This book examines how military institutions attempted to meet the demands of the new strategic, political and technological realities of the turbulent era between World War I and II. The contributors chose France, Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States as focus countries because their military institutions endeavored to develop both the material capacity and the conceptual framework for the conduct of modern industrialized warfare on a continental scale. Also included are an introduction describing the intellectual and practical challenges facing the military reformer in peacetime and a concluding essay by Dennis Showalter drawing together the themes examined in the preceding studies and setting these themes in an interpretive, historiographical context.