Winston Churchill once said that the wars of men would be much worse than the wars of kings, which is the premise of this excellent history of the change in European warfare as a result of the French Revolution.  Yes, the religious wars were terrible, as was the Thirty Years War, but to a large extent, the worst excesses of those wars (the slaughter of civilians) were the result of local conditions and not the policies of the engaged.  Indeed, the ethos of the pre-Revolution wars was based on the mores of the aristocrats who were able to move from the audience chamber (or boudoir) to the battlefield and back with ease.  Wars were largely wars of movement and position, for as Maurice de Saxe believed, a good General could spend his entire career successfully if he never had to actually fight a battle.

In May, 1945, Germany was a nation destroyed; the entire infrastructure from trains, to electricity to running water lay in ruins; the political system founded on the principals of National Socialism lay shattered as millions of Germans fled the advancing Red Army and the military was suffering the greatest losses of the war, up to 450,000 dead in one month.  The lack of fuel, ammunition and transportation meant that the Wehrmacht was doomed to fight with rifles and machine guns against thousands of tanks and planes on each theater. Despite these terrible realities, the German killers who had operated in the East were let loose on the German population and through intimidation and executions, they drove the population onward to the very end.  Finally, when the war did end, millions of former slave laborers were free from their guards and took to the streets.  Even with the best of intentions, they were driven to violence in the simple act of eating as there was no organization for their care.  And, many were filled with a hatred of all things German after seeing their countries and their families, not to mention their own personal experiences at the hands of the “Master Race”.