Dr Nigel Thomas is an accomplished linguist and military historian and is currently a Senior Lecturer in charge of the Business Language Unit at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle. His interests are 20th century military and civil uniformed organisations, with a special interest in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. He was recently awarded a PhD on the Eastern Enlargement of NATO.

Gerry Embleton has been a leading historical illustrator since the early 1970s. Gerry specialises in the medieval period, but has a keen interest in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. An illustrator and author of a number of Osprey titles, he now lives in Switzerland.

In August 1914 the mobilization of Imperial Germany's 800,000-strong army ushered in the first great war of the modern age - a war which still stands as the greatest slaughter of soldiers in history. That German Army is also the best example of a particular period of military thought, when virtually the whole manpower of the European nations was integrated into mass conscript armies, supported by several age categories of reservists and by dedicated industrial and transport systems. In this first of three volumes the author offers an extraordinary mass of information, in text and tables, illustrated by photographs and colour plates.