The writing on war in German history has been transformed since the mid-1990s by the successful application of a variety of new approaches. This is especially true for the period before 1800 where research has moved beyond the concerns bracketed since the 1970s in Anglophone scholarship as “war and society,” to embrace issues associated with so-called “new cultural history.” German historians have taken the lead in examining the experience of war through personal testimonies and other “ego documents.” Stefan Kroll's published Habilitation represents both a major monograph and a carefully considered critique of the new methodology. One of the book's most important points is that the insights offered by the recent “cultural turn” only gain their full meaning when embedded in a thorough examination of material conditions. The desire to avoid the potential pitfalls of micro-history is one reason that Kroll chose to examine the Saxon army over a lengthy period from its reorganization after the Great Northern War to the conclusion of its last campaign before the Napoleonic era. The Saxon case is important for numerous other reasons, too, not least for its rich and still largely unexploited archival sources of which Kroll has made extensive use.

The first of the main chapters examines the army as an institution, concentrating primarily on how and why men became soldiers. Saxony used its own mix of voluntary enlistment and limited conscription, drawing at least ninty percent of its manpower from its own subjects, with most of the “foreigners” coming from Poland, which was linked dynastically to the electorate from 1697 to 1763. Force was used, but recruitment generally relied on the consent of those enlisted and on the cooperation of local civil authorities to find them. Men served for relatively short periods, certainly compared to those in Prussia, while generous leave arrangements ensured most retained ties to their previous civilian life. The connection with civil society runs through the second chapter focusing on the daily routine of peacetime service. At least one in four soldiers was married, though families were small, with an average of only 1.3 children per couple. Wives and children counted as part of the “military community” but, like their menfolk, lived simultaneously in a number of civil spheres including that of casual employment. Additional incomes were essential given that soldiers' pay remained fixed from 1729. Nonetheless, military service at least guaranteed a basic minimum, and soldiers fared better than most civilians during the 1771–72 hunger crisis. Much of the chapter is devoted to the official norms and the practices and rituals intended to instill these. Kroll questions the social disciplining thesis that sees soldiers simply as objects acted upon by the state. The issue of motivation continues as the next chapter examines the experience of active service, primarily through the examples of the Seven Years' War and Saxon involvement in the War of the First Coalition 1793–96. The more mundane aspects of campaigning, such as marching and making camp, receive proper attention alongside the question of violence. The latter includes the participation of wives and children, many of whom accompanied the regiments on campaign, as well as soldiers as perpetrators, victims, and onlookers. The consequences of service, including death, disability, and discharge, are scrutinized along with some information on the fate of former soldiers in civilian life—a topic that remains generally understudied. Desertion in both peace and wartime is considered in the fourth major chapter that offers concrete examples and fairly substantial statistical analysis of a topic so-far considered primarily from the perspective of official regulations and discourse. Self-mutilation and suicide are also considered, both statistically and from the less concrete question of motivation.

Many of the specific findings are unsurprising and broadly in line with what is known about other armies in the period. Kroll takes aim at quite a few historiographical targets, and the book's structure helps him hit some rather more than others. Nonetheless, his work succeeds on three important accounts. It is the first detailed social study of one of the larger and politically more significant German territorial armies. Whereas Ralf Pröve's pioneering 1995 book on Hanover examined the Göttingen garrison, Kroll looks at the entire army and does so across a longer period. Second, he provides a sustained engagement with the main conceptual models in the field, rejecting absolute concepts such as social militarization or the “civilianization (or urbanization) of the military,” arguing that soldiers and the wider military community were at home simultaneously in several worlds (Lebenswelten). Despite efforts to discipline them, they retained considerable flexibility to respond to their varied circumstances. Underlying these points is the methodological argument that cultural analysis must be placed in its material context. Finally, many of his findings challenge the current wisdom on experience that argues the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon represented a significant break with old regime warfare. Kroll not only places the origins of a new discourse about war much further back in the 1770s, as others have also done, but provides new evidence suggesting the wider reception of these ideas by the early 1790s. The notion of death for the fatherland as a masculine ideal was already expressed by some writers in the 1760s. While this has been studied for Prussia, Kroll provides a wealth of evidence to show how this ideal filtered through the debates of the “military enlightenment” in Saxony from the 1770s. He also shows the extraordinary level of popular engagement on the Saxon home front during the 1793–96 campaigns as communities raised popular subscriptions, benefit concerts, and other activities to support “their” local regiment. While rank and file largely saw war in conventional, often religious terms, some also embraced notions of patriotic sacrifice otherwise associated with the War of Liberation twenty years later.