The German military tradition

[JasonC]

In the thread on assaulting anti tank guns, a discussion started as a bit of an aside, about the German military tradition and what is commonly meant by it. I spoke of the cartoon version of it, and another poster asked what I meant by the cartoon version. That prompted this long essay, which I am giving its own thread since it would overwhelm that ongoing discussion. Comments welcome.

The cartoon version is the one that pretends there is a single unified German military

tradition from Frederick to the ruins of Berlin in 1945. That it is marked by the cult

of the offensive ("the only decisive form of warfare" repeated ad nausem) and by going

around ("the indirect approach"), prefiguring the glories of Lind-esque maneuverism, the

epitome of military brilliancy, immensely successful except for the bit about fighting

the entire world. That this unitary tradition was in turn caused by German geography,

many fronts in all directions and little depth, requiring fighting on the other fellow's

soil and getting it over with as rapidly as possible. Frederick, Schlieffen, and Hitler

are all doing the same thing, and are German military thought. Occasionally it is admitted

that Hitler was an amateur stuff-up and Guderian is substituted for the last term. It

is perhaps not entirely sound to fight the whole world, but if you do, go to Moscow instead

of Kiev and everything will work out. As long as no attritionist backsliding is tolerated

and the cult of the offensive by going around is pursued to the utmost. Moltke the younger

lost WW I by taking 2 corps away from the right wing for east Prussia, against Schlieffen's

dying admonition, but Ludendorf could still have won it if only he'd been put in charge

sooner.

Jena never happened, Blucher rhymes with butcher if mentioned at all, Clausewitz didn't

write "the defensive is the stronger form of warfare", Bismark didn't caution against

breaking with Russia and didn't insist on allying with Britain if you did, Falkenhayn

was a hopeless idiot not the man who broke Russia, Italy and effectively France, Halder

does not exist or was at least wrong about France, and planning every German success in

Russia doesn't count because they were rotten and it was a forgone conclusion or at least

due to Guderian up front, defeat in Russia doesn't have anything to do with not being

prepared for the long war that predictably resulted and firing every sane professional

as soon as he recognized it.

Such inconvenient bits would blur the picture presented to the aspiring young captains

and majors who are all to become Guderians and Mansteins effortlessly, by swallowing

Lind-esque ideology and parroting it back unprompted, which is the height of intellectual

initiative and creativity. As well as being so easy that any 14 year old can "get" it

as soon as Hart has pointed out how clever it is to go around. The cult can be broadened

to include Lee and Jackson, but nobody is to bring up Grandmaison and the battle of the

frontiers in 1914, and the bill for faith in the moral effect of true offensive spirit

will instead by imputed to hidebound attritionism, since after all a lot of men got killed

and men getting killed is attrition, so anyone who presides over catastrophe must have

been trying to, making it really easy to avoid such things by just wanting to be clever.

A data point to show how far this nonsense has gone. Whenever Jena is mentioned at all,

the story is supposed to be that hidebound unimaginative linear tactics lost to clever

go around maneuverism, temporarilly instantiated by Napoleon instead of Germans for some

unstated reason (probably a prolonged peace and the resulting age and rot). Therefore

every acolyte learns the equation "linear tactics equals bad". So then when the acolyte

is typing away on the wikipedia entry for Gustavus Adolphus, clearly a great captain because

he won several pitched battles, the connection of Gustavus to linear tactics requires

something be said, and he was smart, and linear tactics are bad, so Gustavus must have been

innovative in abandoning unimaginative linear tactics. The little fact that Gustavus

*invented* modern linear tactics, the kind that dominated European warfare from his

day until the French revolution or beyond, is transformed by the muddle of valuative

Orwellian phrase assessment Newthink, so the inventor is the abandoner, and only idiots

apparently ever did anything of the kind, all smart men ever being against it. Background -

the wikipedia page for Gustavus actually said this, I had to correct it to point out that

Gustavus invented modern linear tactics, and specifically that he is the man who replaced

Spanish squares up to 100 men deep for infantry, with 6 rank shallow columns of the

recognizable Napoleonic type, occasionally supported by the same again at a considerable

interval (second line), the whole defending themselves largely by musket firepower.

Frederick was reckless and his diplomacy so poor he deserved to lose, and was only saved

by dynastic succession struggles in key opponents at key moments (death of a Czarina, etc).

Such survival as he managed was due to his state being too small to be the largest threat

on the board to balancing powers. That Britain sided with him, however, produced a torrent

of propaganda in his favor in English. It is fair to say that Prussian militarism of

the recognizable small nobility led style dates from him. What most fail to realize is the

largely financial basis of that system.

Military position was a purchased office. 80% of the state budget (dervived from excise

taxes, monopolies, sales of offices, and direct ownership of a third of the land of the

country and their ground rents flowing straight to the treasury) was spent on the military,

with officers keeping half or all of their men's pay in time of peace, or hiring them out

as unskilled labor like a contractor. Younger officers bought their promotions with their

savings, the oldest cashed out into land at the end of their careers, and then funded their

son's own purchased commissions. This produced a closed military caste, most of whose

capital was tied up in the value of their commissions, which were effectively bond-like

claims on the state.

There wasn't the slightest possibility of rigorously selecting for raw intellectual talent

in this set up. From Frederick to Jena, initiative was not exactly the watchword of

Prussian militarism. The prince might occasionally engage in offensive warfare or rapidly

seek battle, as much to avoid prolonged expense and the diversion of pay from officers

to men active war brought, in this following Gustavus more than anticipating Napoleon let

alone the modern German doctrines of the world wars - but the officers were largely unimaginative

tools and placeholders, bound by honor to bravery in battle and to loyalty to their paymaster,

certainly, but hardly promising material for auftragtactik or decisive subordinate maneuver.

The only maneuver any of them did was march where the prince commanded when commanded.

If this is maneuverism, then only physical immobility inside fixed fortifications can be

constrasted with it. Enough, it wasn't maneuverism of any kind. Germany was considered

a factured basket case nation of philosophers and theologians, with some minor pieces

hiring out their adult men as mercenaries, half late Greece and half medieval Swiss fashion,

and not a leading military power. The great German military power, anyway, was Austria,

which was the poster child for old regime dynastic aggrandizement, through careful marriages

and inheritance and diplomatic politiking, not military innovation.

