The Brain of an Army: A Popular Account of the German General Staff

by Spenser Wilkinson

It is in this last process that the educational value of military history is to be sought. The Prussian School aims not only at developing the power of comprehension, but also at forming the character.[[5]] Accordingly it requires that the student should not merely make himself acquainted with the facts of a campaign, and with the general bearings of theory upon its events. He is expected in every case to form a definite conclusion as to what ought to have been done. He must clearly make up his mind what course he would himself have adopted in the circumstances which confronted the general whose operations he is studying.

The influence of the ideas of Clausewitz upon the historical studies of the general staff is clearly marked. In 1862 was published "The Italian Campaign of the year 1859, compiled by the Historical Department of the General Staff of the Royal Prussian Army." It is an open secret that this work was written by Moltke himself; and therefore it is worth noting that the preface describes the object of the book almost in the words of Clausewitz: "to ascertain as accurately as possible the nature of the events in Northern Italy during those few eventful weeks, to deduce them from their causes—in short, to exercise that objective criticism without which the facts themselves do not afford effective instruction for our own benefit." The history of the Italian campaign is a model of this positive criticism. At, every stage the writer places himself in turn in the position of the commander of each side, and sketches clearly and concisely the measures which at that moment would, in his opinion, have been the most appropriate. This is undoubtedly the true method of teaching the general's art, and the best exercise in peace that can be devised for those who have acquired its mastery.

In 1867 appeared "The Campaign of 1866 in Germany, compiled by the Department for Military History of the Great General Staff." This work is described in its preface as "drawn from the official reports of the Prussian troops, and intended in the first instance for their use. The description," the writer goes on to say, "is one-sided, because hitherto our late antagonists have not made disclosures such as would suffice to explain the motives of their action." A similar qualification may be applied to the account of the Franco-German war published by the great general staff. But both works supply, within the limits laid down by their authors, precisely the kind of history which is of the greatest value to the military student. The utmost pains have been taken to secure a true statement of facts, and a clear exposition of the guiding motives on the Prussian or German side. Accordingly these works, and the account published more recently of the campaign of 1864 in Denmark, form rich storehouses of material for that "objective criticism" in the exercise of which lies the principal means of maturing the military judgment.

The great general staff began in 1883 to publish a series of historical monographs, of which the object is, in the case of subjects chosen from recent campaigns, "to throw light upon important questions relating to the art of command, in particular the mode of employing, and the performance possible to, the several arms; the service of security; minor warfare; fortification; the composition and preservation of armies." Those of the essays which take their subjects from earlier campaigns are intended "to enrich our insight into the nature of war, and to make possible a profounder and more correct judgment of events, and of the persons concerned in them."

The Order of Teaching of the War Academy describes the purpose of all these studies in military history. They are to lead to a knowledge of "the unchanging conditions upon which good generalship depends, in their connection with changing tactical forms." Before there can be good practice there must be a true theory, and a true theory can be acquired only from historical study pursued according to a sound method. Moreover, the theory can never have an independent existence; it must always derive its sustenance from fresh contact with the historical reality of which it is the abstract. It is like the giant Antasus, whose strength fails whenever he is lifted up from the touch of his mother Earth. On the other hand, historical study which did not yield a theory would be barren and useless.

This connection between history and theory finds expression in the tradition of the Prussian service. The general staff has been no less active in the production of theoretical works than in that of historical studies. But in the department of theory each work is published on the responsibility of its author. There is no official theory;[[6]] only the theories of individual officers. A short account of the principal works which in this way emanated from the general staff during the reign of King William I. will show that the accepted body of military doctrine is almost entirely due to this one source.

