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Interesting article re "auftragstaktik"


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by Scott N. Hendrix

Much of the discussion about auftragstaktik seems an example of what has been described as "Wehrmacht ***** Envy," an infectious fetishization of the German Army and a concomitant belief that its ways should be slavishly copied. One strong indicator that this syndrome might be in operation is the constant use of the term in German as opposed to using an English equivalent such as "mission orders." (If auftragstaktik is being discussed, can paeans of praise to the wonders of bewegungskrieg and the importance of the schwerpunkt be far behind?) It is always worth remembering that the German Army lost both world wars and did so badly.

Nonetheless, the German Army, in military terms, did much that was worthy of study and even of emulation but I am not sure that auftragstaktik, as used by the German Army at least, is a technique or doctrine that can or should be exported. At a minimum it should be noted that the concept of auftragstaktik operates at several level, and while some of these levels are useful today other are much less so.

At its most basic level auftragstaktik is simply the principle that subordinates should be kept aware of the intentions of their superiors so that if circumstances change they can adapt their conduct to them

-- even if that means altering, or in extreme cases ignoring, their superior's orders, and that in the absence of orders subordinates should try to act in accordance with said superior's intentions. This, it seems to me, can best be described as military potty training -- no military organization in the twentieth or twenty-first century would disagree with this principle, though their ability to apply it has varied greatly from time to time and army to army.

I would begin by arguing that it is the ability to apply this principle, rather than the principle itself, that is often what is being debated. I would strongly suggest that main reason that other armies, notably the British, American, and Red Army in World War II, did not seem flexible, did not react or respond quickly, could not operate in accordance with this lower level of auftragstaktik, is that quite often the leaders concerned, from junior to senior, did not know what to do. This recent publication of Joerg Muth's Command Culture:

Officer Education in the Us. Army and the German Armed Forces,

1901-1940 (full disclosure, I am a H-WAR List Editor, Joerg Muth sits on the H-WAR Editorial Board) has refocused attention on the question of the comparative value of Geman and American officer training.

Reading Command Culture, particularly in conjunction with Robert Citino's The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-1939, and Siegried Knappe's Soldat: Reflections of a Germany Soldier, 1936-1949 should convince most that the German Army simply did a better job of training and educating its soldiers, enlisted and commissioned, individually and in units, than any other army of its time. In this writer's opinion at least, they probably were doing a better job than most armies do today. More generally these works show that the German Army as an institution was simply much more professional in its approach to military affairs than any army in the world at that time. In short, it is probable that this lower level of auftragstaktik worked for the German Army because its officers and men had a much better idea of what to do in any given situation, or to put this another way around, to the extent that the German Army was much more adaptable or flexible, showed more initiative, responded more quickly to a given situation, had more to do with superior training and military education than some sort of doctrinal superiority related to the concept of auftragstaktik that they possessed that was unknown to other armies. If from this we take the principle that armies should place great emphasis on the training and education of their officers and men, than this is almost certainly true, but it also certainly should not come as news to anyone.

This lower level of auftragstaktik is not, however, what is usually being discusses when the subject arises. Beyond the basic level of knowing your superior's intentions and acting in accordance with them, there are more advanced levels, and it is these more advanced levels that are so coveted by the enthusiasts for auftragstaktik. The best known of these more advanced levels is issuing minimalistic orders that state only intentions and leave the means (the execution) up to the subordinates -- this style of order is often referred to as "mission orders." Beyond this, however, what most admirers of the German Army's auftragstaktik truly want is more intangible. This is the German Army's attitude toward planning and command: a sense that war is an art form that requires creativity and a belief that well crafted orders -- in fact command culture in general -- should attempt to release the creativity of leaders at all levels. In a practical sense this attempt to release the creativity of commanders was tied to an emphasis on the offense, a rapid tempo of operations (in less fancy language moving quickly), a willingness to take big risks in the hope of realizing big gains, and what Robert Citino described so well in The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich, a simple bloody minded aggression, an attitude of "when in doubt, go beat on someone." It seems to me that it is these intangible, as much as any method of giving orders, are what admirer's of auftragstaktik wish to emulate, and it is these factors that are much more problematic.

