Iron and Blood

A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500
Peter Wilson looks to 500 years of history to contest rigid assumptions about German militarism. Historically German-speaking states have had complex—that is, typical—politics surrounding militarization, strategy, and civilian control. The belief in German military genius arose only in 1871 and was soon dashed by the two world wars.

“The scholarship of this book is breathtaking…No one interested in the history of Europe, and of the Germans in particular, can afford not to read this stupendous book.” —Simon Heffer, The Telegraph 

“[Iron and Blood’s] long view of Germany’s military history, magisterial detail and acute analysis provide a new understanding of what was once Europe’s warring heart.” —The Economist  

“Astonishingly ambitious and detailed…An absorbing overview of how slowly changing societal forces… have transformed the use of military force across modern times.” —Foreign Affairs

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. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. In fact, he finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting. 

Starting with the consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire, which was largely defensive in orientation, Iron and Blood shows that 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, which owed much of its strength to its ability to secure alliances. Prussia, meanwhile, invested in militarization but maintained a part-time army well into the nineteenth century. Both states, Wilson shows, 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.

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