Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
German-speaking people, German military history
Abstract
Modern Germany has a reputation for militarism and expansion. This reputation is often distilled into a simple view of German states as aggressive, regimented, and militaristic. Peter Wilson’s Iron and Bloodexplores how conflict has shaped German history since the 1500s. An accomplished historian of the Thirty Years War, Wilson is the right author for this work, and is able to draw out important themes and subtleties of German military history. He argues that although militarism is “integral” to German history and state structure, it was “neither an end destination nor a single trajectory of development” (xliii). He shows that although military service and conflict intimately shaped modern German history that there were many cultural and political alternatives. He also convincingly disputes the idea that Germany had a unique or distinctive way of war, arguing that during the last five centuries of German states have been unusually decentralized and diffuse, rather than centralized and aggressive.
Recommended Citation
Fahey, John E.
(2024)
"Book Review: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 60:
No.
2, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol60/iss2/6