A view of the inevitability of civilian involvement in combat and an “appropriate” military response permeated the German military. There was an anti-French feeling against the “people’s war” or “levée en masse,” which was seen as legal, but reprehensible. Julius v. Hartmann, a noted theorist, said, “where the people’s war breaks out, terrorism becomes a principle of military necessity.” Senior commanders in their 60s and 70s during the invasion of 1914 had been young officers during the Franco-Prussian War and had distinct views based on their experiences with francs-tireurs. In the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907, there was an international endeavor to more tightly define the laws of war. The intent was to make things more civilized and less barbarous. As a result of the first convention, the German General Staff developed a “war book” to offer some guidance. It required that prisoners of war be conditionally identified, if there was some proof that they were operating as enemy soldiers. The negotiations involved a seesaw battle between smaller countries that wanted the ability to have a mass “people’s war” and imperial Germany that did not. In 1908, the German Army issued the Felddienstordnung, which provided guidance that preventive security measures were justified when there were possible attacks by enemy civilians. This guidance included threatening the inhabitants with penalties, taking hostages, and burning streets. This rule was in direct conflict to the previous endorsement of the Hague Convention, which was actually published as an appendix to the Felddienstordnung in 1911.
Despite this conflict, there was no change to the language of the Felddienstordnung. Imperial German officers were trained to expect civilian resistance and to treat it as a criminal act. Specifically, the Kriegs-Akademie taught that Article 2 of the convention did not comply with the German viewpoint. The noted theorist and writer v. d. Goltz dismissed the 1907 Hague Convention as hypocrisy because none of the signatories had any intention of sticking to it.
Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz (12 August 1843 – 19 April 1916) also known as Goltz Pasha, was a Prussian Field Marshal and military writer.
At the outbreak of the First World War Goltz was recalled to duty and appointed the military governor of Belgium. In that position, he dealt ruthlessly with what remained of Belgian resistance to German occupation. Tthe newly appointed Goltz proclaimed: “It is the stern necessity of war that the punishment for hostile acts falls not only on the guilty, but on the innocent as well.” “In thefuture, villages in the vicinity of places where railway and telegraph lines are destroyed will be punished without pity (whether they are guilty or not of the acts in question). With this in view hostages have been taken in all villages near the railway lines which are threatened by such attacks. Upon the first attempt to destroy lines of railway, telegraph or telephone, they will immediately be shot.”
From the 1870s until World War I, Baron von der Goltz was more widely read by British and American military leaders than Clausewitz. In addition to many contributions to military periodicals, he wrote Kriegführung (1895), later titled Krieg und Heerführung, 1901 (The Conduct of War).

