Evaluating The Armies And Generals Of 1914

[Ken Estes]

 

 

 

 

............. The mechanization of the US and to a lesser extent of the British armies, ............

 

.

 

The British had much lesser problems with logistics on the Continent than the US (they still had some) for many reasons ;

 

1: Better estimates of reserves required - they planned for more wastage (their main problem was manpower)

 

2: They used less

 

3: They planned their logistics better ( BUT STILL failed to properly resource and organise )

 

4: All this whilst having a much wider range of equipment to support.

 

------------------------------------------

 

Re. Rail transportation - both the US and UK produced specialised locomotives (suited to UK and Continental rail loading gauges) and rolling stock. Great efforts were taken to transport these to the continent.

 

Uh, this is to establish what? Great efforts? These are not to be confused with results.

[Ken Estes]

 

as is this silly notion of "high force-to-space,"

 

It's not silly at all. It's a foundational concept of operational analysis. The most obvious example is that you can't maneuver around an enemy if he has enough force to fill up the available maneuver space. That's why the Race to the Sea turned out how it did. (To bring things back on topic.)

 

 

You can see how you have moved the goal posts, defining it earlier as an essential of Op Analysis. And you are using it as a MOE, clearly convoluted, as shown in the snippet you had.

 

You are likely confusing it with Time and Space which is part of the definition of strategic vs operational movement.

 

Have you found any usage of force to space ratio outside of the Civil War generalist?

 

 

BTW, don't get carried away on rail, as it clearly operated with serious gaps through Mar1945 in the American system. But cherry picking is your forte. As I pointed out originally, it took a long time for rail to catch up with the forces, which it never did in some sectors.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Tony Evans]

You can see how you have moved the goal posts, defining it earlier as an essential of Op Analysis. And you are using it as a MOE, clearly convoluted, as shown in the snippet you had.

 

Ummm...how is noting that something -- even something of foundational significance -- can be taken too far moving the goalposts? Anything can be taken too far, Ken.

 

Or perhaps you are referring to this:

...force-to-space ratio is not a measure of effectiveness. It's a measure of battlefield state: how much force exists in a given area of operations.

 

Correctly identifying the definition of a term, to someone who is laboring under and obvious misunderstanding, is also not moving the goalposts.

 

You are likely confusing it with Time and Space which is part of the definition of strategic vs operational movement.

 

Have you found any usage of force to space ratio outside of the Civil War generalist?

 

I'm not confusing anything. If you want a very formal treatment, refer to Biddle, where he defines the term as either the number of divisions per kilometer of front or the number of divisions per square kilometer of battle space. He uses both in his calculations.

 

Liddell Hart wrote an article about the concept in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institution in 1960.

 

Or you might be interested in an article in the Spring 1988 edition of International Security by USMA graduate and former Air Force officer John Mearsheimer. Though not totally devoted to the concept of force-to-space ratio, within the work the concept is discussed WRT to the then NATO-Warsaw Pact military balance in Europe.

 

It's a well-used term of long standing.

 

BTW, don't get carried away on rail, as it clearly operated with serious gaps through Mar1945 in the American system. But cherry picking is your forte. As I pointed out originally, it took a long time for rail to catch up with the forces, which it never did in some sectors.

 

Not getting carried away at all. Let's recall the statement to which you have taken so much seeming exception:

The reason the mostly horse-drawn Germans could stand up to the Western Allies for a few months at the end of 1944 was simply that the Allies were hundreds of miles from their supply sources on the Continent. The Germans were within a hundred miles (if not closer) of their railheads. (Note that the fully motorized Western Allied armies, once deep into the Continent, became as dependent on rails for bringing up supplies as anybody else.)

 

I'm presuming here that the offending assertion is the one in bold type. I think we've adequately established that the Western Allies were absolutely dependent on rail from the late winter of 1945. In the last month of the war, their railheads were at or past the German border, and their trucking operations depended from the railheads, nowhere else.

 

More importantly, the point I was making was not that the Allies had achieved a certain proximity of railhead to front. The point I was making was that full motorization did not cut the Allied armies loose from rail transportation of troops and supplies. In the context of the less operationally mobile (i.e. "horse drawn") German logistics, the supposedly superior mobility of the fully motorized Allied armies fell apart at a great enough remove from the points at which truck convoys depended. That, among other things, is why the Germans could regroup and hold at their border for a time. The Allied had to bring the points of dependence much closer to the front before the final offensive could be mounted. And that meant a dependence on rails, no matter how close railheads actually got to the front line.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Ken Estes]

Your blather clarifies nothing and your assertions worsen as they grow. So now the US forces in NW Europe are utterly dependent upon rail.

