Daniel J. Hughes is professor emeritus, United States Air
Force Air War College.
Richard L. DiNardo is professor of national security
affairs, US Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the author
of Germany and the Axis Powers: From Coalition to Collapse.
Hughes and DiNardo provide a fine-grain portrait of the Imperial
German Army from its greatest victory in 1871 to its final collapse
in 1918. Written by two of the scholarly world's leading
authorities, it offers in-depth research into the German sources,
judicious verdicts on men and events, and a breadth of vision
greater than any previous work. It is an indispensable book that
will dominate the narrative on the German Army for decades.""-
Robert M. Citino, author of The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German
Campaigns of 1944-1945;
""Few institutions were more important to European history between
1871 and 1918 than the German army. This study provides a detailed
analysis of how it responded to the rapid societal and political
changes around it. No student of this period of Germany will want
to miss it.""- Michael S. Neiberg, author of Dance of the Furies:
Europe and the Outbreak of World War I;
""The Prussian/German army failed its ultimate test: preparing for
and waging the Great War of 1914-1918. This major contribution to
institutional military history convincingly establishes that
failure as the consequence of a fundamental and enduring tension
between efforts to adjust to the requirements of mass-industrial
warfare and pressures seeking to limit the consequences of the
French and Marxist revolutions. Essential for all students of the
subject.""- Dennis Showalter, author of Instrument of War: The
German Army 1914-1918;
""A formal people, the Germans were disastrously informal about
war. Clausewitz set the tone with his emphasis on friction, human
error, and improvised genius. That strand connected Moltke the
Elder's unorthodox invasions of Austria and France with the
thrusting, decentralized combat of generals given a broad mission
and the flexibility to accomplish it by Schlieffen and his
successors. Ultimately this can-do attitude was the Prussian-German
army's 'secret sauce.' It defeated bureaucracy and ensured rapid
action yet- as Hughes and DiNardo reveal in this splendid, lucid
work- it made German leaders dismissive of policy, grand strategy,
and their iron constraints. A Germany dominated by the uniformed
military came to view battle as the solution to every problem,
ensuring Germany's defeat in 1918.""- Geoffrey Wawro, author of A
Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of
the Habsburg Empire
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