Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Germany
Languages : de
Pages : 1136
Book Description
Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift
Author: Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift
Author: The First World War
Author: Holger H. HerwigPublisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472508858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
The Great War toppled four empires, cost the world 24 million dead, and sowed the seeds of another worldwide conflict 20 years later. This is the only book in the English language to offer comprehensive coverage of how Germany and Austria-Hungary, two of the key belligerents, conducted the war and what defeat meant to them. This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, including new developments in the historiography and, in particular, addressing new work on the cultural history of the war. This edition also includes: - New material on the domestic front, covering Austria-Hungary's internal political frictions and ethnic fissures - More on Austria-Hungary and Germany's position within the wider geopolitical framework - Increased coverage of the Eastern front The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 offers an authoritative and well-researched survey of the role of the Central powers that will be an invaluable text for all those studying the First World War and the development of modern warfare.
Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte
Author: Blueprints for Battle
Author: Jan HoffenaarPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813139821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
While scholarship abounds on the diplomatic and security aspects of the Cold War, very little attention has been paid to military planning at the operational level. In Blueprints for Battle, experts from Russia, the United States, and Europe address this dearth by closely examining the military planning of NATO and Warsaw Pact member nations from the end of World War II to the beginning of détente. Informed by material from recently opened archives, this collection investigates the perceptions and actions of the rival coalitions, exploring the challenges presented by nuclear technology, examining how military commanders' perceptions changed from the 1950s to the 1960s, and discussing logistical coordination among allied states. The result is a detailed study that offers much-needed new perspectives on the military aspects of the early Cold War.
Postwar Soldiers
Author: Jörg EchternkampPublisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789205581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570
Book Description
Contemporary historians have transformed our understanding of the German military in World War II, debunking the “clean Wehrmacht” myth that held most soldiers innocent of wartime atrocities. Considerably less attention has been paid to those soldiers at the end of hostilities. In Postwar Soldiers, Jörg Echternkamp analyzes three themes in the early history of West Germany: interpretations of the war during its conclusion and the occupation period; military veteran communities’ self-perceptions; and the public rehabilitation of the image of the German soldier. As Echternkamp shows, public controversies around these topics helped to drive the social processes that legitimized the democratic postwar order.
Strategy Before Clausewitz
Author: Beatrice HeuserPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351968351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Book Description
This collection of essays combines historical research with cutting-edge strategic analysis and makes a significant contribution to the study of the early history of strategic thinking. There is a debate as to whether strategy in its modern definition existed before Napoleon and Clausewitz. The case studies featured in this book show that strategic thinking did indeed exist before the last century, and that there was strategy making, even if there was no commonly agreed word for it. The volume uses a variety of approaches. First, it explores the strategy making of three monarchs whose biographers have claimed to have identified strategic reasoning in their warfare: Edward III of England, Philip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France. The book then analyses a number of famous strategic thinkers and practitioners, including Christine de Pizan, Lazarus Schwendi, Matthew Sutcliffe, Raimondo Montecuccoli and Count Guibert, concluding with the ideas that Clausewitz derived from other authors. Several chapters deal with reflections on naval strategy long thought not to have existed before the nineteenth century. Combining in-depth historical documentary research with strategic analysis, the book illustrates that despite social, economic, political, cultural and linguistic differences, our forebears connected warfare and the aims and considerations of statecraft just as we do today. This book will be of great interest to students of strategic history and theory, military history and IR in general.
The Myth and Reality of German Warfare
Author: Gerhard P. GrossPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813168384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
Surrounded by potential adversaries, nineteenth-century Prussia and twentieth-century Germany faced the formidable prospect of multifront wars and wars of attrition. To counteract these threats, generations of general staff officers were educated in operational thinking, the main tenets of which were extremely influential on military planning across the globe and were adopted by American and Soviet armies. In the twentieth century, Germany's art of warfare dominated military theory and practice, creating a myth of German operational brilliance that lingers today, despite the nation's crushing defeats in two world wars. In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid--nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history, including Moltke the Elder, Alfred von Schlieffen, and Erich Ludendorff. Essential reading for military historians and strategists, this innovative work dismantles cherished myths and offers new insights into Germany's failed attempts to become a global power through military means.
Iron and Blood
Author: Peter H. WilsonPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674292855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981
Book Description
From the author of the acclaimed The Thirty Years War and Heart of Europe, a masterful, landmark reappraisal of German military history, and of the preconceptions about German militarism since before the rise of Prussia and the world wars. German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting. Iron and Blood takes as its starting point the consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire, which created new mechanisms for raising troops but also for resolving disputes diplomatically. Both the empire and the Swiss Confederation were largely defensive in orientation, while German participation in foreign wars was most often in partnership with allies. The primary aggressor in Central Europe was not Prussia but the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, yet Austria’s strength owed much to its ability to secure allies. Prussia, meanwhile, invested in militarization but maintained a part-time army well into the nineteenth century. Alongside Switzerland, which relied on traditional militia, both states exemplify the longstanding civilian element within German military power. Only after Prussia’s unexpected victory over France in 1871 did Germans and outsiders come to believe in a German gift for warfare—a special capacity for high-speed, high-intensity combat that could overcome numerical disadvantage. It took two world wars to expose the fallacy of German military genius. Yet even today, Wilson argues, Germany’s strategic position is misunderstood. The country now seen as a bastion of peace spends heavily on defense in comparison to its peers and is deeply invested in less kinetic contemporary forms of coercive power.
The First Soldier
Author: Stephen G. FritzPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300240759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493
Book Description
“An expert account of Nazi war strategy that concludes that Hitler was not without military talent.”(Kirkus Reviews) After Germany’s humiliating World War II defeat, numerous German generals published memoirs claiming that their country’s brilliant military leadership had been undermined by the Führer’s erratic decision making. The author of three highly acclaimed books on the era, Stephen Fritz upends this characterization of Hitler as an ill-informed fantasist and demonstrates the ways in which his strategy was coherent and even competent. That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany’s fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler’s tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler’s thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy. “Perhaps the best account we have to date of Hitler’s military leadership. It shows a scrupulous and imaginative historian at work and will cement Fritz’s reputation as one of the leading historians of the military conflicts generated by Hitler’s Germany.” —Richard Overy, author of The Bombing War “Original, insightful and authoritative.” —David Stahel, author of The Battle for Moscow