 

Utterly false and ridiculous. Try going back to a factual basis, and spare us the term paper references.

[Tony Evans]

Your blather clarifies nothing and your assertions worsen as they grow. So now the US forces in NW Europe are utterly dependent upon rail.

 

Utterly false and ridiculous. Try going back to a factual basis, and spare us the term paper references.

Were they not dependent upon rail? Where did the trucking operations depend from? Beachheads or railheads? Were the armies of the Western Allies, as they approached the German border, more capable when they relied on trucks back to the ports and beachheads? Or were they more capable when they had railheads closer to their front line operations?

 

See, Ken, you're making a semantic argument here, not a technical one. Your argument seems to be that, because the Allied armies still used truck convoys past their railheads, they were somehow not dependent on rails. That's obviously not the case, since every army relied on some form of transportation past their railheads, either motor or horse-drawn. The question is whether the Allies had a viable means other than rails to extend their operational reach. Which of course they didn't. The use of trucks all the way back to ports and beachheads failed when the distance became too great. The Allies planned on the use of rails and then used rails to extend their operational reach into Germany. That's settled fact, Ken. It's in the Green Books. Check it out for yourself -- The European Theater of Operations - LOGISTICAL SUPPORT OF THE ARMIES - Volume II: September 1944-May 1945 - Chapter V, Section 2 and Chapter XV, Section 1.

 

An illustrative vignette from the second cited chapter demonstrates the reliance on rail as far forward as possible during the final month of operations:

 

Rail traffic over the Rhine, which began on a small scale on 8 April, quickly overtook motor transport as the main long-distance carrier. Within ten days the railways were handling about 12,000 tons over the Rhine bridges, which approximately equaled the tonnage hauled by truck. By V-E Day, when they were handling 20,000 to 25,000 tons per day, they were accounting for fully three fourths of the total tonnage.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Ken Estes]

That was my point of citing the first arrival of rail in Berlin. Rail did not catch up with the advancing armies in the ETO until later in the war, even later than I had suspected. Output from Antwerp was handled via trucking for most of the remaining months of the war, for instance. If your argument is simply that the army was dependent upon rail, that fails because sealift was required as a prerequisite. Sealift, port and inland, motors, rail and motors again were each dominant for the ETO in a specific range, which varied according to time to set up and operate.

 

Doing a google word search does not provide much reference nor an answer to how much currency your contrived idea of force to space ratio has.

 

This all stems from your contrived answer to Scott, attempting to deny the relevance of motor-mechanization in warfare as controverting the deadlock faced in WWI. In doing so, you completely ignored the firepower problem that caused the deadlock and thus misled any reader.

 

Your words were: "The problem was the ridiculously high force to space ratio that mass politics and industrial economies can generate in such confined spaces." That's your breathless version of what you later stated came from Archer Jones.

 

This flies in the face of the accepted descriptions of the WWI deadlock on the Western Front, and they are widely accepted for obvious reasons. As Michael Howard wrote in his essay "The Doctrine of the Offensive" in the new (1986) version of Makers of Modern Strategy, the moral cult of the offensive remained alive by 1914 despite the lessons of the previous century, where the bayonet charge had literally died on the battlefield. "In consequence, out of the 1,500,000 French troops who went on campaign at the beginning of August, 1914, 385,000, or about one in three, were casualties after six weeks of fighting. Most of these losses were suffered, not in set-piece attacks against prepared positions, but in encounter battles when both armies were on the move and the French infantry were caught in the open and destroyed by artillery fire."

 

He concluded his essay by noting that the staffs knew the impact of firepower on tactics and that well-trained forces "...knew that the best answer to the rifle was the spade. The worse losses were those not due to faulty doctrine but to inefficiency, inexperience and the sheer organizational problems of combining fire with movement on the requisite scale."

 

The assault fire effects of the rifle and machine gun were not fully exploited tactically until the last stages of WWI, while the defensive aspects of both were exploited much earlier. Innovations required to improve the capabilities of artillery to support the offensive as well as the defensive were almost as slow to take place in 1914-18.

 

So, do try to insert your force-space ratio into that. I have every confidence in your 'abilities.'