Then came Jena, the comeuppance of obediance and more than Spartan discipline. Dumb leaders

plus ranks obeying only out of brute insensibility and ferocious beatings, were effortlessly

shattered by thinking commanders and men motivated by nationalism. Prussia took the lesson

and Gneisenau, above all, engineered a comprehensive reform of the Prussia military system,

meant to capture the strengths of the French system without overthrowing the military caste

nobility central to Prussian state politics. It was accepted that the vons would continue

to be blockheads for the most part, but their birth, class, and loyalty was still required

to keep the whole military a tool of the state instead of a dangerous source of Napoleonic

adventurers. But meritocratic selection for intelligence and professionalism was required

at every level and above all at the highest ones. The solution was the staff system, pairing

a professional, merit-selected genius with each noble mediocrity to tell him what to do next.

Opening the officer class to talents of all classes was also paired with a relaxation in

discipline and a replacement of near permanent enlistment of unemployable scum and villainy,

with broad conscription for relatively short terms, nationalism replacing class as the basis

of motivation and allegiance. This was consciously copied from the French, while trying to

contain its revolutionary political tendencies.

But the new army so conceived and created was not at all the coerced instrument of centralist

tyranny that Frederick's was. It was not designed to fight all of Europe, either. On the

contrary, it expected to be a national army in larger diplomatic coalitions, to work with

allies, to mobilize the populace and enable the region to punch its weight in international

affairs certainly. But it was created in tutelage to Russian overlords and financed by

English gold. Prussia sought to be Russia's most reliable and valuable central European

ally. When England and Austria sought to balance the ascendent Tsar Alexander after Napoleon's

defeat, Prussia was the Tsar's great ally. This wasn't go it alone, it wasn't even balancing.

It was consciously following the lead of the strongest state in Europe. Nothing about it

was focused on winning wars as rapidly as possible, none of it stemmed from any encirclement.

Organizationally, the model was French, with very minor differences. Tactically the emphasis

was on shock by infantry column and cavalry charge, with no great emphasis on any involved

maneuvering. Solid combined arms was the aim.

Blucher was the most successful user of the new system, though he came of age in the older

one and was marked by its own weaknesses. He was a brave fighter, not a thinker. He was

practical enough to propose the strategy of giving ground when faced by Napoleon personally,

while all other allied armies advanced on the lesser French lieutenants. He broke his own

rule in the matter repeatedly, however, because he hated denying battle and retreating. His

desire for pitched battle whenever possible was part temperment, part a sound appraisal that

the allies overmatched the French if only they could come to grips with them and maul them

relentlessly enough. He was an attritionist, in other words. And his attitude in the matter

was directly responsible for the two great defeats in pitched battle of Napoleon's military

career, Leipzig and Waterloo. Both decided by raw numbers, once directed with merely adequate

fight and professionalism.

Is this Blucher era of the German military tradition supposed to be the same as Guderian's?

Arguably it was sounder and unarguably it was more successful, despite the supposedly all

important greater multipliers and drama of achievement seen in the later era. "Well, they

had a better hand". Really? Occupied and oppressed by the greatest single military genius

ever known, a small and utterly defeated state with a shaky monarchy run by scarcely competent

rulers who had just wrecked their first war against him, etc. But sure, Russia did the heaviest

lifting. Just as it did in WW II for the western allies. With, gosh, a quite similar military

tradition of solid fight without any great brilliance, open coalition diplomacy, etc. History

is just rife with these idiotic unimaginative attritionists winning all the time. But I digress.

The next great figure of the German military tradition is Clausewitz the theorist. While

making full allowances for the importance of command brilliancy in war, and for the value of the

initiative, he is justifiable most famous for stressing the subordination of military to political

and diplomatic strategy, and secondly for stressing the tendency of war to become total, for

the importance of decisive battle. Where older pre-Napoleonic traditions had stressed positional

advantages and the victory without fighting ideal beloved of both premodern nonwestern theorists

and postmodern maneuverists, Clausewitz stressed decision in warfare. Was this a result of a

perceived need for Germany to win wars rapidly because of multiple enemies on many fronts?

Not at all. It was direct experience of the central role of pitched battle in the Napoleonic

wars. Which note well, were extremely protracted despite their great battles and clear winners

in half of them. Clausewitz taught that the center of mass of the enemy is always his armed

forces in the field, that with defeat of them everything becomes easy, and without it nothing

else will serve. This was a direct paraphrase of Napoleonic precept.

It is less well known and appreciated that Clausewitz taught that the defensive is the stronger

form of warfare, or that he stressed the importance of numbers and the limits on the multipliers

that differences in skill can offer. Leipzig is his model. He gives the reasoning as well

as the cases - modern states learn what works and copy the successful. Differences in skill

remain, but they are bounded in scale or temporary or both. He also stressed the need to

"cash" any momentary dislocation of the enemy for a lasting edge in odds, and prescribe the

means for doing so - bring about battle under favorable conditions, destroy the enemy forces

in the field, and so turn their temporary embarassment of position or readiness into a lasting

and robust advantage in overall odds.

Much of that remained German doctrine clear through WW II, but significant elements of it are

contradicted by modern maneuverism, and sometimes German adherence to it during the war is

criticized as an attritionist leftover, both by modern historians looking back at it, and in some

cases by contemporary German generals criticizing their superiors, playing blame games, or

alleging everything would have been better had their alternatives been embraced instead. But

this is always done very selectively, the selection principle being some apparent failure later

on, tendentiously mapped back to such decision points. In other words, no one ever says

Guderian was an attritionist to head for the channel instead of Paris after Sedan, but he

will himself say it of Kiev rather than Moscow. At any rate, the tradition of annihilation

battle, the enemy center of gravity being his fielded forces and not his capital or other

supposedly softer rear area objectives, is dead center of the real German military tradition

going back to Clausewitz and through him to Napoleon and the lessons of Jena, whatever later

revisionists want to claim about how maneuverist it was or wasn't.

