The bourgeoisie made up approximately 30 percent of the population. The term bourgeoisie originally denoted a wide range of individuals, from substantial business owners to small shopkeepers, from unbelievably rich…
A view of the inevitability of civilian involvement in combat and an "appropriate" military response permeated the German military. There was an anti-French feeling against the "people's war" or “levée…
There were only two means of electronic communication in the German Army: telephone and radio. Telegraph communications were abandoned in 1910. By 1914, the intent was to provide each army…
One of the reasons this book was in editing for so long was attributed to the three language balancing act. Really it is more like five languages and it has…
During the Franco-Prussian war that ended in 1871, the German army ran afoul of a swarm of what became known as francs-tireurs - from the French word for “free shooters,”…
Losses of cavalry at the beginning of the war show numbers that are minuscule compared to infantry losses later in the war. Some critics dismiss those losses as insignificant. However,…
Conventional wisdom has it that all of imperial Germany rejoiced at the war and rushed to the colors. A study by Jeffrey Verhey exposed the dichotomies of this spirit. The…
How big was first Army? Figures from theBritish official history (James Edmonds, British Official History, vol.1.(London: McMillan, 1922), 42.) quoted German official accounts as: First Army, 320,000 and Second Army,…
The Population – part one – Aristocracy There are many long-held misconceptions about the nature of the imperial German population. One of the most common-held mental pictures includes a middle-class…
The German Army entered the campaign with little or no arrangements to feed any horses. The most compelling logistical problem was most acute for the cavalry, but it extended to…