Skipping the Middleman

Old books are often handier than new ones

Anton Alexander von Werner Moltke in Versailles (1872)

A friend of mine, who has developed an interest in Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1893) and “demigods” who assisted him, recently asked if it was worth his while to devote time, trouble, and treasure to the acquisition of a copy of A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945. I responded that, while I thought well of the book, which played a seminal role in the maneuver warfare movement of the 1980s and 1990s, he might want to “skip the middleman” and go straight to earlier treatments of the same subject, all of which are available for free at such sites as the Hathi Trust and Archive.org. In particular, I recommended that he start with relevant portions of The Armies of Asia and Europe (1878) before progressing to The Brain of an Army (1895) and The Duties of the General Staff. (1877).

Answering this query reminded me that, in the days when nearly all books used to be trees, much the work of the historian might well be described as a branch of stenography. That is, before he could help his readers make sense of an event, the soldier of Clio had to do a great deal of copying. Indeed, when I cast a net of remembrance over much of what I wrote in the eighties, nineties, and oughties, I conclude that the chief service I provided my readers was the organization, condensation, and paraphrase of things I found in old books and magazines of the sort found chiefly in very large libraries.

With that in mind, I recommend that, when a recently published book catches your eye, you refrain from pulling it off the shelf until you have perused, with the help of our friends at Hathi Trust and Archive.org, older works on the subject. Thanks to copyright laws, this is easiest when the latter books and articles were published before 1928. However, readers of military history will also find that much that was written on subjects that interest them was produced by governments, and thus, even when published more recently, stand a good chance of membership in the public domain.

For Further Reading:

Articles about Research

Making the Most of The Tactical Notebook