The German Genius

the railways added the dimension of greater mobility to war, marking another radical transformation. The rise of imperialism and colonial expansion later in the nineteenth century contributed a further twist, not least in the way the campaigns and victories in far-off lands helped glorify military values. These factors affected all nations.
    That said, there were a number of elements special to Germany that caused people to identify “Prussian militarism” as something set apart. There was, for example, what has been called a “military revolution” in the 1860s. 2 This was a unique short-service system, insisted upon by King Wilhelm I against Liberal opposition. It ensured three years’ obligatory service in the regular army and another four in the reserve, meaning Prussia had a far larger front-line army relative to its size than any other European power.
    A second factor was the Prussian General Staff. This, according to Paul Kennedy, “rose from obscurity in the early 1860s to be ‘the brains of the army’ under the elder [Helmuth von] Moltke’s genius.” Before this date there had been no general staff beyond the quartermaster, other staff officers being recruited for specific campaigns, often not far in advance. Moltke now chose the best of the products of the War Academy and taught them to prepare for possible future conflicts, updating their plans as a result of the study of history, war games, and maneuvers. “A special department was created to supervise the Prussian railway system and make sure that troops and supplies could be speeded to their destinations.” 3 Above all, the officers were taught Clausewitz’s doctrine of the decisive battle, and to be prepared to bring large bodies of men to converge on the crucial location, using their own initiative if communications were disrupted. This combination of factors gave the Prussians decisive—and relatively swift—victories in 1866 and 1870 where, in the latter case, within a fortnight of the declaration of war, three armies (300,000+ men) were sent to the Saarland and Alsace.
    It was this system that, under Bismarck’s leadership, would come to dominate Europe, what Nicholas Stargardt calls “the new militarism,” shifting the European center of gravity to Berlin. 4 It was underpinned by the fact that, from the 1860s on, when the new Prussian military system took hold, the trend to industrialization intensified, a matter that cannot be ignored. How quickly the balance shifted among the Great Powers is shown most vividly in the statistics:
     
     
    T OTAL P OPULATION OF THE G REAT W ESTERN P OWERS (MILLIONS)
     
    Russia
    1890: 116.8
    1913: 175.1
    % CHANGE : 149.9
     
    United States
    1890: 62.6
    1913: 97.3
    % CHANGE : 155.4
     
    Britain
    1890: 37.4
    1913: 44.4
    % CHANGE : 118.7
     
    France
    1890: 38.3
    1913: 39.7
    % CHANGE : 103.6
     
    Germany
    1890: 49.2
    1913: 66.9
    % CHANGE : 135.9
     
    Austria-Hungary
    1890: 42.6
    1913: 52.1
    % CHANGE : 122.3
     
    P ER C APITA L EVELS OF I NDUSTRIALIZATION
     
    Russia
    1880: 10
    1913: 20
    % CHANGE : 200
     
    United States
    1880: 38
    1913: 126
    % CHANGE : 332
     
    Britain *
    1880: 87
    1913: 115
    % CHANGE : 132
     
    France
    1880: 28
    1913: 59
    % CHANGE : 211
     
    Germany
    1880: 25
    1913: 85
    % CHANGE : 340
     
    Austria-Hungary
    1880: 15
    1913: 32
    % CHANGE : 213
     
    R ELATIVE S HARE OF W ORLD M ANUFACTURING O UTPUT
     
    Russia
    1880: 7.6
    1913: 8.2
    % CHANGE : 8.0
     
    United States
    1880: 14.7
    1913: 32.0
    % CHANGE : 18
     
    Britain
    1880: 22.9
    1913: 13.6
    % CHANGE :–41
     
    France
    1880: 7.8
    1913: 6.1
    % CHANGE :–28
     
    Germany
    1880: 8.5
    1913: 14.8
    % CHANGE : 74
     
    Austria-Hungary
    1880: 4.4
    1913: 4.4
    % CHANGE : 0.0 5
     
    These figures are not, of course, in themselves evidence for militarism, but taken together they do underline Germany’s material progress, both a symptom and a cause of greater nationalistic feeling, and they are in any case paralleled by changes in military capabilities:
     
    M ILITARY AND N AVAL P ERSONNEL OF THE P OWERS
     
    Russia
    1880: 791,000
    1914: 1,352,000
    % CHANGE : 171
     
    United States
    1880: 34,000
    1914: 164,000
    % CHANGE : 482
     
    Britain
    1880: 367,000
    1914: 532,000
    % CHANGE : 145
     
    France
    1880: 543,000
    1914: 910,000
    % CHANGE : 168
     
    Germany
    1880: 426,000
    1914: 891,000
    % CHANGE : 209
     
    Austria-Hungary
    1880: 216,000
    1914: 444,000
    % CHANGE : 206
     
    W ARSHIP T ONNAGE
     
    Russia
    1880: 200,000
    1914: 679,000
    % CHANGE :