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The official German policy against civilians was described as Schrecklichkeit — frightfulness.

Germany originated all three, part of a policy of schrecklichkeit, or terror, that shocked a world still clinging to the 18th-century conviction that wars should be fought only between armies on the battlefield and civilians should be spared — a conviction sealed with solemn treaties among the European powers.

It would be more accurate to say that our technology has exceeded our inhumanity: We are all purveyors of schrecklichkeit now.

I would like to have seen more discussion of German military theorizing about the value of the new weapons — Preston makes it seem as if the fundamental justification was indeed schrecklichkeit, if not simply the kaiser’s perpetual, dyspeptic indignation — but perhaps the German military gave little thought to long-term strategy in the face of the colossal loss of life on all sides: 10 million military deaths, 7 million civilians, total casualties of more than 37 million across that first world-scale war.

There is much besides this to indicate that Carlyle’s praise of Germany in the eighteenth and early nineteenth  centuries is anything but evidence that he would endorse Kultur and Schrecklichkeit.