THE MAIN APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF MILITARY HISTORY IN THE ENGLISH AND GERMAN-SPEAKING HISTORICAL SCIENCES IN THE XIX – EARLY XX CENTURIES

Abstract: the relevance of the study of the problem of understanding military history in the works of Englishand German-speaking historians is primarily determined by a number of fundamental differences in the approaches
of European scientific thought to the interpretation of the concept of “military history”. For a long time, the works
of military historians in fact differed little from the classical works of ancient and medieval authors and, as a rule,
were a narrative describing the battles and military campaigns. The main emphasis in such studies is usually made
on the personality of generals or rulers, the reasons for the victories are often not explained or explained by the military talent and better preparedness of the army. The eighteenth century was the time when historians first attempted to generalize and rethink previously raised issues on the basis of both old and identified new documents
and sources. XVIII and especially XIX centuries were the time of emergence of fundamentally new directions of
study of the meaning of the term “military history”, the meaning of which was greatly expanded. The beginning of
the XX century was another milestone that turned the process of studying military history in a fundamentally different direction, the huge losses suffered by Europeans during the First World War actually completed the era of
faith in progress and development of a serious crisis. The scientific relevance of the article is given by the fact that
in the domestic historiography military history for many years was considered virtually without regard to the
achievements of foreign historical science. The main achievements of the English- and German-speaking historians
who wrote about the strategy, logistics, command structure, daily life of the army almost did not find successors
among domestic scientists and the military.
Keywords: military history, terminology, English historical science, German historical science