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The same sentiments ran through his whole nation, which suffered, like their emperor, from a terrible need for recognition.
Nations, he said, must progress or decay; “there can be no standing still,” and Germany must choose “world power or downfall.” Among the nations Germany “is in social-political respects at the head of all progress in culture” but is “compressed into narrow, unnatural limits.” She cannot attain her “great moral ends” without increased political power, an enlarged sphere of influence, and new territory. This increase in power, “befitting our importance,” and “which we are entitled to claim,” is a “political necessity” and “the first and foremost duty of the State.” In his own italics Bernhardi
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What made the Schlieffen plan was not Clausewitz and the Battle of Cannae, but the body of accumulated egoism which suckled the German people and created a nation fed on “the desperate delusion of the will that deems itself absolute.”
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip, and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Indemnity, which enables a state to conduct war at the enemy’s expense instead of its own, was a secondary object laid down by Clausewitz. His third was the winning of public opinion, which is accomplished by “gaining great victories and possession of the enemy’s capital” and which helps to bring an end to resistance. He knew how material success could gain public opinion; he forgot how moral failure could lose it, which too can be a hazard of war.
At the same time they considered France decadent in culture and enfeebled by democracy.
Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe.
