ABSTRACT
‘Militarism’ is central to the common sense of German historiography. In Western popular consciousness the imagery of ‘Germanness’ exudes militarist associations. The social arrogance, reactionary narrow-mindedness and institutional power of the army in the state were the epitome of German backwardness. Inside Germany it there has been a similar tradition of thought, which ultimately derives from liberal, democratic and socialist critiques of the Prussian army in the second half of the nineteenth century. A military establishment of the size presupposed a bureaucratic organization capable of sustaining its efficiency and cohesion, and the Prussian army acquired such a structure in the reshaped General Staff under Moltke after 1857. ‘The militarisation of Prussian society since the eighteenth century had placed the military at the peak of the pyramid of prestige, so that military thinking, behaviour and norms became increasingly prevalent in civil society too’.
