Germany and the Next War

by Friedrich von Bernhardi, Allen H. Powles (Translator)

Germany's General von Bernhardi explains (in 1911), from the German viewpoint, the inevitability of war between Germany and England. He discusses "the goals to be aimed at, the difficulties to be surmounted, and the sacrifices to be made" resulting in the political crises in Germany. To counter Bernhardi's "facts", Arthur Conan Doyle undertook England's answer in his Great Britain and the Next War.

Genres: History, World War I, War, Germany, Nonfiction, 20th Century

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Prussian general and military historian. He was a best-selling author prior to World War I.

A militarist, he is perhaps best known for his bellicose book Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg (Germany and the Next War), printed in 1911.

He advocated a policy of ruthless aggression and of complete disregard of treaties and regarded war as a "divine business".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

We are accustomed to regard war as a curse and refuse to recognize it as the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power... 

There are two sections to this book. One of them is about political philosophy and the other is a manual of contemporary military strategy and preparation. He lost my focus on the latter chapters, dated as they were, but the former I found fascinating and abhorrent at the same time.

Let's keep in mind the cliché about the paving the paths leading to Hell. Bernadhi's collectivist and paternalistic views of the state are heterodox at worst. He speaks of the state as not existing for the sake of protecting abstract rights but to take a positive effort in improving its citizens. He emphasizes the importance of education and refers to intellectual hygiene. Yet he also takes the Hegelian view that the state is itself the highest conception in the wider community of man, but its a nationalist view.

He views a world state as absurd though I was never able to figure out whether he means this from a practical or a theoretical point of view. International bodies such as the Hague are mocked as idealistic and toothless, which needless to say are legitimate criticisms. the state is so far exalted to the point of being revolting. He accepts the Machiavellian dictum that the state is allowed to carry out actions that would be considered immoral for the individual, including wars of conquest. If the state is man's highest conception, then to what should it sacrifice its interests to. Everything must be done in reference to its aggrandizement and self preservation. The candid admission that wars of conquest are allowed is very bold and very rare as Bernardhi notes that even Bismarck disguised his wars of conquest as reluctant necessities.

Frederick the Great's acquisition of Silesia, which let's remember had a legal pretext of course, is brought up as an example of a situation where war brought about more benefits than legal maneuvers: international prestige, strengthened sovereignty, projection of power, and the example of a heroic and successful leader to imitate, but it is not mentioned that the Silesian Wars were not endless successes, and that they brought Frederick to the brink of suicide, saved by the timely death of Russian Empress Elizabeth, perhaps such gambles could inspire a future leader with a little less luck to bring the nation to destruction in a failed war of conquest, but one never knows.

Bernardhi plans for the next war, and while this was the most tedious part of the book there were some interesting moments. An invasion of Belgium is alluded to, with its neutrality discarded, but not as a scrap of paper, but as perhaps entirely illegitimate. How can Belgium be neutral with it's enormous colonial holdings in Africa. Doesn't neutrality imply renouncing involvement in world affairs? He actually says this.

This book is so thoroughly German. I can't remember a single non German thinker cited here.

Two great movements were born from the German intellectual life, on which, henceforth, all the intellectual and moral progress of man must rest: the Reformation and the critical [Idealist] philosophy. The Reformation, which broke the intellectual yoke, imposed by the Church, which checked all free progress; and the Critique of Pure Reason, which put a stop to the caprice of philosophic speculation by defining for the human mind the limitations of its capacity for knowledge.

I'm going to disagree with both of these, both were a triumph for subjectivism however, and the former for nationalism. It is war that Berardhi regards as the fountain of German and thus human progress, but how many of Germany's achievements in science, industry, art, philosophy, or literature, were really due to the conquests of Frederick the Great and Bismarck? How many brilliant minds have also been lost in the battlefields?

I'm not a pacifist, and a triumphant war waged for a just cause may very well catapult a nation on to greater things, but it is certainly a situation that is forced upon a nation. Viewing conquest as a duty, world domination as a goal, and constantly seeking out wars will thoroughly destroy a nation as much as any period of decadence. The best repudiation of this book is history itself. Less than a lifetime after this book was published, where is Prussia? Where is Hohenzollern Germany?

wer das Schwert nimmt, der soll durchs Schwert umkommen

[Bill Spurlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work is most famous for its apotheosis of war: "War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization.", but polemic aside I found it most useful as an indication of how the German General Staff viewed the modernization of the armed forces in the run-up to the first World War, and how wrong Bernhardi was in, e. g., his detailed recommendations for the expansion and improvement of the cavalry arm. But who can predict the future? Certainly not I, even when that future is as close as WW1 was to Bernhardi. But as the post WW2 world order dissolves around us I have a dreadful feeling that we have not learned from the past, and are thus doomed to repeat it.

[ian witham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading.

General Friedrich von Bernhardi was a Prussian cavalry officer in the Franco-Prussian War who wrote about the next war between France and Germany. His book is little read these days but it is impossible to understand the Great War without reading it. After the Franco-Prussian War, Germany demanded reparations from France and he was upset that the French paid them too quickly. He wanted another war, and when France was defeated it would be forced to pay the cost of the war. The war lasted longer than anyone predicted, the costs were higher, and Germany lost.

Modern historians have not read Germany And The Next War. They write how the excessive reparations demanded by France led to the next war, and they are right, but many of those politicians had read this book. They knew that General von Bernhardi had not merely advocated making France pay for the war but paying more than what the War had cost Germany to prevent them from fighting another. Gemany invaded France and Belgium. The War was fought on the soil of France and Belgium. From 1914-1918, no French or Belgian soldiers entered Germany except as a prisoner. French and Belgian cities, churches, universities, and farms were destroyed. French and Belgian men were deported to work in Germany.

I do not know how the Second World War could have been prevented but thanks to von Bernhardi, I understand why steep reparations were demanded. If I had been at Verseilles, I would have demanded those operations. If I had been in the German or Austrian delegations, I would not have been able to do anything except say, "Let's not do that again." But they did it again.

[Haavard Fonneland Pettersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

von Bernhardi's views are unbelievably, fascinatingly politically incorrect today. He basically argues that war is good and peace is unhealthy, because war is a "biological necessity" - the law of struggle for existence applies to humans as much as other organisms, and to countries as well as individuals. Like a lot of people in this period, he had overdosed on Darwin. He further argues that it is Germany's right, nay, duty, to wage war to further her interests, and that since Germany is trapped in these "unnatural" borders, it must get colonies to have somewhere to put her excess population. What is not willingly given, must be taken by force. He also believes that Germany's is the highest civilization on earth.

While I completely disagree with 99 pc of what he writes, it is quite refreshing to read something so nakedly, shamelessly cynical and, I suppose, honest. It was published in 1912, and what followed - the First World War and the rise of Nazism - makes total sense when you have read it. If this was a widespread attitude in his day, the theory that the Germans somehow wanted the first world war to happen and were bent on world conquest even then, actually seems plausible.

On the other hand, there was something about this timeperiod, too. It had much more enthusiasm for war than anyone since 1914. It was, after all, a world which hadn't witnessed the horrors of WWI and WWII (and various later conflicts), but associated war thing the quick, limited campaigns of Bismarck's Germany or the Crimean war, or, at worst, the US Civil War.

[Thomas Rausch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing just before the First World War, the author argues that a war with the Triple Entente is inevitable. He also imagines Germany triumphant and ascending from a regional power to a great world power. Alas, the war came, and the outcome was far different from what he imagined.