How have the theories of Carl Von Clausewitz and/or Henri Jomini influenced the birth of combined arms warfare? In your conclusion, suggest the significance to today’s military professional.

Königgrätz

by Samuel J. Lewis

I

The three wars won by the Prussian Army from 1864 to 1871 led to the widespread emulation of Prussian military institutions by armies around the world. Some Prussian traits like spiked helmets were ephemeral (as was the Prussian state itself soon to disappear). Other traits, however, such as the General Staff system and national military service through conscription, would become, at least for several decades, fixtures of Western military culture and, in some cases, institutions that we live with today. For the last several weeks we have been looking at the European military revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and its repercussions on the theory, art, and practice of war. It is in this broader context and not that of an isolated development in northern Germany that we should examine the origins of the Prusso-German military.1

Hajo Holborn suggested that four men created the Prussian military system: Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau—a statement with which it is difficult to argue. Several weeks ago, soon after we started this class, we observed how Frederick the Great advanced the military art of the limited “Cabinet,” or dynastic wars, to its highest form. For subsequent generations of the Prussian officer corps, Frederick's legacy was the example of victory secured against great adversity and of the self-sacrifice required to attain that victory. Frederick also left the legacy of rigorous peacetime training, escalating to the famous Autumn maneuvers.2

1 Peter Paret, “Napoleon and the Revolution in War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, edited by Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986),124. 2 Hajo Holborn, “The Prusso-German School: Moltke and the Rise of the General Staff,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 281–84. To Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, one must add the name of Clausewitz as another well-known Prussian military reformer. They and their colleagues were revolutionary thinkers who, while motivated by the spirit of the French Revolution, were German nationalists and enemies of France. Few of the reformers actually came from Prussia, and if noble, their families generally had only recently entered the ranks of the nobility. (Two exceptions were von der Knesebeck and Ruehle von Lilienstern).

Gerhard Scharnhorst “was born a commoner in 1755 in Hannover. He attended the Schaumberg-Lippe Military Academy and subsequently served in the Hannoverian cavalry. Max Lehmann, Scharnhorst, 2 Vols. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1887); and Hans-Juergen Usczeck, Scharnhorst. Theoretiker, Reformer Patriot, (East Berlin: Militaerverlag, 1972).

August W. A. von Gneisenau was born in 1760 in Saxony, where his father was an artillery officer. He was raised in humble circumstances by relatives, attended Jesuit school in Wuerzburg, and later attended the University of Erfurt. He joined the Austrian Army in 1779 but later served in Canada in an Ansbach regiment. He entered the Prussian Army in 1786, fought at Jena, and gained his reputation for defending the fortress of Kolberg. A member of the reorganization committee, he performed diplomatic duties from 1811–13, when he became Blücher’s chief of staff. He was the Governor of Berlin in 1818, promoted to field marshal in 1825, and died in 1831. Hans Otto, Gneisenau Preussens unbequemer Patriot (Bonn: Keil, 1979); Georg Heinrich Peltz arid Hans Delbrück, Das Leben des Feldmarschalls Grafen Neidhart von Gneisenau, 5 vols. (Berlin: Reimer, 1864–80).

Carl von Clausewitz was born in the province of Brandenburg in 1780, the fourth son of a civil servant. He joined the Prussian light infantry in 1792 and fought against the new forces of the French Revolution. A follower of Scharnhorst, he became a key figure in the Prussian reform effort. He is best known for his theoretical study, On War. In 1818, he became director of the War Academy and subsequently served as inspector of artillery. Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassene Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz ueber Krieg and Kriegfuehrung, 10 vols.

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Even before Frederick’s death, however, the Prussian Army began to show signs of deterioration, a process that was still evident in 1806, when Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt. That humiliation led Prussia into an era of reform that was not only military, but social and economic in nature as well. In this respect, the evolution of the Prussian military system was a legacy of the French Revolution, introduced by the harshest of the Prussian Army’s taskmasters, the Emperor Napoleon.

The tactical methods used by France’s revolutionary armies were actually well known in the Prussian military, with the French Army regulations being translated into German as early as 1801–02. Following the defeat of 1806, Scharnhorst and his followers dutifully altered Prussian Army regulations to conform to the successful French tactics. That proved relatively simple, as did the copying of the French corps organization. Altering doctrine for the officer corps, however, which meant changing thought patterns and behavior, proved nearly impossible. The old officer corps had been schooled to drill a mercenary army in the minutia of Fredrician linear tactics. Now, they were being asked to make independent tactical decisions and to do so while leading citizen-soldiers who, given Prussia’s half-feudal monarchy, would have little desire to be in an army that only months before could be characterized as a penal institution.3

Once again, Napoleon provided the solution, by limiting the size of the Prussian Army after Jena- Auerstadt to a mere 42,000 and leaving a large and conspicuous occupation force in Prussia. The small size of the army assisted the reformers in purging the officer corps of its dead wood, while the occupation awakened German nationalism.

