Reich Rails: Royal Prussia, Imperial Germany and the First World War 1825-1918

With the Great War (1914-18) Centennial beginning in 2014, this is a comprehensive study of Prussian/German railways in peace and strife, 1825-1918 -men, rails, lines, engines, cars, and stations. They all played a crucial part in Germany’s Wars of Unification during 1864-71, the interwar years, and the final catastrophe that toppled many crowns, thrones, and states, all told from a railroad perspective, a unique way of exploring the history of the 19th-20th Centuries. Here the reader will also find the sagas of the other railways aligned both for and against the Second Reich: Berlin-Baghdad, Trans-Siberian, Hejaz, African, Italian, American, and more. Presented also are notable individual historic trains, such as those of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, hospital conveyances, differing gauges, railroad guns, armored trains, Lenin’s infamous sealed train through Germany to Russia, and much more. Here, too, are the famous men who made training a successful wartime tool: banker Bleichroder, soldiers von Moltke, raider Lawrence of Arabia, Bulow and Hindenburg, and how French Marshal Foch’s railroad dining car became the focal point of the Great War’s final ending. From the very first German passenger service to the Russian Civil War, this is epic railroading as a military force.