This book is among a range of recent studies utilizing primary source records documenting the German Army of World War I. Tiring of the usual recounting of German action during the war (von Schlieffen plan, Race to the Sea, Verdun, the Somme, Ypres, Operation Michael, Amiens), authors like Nick Lloyd and Dennis Showalter did the difficult research work to present a different narrative, one that puts the German war effort in a much different light.

Encompassing a total of 320 pages, "Instrument of War" was published by Osprey in 2016. The book is divided into an introduction and acknowledgements, six numbered chapters, a coda (I had to look that one up; it means conclusion), a selection of photographs, endnotes, and an index. Logically arranged in chronological order, Chapter I, Portents and Preliminaries, sets the stage for the war to follow and covers its early weeks. Chapter II, Autumn of Decision, delves into the fall of 1914 and the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front. Chapter III, Reevaluating, explores the changes that the German Army leadership and the General Staff initiated in the wake of the failure of the war of maneuver and the subsequent shift to the strategic defensive in the West. Chapter IV, Verdun and the Somme: End of an Army, recounts the crippling of the German Army even as it inflicted incredible damage on its foes during the battles of Verdun and the Somme. Chapter V, Reconfigurations, eamines how the German General Staff and senior military leaders changed the formations, tactics, organization, and equipment of the Army to face the new realities of 1917. Chapter VI, Climax and Denouement, closes out the story with the Spring Offensive and the ultimate defeat of the German Army.

The story of Germany's First World War army is a difficult one to portray accurately as so much was written about it in the years immediately after the war, giving the German Army a mythical reputation that fostered the rise of fascism in the 1920's and 30's. Unfortunately, this optimistic portrayal of that army lingered long after the trauma of the Second World War. Potential modern authors of German Army histories have to hack away at the layers of distortions and exaggerations to get at a story that resembles the truth. Dennis Showalter has done this to my satisfaction. His focus on contemporary primary sources undermines the revisionist historians of the twenties and thirties--those who provided a false narrative that gave rise to the "stab in the back" myth that had such an impact on German politics and culture.

Although Showalter covers other combat theaters in this book, they are mentioned only as they impact the primary theater of the war--the Western Front. Although this gives short shrift to those who fought in the other theaters, the author rightly concentrates on the action that truely determined the war's outcome. I do have some issues with Showalter's writing style at different points in the book, but I had no problem understanding the author's presentation of his case and the proofs he provides.

Dennis Showalter fills a noteworthy gap in military histories with this book. Anyone interested in First World War history should pick up "Instrument of War ". ( )

Instrument of War: The German Army 1914–18 by Dennis Showalter is a history of World War I based on the German participation. Showalter is a retired Professor of History, past President of the Society for Military History and Joint Editor of War in History specializing in comparative military history. He has written or edited two dozen books and a hundred fifty articles.

World War I was the war that could have been prevented, it, however, set the stage for the 20th century. It was the stubbornness of Austria-Hungary and their demands that brought on the violence. From all accounts, the Kaiser thought Serbia had met Austria-Hungary's demands and planned on vacation. Franz Josef took the assassination of his despised nephew as the will of God and saw it as a way of accomplishing what he couldn’t. Unfortunately, his ministers saw things differently and moved to war. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany joined its ally. Russia came to the aid of its Slav allies. Germany moved against France, who was bound to aid Russia by treaty. Germany’s move through Belgium brought England to war. Much has been blamed on the entangling alliances as the cause for the war but one must remember too that the NATO alliance (and the Warsaw Pact for that matter) helped keep the peace in the Cold War. WWI was more the fault of faulty leaders than alliances meant to balance power.

World War I was history caught between pages. The advances in technology changed the world. The expansion of railroads meant that mobilization and transportation of troops and equipment could move at previously unattainable speeds. The machine gun was capable of killing on a scale never seen before. The internal combustion engine started to play a role in the military but was still too undependable to be counted on. Horses still played a major role in transportation at this time. That meant pulling animals from the farms which still used and needed them. It also meant feeding the animals. 84,000 horses used by the German’s required almost two million tons of feed a day; this came out of food that would be used by soldiers and civilians. Armies did not adapt to new technologies on the offensive. Killing charging masses of enemy troops is where the machine gun excelled. Advancing armies refused to learn their lesson.

