Almost finished this fantastic book tracing European military history from 1453. Simms' argument is that a battle for supremacy in Europe has always centred on the control of the Holy Roman Empire/Germany.
Reading this absolutely superb biography, though I hear the accompanying TV series on the BBC was dreadful.
That's interesting. Two of my ten books I keep on my desk are
Napoleon: A Life and
The Struggle for Mastery in Europe: 1848-1918. It's interesting that you mention Simms's adoption of Taylor's theory in 1848-1918 - that Germany was so aggressive because, in a Europe wide war, no matter what the alliances were, Germany would always be fighting a two front war, taking the brunt of the assault twice or thrice that of any of their potential allies.
