The Great War Dawning

[phil andrade]

And here's to you, Mr and Mrs Robinson !

And to your pal Mr Bucholz, too !

Phil (PJA)

[David Filsell]

And I think Jack Sheldon.

[joerookery]

Amen!

[joerookery]

Another two reviews arrived today one from a German language publication and this which might find it way eventually into Stand To!

The Great War Dawning: Germany and Its Army at the Start of World War I, Frank Bucholtz, Joe Robinson & Janet Robinson, Verlag Militaria, 2013, 532 pages, maps, illustrations, appendices, charts, ISBN 978 3 9025 2665 6, $89.95 hb.

This is tour de force deserves attention from all serious students of The Great War. Like most military historians, its authors agree that the German war plan implemented in 1914 (commonly call the Schlieffen Plan) was flawed in concept and execution. Germany simply did not have the manpower needed for a quick victory on two fronts. This work delves deeper, far deeper, to examine why Germany failed to achieve victory on the Marne, throwing the war on the decisive Western Front into a bloody four-year stalemate leading to her defeat.

As to the first weakness, manpower, Wilhelmine army strength was limited by parliamentary parsimony. Control of the purse was the major right of a Reichstag which had no power to approve an imperial Chancellor or cabinet members. An equally important limiting factor was the limited availability of aristocratic officers and the refusal of army command jealous of its prerogatives to admit more than a handful of bourgeois officer candidates outside the technical branches.

More to the point in 1914 were systemic weaknesses. Germany alone among the great powers added reservists to bring first-line combat units up to wartime strength. Thus, its army was made up of large numbers of inexperienced soldiers and leaders. Command and control, despite the use of wireless and wired telecommunications, were chaotic with German High Command often making bad decisions from afar. Logistics and supply, particularly of artillery ammunition, were also problematic with a largely animal- traction supply service stretched beyond endurance. Finally, the mounted arm was poorly organized and led failing in its key task of forward reconnaissance. Most crucially, however, there was no back-up plan in case German arms were checked in either the West or the East, or both.

While it is tempting to blame much of these weaknesses on the actions of a mercurial and amateurish Kaiser Wilhelm II, much of the confusion can also be laid at the door of an imperfect constitutional structure created in 1871 by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. This left Imperial Germany as a patchwork of overlapping and competing military and political jurisdictions in an imperfect quazi-federal system with both democratic and autocratic features. Coordination among the civil and military arms of government was largely absent. Even within the military competing bureaucracies and individual power centers hampered rational planning. The authors go into much useful detail in examining and analyzing these dysfunctional anomalies giving us an uncommonly fine portrait of a nation preparing for war.

Len Shurtleff

May 2014

[Latze]

At the moment my time to read Great War literature is rather limited (even if the reason for this - the birth of my daughter - is a wonderful thing). Still I tried to skim through "The Great War Dawning" to offer some thoughts.

In general I think that is an excellent book that delivers a lot of information about the Imperial army in one place that was scattered through a lot of different books due to its diverse nature. For example in my schooling (Abitur) in Germany with a focus on history and while studying political science (masters degree) I never encountered a German language book giving all the details about the constitutions of all German states and cities as Joe does here. I think the way in "The Great War Dawning" technical information from period sources is fused with sociological fact from contemporary "new military history" is very well done (the chapter about officer selection being a nice example).

The standard tome about the Imperial army until now was Fiedler's "Kriegswesen und Kriegführung im Zeitalter der Millionenheere" but in my opinion Joe's book far surpasses it. Which is all the more astonishing as he is working outside of the academic establishment.

So if one wants to get to know the army whose death in 1916 on the battlefields of Verdun and the Somme was so mourned by its generals should by this one. I just wish somebody would now deliver something comparable in its breadth and width for the French army!

If Joe by any chance is reading this I might ask two questions in public:

In chapter 12 German doctrine is discussed. There was published in Germany a book by Rath "Vom Massensturm zur Stoßtrupptaktik" dealinmg with the doctrinal discussion in military periodicals. Did that one escape you or did you find it not worthwhile to consider?

And regarding chapter 9 and 10 did you read Muth's "Command Culture"? He brings a lot of examples from Imperial Germany to make his point about superior German officer training. I would have been very interested in your take on his thesis.

regards

Matt

[joerookery]

a book by Rath "Vom Massensturm zur Stoßtrupptaktik" dealinmg with the doctrinal discussion in military periodicals. Did that one escape you or did you find it not worthwhile to consider?

Matt,

Thanks for the kind words and congratulations on the child! You had better start saving money now for her wedding! That book escaped us. There were just so many to digest. I forget how many pages our bibliography was but we looked at a heck of a lot (9full pages). We went back to the periodicals on the doctrinal discussion and I think you'll find adequate footnotes for the sources but sadly I don't remember looking at that one.

And regarding chapter 9 and 10 did you read Muth's "Command Culture"? He brings a lot of examples from Imperial Germany to make his point about superior German officer training. I would have been very interested in your take on his thesis.

