ABSTRACT

A serious omission from the discussions has been the idea of 'social militarization'. The term 'social militarization' was coined by Otto Busch in his 1953 doctoral thesis to describe the process by which army and society became interrelated in eighteenth-century Prussia. Busch's concept also struck a chord with historians elsewhere, who produced work similar to, or incorporating, the social militarization thesis. Many historians point to a three-fold militarization of state and society. A great deal of the opposition to military reform in late-eighteenth-century Prussia stemmed not from a conscious desire within a declining elite to cling to power, but from the simple conviction that change was unnecessary and the existing military system did not require modification. An established part of the historical mainstream, social militarization is only just coming under critical review from a new generation of scholars in the reunified Germany.