contribution to military literature. Goltz stressed how, despite the rapid initial victory against the Imperial French forces at the Battle of Sedan, the new French Republic had been able to mobilise national will for a ("War of the People") which dragged on for many more months (the Siege of Paris, the campaign of the Loire and the partisans behind German lines, the latter tying down 20% of German strength), the implication being that it was therefore unrealistic to expect a quick victory over France in any future war. Goltz, who wrote with open admiration about Léon Gambetta's efforts to raise new armies after September 1870, argued that the French "people's war" might have been successful had Gambetta been able to better train his new armies. Goltz argued that henceforward a new age in war had begun, that of the "nation in arms," where the state would seek to mobilize the entire nation and its resources for war, what today might be called total war. The views expressed in the latter work were unpopular with the powers that be and led to Goltz's being sent back to regimental duty for a time, but it was not long before he returned to the military history section. In 1878 Goltz was appointed a lecturer in military history at the military academy in Berlin, where he remained for five years and attained the rank of major. He published, in 1883, Roßbach und Jena (new and revised edition, Von Rossbach bis Jena und Auerstadt, 1906) and Das Volk in Waffen (The Nation in Arms), both of which quickly became military classics. The latter also became the theoretical handbook of the Argentine Army, and in 1910 Goltz headed the German diplomatic mission to the Argentina Centennial. During his residence in Berlin, Gilt contributed many articles to military journals. The ideas that Goltz first introduced in Léon Gambetta und seine Armeen were further expanded in The Nation in Arms, where he argued: So to win war in the future would require that "the great civilized nations of the present bring their military organization to ever greater perfection." To that end, Goltz thought society needed to be militarized in peacetime on an unprecedented level, and what was required was "the full amalgamation of military and civilian life." Goltz was a militarist, Social Darwinist and ultra-nationalist who believed war was necessary, desirable and inevitable. In Goltz's Social Darwinist perspective,