From the author of the acclaimed The Thirty Years War and Heart of
Europe, a masterful, landmark reappraisal of German military history,
and of the preconceptions about German militarism since before the rise
of Prussia and the world wars.
German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to
the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism
and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges
this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across
the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in
German militarism or warfighting.
Iron and Blood takes as its starting point the consolidation of the
Holy Roman Empire, which created new mechanisms for raising troops but
also for resolving disputes diplomatically. Both the empire and the
Swiss Confederation were largely defensive in orientation, while German
participation in foreign wars was most often in partnership with allies.
The primary aggressor in Central Europe was not Prussia but the Austrian
Habsburg monarchy, yet Austria's strength owed much to its ability to
secure allies. Prussia, meanwhile, invested in militarization but
maintained a part-time army well into the nineteenth century. Alongside
Switzerland, which relied on traditional militia, both states exemplify
the longstanding civilian element within German military power.
Only after Prussia's unexpected victory over France in 1871 did Germans
and outsiders come to believe in a German gift for warfare--a special
capacity for high-speed, high-intensity combat that could overcome
numerical disadvantage. It took two world wars to expose the fallacy of
German military genius. Yet even today, Wilson argues, Germany's
strategic position is misunderstood. The country now seen as a bastion
of peace spends heavily on defense in comparison to its peers and is
deeply invested in less kinetic contemporary forms of coercive power.
