Friedrich von Bernhardi

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Friedrich von Bernhardi (November 22, 1849, Russian Empire—December 11, 1930) was a German militarist, perhaps best known for his bellicose book Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg (Germany and the Next War), printed in 1912. He advocated a policy of ruthless aggression and complete disregard of treaties and regarded war as a "divine business". As of 1935 he was generally supposed to be the spokesman of German feeling prior to 1914.

In his book, Germany and the Next War, he stated that war "is a biological necessity," and that it was in accordance with "the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence."

During the Franco-Prussian War Bernhardi was a cavalry officer in the Prussian army, and at the end of that conflict had the honor of being the first German to ride through the Arc de Triomphe when the Germans entered Paris.

[edit] Partial bibliography

Videant Consules: Ne Quid Respublica Detrimenti Capiat (1890) (Let the consuls see to it that no harm comes to the republic) (published anonymously)
Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg. (1912) (Germany and the Next War)
Vom heutigen Kriege. (1912) (On War of Today)
Vom Kriege der Zukunft, nach den Erfahrungen des Weltkrieges. (1920) (On War of the Future, in light of the lessons of the World War)

[edit] References

Campion, Loren Keith. "Behind the modern Drang nach Osten: Baltic émigrés and russophobia in nineteenth-century Germany." Dissertation, Indiana University, 1965.
This article incorporates text from The Modern World Encyclopædia: Illustrated (1935); out of UK copyright as of 2005.
Tuchman, Barbara W., The Guns of August, 1962.