Finally in 1897 he returned to the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin as an instructor and concurrently served as a member of the Third Department of the General Staff, which monitored France, Britain, and the Low Countries.

With the tip of the Eiffel Tower on the horizon, they were sure that "complete victory beckoned"[7] Nonetheless they were ordered to retreat because of concern about the gap between their right flank and the German Second Army — abandoning the Schlieffen Plan.

On 22 September in that same year, he became chief of staff in General Max von Fabeck's Twelfth Army, which was shifted to the Eastern Front.

Next starting on 24 November 1915 he served in the same capacity in the Sixth Army on the Western Front, which was commanded by General Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.

Rupprecht was one of four senior members of German royal families who were appointed army group commanders; he was regarded as difficult: according to Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn: "One minute he is extraordinarily optimistic, the next terribly down.

Their success was so overwhelming that they extended the attack, but failed to separate the French and British armies and depleted resources intended for Flanders.

To drain allied reserves from Flanders, the Germans shifted direction to hit the French in the south, once again shredding through their opponents lines, but failing to smash their will to resist.

For the march back to Germany, the Army Group was designated "A" (German: Heeresgruppe A) and Kuhl was made General der Infanterie to oversee its orderly demobilization.

In retirement, von Kuhl published books and numerous essays, articles and reviews about leadership problems on the Western Front during the war.

[11] Perhaps his most popular book in its day was The German General Staff in the Preparation and Conduct of the World War (1920), republished several times.

[12] A string of notable works[13][14][15] was capped in 1929 when he published Weltkrieg 1914–1918, two extensive volumes covering the entire war, which firmly established his reputation as a historian.

In the 1920s von Kuhl was appointed to the Historical Commission of the Reich Archives and gave evidence to the Weimar Republic's Parliamentary inquiries on the reasons for the military collapse of 1918.

[18] This stands in contrast to General Erich Ludendorff who spent his post-war years promoting a stab-in-the-back legend that blamed the German defeat without an honorable peace on Marxists and Republicans at home.

[19] Military historian Hans Meier-Welcker summed up von Kuhl this way For a deep historical understanding of the world war, even if not free of temporal apology, he performed a significant contribution.

[20]For his postwar work, von Kuhl was awarded the Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (English: Order of Merit in the Sciences and Arts) in 1924, Germany's highest civilian decoration.