Auftragstaktik developed in very specific historical, technological, and geostrategic circumstances, and these circumstances are quite unlikely to reproduce themselves in the future. To begin with auftragstaktik developed, roughly, in the period that stretched from the Napoleonic Wars through the opening days of the Great War. This is the period when armies had grown so big that "march separately, fight united" was an absolute imperative while at the same time communication technology was still comparatively primitive, so these armies would often be out of contact with one another and their commander in chief. Under these circumstance orders, of necessity had to be very general with much left to the man on the spot, and control and coordination (getting feedback and providing timely guidance) was often just about impossible for the commander in chief. Under these circumstance, some type of auftragstaktik was not a doctrinal breakthrough rather it was a matter of simple necessity.

Beyond these general factors there were some features unique to

Germany: As others have noted Germany faced a difficult and relatively unique military situation: it was a continental power surrounded by potential enemies, war could come suddenly, involve more than one enemy, and might well take the form of an actual or potential invasions from several different directions. Under these circumstances strategy was simplified (run the invaders out ASAP), a rapid operational tempo was often imposed by others, quick decisions and speedy movement were required, offensive-mindedness, indeed hyper-aggression, was often appropriate. Moreover the German Army was quite likely to be faced with the need to "fight outnumbered and win,"

and running big risks for big payoffs was not just a necessity, it was a condition imposed on the German Army.

The point is that many of these conditions have changed. Most notably begin with roughly the second half of World War I vastly improved communications bridged much of the gap that cut off superiors from subordinate -- issuing timely orders, receiving information and feedback, and coordinating the action of far-flung units became much easier. This much is obvious, what is often forgotten is that at the same time there was a vastly increased need for coordination. Prior to the Great War, as a rough rule of thumb, the only things that could directly affect the battlefield were those things that could see the battlefield -- yes armies marched separately, this was the famous Grand Tactics of Napoleon, but they actually had to appear on the battlefield to have a direct impact. As the Great War ground on, however, more and more distant actors came to play a more and more direct role on the battlefield: indirect machine gun and artillery fire, air power in various forms, chemical warfare, sophisticated intelligence gathering from sound ranging to signals intelligence -- all this and more had an increasing influence on the battlefield, but this influence could not easily be developed by the mission type orders of auftragstaktik, they required a great deal of coordination, needing a sophisticated communications net, and in the real world this usually required highly detailed written orders that were the direct antithesis of auftragstaktik.

Now the conventional historical account gives us a heroic German Army that, under the leadership of von Seekt and his successors, struggled against this degenerate over-centralization, and rediscovered the purity of bewegungskrieg and auftragstaktik and thus rode these revived principle to victory between 1939 and 1942. There is, or course, some truth to this. (It is worth noting, however, that many of the factors listed above as requiring detailed planning to intervene effectively on the battlefiled were specifically forbidden to the Weimar era Germany Army by terms of the Versailles Treaty) The problem is, however, as Dennis Showalter argued in Hitler's Panzers: The Lightening Attacks that Revolutionized Warfare, that when blitzkrieg was defeated it was not defeated by opponents who adopted the concepts of auftragstaktik and bewegungskrieg, armies that issued mission orders and embraced their inner LaSalle. The Soviet Union, for instance, defeated Germany by organizing attacks that often covered huge geographic areas and aimed at, and often succeeded in, producing their doctrinal Holy Grail, the "Deep Battle;" but they did so through careful top-down management and central direction and control.

Likewise the British began winning in North Africa when they stopped trying to imitate what they thought the Germans were doing and returned to the "Corp Coordinated Semi-Mobile Attack" (Dennis Showalter's phrase again) they had developed during the Great War -- again a carefully directed top-down battle. Broadly speaking this probably best describes the American way of war in Europe in World War II as well. While broad generalization are always dangerous, is seems plausible to argue that when auftragstaktik came up against skilled practitioners of the set-piece battle, the set-piece won -- and that it was the set-piece battle that defeated the Germans in the second world war.

In short, the German style of command that English speakers usually shorthand as auftragstaktik was obsolescent by the beginning of the Second World War and well on its way to being obsolete by its end. I would argue that changes since then have only increased the need for top-down control and management: essentially these are the need to incorporate more and more elements into the battlefield itself --from drones and space power to the dramatic increase in information available at all levels of command, the need to manage and coordinate is only increasing. Rather paradoxically it seems that the need for initiative and low-level decision making have not decreased, but the need for top-down management, coordination, and command, have dramatically increased.