The cornerstone of the Prussian military system was the Military Law of 1814, drafted by Scharnhorst’s disciple, Herman von Boyen.4 Throughout the remainder of the century, most European states used conscription, but it was basically conscription of the poor, since the wealthy could provide either a substitute or money in lieu of service. What made the Prussian system unique was that it drafted males from all classes. In the traditional central European pattern, units were organized on a territorial basis, with men from the same province serving in the same unit. Prussians served for three years in the army (two years after 1834), after which they were in reserve status for two years and subsequently could be called up to serve in the Landwehr. The Prussian reformers designed the Landwehr to be an integral part of the mobilized Field Army, but following the failed Revolution of 1848, the army’s senior leaders sought to restrict the Landwehr to a purely subsidiary role. This was motivated both by a desire for improved efficiency and conservative opposition to the Landwehr. This struggle led to the Prussian

(Berlin: Duemmler, 1832–37); On War translated and edited by Michael Howard, Peter Paret, and Bernard Brodie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); and Paret, CIausewitz and the State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

Karl Friedrich von dem Knesebeck was born on 5 May 1768 on the family estate in Brandenburg. He entered the army in 1782 and distinguished himself in the Rhineland campaign against the French. He accompanied Gneisenau in the retreat from Auerstedt, serving the remainder of the war as liaison officer to the Russian field army. During the wars of liberation, he served as advisor to the king. Von dem Knesebeck retired in 1831. Eugen von dem Knesebeck, Eine Diplomatische Trilogie aus dem Leben Karl Friedrich von dem Knesebeck (Berlin, 1879).

Johann Ruehle von Lilienstein was the son of a Prussian officer born in Berlin on 16 April 1780. He retired in 1811 to the family estate but in 1813 joined Blücher’s staff. He became army chief of staff in 1822.

3 Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); C. de la roche-Aymon, Des troupes Legeres (Paris: Maginel, Anselin, Rochard, 1817). 4 Leopold Hermann L. von Boyen was born on 20 June 1771 in East Prussia, the son of a senor judicia1 official. He entered the Prussian Army at the age of thirteen. Later he studied under Kant at the University of Königsberg. He was wounded at Auerstedt and was later on the Reorganization Committee. In 1812, he performed secret diplomatic missions and, in 1814, became minister of war. A victim of political reaction, he spent the years from 1819 to 1841 in private life. In the latter year, he once again became minister of war. He died on 15 February 1848 as a field marshal. Hermann von Boyen, Denkuerdigkeiten und Erinnerungen I 771–1813, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Lutz, 1899); and Friedrich Meinecke, Das Leben des Generalfeld-marschalls Herman von Boyen, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1895–99).

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constitutional crisis of the early 1860s, which saw the emergence of Otto von Bismarck and a conservative victory. That political controversy and its implications lie beyond the scope of this paper. The practical military result, however, was basically the doubling of the Field Army and the reform of the reserves, which allowed for the victories from 1864 through 1871.5

Even with the modification of the Prussian reformers’ earlier law, Prussia had taken the implications of the French Revolution further than any other state. Military service in Prussia was the most democratic in Europe. The irony of this was of course that Prussia lagged far behind its western neighbors in the evolution of the other democratic institutions. This, then, the development of universal male military service based upon conscription, was one of the cornerstones of the Prussian military system of the nineteenth century. What was needed, however, was an institution to organize and direct the new mass army—that institution was the General Staff.

II

The German General Staff had its origins in Frederick the Great’s Quartermaster General Staff. In an age of limited literacy, Frederick required a group of intelligent and literate officers to reconnoiter march routes and bivouac sites and perform adjutant duties. In 1787, these men received their own distinctive uniforms. In 1803, Christian von Massenbach6 reorganized the department, creating three branches responsible for operations: west, south, and east. He named Scharnhorst as branch chief for the western theater. In peacetime during the summer months, the officers assigned to each branch reconnoitered, and often mapped, march routes in the theater for which they were responsible. This system could not assist the antiquated Prussian Army in 1806, but it survived the purge following the defeat of Jena-Auerstedt, and Scharnhorst built upon this structure to create the modern General Staff.

The Prussian General Staff system always remained elitist. It invariably consisted of a very small number of combat arms officers who had passed rather difficult examinations. A cabinet order of 29 December 1809 stipulated that these officers must rotate from staff to line positions to ensure that they would remain practical soldiers and not militarized clerks. The reformers transformed a Berlin military school, later called the War Academy, into a school specifically designed to educate general staff officers.

The immediate problems that faced the Prussian Army largely shaped the form that the General Staff system would take. The first requirement was a centralized planning center, which subsequently became the Grossergeneralstab. The second requirement was for general staff officers to serve with headquarters down to corps level, what became known as the Truppengeneralstab. The chiefs of staff in this second category basically served as deputies and advisors to their commanders. Some of those commanders, and particularly those of the other small German states, subsequently allied with Prussia but remained relatively unfamiliar with the new form of warfare institutionalized by the French Revolution. Those chiefs of staff, therefore, were also specially trained technical advisors to their commanders. Naturally, the personalities of the commander and his chief of staff would prove to be of decisive importance—the two had to function as one. For that reason, a successful matching of commander and chief of staff was seldom broken up in wartime. Hence began the succession of successful teams or “marriages”: Blücher and Gneisenau; Frederick III and Blumenthal; Hindenburg and Ludendorff; and Kleist and Zeitzler, to name but a few. Needless to say, there were teams that did not function well and several “marriages” led

5 Renè de l’Homme de Courbiere,Die Preussische Landwehr in ihrer Entwicklung von 1815 bis zur Reorganisation von 1859 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1867); Michael Howard, “William I and the Reform of the Prussian Army,” in A Century of Conflict,, edited by M. Gilbert (London: Hamish-Hamilton, 1966), 90–103; and Walter Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff 1657–1945, translated by Brian Battershaw (NewYork: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 15–49. 6 Christian von Massenbach was born on 16 April 1758 in Schmalkalden. Educated in a Stuttgart military academy, he entered the Wuertemburg Army in 1778. He switched over to the Prussian Army in 1782, and his publications led to him becoming tutor to Prince Ludwig. He served on the Generalquartiermeister staff during the wars of 1787 and 1792–95. He was senior staff officer to Prince von Hohenlohe in the Jena-Auerstedt campaign, after which he was tried and imprisoned. He died on 21 November 1827.

