Thorough look at war machine

Imperial German Army 1914-18: Organisation, Structure, Orders-of-Battle
By Hermann Cron. Helion & Company (distributed by Crusader Books). 414pp. $115.50
Reviewer: AIRCDRE Mark Lax

To understand the Great War, you need to understand how the German war machine was structured and operated.

As the sub-title suggests, this book covers the German Army as it was from the beginning of the Great War and what it developed into by war’s end. It is wholly a reference book, with highly detailed and well-researched listings of orders of battle, histories of the individual service arms and explanations of the Imperial General Staff’s span of command and control.

For those who have an interest in this period, this volume will become an essential text for their library.

In accordance with Article 63 of the Constitution of the German Reich of April 16, 1871, the entire land forces of the Reich formed one army.

This directive was later applied to aerial forces, which sprang out of the Wright Brother’s startling invention, a tool quickly adopted by the military.

Despite the directive to amalgamate, Prussian, Bavarian and Saxon Corps all formed independently and coexisted as active elements throughout the conflict, although officially, in both war and peace, the army was under the unified command of the Kaiser.

Despite the volumes written about WWI, few, if any, texts exist which cover the scope of this volume. The author has spent countless days scanning the files of the German Army Research Institute and other sources to uncover the full extent of the German Army’s immense organisation.

The German’s invented the staff system and this compendium explores it to the greatest extent. There are illustrations or index. Six appendices and a bibliography complement the volume and I recommend it for serious students of the German war machine in WWI.