Dennis Showalter and the study of the First World War.

Dennis Showalter's influence on the scholarship of the First World War is unmatched among American historians. His work is especially important for two reasons. First, it studies the German Army using primary sources and original research, a particularly valuable contribution given the mythic and just plain false associations that many amateur scholars place on the German military. Second, Dennis's career involved long stretches of teaching cadets and military officers. His work thus combined an appreciation of the problems of the past with the challenges of the present day. The second half of this essay renders homage to that tradition by examining patterns in Dennis's writings of the First World War that remain relevant to an understanding of war in our own time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]