Gerhard Ritter is a rather suspect author for a book on Friedrich. His forte was "militarism" in the
Kaiserreich. I can't imagine that the book's analysis would be particularly useful compared to a more modern account of the wars like those of Szabo, Showalter, or, hell, Duffy.
It is a very good read, but there are some assertions that I am slightly suspicious about:
He states that during the war of Austrian Succession when Maria Theresa fled Vienna to Hungary, she made a speech to Hungarian nobles, encouraging them to take a more active role in the war. He notes that this event laid the seeds for later dualism, which ended up destroying the Hapsburg state, a tragic consequence of Prussia's rise to power.
You're correct to be suspicious. Dualism simultaneously goes back much further than 1740-1 and at the same time, it doesn't go far enough. The long history of Austro-Hungarian relations was predicated in part on the arrangement relied on after the Battle of Mohacs but underwent so many modifications - Hungary itself being abolished in the wake of the 1848 revolutions and the 'progress' of the Magyars erased (only to be resurrected by Elisabeth of Bavaria and yeah I'm rambling) - so that it's hard to see how particular and minute occurrences in that long history could have had much of an impact on the formulation of Dualism itself. Frankly, the famous speech was an almost irrelevant milestone on the road to dualism and in the short term ended up getting the Hungarian magnates rather little maneuvering room. I imagine that that was just Ritter attempting to tie in his experience with the Dual Monarchy.
Bowsling said:
He also defends some of Frederick's tactical mistakes during the Seven Year's War, saying that his troops were not very disciplined, therefore he had to limit his strategies to avoid desertion.
Yes and no. He certainly had problems dealing with desertion (the two-edged sword of ridiculously high standards of discipline in a partially mercenary army) and by the last few years of the war his decent troops had been attrited away. But his tactical mistakes were generally all of his own making, from Kolin to Kunersdorf. The man was inconsistent as all hell.
Bowsling said:
According to him, the manpower and finances in Napoleonic France were almost unlimited, and that the loyalty of French troops was unwavering, which is the reason for Napoleon's successes.
Manpower is usually cited as one of the main reasons France steamrolled Europe for awhile, yes. That's relatively uncontroversial. Hell, Napoleon was able to maintain a half-million man
professional army for several years, a rather stupendous feat. Napoleon also was extremely lucky (and in large part, like most such generals do, he made his own luck) for a very long time. As for loyalty, well, can you recall a point when Napoleon's soldiers gave up on him and voted with their feet? Me either.
Bowsling said:
Post Thirty-Year's War German princes were peaceloving and devotedly religious, unlike the "Italian tyrants of Machiavelli's time". (Remember that the author is German)
Has nothing to do with his nationality. It's an artifact of his later discussion of militarism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German society, the cornerstone of his magnum opus,
The Sword and the Scepter. He tries to blame Prussia for that stuff, and it's hard to blame Prussia if the other German princes are just as conniving and "militaristic".
Bowsling said:
Moltke (The German Chief of Staff during the First World War) was a military genius.
Either you misunderstood him (mix him up with his more famous uncle?) or Ritter's editors
really weren't doing him any favors. Ritter helped create the myth of Moltke the Younger being a complete cockup who messed with the so-called Schlieffen Plan. It's utterly inconceivable that he would state that the man was a military genius in a subsequent book.
