Parliament, from 1871 until his death. He published more
books, including Wanderbuch (Notes on travel, 1879),
and died in Berlin on 24 April 1891 at the age of 90.
Moltke was better known for his military strategy
and writings rather than field service. Historian Gunther
E. Rothenberg writes:
Moltke may be considered the most incisive and
important military European military writer be-
tween the Napoleonic Era and the First World
War. [Carl von] Clausewitz was a more profound
thinker, and equal claims to greatness as tacti-
cians and combat leaders could be advanced for
a number of other commanders, but Moltke ex-
celled not only in organization and strategic plan-
ning but also in operational command, abilities
he combined with an acute awareness of what
was and was not possible in war. Moltke had
broad cultural interests and has been pictured as
“essentially a humanist of the post-Goethe era.”
Perhaps too much has been made of this. Moltke
did indeed share many of the intellectual charac-
teristics of German classicism, but above all he
was a soldier and what truly mattered to him was
the controlled application of force in the service
of the Prussian monarchy.References: Morris, William O’Connor, Moltke: A Bio-
graphical and Critical Study (New York: Haskell House,
1893); “Moltke, FM Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von,
‘the Elder,” in The Oxford Companion to Military History,
edited by Richard Holmes (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 594–596; Echevarria Antulio J., II, “Moltke
and the German Military Tradition: His Theories and
Legacies,” Parameters 26, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 91–99;
Hughes, Daniel J., ed., Moltke on the Art of War, trans-
lated by Harry Bell and Daniel J. Hughes (San Francisco:
Presidio Press, 1993); Bruce, George, “Sedan,” in Collins
Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1995), 223–224; Wilkinson, Spenser, Moltke’s
Correspondence during the Campaign of 1866 against Aus-
tria (London: Printed Under the Authority of His Majes-
ty’s Stationary Office, 1915), 19; Rothenberg, Gunther
E., “Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic En-
velopment,” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machia-
velli to the Nuclear Age, edited by Peter Paret (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 296–325.
Monash, Sir John (1865–1931) Australian
general
The first major Australian military commander, John
Monash was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 27 June
1865; his family were Prussian Jews who had fled to Aus-
tralia to escape religious persecution. Monash received
his education at Scotch College and the University of
Melbourne, where he studied law and engineering. He
joined the army reserve in 1884 as a member of the Uni-
versity company of the 4th Battalion, Victorian Rifles
and eventually became a member of the Metropolitan
Brigade of the Garrison Artillery based in Melbourne.
He worked as an engineer on various city projects, in-
cluding a main railway line, and also went into private
business, forming an engineering partnership that built
bridges in the Melbourne area. However, he remained
in the military reserve, and by 1914 he had risen to the
rank of colonel of the 13th Infantry Brigade.
Following the outbreak of the First World War in
August 1914, Monash was named commander of the
4th Infantry Brigade of the Australian Imperial Force
(AIF), which was sent to Egypt and took part in the
ill-fated campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula. After Gal-
lipoli, Monash was promoted to major general and given
command of the 3rd Australian Division. Stationed in
England, he oversaw the training of the division and
then took them to France, where Monash and his men
saw action at the battle of Messines (7 June 1917). He
eventually fought in the battles of Polygon Wood (26
September 1917) and Passchendaele, also known as the
third battle of Ypres (July–November 1917), among
others. In May 1918, Monash was made Knight Com-
mander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), promoted to
lieutenant general, and named as commander of the en-
tire Australian Corps. He led this corps at Hamel (4 July
1918), where tanks and aircraft were utilized, and at the
second battle of Amiens (8 August 1918), all of which
contributed to the breach of Germany’s Hindenburg
Line and the end of the horrendous trench warfare that
had lasted since 1914.
With the end of the war, Monash remained in
France as director general of the Australian Office of
Repatriation and Demobilisation, getting his men back
to civilian life and employment. When he returned to
Australia in 1919, he was given a hero’s welcome in
Melbourne. The following year, he went to work as the
general manager of the State Electricity Commission ofmonASh, SiR John