Prior to 1870, training at the War Academy was conducted in university-like lectures. The artillery general and military writer General Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen attended the War Academy from 1851 to 1853. In his records he assessed the General Staff training at that time as follows:
Everything was dealt with in a theoretical and scientific way. Some of the lecturers did it brilliantly and in a fascinatingly ingenious manner, others, however, in as dry as dust, sometimes even sickening fashion. Besides a few exceptions the training was of no practical use for life and service at all. Everything remained mere theory and the blossoming life tree remained a secret to us. The teachers were not to be blamed for that, because they themselves did not know it any better.
The students had to attend 20 hours of lectures per week. Lecturers were professors of Berlin University and General Staff officers. Nonmilitary subjects predominated. Thus the War Academy training had more the character of studies in the classical academic disciplines than that of a preparatory course for General Staff officers.
In 1872 the War Academy was taken from the Inspector of Military Education and placed under the Chief of the General Staff. Its organization remained unchanged. The teachers at the Academy became mostly General Staff officers from the Great General Staff who had to teach in addition to their normal duties. Those young officers who wanted to become General Staff officers prepared voluntarily for the entrance examination. From hundreds, about 100 were accepted per year and went through a 3-year course at the Academy. At the end of the course they took their second examination. Only about 30 students passed this extremely difficult test. These were then ordered (kommandiert) into the Great General Staff. After 2 years they had to take their third and final examination. After that, between five to eight were permanently posted to the General Staff. Most of the former "ordered" found jobs-according to their qualifications-in the higher staff service (Hoehere Adjutantur), the G1 Branch of today, which did not belong to the General Staff at that time, or perhaps as teachers in an officers school; others simply in regular line service. The extremely small number of those who were finally posted to the General Staff is also due to the advanced retirement age during these decades.
The goal of the General Staff training was not to produce a genius, but to concentrate on the training of ordinary men who could display efficiency and common sense. Every General Staff officer had to be able, at any time, to take over the work of another and apply to it the same body of basic ideas and the same principles of operational and tactical thought. Today this is still a major goal of the General and Admiral Staff officer training at the German Command and General Staff Academy. The long and demanding training led to a great homogeneity of General Staff officers. At the time of their acceptance into the General Staff, most of them were holding the rank of a captain; first lieutenants were the exception and required 3 years of commissioned service with the troops. Then, as is the case today, the General Staff career began generally in the Line General Staff, at division and army corps level. After a line command as a company commander, the General Staff officer was usually posted back to the army corps level. Afterwards, line commands alternated with assignments in the Great General Staff and the Line General Staff.
Refusal of entrance into General Staff training at the War Academy did not rule out a later call to the General Staff. It was possible for line officers without academy training to be ordered to the General Staff due to extraordinary achievements in a line command. Officers such as Field Marshal von Mackensen, and General Colonel von Einem, among others, became General Staff officers without this training. They were, however, rare exceptions. Here we see the origins of the Heusinger Directive of 1959 which offers the same opportunities for officers who have not been given General Staff officer training. In the old system, however, officers without academy training had to take the final examination after 2 years. This procedure was increasingly waived after the turn of the century because a sufficient number of War Academy graduates was available.
The reorganization of General Staff training into a more technically oriented training scheme under Moltke and Schlieffen has been criticized by some historians. Critics often reproached Schlieffen's General Staff training for not having been sufficiently training-oriented. In addition, Schlieffen was criticized for involving young, future General Staff officers in map exercises at a very high level for which they were not senior enough due to age and experience. It was claimed that operational aspects had been stressed too much and technical details were totally neglected. It is simply the nature of General Staff training to be the subject of continuous criticism. It is quite interesting in this context to note how the qualification profiles of General Staff officers of the times of Schlieffen resemble those of the Bundeswehr as far as the military-technical knowledge is concerned.
After its defeat in the war against Prussia of 1866, Bavaria established its own War Academy and retained General Staff training of its own after the foundation of the German Empire in 1870. The number of general knowledge subjects in the Bavarian General Staff training was greater than was the case at the Prussian War Academy in Berlin. The lectures were given by Munich University professors and General Staff officers, for whom teaching was the main profession. In contrast to the situation in Prussia, the chief of the General Staff and the War Academy were subordinate to the Bavarian Ministry of War, which set great store by foreign language instruction. While graduates of the Berlin War Academy were ordered to the Great General Staff and were immediately tasked with finding solutions to practical problems, their Bavarian counterparts first passed through a further 2 years of centralized training which provided them with an understanding of theory in the sciences of war.
A comparison of both academies' curricula shows that Bavarian General Staff training was oriented more strongly toward producing General Staff officers educated on a broad, scientific basis. The speculation of high level Bavarian officers and some Bavaria-loving historians after World War II supporting the claim that War Academy training in Munich had been generally superior to that of Prussia must be considered with caution. Munich did not deal with tasks associated with the defense of the German Empire, and the Berlin War Academy graduate working in the Great General Staff gained a faster insight into the general context of war planning than his Bavarian counterpart. Furthermore, some young future Bavarian General Staff officers were ordered to the Great General Staff in Berlin after they too had successfully graduated from the Munich War Academy. In spite of all the Bavarian attempts for independence, in the end there was an underlying orientation of the Bavarian General Staff officers towards Prussian conditions due to the emperor's command, which was not to be misunderstood. Seen in this light, the emphasis on fundamental differences between the two systems appears artificial. The great number of able Bavarian General Staff officers who held high-level positions in the army after the First World War and in the Wehrmacht showed that the Bavarian General Staff officers were highly qualified.
Before the outbreak of World War I, 625 officers served on the General Staff of the German Army which included 270 officers who were commanded or detached to the General Staff. Out of a total of 352 General Staff officers with a normal peacetime career, 295 came from the Prussian, 34 from the Bavarian and 23 from the Saxonian Armies. Only the Bavarian General Staff officers had been trained in Munich; all the others were instructed in the Berlin War Academy. The officers corps of the army of the German Empire had a peacetime strength of 36,693 officers, with 625 being General Staff officers, which amounted to 1.7 percent of the total officer corps. One hundred thirteen General Staff officers were employed in the Great General Staff. In 1914, France had available 950 graduates from the École Supérieure de Guerre, the French General Staff Officers' School. The Austrian Army included 500 General Staff officers while the Russian Army had 1,000; but their function and independence were not comparable to those of their German opponents. Under Schlieffen and his successor, Colonel General von Moltke, who was a nephew of the Field Marshal and later became Chief of the General Staff in 1906, General Staff officers already showed a great many of the characteristics still evident in the Bundeswehr of today: selection and special training; small number; main function as the commander's adviser; work according to the mission-oriented command and control principle; and special uniform insignia. The General Staff officer of the year 1914 wore on his 1910 field uniform crimson pipings or trouser stripes and a crimson stripe at the collar. In 1915 the crimson collar patches for General Staff officers' field uniforms were reintroduced as well. Generals, however, stopped wearing the General Staff officer collar patches, and have worn the gold embroidery on a flaming red background up to the present day.