Edited August 31, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Ken Estes]

 

Were they not dependent upon rail? Where did the trucking operations depend from? Beachheads or railheads? <snip>

Both, for most of 1944. You have not read the above very much. Paris was the rail center for 12th Army Group. There was very little rail to the west or north for many months. Trucks brought supplies to Paris from Normandy, and likely Cherbourg. Trucks again hauled from wherever the railheads were to the army supply dumps. That's two sequences of the LOC from Bayonne NJ to the Rhine.

 

Mulberry B operated for over 6 months after D-Day, landing over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies. No railhead there.

 

That's a technical argument for you to digest, if you are capable. Trucks made the difference, everywhere.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Tony Evans]

That was my point of citing the first arrival of rail in Berlin. Rail did not catch up with the advancing armies in the ETO until later in the war, even later than I had suspected. Output from Antwerp was handled via trucking for most of the remaining months of the war, for instance. If your argument is simply that the army was dependent upon rail, that fails because sealift was required as a prerequisite. Sealift, port and inland, motors, rail and motors again were each dominant for the ETO in a specific range, which varied according to time to set up and operate.

 

Geez, Ken, Really? There wasn't a direct rail line from the factory floor to the front line foxhole? That's how you define whether or not an army was rail-dependent? You've graduated from semantic hair-splitting into argumentum ad absurdum.

 

The point I was making was that the Allied armies in NWE still needed to rely on rails from their entry points to the continent to extend their logistic reach into Germany. If you choose to obstinately disagree, then I'm not trying to change your opinion. In that sense, my arguments are laid out in juxtaposition to yours, for others to read, compare, and decide.

 

Both, for most of 1944. You have not read the above very much. Paris was the rail center for 12th Army Group. There was very little rail to the west or north for many months. Trucks brought supplies to Paris from Normandy, and likely Cherbourg. Trucks again hauled from wherever the railheads were to the army supply dumps. That's two sequences of the LOC from Bayonne NJ to the Rhine.

 

 

 

Mulberry B operated for over 6 months after D-Day, landing over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies. No railhead there.

 

 

 

That's a technical argument for you to digest, if you are capable. Trucks made the difference, everywhere.

Sorry, Ken, but trucks were the "motor" part of the "fully motorize" army. That didn't absolve the army of needing railroad-based logistics to extend operational reach. .

 

Does this mean trucks didn't come in handy, as an expedient? No, of course not. Trucks were extremely handy at times. But the established record is that the Allied armies depended on rails for their operational reach into Germany.

 

 

Doing a google word search does not provide much reference nor an answer to how much currency your contrived idea of force to space ratio has.

I guess citing Biddle and Mearsheimer -- two names I'm pretty sure you recognize -- didn't do it for you as far as currency is concerned?

 

But if you're looking for hot-off-the-griddle currency:

 

"In jockeying for advantage in the Western theatre, too many men were crammed into too small a space, a problem exacerbated by the fact that military depots could quickly fill up the depleted ranks with reservists."

Philpott, William, War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War (June 26, 2014), p45

This all stems from your contrived answer to Scott, attempting to deny the relevance of motor-mechanization in warfare as controverting the deadlock faced in WWI. In doing so, you completely ignored the firepower problem that caused the deadlock and thus misled any reader.

 

Your words were: "The problem was the ridiculously high force to space ratio that mass politics and industrial economies can generate in such confined spaces." That's your breathless version of what you later stated came from Archer Jones.

 

This flies in the face of the accepted descriptions of the WWI deadlock on the Western Front, and they are widely accepted for obvious reasons. As Michael Howard wrote in his essay "The Doctrine of the Offensive" in the new (1986) version of Makers of Modern Strategy, the moral cult of the offensive remained alive by 1914 despite the lessons of the previous century, where the bayonet charge had literally died on the battlefield. "In consequence, out of the 1,500,000 French troops who went on campaign at the beginning of August, 1914, 385,000, or about one in three, were casualties after six weeks of fighting. Most of these losses were suffered, not in set-piece attacks against prepared positions, but in encounter battles when both armies were on the move and the French infantry were caught in the open and destroyed by artillery fire."

 

He concluded his essay by noting that the staffs knew the impact of firepower on tactics and that well-trained forces "...knew that the best answer to the rifle was the spade. The worse losses were those not due to faulty doctrine but to inefficiency, inexperience and the sheer organizational problems of combining fire with movement on the requisite scale."

