The German Way of War

A Lesson in Tactical Management

Jaap Jan Brouwer

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526790385
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

How the German Army combined opposing characteristics, such as drill and creativity, authority and independent thinking, into a potent mix of fighting power. The German Army lost two consecutive wars and the conclusion is often drawn that it simply wasn't able to cope with its opponents. This image is constantly reinforced in literature and in the media, where seemingly brainless operating German units led by fanatical officers predominate. Nothing was as far from the truth. The records show that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them: their relative battlefield performance was at least 1.5 and in most cases 3 times as high as that of its opponents. The central question in this book is why the German Army had a so much higher relative battlefield performance than the opposition. A central element within the Prussian/German Army is Auftragstaktik, a tactical management concept that dates from the middle of the nineteenth century and is still very advanced in terms of management and organization. Using more than fifty examples to illustrate the realities of the battlefield, from North Africa to Arnhem and the Hürtgen Forest, the author explains why the Prussian/German Army was such an unprecedented powerful fighting force. And why Auftragstaktik—under other guises—is still the basic form of operation for many European armies, with even the US Army introducing certain elements of Auftragstaktik into its organization, more than 150 years after its conception. "A fascinating book looking at the way the German Army went about training its units and men." — UK Historian

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: Defeat as a Basis for Learning

In 1806, the Prussians suffered a painful defeat by Napoleon’s armies at the Battle of Jena (there were actually two battles, one at Jena and one at Auerstadt). To give an impression of the magnitude of the battle and the effects of the ensuing defeat, the French deployed 121,000 men and the Prussians 117,000, with resultant losses of 12,000 and 38,000 respectively. This defeat had a profound impact. While Prussia lost large parts of its territory and inhabitants to France, perhaps more importantly the loss underlined the need for reform of both the army and the feudal state of Prussia. Reformers such as Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Clausewitz had fought at Jena, and in the following years they laid the foundations for much needed reforms and sparked the transformation of Prussia into a modern state. Under the leadership of this renewed Prussia, France would eventually be expelled from German territory. It was the starting point of the leading role that Germany would come to play in Europe, a role that it still plays today.

After Jena, contrary to common practice in other armies at the time, the Prussians evaluated in detail the reasons for their defeat. They came to the conclusion that the battlefield was ‘a chaos’. We can imagine this when we consider the sheer number of people fighting in a relatively small area. The Prussians concluded that this chaos doomed every attempt at centralized command and control, since the time lag between messages from the front to the commanders and back again was so great that they were only applicable to the situation of a couple of hours earlier.

The Prussians concluded, in fact, that the battlefield was so complex and unpredictable that using detailed plans and orders actually put them at a serious disadvantage: after the first shots had been fired, plans and orders were immediately irrelevant and did not reflect the reality of battle. Moreover, a commander actually wants his soldiers to react positively to unexpected situations in real time, rather than having to wait for orders. Troops must learn to deal with these situations and the chaos of the battlefield themselves. Very significantly, it is this very chaos that creates the ideal environment for troops to seize the advantage, provided that they have been trained to respond to opportunities. Therefore, if there is no chaos, you must create it to unbalance your opponent. This view was, and is, contrary to that of most army organizations which, then and now, attempt to control the battlefield and the course of the fighting. This Prussian analysis formed the basis of Auftragstaktik, a command concept with highly decentralized decision-making and ample room for initiative.

The evolution of what we now call Auftragstaktik started in 1812, when the rules for infantry were adjusted based on the above analysis; the classic rigid combat formation was replaced by a more flexible one, with units directly under divisional commanders who were given more room to use their own initiative and freedom of thought and action. However, at lower levels in the organization, manoeuvring with large formations of soldiers as one group remained commonplace.

It was a technological change in the middle of the nineteenth century that forced everyone to fundamentally rethink battlefield operations, when the classic musket was replaced by the breech-loading rifle. The speed of fire of the latter and the range at which this fire was effective made manoeuvring in larger formations on the battlefield far more dangerous. This marked the onset of major changes in the way infantry operated and can be regarded as one of the decisive arguments used by the Prussian Army in introducing Auftragstaktik in both depth and breadth in its organization. The Wars of German Unification of 1864 against Denmark, 1866 against Austria and 1870–71 against France confirmed that technological development, not only of weapon systems but also, for example, of the telegraph, had definitively undermined prevailing doctrines and tactics. These new weapons and technologies forced military organizations to split existing formations into ever-smaller units and spread these over an ever-wider area. Army commanders, corps commanders and the commanders of divisions and regiments could no longer physically overlook and control their units, and were thus forced to drastically devolve decision-making to lower echelons. However, the results could be disastrous, as these lower levels of command were not always able to cope with these new responsibilities. It was clear that it was necessary to develop a new command concept that, on the one hand, placed responsibilities and decision-making capabilities lower in the organization while, on the other, guaranteed that the commanders of these units would not take counter-productive decisions.

Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the General Stab (General Staff) from 1857 to 1888, played a decisive role in the development of Auftragstaktik and can be seen as the spiritual father of this new command concept. From him came the dictum, ‘No plan survives the first contact with the enemy’. Von Moltke was a diligent student of Frederick the Great’s campaigns and philosophy, and of military history in general.

‘No plan survives the first contact with the enemy.’

Von Moltke, Chief of Staff, Prussian Army, 1857–87

When he attended the annual Kriegsspiele (war games) of the General Stab in 1858 he was not yet famous; his victories in three wars were in the future. However, he was upset by the slurry of paper and the degree of detail in the orders, because he knew that in war there was no time for such nonsense. In his review of the Kriegsspiele he stated that ‘as a rule an order should only contain what the subordinate for the achievement of his goals cannot determine on his own’; in other words everything else must be left to the discretion of the commander on the spot. In the following decades under von Moltke’s leadership, the Prussians developed a new command concept for their armies, a concept eventually known as Auftragstaktik: Führen durch Aufträge (leading by assignment).

Auftragstaktik, the British way

The British also had a form of decentralized decision making, but in their case based on the inherent hierarchy of their class society. Members of the upper classes could buy an officer’s commission without necessarily knowing anything about war. In practice, this was not a problem, since they gave orders to their ‘best men’ i.e. the professional officers who commanded their companies and who in turn depended on non-commissioned officers (NCOs). These NCOs were professionals who led their units, often consisting of mercenaries, with regard to the limits of the ruling doctrine. These could be adapted because the doctrines differed; for example, that of Hessian soldiers was different from that of Spanish mercenaries.

Auftragstaktik did not evolve without controversy, and the years after 1871 were characterized by a struggle between the ‘moderates’ and the ‘hard-liners’. The first were the adopters of Auftragstaktik who wanted to decentralize decision-making to the lower echelons and preferred independently operating units. The latter were those who wanted to keep command and control centralized, particularly as more modern weapons threatened to disrupt the traditional ways in which troops were controlled. Hard-liners were contemptuous of Auftragstaktik because, in their eyes, it would undermine discipline and thereby put the entire military command and control system at risk. However, its development continued and Auftragstaktik eventually gained a permanent position in the thinking of the imperial army. In 1888 the term was first recorded in the Exerzier-Reglement für die Infanterie der Königliche Preussischen Armee (exercise regulations for the infantry of the Royal Prussian Army).

The American Civil War (1861–5)

The American Civil War was in every sense a terrible war, with more than 750,000 soldiers and probably as many civilians killed. European military observers were shocked by the way in which both parties fought. On the American battlefields new weapon technologies collided with what were the often archaic tactics of both sides. The observers noted that:

• Cavalry without infantry in a supporting role was used to carry out meaningless charges at enemy lines

• Guns were dispersed across the units, so there was no central fire control, each gun firing at its own discretion

• Bayonets were used as weapons and not, as on the European continent, as deterrents or a means to threaten the opponent’s units until one or the other gave way and beat a retreat. Mobs of men fought each other with bayonets, resulting in large numbers of wounded and killed

Possibly the worst feature was that lines of infantry faced each other in ‘classical’ formations but fired using modern rifles. As a result, row after row of men was hit and fell dead or wounded, only to be replaced by fresh ranks. This resulted in mass slaughter, particularly when the Northerners started using the first rapid-fire repeating rifles.

These observations clearly indicated the consequences if armies did not adapt their doctrine and tactics to new technological realities. They underlined the need for European armies to look for new command and control concepts.

The fact that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy does not mean that plans should not exist. In fact, the opposite is true: planning is a necessary element in war. The reality is that account should always be taken of the need for improvisation by those operating in the front line, where planning and reality meet; in other words, between the command and control system and the harsh reality of the battlefield. Soldiers and local commanders need professional leeway to put formal plans aside when reality requires. This is the nucleus of Auftragstaktik: decision-making wherever an ever-changing reality is most manifest. Von Moltke and others realized that the army leadership was not omniscient. They understood that the complexity of the battlefield necessitated a style of leadership that left room for independent thinking by officers and their men. Thus they placed ‘thinking’ and ‘acting’ at the right level within Auftragstaktik: the level of soldiers and their officers in the front line.

This was in contrast to Befehlstaktik, where ‘thinking’ and ‘acting’ were strictly divided and men only had to follow precise orders. In Befehlstaktik, ‘thinking’ is done by planners at the top of the organization (general staff, army and divisional staff) and ‘acting’ is delegated to the troops in the field. This separation of ‘thinking’ and ‘acting’ makes troops dependent on orders from above and results in extended reaction times in an ever-changing environment.

As a consequence, Auft...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter One Introduction: Defeat as a Basis for Learning
• Chapter Two Command Concept
• Chapter Three Structure, Verbundene Waffen and Kampfgruppen
• Chapter Four Leadership
• Chapter Five Men, Teams and Training
• Chapter Six Shared Values, Morale
• Chapter Seven The Reality of the Battlefield: Overloon 1944
• Chapter Eight Reflections and Conclusions
• Chapter Nine Epilogue
• Appendix: Absolute and Relative Battlefield Performance
• Glossary
• Bibliography/References