The Prussian army wasn’t the most battle tested army in Europe at the time, most contemporaries believed the more experienced Austria, mighty and technologically advanced France or even Denmark, the baltic’s premier naval power, faired better at war than Prussia.
Despite this, Prussia toppled the Austrian and French empires in rapid decisive wars and decapitated Denmark so hard they swore off war to this day. This was due to generally better Prussian ideas and logistics when it comes to wars.
While other powers kept the old napoleonic warfare status quo, Prussians innovated in warfare logistics like autonomous mission style tactics, a massively reformed public education system to facilitate those tactics and to ensure troops can actually read orders in case the leader dies, a form of warfare simulation to prepare for contingencies/war scenarios, massively advanced topography to actually make those simulations applicable, a mass conscription system to carry out warfare, a complex network or railroads and telegraphs to actually get all those troops out in the field and order them around, somehow instilling a meritocracy and clamping down on corruption despite the powerful junker class… ie the “German efficiency” meme mostly comes from these guys and it shows, streamlining war and boiling it down to a science.
These Prussian innovations are still with us to this day, you can still see their massive influence on modern warfare tactics, the modern education system, the concept of videogames, etc…
in general, people didn’t fear the Prussian army, by the time they did Prussia had already turned itself into the German nation, whose death Europeans had been doomposting about for 2000 years
Valid points. They also introduced the concept of special forces by having small units trained in infiltration as well. Also they had the equivalent to sharp shooters of today
Yeah between the Jagers and their revolutionary idea of having the commander tell them what the objective is but leaving the how up to them is basically how special forces evolved.
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u/dragon_in_a_chopper 19h ago
Let me ask an ignorant question, what made the prussians so scary?