This book is about a Moloch.

Behind the three letters GHQ, commonly abbreviated to “His Majesty the Emperor and King’s Grand Headquarters,” comprised no fewer than four thousand people—from chief general to kitchen help, plus an unknown number of “local staff” from each.

And just the fact that it was possible to transport this enormous amount, including His Majesty's wife and children, from Koblenz to Luxembourg, Charleville-Mézières or Pless (for the Ostheer), Kreuznach and finally Spa was a logistical masterpiece from which however, no one has spoken yet.

Gerhard P. Groß, well known to world war historians as a specialist in Schlieffen and his deployment plan as well as the history of operative military strategic thinking, has done work with this book that is based on many archival sources and memoirs of the actors involved.

And of course he also consulted the research literature, such as Holger Afflerbach's biography of Falkenhayn and John Roehl's biography of the Kaiser.

An ensemble of different authorities

The GHQ as the central military authority was responsible for the entire war planning and the organization of all military units, so this is where the staffs of the army and the navy came together.

But it was also, as the author pointedly put it, the central authority for all political and military affairs of the Empire.

However, his description of this authority draws the picture of an ensemble of the most diverse authorities whose order of precedence had to be constantly negotiated anew – not least through the all-encompassing intriguing practiced on a daily basis.

It crunched in all institutional and personal relationships.

For example, the head of the naval cabinet, Georg Alexander von Müller – whose memoirs have always been a highly regarded source – was only able to hold on because the Kaiser ultimately held his hand over him.

During the war years, the military representatives of the individual states traveling with the GHQ apparently did not understand that there was an all-German army and constantly tried to assert the interests of, for example, the Bavarian and Saxon armies or the Württemberg contingent.

The respect dropped significantly

The organization chart of the GQH as it stood in 1917/18 gives an impression of the diversity of this institution: the German Emperor Wilhelm II was the formal main figure.

Under him - and traveling with him - were the Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, or better: the Supreme Army Command (OHL), first Moltke the Younger, then Falkenhayn and finally Hindenburg.

In addition there were the Chief of the Admiralty, the staff of the Prussian Minister of War (the Reich did not have its own Minister of War), the representative of the Reich Chancellor at the OHL, the military plenipotentiaries of the individual states already mentioned and those of the allied states of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey.

On top of that,

There was also the Oberhofmarschall with his office and the so-called general and wing adjutants of the Kaiser, whose relationship with the chiefs of His Majesty's cabinets - military cabinet, naval cabinet and secret civil cabinet - was very tense.

And there were a number of other players.