Finally it is worth considering why the German Army embraced not just the notion of auftragstaktik but combined this with an obsession with the offense at the expense of the defense, hyper-aggression, and a willingness to run great risks in the hope of gaining great rewards.

In fact the answer is obvious, they had to because historically they were usually either considering or facing the actually of a multi-front war. But the risks they ran strategically, tactically, and in terms of their command culture were immense and they often did not pay off. Probably the most famous example of the dangers of auftragstaktik for the German Army occurred at the opening of the First World War, when German General von Kluck made the decision to decision to move his First Army southeast of Paris, rather than southwest as had been planned. This decision was in line with the ideal of auftragstaktik, communications with his superior commanders was unreliable and von Kluck's move was an attempt to envelope the retreating French armies. This triggered the Battle of the Marne and arguably ended Germany's best hope of a quick defeat of France. In doing so von Kluck conceivably lost Germany the War. One way to look at this was as a piece of failed initiative, the other way is to see this a failure of command, control, and management. However you look at it, it was an auftragstaktik assisted disaster.

The larger point is that the German command culture that led to auftragstaktik, aggression, rapid tempo of operations, offensive-mindedness, risk taking -- all the elements of the German military system that are so admired today and that continue to fascinate military historian and military leaders were ultimately the product of weakness not strength. They were the results of a military system that wrestled with problems that were ultimately unsolvable -- how to fight a two front war outnumbered and win. Auftragstaktik, and all that accompanied it are risky and broadly speaking risks are things that you run when you have to and don't when you don't. It can be argued that the allies beat the German Army in World War II by slowing down the operational tempo, not by learning to act more quickly that the Germans. In World War II, the British, Americans, and the Soviet Union adopted a more deliberate style of warfare than the German Army because they had the means to do so and didn't have to run the sort of risks the German Army did -- and this had the added bonus of forcing the German Army to play their game instead of the Allies playing the German Army's game.

In fact, though it is the worst sort of historical heresy to say so, maybe the French, before World War II were righter than they are given credit for with the notion of the "managed" or the "methodical"

battle. Auftragstaktik and bewegungskrieg have acquired such a reputation as the best or the right way to make war that somehow it seems like the Russian or Anglo-Americans cheated -- the Russian deployed their "hordes," or the British and the Americans only won when they had overwhelming material superiority. There are several problems with this, beginning with the fact that by 1943 and 44 the Russians were running out of hordes, and the Allied material superiority wasn't always that superior. In fact, though it might be more dramatic to roar up in a tank and rattle off a couple of mission orders on the fly, it might well take much more skill to organize the movement of huge armies across the ocean or a coordinated attack the spans over a thousand miles in length and hundreds in depth, and that certainly seems closer to what the American Army needs to do today.

Perhaps we need to stop looking at the battlefields of the past to find out what the Germans did right and the British, Americans and Russians did wrong and start considering what the British, Americans, and Russians did right, and the Germans did wrong. Perhaps we need to face fact that auftragstaktik and bewegungskrieg are the methods that lost the Germans the War and that a more deliberate style of battle was what won the Allies the war.

**************

The main concept I question about the above is that Scott somewhat dismisses the overwhelming material and manpower superiority/economic issues that made "auftragstaktik" less useful/relevant for Germany as WW2 progressed. When a force is overwhelmed, attrition takes over.

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Nice find Erwin! Well you can not remove the material superiority from the equation, but still i agree with Scott that it was the auftrag tactic that lost the war for the Germans. Especially the part where it taught the soldiers to always think aggressive. Sure army's don't win by sitting tight doing nothing, but the German aggressiveness became predictable. My focus is mainly on the British sector of North West Europe in 1944 but after every British attack there was a German counterattack.

And that counterattack was always expected so the first thing the Brits did was to dig in and range the artillery and then just pulverized the German counterattacks as they materialized. So the Germans just sent units into a certain failure that they could have used later on to defend a new line of defense. Sure sometimes the counterattacks did manage to send the Brits hurrling back for old lines, but most of the times German units was used up in pointless counterattacks, and the aggressive auftrag tactic was the reason for it. So in a way you can say that the auftrag tactic shortened the war...

