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ON 25 October 1909, retired Prussian General Sigismund von Schlichting was laid to rest in the Zieten family cemetery in Bad Warnbrunn. His death three days previously had closed one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the Prussian army's theoretical and intellectual development. Schlichting, known only to a few specialists today, has not attracted the historical attention given to many of his famous or infamous contemporaries. His wartime service was distinguished but limited to lower command positions. Few of today's historians or military writers have studied his many works, which are available only in German. Because he stood aside from the great political struggles of the Imperial era and did not live to play a role in the great events of the First World War, his name is absent from many of the standard books on the political or social history of the Prussian army. Most students of military history and theory are reasonably well acquainted with Alfred von Schlieffen, but few know of his great critic, Sigismund von Schlichting.(1)
Nevertheless, Schlichting was one of the most important officers of imperial Germany, both for his impact upon the Prussian army of those years and for his groundbreaking work in modern military theory. In addition to being one of the most famous peacetime corps commanders and notable troop trainers of his day, Schlichting was perhaps the most creative Prussian theorist in the years after the retirement of Count Helmuth von Moltke. Some contemporaries expected that Schlichting would succeed Moltke as Chief of the General Staff. The premature death of Emperor Frederick III ended any such hopes, however, as William II appointed Count Alfred von Waldersee to the position.(2) Schlichting's work in revising Prussian tactics set the framework for the discussion of that basic problem throughout the decades between 1880 and 1914, while his theories on military strategy formalized Moltke's teachings and eventually became one of the enduring pillars of modern theories, particularly those of the Soviet Union, and, less directly, of the U.S. Army.(3)
Born in Berlin on 3 October 1829, young Wilhelm Lorenz Sigismund von Schlichting had a nearly ideal background for a successful Prussian officer of the nineteenth century. The scion of a Silesian Uradel clan, Schlichting's noble ancestors could be...