Military scientific review
| Military scientific review
|
|
|---|---|
| Area of Expertise | military |
| language | German |
| publishing company | Middle ( German Empire ) |
| Headquarters | Berlin |
| First edition | 1936 |
| attitude | 1944 |
| Frequency of publication | bi-monthly |
| editor | High Command of the Wehrmacht |
| ISSN (print) | 0935-3623 |
The Military Scientific Rundschau was a German military specialist magazine that appeared from 1936 to 1944 and was created in the course of the armament of the Wehrmacht .
The magazine was first published by the Reich Ministry of War (1936–1937) and then by the 7th (war science) department of the Army General Staff , under the direction of Lieutenant General V Lieutenant General Waldemar Erfurth (1879–1971), whose task it was to conduct the war to research scientifically, to depict war events and foreign armies, to evaluate war experiences and to look after the military literature. The founding of the magazine reflected the new self-confidence of the military leadership in this regard.
“The new building of the German armed forces and the manifestations of the modern war give the scientific work of the officer changed bases and larger tasks. The Military Science Rundschau owes its creation to this knowledge. "
The magazine was first published in January 1936 by ES Mittler & Sohn and was published every two months in the following years. The volume was eight to ten printed sheets and the annual subscription price was twelve Reichsmarks (18 Reichsmarks abroad). Wehrmacht members and personalities who were in contact with them received particularly favorable purchase prices. Until the outbreak of the Second World War , the magazine appeared regularly, but in the last four months of 1939 only one issue appeared, but this was a double issue (5th and 6th issue). From 1940 onwards there were only four issues per year. At the end of 1942, the management and publication of the magazine finally went directly to the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). In 1943 three issues were published (2 single issues and 3rd and 4th issues as double issues) and in 1944 only two issues before the project was canceled. The reason for this was Adolf Hitler's increasing mistrust of the officers of the General Staff, who wanted to deprive them of any influence on the official military historiography of the war. The OKW set up its own war history department, geared towards Hitler, which, under the direction of the Fuhrer's representative for military historiography, Colonel i. G. Walter Scherff should record Hitler's achievements as a general and exploit them for propaganda purposes. The military science review has therefore been used more as a platform for propaganda than for military science in recent years. Publications of the German Society for Defense Policy and Defense Sciences were also published in the journal .
The Military Science Rundschau saw itself in the tradition of the quarterly books for troop leadership and army studies , a magazine that was published from 1904 to 1914. In this, the tasks were formulated as follows: "The magazine brings articles of tactical and war-historical content as well as news about interesting troop exercises and information about foreign armies. In the latter case, emphasis is placed on reproducing what is essential for organization, training and leadership Instructive, and not in the form of mere compilations, but complete essays. "
“She [the magazine] is supposed to be the mediator and servant of serious military intellectual work. Just as before the war the quarterly journals for troop studies and army command played an outstanding role in the uniform development of the German officer corps, the new magazine is intended to be a source of scientific truth, intellectual clarity and thus a solid bridge from knowledge to ability for today's officer. I give the Military Scientific Review three guiding principles: 1. Any search in the past without reference to the present and future is useless. 2. The whole is more important than the part, the small gets its place from the whole. 3. Male discipline also includes discipline of thoughts, in writing and in reading. "
In the pre-war period, the Military Science Review served as an important forum for the dissemination of progressive military theories. The various authors not only analyzed the warfare of the First World War and the wars in Abyssinia and China , but also developed the concepts for tactical procedures of the Second World War. So published u. a. also Heinz Guderian essays on future tank tactics. The concepts of the Blitzkrieg and the Total War were also discussed. Often important publications were first published in the Military Science Review before they were published as a book. B. the book The Defense of General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb . After the start of the war in 1939, analyzes and combat reports of the various campaigns up to 1941 were added, which still provide important information about the strategic conceptions of the Wehrmacht. From the end of 1942 the level of the magazine fell; Victory and perseverance slogans set the tone.
After the war, the tradition of the magazine was resumed in West Germany by the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau .
See also
literature
- About military literature in the Prussian-German army from Scharnhorst to the World War , in: Militärwissenschaftliche Rundschau 4/1938, pp. 463–482
- Dictionary of German Military History , Vol. 2, Berlin 1985
- Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen: Military history in Germany from 1918 to 1945 , in: Lectures on military history, Vol. 6, Herford / Bonn 1985, pp. 108-133
Web links
- Record of the journal. In: Catalog of the German National Library .