Strategy

by Lawrence Freedman

  Von Moltke accepted that the aims of war were determined by policy. Once fighting began, however, the military must be given a free hand: “strategy” must be “fully independent of policy.” This belief went back to the formation of the Prussian general staff after the defeat at Jena in 1806, in order to guard against princely incompetence. Von Moltke judged this role to be as essential as ever. Surround a commander in the field with “independent and negative counselors” and nothing would ever get done. “They will present every difficulty, they will have foreseen all eventualities; they will always be right; they will defeat every positive idea because they have none of their own. These counselors are the spoilers; they negate the Army leader.”19 There was an unavoidable tension at the heart of von Moltke’s position. It was illuminated by his reported conversation with crown prince Frederick William at the height of the crisis. Von Moltke explained that after Paris was taken the army would “push forward into the south of France in order to finally break the enemy’s power.” When asked about the risks of Prussian strength being exhausted so that battles could no longer be won, he denied the possibility. “We must always win battles. We must throw France completely to the ground.” Then “we can dictate the kind of peace we want.” “What if,” wondered the crown prince, “we ourselves bleed to death in the process?” Von Moltke replied : “We shall not bleed to death and, if we do, we shall have got peace in return.” He was then asked whether he was informed about the current political situation, as this “might perhaps make such a course seem unwise.” “No,” the field marshal replied, “I have only to concern myself with military matters.”20

  Out of these highly charged debates emerged a concept of crucial importance for subsequent military thought. Stressing his delegated powers from the Kaiser to issue operational commands, von Moltke identified the operational level of war as the one within which the commander must expect no political interference. The episode over Paris might have just demonstrated the fantasy of this political exclusion, but for commanders in the field this became an article of faith, essential to the proper and successful implementation of strategy.

  CHAPTER 9 Annihilation or Exhaustion

  Git thar fustest with the mostest.

  —General Nathan B. Forrest, quoted (probably incorrectly) on strategy

  AT THE START of the twentieth century, the military historian Hans Delbrück argued that all military strategy could be divided into two basic forms. The first, conforming to the majority view of the day was Niederwerfungsstrategie, the strategy of annihilation, which demanded a decisive battle to eliminate the enemy’s army. The second drew on Clausewitz’s note of 1827 which recognized the possibility for another type of war when the available military means could not deliver a decisive battle.1 This Delbrück described as Ermattungsstrategie, the strategy of exhaustion, sometimes translated as attrition. Whereas with a strategy of annihilation there was just one pole, the battle, with exhaustion there was another pole, involving a variety of ways to achieve the political ends of war, including occupying territory, destroying crops, and blockading. In the past, these alternative approaches, for want of better options, had often been used and could be effective. What was important was to be flexible when deciding upon a strategy, to attend to the political realities of the time, and to not rely on a military strategy that might be beyond practical capacity.

  Delbrück did not intend to imply that the strongest was bound to be attracted by annihilation whereas the weak were fated to do what they could through exhaustion. Exhaustion was not about a single decisive battle but about an extended campaign that would wear the enemy out. He mocked the idea of a “pure maneuver strategy that allows war to be conducted without bloodshed.” There was always a possibility of battle. His view of a strategy of exhaustion was more operational than an anticipation of the later concept of attritional war. This placed more emphasis on how underlying economic, industrial, and demographic factors would sustain warfare.

  Delbrück’s analysis led him into furious arguments with the historians of the German general staff, especially when Delbrück argued that Frederick the Great had practiced limited war rather than decisive battle. The history was on his side, in that Frederick had become wary of battle and careful in his ambition, but there was still a problem with the dichotomous presentation of complex options.2 The problem was to suggest that a fundamental choice had to be made in advance about how to comport an army for a coming war, a tendency that remained evident in strategic debate over the coming century. The challenge for Delbrück at this time, however, was to get German generals to contemplate anything other than a swift offensive leading to the annihilation of the enemy army in a decisive battle.

  The American Civil War

  The complex relationship between theory and practice in strategy was revealed by the American Civil War (1861–1865). At one level, the outcome of the war was the result of the North enjoying twice the population and far greater industrial strength than the South. For much of the war the Confederacy could claim more imaginative generals. As the weaker side it might have been tempted to rely on defensive tactics, but instead often took the military initiative, perhaps in the hope that the North would respect the outcome of a truly decisive battle. President Lincoln saw clearly that the Union’s strategy required an offensive, but to his exasperation his generals seemed to be unable to mount one successfully until quite late in the war.

