VICTORIES ARE NOT ENOUGH: LIMITATIONS OF THE GERMAN WAY OF WAR

Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2011

In recent years, some of the most enduring interpretations of World War II have been subject to revision. Indeed, military historians are using innovative and often inter-disciplinary methods to answer original questions, and offer new perspectives in established debates. With advances in Holocaust studies and departures from the evidence presented at Nuremberg, this allows German occupation policies to be reconsidered. Conditions that were specific were separated from general circumstances in occupation campaigns. New background in German experience in suppressing rebellion in World War II is presented. With the understanding that Clausewitz saw defense as stronger than offense, the author argues that this was behind a German preference for conflicts of annihilation or destruction, particularly in dealing with rebellion. This article considers: 1) Background (1831-1932)-from Clausewitz and experience up through World War I; 2

Greenwood, 1992

The first in-depth comparison of German and British infantry tactics, training, and leadership techniques during World War I. Samuels undercuts some traditional views about the reasons for German successes and British failures during the Great War and points to how different value systems in the two countries affected military outcomes. This is the first in-depth comparison of German and British infantry tactics, training, and leadership techniques during World War I. Samuels' study undercuts some traditional views about the reasons for German successes and British failures during the Great War and points to how different value systems in the two countries affected their military prowess. This historical study of the doctrines underlying the British and German strategies and their implementation is intended for students of military history and contemporary military strategy. This history first analyzes the development of German infantry tactics and the role of the Storm Battalions and then examines the British attempt to adopt the German defensive systems and points to reasons for flaws in the British doing so. In comparing and contrasting the British and German armies, Samuels outlines the key concepts on which the German defensive system was based and analyzes how forces were trained and leadership was decentralized to produce a dynamic and flexible system. British efforts to adopt the key concepts failed because leadership was centralized and poor training contributed also to combat ineffectiveness.

International Affairs, 2008

International Security, 1983

This paper looks at German command and control from the Wars of Unification to the outbreak of the First World War. It analyses German definitions of different command levels and their function in combat, the vocabulary of command and, related to this, the concept of mission command. This leads into a section on how Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and Alfred Graf von Schlieffen thought about command. Under Schlieffen's successor, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, much of this thinking was codified in instructions for senior commanders which were in force at the outbreak of war. The paper's conclusions show the links between German concepts of command and modern ideas. I wrote this think-piece in 2010 when I was a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool. It has not been published, but I drew on it for my thesis 'Genius for War? German Operational Command on the Western Front in Early 1917' (2016).

Literature Review: Does a historical evaluation of the use of Nazi Propaganda methods provide us with a template by which propaganda can be conducted in contemporary times? Candidate: Alexander Ujah / 1531775 Literature Review: Does a historical evaluation of the use of Nazi Propaganda methods provide us with a template by which propaganda can be conducted in contemporary times? Candidate: Alexander Ujah / 1531775

Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 2022

Nuova Antologia Militare , 2020

In 1914, the German Army was widely considered to be the most powerful armed force on the planet. Its plan of operations for the opening stages of the war were breath-taking in their scale and ambition, though perhaps doomed to failure for precisely those reasons. Yet almost nothing has been written about the men who led that vast force into battle. Apart from the royal princes, not one of the fifty or so generals who commanded the field armies and corps of that army has been the subject of a biography in English, in stark contrast to, for example, the commanders of the British Expeditionary Force. Drawing on the statistical techniques developed by Daniel Hughes in his analysis of Prussian generals from 1870 to 1914, The King's Finest, this article seeks to present a collective examination of the backgrounds and careers of those fifty commanders.

The idea that the armies of the First World War were incapable of learning is one of the most enduring myths of the conflict. This image of 'lions led by donkeys' has proved difficult to shift despite the sizable scholarly literature on the tactical, technological and organization adaptation and innovation undergone by all armies during the war. By examining the British and German armies as learning organizations during the war, this article contributes to this growing literature on adaptation and innovation. It demonstrates how the organizational cultures of these two armies shaped the way in which they learned, predisposing the British army towards radical, often technological, solutions to the tactical and operational challenges of the First World War battlefield, while at the same time inclining the German army towards incremental and tactical solutions to the same problems.

War &# 38; Society, 2004

Making use of a wide range of previously unknown archival material from Germany and the United States, this article explores the ideas and means by which Alfred von Schlieffen and Helmuth von Moltke the Younger inculcated the generation of General Staff officers who guided the German army on the First World War.