Abstract
Prior to World War I, electric ploughs held great promise in Germany. They could carry out deep ploughing as well as, or better than, steam ploughs, and they promised to solve social and political problems, such as the increasing labour shortages east of the Elbe. But they found little success because, as with early tractors, agriculture had to be modified too much to make them work. Unlike tractors, electric ploughs did not prove to be flexible enough to fit the varied conditions of German agriculture.