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German Command Decisions: The German General Staff and the Direction of the Marne Campaign, 1914

Posted By: hill0
German Command Decisions: The German General Staff and the Direction of the Marne Campaign, 1914

German Command Decisions: The German General Staff and the Direction of the Marne Campaign, 1914 by William C. Scanlan
English | 2017 | ASIN: B071GH8KZY | 512 Pages | AZW3 | 2.01 MB

Sir Winston Churchill wrote of this campaign: “No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.” This is the only known instance of Sir Winston understating a subject.

The campaign is commonly thought of as German Armies advancing, virtually unopposed after the defeats of the French in the "Battles of the Frontiers" until German Uhlan cavalry, after cresting the ridge line at Saint-Soupplets, could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

If it had gone that well, even up to that point, there would hardly be a story at all. As it turns out, the true saga that played itself out at the German Headquarters was more a Homeric tragedy; though not under the influence of the Olympian Gods but just as failingly under the Officers of the German General Staff. For their plan was overturned, largely by their own doing in a series of circumstances so remarkable as to leave one dumbfounded.

My book, German Command Decisions: The German General Staff and the Direction of the Marne Campaign, 1914 will, for the first time in English, treat that campaign from the perspective of the German General Staff.
Specifically, we will look over the shoulders of Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the German General Staff and his subordinates as they made sense of the sparse and conflicting trickle of information that arrived at their headquarters in Luxemburg. We will see how they weighed that information and formulated plans and courses of action for the direction of the German Armies to achieve the strategic objective of crushing the French Army in an as near Blitzkrieg-like campaign as the world had yet to see.