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

Abstract

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.