In 1865 appeared as a supplement to a military newspaper an anonymous memorandum of eight pages, headed "Remarks on the Influence of the Improved Firearms upon Battle." This short essay, of which the authorship was afterwards acknowledged by Moltke, gave a searching analysis, based upon exact historical data, of the modifications in the handling of troops on the battlefield to be looked for from the adoption of rifled cannon and breechloading rifles. The writer drew with a master's hand in a few strokes the characteristics of the physiology and psychology of the modern battlefield, as results of the new arms. The rifled gun can change its target without changing its position. Its long range and its accuracy, where the distance is known and the target visible, must prevent the enemy from employing large columns within a mile. The breech-loading rifle requires soldiers carefully taught to shoot. But sharpshooting must be the exception. Decisive results on a large scale must be sought by reserving the fire for those short ranges at which errors in estimating the distance are immaterial. A strict control of the fire by the officers must prevent the waste of ammunition. The formation for firing will be the line two deep; that for manoeuvring in the range of the enemy's rifled guns will be a line of small columns, which can rapidly deploy, are easily handled, and admit of the full use of the ground for protection and concealment when in motion. The new firearms produce their full effect only on open ground. Accordingly the defender will seek positions such as are formed by a gentle slope of the ground offering a free and extensive field of fire. The attacker will seek for his advance the protection afforded by broken ground or by woods and villages. Though in the abstract the new weapons are favourable to the defence, so that a general on the defensive will try to force the enemy to attack him in a good position, the breechloading rifle, if it can be brought within effective range of the defender, will quickly bring about a decision. The defenders will not be able to sustain the hail of bullets, and if they attempt to charge with the bayonet will be effectually stopped by the rapid fire of the needle-gun.[[7]]

The views here expressed were put into practice, and proved to be sound, on the battlefields of 1866. The battle of Nachod, in which the Crown Prince's left column, emerging from the mountains, defeated the Austrian corps which tried to prevent its debouching, illustrated the leading ideas of Moltke's essay. The position was on the crest of a long slope, up which the Austrians attacked. The Prussian troops were handled in small columns, which deployed to resist by steady and rapid fire at short ranges the advance of the Austrian masses. After the war, a younger officer of the general staff, Major, afterwards Lieutenant-General Kühne, published a critical history of these early battles of the Crown Prince; and it is worth noting that he found the chief cause of success on the actual battlefields to have lain in the thoroughness with which the men had been taught to handle the needle-gun, and in the judgment with which the officers applied the small column for manoeuvre and the deployed formations for firing. At Königgrätz itself was illustrated the view that the attack would find its advantage in broken or covered ground, for the decisive blow was prepared essentially by Fransecky's hard fighting in the wood of Maslowed.

After the war of 1870, the Prussian staff was for many years engaged upon its history, which was not complete until 1881. During this period the main business of military criticism was the sifting of that war, with a view to the improvement of theory, in other words to the better management of future wars. It has always been thought remarkable that this criticism should have been undertaken by the Germans themselves. The bulk of this work also was done by the general staff, in the shape of unofficial publications by members of that body. Between 1870 and 1875 appeared the studies of Verdy du Vernois in The Art of Command, works which have exercised the profoundest influence on the military literature of our time, and which recall the efforts of Scharnhorst to teach, not a series of disconnected sciences, but a doctrine of the conduct of war.[[8]] Verdy's studies were based on his work in the historical department of the staff, where he was engaged on the records of both the great campaigns. In 1882 appeared the essay on Strategy of Blume, who had prepared for it by a strategical history, published in 1872, of the campaign of 1870 from the battle of Sedan onwards. In 1883 was published the brilliant popular work of Von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms, also the outcome of extensive historical studies.[[9]] All these writers were members of the Prussian general staff.

The tactical discussions which immediately followed the war were conducted in the main by writers whose experience had been gained, not on the staff, but in the actual command of fighting units. Boguslawski, Laymann, Tellenbach, and May had been company leaders on the French or Bohemian battlefields. But even here the influence of the staff was considerable. Bronsart von Schellendorf, who wrote the reply to May's Tactical Retrospect, Von Scherff, whose essays on formal tactics were very widely read at the time of their publication (1873), and Meckel, whose treatise on tactics in 1881 condensed into a systematic shape the substantial results of the ten years' controversy, were all officers of the general staff. Thus it is hardly too much to say that for more than twenty years the Prussian general staff has done a great part of the military thinking of Europe.