Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)
Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.
The answer might be here: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/home-before-the-leaves-fall-national-world-war-i-museum/AQPvqhFE?hl=en
Yea, the answer is not there.
Might be a case of “I heard that there are pirates in the game” with everyone quoting the same speculation.
It is referenced in Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August in 1962 (I am not sure where my copy is), so it has been around for a while. I just wonder what was the original event the statement was made at and in what context.
There are some online speeches by the Kaiser addressing troops at the start of war. In the ones online, he does not make that statement, nor really anything like it.
A lot of that early part of the war are a bit fuzzy. Even the the “Schlieffen Plan” as presented (and “modified”) is a bit fuzzy. Stuff just keeps getting repeated.
So my question is not unreasonable.
Everyone attributes (but no one documents) it as being by Kaiser Wilhelm:
Addressing German soldiers departing for the front in WWI (August 1914), as quoted in The Chanak Affair (1969) by David Walder, p. 21
Everyone seems to cite David Walder, but he probably got it from Barbara since Barbara’s book was published in 1962.
Someone cited in Walder in Wikiquotes and this reference has been repeated across the internet. The internet has a bad tendency to reinforce “facts” by the multiple repetition of these “facts.”
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783486829822/html
Seen it in Afflerbachs Falkenhayn, referring to Tirpitzs and Groeners memoirs, (Lebenserinnerungen).
https://books.google.de/books?id=Hc_pBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=bevor+das+Laub+Afflerbach+Falkenhayn&source=bl&ots=n4uIeRH4v8&sig=ACfU3U1-uMNNTXudG0QMWS7jtr06rRRt0A&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl2LPs0tvuAhUmA2MBHY5kD3wQ6AEwEXoECBQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
Stiltzkin, Thanks. What page(s) should I be looking at?
p.171 in Afflerbachs work [quote 104,105]; p.251, 456 in Tirpitz; Groener p.160; Germany in the First World War p.309 (I think Hirschfeld et Krumeich).
I (google) translate the sentence to read:
Such a situation differed considerably from the optimism of Moltke, who rather little and non-revealing English involvement in the war, and from the confidence of the Kaiser, who matures his outstretched troops: “You will not be back home before the foliage falls from the trees.”
Footnote 104 leads me to what I gather is another four books. Do any of them actually give the time and place of when this quote was made?
Footnote 104 reads: Siehe oben, S.168, Anm. 88; Tirpitz, Erinnerungen, S. 251, 456; Groener, Leberserinnerungen, S. 160; Deutschland im ersten Weltkrieg I, S. 309.
There seems to be little information regarding its exact time and location, I haven’t found anything useful in Tirpitz either.
I only know of a few speeches (“Balkonreden”), one held on the 31st July, the other on the 1st August (audio files exist, recorded in 1918).
Printed in Königlicher Preußischer Staatsanzeiger, Berlin, 179, 1. August 1914 (facsimile) https://www.1000dokumente.de/dokumente/scan/jpg100/0203_bal_01.jpg
But none of them include the line on hand, or any information on a review of his troops.
Another author cited Wehler, but there was no further note on its origin. Then there is “Chanak Affair”, Walder, but again no source.
Perhaps it should be dismissed?
Stiltzkin, thanks for looking. It might have been something quoted in the newspapers of the time.