In the epilogue to his book A Short History of the German General Staff (Kleine Geschichte des deutschen Generalstabs) of 1967, Walter Goerlitz pointed out that the Prussian-German General Staff has remained a sociological and political phenomenon, despite the German loss in World War II. He is certainly right; there is hardly another military institution or group that has been looked upon with so much controversy. For Germany's former enemies, the Prussian-German General Staff was an object of fear and revulsion, an organization which was considered to represent the kernel of professional militarism in which a selected group of officers worked in monkish isolation on the preparation of war plans. They suspected the German General Staff to be one of those "dark forces," which was weaving the threads of the destiny of nations behind the scenes. Above all, many Americans viewed it as a "conspiracy" which is a crime within the common law legal system. After 1945, noted Europeans spread similar interpretations. It may remain an open question whether these were uttered on the basis of conviction or were mere propaganda. Winston Churchill wrote in his memoirs after World War II: "If we arrest and shoot every General Staff officer, we will have peace for the next 50 years." Stalin went one step further; he wanted to liquidate every German Staff officer after the war.
In the Treaty of Versailles, the victors of World War I banned the Great General Staff (Grosser Generalstab). The victors of World War II accused the German General Staff, the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) of being criminal organizations and the leading Wehrmacht generals of being criminals at the Nuernberg Trials. Thanks to the defense by Dr. Laternser, assisted by Field Marshal von Manstein, the General Staff and its officers were acquitted of this charge. The defense succeeded in proving that the German General Staff of World War II was only one of several operations staffs of the Wehrmacht and never had the immense power that had been ascribed to it in the indictment. The Soviets protested this acquittal.
In East German military literature the Prussian-German General Staff was assessed unfavorably:
In the system of modern German militarism there is no institution since the end of the 19th Century which has played so disastrous a role as the General Staff.... The General Staff of the Prussian-German type represents in a most obvious way the anti-democratic and inhuman character of German militarism; this both in the past and in the Federal Republic of today.
General Staff training was not excluded from the controversial discussion on the reorientation of Bundeswehr officer training in the 1970s. Officers and education reformers of entirely different intellectual and political backgrounds argued that a democratic state's army no longer needed General Staff officers. They said that training a small group of officers with special competencies within the officers corps was inconsistent with the principle of equality, promoted the development of a caste spirit, was elitist, and no longer tolerable in modern times.
Authors of English military literature overwhelmingly admire the Prussian-German General Staff. They draw attention to the phenomenon that after Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke's victories over Austria in 1866 and France in 1870-71, other countries tried to adopt the Prussian-German General Staff system for their armed forces. For example, Secretary of War Elihu Root failed to achieve this end in the United States of America from 1899 to 1904, because the American public opposed the establishment of a specially trained, small group of officers in the armed forces. However, Root was not completely unsuccessful; we find numerous elements of Prussian-German origin in the American staff system of today. At the beginning of the 1980s a second year of training was introduced at the United States Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth for selected staff officers, which indicates that the U.S. Army is currently testing a 2-year training program for its future leadership. Elihu Root's plan has been revived. The British studied the Prussian-German organization carefully but went different ways. After the war of 1870-71, General Marie-Joseph Miribel established a new General Staff in France which was based to a certain extent on the Prussian-German organization and some of its command and control principles.
Walter Goerlitz pointed out that after World War II, the Americans were the first to use the methods of the Prussian-German General Staff for the benefit of their economy. Many elements that have become integral parts of managerial economics and organizing sciences can be traced back to the Prussian-German General Staff system. In this light, the working method of the Prussian-German General Staff has been adopted in the German language as an idiom. A very accurately prepared and successfully executed project is frequently rated "general staff-like" (generalstabsmaessig).
When the Bundeswehr was formed in the 1950s, the German military tradition had a negative connotation. The National Socialists had abused the traditional German military values, and, as a result, leading Bundeswehr officers wanted to distance themselves from past traditions. Thus, only certain periods of history considered to be "tradition-worthy" were selected. This approach has been called untenable by historians. In light of this approach, it is astonishing that the whole tradition of the Prussian-German General Staff was declared to be binding for Bundeswehr General Staff officers. On May 15, 1957, the first Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, General Heusinger, delivered his opening speech at the newly founded Army Academy (Heeresakademie). In the presence of the Federal Minister of Defense he said:
Tradition obliges... when I am to reopen today...the recreated Heeresakademie.... We (the General Staff officers) are only links in the long chain of the development of German military history... This chain goes back 147 years into the past... You, particularly, are in a most dedicated manner the defenders and guardians of the values of German military tradition. Thanks to these values it was held in high esteem in the past; slowly but constantly the postwar veils are being lifted from these values.... "
After years of controversy surrounding Bundeswehr General Staff officer training, another Chief of Staff, General Brandt, summarized the tradition and the way Bundeswehr General Staff officers see themselves in his farewell speech to the General and Admiral Staff Course of 1977. Just as General Heusinger had done in 1957, General Brandt established a direct link between the present and the past:
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Clausewitz created the General Staff and gave this instrument its objective and direction; the great Chiefs of Staff, Moltke and Schlieffen, developed the General Staff to high perfection; their successors Seeckt, Beck and Halder preserved their heritage. They personified the typical General Staff officer who is the first adviser of his commander, the 'Fuehrergehilfe.' In this respect they are still exemplary for us today.