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to rather quick annulments, but more often than not, the chief of staff simply soldiered on, looking forward to his next assignment if, indeed, he did not particularly like working for his commander. Although it was apparently never officially sanctioned, the notion of “co-responsibility” developed whereby, if the chief of staff objected to a command decision, he had the right to enter his written objections in the war diary. In point of fact, that rarely happened.7

The years of peace from 1815 to 1864 saw the evolution of both the Prussian Army and its small corps of General Staff officers. The Greater General Staff remained one department of the Ministry of War, but its role in the eventuality of war remained undefined. Its officers devoted most of their time to mapping, observing foreign armies, and planning for both deployment and mobilization. Staff officers on field unit staffs performed those same duties at their level. Within the army staff, officers were regarded as the commander’s “helpers.” General staff officers advised the commander and issued his written orders to the subordinate units. Whether issued on paper or verbally, they were mission-type orders, informing the subordinate in general what was to be accomplished and giving him the maximum amount of freedom to execute it. Over the last several decades, Anglo-Saxon military writers have dubbed this system Auftragstaktik, although that word was not part of the German military vocabulary before 1945. The Prusso-German Army always aimed at keeping the staff as small as possible. It also attempted to keep paperwork to a minimum, for the purpose of reducing friction and misunderstanding. The aim of the General Staff system was to provide the commander with several skilled helpers to free him to devote his time and energy to the most important matters.8

Regimental commanders recommended officers for general staff training when they were senior lieutenants, around the age of thirty-two. The latter had the right to decline this honor. During the course of the three-year instruction at the War Academy, several candidates were often sent back to their regiments. It also was theoretically possible that after finishing the course, a candidate would not successfully pass his probationary period and subsequently not enter the General Staff corps. Failure to advance successfully to the General Staff corps, however, did not damage an officer’s career. Instruction at the War Academy always aimed at the practical aspects of operations, making an estimation of the situation (Lagebeurteilung), map reading, terrain studies, war gaming, drawing the order of battle, and mobilization and deployment plans, and, of course, writing orders. The War Academy did not study strategy or address technological advances. One senior Prussian staff officer described other required skills of a staff officer as follows:

He must keep up his practice on the handling of the different arms; he must train himself to be a quick and untiring rider; he must have an eye for taking in at a glance a correct view of the general state of things; he must write clearly, be a good draughtsman, and if possible a practical telegraphist. Finally, by keeping himself constantly in contact with troops, he should not lose his sense of comradeship with them or their wants; a frequent return to regimental duty will, in this respect, refresh his knowledge, and is consequently most desirable.9

Entrance into the General Staff corps offered the possibility of more rapid promotion, challenging and demanding work, contacting the ruling elite in Germany, and the probability of developing ulcers— known within the army as “General Staff Officers’ Stomach.” By the end of the century, small private schools coached lieutenants for a fee to prep them for their examinations.

7 Heinz Helmert, “Zu den Ursachen der militaerischen Siege Preussens in den Kriegen von 1864, 1866, und 1870/71,” Zeitschrift fuer Militaergeschichte, vol. 6 (1967), 5–22; Paul Bronsart von Schellendorf, The Duties of The General Sniff translated by W. A. H. Hare (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, n.d.); W. O. Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 1786–1813 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945); and Goerlitz, op. cit. 8 The same sources as previous note; see page 8 in Bronsart von Schellendorf. 9 Bronsart von Schellendorf, op. cit.

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III

Although several major developments in the Prusso-German military system clearly originated during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the name most associated with its nineteenth-century victories is that of Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff from 1857 to 1888. He was born in October 1800 in the small north German state of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to a minor noble family. His father soon transferred to the Danish Army, and young Helmuth consequently attended the Danish cadet school in Copenhagen. Much has been suggested on the harshness of that education and the poverty of the von Moltke family. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the Danish cadet school was scarcely different from the other military academies that rimmed the Baltic at the time. In addition, von Moltke’s father did not have such a lackluster career, retiring as a lieutenant general in the Danish Army. Helmuth von Moltke served three years in the Danish Army, but in 1822 accepted a commission in a Prussian infantry regiment. By 1832, he had graduated from the War Academy and entered the General Staff, working in the topographical office.10

In 1835, he and another captain began what was supposed to be a six-month visit to Istanbul, but what turned into a four-year tour as military advisors to the Ottoman Empire. Moltke accompanied the Ottoman forces in campaigns against the Kurds, and in 1839, he was present at the battle of Nisib against Mohamed Ali (the governor of Egypt). His experiences and observations survive as Brief aus der Tuerki, a book of travel letters periodically reprinted, which a number of literary critics still regard as a classic of German prose. The book reveals its author as a keen observer of high intellect, with a wry sense of humor. He also proved to be surprisingly high minded, his letters revealing little if any religious, race, or class hatred. At this time, he was still attempting to translate Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from English into German to supplement his meager income. That publication never came to fruition, and he gradually gave up his literary efforts. Nevertheless, it is clear that Moltke was not a typical European officer, although like his colleagues, he was a conservative and royalist. The public Moltke was usually silent, showing no feeling whatsoever, although each small gesture or saying in a moment of crisis was calculated to have a specific effect. That is one of the reasons why his writings are important. They are one of the only tools available to understand the man.

