The roots of 20th-century German aggression

It is the contention of Peter Wilson, professor of the history of war at Oxford University and the author of an acclaimed history of the Thirty Years’ War, that military historians have focused too much on the German wars of the 20th century in trying to understand German ‘militarism’ as a distinctive characteristic – a ‘genius for war’ imitated by others. As he points out, Germany and Austria lost the first world war, and Germany, with Austria now attached, lost the second as well. A ‘genius for war’ evidently needs some rethinking.

Wilson wants to place these modern wars in perspective, stretching back to the 15th century. To understand how German lands (the small German states, Austria and Switzerland) reached their modern destinations entails studying the long journey from medieval Europe to the present. The book moves from the struggles of Reformation central Europe, through the Thirty Years’ War, the dynastic conflicts of the 18th century and revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare before reaching the age in which Habsburg Austria, with its large (non-German) empire, and Prussia became the dominant German polities.