Read The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World for Free Online

27.7.1914–3.1.1915.
    One of the richest veins for historians is the military records of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth Army at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, IV, Kriegsarchiv (BHStA-KA), Munich. Bavarian forces were initially deployed in Lorraine and then shunted to the right flank of the German armies in Picardy, Artois, and Flanders. Critical files consulted included its war diary: Armeeoberkommando 6, Kriegstagebuch der 6. Armee 2.8.14– 14.3.1915; as well as its prewar mobilization orders in Folder 369, Gedanken über die ersten Operationen der 6. und 7. Armee and Aufmarsch-Anweisungen. The Sixth Army KTB was then checked against the war diaries of the General Commands of the various Bavarian Army Corps: Generalkommando I AK, KTB 31.7.14–28.2.15; Ge. Kdo. II. bayer. AK, KTB 1.8.1914–31.12.1914; Generalkommando III AK, Kriegstagebuch 29.7.14–31.12.1914; and the war diary for Bavarian I Reserve Army Corps, Auszug aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Generals d. Inftr. Ritter von Fasbender, komd. General I.b.R.K. Extremely valuable was the rich war diary of Sixth Army’s chief of staff, Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen: KTB 1914, Nachlaß Krafft von Dellmensingen 145; and the (albeit fragmentary) diary of one of his brightest staff officers in Nachlaß Rudolf von Xylander 12, Kriegstagebuch 1914/18. An incomplete list of Bavarian war dead for 1914 is in AOK 6, Feldzug 1914, Verlustliste. The reports of the Bavarian military plenipotentiary to the OHL are at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv-Ministerium des Äußeren: MA 3076–3085 Militärbevollmächtigter Berlin, Tagebuch Karl von Wenninger. Most critically, I AM indebted to Dr. Gerhard Immler for garnering permission from HRH Prince Luitpold, head of the House of Wittelsbach, for me to research Crown Prince Rupprecht’s war diary: Tagebuch Rupprecht, Nachlaß Kronprinz Rupprecht 699, at the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, III, Geheimes Hausarchiv (BHStA-GH).
    Over the past three decades, I researched fragments of personal files pertaining to leading figures of the General Staff and senior military commanders at the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) in Freiburg: Beseler (N 30); Boetticher (N 323); Dommes (N 512); Einem (N 324); Groener (N 46); Haeften (N 35); Kluck (N 550); Moltke (N 78); Schlieffen (N 43); Tappen (N 56); and Wild v. Hohenborn (N 44). A very few prewar records from the Prussian army also exist in PH 3, Großer Generalstab: 256 Aufmarsch und operative Absichten der Franzosen in einem zukünftigen deutsch-französischen Kriege; 443 Mobilmachungsplan für das deutsche Heer zum 1. April 1914; 663 Große Generalstabsreise 1905/06; and 6546 Berichte über fremde Armeen, 1907–1911. Data on general officers were gleaned from the roughly twenty-volume collection MSg 109. Soldiers’ letters came from several files, including MSg 2/3112 and 2/4537.
    The collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989–90 proved to be a boon to scholars of World War I. First and foremost, its demise allowed research in the records of the Saxon Third Army at the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (SHStA) at Dresden. The reports of the Saxon military plenipotentiary at General Headquarters are in 11250 Sächsischer Militärbevollmächtigter in Berlin Nr. 71. Geheimakten A: Verschiedenes. Third Army Commander Max von Hausen left two sets of personal recollections: 12693 Personalnachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen (1846–1922) Nr. 38 and Nr. 43b; and 12693 “Meine Erlebnisse u. Erfahrungen als Oberbefehlshaber der 3. Armee im Bewegungskrieg 1914” Nr. 43a. The latter was most valuable as it contains the general’s handwritten memoirs, penned in July 1918; much of this material (and especially the critical sections) was exorcised from his published memoir, Erinnerungen an den Marnefeldzug 1914 (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920). I also worked through the war diary of Third Army Supreme Command, 11353 Armee-Oberkommando 3. Unfortunately, the files for its Strategic (Ia)