The German Army and the Defence of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle, 1918-1939 (review)

The German Reichswehr—the army of the Weimar Republic—seems to be making a comeback in historiography. For decades after World War II, historians were mainly interested in the role it had played in the tortured politics of the day, that is, in the responsibility it bore for the collapse of German democracy and the rise of Adolf Hitler. The signposts along the way were Harold J. Gordon's The Reichswehr and the German Republic (Princeton, 1957) and F. L. Carsten's Reichswehr und Politik, 1918-1933 (Cologne, 1964). The two stood in opposition, with the former defending the Reichswehr against the charge of having subverted the Republic, and the latter accusing it of just that. Between them stood works by Gordon A. Craig, J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, Hans Meier-Welcker, Gaines Post, Jr., and Michael Geyer. After all sides in the political debate had had their say, the focus began to shift in the 1980s, at least in the United States, to the operational plane. Historians increasingly turned toward studying the Reichswehr as a military force, rather than as a political actor. The “army and republic” school gave way to the “rise of Blitzkrieg,” but in many ways the two approaches were talking past one another, and, for decades, little that was new appeared.

This appears to be changing, however, and we may be seeing a mini-revival of interest in the Reichswehr. Several years ago, William Mulligan published a fine monograph on General Walther Reinhardt and his role in creating the Reichswehr, a book that integrated both the operational and the political schools (The Creation of the Modern German Army: General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914-1930 [Oxford and New York, 2004]). Now, Bundeswehr soldier-scholar Matthias Strohn has attempted to do the same for the formulation of Reichswehr defensive doctrine in the period—though he is quick to point out that the German military tradition was always wary of the notion of “doctrine,” with its overtones of theological rigidity and legalism.

The result is a highly satisfying book, for the most part. Strohn is well versed in both the primary sources and the literature, and he moves smoothly through the pre-1914 thought of Helmuth von Moltke and Alfred von Schlieffen, the evolution of doctrine and practice in World War I, and the reassessment forced on Germany by the defeat of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles. During the Weimar era, the Reichswehr first passed through a period of denial under General Hans von Seeckt (who is treated much more roughly here than in previous literature). Pipe dreams of offensive warfare, especially invasions of upstart Poland, dominated military planning. The bankruptcy of that approach, proven during the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, led the army to adopt a much more realistic appraisal of its capabilities, and thus a much stronger emphasis on defensive fighting. Now the emphasis was placed on “national defense” (Landesschutz) and “delaying resistance” (hinhaltender Widerstand). With the transition to the Wehrmacht came a more balanced view of the relative merits of offensive and defensive fighting. As a result, the “Blitzkrieg” army that launched World War II was not only a weapon of attack, as most historians have assumed, but also had some formidable defensive skills. While none of this is particularly new or unfamiliar, Strohn's work is the first to lay exclusive stress on defensive fighting, and for that reason alone is a valuable contribution to the literature.

The approach is not without problems, however. While Strohn argues that the Germans emphasized defense as much as offense, the weight of historical evidence suggests otherwise. This is a nicely argumentative book, one that takes issue with the extant scholarship in both the footnotes and the main text. But Strohn must realize that he is arguing...