Andrew Kless, assistant professor of history and global studies at Alfred University, has published a book detailing Germany’s occupation of Poland during the early part of World War I.
Andrew Kless, assistant professor of history and global studies at Alfred University, has published a book detailing Germany’s occupation of Poland during the early part of World War I.
The book, “Broken Ground: Building Germany’s Occupation of Poland in the First World War,” was published by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers.” According to the publisher’s description, Broken Ground “captures Germany’s tumultuous first year of the First World War, as it built an occupation administration from scratch between August 1914 and August 1915.”
“Occupations are often described in terms of their consequences, with the beginnings being neglected,” commented Christian Westerhoff, director of the Library of Contemporary History in Stuttgart, Germany, one of Europe's largest special libraries for contemporary history. “Andrew Kless shows how an occupation in Russian Poland came into being during a critical time in the First World War—it emerged from the ground. He therefore fills an important gap in research.”
Added Jesse Kauffman, professor of history and philosophy at Eastern Michigan University: “This book provides a much-needed look behind the surface of the Imperial German state at war. In contrast to the image of a rapacious and finely tuned war machine, Kless illustrates the frictions, uncertainties, and rivalries that marked Germany’s often confused attempts to create an occupation regime in Poland.”
Kless’s book project—“Infighting at the Front: Officers, Bureaucrats, and Politicians at War in German-Occupied Russian Poland, 1914-1915”—was the Joint Winner of the 2020 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition for German Studies in America. “Broken Ground: Building Germany’s Occupation of Poland in the First World War” was published in 2024 and released for sale in February 2025.