The social burdens of war resulted in broadening discontent. In some sectors of German society, discontent translated into organized protest and resistance to the war's continuation. Understanding the dynamics and patterns of this process begins best with a number of general observations about the organization and mobilization of sentiment to political ends.
Class, gender, generation, and confession all combined to structure basic communities of experience in wartime Germany. These communities provided frames of collective identity, as well as several different cultural vocabularies for making sense of the war. The common experience of combat defined one such community at the front, while the home front played host to several others. These were nurtured in routine encounters among people who faced common problems, shared common lifestyles, lived in the same neighborhoods, and knew one another personally.
The most durable communities of experience on the home front were those that were best organized; and these were defined historically by class and confession. They reflected the basic cleavages in German society and their institutionalization in rich networks of clubs and other kinds of voluntary associations, which the Germans called Vereine. Organizations of many descriptions had sprouted during the decades before the war, in order to serve a bewildering variety of purposes. They included chambers of commerce and local political organizations, trade unions and professional associations, women's groups, church auxiliaries, bicycle clubs, sharp-shooting societies, and groups devoted to the collecting of stamps, butterflies, or carrier pigeons. They tended to replicate and reinforce the broader division of German society, however – in the first instance along lines of confession and class. The Kulturkampf drove the mobilization of German Catholics into their own organizations, which served the practical defense of Catholics’ interests, as well as their spiritual needs and sociability. Then, in the 1890s, the spread of the German Socialist movement brought the further segregation of these organizations, now by class. Networks of working-class Vereine took shape in parallel with middle-class organizations, both Protestant and Catholic, in which many workers had not felt welcome. Localities throughout the land henceforth hosted multiple gymnastics clubs, women's auxiliaries, youth groups, and choral societies.
The war profoundly affected associational life in Germany. Many organizations collapsed or withered with the departure of dues-paying members to the front. Groups such as gymnastic societies and bicycle clubs, which appealed to able-bodied young men, were particularly vulnerable, as were trade unions in non-essential sectors of the economy.