The force that most Germans had earnestly believed would be home for the Christmas of 1914 stumbled across the Rhine for the meagre festivities of 1918. They streamed home in their millions, from the blackened wastelands of the Western Front, and later from the lost empire in the East. The nation’s roads became rivers of grey and steel as endless columns of soldiers fanned out across the nation, heading home. In Berlin, as they passed through the specially decorated arches of the Brandenburg Gate and beneath the thin wintry trees of Unter Den Linden, large crowds gathered to cheer. Even in defeat Germany’s army, once the mightiest in Europe, looked nothing like a vanquished force. But the Germany they marched through in November and December 1918 bore only a vague resemblance to the dynamic, jubilant state that had waved them off to war four years earlier. The unprecedented and unnatural effort of total war, particularly during the last two years, had taken an appalling toll.
