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Title: Moltke makes it look easy
Review: Howard's The Franco-Prussian War details the conflict of 1870-71 wherein Prussia defeated France in the last of the three wars of German unification spanning the time from 1864-1871. The development of the modern Prussian general staff, started in the wake of Napoleon's crushing victory at Jena, here reaches its culmination both in the person of Moltke and the crowning victory over the Second French Empire. What few mistakes were made against Austria in 1866 had been corrected, and as Howard writes, "By 1870, the machine was perfected."The swift and decisive Prussian victory, Howard concludes, actually portended disaster for the unified Germany. It brought the Germans of that era to believe that since their nation had been unified as a result of military action, that it would be through military action that the nation would be preserved. This was to bear significant consequences over the next seventy-five years.
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