War and Logistics, 1861-1918

Count von Moltke, for thirty years Chief of Staff in Berlin and the prime architect of three quick Prussian victories over Denmark, Austria and France, disparaged the American Civil War as a conflict between armed mobs from which no useful lessons could be learned—a judgment that had some justification only in the opening stages of that war of attrition. Yet many historians have called it the first of the modern wars.

Besides the technical advances and innovations that will be referred to later, the Civil War gave us the term “unconditional surrender,” perhaps the first fabricated atrocity story—the fictitious bayoneting of wounded Federal soldiers—some conception of what the words “total war” would hold in store, and a clear sense of the power of propaganda used both to gain sympathy and support abroad and to buoy up spirits at home.