The German army, like most powers, relied on reserve units. It differed in that their reserve units were trained and expected to hold their own in combat. Most nations reserves went to the rear and were used as fillers. The Russian army was in the worst position of the major powers. It’s rail system needed developing and the rally points for mobilization were spread across the vast country. Germany, on the other hand, exercised a near flawless mobilization and continued to be a successful force until it was not only beaten but out-soldiered at Vimy. No one expected a long war and no one was prepared to fight a drawn out war. The German army was statistically successful in creating three casualties for every two it suffered, but allied army size stood against the Germans in a war of attrition. A well-written history of Germany in World War I.

( )

Very interesting book. Looks at the German Army from the perspective of performance and efficiency. Seems to be well researched. When reviewing the bibliography, I recognized many of the sources as books I have already read. Recommend. ( )

The problem with the German Army in World War One, argues Dennis Showalter, is that it was an instrument of war and not for war.

It started with the insouciance of Prussian War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn. On July 5, 1914, he told Moltke the Younger (known as “Gloomy Julius” to the higher ranking members of the German General Staff) – after, of course assuring the Kaiser that the German Army would support the Austro-Hungary Empire’s ultimatum to Serbia -- that nothing would come of this war talk. The man who planned the railroad timetables clocking how the German Army would go to war, Wilhelm Gröner, took a July holiday.

It ended with Ludendorff’s spring 1918 offensives which had little more by way of specific objectives than punch a hole in Allied lines and see what happened.

Germany pursued war with a too casual appraisal of strategic ends. It concerned itself with the operational scale of war, not the strategic. Battles were to be won. And the next battle would be won and …

But this was the German Army, regarded as the best in the world. It was Germany’s pre-eminently competent institute. After all, it had wrapped up the 1866 war against Austria and the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 quickly and with few casualties. There was no “mythology of sacrifice and victimization” as came out of the Crimean War or the American Civil War.

Sure, there was an 1895 staff report stating an offensive against France would result in a limited advance and eventual tactical stalemate.

But duty called. There had to be a “next war”. Russia was getting stronger. France was an enemy. It was not pure paranoia that they thought themselves surrounded by enemies. German honor was at stake.

In the second through sixth chapters of the book, Showalter shows how that war played out, how the German Army evolved and failed, changed the Second Reich and planted seeds for later German policies in World War Two. Each of those chapters covers roughly a year of the war.

Two important areas covered.

First, the book counterpoints the impression of Allied futility and slaughter on the battlefield after the trenches were dug. Massive Allied casualties in stalled offensives on the Western Front seemed, to the German Army, a slowing raising sea lapping at the shore and forever taking ground. To them, the Somme looked like a near run thing and not futility. The opening artillery barrage of the offensive seemed, to German soldiers, like the end of the world. German lines almost ruptured. By September 1916, two months into the battle, the Germans were at the limits of endurance. “A necrology of the irreplaceable” dead began to fill German accounts. In November 1916, Allied officers noted the Germans now were not the Germans at the beginning of the battle.

They begin to question the competence of their nation and army.

The war dragged on for two more years, of course, because the Germans became masters of defense and innovated in other ways. In particular, they developed the portable MG 08/15 machine, a complicated defense system, stormtrooper tactics, and better airplanes. They did not, even though they got their hands on an Allied tank very quickly after its deployment, develop effective tanks. Why bother? It was an offensive weapon and, by 1917, Germany was planning defense.

In fact, argues Showalter, the German Army got in the habit of defense and was ultimately too used to it when it launched the Michael Offensive on March 21, 1918. It was not, argues Showalter, disrupted by starving German troops looting overrun Allied supplies. It was doomed by troops often years out of practice in offensive operations, a supply system that pushed supplies to the moving front on a pre-planned schedule and not on real-time demand, continued offensive operations killing experienced assault troops and requiring more men to hold area behind the line, and so many men down from the “Flanders flu” that Ludendorff complained it was his subordinates’ excuse for failure. The offensive even failed due to a lack of fresh horses because this was the one time on the Western Front horse cavalry might have been able to operate in the open and make a difference.

Tactically Michael was a stunning success. The line advanced 14 miles in a day – more than any other day in the war. Planning had started on it exactly one year before the war ended, November 11, 1917. The tactics were partially based on the stunning – perhaps the most perfectly realized German offense of the war – German victory at Riga September 1917. General Bruchmuller’s planning showed the way to new combined arms tactics.