Until 1857 von Moltke alternated between staff positions and adjutant duties to various Hohenzollern princelings, spending little if any time with troop units. His closeness to the Royal family undoubtedly influenced his being named chief of the General Staff in 1857. Gunther Rothenberg maintains that Moltke was not a significant military theorist but merely a grammarian of warfare. One must confess that he, indeed, did not publish his views, like Jomini and Mahan, and that what remains of his military thought lies buried in his official and unofficial working papers, the observations of his colleagues, and his actual campaigns. Furthermore, he himself repeatedly stated that war was an art rather than a science and hence exempt from general rules. He was greatly influenced by Clausewitz’ writing, frequently borrowing his analogies. Moltke’s legacy is therefore that of a practitioner rather than that of a publicist. In addition, Moltke should not be viewed as an isolated individual but as a vital transitional figure of the Prussian General Staff, who carefully built upon the work of his predecessors.11

The period from 1815 to 1870 saw Western Europe change drastically as populations increased and the Industrial Revolution began to alter the face of Europe. As European society changed, the patterns of European warfare would change too. Many of these changes developed slowly, such as the expansion of the battlefield as a result of larger armies, the increased lethality of weaponry, and the military use of the railroad and telegraph. The Prussian Army, like the other western armies, fitfully attempted to grapple

10 Eberhard Kessel, editor, Moltke Gespraeche (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1940), 221–29; Moltke (Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler Verlag, 1957), 25–110; and Goerlitz, op. cit. 11Moltke, Briefe aus der Tuerki. Rothenberg, “Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 296–302; Daniel J. Hughes. Moltke on the Art of War, Selected Writings (Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1993), 1–19; and Goeriitz, op. cit.

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with the dilemmas of technological change. One thing is certain, and that is that no European state, certainly not Prussia, fully mastered the emerging technology. Moltke’s predecessor in 1855 directed the General Staff to undertake the first study of European railway capacities. Thereafter, railroads figured prominently in deployment plans and became an integral part of General Staff training. In the 1840s, the Prussian Army adopted one of the early primitive breech-loading rifles. This “needle gun” gave the Prussian infantry a great firepower advantage over the Austrians in 1866, but in 1870, that advantage rested with the French infantry in the Franco-Prussian War. Prussian artillery proved inferior to that of the Austrians in 1866, superior to the French in 1870. In short, no one side possessed a technological advantage across the board.

To Moltke and several other senior officers, it was clear that it was becoming increasingly difficult to command and control corps and armies. Moltke became more and more concerned with the increasing size of military formations and armies. One could not move more than one corps on a road on the same day, and the availability of roads dwindled as corps converged. The massing of one’s corps in the traditional Napoleonic form before battle created enormous problems, particularly in the area of logistics. In addition, a massed army could not maneuver rapidly, but only slowly march across fields. Disassembling the massed army, particularly in the face of an enemy army, would be highly dangerous. In 1865, von Moltke in all probability was already thinking of violating one of the major tenets of Napoleonic success (as preached by the high priest Jomini), the massing of all available troops before the battle. Moltke still desired to concentrate all his forces on the battlefield, but during the battle and not beforehand. He concluded that the increased size of armies, coupled with large-scale deployment by railroad, allowed for external concentration of forces on the battlefield rather than fighting on interior lines.12

IV

In 1864, Prussia joined Austria in declaring war against Denmark over the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein. The Prussian forces were commanded by the old and incompetent Field Marshal Wrangel. The king soon relieved him and his chief of staff, naming Prince Frederick Charles as the new commander and asking Moltke to serve as his provisional chief of staff.13 Their successful assault on the Dueppel fortifications helped lead to the rapid end of the war. This was the opening round over whether Austria or Prussia would unify Germany. Over the next two years, the two states diplomatically feuded over Schleswig and Holstein, the cacophony usually orchestrated by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.14

In 1860, Moltke and his deputies examined the Austrian threat and resolved that Austria’s Bohemian Salient threatened Silesia and, in addition, could rapidly reinforce its ally Saxony, thus threatening Berlin. Moltke decided, therefore, to adopt a defensive plan and threaten the flank of a possible Austrian offensive. Beginning in 1865, Bismarck sought to gain the neutrality of France and Russia, a demarche that would free additional Prussian forces, giving Moltke numerical parity with Austria. Moltke’s operational plan remained defensive, but allowed for an early offensive to eliminate Saxony, similar to Frederick the Great’s opening gambit in l756.15 By February 1866, Bismarck’s diplomatic offensive convinced Moltke that a war with Austria was impending. He concluded that rapid Prussian mobilization

12 Rothenberg, op. cit.; see also Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning (New York: Berg, 1991); and Goerlitz, op. cit. 13 Friedrich H. E. Graf von Wrangel was born on 13 April 1784 in Stettin, the son of a colonel from an old Baltic aristocratic family. In 1796, he entered a dragoon regiment and won the prestigious pour le meritè in 1807 at the Battle of Heilsberg. He advanced rapidly through 1815, becoming a brigadier general in 1823. He was politically reliable in the postwar years but at the age of 80 proved incapable of effective leadership. He held no commands after 1864 and died in Berlin on 1 November 1877. See Rudolf Thiel, Preussische Soldaten (Berlin: Paul Neff Verlag, 1940), 367–76. 14 Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification 1815–1871 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 433–57; Theodor Fontane, Der Schleswig-Holsteinische Krieg im Jahre 1864 (Berlin: Decker, 1866); and German General Staff, Der Deutsche-Daenische Krieg, 1864, 2 vols. (Berlin: E. 5. Mittler, 1886). 15 Craig, 28–30.

