Delbrück: The military historian

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age

Volumn , Issue , 2010, Pages 326-353

  Craig, Gordon A ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84890629335     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
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References (56)

1. See Hans Delbrück, "Etwas Kriegsgeschichtliches," īreussische Jahrbücher 60 (1887), 607.
2. See the essays on Clausewitz and Moltke, above.
3. Delbrück himself has written brief autobiographical sketches in Geschicbte der Krtegs-kunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschicbte (Berlin, 1900-20), i:vii f., and Krieg und Politik (Berlin, 1918-19), 3:225ff. See also J. Ziekursch in Deutsches biographtsches Jahr-buch (1929). An excellent account of Delbrück's life is given in Richard H. Bauer's article on Delbrück in Some Historians of Modern Europe , ed. Bernadotte Schmitt (Chicago, 1942), 100-27.
4. Hans Delbrück, Über die Glaubwürdigkeit Lamberts von Hersfeld (Bonn, 1873). See Richard H. Bauer in Some Historians of Modern Europe, ed. Schmitt, 101f.
5. On Rüstow, see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 30:34ff.; Marcel Herwegh, Guillaume Rüstow (Paris, 1935); and Georges Rapp, Viktor Hofer, and Rudolf Jaun, Der schweizerische Generalstab, 3 vols. (Basel, 1983), esp. vol. 3.
6. Hans Delbrück, Das Leben des Feldmarschalls Grafen Neidhardt von Gneisenau (Berlin, 1882.).
7. Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der polittschen Geschichte (Berlin, 1900). The work is in seven volumes but only the first four can be considered Delbrück's own. The fifth volume (1928) and the sixth (1932) were written by Emil Daniels; a seventh volume (1936) was written by Daniels and Otto Haintz. The first four volumes will be treated here. All citations will be made from the first edition. A second edition of the first two volumes appeared in 1908 and a third edition of the first volume in 1920. None of the changes in these later editions made essential differences in the original work. The first four volumes were also repeated in 1962-64 (Berlin).
8. See especially Annelise Thimme, Hans Delbrück als Kritiker der Wilhelminischen Epoche (Düsseldorf, 1955).
9. Andreas Hillgruber, "Hans Delbrück," in Deutsche Historiker, ed. Hans-Ulπch Wehler (Göttingen, 1972), 4:42.
10. Wilhelm Groener, "Delbru&udack und die Kriegswissenschaften," in Am Webstuhl der Zeit, eine Erinnerungsgabe Hans Delbrück dem Achtzigjährigen. . . dargebracht, ed. Emil Daniels and Paul Rühlmann (Berlin, 1928), 35.
11. Franz Mehring, "Eine Geschichte der Knegskunst," Die Neue Zeit (Ergänzungsheft, no. 4, October 1908), 2 , and Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 1 (Berlin, 1959). On the Soviet edition of the Geschichte der Kriegskunst , see Otto Haintz, introduction to the first four volumes of the 1962 edition of the Delbrück work, p. 6.
12. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, i:xi.
13. Delbrück used this last method in his first account of the Persian Wars, Die Perserkriege und die Burgunderkriege: Zwei kombimerte kriegsgescbichtliche Studien (Berlin, 1887).
14. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 1 :introduction.
15. Herodotus, 7:184-87.
16. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 1:10.
17. Hans Delbrück, Numbers in History: Two Lectures Delivered before the University of London (London, 1913), 24.
18. Herodotus, 6:109-16.
19. Geschicbte der Kriegskunst, 1:39.
20. Delbrück, Numbers in History, 18.
21. General Groener made explicit acknowledgment of Delbrück's contribution. See "Delbrück und die Kriegswissenschaften," 38.
22. Geschicbte der Kriegskunst, 1:7.
23. Groener, "Delbrück und die Kriegswissenschaften," 38. The oblique battle order, first used by the Theban Epaminondas, bears a striking resemblance to that used by Frederick the Great at Leuthen in 1757. On Epaminondas, see Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 1:130-35.
24. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 1:281-302. Graf Schlieffen, Cannae (Berlin, 1925), 3. See also the essays on Moltke, above.
25. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 2:80. Delbrück used the method not only for the battle of Marathon but also in his reconstruction of the battle of the Teutoburger Wald.
26. Delbrück's argument becomes weaker if one assumes that the Greeks would begin their charge only when they came within arrow range, but Herodotus says explicitly (6:115) that they "advanced at a run towards the enemy, not less than a mile away." Ulrich von Wilamowitz defended Herodotus by arguing that the goddess Artemis gave the Greeks sufficient strength to make the charge and criticized the kind of scholarship that underestimated the importance of divine, and other forms of, inspiration. He was supported by J. Kromayer, with whom Delbrück argued the point in the Historische Zeitschnft (95: iff., 514f.) and the Preussische ]ahrbücher (121:158f.).
27. Geschicbte der Kriegskunst, 1:41-59.
28. F. J. Schmidt, Konrad Molinski, and Siegfried Mette, Hans Delbrück: Der Historiker und Politiker (Berlin, 1928), 96. Eugen von Frauenholz, Entwicklungsgescbichte des deutschen Heerwesens (Munich, 1940), 2:vii.
29. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 2:43.
30. T. F. Tout in English Historical Review 22 (1907), 344-48.
31. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 3:483. For a penetrating criticism of Delbrück's discussion of medieval warfare, see Tout, cited in note 43.
32. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 3:661. See essay on Machiavelli, above.
33. See the essay on Frederick the Great, Guibert, and Biilow, above.
34. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 2,:424.
35. See the essay on Clausewitz, above.
36. Hans Delbrück, Die Strategie des Pertkles erläutert durch die Strategie Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin, 1890), 27-28. This work is Delbruck's most systematic exposition of the two forms of strategy.
37. Preussische Jahrbtucher, 115 (1904), 348f.
38. In the Strategie des Perikles, Delbrück wrote a parody that showed that the application of such criteria to Frederick's campaigns would prove him a third-rate general. For this Delbrück was accused in the Prussian Landtag of maligning a national hero.
39. A full account of the controversy, with bibliography, appears in Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 4:439-44. See also Friedrich von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus meinem Leben (Berlin, 1917), 126, 133, 143. The most thorough and judicious criticism of Delbrück's strategical theory is that of Otto Hintze, "Delbrück, Clausewitz und die Strategic Friedrichs des Grossen," Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte 33 (1920), 131-77. Hintze objects to the sharp distinction that Delbrück draws between the strategy of Frederick's age and that of Napoleon and insists that Frederick was at once a Nieder-werfung and an Ermattung- strategist. He also questions Delbrück's interpretation of Clausewitz's intentions, as does H. Rosinski in Flistorische Zeitschnft 151 (1938). See Delbrück's answer to Hintze, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte 33 (1920), 412-17.
40. Geschichte der Kriegskunst, 1:101f.
41. Strategie des Pertkles, ch. 1.
42. The articles that Delbrück wrote in the Preussische Jabrbücher are collected in the three-volume work called Krieg und Politik (Berlin, 1918-19). To the articles as they originally appeared Delbrück has added occasional explanatory notes and a highly interesting summary statement. The best article on Delbrück's war writings is that by General Ernst Buchfinck, "Delbrücks Lehre, das Heer und der Weltkrieg," in Am Webstuhl der Zeit , ed. Schmitt, 41-49. See also Martin Hobohm, "Delbrück, Clausewitz und die Kritik des Weltkneges," Preussische Jahrbücher , 181 (1920), 203-32.
43. Krieg und Politik, 1:35.
44. Delbrück's views on England's weakness as a military power were most dearly developed in an article in April 1916. See Krieg und Politik , 1:243ff.
45. Buchfinck, "Delbrücks Lehre, das Heer und der Weltkrieg," 48. Krieg und Politik , 1:90, 227ff., 261.
46. Krieg und Politik, 1:33.
47. The Peace Resolution, passed by the Reichstag by 212 votes to 126, stated in part: "The Reichstag strives for a peace of understanding and a lasting reconciliation among peoples. Violations of territory and political, economic and financial persecutions are incompatible with such a peace. The Reichstag rejects every scheme which has for its purpose the imposition of economic barriers or the perpetuation of national hatreds after the war. The freedom of the seas must be secured. Economic peace alone will prepare the ground for the friendly association of the peoples. The Reichstag will actively promote the creation of international organizations of justice. But so long as the enemy governments dissociate themselves from such a peace, so long as they threaten Germany and her allies with conquest and domination, then so long will the German people stand united and unshaken, and fight till their right and the right of their allies to live and grow is made secure. United thus, the German people is unconquerable."
48. Krieg und Politik, 2:187.
49. See R. H. Lutz, ed., Fall of the German Empire, Hoover War Library Publications, no. 1 (Stanford, Ca., 1932), 307.
50. Delbrück's testimony is reproduced completely in Das Werk des Untersuchungsaus-schusses der Deutschen Verfassunggebenden Nationalversammlung und des Deutschen Reichstages 1919-1926. Die Ursachen des Deutschen Zusammenbruches im ]ahre 1918 (Vierte Reihe im Werk des Untersuchungsausschusses), (Berlin, 1920-29), 3:239-73. Selections from the Commission's report, but only a very small portion of the Delbrück testimony, may be found in The Causes of the German Collapse in 1918, ed. R. H. Lutz, Hoover War Library Publications, no. 4 (Stanford, 1934).
51. Die Ursachen des Deutschen Zusammenbruches, 3:345. Lutz, ed., Causes of the German Collapse , 90.
52. Die Ursachen des Deutschen Zusammenbruches, 3:246.
53. Charles Oman, On the Writing of History (New York, n.d.), 159.
54. Haintz, introduction to the 1962 edition of Geschicbte der Kriegskunst, 9.
55. Delbrück, "Etwas Kriegsgeschichtliches," 610.
56. Hans Delbrück, Weltgeschichte (Berlin, 1924-28), 1:321.