 

The assault fire effects of the rifle and machine gun were not fully exploited tactically until the last stages of WWI, while the defensive aspects of both were exploited much earlier. Innovations required to improve the capabilities of artillery to support the offensive as well as the defensive were almost as slow to take place in 1914-18.

 

So, do try to insert your force-space ratio into that. I have every confidence in your 'abilities.'

 

No contrivance, Ken -- just thinking on a different level. The problems of unrealistic offensive doctrines vs. defensive firepower applied most acutely in direct frontal tactical confrontations. They were not as decisive -- and could not be as decisive -- if one or the other of the forces in the field had scope to maneuver into its opponent's rear, by turning movement. Getting around the enemy's flank and into his rear was indeed a guiding principle in German General Staff thinking. It's at the level of operational maneuver that the factors constraining the armies to direct frontal confrontation can be found, pretty easily. Precisely because the armies had so much more firepower, they had the ability to fill up all of the available maneuver space, across the entire possible engagement front, with sufficient force to stop a turning movement.

 

As this was a direct consequence of the mass politics to create large citizen armies, combined with the industrial power to equip, move, and supply such large forces. Without unprecedentedly large armies, equipped with modern weapons, one has a rerun of 1870.

 

WRT to motorization and the unlocking of the stalemate, you're arguing a different issue. Motorization wasn't available in 1914, and not reliable enough in 1918 to make that much difference. In fact, the failure of the German offensives in 1918 is usually laid at the feet of their inability to move logistics and artillery forward quickly enough. But motorization wasn't a necessary condition for maneuver until the force-to-space ratio required penetration of enemy defenses for decisive action. See the Eastern Front of WW1 for an example of a relatively low force-to-space ratio enabling non-motorized maneuver.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Ken Estes]

You are just dodging, Evans. You remain hopeless.

 

Uhhh...sorry, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the ridiculously high force to space ratio

 

 

There appears no support for your erroneous assertion to that this contrived force-space ratio was responsible for the deadlock on the W Front in WWI. The snippets you provide lack any context to show it as the reason now accepted by the academy.

 

Motorized transport was a logistic expedient in WWII. That will rest as your case, I gather. Good job, that will hold up well.....

 

Deceptive and disingenuous overall.

[Tony Evans]

You are just dodging, Evans. You remain hopeless.

 

 

There appears no support for your erroneous assertion to that this contrived force-space ratio was responsible for the deadlock on the W Front in WWI. The snippets you provide lack any context to show it as the reason now accepted by the academy.

 

Force to-space-ratio is only contrived if you think it's a contrivance of the academics I cited. Is that your assertion?

 

In any case, the academic consensus about the cult of the offensive is not in doubt, nor does anyone wish to place it in doubt. My point -- and the point of some academics that I have cited -- is that the failure of offensive doctrines is only one part of the story. Another significant part is the inability of the armies to maneuver decisively, because there were too many troops in too little space. Any maneuver ran headlong into strong defensive opposition. Any attempt to find a flank was countered by an extension of the flanks as far as they needed to be extended. The two concepts can live peacefully side by side, since one (cult of the offensive) is about tactical warfare, while the other (force-to-space ratio) is about operational warfare.

 

Motorized transport was a logistic expedient in WWII. That will rest as your case, I gather. Good job, that will hold up well.....

Actually, it does hold up very well. The CMH histories I have been mostly relying on make it abundantly clear that the Red Ball Express was in fact an expedient that was abandoned as soon as railways could support the load. The XYZ Express was likewise an expedient to support a front moving faster than the establishment of forward railheads.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Ken Estes]

Nope. You stated that force-space was the problem in 1914-18, and never demonstrated why 1918 proved decisive under the same conditions. Antwerp could not have been an effective throughput site until March1945 but for motor transport, ditto for 6+ months from Mulberry B. It was far more than an expedient and in fact relieved modern forces from the WWI dependence on rail.

 

Motorization is the major improvement of WWII over WWI for both operations and logistics for those nations capable of exploiting it.

 

Your claim that this is merely semantics proves slippery and self-serving; nothing new there.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Ken Estes]

Back to Generals. What about some of the German generals at the Corps and Army level? Competent or not? All I have for reference on WWI is Keegan's book, and The Great War in Africa by Farwell.

 

Great, Murph, back on topic, it would be very hard to evaluate WWI corps and army level commanders apart from the most general summaries of their reputations, and these are seldom noted by historians of WWI in a comparative way.

