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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed but Useful Study, September 30, 2007
Hull writes a flawed, but interesting, study about the relationship between the ideological underpinnings of the Imperial Germany Army and Germany's military failures since the Franco-Prussian War. Hull main point is that the Prussian (and then Imperial German Army's, Gr. Reichswehr's) overwhelming bias toward operational effectiveness both created, and was created by, a view of warfare so dedicated to the dstruction of enemy forces that it was blind to the political and strategic dimensions of war. As a result, Hull claims, German logistics were problematical, German Military Occupation was disastrous, German strategy was neglected, and German policy was virtually non-existent. Put more broadly, she believes that the German Army was so focused on winning battles and campaigns that it did not have the foggiest idea of how to win (or emerge favorably from) a larger war.
Hull also aims at some bigger points, which she only touches on indirectly. First, her analysis would imply that Germany's conduct of World War II was largely a continuation and (great) amplification of its conduct in World War I and in Africa. Many prominent Nazis -- Hitler, Roehm, and many others come to mind -- were front line soldiers in World War I and had absorbed that military culture. Second, and related, the Imperial German State in general had so completely absorbed and deified that military culture that the German government shared the same failings as the German military.
There is much in what Hull says. But there are also several significant faults in her analysis. First, she dislikes the German Army, despite attempts to remain objective, and thus sometimes makes it look less effective than it was. For example, she claims that German and French losses at Verdun were about equal, something few others would support. Second, she is sometimes ambivalent, if not contradictory. For example, she condemns the German High Command for failing to acknowledge when it was beaten, as for example when the United States entered the war. Yet she condemns its 1918 offensive strategy as reckless gambling, claiming that Germany could have held out far longer if it had adopted a more defensive strategy. Now Hull is probably right -- once the United States entered the war, Germany was probably doomed. But if this is true, Ludendorff and Hindenburg would seem to have done Germany a favor by ending the agony in one year rather than three or four through their adoption of an all-or-nothing strategy.
Actually, Germany came fairly close to a favorable result in World War I, even if it could not have "won" outright. If it had continued to negotiate in good faith, eschued unrestricted submarine warfare, and maintained a relatively defensive posture in the West, Russia would have collapsed and there would have been a real chance at an acceptable peace. Of course, as Hull's own analysis suggests (it would have been helpful if she had been more explicit here, but her fixation on Germany's weaknesses prevents her from doing so), Germany was incapable of formulating such a policy. She was commited to absolute victory and her civilian government was too fragmented and too military-minded to carry out a flexible political strategy. For this inflexibility, Hull rightly claims, Germany military culture was greatly to blame.
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34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy Reading, May 6, 2007
This is a study of institutional extremism. It examines the German conduct of war from 1870 through 1918 (from the author's introduction). Part I of the book begins with the suppression of Native revolts in German Southwest Africa in 1904-1907. Part II speaks to Military Culture and the lessons of 1871 and Part III covers WW I.
The author uses an extensive amount of primary resources to present a very compelling case, yet, also draws unsubstantiated conclusions from incomplete records and entries. Despite the attempt to remain objective, there is a readily detectable tone of bias.
As a military analyst and instructor I felt the book was useful as a tool for comparing the lessons of the German experience with the US Military experience over the last 10 years. For instance: is the US Military only capable of thinking in Military terms? In light of Joint and Combined Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, has the US Military morphed into a "polycratic" institution? Does the Diplomat stand with the soldier? Is there a set of mutually reinforcing values and characteristics that inhibit decision making?
Regardless if these lessons are German, Indian or American, the questions for any Military are the same, are essential and must be asked.
All in all, a good book that is a little heavy to read with some very compelling evidence, yet, also some bias and speculation in presentation.