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Chainsaw makes a good point.

But my problem with the top down method of managing battle is that it tend to be both rigid and brittle. Rigid in that it may be slow to respond to new opportunities or new threats. Brittle in that it depends on rapid and reliable communications between echelons. If those are interfered with or break down in any way, then the whole thing can go to hell. I'd say that top down is the way to go on today's battlefield most of the time for all the reasons stated in the article, but that a Plan B is needed when top down cannot cope. And that Plan B involves officers further down the chain of command recognizing when it is time to exercise initiative and to be both willing and able to do so effectively. And there is really nothing new in that. Think of Nelson at Copenhagen for instance.

Michael

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I think it is interesting that the Israelis, who found themselves in a very similar strategic situation to the Germans at the beginning of the 20th. century, adopted a similar battlefield doctrine. I remember reading an account of the Six Day War where the author states that reduced to its essence, the instructions given to brigade and battalion commanders going against the Egyptian army was, "Get in the enemy's rear, raise hell, and report on what you are doing." Against that enemy, at that time, it was wildly successful.

Michael

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And they would have won the war if they had not routinely launched local counterattacks?

No, but once their tactic had been figured out and a successful counter had been evolved, they might not have lost so quickly nor so badly if they had abandoned it in favor of something different.

Michael

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"Auftragstaktik" as a concept should not be confused with a tactic (immediate counterattack) that worked for the Germans at the start and then stopped working later in the war.

That "Subordinates should be kept aware of the intentions of their superiors so that if circumstances change they can adapt their conduct to them -- even if that means altering, or in extreme cases ignoring, their superior's orders, and that in the absence of orders subordinates should try to act in accordance with said superior's intentions." is not a tactic.

The fact that the Allies learned to use the German SOP of immediate counterattack against them, and the Germans kept on making the same error could be explained by their increasingly slavish "obedience to orders" that became ever more prevalent as the war continued and the troops became less experienced due to attrition of the initially highly trained troops.

I see no argument in the above article or comments against the concept of "Auftragstaktik".

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The main concept I question about the above is that Scott somewhat dismisses the overwhelming material and manpower superiority/economic issues that made "auftragstaktik" less useful/relevant for Germany as WW2 progressed. When a force is overwhelmed, attrition takes over.

Except that, as he points out, the German way of war (including all their sexy terms) was developed specifically to overcome "the overwhelming material and manpower superiority/economic issues" that Germany always faced. Also, actually applying overwhelming material and manpower superiority/economic issues in a winning way is neither simple nor a given. Doing that takes real skill, as he also points out, and it was in developing those skills (which the Germans largely neglected) that the Allies found their strength. 200 millions artillery shells stockpiled in New York isn't much use when fighting a battle in eastern France. 10,000 aircraft aren't much use if they don't have any fuel or crews. By the second half of WWII the Allies had figured out how to produce a ton of stuff, how to move it, and how to use it.

When the Allies in WWII stopped trying to be pseudo-Germans, they started winning.

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I don't really have an argument re that Jon. I was simply pointing out that "auftragstaktik" is not a tactic, but a philosophy. So, it should not be blamed for the Axis losing when it was clearly misapplied. I am sure there were plenty of Germans of all ranks who figured out that the Allies had figured out that the Germans would immediately counterattack and therefore set a trap... I'll bet they were overruled by senior CO's who had become hidebound with rigid rules - like the Allies were at the start of the war.

My take is that to some extent the Axis and Allies sorta reversed roles.

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I don't really have an argument re that Jon. I was simply pointing out that "auftragstaktik" is not a tactic, but a philosophy. ...

... or a doctrine. I fully agree. And I get the sense that Scott was using it in that sense, but perhaps a little too wide in that he included their hyper aggression under the general heading of "auftragstaktik", which isn't really right, but it's not really wrong, either. They were two sides of the same coin - "auftragstaktik" worked for the Germans as often as it did partly because any German commander could reasonably guess what other German commanders would be doing, on other parts of the front. They'd be attacking, and probably concentrically. So as long as our notional German commander applies auftragstaktik and attacks, more often than not he'll be working in a more-or-less coordinated way with the other commanders, even if they're completely out of communication with each other.