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would be the decisive factor. In April, he decided to use an offensive rather than a defensive plan, accepting the inherent risk of spreading his forces along the 400-kilometer semicircle north of the Bohemian Salient. He also recognized that Prussia possessed five major rail lines leading into the salient, while Austria had only one. The Prussian Army could thus concentrate its full strength in three weeks, the Austrians in six. Bismarck succeeded in isolating Austria by obtaining the neutrality of both France and Russia. Then, Italy joined Prussia in the war, tying down additional Austrian forces and, with them, Austria’s best general, Archduke Albert (the son of Napoleon’s nemesis Archduke Charles).16

It was clear that rapid mobilization and deployment would be of major importance. The king of Prussia, however, who still sought to avoid war with Austria, disrupted Moltke’s plans by slowing the mobilization. On 2 June 1866, three days before the mobilization was completed, the king announced that the Prussian General Staff would henceforth be independent of the Ministry of War, making Moltke the de facto field commander of the army. From his desk in Berlin, Moltke ordered three Prussian armies to invade Saxony and move on the Bohemian Salient from three directions, all aimed at the crossroads at Gitschin. Prussia mobilized some 355,000 men and deployed 254,000 against the Bohemian Salient. Moltke joined the army in Bohemia, where Prussian railroads and telegraphs would be of no help.17

The king of Prussia selected his nephew, Prince Frederick Charles, to command the First Army. One might mistake the prince for a daring cavalryman, but he was a serious professional who could be meticulous to a fault. He was also a confident, energetic commander, popular with his soldiers, who called him “the red prince” because of his beloved red hussar uniform. Most of the German states, including Saxony, sided with Austria. A small Prussian army under General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, the Elbe Army, received the task of occupying Saxony with three divisions, It, too, fell under the command of the First Army.18

Crown Prince Frederick William (later Emperor Frederick III) commanded the Second Army in Silesia. He was thirty-five years old, a handsome man distinguished by his full beard. Besides being a capable field commander, he was a man of considerable intelligence and learning. His army fielded the I, V, VI and Guard Corps. It had the difficult task of advancing through the treacherous mountain passes of the Riesengebirge. The Second Army would have to send forces through each of the mountain passes, but yet not allow the Austrians to concentrate decisively against any one of the columns.19

Military experts across Europe expected a rapid Austrian victory. Austria possessed 35 million people to Prussia’s 18 million, while Austria’s army had had recent combat experience. The Prussian Army had seen hardly any real combat in the previous fifty years. In addition, military experts viewed the Prussian Army as a sort of large militia with funny hats. On paper, the Austrian army had some 850,000 men. In reality, however, it could only mobilize about 528,000 and deploy only 320,000 against both Prussia and

16 Archduke Friedrich Rudolf Albrecht was born on 3 August 1817 in Vienna, the son of Austria’s distinguished commander of the same name. Privately educated, he entered the army in 1837. A disciple of Radetzky, he distinguished himself in numerous battles in northern Italy. He defeated the Italian Army at the Battle of Custozza on 23 June 1866. He attempted to reform the Austro-Hungarian Army after 1866 and died on 18 February 1895 in Arco in the Tyrol. Goerlitz, op. cit., 69–102; Craig, 2, 28–30; and Carl von Duncker, F. M. Erzherzog Albrecht (1897). 17 Goerlitz op. cit.; and Craig, 24–31. 18 Frederick Charles was born on 20 March 1828 in Berlin. He attended the cadet schools and spent most of his life in the army. He saw his first combat as a captain in 1848 against fellow Germans. In 1858, he married Princess Marie Anne of Anhalt. His cool detachment and tactless manner made him a difficult superior. He was nevertheless one of Prussia’s most successful field commanders. He commanded the Second Army in France in 1870 and was promoted to field marshal on 28 October 1870. He died in Potsdam on 15 June 1885. His chief of staff was General Konstantin von Voigts-Rhetz, an intelligent, ambitious officer who was jealous of von Moltke. The quartermaster was General Wolf von Stuelpnagel. See Wolfgang Foerster, Prinz Friedrich Karl von Preussen, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag, 1910); and Craig, 18–22; and H. Mueller-Bohn, Der Eiserne Prinz (1902). 19 The crown prince was born on 18 October 1831 in Potsdam. After attending the University of Bonn (the first Hohenzollern to attend a university), he married Princess Victoria. A political liberal, he was frequently at odds with Otto von Bismarck. He reigned as Emperor Frederick III for ninety-nine days before he died of throat cancer on 15 June 1888. His son William II succeeded him as emperor. His chief of staff was the capable Leonhard von Blumenthal. W. Richter, Kaiser Friedrich III (1938); and Craig, 30–36.

