"Book recommendations for WWI period ??" Topic

Good people, please, a query for you, I am looking for some recommendations for books, in English, covering the German Army in WWI? History of development, evolution of tactics, weapons, equipment, recruiting, training … comprehensive coverage really? Perhaps some after-action-reports from the German perspective?

I've got reasonable material of the British and Imperial forces and the Turks but realise my library is deficient on the German army on the European fronts. For that matter the same questions for the French, Austrian and Russian armies too?

Very open to filling the gaps in my library and need some recommendations please.

Jack Sheldon has written a series of books about the German army. I think Christopher Duffy wrote "the Somme through German eyes".
(Or words to that effect).

I enjoyed "Under the Guns of the Red Baron."
It's a detailed study of each one of his victims.

Here are two suggestions for the German side of things for the evolution of tactics.

Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army 1914 -1918, (1989) is considered to be the best English-language study of this topic.

I also found a PDF download of Timothy Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War, (1981) at PDF link

Good luck with finding material on the French Army though. I have been looking for quite some time without any luck.

The following are all very informative and good reads

In The Line 1914-1918 by Georg Bucher

Stormtroop Tactics:
Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918
by Bruce I. Gudmundsson

A Survey of German Tactics, 1918
by Historical Section US Army General Staff

The Kaiser's Army: The German Army in World War One
by David Stone

Attacks by Irwin Rommel

The Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

The following read is more recent, and pretty well done. The footnotes and references provide a number of additional writings you might find useful-

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
VOLUME 13, ISSUE 4, Summer 2011
Strategy "in a microcosm": Processes of tactical learning in a WWI German Infantry Division By Christian Stachelbeck
PDF link

If you are looking for in the weeds details, May I suggest you check out Verlag publications. Not inexpensive but the quality in each book is amazing! (I was fortunate to get a few – Did I mention they are not cheap?-at the Austrian Army museum coffee shop in Vienna over several trips.) There are so many you must come with an idea of what part(s) you need the most. (They also have done several on the French as well)

Here is a link in English. (looking and drooling is free!)
verlag-militaria.at/en

Once you get on their site you will understand what I mean. Good luck. WWI- a very underplayed period on the ground in my experience.

For Germany you could add the following,

Landrecies to Cambrai: Case studies of German offensive and defensive operations on the Western Front 1914-17. Captain G.C. Wynne

If Germany Attacks: The Battle in Depth in the West (1915-17) also by Wynne

For French Army, these are all good

Early Trench Tactics in the French Army: The Second Battle of Artois, May-June 1915 by Jonathan Krause

Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
By Robert A. Doughty

Flesh and Steel During the Great War by Michel Goya

The French Army and the First World War by Elizabeth Greenhalgh

Battles & Bivouacs: A French soldier's note-book by Jacques Roujon

I also enjoyed
Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15 by Bernard Pares. Hard to come by basic info and standard history for Russian army

The following is pretty much about as much as you might read and or need to read regarding Austria-Hungary. I have only read bits of the majority of the translations as they can be expensive for the casual military history buff, but the link has some good free downloadable as well.

"OSTERREICH-UNGARNS LETZTER KRIEG, 1914-1918"
STAN HANNA ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

link

Second the recommendations for Sheldon and Duffy.

Also "Command or Control. British and German Battle Tactics 1888 to 1918" by Gilbert(or thereabouts ?). Despite the title, mainly about WW1 and compares and contrasts British and German approaches.

Sorry, the book above is by Martin Samuels. Available from a large online retailer near you…

Doesnt cover the German army in detail but read Alistair Hornes price of glory. My favourite book on ww1. It covers the battle of Verdun and the Germans tactics and expectations as well as the French response. Great book I have read it many times.

Thanks for all the great suggestions guys, I will start working through the list.