The next great German military figure is Moltke the elder, who first begins to approximate

the modern character imputed to the whole history. Moltke believed in rapid mobilization

and aggressive war, but he believe in it in part to exploit a geekish and industrial

superiority Prussia achieved through railway timetables. Moltke was the epitome of the

general staff idea that a war could be centrally and rationally planned before it even

began. This is Weberian bureaucratic rationality more than Boyd decision looping. He

also absorbed the lesson that the defensive is stronger tactically, and contrived to

mix the strategic offensive with a tactically defensive stance through use of envelopment,

which for a long time is what men meant when they spoke of the power of maneuver. The

great success of this approach was Sedan 1870. But it wasn't about going around to strike

at deep softer objectives, it was about going around armies to sit down around them and fire,

exploiting modern artillery firepower and the defensive firepower of modern small arms.

While other nations were preaching "cold steel" and the morale effect of the charge home,

the German idea of offense was to get on 2-3 sides of the enemy, go prone and plink, while

the big guns played on the confine area thereby created. In the context of the time, this

was a reliance on fire over shock.

The political context of Moltke's system must also be seen. It was Bismarck, who carefully

isolated every opponent diplomatically before contemplating actual war with them. Bismarck

lived and breathed Clausewitz on the relation between diplomacy and warfare. He was the farthest

thing from recklessly taking on the whole world. He told the Kaiser to always stay allied

to Russia, but if he had to break ranks with Russia for any reason, to at all costs first

secure a British alliance. That formula would have sufficed to avoid any actual isolation

of Germany, and any war without significant allies against a general European coalition.

This is not Frederick, and it is not Hitler, it is not Kaiser Bill either. It was rational,

it was careful, it was sound. It did not gamble. And it worked.

Kaiser Bill fired Bismarck and broke with Russia, and then built a navy for reasons largely

of prestige, destroying thereby the British option Bismarck explained was the necessary

corollary to any break with Russia. But Bill thought he could tweak everyone, and kept

only Austria as an effective ally, largely due to pan German sympathy. He was an ideologue

where he needed to be a strategist, in other words. And he handed the German general

staff the insoluable problem of how to fight the whole world, where Bismarck had carefully

asked of the military only what it could actually be expected to perform. This was,

perhaps, of a piece with Frederickean despotism or Hitlerian gambling, but it was not

maneuverism, nor forced on Germany by geography. It was political and diplomatic stupidity,

bordering on suicide by the sin of pride. But certainly neither Blucher, nor Clausewitz,

nor Bismarck, deserves to be tarred with it, or to have it elevated into all that is

typically German. None of them would have made such mistakes.

That impossible task brings us to Schlieffen, the first German military figure to actually

fit the cartoon model of what the German way of war is supposed to be. His plan is a

brilliant gamble but one that deserved to lose, and to lose even worse than it actually

did in the event. The performance in France could have been more in keeping with his

intentions, yes, but he had no reason to expect the combination of Russian stuff ups and

German brilliancies that stopped the Russians in the east while it was going on. Indeed,

he depended on the Russians not being able to mobilize as fast as they did. Such success

as the Germans had in the west, they achieved in large part because the French were in

the full grip of the madness that was the Grand Maison school, the true Cult of the Offensive,

the faith in the moral power of simply wanting to close with the enemy and stick a knife in

him, the triumph of will and testoterone over steel breechloaders and Maxims, err, well, not

quite "triumph". It also brought in the British by going through Belgium. A typical manueverist

brilliancy, it produced typical high drama, lots of hindsight claims that adjusting one widget

three inches would have worked, and the usual abject failure to achieve actual decision.

Defenders have a faster time to front, the French shifted armies from the right or south or

reserve faster than marching German attackers could cover a tenth the same distance, into

enemy held territory.

We are told the gamble on a rapid victory was imposed on the Germans by their clear inability

to win a long war. But in fact, they thought in terms of rapid victory because their

recent experiences of warfare had all been of rapid victories in limited dyadic conflicts.

Everybody thought the war would be rapid. It wasn't a planning variable, it was simply

taken for granted that modern civilized states would not go on murdering each other wholesale

for years. Needless to say this was an inaccurate appraisal. So was the belief that Germany

had no chance of winning a long war of attrition. They actually came very close to doing

so, and arguably might have with minimal changes to their existing strategy. It likely would

have been enough to refuse the navy's demand for unconditional submarine warfare late in

1916, not replacing Falkenhayn, leaving civilians like Bethman Holweg in charge of the state,

courting the US as a mediator instead of challenging it as an enemy, and then accepting

Wilson's peace requirements after revolution in Russia strengthened the German negotiating

(and military) hand.

Using Falkenhayn's attrition strategy, Russia was destroyed, Italy was destroyed, all the

minor states in the east were destroyed, the French army was driven to mutiny and a military

strike. That left the British, who were largely beaten in 1918 with forces shifted from

Russia, and could have been handled at least as roughly standing on the defensive, had the

German not needed to rush to beat arriving American millions etc. Enough, Falkenhayn was

an attritionist, he was a typical German military professional of the Moltke type and square

in the middle of the German military tradition, and what if revisionist claims can be indulged

at least as easily and plausibly in favor of such courses, as the typical extreme claims

that two more corps on the right wing would have taken Paris in 1914 (so what? The French

would still have fought for years), or that if only the reckless gambling maneuverist of

the east (Ludendorf) had been brought in to gamble more recklessly sooner, etc. The men

who actually were obeyed and lost the war because their strategy did not work can thereby

pretend they are brilliant and their domestic rivals are idiots who wrecked it all etc.

What no fair minded rational man can claim, is that Ludendorf is the German military

tradition and Falkenhayn is not.

Meanwhile, it was in WW I that the tactical innovations that would later be described as

typically modern and maneuverist were actually developed. And the basic core of them was

not German and didn't start with the strosstruppen. It was French and is called packet

movement. The British added the tactics of the trench raid, especially one conducted at

night by small leading parties of stealthy grenade throwers. The British also invented

and deployed the light machinegun and pushed it down to low echelons to hold all ground

taken, just as they had first innovated in trench mortars, perfected by Brandt, etc.