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Italy. Its soldiers tended to be poor and uneducated, speaking a polyglot of languages. Its officers were loyal and gallant, but inclined to be self-willed and overly impetuous. Its major weaknesses were in staff work and higher officer training. In 1854, the Prussian military attached to Vienna invited several Austrian officers to play a war game. They turned him down, however, upon discovering that the purpose of a war game was not to wager money. Things had not changed over the ensuing twelve years, and unless an Austrian general brought his own maps of the theater, he would have to do without them.20 The Austrian commander in Bohemia was Ludwig August von Benedek, a Hungarian Protestant from the lesser nobility. He was Austria’s most renowned and popular soldier, personally brave, loyal to subordinates, liked and trusted by the common soldier. He at first turned down the command, stating that he was sixty-two, in ill health and that all of his soldiering had been in Italy. In addition, he had never held an independent command. Upon the emperor’s insistence, however, he accepted the command. In the field, he displayed considerable confidence, but his letters to his wife from this period reflect a man burdened by doubt and uncertainty.21 Both armies maintained that tactical victory would come through mass. For the Austrians, this would be done through the battalion column, for the Prussians through the company column. The Prussian companies, however, were more flexible than the Austrian battalions, and with their needle guns, Prussian companies demonstrated remarkable firepower. In the first fire fights and meeting engagements, the Prussian infantry easily demonstrated its superiority, even when handled poorly. In four days of fighting on the frontier, Benedek lost 30,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. This had a telling effect on not only the morale of the troops but on Benedek himself, who suggested that the emperor open negotiations. The emperor replied via telegraph, inquiring if a battle had been fought yet.22 Both armies still maintained the cherished Napoleonic cavalry doctrine of massing horsemen in a large cavalry reserve, which would deliver the coup de grâce at the decisive moment. In 1866, however, that signified that the horsemen could not get into action. As a result, both armies had severe reconnaissance problems. Benedek knew that three Prussian armies had invaded Bohemia, giving him the advantage of interior lines, but he could only move his large army north towards Josephstadt with one railway, which slowed his movement to a crawl. Benedek’s army contacted the Prussian First Army and the Elbe Army on 2 July 1866, about eight miles north of the town of Königgrätz. Interior lines are only an advantage if one attacks and defeats the opponent before he has an opportunity to converge. Benedek, however, decided to defend the Bistritz River, digging field fortifications and hoping that the Prussian First Army of Prince Frederick Charles would attack him. Benedek proved indecisive, living from moment to moment, unaware of the location of the Prussian Second Army and still toying with the idea of launching an attack against Frederick Charles.23 On the evening of 2 July, Prince Frederick Charles resolved to attack Benedek with his own First Army and Herwarth von Bittenfeld’s Elbe Army and had his staff issue the orders. Just as importantly, however, he sent a message to the commander of the Second Army, Crown Prince Frederick, stating his intentions and requesting his support. Moltke was awakened at 2200 in Gitschen and informed of the situation. He suspected that Benedek’s entire army was massed behind the Bistritz River instead of just the four corps thus far identified and consequently feared that Frederick Charles’ frontal attack would fail.

20 Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War, Austria’s War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6– 35; Prinz Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, Aus meinen Leben, 1848–71, 4 vols. (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1897–1908), vol.1, 296; and Craig, 5–16, 24–30. 21 Ludwig August von Benedek was born on 14 July 1804, the son of a doctor from Oedenburg, Hungary. At fourteen, he entered the Wiener- Neustadt Military Academy. Later, he retired to Graz, where he died on 27 April 1881. His chief of staff was General Gideon Ritter von Krismanic. Craig, 12–15 and Wawro, op. cit. 22 The following day the Emperor directed Benedek to relieve several generals, including his chief of staff, Craig, 20–22, 77–80; and Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War, 124–80. 23 Goerlitz, op. cit., 86–89; and Craig, 50.

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To change orders, however, would only lead to massive confusion. Therefore, in his own orders, he confirmed Frederick Charles’ orders but directed the crown prince to strike the Austrian right flank with the entire Second Army.24 Benedek had contemplated a withdrawal behind the Elbe River but feared being attacked by the Prussians before he could get across. He decided that it would be better to fight on ground of his own choosing. After the first shock of the power of the needle gun, Benedek resolved that its firepower could be negated by placing his troops in field emplacements and allowing the Prussians to break against his wall. He consequently fielded about 197,000 men and 770 guns in a well-fortified defensive position running along the rolling hills above the Bistritz River, which was not a serious military obstacle. He kept some 58,000 men in reserve. On the morning of 3 July 1866, a cold rain began that was to last throughout the day, limiting observation of the battlefield on occasion. Benedek also received a new chief of staff in the morning, a man he had never seen before. His former chief of staff stayed by his side through the day but offered little counsel. By 0730, the Austrian and Prussian artillery began to fire across the Bistritz Valley, and it was clear the Prussian infantry was advancing on the Bistritz River. The Prussians had been up since 0400, having obtained little sleep and probably no breakfast. The three Prussian divisions making the attack remained pinned down along the Bistritz through the remainder of the day, taking heavy casualties from the superb Austrian artillery. To the north, the Prussian 7th Division advanced and seized the Swiep Forest. The Austrian commander in the area led seven battalions to drive the Prussian out. But the power of the needle gun was too great. The Austrian commander fell and his seven battalions were largely destroyed. His successor continued the attacks, and when his forces were used up, he began borrowing units from the reserve. All told, the Austrians threw forty-nine battalions against the Swiep Forest, apparently without Benedek’s knowledge. The Prussian infantry in the Swiep Forest only barely managed to hold out. Most of their officers were killed or wounded. At one point, one Prussian soldier was heard to say that it would all be OK, since the Austrians were only shooting at the lieutenants. Somehow, his attempt at humor was lost on his comrades. By the early afternoon, ammunition was running short, and Prussian soldiers began to search the dead for unspent rounds. By noon, the situation looked quite bleak for the Prussian infantry along the Bistritz. Some small units began to retreat, and one general considered pulling his division back. Help, however, was on the way.25 On the Austrian left flank, Herwarth von Bittenfeld’s Elbe Army made slow progress, but by 1500 had routed the Saxon Corps. On the right flank, the crown prince’s Second Army began to arrive as early as 1200. The key blow fell at 1500, when the Prussian Guard Corps silently marched unseen through the fog to storm the Heights of Chlum. Until that time, Benedek thought he was winning the battle and upon hearing the news at first refused to believe it. Now, instead of winning the battle against a numerically inferior force, he himself was outnumbered and threatened by an attack against his northern flank. Within minutes, another report arrived, informing him of the rout of the Saxon Corps, signifying that he was now threatened by a double envelopment.26 The specter of defeat awakened Benedek and brought forth his finest qualities. He soon discovered that much of his reserve had been frittered away attacking the Swiep Forest. He took his remaining forces, however, and launched several hammer blows to secure the withdrawal of his army. Indeed, some of the heaviest fighting took place in those last hours. The Prussian Guard took heavy casualties, holding off repeated Austrian attacks. Benedek managed to extricate most of his army. He had lost 5,600 killed, 7,500 wounded, 7,400 missing, and 22,000 captured. But in the end, faulty staff work betrayed the army again,

