History of the Great War 1914-1918 (Illustrated‪)‬

Militarism is not merely the possession of large armed forces; it involves also the exaltation of such armed forces to the chief place in the state, the subordination to them of the civil authorities, the reliance upon them in every dispute. In explaining why a given nation may be peculiarly predisposed to militarism, at least four factors should be taken into account: (1) geographical situation, (2) historical traditions, (3) political organization, and (4) social structure. In every country one or another of these factors has worked toward militarism, sometimes two or three. In Germany all four have been fully operative in that direction. 

For centuries German lands had been battlefields for aggressive neighbors. Situated in the center of Europe, with weak natural frontiers, these lands had been the prey of Spaniards, Swedes, Frenchmen, Poles, and Russians. From the Thirty Years' War, in the first half of the seventeenth century, down to the domination of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, most of the German states were at the mercy of foreigners. What international prestige Germans retained throughout that dreary period was credited to the military prowess of Austria and more particularly to the waxing strength of Prussia. Prussia had no easily defensible boundaries, and her rise to eminence was due to the soldierly qualities of her Hohenzollern sovereigns – the Great Elector, King Frederick William I, and Frederick the Great. When, in the nineteenth century, the German Empire was created, it was the work of the large, well-organized, well-equipped army of Prussia, and it was achieved only at the price of French military defeat and of diplomatic concessions to Russia. After the creation of the German Empire in 1871 most of its citizens continued to believe that its geographical position between populous Russia and well-armed France required the guarantee of militarism for its future maintenance...