Alongside Switzerland, which relied on traditional militia, both states exemplify the longstanding civilian element within German military power. This goes for the Swiss military evolution as well--their soldiers once admired as the epitome of the warrior. I would never suggest that this is a book not worth reading but it is not one I felt that I had to read. Instead, Wilson gives reasons why modern English-written works especially comb over well-trodden ground with respect to the history of military Prussia, while giving scarce attention to the leviathan that was the Holy Roman Empire during the 1500s-1700s.

Wilson is the author of the highly acclaimed Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War (2009) and The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2016).Wilson goes through painstaking detail to describe the ever-changing political landscape of Europe leading up to World War I and II…A fascinating study. His book - “Iron and Blood” is a history of all things military for German-speaking peoples since 1500. Wilson provides a bold survey of over half a millennium of warfare…His book is a masterful demonstration of the great potential of the new military history that has emerged over recent decades as scholars, distancing themselves from an older generation mainly interested in chaps and maps, have begun to pay more attention to the social, economic, and political aspects of war.

This is an ambitious book which was badly needed given that so much of our recent history has been dominated by both the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns and the consequences of their demise…Required reading for serious military historians. I should also note that the title might be a bit misleading in the sense that this is not an operational military history. That's not to say that there is no coverage of important aspects of military history--we get an excellent section on the design of warships, for example--but while battles are referred to, they are not detailed as in purely military histories.

A thorough/detailed book indeed, but I've felt the balance of details was a bit off, some numbers could be omitted, as well as enumeration of certain facts. And as I said above, there is at last equal attention given to Austrian development: I've only found good looks at equivalent developing of the Holy Roman Empire's military in books written in German. Violence had stamped the German state since unification in the late 19th century and Heuss’s own republic had emerged in 1949 from the ashes of two devastating world wars instigated by German governments. We can learn all the intimate details of weaponry from the Thirty Years War or the Franco-Prussian War, but discussions of weaponry for Fredrick the Great aren’t there. The other type of reader is interested in what caused the great wars that defined European history over this period.

The primary aggressor in Central Europe was not Prussia but the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, yet Austria’s strength owed much to its ability to secure allies. From weapons technology to bureaucratic and logistical concerns of the evolving military (for example in the design of warships and the casting of canon) as well as the growth of professional mass armies and their evolution from very different militia based feudal levies, the author marshals a formidable array of facts to support a very different perspective on his subject. He captures the essence of these tumultuous times, where the German people struggled for identity and unity amidst external pressures and internal strife. This astonishingly ambitious and detailed 900-page study of militaries in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland is not for the faint of heart. Wilson masterfully navigates through the complex web of the Holy Roman Empire and the Thirty Years' War, shedding light on the divergent paths taken by the various German-speaking states.I’m also not sure that including the Swiss (because they were German speakers) really works, rather it adds to the loss of focus. There is no equivalent study of this quality for Germany, nor, indeed, really for any other European state, so Wilson deserves considerable praise for a work which should receive much attention…This brilliant book sets a model for other works. This is a book well worth having for anyone looking for reasons for military evolution through the middle of Europe before and during the Early Modern Period, which informs the shape of European interaction in the 20th Century.