A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945

’Superb...enthralling...highly recommended.’ - Library Journal

It is often agreed that militarism, the aggressive policy of arming nations, was a chief cause of the wars of the twentieth century between forces loyal to Germany and those loyal to Britain.

In a very comprehensive study across 150 years, Colonel T. N. Dupuy uses his experience in the US Army to explain the manoeuvrings and characters behind German warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is the General Staff who influence the performance of the Army, institutionalising military excellence in direct and indirect ways.

Colonel Dupuy begins with the Prussian generals of the 1800s including Frederick the Great, and then tells of the alliance between Prussia and Germany in the aftermath of the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War.

Colonel Dupuy goes on to write excellently about the two generals named Moltke, uncle and nephew, who steered the German army from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries.

He extols the military virtues of the man whose idea it was to invade France by using the neutrality of Belgium, von Schlieffen, whose plan seemed so brilliant before Britain saw through it during World War I.

Following the Treaty of Versailles, which led to the resignations of Groener and the ascendancy of Hindenburg to President, Germany was saved from dissolution and civil war by the brilliant Seeckt.

The rise of the National Socialist party, headed by the charismatic Adolf Hitler, made rearmament a pillar of their policies. The story ends with the offensives of World War II and the lessons historians and military strategists can learn from them.

This book is a detailed study of the goings-on in the committee rooms and at the frontline of the nation which had in modern times a genius for war.

Praise for Trevor Dupuy

’Concise, well-written...a wide selection of paintings and photographs and excellent maps...aid in understanding the complexities of strategy and following the action.’ - The New York Times

Colonel T. N. Dupuy (1916-1995) commanded American forces during World War II, serving in Burma and China, before becoming a professor and military historian at Harvard University and then on to Ohio State University. Together with his father, he wrote the textbook Military Heritage of America which has for half a century been used widely as a teaching aid. His other books include Brave Men and Great Captains and a series of Military Lives which focussed on great war leaders from Alexander the Great to Winston Churchill. He pioneered the Quantified Judgment Method of Analysis to use the lessons of past combat for today, established the Dupuy Institute for that very purpose, and often appeared on television as a pundit, giving his opinion on contemporary combats.