 

The added difficulties are the records and languages primarily. Even then, look at how much disagreement we saw when I posted Ike's letter to Marshall in 1945 evaluating his ETO commanders a while back. Did Pershing write the same thing? Did Haig?

 

I read an interesting essay (1961) on the problem, where the writer posed three grouped categories on which to evaluate.

 

A. The Traditional one through the mid-19th Century: Insight on the battlefield, boldness, concentration, and sophisticated following of the principles of war. These are continuing features of human behavior necessary for the conduct of war in what can be called the Iron Age of warfare

 

B. Industrial Revolution. This is Jay Luvaas' assertion that the IR demanded that a general must also have some insight into the tactical possibilities inherent in the evolving weapons and machines of the day and that such insight is a sign of good generalship. Today, we would have to add C3I and electronics in general.

 

C. Staff Work. Reflecting the Prussian General Staff and the managerial revolution: the appreciation that modern armies cannot be commanded and controlled without planning and a doctrine of war spread by the general staff through deliberate military education at all command levels.

 

I thought it was interesting.

[ScottBrim]

 

Back to Generals. What about some of the German generals at the Corps and Army level? Competent or not? All I have for reference on WWI is Keegan's book, and The Great War in Africa by Farwell.

 

..............

 

I read an interesting essay (1961) on the problem, where the writer posed three grouped categories on which to evaluate.

 

A. The Traditional one through the mid-19th Century: Insight on the battlefield, boldness, concentration, and sophisticated following of the principles of war. These are continuing features of human behavior necessary for the conduct of war in what can be called the Iron Age of warfare

 

B. Industrial Revolution. This is Jay Luvaas' assertion that the IR demanded that a general must also have some insight into the tactical possibilities inherent in the evolving weapons and machines of the day and that such insight is a sign of good generalship. Today, we would have to add C3I and electronics in general.

 

C. Staff Work. Reflecting the Prussian General Staff and the managerial revolution: the appreciation that modern armies cannot be commanded and controlled without planning and a doctrine of war spread by the general staff through deliberate military education at all command levels.

 

I thought it was interesting.

 

 

General Mattis has said that, "Doctrine is the last bastion of the unimaginative."

 

If we are evaluating the performance of the senior generals and their staffs in World War I, does General Mattis' opinion mean something either more, or something less, than his words would seem to say?

[Tony Evans]

Nope. You stated that force-space was the problem in 1914-18,

 

Actually, it was the problem in both world wars, at the operational level of warfare. It says nothing about the tactical level of warfare.

 

and never demonstrated why 1918 proved decisive under the same conditions.

 

 

One has to look at the different levels of warfare to understand what happened in 1918. The Germans (and the Allies as well, but the Germans get most of the credit in the standard narrative) had developed better offensive tactics, which allowed them to break the trench deadlock on the tactical level. But the Germans did not possess the necessary motorization to make something decisive out of it on the operational level. Neither did the Allies, but the decisive condition for 1918 was at the strategic level -- the Germans were economically exhausted, and finally collapsed under renewed Allied pressure.

 

Antwerp could not have been an effective throughput site until March1945 but for motor transport, ditto for 6+ months from Mulberry B. It was far more than an expedient and in fact relieved modern forces from the WWI dependence on rail.

 

Motorization is the major improvement of WWII over WWI for both operations and logistics for those nations capable of exploiting it.

 

 

Motorization was indeed the major improvement, but it did not relieve armies of their reliance on rails. Motor transport could be used as a temporary expedient for logistics line haul, but it couldn't support the armies on its own past a certain distance. Then the armies were required by the differential efficiencies of motor transport vs rail to rely on the latter.

 

Your claim that this is merely semantics proves slippery and self-serving; nothing new there.

 

 

No, the import of motorization is not merely semantics. Your interpretation of that import is, however.

[Ken Estes]

Very good catch, Scott and our USMC 4* from Richland, WA meant that as a warning to the officer corps to read for knowledge, both general and military, in addition to knowing one's stuff from the manuals. We've been in touch since becoming staff college classmates, he being a bit junior to me back then - heh. In later years we corresponded and broke bread every so often, especially when I was working on the official history for I/II MEF in Iraq 04-06. When he went to Tampa, we both got busy and I have not heard from him in a while. He voiced much the same thing on the eve of the 2003 campaign when I pointed out to him that we once again were going into action, as in 91, without a doctrine for mounted operations. He said, 'we don't read doctrine, anyway' and by that he meant that closing the enemy by any means would do the trick [i think], almost a Nelsonian touch. In 1991, however, he had written me that he wished they had my C&SC draft manual in hand for that effort.

