"Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, 1755-1801" Topic

"This is the first comprehensive studyof Gerhard Scharnhorst in any language. Other than the author's The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (1989), there exists no other work on Scharnhorst in English. Of the major German works, Das Leben des Generals von Scharnhorst (1869/71), written by Hanoverian historian Georg Heinrich Klippel,was a popular biography with no critical analysis. In keeping with the political correctness of his time, Klippel failed to include a single document from Scharnhorst's voluminous papers that was disparaging toward the social, political, and military cultures in Hanover. Seventeen years later, Prussian historian Max Lehmann published his study of Scharnhorst (1886/87), which corrected many of the flaws in Klippel's work, but failed to provide any critical analysis of Scharnhorst's modernization, especially as it applied to Prussia. Like Klippel, Lehmann complied with the political correctness of his time in Prussia and Germany. Rudolf Stadelmann, Scharnhorst: Schicksal und Geistige Welt (1952), is an incomplete fragment that offers some interesting insights."

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Amicalement
Armand

Chuck White is probably the English language authority on Scharnhorst. His first book on him, The Enlightened Soldier, is excellent and anyone interested in the Prussian Army of the period should at least read it.

I'm definitely going to get this new one when it comes out.

Thanks Armand, very interesting.

Yes….have to agree….and when you combine theae books with those from Peter Paret on the defeat of Prussia you have an unbeatable combination for understanding Prussia prior to and then after the 1806 campaign.

A votre service mes amis!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I should, and hard back for sure, swearing off ebooks