The German's main innovation before 1917 was actually the defensive in depth scheme that

we now recognize as the strongpoint defense, discovered the artillery negating virtues of

the thinned front manned only by OPs, the great defensive power of scattered dug in

machineguns strewn at random about an otherwise nearly empty defended zone, under registered

barrage zones to disrupt all penetrations in force, etc. The western allies thought of

the great problem of WW I as achieving breakthrough, but neither the Germans nor

the Russians did so. Neither had any great trouble achieving them - they just weren't

decisive, individually. They produced results of operational scale, and it was the

Russians who learned the lessons of that fact the most clearly and in the most lasting

manner. But their army did not hold together long enough to reap any benefits from

theoretical understanding of the point, during the war.

The late war German offensive innovation of strosstruppen tactics combined all the

preliminaries learned from the French and British (packet movement, supporting

heavy weapons, trench raid scouting parties, limited visibility starts to attacks),

and from the Russians the short prep rather than overlong, surprise destroying

week long prep fire (Brusilov showed what could be done without any of that). They

added the principle of reinforcing success not failure and pushing as far forward

as possible to maximize confusion, recognizably maneuverist and since thought

typically German - though sometimes thought of as only appearing in WW II and as

technically dependent on tanks, which these principles were not.

The soundest single bit of that was the way opportunity pull guided the tactics,

which required pushing initiative far down the chain of command, outcome oriented

orders that left "how" to subordinates.

Note that the lesson the Russians learned from WW I was above all that wars between

great powers will be protracted total war affairs, that no single operation will

suffice to destroy the military potential of a great power, and that therefore it

will be necessary to string together multiple successful *operations*, in time,

to do so. They utterly rejected the myth of quick decision by single breakthrough, in

other words, and regarded this rejection as the key lesson of the whole war. They

had broken through the Austrians on a grand operational scale at the outset of

the Brusilov offensive in 1916, but it did not win the war. It crippled the

Austrian army and made it reliant on German assistance, but it did not win the

war. The Russian staff drew the lesson. Nobody else got it right.

German followers of Ludendorf continued to believe that greater gambling sooner was

the way to go, and the Schlieffen revisionists looked at the cost of the long and

lost war and thought, how right he was, win in 3 months or you won't win at all.

It would be fair to say that assessment was general, but it won't make it true.

And competent and rational professionals remained who could clearly assess the

chances and the risks, and in consequence frequently advised against ambitious

course of action, or at least urged the greatest preliminaries. Halder thought

the war with France could last years, that the Germans should aim for a modest

area of northern France and the low countries to start with, and should fully

mobilize the economy for war. Because Manstein promised more on the first without

so much on the second, Hitler backed him, and succeeded. The incorrect lesson

drawn from that experience was that the rational professionals could be discounted

as unduly timid men, and that smarter application and, from the highest command

perspective, simply hoping and gambling for higher stakes, could overcome every

obstacle. (Because clearly, said command levels were incompetent to judge the

actual military merits of the rival proposals - they simply picked the one that

promised more, as later behavior demonstrates).

The German military tradition still includes the rationalists like Halder.

It emphatically includes the focus by all concerned on annihilation battle and

the fielded forces of the enemy, in doctrinaire Clausewitzean fashion, and not

Fuller-esque or modern maneuverist soft rear political or geographic objectives

(in Fuller's terms, the "shot to the brain" instead of "hacking at limbs").

Manstein's plan was to cut the French army in half to kill half of it to achieve

a superior odds ratio for the rest of the campaign; Guderian knew he should head

for the channel because encircling French armies rhymes with "Sedan". This much

can be called German maneuverism. It also counsels Kiev, not Moscow.

Next into Russia, and the comeuppance of overconfidence and reckless faith in

rapid decision, yet again. Men like Halder and Rundstadt had at least as much

to do with the success as Guderians and Mansteins, and any of them more than Hitler.

As each rational man saw the limits of what they were doing, noticed the hazards

and correctly called for adaptation, they were each sacked. The diagnosis was

always the same - belief in anything but unlimited prospects for immediate victory

by wishing for it and believing in oneself, meant one had the same disease that

Halder had suffered from before France. The German military tradition going

clear back to Gneisenau had been professional, rigorously selected, intellectual

merit, issuing in brutally objective rational clarity. This was jettisoned for

ideology, and the top level direction of the army instantly reverted to the levels of

stupidity that had produced Jena. Halder is fired in September 1942. Every

strategic move made after that is objectively inferior to the moves make by the

Russian chessmaster Vasilevsky, and they only get into the same league, even,

when a Manstein is driving without higher constraint restraint, and even that

is limited to a single army group in scale, and to periods of disaster in which

central micromanagement relaxes. Rarely do such periods coincide with real

opportunity or abundant reserves. And eventually, they issue in the remaining

rational leaders being fired in their turn.

Now tell me again that this entire history, with all its bitter internal disputes

over strategy in the critical wars, and all its variety across time and political

and technological circumstance, are the initial cartoon "German way of war" from

Frederick to the ruins of Berlin. And tell me that the parts picked out as

supposedly the whole and typical, are the most successful or exemplary parts, of

that tradition. To me, Gneisenau and professional merit, intellectual selection,

is sound. Blucher and dogged fighting stubborness, is sound. Clausewitz in the

points I outlined above, is sound. Bismarck and careful diplomacy, avoiding excess

aggrandizement and isolation, avoiding a grand counter-coalition as death, is sound.

Falkenhayn brutally but realistically assessing how many 210 mm howitzers for what

period of time, it takes to drive a nation screaming from the field, was sound.

Bethman Holweg pleading against unrestricted submarine warfare, was sound. Strosstruppen

tactics with their opportunity pull, were sound. Manstein on France took risks,

but he had gauged his opponent accurately, and was sound - but so were Halder's

fears in the matter, and his admonition to totally mobilize the economy before

making the attempt, was sound. Halder's direction of the first 15 months of

the war in Russia, was sound. Kiev rather than Moscow, was sound, as sound as

the channel instead of Paris.