But, arguably, the Germans should have stopped when they were ahead, consolidated their advances, went back on defense. Douglas Haig even entertained notions briefly of peace negotiations. But Showalter says Ludendorff’s offensives were not impressive in success but in “the limited nature of that success”. Allied counterattacks began on July 18th, and one German general marked the date as the turning point of the war.

The book’s second strength is showing the life and psychology of the German soldier. A member of a citizen army and serving in units from the same area, they bonded like families. The captain of the company was father and the first sergeant mother, and a joke went that a recruit’s expected reply out of what he wanted from the army was to be an orphan. It was less ideology or country that motivated them that living up to German idea of masculinity and gaining the respect of one’s peers.

Serving successfully as a soldier, enduring what had to be endured, accomplishing a mission, was a rite of passage for a German man.

They were not robots. Quite the opposite. Individual initiative was expected out of soldiers even at the beginning of the war and particularly after 1915 under the new German defensive doctrine of “resist, bend, and snap back”. German workers in factories carried out complicated tasks together with minimal supervision. They carried that teamwork and initiative and intelligence into battle. Showalter says that the war on the Western Front in 1917 has been called a factory of death,L but the German Army developed a “artisanal approach to modern war”.

Institutions of knowledge-sharing, practical experience gained in battle, were created. The German Army expected a lot of its men. Even during wartime, its number of commissioned officers was not increased.

Officers didn’t hand out the harsh punishments of armies from more democratic countries. Less than a 100 German soldiers were executed in the war. A certain amount of high spirit was expected in the troops. In fact, a soldier who hadn't spent a few days in the guard house or on punishment detail almost couldn’t call himself a real soldier.

Officers regarded it as their duty to look after their men even if the officers were aristocrats. They also thought never giving an order you knew would be disobeyed a good rule. The combination may have led to looting by German soldiers in the hot, humid, thirsty days of August 1914 when supply trains could not keep up with the rapid movement.

Showalter doesn’t ignore the bodies of the German soldier. He mentions how, in those hot days, the Germans marched to the Marne with their pants down – from dysentery. German soldiers suffering from diarrhea at Verdun had the same problem and had to venture out to the hellish zone of war to relieve themselves during breaks in the hellish shelling. The young German soldier, we are told, often away from home for the first time and with his peers, exhibited a peculiar Teutonic fixation on bodily functions. He was in a peculiar zone outside of the hierarchies of civilian life where he could prove himself.

In the later days of the war, tensions crept in. Old, experienced soldiers didn’t appreciate young officers. The 1916 census of Jews in the German Army, never officially released, created resentment by Jews – disproportionately represented in the Army – and non-Jews alike who regarded them as fellow participants in battle.

There was also the always present resentment, in war, of front line troops for those in the rear. And, since the German Army was, for the duration of the war, on occupied ground, a large number of troops were thus engaged. Almost a million troops were on the Eastern Front after Russia left the war.

Being on occupied ground also psychologically ground the troops down and made them paranoid. They also decorated the tombs of their fallen comrades – when they had them – more than the French or English troops did.

Showalter doesn’t talk much about the Eastern Front, though he wrote the acclaimed Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914, but he talks about the impression Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, made on the Germans. It wasn’t a favorable one. They regarded the conquered members of the East as dirty – they were by German standards – and ignorant. One Jewish soldier even remarked that if these Jews of Russia were his co-religionists, he thanked God he was German.

The German Army instituted delousing plans for the conquered East. Ludendorff, Hindenburg, and the Kaiser dreamed of colonizing its new lands. All these and the use of forced labor by civilians and POWs to build, in 1916 and 1917, the Siegfried Line, Showalter acknowledges, planted seeds for the Third Reich’s behavior.

There is much more including the effects of what was, basically, a Ludendorff and Hindenburg dictatorship which included mandatory work for all able-bodied German men. Militarism and the erosion of democracy may have been the result, notes Showalter, but no other leaders were available to lead the war and its required industrial production.

Not a book for the World War One newbie. Reading a good general history of the Great War is needed to put things in context though Showalter approaches things chronologically. Surprisingly, for an Osprey Publishing book, there are no maps. A few events post-armistice are very briefly covered.

There is an index and 23 pages of photos.

Definitely recommended for those with an interest in the Great War and a valuable redress to the Allied-centric histories in English. ( )

Book received from NetGalley.

I really loved this book. While I have read some books on World War I and have studied it a little in college classes I really don't know much about the soldiers and their training of the era. I learned quite a bit from this book and will definitely be buying a copy for my own shelves ( )