For details, see: