Reddit reviews The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty That Armed Germany at War

"We were all blind. The Russo-Japanese War represented an opportunity for us to learn about the tactical consequences of the new weapons and combat conditions. Instead we believed that the trench warfare that was characteristic of this war was due to logistical problems and the national traditions of the belligerents.... The force of the defensive is unbelievable!"

-- General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff in the first two years of the war, successor to Moltke.

Source: Quoted from Holger Afflerbach, "Planning Total War? Falkenhayn and the Battle of Verdun, 1916"

Chickering and Forster, "Great War, Total War"

Also, in terms of general critique of Falkenhayn's strategic and tactical outlook, B.H. Liddel Hart, Reputations: 10 years after (1928)


Now, armies, and even officer corps are very diverse things, intellectually. You can find individuals who appear in retrospect to be prophetic given any possible outcome. However, to say that the German strategic high command was a) monolithic and b) generally were aware of and implemented the strategic lessons of the Boer and the Russo-Japanese war as an institution would be to misinterpret history. As the Falkenhayn quote illustrates, the chief of the General Staff was taken completely by surprise by the way the new strategies turned out. Maybe not everyone was wrong, but certainly the general bureaucratic culture was wrong about how wars were fought. As I said before, I don't know much about how the tech adoption process worked - it would not surprise me to find that the General Staff decided to prioritize particular technologies based on their assessment of the R-J war or the Boer war (really the Boer war influenced the Germans far more deeply as they were basically covertly supplying the Boers- and they were doing so against the premier military superpower of the day), but in any case the larger strategic lessons from those wars were explained away, although they were remarked on and debated.


Really, your points about the use of really large artillery weren't formulated by the Germans as a result of the Russo-Japanese war. They were formulated by their experience of the Franco-Prussian conflict in 1870, when the decisive breaking of the French armies was almost entirely due to the revolutionary effect that Krupp cannon had on the battlefield. I can highly recommend Manchester's The Arms of Krupp for a fascinating in depth look at how high-tech cast-steelmaking revolutionized the thinking of both peace and war during this era. Manchester makes a pretty strong case that the rise of the Ruhr steel barons, and of Krupp as first among equals, is realy the history of modern Germany.


I've been thinking about this particular subject lately after reading Jack Beatty's The Lost History of 1914 wherein he defends his thesis that WWI was not in fact inevitable. He has a lot of interesting things to say, but I find his central thesis very weak. Still, it's a great book and supplies a lot of really fascinating history on the domestic long-standing crises in many of the beligerent powers that were coming to a head in the years immediately prior to the war. (The section on how Britain nearly had a civil war over Irish home rule in 1914 is really engrossing).

In answer to your second question, I would urge you to look into the Krupp dynasty, an incredibly influential industrial family of Northwest Germany that proved instrumental in arming the Kaiser's forces, laying down railroad tracks and reviving the conservative movement in the Weimar era. Though they began in the late 16th century, it wasn't until the early 19th century that their power really began to explode in the industrial revolution, arguably the most influential industrial family in Germany beginning in 1800. By the dawn of the 20th century, their company Friedrich Krupp A.G. was the largest company in Europe.

Following WWII their family was disgraced as it was so strongly associated with the most negative elements of the Third Reich and the familial dynasty itself separated from the company altogether. Today, their company is known as Thyssenkrupp after Thyssen and Krupp merged.

Thyssenkrupp has a history section on their website:
http://www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/konzern/geschichte.html

Here is the definitive biography of the family's history and their very intimate involvement in the ideological, political and industrial development of German expansionism and militaristic might:
http://www.amazon.com/Arms-Krupp-Industrial-Dynasty-Germany/dp/0316529400

Not quite as bad, Germans were making "tractors" with cannons and French and British arms inspectors gave it a pass. See http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316529400

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> IG Farben

you might appreciateArms of Krupp.