Much of the rest was not at all sound. And I see no reason to let the unsound

but currently fashionable bits, even as they really were let alone as they appear

in rosy revisionist glasses and cartoonish oversimplifications of the Hart to

Lind schools, appropriate the name of the German military tradition.

[Cornelius Quilty]

Well written post. I am not capable to counter it. If you want to test your version of german military tradition you should post it at http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/. Since William S. Lind is frequently posting there and finds approval, it is likely you will provoke a tough discussion.

[Yushal]

COMPLETELY WRONG AND UNTRUE !

(no, I'm just kidding, I have no idea but I did enjoy reading it)

[costard]

Hi Jason. Taking you up on the invitation to comment - thanks for taking the time to write this stuff.

This produced a closed military caste, most of whose

capital was tied up in the value of their commissions, which were effectively bond-like

claims on the state.

There wasn't the slightest possibility of rigorously selecting for raw intellectual talent

in this set up.

The probability of capable intellects arising from this selection process is actually quite high if you contrast it with the other available method - selecting from the entire population, but with the knowledge that 95% percent of the additional resource (intellectual capital) is entirely uneducated, 99.9% if you require the education to have a basis in military history (beyond a familiarity with culturally relevant items - painting, music, architecture, etc). To train a mind to critical analysis requires a great deal of time and invested capital in the form of records and documents maintained for perusal, in the skills and people required to do the training, and the infrastructure required to maintain all this. Sure, education was a commodity more readily available to a growing middle class (certainly in stark contrast with most of the rest of the globe), but the the effects of concentration of capital work in education, too - so universities specialised, they specialised to meet market requirements, and many were financed by the military industrial complex of the time. [Lots more waffle deleted]

with officers keeping half or all of their men's pay in time of peace, or hiring them out

as unskilled labor like a contractor.

This bit of info is interesting - the system drives peace if the officer has the ability to control his troops (i.e. leads well), this most easily achieved by only keeping half the pay of his non-coms. Of course, it may be that the state only sees fit to pay it's soldiers when it requires them to fight (sound familiar?), the officer class, with family investments tied up in state industries (of which military supply remains the most jealously guarded) recognises the need for their self-sacrifice - not in times of war, when the industries they invest in as a class are fully funded by the state, but in times of peace, when their class has to "sit tight", coping with a reduced income stream so that their family has the opportunity of capitalising on the next war.

[JasonC]

Costard - just nonsense. One, Germany was the most educated society in human history. It is true the south west (Bavaria especially) was even more known for it than the rest, but it was the nation of philosophers and theologians (and mathematicians and musicians and classicists...) for reason. No, the military was not the educated portion of that - the clergy was educated to a standard the officers didn't even approach.

Remember we are talking about the period between Frederick and Gneisenau. There was no general staff system. There was no network of military colleges. There were no written examinations. All of that is Gneisenau, not Frederick. Frederick is a venal class nobility beating their class underlings with sticks. They were not scholars, they were jock horsemen riding to hounds.

In Frederick's system, the only way to advance was to wait for the man ahead of you to retire, and then have the capital to buy him out, and also to make sure your wives were on good terms etc. The average age of a Prussian general at Jena was 20 years more than the French marshalate, let alone the lesser generals, who were in their 30s, from every walk of life and even all political persuasions, but had been through fire to get where they were.

The way you make an elite anything is to rigorously select for it, on pure merit for that activity, out of a large qualified input pool. A hundred men will test today but only three win the green beret. This is in fact what the word "elite" means. Elite by birth, by inherited wealth, by seniority, by social connections - these are all round squares and misunderstandings. Ask any software executive how you get people who are good at an intellectually demanding job. Ask modern private universities. Ask modern militaries.

This isn't an eternal constant of the human condition. It had to be invented. When you staff a whole hierarchy that way, with advancement within based on merit, it is called bureaucratic rationality, and it produces professional competence like clockwork. Brilliance at its highest can throw up equal stars from time to time by chance, but nothing amateur, and certainly nothing selection for orthogonal qualities from a tiny set, will get within light years.

Remember if you cannot winnow rigorously for ability, 16% of your pool will have IQs of 85. Blockheads. If that blockhead has enough money in the family, he'll be commanding the division next to you. Only one out of six will have the raw horsepower to finish at a decent private college, under a merit system. If one of the others is richer or older, the only bright one will be the subordinate, in a system that prizes obediance and discipline above all things.

Now, put a system of competitive examinations alongside that, drawing on the entire educated class of Germany. Send the best from it to school, not with their fathers but under military professors of genius, for a decade as youngsters and for half the rest of their careers, for more advanced topics. Rotate them through each level of lower command, without any regard to what they can pay for - as soon as they have mastered the tasks of a company, up to a battalion etc. Keep them out of the commanders way by calling them staffers, so you can send as many as you can train to the level they need to train at. Pick those that do best at each position for higher ones.

By the time you are talking about the chief of staff of an army corps, you will have raw intellectual horsepower of higher degree levels, with gobs of relevant experience and an intimate understanding of every task at every subordinate level. That is the general staff system. That is Gneisenau. No, everybody didn't have it. Gneisenau invented it, in the military application that is, others copied. The system itself was used by religious orders for centuries, by modern companies (later, though, decades later than the German military started doing it), by governments, etc. This was a conscious, engineered attempt to replace Napoleon's individual genius with a collective brain.

And a closed venal military caste cannot begin to compete with it, any more than The Duke of Suffolk can compete with Google.

[costard]

Jason -nonsense nothing. You are describing the evolution of the selection for ability in the military profession (in Germany). To say that Frederick had the resources to build the latter form of the process in his time is nonsense. Result before progression? - that's cart before the horse stuff. I agree entirely that the system used in Fred's time was less than perfect, I'd strongly agree that the current selection methods (still not adopted by some political systems around today) on merit delivers a far higher quality of officer - but I'd also have to say that I doubt that any modern military achieves perfection.

