Civil-military relations have been a consistent theme of the history of the Weimar Republic. This study focuses on the career of General Walther Reinhardt, the last Prussian Minister of War and the First Head of the Army Command in the Weimar Republic. Though less well known than his great rival, Hans von Seeckt, Reinhardt's role in forming the young Reichswehr and his writings on warfare made him one of the most important and influential military figures in interwar Germany. Contrary to the conventional view that civil-military relations were fraught from the outset, the author argues, Reinhardt's contribution to the military politics of the Weimar Republic shows that opportunities for reform and co-operation with civilian leaders existed. However, although he is primarily seen as a liberal General, this study demonstrates that he was motivated by professional military considerations and by the specter of a future war. His ideas on modern warfare were amongst the most radical of the time.

This new addition to Brassey's History of Uniforms series covers the German Army at war from 1914-1918 and is the partner volume to the title World War One: British Army. The author analyses the uniforms, equipment, and weapons used by the German army on the Western Front. Many classic German items of equipment were created in this period and those innovations in equipment assisted their successes on the battlefield. Lavishly illustrated and includes not only details of service dress and regimental distinctions but also information on the Pickelhaube, steel helmet, personal equipment, and weapons.

German Americans were one of the largest immigrant groups in the Civil War era, and they comprised nearly 10 percent of all Union troops. Yet little attention has been paid to their daily lives--both on the battlefield and on the home front--during the war. This collection of letters, written by German immigrants to friends and family back home, provides a new angle to our understanding of the Civil War experience and challenges some long-held assumptions about the immigrant experience at this time. Originally published in Germany in 2002, this collection contains more than three hundred letters written by seventy-eight German immigrants--men and women, soldiers and civilians, from the North and South. Their missives tell of battles and boredom, privation and profiteering, motives for enlistment and desertion and for avoiding involvement altogether. Although written by people with a variety of backgrounds, these letters describe the conflict from a distinctly German standpoint, the editors argue, casting doubt on the claim that the Civil War was the great melting pot that eradicated ethnic antagonisms.

Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar discusses his recollections of the climatic battle for Berlin from within the Wehrmacht. “No cohesive, over-all plan for the defense of Berlin was ever actually prepared. All that existed was the stubborn determination of Hitler to defend the capital of the Reich. Circumstances were such that he gave no thought to defending the city until it was much too late for any kind of advance planning. Thus the city’s defense was characterized only by a mass of improvisations. These reveal a state of total confusion in which the pressure of the enemy, the organizational chaos on the German side, and the catastrophic shortage of human and material resources for the defense combined with disastrous effect. “The author describes these conditions in a clear, accurate report which I rate very highly. He goes beyond the more narrow concept of planning and offers the first German account of the defense of Berlin to be based upon thorough research. I attach great importance to this study from the standpoint of military history and concur with the military opinions expressed by the author.”-Foreword by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder.

In a book that is at once a major contribution to modern European history and a cautionary tale for today, Isabel V. Hull argues that the routines and practices of the Imperial German Army, unchecked by effective civilian institutions, increasingly sought the absolute destruction of its enemies as the only guarantee of the nation's security. So deeply embedded were the assumptions and procedures of this distinctively German military culture that the Army, in its drive to annihilate the enemy military, did not shrink from the utter destruction of civilian property and lives. Carried to its extreme, the logic of "military necessity" found real security only in extremities of destruction, in the "silence of the graveyard."Hull begins with a dramatic account, based on fresh archival work, of the German Army's slide from administrative murder to genocide in German Southwest Africa (1904–7). The author then moves back to 1870 and the war that inaugurated the Imperial era in German history, and analyzes the genesis and nature of this specifically German military culture and its operations in colonial warfare. In the First World War the routines perfected in the colonies were visited upon European populations. Hull focuses on one set of cases (Belgium and northern France) in which the transition to total destruction was checked (if barely) and on another (Armenia) in which "military necessity" caused Germany to accept its ally's genocidal policies even after these became militarily counterproductive. She then turns to the Endkampf (1918), the German General Staff's plan to achieve victory in the Great War even if the homeland were destroyed in the process—a seemingly insane campaign that completes the logic of this deeply institutionalized set of military routines and practices. Hull concludes by speculating on the role of this distinctive military culture in National Socialism's military and racial policies.Absolute Destruction has serious implications for the nature of warmaking in any modern power. At its heart is a warning about the blindness of bureaucratic routines, especially when those bureaucracies command the instruments of mass death.

This singular account of an estimated 216,000 Germans, mostly newly-arrived immigrants and about 300,000 Americans of German descent, who served in the American Civil War is an unprecedented event in the publication of material on U.S. military history. Written by a successful German immigrant, publishing entrepreneur and journalist, Wilhelm Kaufmann, 1847-1920, this book was originally published in 1911 by Munich Publisher R. Oldenbourg in the German Language only. In their Civil War Centennial book, Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography, published in 1967, the distinguished contributors, Allen Nevins, James I. Robertson, Jr., and Bell I. Wiley, wrote of Kaufmann's history: Finally, after two world wars and the consequent anti-German sentiment and the neglect that discouraged publication, a new Edition -- in English for the first time -- is now available. Scholars, general readers, genealogists and people who wish to explore their own German heritage will welcome this penetrating account -- now with enhanced features: readable type, larger maps (36 in all) designed for clarity; and now, most importantly, fully indexed for more effective reference use. Available in both a quality genuine clothbound as well as an economical paperback edition, this history deserves a place on your permanent library shelf. 392pp., 36 maps, bibliography, end notes, index.