Once again I have not read that but I think I might now. It would be interesting to get his view or thesis on the officer training. There are a couple of English-language texts about the officer system that mostly focus on the HKA cadets. So in those sources which are listed in the book you really get kind of the impression that all officers went through the Academy. This of course completely ignores the one-year volunteer and the Fahnenjunker which affected both active and reserve officers. So I would be eager to see what his thesis says about training these guys. The big issue for the early war was the distance in time between the officer's training and his execution on the battlefield. It is easy to trace reservists in the active service who went through their training far before current "doctrine".

[Latze]

Matt,

Thanks for the kind words and congratulations on the child! You had better start saving money now for her wedding! That book escaped us. There were just so many to digest. I forget how many pages our bibliography was but we looked at a heck of a lot (9full pages). We went back to the periodicals on the doctrinal discussion and I think you'll find adequate footnotes for the sources but sadly I don't remember looking at that one.

Once again I have not read that but I think I might now. It would be interesting to get his view or thesis on the officer training. There are a couple of English-language texts about the officer system that mostly focus on the HKA cadets. So in those sources which are listed in the book you really get kind of the impression that all officers went through the Academy. This of course completely ignores the one-year volunteer and the Fahnenjunker which affected both active and reserve officers. So I would be eager to see what his thesis says about training these guys. The big issue for the early war was the distance in time between the officer's training and his execution on the battlefield. It is easy to trace reservists in the active service who went through their training far before current "doctrine".

Muth focuses exclusively on the Kriegsakademie and the Kadettenanstalten. His point being that officers there were expected to think for themselves and that character building is more important than any content of the curriculum. He harshly criticizes the hazing at West Point as an institution that destroyed any independence in officer candidates. Of course it would be very interesting to try to compare the experience of German Reserveoffiziere to US National Guard or British Territorials (the French had no real equivalent, did they?).

Concerning the periodicals: I would someday like to reread Rath in parallel with your take on the matter but right now I am hors de combat

[joerookery]

Naval and military press just listed this 10 pounds cheaper than the publisher!

http://www.naval-military-press.com/great-war-dawning-germany-and-its-army-at-the-start-of-world-war-i.html

[joerookery]

FWIIW--The Great War Dawning was just awarded the 2014 bronze medal for a work on history by the Military Writers Society of America. Perhaps not enough to ring the church bells but it is hard to compete with the American Civil War when you are writing about Germany in World War I.

[nigelcave]

Congratulations!

[joerookery]

Wow! An incredibly nice review in Stand To! 101. Thank you David and to Jack for all of his help!

[Guest]

Just received this book. A stunning piece of research. MG

[joerookery]

Thank you Martin. I hope you find it useful!

[Guest]

Thank you Martin. I hope you find it useful!

It has at least put me right on a few misunderstandings.

I suspect you would sell more if it was available on Amazon.co.uk. I couldn't find it via abe.books either (now owned by amazon I believe, so no real surprise). Had to go via N&MP. Have you thought of making a digital e-book that is searchable?

[joerookery]

I suspect you would sell more if it was available on Amazon.co.uk. I couldn't find it via abe.books either (now owned by amazon I believe, so no real surprise). Had to go via N&MP. Have you thought of making a digital e-book that is searchable?

I completely agree with you. To be totally honest the book is very hard to find. This has to do with the publisher who does not like the pricing offerings of Amazon. It took him almost a year to put it on N&MP. He put one copy on the American Amazon but jacked the price way up. We really are not at all involved in the royalties. It never was our motivation anyway. But if he had made the book more available he could have sold a huge number of them I think. Completely different mind thought between my idea of marketing and the Austrian method. We changed publishers for our next book. Nice guy – good company – just different. They have all the rights so a digital e-book is up to them. I also agree with you that making it electronically searchable would be very useful.

[MartH]

It is a stunning piece of work. I always feel a book's bibliography is an indication of the quality of the book, this book's one is simply superb, the benchmark.

[joerookery]

Thank you MartH! That really was the purpose of the whole study.english-language histories had many often repeated ideas. This was completely different. Zuber's explanation of the foes of the BEF we thought it was just wrong. So we went about looking at what we thought were better documents that explain the relationship between them. What we found was a completely complex but flawed system that we explained in the "cracks". That explains in part why the book was so big because we had to tie the entire system together. I am positive that there are still things out there that we did not use. Also that the study of the BEF vs. different German corps is a fertile field!

[Guest]

Joe

Who has copyright of this book? The authors or the publisher? Also does the copyright extend to the UK?

MG

PS You may be one of the very few GWF members whose online GWF 'rank' exceeds their actual rank.

[joerookery]

MG,

The publisher has the rights but he seems reasonable about them as long as it doesn't cost him too much. I don't know much about UK copyright law-sorry.

My wife and I earned a rank that is more ceremonial as the years pass. We retired long ago but we are not old enough to have had any WW1 experience!