The regiment was the largest unit gathered in times of peace. The infrastructure for barracks and maintenance of that unit required fortresses - castles, in turn supported by towns and county. With the fragmented nature of German politics (the very definable differences in culture between Prussia and Bavaria, for example, and the existence of some twenty other principalities not welded together until Bismarck) it was natural for the regiments to be based around groups of families - fuedal structures of leige ownership. How these structures were grouped into divisions and armies in time of need depended on the historical narrative of allegiancies between the city-states - the duchies. The definition of a state historically relies upon the presence of a state military - those that go without really go without, sooner or later. The lack of effective communications technology delimits the effective radius of activity of an indepedent command, giving you areas of land (usually defined by geographical features) under the control of a titular head of the military, the owner of the castle and other infrastructure, a capital resource either inherited or won in battle.

The church is a different kettlerian fish altogether, it is the rise of the corporate structure, where the need for mental capability is addressed as a matter of corporate survival - the deliberate expansion of the resource base through the building of a state funded education system - where the science of philosophy is required to produce results; the better ordering of events in the quest for quantitative predictability.

[JasonC]

Costard - no, it isn't inevitable given the state of German society. It was changed by one man in a deliberate reform. That man is Gneisenau, not Frederick, that is all. And the date it starts is after the catastrophe at Jena. The point of bring that up is to show that the pretense that the German way of war is a tradition stretching back to Frederick is utter nonsense.

They weren't a band of rational hyper trained professionals studying war and propounding theory and exploiting brilliant maneuver. They were blockhead jocks on horseback aimlessly charging when told to charge. That is why Davout could beat their main body with a single corps.

They could become a well led body, Napoleon had made the French into one. The staff system made the Prussians at least competent, if not brilliant yet, in the later Napoleonic period, as I explained when I contrast the achievements of a Blucher compared to say a Guderian.

Everyone agrees Guderian was smarter and more brilliant and more razzilee dazzilee. But he lost. Blucher didn't. Blucher was doing several somethings that were sound. The blockhead deficiencies of Jena had been corrected - and Frederick didn't correct them, he created and left them. Gneisenau corrected them.

And most of what is later considered the German way of war and the successes of German militarism, date from Gneisenau and his professionalizing reforms, and not from Frederick.

Gneisenau isn't a maneuverist icon. Frederick is. But Frederick was a reckless gambler without any great skill who deserved to lose. And Gneisenau was a professional military genius.

Blucher also isn't a maneuverist icon. And he wasn't a genius, wasn't even a thinker really. But he was a great general, and the man who beat Napoleon. Rather like Grant was the man who beat Lee. Blucher needed a Gneisenau to get into Napoleon's league. But once he had one, he didn't need to be a Napoleon, to beat him, decisively and repeatedly.

There is a rather important lesson in that, but it isn't one the usual purveyors of "German way of war" stories usually bother to tell, or would understand. It doesn't fit their master narrative of dashing- successful- risk-taking offensive- going-around.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[costard]

Oxford English Reference Dictionary

philosophy - 1 the use of reason and argument in seeking truth and knowledge of reality, esp. the causes and nature of things and of the principles governing existence, the material universe, perception of physical phenomenon, and human behaviour.

If that isn't science, nothing is.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Der Alte Fritz]

At the risk of incurring JasonC's ire, I would point out that it was Scharnhorst who was the genius behind the Prussian military changes leading up to the 1812 reform. His early death at Lutzen allowed his pupil Gneisenau to carry on his work.

[JasonC]

DAF - well they both worked at it, sure. They were both Blucher's chiefs of staff, and Clausewitz's mentors.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Clausewitz taught that the center of mass of the enemy is always his armed

forces in the field

you speak of "mass" but later you speak of "gravity" (in context of soft targets like capitals) so i suppose you mean "gravity" above as well.

Clausewitz did not teach that the center of gravity is always the armed forces of the enemy. he actually did list soft targets like capitals and leaders as possible center of gravity.

[Dook]

JasonC,

I would be interested in your opinion on Citino's book, The German Way of War. You mention the title at one point in your initial post, but it wasn't clear whether your comments were intended as direct refutation of the book. Although the general thesis of the book is pretty close to the viewpoint against which you are arguing, it is not (at least in my opinion) as cartoonish as other versions of the same basic view.

Dook

[Tux]

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JasonC:

Clausewitz taught that the center of mass of the enemy is always his armed

forces in the field

you speak of "mass" but later you speak of "gravity" (in context of soft targets like capitals) so i suppose you mean "gravity" above as well.</font>

[DavidFields]

Once the fighting starts, however, isn't the "philosophy" often affected by the perceived successes/failures on the ground?

If the germans had not been so "lucky" in their invasion of France (If French deployments had not been so....wrong. And had they understood armor tactics better), if the hole at Sedan had been closed for a few weeks and required a change in tactics, and/or the French counterattacks had been more successful, wouldn't different people had been promoted/discharged?

In other words, did the "lessons" in the fight against France, sometimes resulting from chance, in some cases hinder the german invasion of the Soviet Union?

Or, if the Crete paratroop invasion had been a success with low casualties, would the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union been scattered with similar airdrops? (The Sevestopol peninsula, for example)

[i realize some people find "What if?" propositions interesting, while others find them silly. But I find them a useful antidote to some sort of deterministic view, that things had to necessarily happen as they did.]

[SgtSkrap]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Jason,

Do you have anything similar on the Russian military tradition?

What is the lesson? I would say that more thinkers are better than less, and that the "nerdy" aspects of war planning are more important than individual commanders, not just because they are applied more prolifically but also that a general is a quantifiable asset too. Would love to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Mcnamara and crew would be a valid argument against this no?

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Tux:

Just a minor point: The terms 'Centre of Mass' and 'Centre of Gravity' are effectively synonymous, with the 'Mass' variation being more accurate for the purpose for which most people use either term, since it is independent of possible variations in the gravitational field within an object.

