@article{1476798,
      recid = {1476798},
      author = {Wilson, Peter H., },
      title = {Iron and Blood : A Military History of the German-Speaking  Peoples since 1500 /},
      pages = {1 online resource (816 p.)},
      abstract = {From the author of the acclaimed The Thirty Years War and  Heart of Europe, a masterful, landmark reappraisal of  German military history, and of the preconceptions about  German militarism since before the rise of Prussia and the  world wars.German military history is typically viewed as  an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two  world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a  specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges  this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking  Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little  unique or preordained in German militarism or  warfighting.Iron and Blood takes as its starting point the  consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire, which created new  mechanisms for raising troops but also for resolving  disputes diplomatically. Both the empire and the Swiss  Confederation were largely defensive in orientation, while  German participation in foreign wars was most often in  partnership with allies. The primary aggressor in Central  Europe was not Prussia but the Austrian Habsburg monarchy,  yet Austria's strength owed much to its ability to secure  allies. Prussia, meanwhile, invested in militarization but  maintained a part-time army well into the nineteenth  century. Alongside Switzerland, which relied on traditional  militia, both states exemplify the longstanding civilian  element within German military power.Only after Prussia's  unexpected victory over France in 1871 did Germans and  outsiders come to believe in a German gift for warfare-a  special capacity for high-speed, high-intensity combat that  could overcome numerical disadvantage. It took two world  wars to expose the fallacy of German military genius. Yet  even today, Wilson argues, Germany's strategic position is  misunderstood. The country now seen as a bastion of peace  spends heavily on defense in comparison to its peers and is  deeply invested in less kinetic contemporary forms of  coercive power.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1476798},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674292840},
}