So, it should not be blamed for the Axis losing when it was clearly misapplied.

Do you think it was though? If we accept that auftragstaktik was bascially inseperable from hyper-aggression, and that each facilitated the other (and I do accept that) then he didn't really misapply it.

My take is that to some extent the Axis and Allies sorta reversed roles.

True, and it was exactly the same behaviour that allowed the British to develop tactics that got the German army to bled itself white on the Western Front in WWI. When the British Army's corporate memory remembered how to do that again in WWII, Rommels days of swaning about in the desert were over.

Scott does makes the very good point that the German Army at the start of WWII, and for most of the war, was simplty better trained than anybody else. And then when they ran out of military nobodies to bully (Poland, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Holland), things got significantly harder.

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I just have to challenge the Rommel comment. The guy was in low supply and ran out of stuff. It was an attritional campaign and the Brits were able to get more stuff to Monty while it was a low priority sideshow for the Germans (until they daftly decided to send in and sacrifice all those troops in Tunisia).

I cannot see that the concept/doctrine of "knowing what everyone else should be be doing" was at all wrong - ever. Leastways, that is what my interpretation of "auftragstaktik" is. It has nothing to do with the tactic of immediate counterattacks that was clearly obsolete in the late war years. If anything that simply shows that the Germans had become hidebound to orders, unable to improvise etc due to losing most of their trained/skilled guys.

You know a country at war is screwed when they eviscerate their training facilities to provide front line troops. (Hey, isn't that what the US is doing with all the mil education budget cuts over the last 5+ years?)

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[Rommel at El Alamein] was in low supply and ran out of stuff.

No more so than at Gazala in June '42, or Tobruk in Nov '41. And that didn't stop him attacking at any one of those places - at El Al his last offensive attack was in September, and he never stopped counter-attacking in October. Despite being low on supply and stuff.

By the by, the 'Rommel swanning in the desert' was just an example. The same effect happened in Russia to the German commanders there, although the Russians stopped them with their own doctrine (rather than either learning to fight like the Germans or pretending to be British). So instead of 'Rommel swanning in the desert', that example could as easily have been 'Manstein swanning about on the steppes.'

It was an attritional campaign

Yes exactly, and that's the point. The British finally remembered what worked, and started doing that, rather than trying to out-German the Germans.

I cannot see that the concept/doctrine of "knowing what everyone else should be be doing" was at all wrong - ever.

Neither can I. Nor Scott. In fact, this is what he wrote:

At its most basic level auftragstaktik is simply the principle that subordinates should be kept aware of the intentions of their superiors so that if circumstances change they can adapt their conduct to them - even if that means altering, or in extreme cases ignoring, their superior's orders, and that in the absence of orders subordinates should try to act in accordance with said superior's intentions. This, it seems to me, can best be described as military potty training - no military organization in the twentieth or twenty-first century would disagree with this principle

Where I think he takes exception, though, is the corrollary that subordinate commanders should have a willingness to take big risks in the hope of realizing big gains. Because

1) first world militaries aren't fighting for national survivial,

2) having subordinates go sparking off on a tangent isn't helpful when they are a small cog in a big machine (e.g. having a B-1B driver decide he'd better meet the commander's intent by bombing Nahr-e Saraj when everyone else thought he was supposed to be supporting ops at Nad Ali isn't helpful), and

3) the 'Strategic Corporal' is also the 'Strategic Platoon Commander', the 'Strategic Company Commander' and the 'Strategic Battle Group Commander.' Wars these days seem invariably to be long, drawn out things, taking years of comparatively low intensity Police-like activity, rather than a day and a half of combat razzle dazzle. Everyone needs to calm down and take the long view as part of a team, rather than unilaterally deciding to risk it all in an attempt to win the war today.

And I agree with him.

[Auftragstaktik] has nothing to do with the tactic of immediate counterattacks that was clearly obsolete in the late war years.

Those counter-attacks became obsolecent during the battle of the Somme in 1916, and obsolete at Passchendale in 1917. But they kept doing them anyway.

And auftragstaktik does have something to do with immediate counter attacks, in that they are both outgrowths of Germany's geoploitical situation. They each informed and enabled the other. Auftragstaktik usually worked for the Germans because they generally knew what each other would be doing - they'd be attacking. And attacking usually worked for the Germans because they knew that the other German commanders would generally be Auftragstatkiking the heck out of their orders so as to get into the fight too.