Clausewitz used (translation issues ignored) those terms to describe specific ideas related to warfare. his "On War" is one of the most confusing books, and the concept of "center of gravity" is especially hard. his use of various terms is not entirely consistent, not least because Clausewitz died before he finished the book. fortunately we know what parts he considered more and what less finished.

his "center of gravity" is not just mass (e.g. enemy armies), it is also things like movement and interdependencies. to simpify a great deal, it is The Thing that makes it possible for the enemy to wage war. according to Clausewitz it can be things like public opinion, alliances or even a single charismatic leader.

for example some argue that the COG in Vietnam war for South Vietnam would have been the alliance with the US, while the COG for US was public opinion. the US would have wrongly miscalculated the enemy COG to be Viet Cong forces -- thus the enemy was not defeated by the destruction of Viet Cong.

note that none of the above means that you should "go around". on the contrary it means that you should aim directly at the center of gravity. the center of gravity just isn't necessarily JUST the field armies themselves. also, the COG can change.

for example one could argue that in Operation Barbarossa Germans misidentified the Soviet armies in Western Russia as the Soviet COG. misidentified, because obviously USSR wasn't defeated by destroying their armies in Western Russia -- Soviets used a three layered system in which the high command mobilizes new armies in rear while the armies in front are being destroyed (just as planned to delay the enemy). German planners actually discovered in their wargames that it wasn't "all that likely" that they could destroy Soviet armies in Western Russia. they defined a line after which, if enemy still fielded coherent forces, they should stop and redefine their strategy -- in terms of Clausewitz to either recognize the changed enemy COG or simply correctly redefine it.

contemporary research has develop logical methods for helping commanders define the COG. these methods have also been used to analyze historical scenarios, to find out what the COG for various sides most likely actually was, and it is relatively easy to do it yourself. so far all such papers i have read have concluded that the Kiev turn was a mistake.

[Tux]

I think I'm beginning to understand the whole concept a lot better now. Thanks guys.

[DavidFields]

for example one could argue that in Operation Barbarossa Germans misidentified the Soviet armies in Western Russia as the Soviet COG. misidentified, because obviously USSR wasn't defeated by destroying their armies in Western Russia -- Soviets used a three layered system in which the high command mobilizes new armies in rear while the armies in front are being destroyed (just as planned to delay the enemy). German planners actually discovered in their wargames that it wasn't "all that likely" that they could destroy Soviet armies in Western Russia. they defined a line after which, if enemy still fielded coherent forces, they should stop and redefine their strategy -- in terms of Clausewitz to either recognize the changed enemy COG or simply correctly redefine it.

contemporary research has develop logical methods for helping commanders define the COG. these methods have also been used to analyze historical scenarios, to find out what the COG for various sides most likely actually was, and it is relatively easy to do it yourself. so far all such papers i have read have concluded that the Kiev turn was a mistake. [/QB]

I find this particularly clear, and useful.

Most simulations I see of Barbarossa require for a german victory the occupation of the Soviet territory to...usually something like the Urals. But, of course, that is a post-war, post-hoc, designation of convenience. I would imagine the german military would have hoped, prior to the invasion, that the COG was something less than that.

At this point, though we know that destruction of the initial Soviet armies were not the COG, we can't know what would have been--since the Soviets never collapsed. Perhaps taking Moscow in the initial lunge would have caused a....psychological, much like the Cold War, collapse. Maybe the early capture of Leningrad would have done it.

We will never know--but most simulations/games stack the deck to require the Germans to drive heedlessly east. (Something different, like: "Liberate" the Baltics and the Ukraine, then set up heavy defensive positions and negotiate for peace--not usually an option.)

[John Kettler]

Rankorian,

Regarding Russian divisions multiplying like mushrooms during WW II, may I suggest that you read THE SECRET OF STALINGRAD, by Walter Kerr? He describes how the Russians produced swarms of divisions long after German intel estimates predicted no more forces were available. See also the various discussions Suvorov provides of how units are not only fleshed out, but then, via use of experienced deputy commanders at all levels, a whole new division is formed and it, too, is fleshed out. Believe the primary discussion was in his THE "LIBERATORS."

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Tux - except, you are being spun with a modern maneuverist load of bull, that is a direct denial of the original meaning of center of gravity or center of mass, as meant by Clausewitz and before him by Napoleon.

Modern maneuverists fundamentally disagree with the center of gravity teaching of both, and they therefore substitute their own, and pretend it must be what they meant because they claim it is sounder or more sensible. In the case of Clausewitz, they can find a few qualifications around the main doctrine to hang this on - with Napoleon, it is hopeless. The issue is modern maneuverists believe in attacking enemy *weaknesses*, gaps, and in surprise and the unexpected. But here is the original idea.

"There are many fine officers in Europe, many fine generals, but they see too many things at once. Whereas I see only one thing - the main body of the enemy. This I crush, confident that lesser matters will take care of themselves." Napleon.

The idea is about *decision*, and it is about attacking the enemy *strength*. It is not about finding critical weaknesses - that is an alien maneuverist idea. In fact, the whole point is to utterly ignore as unimportant side shows, anything of that kind.

When Marshall wants to strike straight across northern Europe into the heart of Germany with a direct invasion by a massive ground army, he is applying the principle as originally meant. When Churchill instead advises nibbling away at the Med, Italy, the Balkans, or Norway, he is violating it. Churchill thinks he is striking at gaps and being clever. But Marshall is right, Napoleon is right, Churchill is seeing too many things at once.

Marshall doesn't give a tuppenny damn whether the Germans are strong in northern Europe. He doesn't give a tuppenny damn whether the attack is expected. He just sees the main body of the enemy, and he sees that putting a live fire spitting massive army smack on top of him will win the war. And all the gap seeking side shows will not.

In the case of Napoleon, the principle had another operational skill meaning directly related to the physicists notion of "center of mass". It is, when facing any enemy with multiple divided forces, to take your own all in one massive force and put it directly at the geometric center of mass, of those divided enemy forces. Don't turn their left. Don't nibble. Don't try to protect your supply line. Don't go for the weak little side army to whittle them down.

Instead, get right smack in the middle of them. This gives you central positioning, and it makes it harder for the enemy to unite for battle and to coordinate his forces. It will tend to force battle on the enemy. And it will give you the greatest options to fight one or the other in turn. The position aimed at should be the weighted center, because the larger enemy forces are both more important and will move more slowly than his smaller detachments.

