The Spanish Flu 1918/19. Course, Consequences and Interpretations in Germany in the Context of the First World War

Responsible for approxiniately 320000 to 350000 deaths, the Influenza Pandemic of 1918/19, also known as the Spanish Flu, claimed more victims in Germany than any other epidemic of the last 150 years. However so far, the event has been researched mostly from a local perspective, and only as a phenomenon of the home front while neglecting the military and its medical statistics. An analysis of both civil and military sources establishes a much more complete picture of the course and consequences of this pandemic on a national scale. It becomes obvious that compared to the looming collapse of Imperial Germany and despite its virulence in the summer and autumn of 1918, the epidemic attracted relatively little attention in public or from the military and civil authorities. An international and comparative perspective reveals that the war situation of 1918 did not result in a more severe course of the epidemic in Germany than in other belligerent or neutral countries, as many contemporaries believed at the time (and some historians have claimed since). On the contrary, there are clear indicators that the state of war in 1918 led to fewer losses of life in Germany than if the Spanish Flu had hit a prosperous and internationally integrated society during peacetime.