Dr. Terry Tucker
Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Decent Read with an Interesting Perspective, December 8, 2011
Isabel Hull, in her tome Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, analyzes German military culture and policy from the German Wars of Unification (1866-1871) to the final year of the Great War (1918). She contends that an isolated German military culture emerged as the chief directorate of German foreign policy (Weltpolitik). The German state and society, forged in war, came to adulate the military apparatus as a conveyer of strength and patriotism in Europe during the late 19th century. Fin-de-siècle Europe found itself immersed in social Darwinist ideology as well as global imperial competition and militarism. However, as Hull makes clear, Germany was different. Germany came to be dominated by its military institution rather than civilian institutions. It is also important to note that the German military was not ideologically driven (as it was during the era of the Third Reich). Rather, Germany was driven by a military culture that internalized "habitual practices, default programs, hidden assumptions, and unreflected [sic] cognitive frames" that created illogical and irrational war aims and practices (2). Moreover, the military was, itself, isolated from criticism due to the Bismarck constitution, which restricted the Reichstag's ability to control the military, the creation of a powerful Kaiser, and an accommodating public (militarist and "patriotic" pressure groups) and press. The German military, thus, became entrapped in its own "solipsistic" groupthink, approving of its own policies (including the complete "annihilation" of the enemy as the only form of victory), which eventually led to the Kaiserreich's demise by 1918.
Hull uses the German colony in Southwest Africa (SWA) during the early 1900's as an example of brutal tactics utilized by the German war machine. The General Staff was given nearly complete control of orchestrating policy in SWA by the Kaiser. The "Wilhelminian government was not integrated under civilian leadership" (12). Rather, Kaiser Wilhelm II had the authority to appoint the apparatus of his choosing to implement policy in the colony. Because the Herero revolt was considered one of "national security," Wilhelm chose the General Staff. Moreover, the constitution allowed for the Kaiser to fund the army without Reichstag approval. Thus, the colony fell under the auspices of German military doctrine rather than civilian doctrine. Military patrols lacked government oversight, leaving generals and subordinate commanders in charge of implementing policy on the ground. Courts-martial and the arbitrary shooting of civilians suspected of practicing guerrilla warfare ("francs-tireurs") were, therefore, carried out by the military apparatus. Because the military identified "the entire people" in SWA as enemy combatants, all were susceptible to execution. Executions were "not random atrocities but accepted methods of warfare" preached in German military doctrine (20). This brutal approach regarding civilians was implemented previously during the Franco-Prussian War, "the first German 'national' war," which generated and "galvanized" German military doctrine and later in Belgium and France during WWI (110). Because this policy of annihilation seemed to "work" in SWA, the military leadership convinced itself that it was indeed the correct tactic for military victory.
How did a policy of killing civilians in warfare become part of German military doctrine? Hull utilizes a sociological approach, arguing that such a policy became protocol as a result of "trauma-learning" from the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. The Franco-Prussian War was, in a sense, Germany's war of revolution. The autonomy of a future unified German state "hung in the balance" (117). Because the French did not surrender after the massive battle of Sedan, in which the enemy was "annihilated," a core precept of German-Clauswitzian military doctrine, the General Staff could not see how to clearly end the war. Civilians, Hull contends, became the enemy because many committed to guerrilla warfare. The General Staff came to the conclusion, out of irrational fear, that annihilating civilian populations was a fundamental condition for victory. Thus, despite international prohibitions against killing civilians, the German army trained its burgeoning officer corps to essentially disregard such regulations. Hull compares this policy to the British policy in South Africa during the Boer War in which the British Army, constrained by a powerful Parliament and press, was kept from committing such atrocities against civilians through civilian oversight.
The General Staff's policy of annihilation led it to create irrational and impractical military strategies such as the Schlieffen Plan, which eventually led to disastrous results for the German war machine in the first two years of the Great War. The German military entered WWI with no real goals other than the total annihilation of the enemy, which consisted of countries with much larger armies and populations (Russia, France and, later, Britain). By 1917, WWI had become a war of attrition, for which the German military had no supplies or manpower. A nation forged in war was destroyed by war.
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