In both cases, the principle is about seeking decision by overthrowing the enemy at his strongest, and not at his weakest. Maneuverists therefore hate it, and spin it away. Instead of a clear direct geometric meaning and a clear, unambiguous intent and application, they turn it into a muddy search for something that might work, a possible chink in the enemy armor. They think the enemy dangerous and strong, too much so to challenge directly, and Napoleon is all about challenging him directly, his strength be damned.

In the case of Russia in WW II, there was nothing wrong with targeting the fielded forces of the enemy, the Germans were right to do so. They were wrong to not increase their own strength while doing so. The Russians take 10 to 1 losses but gain in relatively power. Why? Because they have a full replacement rate and the Germans have none. The German error is not the target, it is the lack of a replacement rate. If they even half matched the Russians in the force mobilization department, the achieved loss ratio would have crushed the Russians.

The maneuverists instead try to pretend that since killing massive enemy forces didn't alone win the war, they should instead have sought some other weakness - usually a geographic one like "Moscow", occasionally a political one like "be nicer to the Ukrainians".

But they simply accept that the Germans can't win by smashing Russians, and never ask how the Russians could gain in relative strength with the losses running so high against them. Typically there is an imaginary 10 or 20 to 1 odds against them idea, so they can kill 5 or 10 to 1 and still lose on odds - even though the Russians never had more than twice the manpower base, and after the loss of western Russian, not more than 3 to 2, and the industrial bases of Germany and Russia were equal.

This spun Clausewitz revisionism is entirely typical of the tendency I am talking about. No element of the German military tradition is allowed to vary from the script, because it is all about boosting a modern doctrine, not understanding the internal variety in actual German doctrine, over time. And one is especially forbidden to notice when the historical German doctrine is not only different from the modern spin, but superior to it.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Rankorian:

Most simulations I see of Barbarossa require for a german victory the occupation of the Soviet territory to...usually something like the Urals. But, of course, that is a post-war, post-hoc, designation of convenience. I would imagine the german military would have hoped, prior to the invasion, that the COG was something less than that.

At this point, though we know that destruction of the initial Soviet armies were not the COG, we can't know what would have been--since the Soviets never collapsed. Perhaps taking Moscow in the initial lunge would have caused a....psychological, much like the Cold War, collapse. Maybe the early capture of Leningrad would have done it.

We will never know--but most simulations/games stack the deck to require the Germans to drive heedlessly east. (Something different, like: "Liberate" the Baltics and the Ukraine, then set up heavy defensive positions and negotiate for peace--not usually an option.)

don't confuse enemy COG with your goals, territory or things like "psychological shock effect".

taking Moscow won't make Soviet armies disappear. by aiming at Moscow you just may have better chances at destroying those armies, of achieving a decisive battle of annihilation.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Tux - except, you are being spun with a modern maneuverist load of bull, that is a direct denial of the original meaning of center of gravity or center of mass, as meant by Clausewitz and before him by Napoleon.

it's simple as this: you are factually incorrect when you say that according to Clausewitz the enemy armies are always the center of gravity. you are simply wrong.

The idea is about *decision*, and it is about attacking the enemy *strength*. It is not about finding critical weaknesses - that is an alien maneuverist idea. In fact, the whole point is to utterly ignore as unimportant side shows, anything of that kind.

exactly.

Maneuverists therefore hate it, and spin it away.

heh, the evil maneuverists conspire.

In the case of Russia in WW II, there was nothing wrong with targeting the fielded forces of the enemy, the Germans were right to do so.

German plan was certainly sound considering the information available for them, but in hindsight it was an error as defined by the criteria set by the German planners themselves.

This spun Clausewitz revisionism is entirely typical of the tendency I am talking about. No element of the German military tradition is allowed to vary from the script, because it is all about boosting a modern doctrine, not understanding the internal variety in actual German doctrine, over time. And one is especially forbidden to notice when the historical German doctrine is not only different from the modern spin, but superior to it.

i am impressed by your pessimism. take a break some day and allow the world to vary from the script you have set up.

[pamak1970]

I think the following link gives a very good point of view about "center of gravity".

http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/sum03/echevarria.html

It also gives passages from "On war" where Napoleon is actually blaimed for turning his army towards the " bigger mass" of his enemy, instead of finishing of the weaker Blucher

According to the book, on War, chapter V critisism.

"Because Blucher, although weaker than Schwartzenberg was, on account of his enterprising spirit, the more important adversary; in him, therefore, lay the centre of attraction which drew the others along in the same direction."

By the way,according to physics the center of gravity can be located outside of an object's mass . For example The center of gravity of two big spheres of equal mass seperated by a certain distance , is going to be located in the middle of that distance and away from either sphere's mass.

The funny thing is that Clausewitz actually thinks that Napoleon should have chosen the option of more uncertainty and more decisive results

here is the passage

There are people, no doubt, who will not be convinced on these arguments; but at all events they cannot retort by saying, that "whilst Buonaparte threatened Schwartzenberg's base by advancing to the Rhine, Schwartzenberg at the same time threatened Buonaparte's communications with Paris;" because we have shown by the reasons above given that Schwartzenberg would never have thought of marching on Paris.

With respect to the example quoted by us from the campaign of 1796, we should say: Buonaparte looked upon the plan he adopted as the surest means of beating the Austrians; but admitting that it was so, still the object to be attained was only an empty victory, which could have hardly any sensible influence on the fall of Mantua. The way which we should have chosen would, in our opinion, have been much more certain to prevent the relief of Mantua; but even if we place ourselves in the position of the French general and assume that it was not so, and look upon the certainty of success to have been less, the question then amounts to a choice between a more certain but less useful, and therefore less important victory on the one hand, and a somewhat less probable but far more decisive and important victory on the other hand. Presented in this form, boldness must have declared for the second solution, which is the reverse of what took place, when the thing was only superficially viewed. Buonaparte certainly was anything but deficient in boldness; and we may be sure that he did not see the whole case and its consequences as fully and clearly as we can now at the present time.