  Clausewitz had no discernible influence on these events. That was not so with Jomini. The leading teacher at West Point, Dennis Mahan, had spent time in France studying the Napoleonic Wars and was an avowed Jominian, while his star pupil, Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, who became President Lincoln’s general-in-chief, had gone so far as to translate Jomini’s Life of Napoleon into English. Mahan celebrated Napoleon’s military art,

  by which an enemy is broken and utterly dispersed by one and the same blow. No futilities of preparation; no uncertain feeling about in search of the key point; no hesitancy upon the decisive moment; the whole field of view taken in by one eagle glance; what could not be seen divined by an unerring instinct; clouds of light troops thrown forward to bewilder his foe; a crashing fire of cannon in mass opened upon him; the rush of the impetuous column into the gaps made by the artillery; the overwhelming charge of the resistless cuirassier; followed by the lancer and the hussar to sweep up the broken dispersed bands; such were the tactical lessons taught in almost every battle of this great military period.3

  Halleck was a senior general at the start of the war and soon became general in chief. His specialty as an engineer, however, was fortification, and that gave him a regard for defenses that was never wholly in keeping with Mahan’s call for “vigor on the field and rapidity of pursuit.” A combination of expertise in defensive methods, including digging trenches and deadly rifled muskets, was bound to inhibit frontal assaults. This caution was also evident in the Union’s first general-in-chief, George McLellan.

  Jomini’s influence among the generals is evident in their focus on lines of communication and their opposition to Lincoln’s proposals to mount a series of concurrent attacks against the South, including coastal operations. This they judged to be an affront to the principles of war as it would require divided forces. It was just the sort of proposal to be expected from an untutored civilian.4 Lincoln, who never doubted that this would be a long, wearing battle, was reluctant to press his own views but was ready to replace his generals in the hope of finding someone who would take the fight to the enemy. The generals were wary of the defense’s potential and were so enamored with the idea of a decisive battle that they were reluctant to risk their forces in anything else. As General McClellan put it: “I do not wish to waste life in useless battles, but prefer to strike at the heart.” Lincoln became increasingly frustrated by a preference for maneuvers over assaults. This he described disparagingly as “strategy.” “That’s the word—strategy!” he exclaimed in 1862, “General McClellan thinks he is going to whip the
rebels by strategy.”5 It described a form of warfare that did everything with an army but fight. Feints, maneuvers, and other clever moves might win the occasional battle, but it was brute force, relentlessly applied, that made the difference. When the South was eventually penetrated, exposing the limits of the Confederacy’s defenses, Lincoln was prepared to accept the benefits: “Now, gentleman, that was true strategy because the enemy was diverted from his purpose.”6

  Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy had made his own studies of Napoleon and was totally convinced of the need to go on the offensive to annihilate enemy forces. He knew that he could not mount a successful passive defense and so had to take the initiative, using maneuvers to get into the best position but then accepting battle. But this involved high casualties, and the Union side did at least understand defenses. Lee had set a goal for victory that he could not realize, and he suffered the consequences. The rival armies were “too big, too resilient, too thoroughly sustained by the will of democratic governments” to be destroyed “in a single Napoleonic battle.” Ulysses Grant saw the logic clearly and brutally. The terrible loss of life in both armies had achieved little, observed Grant, but he understood that the North could survive the losses better than the South and so he decided to embark on “as desperate fighting as the world has ever witnessed,” locking Lee’s forces in constant combat until he barely had an army left.7 Meanwhile, Grant sent General Sherman to make life miserable for the people of the South, bring home the costs of the war, and make it harder to sustain an army in the field.

  Lincoln’s own contribution was to press ahead in January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the areas under rebellion, a move described as a “necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” This not only further unsettled the South but reinforced the Union army. By 1865, former slaves counted for 10 percent of its army. In the end this was a war of exhaustion. The leader of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, observed how the war’s “magnitude” had exceeded his expectations. “The enemy have displayed more power and energy and resources than I had attributed to them. Their finances have held out far better than I imagined would be the case … It is not possible that a war of the dimensions that this one has assumed, of proportions so gigantic, can be very long protracted. The combatants must soon be exhausted.”8

  The Cult of the Offensive

  Industrialization was expanding the numbers of men who could be organized for war, while steam and electricity were making it easier to mobilize and transport them. Firepower was also steadily improving in its range and lethality. All this challenged commanders. The geographical scope of operations and the numbers involved were expanding, while the limitations of weather were easing. The implications for logistics and the actual conduct of battle were uncertain. The politics of war was also changing. Because it drew on whole societies and national sentiments it was much harder to separate the military from the civilian spheres.

  The fact that individual battles in the American Civil War were not decisive and that the French continued to resist even after the apparently decisive battle of Sedan in 1870 warned of the limits to the established view of how to achieve victory in war. Yet so ingrained was the idea of a decisive battle that the urge was still to find ways to force a satisfactory conclusion. Even those who sensed their own weakness in the face of superior numbers did not look so much to guile as to superior spirit. After the defeat of 1870–1871, French theorists glorified the “offensive” and celebrated moral strength as the key to persuading their men to charge against enemy firepower.9 If the material balance of power was not going to guarantee victory, then the vital factor had to be found in something more spiritual—what British field marshal Douglas Haig called “morale and a determination to conquer.” The key text was that of Ardant du Picq, who argued that everything depended on the emotional and moral state of the individual soldier. He was killed in the 1870 war but his work was published posthumously in 1880 as Etudes sur le combat (Battle Studies). Its influence reached the French high command. Ferdinand Foch, who became supreme allied commander during the Great War, was convinced that the question of losing was about a psychological state of mind. Du Picq insisted that the physical impulse was nothing, the “moral impulse” everything. This lay “in the perception by the enemy of the resolution that animates you.” By the time the attack arrived, the defenders could be “disconcerted, wavering, worried, hesitant, vacillating.”10 The doctrine of the offensive became official French policy. It later came to be described as a “cult.”

