Background
Wilhelm Groener was born in Ludwigsburg in the Kingdom of Württemberg as the son of Karl Eduard Groener (1837-1893), regimental paymaster, and his wife Auguste (née Boleg, 1825-1907) on 22 November 1867.
Wilhelm Groener was born in Ludwigsburg in the Kingdom of Württemberg as the son of Karl Eduard Groener (1837-1893), regimental paymaster, and his wife Auguste (née Boleg, 1825-1907) on 22 November 1867.
After attending gymnasium at Ulm and Ludwigsburg, where his father had been stationed, Groener entered the 3. Württembergische Infanterie Regiment Nummer 121 of the Württemberg Army in 1884. In 1890, he was promoted to Bataillonsadjutant and from 1893 to 1896 attended the War Academy at Berlin, where he finished top of his class.
He was promoted major in 1906 and six years later as lieutenant colonel headed the field railway section in the General Staff. In this capacity Groener was largely responsible for the mobilization of August 1914.
Colonel Groener, by September 1914, had transported 3.1 million men and 860,000 horses to the front. He continued to coordinate the German field railways throughout 1915, received the order Pour le merite and was promoted major general in June 1915 after the capture of Lemberg. Often critical of the strategy of General Erich von Falkenhayn, Groener nevertheless was entrusted with a new War Supplies (Food) Office on May 26, 1916; his primary task was to facilitate the import of wheat from Rumania.
On October 29,1916, Groener was appointed chief of a new War Office within the Prussian War Ministry as well as deputy war minister; the next month he resigned as head of field railways and was promoted lieutenant general. Groener was then in charge of supervising the fulfillment of the monstrous Hindenburg Program's munitions quotas as well as execution of the Auxiliary Service Law, which theoretically made all males draft eligible until their sixtieth birthday. As a pragmatist and as a South German with less of the caste mentality than his Prussian colleagues, Groener fully realized that the German economy could be placed on a war footing only with the cooperation of the trade unions and the Social Democrats (SPD). This meant, in effect, stabilizing inflation through wage and price controls (summer 1917), allowing worker participation on economic planning committees, and generally enhancing the financial lot of the workers. And while Groener denounced strikers in the spring of 1917 as "dirty dogs," his alleged pro-Socialist policies quickly earned him the opposition not only of German industrialists, such as Hugo Stinnes and Carl Duisberg, but also of Colonel Max Bauer who, in turn, mobilized General Erich Ludendorff against the "brave Swabian."
On August 16, 1917, Groener was transferred to the Thirty-third Infantry Division first at Verdun and later in the Champagne; after this he commanded the XXV Reserve Corps of the Seventh Army at the Aillette River. On February 25, 1918, Groener was sent to the east as head of the I Army Corps under General Alexander von Linsingen in the Ukraine, but on March 28 the Wiirttemberger became chief of staff for Army Group Eichhorn at Kiev. Once again, Groener's mastery of field railways was required to exploit the grain reserves of the Ukraine. He enjoyed the reputation of being a brilliant staff officer provided that the plans were his own creation and not the work of others. On October 29, 1918, Groener succeeded General Ludendorff as deputy chief of the General Staff. He accepted his role stoically: "What transpires now will take its unalterable course, and I must be its whipping-boy."
Groener immediately withdrew the German armies to the Antwerp-Meuse line and by November 6 demanded that the government of Prince Max von Baden conclude an armistice. As early as November 2 he had proposed that Wilhelm II seek a heroic death at the front at the head of his troops but opposed the notion of abdication as well as the proposed flight to the Netherlands. It was Groener's unenviable task on November 9 to reject the kaiser's plan to deploy force to suppress the revolution in Germany and instead to inform the monarch that the army "no longer stands behind Your Majesty." That same day, Groener concluded a pact with Friedrich Ebert, whereby the general promised to support the new Social Democratic government, provided that it did not drastically reform the officer corps. Thereafter Groener supervised the return and demobilization of the German armies. After counseling acceptance of the Versailles Treaty in June 1919, Groener retired from active service on September 30, 1919, against the express wishes of President Ebert. He recommended that General Hans von Seeckt succeed him.
In retirement Groener gravitated towards the German Democratic party and from July 1920 to August 1923 served as minister of transport, mainly rebuilding the national railway system. Although a staunch monarchist, Groener, unlike many of his colleagues, was nevertheless willing to accept the Weimar Republic and to bring army and nation closer together. Consequently, in January 1928 he agreed to become defense minister; in October 1931 he concurrently served as minister of the interior. Groener's moderate policies might have been successful at another time, but in the tumultuous years that he served they failed to master the situation. The death of Gustav Stresemann and the financial collapse of 1929 were followed by brutal street battles between Communists and Nazis. When the latter viciously denounced President Paul von Hindenburg during the presidential election of 1932, Groener was forced to impose a ban on the NSDAP's paramilitary formations (SA and SS), thus vitiating his plans to incorporate these formations into army sports clubs. The right wing vilified him as the man who had forced the kaiser into exile and General Kurt von Schleicher brutally informed Groener, his former patron, that the army no longer possessed confidence in him; Groener resigned his cabinet posts in May 1932. He died in quiet seclusion at Bornstedt near Potsdam on May 3, 1939.
In 1899, Groener married Helene Geyer (1864–1926) in Schwäbisch Gmünd. They had a daughter, Dorothea Groener-Geyer (b.1900).