La Puissance française à la « Belle Époque »

Krumeich, Gerd

doi:10.3917/comp.dhist.1992.01.0199

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“…80 Famously, Bismarck and Caprivi were able, in the wake of the Boulanger crisis, to use this spectre of the vengeful neighbour to pass ve-and seven-year military budgets in 1887 and 1892, despite the Reichstag's usual predilection for shorter-term grants. 81 Although references to a French enemy were rare when the army budget was next discussed in 1897, the image of France as a powerful military rival did not simply dissolve, even under the impact of the Dreyfus affair, the 'affaire des ches', repeated resignations, scare stories, technical failures and mutinies. Admittedly, most German correspondents did believe from the late 1890s onwards that the French military was weaker than that of the Reich and that it was bound to decline over the long term, as a consequence of demographic stagnation, but this did not mean that France's armed forces were completely discredited in Germany.…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Images of the Enemy: German Depictions of the French Military, 1890-1914

Hewitson¹

2004

War in History

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This article re-examines German assessments of the French military before the First World War. It challenges both the view of the followers of Fritz Fischer and that of subsequent revisionists that such assessments played only a peripheral role in the formulation of the Reich's military strategy and foreign policy. By looking at the correspondence of the General Staff, attachés, diplomats, the Chancellor, Wilhelm II and his entourage, and the press, the study investigates images of Germany's principal military enemy for most of the pre-war period in their own right. It contends that government, the army and the press -of different political leanings -shared a large number of assumptions about the eventual decline of the French army and navy, which had a decisive effect on the conduct of foreign policy in the decade before 1914. This perceived decline, however, occurred later than is commonly held, around the turn of the century, against a widely believed historical background of French military power. The tardiness of such a shift in Wilhelmine views of the neighbouring state helped to ensure that calculations of French strength remained a -perhaps the -central element in the development of Germany's strategy and policy-making prior to the First World War. I I n 1911, Helmuth von Moltke recorded, in notes on Germany's principal military plan for the previous one and a half decades, that the next war would be waged on two fronts. 'Of our enemies', he continued, 'France is the most dangerous and can prepare the most quickly.' 1 One year later, his predecessor and the author of the plan, Alfred von Schlieffen, reinforced the same point, arguing that the 'whole of Germany' must throw itself on a single enemy -'the strongest, most powerful, most dangerous enemy: and that can only be the Anglo-French!' 2 Since the Chief of the General Staff ignored Britain almost 1

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Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Images of the Enemy: German Depictions of the French Military, 1890-1914

Hewitson¹

2004

War in History

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La Puissance française à la « Belle Époque »

Cited by 1 publication

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Images of the Enemy: German Depictions of the French Military, 1890-1914

Images of the Enemy: German Depictions of the French Military, 1890-1914

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