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This comprehensive history traces the Prussian and later German General Staff from its earliest beginnings in the Thirty Years’ War to the German unconditional surrender in 1945. During the first decades of its existence, the Staff was led by idealists with constructive political conceptions. The emergence later of anonymous technicians, whose political convictions were either nonexistent or based on ambition, only aggravated a militaristic national temperament. Hitler’s hostility caused many Staff members to be torn between their ethical responsibilities and the traditional military obedience dictated by their oath of office. In the end, Hitler succeeded in destroying the German General Staff, perhaps because it had become composed of so many different political and intellectual strains. Based on research and interviews with military staff who survived WWII.