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I think we're arguing semantics. If the Germans had a better idea than blindly counterattacking then Auftragstaktik would work again. It was that the initially successful tactics were continued as a fatally predictable and outmoded tactic when the economic and manpower situation no longer warranted it. There must be a name for that, but I can't think of it.

And Rommel's situation became worse as he moved further east. So, he was in worse shape at El A. than at Tobruk or Gazala. At the same time, the Allies had Monty who was a shot in the arm for 8th Army morale and he was given a lot of toys to play with. And still he delayed to get more, almost getting sacked by an impatient Churchill. The tactic of overwhelming force worked.

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IMO, it was not the “Auftragstaktik” that led to Germanys defeat in WW2 but inferior political leadership in the meaning of a “Grand Strategy”. Choosing the way of war to gain a stronger position instead of looking for political agreements was the big mistake.

The Germans tried to counterbalance their known strategic weakness by military superiority, particularly on the operational and tactical level. Especially fast maneuvering should compensate inferiority of resources. Fast maneuvers need fast and flexible leadership. This kind of leadership needed the “Auftragstaktik” as a technology of command that worked well on the battlefield. If the balance of power was not too crookedly the Germans succeeded usually because of their military skills. That the balance of power developed so unfavourably for the Axis was not an issue of inferior tactics, but of a "hyper-aggressive and risky" strategy (Hitler as gambler).

The Allies had little success with the “Auftragstaktik” because it needed more then “to roar up in a tank and rattle off a couple of mission orders on the fly”. It required a long intensive training and education of many leaders and cannot be improvised ad hoc. Obviously you can save the investments in this training, if you pursue a reasonable "Grand strategy". Just as the Allies did.

Frank

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Yes, by restating what Hendrix said, he nailed it!

The un-truncated original, including a fairly important preamble (and nice little summary), can be found here:

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-War&month=1206&week=b&msg=1er6Yq/RQy4nfyhEziD/Xg&user=&pw=

I thought this response to the essay was amusing:

> Dear Scott:

>

> My congratulations on a much-needed and well-done critique of

auftragstaktik. While it often worked well at the tactical level, it became

almost irrelevant and sometimes outright damaging at the operational level, in

particular, when forces received poorly thought out, articulated, and

understood strategic objectives.

>

> All the best,

>

> David Glantz

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Why is this in the Shock Force forum? ;)

I have to wonder at Hendrix's concluding comment that:

Perhaps we need to face fact that auftragstaktik and bewegungskrieg are the methods that lost the Germans the War and that a more deliberate style of battle was what won the Allies the war.

He says he wrote this "with the deliberate intention of being provocative and taking a contrarian point of view" so I assume he realizes that he is taking some seriously questionable positions for the sake of stirring the pot. Nevertheless he did make that statement. It's widely accepted that the Germans would have been better served by taking a more defensive stance post-Kursk, but to suggest they would have or could have won the war by doing so is an extraordinary claim. He downplays Germany's materiel and manpower disadvantage by saying "the fact that by 1943 and 44 the Russians were running out of hordes, and the Allied material superiority wasn't always that superior" while in fact the Soviet strategic force ratio advantage increased from 1943 to 1944 and the Allied landings in Normandy stacked the overall numbers even further.

The implication that Germany would have been better served by a more rigidly top-down command structure seems odd given that the person at the top of the command structure was Adolf Hitler. I suspect the German armies needed more operational independence, not more. IIRC Manstein was fired by Hitler because of his vocal and public argument for the adoption of a mobile defense.

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Why is this in the Shock Force forum? ;)

Probably because the opening part of the article, and it's conclusions, relate to the US military's fetishisation of all things Wehrmacht.

He says he wrote this "with the deliberate intention of being provocative and taking a contrarian point of view" so I assume he realizes that he is taking some seriously questionable positions for the sake of stirring the pot. Nevertheless he did make that statement. It's widely accepted that the Germans would have been better served by taking a more defensive stance post-Kursk, but to suggest they would have or could have won the war by doing so is an extraordinary claim. He downplays Germany's materiel and manpower disadvantage by saying "the fact that by 1943 and 44 the Russians were running out of hordes, and the Allied material superiority wasn't always that superior" while in fact the Soviet strategic force ratio advantage increased from 1943 to 1944 and the Allied landings in Normandy stacked the overall numbers even further.

