9781472813008

Drawing on more than a half-century of research and teaching, Dennis Showalter presents a fresh perspective on the German Army during World War I. Showalter surveys an army at the heart of a national identity, driven by--yet also defeated by--warfare in the modern age, that struggled to capitalize on its victories, and ultimately forgot the lessons of its defeat.

Exploring the internal dynamics of the German Army, detailing how the soldiers coped with the many new forms of warfare, Showalter shows how the army's institutions responded and how Germany itself was changed by war. He goes on to detail the major campaigns on the Western and Eastern Fronts and the forgotten war fought in the Middle East and Africa, revealing operational strategy, the complexities of campaigns of movement versus static trench warfare, and the changes in warfare.

Dennis Showalter, a professor of German military history at Colorado College, was president of the American Society of Military History. He is a founding editor of War in History, an advising fellow of the Barsanti Military History Center, and has taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Military Academy, and Marine Corps University. He won the Paul M. Birdsall Prize for Tannenberg and received a Festschrift called Arms and the Man: Military History Essays in Honor of Dennis Showalter.

[Some section/chapter titles may change]

BACKGROUND
I. Contexts
a. The Second Reich: Made by the Sword
b. Citizen Soldiers, Imperial Army: Synergies and Polarities
c. Challenges of Modernization: Technology versus Doctrine
d. Preparation for War: Strategic Planning or Wishful Thinking?

STRUCTURE
II. Men
a. Motives
b. Preparation: Training and Conditioning
c. Living in War's Everyday
d. Coping with Combat
e. The Ones at Home

III. Systems
a. Command and Leadership
b. Tools: Weapons and Technologies c. Techniques: Tactics, Operations, Strategy
d. Sustainability: Supply, Care, Amenities

IV. Matrix: State and Homeland
a.1915: Improvised Mobilization
b. 1916: Monkeys with a Watch: The Army and the Hindenburg Program
c. 1917: Domestic Overstretch
d. 1918: Collapse and Revolution-Turnout or Turnover?

TEST

IV The Guns of Autumn and Beyond
a, First Blood: To the Marne
b. The Dead Ends: From Plans to Improvisations
c. The Value of Obliging Enemies: The Fragile Stalemate of 1915

V. Paradigm Shift:
a. Verdun and the Somme: Tests to the Breaking Point
b. Fruits of Experience: Learning Curves from Privates to Generals.
c. Long Aftermath: The Trenches of 1917
VI. Foreign Fields: Glittering Promises and Dead Ends
a, Russia
b. Gallipoli and the Balkans
c. The Middle East
d. Italy

VII Twilight and Finale: 1918
a. The Grand Offensive: Apogee of Semimodern War
b. The Allied Counterattack: Portent of a High-Tech Future
c. Endgame at the Front

CONCLUSION: “They haven't been whipped enough!” - Lessons Learned and Experiences Forgotten

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Instrument of War The German Army 1914–18

Instrument of War The German Army 1914–18

1472813006

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