THE FIRST WORLD WAR WAS BARELY TWO WEEKS OLD when Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II shot off an urgent (and now famous) telegram to the commander of his first army group, Alexander von Kluck. The terse note,…

“The ‘contemptible army myth’ would be just one of the myriad of fictions that were spread during the conflict by army spin doctors, patriotic newspaper editors, war-weary civilians and overly-imaginative soldiers.” THE FIRST WORLD WAR was…