The German General Staff: It's History and Structure 1657-1945

Hardcover Cloth 508 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Good. Presumed First edition 1953. Worn grey boards and black embossing on this Clean, tight copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Previous owner's signature stamped on front endsheet. Shelf wear, stains to spine. Topstain faded. Edges have the usual yellowing. Pages are lightly toned with minor signs of wear and/or age. An unclipped dust jacket is fragile with age with the usual shelf wear - a few tears, stains, wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

This comprehensive history traces the Prussian and later German General Staff from its earliest beginnings in the Thirty Years' War to the German unconditional surrender in 1945. During the first decades of its existence, the Staff was led by idealists with constructive political conceptions. The emergence later of anonymous technicians, whose political convictions were either nonexistent or based on ambition, only aggravated a militaristic national temperament.

Hitler's hostility caused many Staff members to be torn between their ethical responsibilities & the traditional military obedience dictated by their oath of office. In the end, Hitler succeeded in destroying the German General Staff, perhaps because it had become composed of so many different political and intellectual strains. Based on research & interviews with military staff who survived WWII.