“The book will attempt to set forth in an intelligible form, according to my knowledge at the time of their occurrence, those operative ideas by which the best of us were guided in battle and victory during the two years of the war when I was at the head of the general staff. My statements do not afford any history of the war in the ordinary sense of the word. They touch upon the events of the war, and other occurrences connected with the latter, only in so far as is necessary to justify the decisions of the general staff.” (Preface) Contents: The change of chief of the general staff; The general military situation in the middle of September, 1914: The battles of the Yser and around Lodz; The period from the beginning of trench warfare in November-December, 1914, until the recommencement of the war of movement in 1915; The break-through at Gorlice-Tarnow and its consequences; Operations against Russia in the summer and autumn of 1915; Beginning of the unrestricted submarine campaign; Attempts to break through in the west in the autumn of 1915, and the campaign against Serbia; The situation at the end of 1915; The campaign of 1916; Comparative review of the relative strength of forces (Appendix); Maps.
“The work itself is a memoir, rather than a history. It makes no references to authorities, and furnishes little in the form of documents, but it bears evidence of more careful preparation than is usual with memoirs and of being based on authentic records or accurate first-hand knowledge.” J: Bigelow
+ − Am Hist R 25:500 Ap ’20 750w Booklist 16:307 Je ’20
Reviewed by W. C. Abbott
Bookm 51:286 My ’20 2800w Lit D p123 Ap 17 ’20 1400w
“Both as a personal apologia and as a revealing of inside German military history this volume is a worthy companion to Ludendorff’s book—indeed, it is better; it is less clumsy and tart, its language is clearer and terser.”
+ Outlook 125:541 Jl 21 ’20 240w
“With one exception, his book is a candid and apparently straightforward statement of the problems he was called upon to solve, and as such it will always be valuable to the special student, but not to the general public: it proves nothing.”
+ − Review 3:533 D 1 ’20 2100w