alternatehistory.com

I never could understand how the German army seemed to be a tad on the small size at the start of world war 1. I found this. So backward convservative ideas robbed the Germans of victory.

http://www.suu.edu/faculty/ping/pdf/THESCHLIEFFENPLAN_000.pdf


"In terms of population, Germany should have been able to raise a trained army capable of overwhelming France. On paper, seventy million Germans had the advantage of fifty million French. But neither Schlieffen nor the German government attempted to expand the German army to anywhere near its potential size. Here again, political considerations provide a clue to strategy. The German ruling elite did not wish to expand the army if it meant corrupting the apolitical country men who made up the rank and file with large infusions of urban workers with socialist loyalties. The same sort of thinking led the German army to bar educated and patriotic Jewish citizens from the officer corps."
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