24 Craig, 80–86; and Thiel, Preussisthe Soldaten, 423–26. 25 Max Jaehns, Die Schlacht vom Koeniggraetz (Leipzig: Gruenow, 1876), 143; Craig, op. cit., 86–112; and Walter von Bremen, editor, Denkwuerdigkeiten des Preussischen Generals der Infanterie Eduard von Fransecky (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1901). 26 Craig, 113–38; and Thiel, Preussische Soldaten, 426–28.

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when troop units did not receive specific march routes for the retreat, and the Elbe fortress commanders were not instructed to facilitate the withdrawal. This produced virtual anarchy at the Elbe crossing sites, rendering the Austrian army incapable of further action. The Hapsburg emperor soon opened peace negotiations.27 The Prussian armies did not pursue the Austrians. In all probability, the Prussians were too exhausted to pursue, or perhaps Moltke realized that the external concentration of his three armies on the battlefield had created an enormous traffic jam—“foot-lock,” if you will pardon the expression. Historians do not know for certain why there was no pursuit. Later, when Moltke and his generals demanded a triumphant march on Vienna, Bismarck overruled them, seeking to give Austria generous peace terms. Austria lost no territories, except Venice (which went to Italy), but was henceforth excluded from German affairs. This freed Prussia to form a unified Germany.28 The Battle of Königgrätz, or Sadowa as it is sometimes called, was the largest battle since 1813 on the continent, with more than 400,000 men on the battlefield. The campaign lasted only seven weeks, however, which limited the number of combat deaths and the spread of diseases, the real killer in prolonged warfare. Europe’s military intelligentsia had difficulty explaining Prussia’s victory. Moltke had broken several of Napoleon’s sacred commandments, at least as preached by his self-proclaimed disciples. They concluded that Prussian strategy had been a sin and that Moltke had only been lucky. They explained the victory as a triumph of the needle gun and its superior firepower. There were, however, several more thoughtful observers. The Russian observer, General Dragomirov, downplayed the role of the needle gun, saying that the decisive factor was the men who carried the needle gun. In like fashion, France’s attaché, Baron Stoffel, stated that it was a victory of the nation in arms possessing a superior form of high command. Colonel Stoffel believed the Prussians would have won even without the needle gun. In Paris, however, few if any desired to heed his council.29 Following the end of hostilities, Bismarck expanded Prussia by creating the North German Confederation, which further increased the size of the Prussian Army. The army also attempted to correct several of its more glaring flaws. It reorganized the cavalry so that it would be able to perform better reconnaissance. It also reformed the artillery, replacing the muzzle-loading smooth bores with breech- loading Krupp guns, established an artillery school for uniform officer education, and decentralized its guns.30

V Otto von Bismarck desired a war with France to complete the unification of Germany under Prussia, although the ostensible cause of the war was the possibility of a Hohenzollern prince becoming the king of Spain. Through a cheap political trick, Bismarck managed to maneuver the vain and insecure Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia, making France appear the aggressor and driving the remaining German states to Prussia’s side. Napoleon III’s rash decision left France isolated against the German states. Prussia had even greater forces available in 1870 than in 1866, with an even more rapid mobilization timetable. It had also overcome its grosser doctrinal deficiencies for the cavalry and artillery. France in 1870 was even less prepared than Austria had been in 1866. The French had rejected the idea of the nation in arms in favor of a professional long-service army. To flesh out the army, France conscripted troops through a form of lottery, with the losers serving about seven years. Since the wealthy could purchase substitutes, basically only the poor were drafted. Following Prussia’s victory over Austria,

27 Ibid., 139–66. 28 Thiel, Preussische Soldaten, 428–30; and Craig, 165–72. 29 Craig, 172–79. 30 Goerlitz, op. cit., 88–91; and Craig, 172–79.