 

But in fact, the German General Staff and its military managerial revolution conceded that we needed doctrine especially when the corporate body of the generals and their staffs had to be able to read the same things in the same context. Only then could the orders from high command be intelligible and clear for all involved. The special impetus for the Prussia-German armies was the constitutional and traditional role of the monarch as the Grosse Feldheer. No problem if the King is Frederick II, but what if its Frederick IV, whose passion was medieval pageantry? Not good for the army.

 

The solution for the Prussians was the general staff officer at the side of each commander, from monarch down to division level. He read the rail timetables for mobilization, wrote the orders based upon the intentions of his commander, explained higher HQ orders to him, coordinated the execution of his commander's for the same and so forth. Only with unifying doctrine, could this corporate Brain of the Army [spencer Wilkinson's classic book title] function as advertised.

 

The US penchant for flexibility goes only so far, I'd say, and cohesion remains a paramount virtue. Combined arms is a practical example, for the various arms, with their various tactics, techniques and procedures, have to achieve coordinated effect upon the enemy, not just appear on the battlefield. For that, one needs a unifying language, lexicon and dictionary. Of such stuff is doctrine made.

 

That's not enough, however, for it must be spread out through the schools and read. Contrary to myths, the French Army of 1940 had excellent armored and AT doctrines. But they, like the equipment, were too recent and the army had yet to absorb it in 1940. It showed.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Tony Evans]

 

I read an interesting essay (1961) on the problem, where the writer posed three grouped categories on which to evaluate.

 

A. The Traditional one through the mid-19th Century: Insight on the battlefield, boldness, concentration, and sophisticated following of the principles of war. These are continuing features of human behavior necessary for the conduct of war in what can be called the Iron Age of warfare

 

B. Industrial Revolution. This is Jay Luvaas' assertion that the IR demanded that a general must also have some insight into the tactical possibilities inherent in the evolving weapons and machines of the day and that such insight is a sign of good generalship. Today, we would have to add C3I and electronics in general.

 

C. Staff Work. Reflecting the Prussian General Staff and the managerial revolution: the appreciation that modern armies cannot be commanded and controlled without planning and a doctrine of war spread by the general staff through deliberate military education at all command levels.

 

I thought it was interesting.

 

 

Makes perfect sense in the abstract. But one wonders whether general officers would ever be graded so systematically by their own superiors. One further wonders how one would even quantify such qualities for grading purposes. How does one, for example, grade "insight"? Do we imagine that a general officer would be sat down to write an essay or take a test or sit an oral exam? How would one evaluate staff work objectively? Grade the general's written orders for hitting all the formal points, like we do TBS and Platoon Sergeants School attendees?

 

In the end, it will always boil down to a commander's personal evaluation of a subordinate, and that will be based on the same old things: perceived achievement of "results" and adherence to whatever the evaluator thinks is the right collection of ideals.

[Tony Evans]

Very good catch, Scott and our USMC 4* from Richland, WA meant that as a warning to the officer corps to read for knowledge, both general and military, in addition to knowing one's stuff from the manuals. We've been in touch since becoming staff college classmates, he being a bit junior to me back then - heh. In later years we corresponded and broke bread every so often, especially when I was working on the official history for I/II MEF in Iraq 04-06. When he went to Tampa, we both got busy and I have not heard from him in a while. He voiced much the same thing on the eve of the 2003 campaign when I pointed out to him that we once again were going into action, as in 91, without a doctrine for mounted operations. He said, 'we don't read doctrine, anyway' and by that he meant that closing the enemy by any means would do the trick [i think], almost a Nelsonian touch. In 1991, however, he had written me that he wished they had my C&SC draft manual in hand for that effort.

One wonders what the Marine Corps would actually do with such a doctrine. There are no standard force structures against which such a doctrine would be applied. The 1st MarDiv of 1991 was not organized like the 2nd MarDiv of 1991, and neither was organized like the 1st MarDiv of 2003. There was no standard regimental task force structure even within each conflict. Doctrine for the most part presupposes such things. The draft manual, for example, IIRC, assumed a task force structure of 1 x tank battalion and 3 x rifle battalion (mounted in AAV). That matches maybe half (or less) of the dozen or so different regimental task forces fielded in the two conflicts.

