Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War

It is widely assumed that after 1918 the British general staff ignored the experience it had gained from fighting a first-class European enemy and that it was not until the establishment of the Kirke committee in 1932 that it began to garner the lessons of the Great War and incorporate them into its doctrine. This article demonstrates that in fact British military doctrine underwent a continuous process of development in the 1920s. Far from turning its back on new military technologies, the general staff rejected the manpower-intensive doctrine that had sustained the army in 1914 in favour of one that placed modernity and machinery at the very core of its thinking. Between 1919 and 1931 the general staff did assimilate the lessons of the First World War into the army's written doctrine. But what it failed to do was to impose a common understanding of the meaning of that doctrine throughout the army.

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1871-1918

Militaergeschichtliche Zeitschrift ◽

10.1524/mgzs.2009.0007 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

pp. 184-211

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

First World War ◽

World War ◽

German Army ◽

British Military ◽

The First World War ◽

Photographic Essay ◽

The Baltic ◽

The Great War ◽

First World

Zusammenfassung Peter Walkenhorst, Nation – Volk – Rasse. Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890-1914 (Bruno Thoß ) André Tiebel, Die Entstehung der Schutztruppengesetze für die deutschen Schutzgebiete Deutsch-Ostafrika, Deutsch-Südwestafrika und Kamerun (1884-1898) (Christian Senne) Eberhardt Kettlitz, Afrikanische Soldaten aus deutscher Sicht seit 1871 (Ulrich van der Heyden) Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita. »Farbige« Söldner in den deutschen Kolonien (Winfried Speitkamp) Matthew S. Seligmann, Spies in Uniform. British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (Stephen Schröder) Naval Intelligence from Germany. The Reports of the British Naval Attachés in Berlin, 1906-1914. Ed. by Matthew S. Seligmann (Nicolas Wolz) Michael B. Barrett, Operation Albion. The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (Gerhard P. Groß) Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals. The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Martin Moll) Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Christian Stachelbeck) Christine Brocks, Die bunte Welt des Krieges. Bildpostkarten aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg 1914-1918 (Christoph Nübel) Anton Holzer, Das Lächeln der Henker. Der unbekannte Krieg gegen die Zivilbevölkerung 1914-1918 (Markus Pöhlmann) David C. Homsher, American Battlefields of World War I, Château-Thierry – Then and Now. A Guidebook, Anthology and Photographic Essay (Heiner Bröckermann) Der Erste Weltkrieg in der populären Erinnerungskultur. Hrsg. von Barbara Korte, Sylvia Paletschek und Wolfgang Hochbruck (Hiram Kümper)

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