German Corps and Army Commanders of 1914. A Prosopographical Study

Abstract

In 1914, the German Army was widely considered the world’s most powerful and professional armed force. Its plan of operations for the opening stages of the war was breath-taking in its scale and ambition, though perhaps doomed to failure for precisely those reasons. Much has been written about Moltke and the ‘demi-gods’ of the General Staff, yet almost nothing has been published about the officers who led that vast force into battle: the army and corps commanders. Just one of these fifty-one generals have been the subject of a biography in English. This is in stark contrast to, for example, the British Expeditionary Force. Drawing on the statistical techniques developed by Daniel Hughes in his analysis of Prussian generals from 1871 to 1914, The King’s Finest, this article presents a collective examination of the backgrounds and careers of those commanders, bringing out how they varied from the traditional stereotypes.