Customer Reviews

Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany

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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.

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

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.

In this fascinating look at military culture in Imperial Germany, Isabel Hull has broken down the topic into three major categories: the development of the military culture, the definition of military culture in Germany, and how the military culture played out in the Great War during the period 1914-1918.

In her opening section, Hull explains how the colonial wars of the early 20th century, where the Germans were attempting to suppress internal rebellions, became the precursor of an organizational culture that moved beyond suppression and into utilizing the mindset of total annihilation. Hull has largely examined the Herero (in Southwest Africa) as her case study, and the commanders of the German forces dispatched to quell the uprising. By examining military manuals and private papers of the military leadership, Hull demonstrates, quite convincingly, that the development of this strategy of utter destruction began during these wars.

Hull then proceeds to explain how the military culture fit into the German military - almost like any organizational culture would pervade into a company. Further examination of diaries, letters, and other military papers explain how this strategy became the widely accepted tactic of German warfare. She explains how this concept differed from that of Britain's use of force to suppress rebels during the Boer War in an effort to explain that the pervasiveness of this thought process really only permeated the German psyche and not other European nations.

Finally, the author explores how this strategy played out during the First World War (the "Great War"). By evaluating everything from the execution of the Schlieffen plan to the use of civilians as hostages, Hull offers the reader a carefully constructed argument that this war was fought using the tactics developed over the last several decades, though that led to Germany's defeat since the German commanders were unable to accept losses in battles and simply pushed on instead.

Overall, this is a very well written book, and one that is a good addition to the historiography of the Great War; we can now better understand why the German troops acted as they did on the battlefield, and how this war paved the way for the National Socialist ideology that would creep into German society and cause another, greater, war only two decades later.

Robert Kaplan in his book "Imperial Grunts," wants the military to assume a greater role in decision making and have no constraints imposed by civilians. Isabel Hull exposes the flaw of this approach in her book. Accroding to Hull, German soldiers committed numoerous atrocities from the Herro uprising to the First World War due to belief in absolute victory and the absence of civilian supervision. This was seen in the destruction of the Herro tribe in which the Germans delibrately starved the tribe to death, and the complaints by the civilian governors were ignored by the German government. The German government imposed no controls on the military because the conservative political parties supported the army and the SPD did not want to appear as though they were not supporting the troops. The German army continued these same practices during the First World War through the massacre of Belgian civilians, and the expulsion of French civilians. Also the German army encouraged the Turks in their genocide against the Armenians. These measures only tarnished Germany's reputation and were militarily counterproductive. I would strongly reccomend this book to people like Robert Kaplan, who wants the military to run wild in foreign adventures.

This book is so full of the authors bias that it is difficult to pick out any useful information. I was left throughout thinking that there were crucial facts missing and that the author picked and chose only those nuggets that would fit the thesis. Could have been an outstanding study, instead it just highlights the stereotypical view of the "evil" German.

This is another piece of lowbrow anti-German propaganda dressed as historiography.

The book is a mess of primary, yet selective and biased historical research, simplistic psycho-babble, ridiculous sociological-anthropological speculation, pathetic organization behavioural theorising and last but not least, absolutely third rate military history. The author is hell bent on proving that there is a German Sonderweg from the founding of the Second Reich to Hitler, that the vaunted German Army is nothing but foolish automatons predisposed to atrocities and mindless offensives.

All in all, cheap trash billed as history.