The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
This study provides a tactical, strategic, and operational view of the interwar German army as a fighting organization. The book describes in detail the process by which the Reichswehr attempted the accomplishment of its principal task--that of defending Germany's borders, particularly those along the eastern frontier, from the end of the First World War until the formation of the Hitler cabinet in January 1933.