 

The best the Marine Corps could realistically do in the direction of such a doctrine would be to publish general guidelines that could be used to enforce a high-level consistency of thought. But the low-level stuff of doctrine relies too much on standardized organizations.

 

Now this is interesting:

...by that he meant that closing the enemy by any means would do the trick [i think]...

That would be a good description of the mindset of the average Marine Division commander.

 

 

COmbined arms is a practical example, for the various arms, with their various tactics, techniques and procedures, have to achieve coordinated effect upon the enemy, not just appear on the battlefield. For that, one needs a unifying language, lexicon and dictionary. Of such stuff is doctrine made.

 

But doctrine isn't enough. Combined arms training needs to be constant and realistic. Otherwise one winds up with a good doctrine that no one knows how to apply.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Tony Evans

[Tony Evans]

 

 

General Mattis has said that, "Doctrine is the last bastion of the unimaginative."

 

If we are evaluating the performance of the senior generals and their staffs in World War I, does General Mattis' opinion mean something either more, or something less, than his words would seem to say?

 

 

That particular opinion is very much like "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." It's not an indictment of doctrine, but an indictment of the unimaginative.

 

In evaluating a general's performance, one would think that it means to ask the question, "What does one do when doctrine fails"? Does one hold on to the failed doctrine, or does one search for and try to apply a better solution?

[ScottBrim]

 

 

 

General Mattis has said that, "Doctrine is the last bastion of the unimaginative."

 

If we are evaluating the performance of the senior generals and their staffs in World War I, does General Mattis' opinion mean something either more, or something less, than his words would seem to say?

 

 

That particular opinion is very much like "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." It's not an indictment of doctrine, but an indictment of the unimaginative.

 

In evaluating a general's performance, one would think that it means to ask the question, "What does one do when doctrine fails"? Does one hold on to the failed doctrine, or does one search for and try to apply a better solution?

 

 

The most prominent example of a failed doctrine that comes to mind for someone of my generation is the doctrine of Flexible Response as espoused by General Maxwell Taylor and the US Army in the late 1950's as an alternative to Eisenhower's New Look.

 

Using Vietnam as a field laboratory for testing the doctrine of Flexible Response was one of the key drivers that drove McNamara's approach to escalating American involvement there, just as testing the validity of Transformational Shock & Awe became one of several key drivers pushing us into Iraq in 2003.

 

But I degress from the main topic of World War I, other than to say that when I was a kid, there were some good number of veterans of WWI around in the city where I lived, and more than a few who were veterans of both WWI and WWII. Very few of the WWI veterans I was acquainted with cared much for what we were doing in Southeast Asia at the time, believing that the benefit wasn't worth the cost.

Edited September 1, 2014 by ScottBrim

[Murph]

I have often thought WWI was fought with mid 1800's mindset by senior officers who just could not adapt to newer weapons and the tactics demanded of them.

 

Back to Generals. What about some of the German generals at the Corps and Army level? Competent or not? All I have for reference on WWI is Keegan's book, and The Great War in Africa by Farwell.

 

Great, Murph, back on topic, it would be very hard to evaluate WWI corps and army level commanders apart from the most general summaries of their reputations, and these are seldom noted by historians of WWI in a comparative way.

 

The added difficulties are the records and languages primarily. Even then, look at how much disagreement we saw when I posted Ike's letter to Marshall in 1945 evaluating his ETO commanders a while back. Did Pershing write the same thing? Did Haig?

 

I read an interesting essay (1961) on the problem, where the writer posed three grouped categories on which to evaluate.

 

A. The Traditional one through the mid-19th Century: Insight on the battlefield, boldness, concentration, and sophisticated following of the principles of war. These are continuing features of human behavior necessary for the conduct of war in what can be called the Iron Age of warfare

 

B. Industrial Revolution. This is Jay Luvaas' assertion that the IR demanded that a general must also have some insight into the tactical possibilities inherent in the evolving weapons and machines of the day and that such insight is a sign of good generalship. Today, we would have to add C3I and electronics in general.

 

C. Staff Work. Reflecting the Prussian General Staff and the managerial revolution: the appreciation that modern armies cannot be commanded and controlled without planning and a doctrine of war spread by the general staff through deliberate military education at all command levels.

