The German General Staff, originally the Prussian General Staff and officially the Great General Staff (Großer Generalstab), was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army and later, the German Army, responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war, and for drawing up and reviewing plans for mobilization or campaign. It existed unofficially from 1806, and was formally established by law in 1814, the first general staff in existence. It was distinguished by the formal selection of its officers by intelligence and proven merit rather than patronage or wealth, and by the exhaustive and rigorously structured training which its staff officers undertook.
The Prussian General Staff also enjoyed greater freedom from political control than its contemporaries, and this autonomy was enshrined in law on the unification of Germany and the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. It came to be regarded as the home of German militarism in the aftermath of World War I, and the victorious Allies attempted to suppress the institution. It nevertheless survived to play its accustomed part in the German rearmament and World War II.
In a broader sense, the Prussian General Staff corps consisted of those officers qualified to perform staff duties, and formed a unique military fraternity. Their exhaustive training was designed not only to weed out the less motivated or less able candidates, but also to produce a body of professional military experts with common methods and outlook. General Staff–qualified officers alternated between line and staff duties but remained lifelong members of this special organization.
Until the end of the German Empire, social and political convention often placed members of noble or royal households in command of its armies or corps but the actual responsibility for the planning and conduct of operations lay with the formation's staff officers. For other European armies which lacked this professionally trained staff corps, the same conventions were often a recipe for disaster.
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World War I or the First World War, often abbreviated as WWI or WW1, known contemporaneously as the Great War, was a major global conflict lasting from 1914 to 1918. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers. Fighting took place throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. The first decade of the 20th century saw increasing diplomatic tension between the European great powers.
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 1859 - 4 June 1941) was the last German emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918, which marked the end of the German Empire and the House of Hohenzollern's 300-year reign in Prussia and 500-year reign in Brandenburg. Born during the reign of his granduncle Frederick William IV of Prussia, Wilhelm was the son of Prince Frederick William and Victoria, Princess Royal.
The Schlieffen Plan (Schlieffen-Plan, ʃliːfən plaːn) is a name given after the First World War to German war plans, due to the influence of Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen and his thinking on an invasion of France and Belgium, which began on 4 August 1914. Schlieffen was Chief of the General Staff of the German Army from 1891 to 1906. In 1905 and 1906, Schlieffen devised an army deployment plan for a decisive (war-winning) offensive against the French Third Republic.