The really absurd part of this article is at the end:
The papers, stored in a record office in Freiburg, south-western Germany, illuminate a little known chapter of German military history and support claims that the expansionist ambitions of the Nazis had roots in the Kaiser's drive for empire.The plans were drawn up by a lieutenant, for Heaven's sake! And we are to construe this as a sign of HM the Kaiser's intent to attack the United States? And as a prefiguration of Hitler's alleged intention to take over the whole world? Let me guess, the Schlieffen Plan was actually authored by a Feldwebel in East Prussia.Die Zeit said: "Once again this proves the continuity between the Kaiserreich and the Third Reich because the Nazis also wanted to risk a final fight for world domination with the US 40 years later."
All significant operational plans are drawn up by Generals and Admirals, or at the very least Majors attached to the Generalstab. Staff officers do this stuff the way single girls thumb through Bride magazine.
At least since the Why We Fight series, and Erikson's mendacious post-mortem psychoanalysis of Martin Luther, it has become customary to view every single aspect of Germanic culture all the way back to Tacitus as a prefiguration and cause of Nazism. I fully expect to see a cookbook some day that pompously explains how a diet of red cabbage, potato salad, sausage and beer is an infallible sign of fascist tendencies, and the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 was merely the first step on the long (but direct) road to the Nuremberg Laws.