 

I thought it was interesting.

 

[Ken Estes]

Depends very much on who is in charge and who has the vision, Murph. There is no steady progression in weapons & tactics, nor in science at the time.

 

What if the French Army had classified the mitrailleuse as an infantry weapon before 1870. Would the French have defeated the German infantry at all their initial battles, leaving Marshall MacMahon in the field as well as the emperor? Could that have offset the German innovations in speed of mobilization and concentration that made numbers count?

 

As significant as is the story of assault fire tactics and the machine gun in 1918, it remains equally so for the British aimed rifle fire that astonished the Germans in 1914, and that resulted from their contacts with Boer troops who had used such fire in similar defensive situations.

 

It also runs counter to the impetus of wartime. Very complex weapons systems have usually been initiated in peacetime, partly because of the need for long-term appropriations and partly because of the need to test their component parts. Although peacetime military organizations typically resist the resulting organizational change, linear tactics with the flintlock, mobile artillery, fire direction, the British fire tactics of 1914, the armored division and perhaps the musket-pike combination were largely peacetime developments. The list is even longer in air and naval warfare.

[Tony Evans]

 

 

The most prominent example of a failed doctrine that comes to mind for someone of my generation is the doctrine of Flexible Response as espoused by General Maxwell Taylor and the US Army in the late 1950's as an alternative to Eisenhower's New Look.

 

Using Vietnam as a field laboratory for testing the doctrine of Flexible Response was one of the key drivers that drove McNamara's approach to escalating American involvement there, just as testing the validity of Transformational Shock & Awe became one of several key drivers pushing us into Iraq in 2003.

 

But I degress from the main topic of World War I, other than to say that when I was a kid, there were some good number of veterans of WWI around in the city where I lived, and more than a few who were veterans of both WWI and WWII. Very few of the WWI veterans I was acquainted with cared much for what we were doing in Southeast Asia at the time, believing that the benefit wasn't worth the cost.

 

 

Wow. That's the first time I've heard Flexible Response tied to Vietnam. Care to document that?

[Tony Evans]

 

I have often thought WWI was fought with mid 1800's mindset by senior officers who just could not adapt to newer weapons and the tactics demanded of them.

 

 

Perhaps initially. But they came to grips soon enough with what they were facing. The problem was that what they were facing nobody had the tools to address. The tools had to be developed, and they weren't really perfected until WW2.

[Ken Estes]

How odd. It is a simple google to check, after all.

 

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Concise_History_of_the_U.S._Air_Force/Flexible_Response_and_Vietnam

Edited September 2, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Tony Evans]

What if the French Army had classified the mitrailleuse as an infantry weapon before 1870. Would the French have defeated the German infantry at all their initial battles, leaving Marshall MacMahon in the field as well as the emperor? Could that have offset the German innovations in speed of mobilization and concentration that made numbers count?

 

Might have caused some initial disruptions, but the mitrailleuse was still an artillery piece in size and mobility. It would probably have quickly attracted priority of fires from Prussian steel, breech-loading artillery. And then...well, it might have made for an interesting artillery duel, while it lasted - .

 

As significant as is the story of assault fire tactics and the machine gun in 1918,

 

 

I think somebody ought to google '"assault fire tactics"' (with the quotes). Precisely four results are returned. If one googles '"assault fire"', well...it's pretty interesting, but has nothing to do with 1918.

 

And what was so special about the machine gun in 1918?

 

it remains equally so for the British aimed rifle fire that astonished the Germans in 1914, and that resulted from their contacts with Boer troops who had used such fire in similar defensive situations.

 

Now that was an interesting bit of technical surprise.

 

It also runs counter to the impetus of wartime. Very complex weapons systems have usually been initiated in peacetime, partly because of the need for long-term appropriations and partly because of the need to test their component parts. Although peacetime military organizations typically resist the resulting organizational change, linear tactics with the flintlock, mobile artillery, fire direction, the British fire tactics of 1914, the armored division and perhaps the musket-pike combination were largely peacetime developments. The list is even longer in air and naval warfare.

 

Linear tactics actually began with matchlocks, starting with Maurice of Nassau's Dutch battalions in the 1590s, arrayed in files 10 deep and 48 across. The flintlock just provided improved firepower, so that the lines could be thinned down to three to four deep a century later.

 

Also, anything that happened in European military innovation prior to 1816 happened in an environment of near constant warfare somewhere on the continent.