The implication that Germany would have been better served by a more rigidly top-down command structure seems odd given that the person at the top of the command structure was Adolf Hitler. I suspect the German armies needed more operational independence, not more. IIRC Manstein was fired by Hitler because of his vocal and public argument for the adoption of a mobile defense.

... or, perhaps, it's to a-tik was the product of a particular set of circumstances, and trying to follow the form without understanding either the substance or the milieu from which it arose probably isn't a good idea. Especially when the Allies developed their own ways of war which played to their particular strengths and won them the war.

Or maybe to highlight that a-tik was an approach who's time had well and truly passed by the middle of WWII.

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I suspect the German armies needed more operational independence, not more.

Whoops, should read "not less"

Probably because the opening part of the article, and it's conclusions, relate to the US military's fetishisation of all things Wehrmacht.

I understand that is the underlying agenda. I just think it odd that rather than directly addressing the present day military application except in passing he oversold the proposition by placing the blame for Germany's failure in WW2 at the feet of auftragstaktik (and bewegungskrieg aka Blitzkrieg).

It reminds me of a little blub I read about how in hierarchical structures the best managers tend to be the delegaters. Which IIRC is essentially the advice Manstein gave Hitler right before he got fired :D

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Nah, Hendrix rambled all over the place with propositions that were arguable.

Just one example: "Likewise the British began winning in North Africa when they stopped trying to imitate what they thought the Germans were doing and returned to the "Corp Coordinated Semi-Mobile Attack" (Dennis Showalter's phrase again) they had developed during the Great War -- again a carefully directed top-down battle."

The Brits were not "imitating" Rommel. They started of with an obsolete doctrine of keeping their armor and inf separate (they didn't train together) as if the armor was cavalry of old. The inf had a few slow "infantry tanks" lile the Matilda but that was it. Eventually the Brits started to "get" the concept of combined arms that Rommel had been using from the start. That plus the growing and eventually vast material superiority, esp air superiority, coupled with Rommel's vastly over-extended supply lines made for a foregone conclusion.

Hendrix sounds like one of those wanky academic types who just want to drum up some controversy to get published and get tenure. :)

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The Brits were not "imitating" Rommel.

Yeah they were. What do you think Jock Columns and Brigade Groups was all about?

They started of with an obsolete doctrine of keeping their armor and inf separate (they didn't train together) as if the armor was cavalry of old.

And, unfortunately(?), it worked brilliantly for them. Op COMPASS and Beda Fomm were so successful because of that doctrine (aided immeasurably by the very high trained state of the British forces in Egypt at the time, and the generally poor state and poor equipment of the Italians).

Didn't work so brilliantly against the Germans, but.

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Exactly. Outmoded tatics only worked against the even more outmoded Italians. Really not a good example of use of "A" on the Italians part and in any case the article was about the GERMANS so Beda Fomm is irrelevant lol.

And Jock colums etc were desperate measures improvised cos the Brits didn't have a clue at the time and the (few weeks?) training wasn't competitive with the years of combined arms training the Germans had including rehearsals etc in Spain.

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Exactly. Outmoded tatics only worked against the even more outmoded Italians. Really not a good example of use of "A" on the Italians part and in any case the article was about the GERMANS so Beda Fomm is irrelevant lol.[/qote]

Well, you brought it up :)

All true enough, but it doesn't negate the point that the British were consciously - if ineptly - attempting to emulate the Germans.

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Um, actually you brought up the Italians and Beda Fomm for some unfathomable reason. (Dementia creeping up, hehe?)

I think of Jock columns as akin to the creation of SOE to "set Europe on fire". A desperate stopgap measure with a tenous relationship to "A". But, if that's how you interprete it, I can at least better understand your thinking process.

I had a similar argument with someone at a party who insisted that WW2 started in the Balkans, "cos that's in East Europe, just like Poland." This person also passionately argued with my wife that Latvia was in "mid-Europe".

It was quite funny once one got over the shock of such ignorance being defended to the death.

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