You'll want "Inventing the Schlieffen Plan" and especially GJ Meyer's "The World Undone". The second deals with prewar military strategy, showing that European

You'll want "Inventing the Schlieffen Plan" and especially GJ Meyer's "The World Undone". The second deals with prewar military strategy, showing that European militaries expected trench warfare and ineffective offensive, until the Ruso-Japanese war, which made them switch gears, believing a strong offensive and bayonets could overcome machine guns. One interesting point is bayonet designs in the 1870s and 1880s were wide, meant to be used for digging, entrenching. But by the 1910s, they were suddenly long and thin to give soldiers "more reach" akin to spears!