White, Charles E. Scharnhorst. The Formative Years, 1755-1801

This is the first comprehensive study of Gerhard Scharnhorst in any language. Other than the authors "The Enlightened Soldier. Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805" (published in 1989), there exists no other work on Scharnhorst in English. Of the major German works, "Das Leben des Generals von Scharnhorst" (erschienen 1869/71), written by Hanoverian historian Georg Heinrich Klippel, was a popular biography with no critical analysis. In keeping with the political correctness of his time, Klippel failed to include a single document from Scharnhorsts voluminous papers that was disparaging toward the social, political, and military cultures in Hanover. Seventeen years later, Prussian historian Max Lehmann published his study of Scharnhorst (1886/87), which corrected many of the flaws in Klippels work, but failed to provide any critical analysis of Scharnhorsts modernization, especially as it applied to Prussia. Like Klippel, Lehmann complied with the political correctness of his time in Prussia and Germany. Rudolf Stadelmann, "Scharnhorst. Schicksal und Geistige Welt" (1952), is an incomplete fragment that offers some interesting insights. "Scharnhorst. The Formative Years" uses the previous German studies as a starting point to present many unpublished discoveries about his youth, his education and training, his extensive service in Hanover, and the modernization program Scharnhorst sought to implement in Hanover, and later realized in part in Prussia.

This up-to-date study of the later Prussian general and reformer Gerhard Scharnhorst uses the previous older German studies as a starting point to present many unpublished discoveries about Scharnhorst's youth, his education, his extensive service in the Hanoverian army and the modernisation programme that Scharnhorst wanted to implement in Hanover and later at least partially realised in Prussia.