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Napoleon III attempted but failed to reform the army on the Prussian model, and a compromise in 1868 pleased no one. Service was reduced to five years, followed by four years in the reserve. The recreated National Guard, however, required only two weeks annual training. At the outbreak of the war in 1870, the half-million men of the National Guard remained untrained, under-equipped, and unorganized.31 French troops were brave and loyal, with many veterans in the ranks. Their Chassepot breech-loading rifles gave them a firepower advantage over the Germans. The main weaknesses of the French Army were in structure, organization, and officer education. French officers were experienced and well versed at the company level, but staff work had not really progressed from the Napoleonic era. It was an officer corps that still had literacy problems and was marked by a strain of anti-intellectualism. In many ways, the officers’ experience in leading small columns against colonial peoples had hindered rather than helped the development of their military skills. Whereas Prussian staff officers worked on planning and mobilization through the year, the French Army would be mobilizing for the first time on the basis of the 1868 reforms. That mobilization produced widespread chaos, with many of the reservists never reaching their units at all. One of the major problems was that French regiments hardly ever garrisoned the areas from which they drew their reservists. Reservists from one Zouave regiment had to report to a depot in North Africa before joining their unit in Alsace. Most French units deployed short of men, equipment, and food. On paper, the French Army would win through mass, but in reality, the French military system of 1870 prohibited the use of mass at the strategic or operational level. It lies beyond the scope of this study to examine the Franco-Prussian War in detail, so what follows is a general overview of the course of the campaign. General Marie Macmahon commanded an army of about 100,000 men near Strasbourg, General Achille Francois Bazaine an army of roughly 150,000 about Metz, and a Reserve Army of about 50,000 men assembled in the Chalons area. The French hoped to advance on the Main River; but the rapid Prussian advance denied them that opportunity. The Prussians massed thirteen corps, with some 475,000 men, along the Rhine by 1 August, allowing its three armies to take the offensive. The first meeting engagements from 2–6 August established a certain pattern: Prussian forces would encounter a French unit and attack. The French would shoot the Prussians to pieces but then suffer heavy casualties to the Prussian artillery. Then, other Prussian units (often without orders) would march for the sound of the fighting and outflank the French force. The French force would retire, encountering increasing disorder. By 6 August, General Macmahon had lost the Vosges defiles and decided to conduct a deep retreat to Chalons. The Prussian crown prince’s Third Army followed as far as Toul. To the north, the Prussian First and Second Armies crossed the Moselle unopposed and enveloped Bazaine’s army at Metz from the south. In spite of the tactical errors and sometimes willful insubordination of his subordinates following the battles of Mars-le-Tour, Vionville, Rezonville, Gravelotte, and St. Privat, General Bazaine managed to retire the French army to the Metz fortifications. By 23 August, Prince Frederick Charles’ army completed the investment of Metz in what would prove to be a long siege. On 16 August, Napoleon III joined Macmahon’s army at Chalons. There, the two men soon decided to take their 130,000 soldiers through Rheims in an attempt to relieve Bazaine’s army in Metz. They got as far as Beaumont sur Meuse, where the new Fourth Prussian Army under Prince Albert of Saxony checked their advance. Retreating north to Sedan, they found themselves trapped between neutral Belgium to the north and the Prussian crown prince’s Third Army to the south. Macmahon was wounded on 1 September and replaced by General Auguste Alexandre Ducrot, who attacked the Germans in an

31 Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany. vol. I, The Period of Unification. I815–1871 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 446–506; Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 1–63; and Goerlitz, op. cit., 88–91.

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attempt to escape the trap. That attempt ended in a bloody failure, and the following day, Napoleon III and some 83,000 men surrendered in Sedan.32

Moltke had eliminated France’s two armies and captured Napoleon III, which ordinarily would signify that the war was won. But on 4 September, the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, and the French vowed to continue the struggle. This forced Moltke to advance on Paris, surround it, and wait for someone to surrender. He also had to deploy armies to intercept any relief attempts, for in unoccupied zones, Frenchmen were flocking to the colors, while guerrilla warfare had broken out in the German rear areas. To complicate matters further, Bismarck demanded that Paris be shelled, both to please the right- wing German newspapers and in the fear of intervention from foreign powers. Prussian heavy guns finally arrived, and a bombardment opened on 5 January 1871. Moltke, however, never attempted to launch a ground attack against Paris’s fortifications and its 400,000 troops. Inside the capital, riots broke out as food became scarce, and on 28 January, an armistice ended both the siege and the war.33

Following the Franco-Prussian War, most Western states adopted national military service through conscription and one form or another of a general staff system. These steps may be viewed as extensions from the changes brought about by the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution. European nations would henceforth train and equip increasingly larger armies, armies that would be mobilized and deployed by general staffs using railroads, telegraphs, and whatever other technological advances that might become available.

France and Germany would set the example for the continental armies, both doubling the size of their standing armies from 1870 to 1914. General staffs performed their newly developed military skills, planning the deployment of large mass armies, uniformly trained and armed. This accelerated another long-term trend in modern Western history—the transformation of the officer corps into a long-term professional service class, with its own professional language, journals, values, and culture. That corporate body grew increasingly conservative and estranged from the society around it, although it could not remain immune from two of the dominant ideas of the late nineteenth century, nationalism and imperialism. The Prussian victories from 1864 to 1871 confirmed the Napoleonic legacy: the cult of the offensive, waged with the greatest possible force, and aimed towards a rapid decision to destroy the enemy in a decisive battle.

As a result of the increased lethality of weapons, Moltke had earlier foreseen the danger of conducting frontal attacks. German doctrine subsequently emphasized outflanking enemy positions. Not even regulations, however, could negate the cult of the offensive, known within the officer corps as Angriffshetze (attack mania). Moltke’s operational planning following 1879 was based upon the assumption of war against France and Russia. The strategic nightmare of a two-front war had become altogether too real. He planned for a defensive posture in the west and an Austro-German offensive in the east. A siege mentality soon developed within the German military decision-making circle, which gave rise to plans for preemptive offensives. Ultimately, Moltke could find no solution to Germany’s strategic dilemma. In 1890, he made one of his last public appearances, warning the Reichstag that with the current European alliances and force levels, no nation could win a war with a single decisive campaign. He stated that the next war could last seven or thirty years, which would rend the fabric of European society. But if anyone was listening to the old man, no one was able to rectify the situation, and certainly not the narrow technicians who would follow in his wake.34

32 Pflanze, op. cit.; Howard, op. cit., 63–223; and Thiel, Preussische Soldaten, 430–55. 33 Pflanze, op. cit.; Howard, op. cit., 224–456; and Thiel, Preussische Soldaten, 430–55. 34 Rothenburg, “Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment,” 296–325; and Howard, “Men Against Fire,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 51–126.

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