  German policy started from a different basis. Von Moltke had no doubt that if Germany could not achieve a quick victory in a future war, its position would soon become dire. The key premise accepted by all German strategists was that if the country was subjected to attack from both east and west it could soon be squeezed, unless one of the belligerents could be removed from the fight early on. After 1871, von Moltke became progressively more pessimistic about Germany’s ability to achieve this. As plans were developed for a war against both France and Russia, he realized the need to scale down political expectations even as the military demands became greater. He wanted to get Germany into the optimum position from which to negotiate a political settlement. That required going on the offensive (so as to acquire territory to be used in the eventual bargaining) rather than absorbing the offensives of others.

  The intensity of the debate reflected von Moltke’s successors’ determination to avoid exhaustion. They could not bring themselves to prepare for an inevitable stalemate. They held to the conviction that when it came to the crunch, the new political order could and should be created through force of arms. As chief of the German general staff at the turn of the century, Alfred von Schlieffen epitomized this view. The secret, he believed, was to be found in combining a grand and compelling concept with meticulous attention to detail. In 1891, he described the “essential element in the art of strategy” as bringing “superior numbers into action. This is relatively easy when one is stronger from the outset, more difficult when one is weaker, and probably impossible when the numerical imbalance is very great.”11 In the most probable contingencies for Germany, facing France from the west and Russia from the east, one enemy must be destroyed before the other was engaged. A frontal assault would cause excessive casualties, leaving insufficient capacity for future battles. It would therefore be necessary to take the initiative, first outflanking the enemy force and then destroying it. Von Schlieffen sought to address the challenge of friction and anticipate the enemy counterstrategy by insisting on careful planning. The whole campaign was choreographed from mobilization to victory. The enemy would have no choice but to follow the German script rather than its own. Contrary to the precepts of von Moltke, this allowed little scope for individual initiative or for much going wrong. Von Schlieffen was aware that there were few margins for error. He was therefore prepared to take political risks, in particular by violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, in order to reduce the military risks.

  An intense debate has developed among military historians as to whether there really was ever a Schlieffen Plan, prepared just before von Moltke’s nephew (known as the Younger) took over as chief of the general staff in 1906. The German records are incomplete and whatever was bequeathed undoubtedly was amended as circumstances changed.12 At times the general staff looked to the east rather than the west and adjusted force levels. The thinking in 1914, nevertheless, did follow an ingrained strategic concept, using envelopment to remove one enemy from the war at maximum speed with minimum losses. This strategy was outlined by von Moltke the Younger in December 1911, when he recommended that in all circumstances, Germany should open the campaign by directing all available resources against France.

  In the battle against France lies the decision in the war. The Republic is our most dangerous enemy, but we can hope to bring about a rapid decision here. If France is beaten in the first great battle, this country, which possesses no great manpower r
eserves, will hardly be in a position to conduct a long-lasting war. Russia, on the other hand, can shift her forces into the interior of her immeasurable land and can protract the war for an immeasurable time. Therefore, Germany’s entire effort must be focused on ending the war, at least on one front, with a single great blow as soon as possible.13

  The German offensive of August 1914 was the culmination of a century of developments in military thought and practice, updating the received wisdom of the Napoleonic period for recent developments in communications and logistics. It broke from the Clausewitzian model by assuming, without evidence, that the offense could be the stronger form of warfare. As Strachan notes, the war plans of all European armies in 1914 were Jominian: “operational plans for single campaigns, designed to achieve decisive success through maneuver according to certain principles.”14 The enemy defenses would be circumvented and then engaged with a strength and momentum that would leave them reeling. This assumed high levels of commitment, skill, élan, and willpower; and an enemy that would fail to rise to the challenge.

  This was a strategy that had been decided upon well in advance and to which all planning had been geared. To ensure that the plan was properly executed, troops who could follow commands obediently and precisely were required. Instead of a Tolstoyan army of individuals shaping outcomes through numerous individual choices, this was a group turned by discipline and drill into instruments of the commander’s will. Where latitude was required for local initiatives in the face of unforeseeable developments, these would still reflect the commanders’ intent, conveyed not only through direct communications but indirectly through a shared institutional culture and agreed doctrine. The systems of hierarchy and control, of specialized functions and their coordination, appeared as the highest stage of modern bureaucratic development. The general staff had the pick of the brightest military brains. It set the standards for comprehensive planning and preparation of individuals to follow straightforward commands in trying conditions.