“On the German Art of War/Truppenfuhrung” – aka – Germans on the Art of War

While Gutenberg’s printing business took off in the 15^th Century with Bibles and religious texts, another popular genre soon attracted readership among the upper classes – military memoirs and manuals.  In the early 19^th Century, Napoleon I recommended that students of the military art should study the campaigns of history’s great commanders, a number of whom also wrote their own manuals on how to make war.  But from the middle of that 19^th Century, you want to make sure to include the writings of Clausewitz and then of von Moltke the Elder and his Prussian acolytes on war, warfare, and how to go to war.  Much of that Prussian learning and experience is reflected in “On the German Art of War: Truppenfuhrung” edited by Bruce Condell and David T. Zabecki which presents a modern annotated English translation of the Germany Army’s World War Two manual.

The basic manual of the Wehrmacht, “Heeresdienstuorschrift 300”, was written in 1933 and served as its principal source on tactics and the conduct of combat operations through 1945.  Part 1 was published to the army in 1933 and Part 2 in 1934.  As often happens in our modern military era, it remained a ‘work in progress” through that period as new tools of mechanized and armored warfare evolved.  This was one of a family of five, sometimes multi-volume, manuals covering the various branches of service as well as staff and command functions.

Between 1936 and 1938, Captain Albert C. Wedemeyer was one of two U.S. Army officers attending the German Kriegsakademie in Berlin under an exchange program.  His report, aka The Wedemeyer Report, and his acquired insights on German tactics, operations, and strategy greatly informed U.S. responses towards Germany during World War Two.  His fellow exchange student, Harlan N. Hartness, likewise contributed his own “Hartness Report” drawing on his experiences.   Meanwhile, the U.S. Army acquired copies of both parts of the German manual and translated them into English.  That translation of Part I was only declassified in 1957 while Part II was still classified as late as 2000 as this book was being prepared.  Reportedly, numerous ideas from the German manual found their way into both the 1940 and 1944 versions of the U.S. Army’s FM-100-5.

Bruce Condell and David T. Zabecki teamed up to produce this new translation, published in 2001.  The main body of the book is “Heeresdienstuorschrift 300”– in English, with original paragraph numbering etc.  Added to that are footnotes by the editors drawing on the unpublished annexes as well as offering additional background information.  This includes the 13 chapters of Part 1 (1933) and the 10 chapters of Part II (1934).  The book omits most of the original 12 annexes (which they describe as mostly obsolete even by 1940) except for Annex 8: Guidelines for Written Communications, Combat Reports, and War Diaries, and Annex 9: Guidelines for Schematics, Sketch Maps, Panoramic Sketches, and Situation Maps.

James Corum provides an informative Foreword that is followed by a 14 page introduction by the two editors that offers good historical background and context to both the manual and the ideas therein.  Their introduction included two quotes from Professor Williamson Murray describing the manual –

“It remains the most influential doctrinal manual ever written.”

“It also represents one of the most thoughtful examinations of the conduct of operations and leadership ever written.”

Certainly, if you want to know how war was supposed to be made across most of the 20th Century, this volume is excellent place to look.  I highly recommend this book.

But I do have to note that I was particularly struck, given the history of the Wehrmacht’s conduct during World War Two, by some of the statements found in the manual shared below (emphasis mine).  These brought to mind the contributions of Franz Lieber, author of President Lincoln’s General Orders No. 100 – aka “The Lieber Code” and the foundations of the modern laws of war.    Born in 1798 in Berlin, Franz Lieber was twice imprisoned in Berlin for his liberal political activities.  Fleeing first to England and then immigrating to the United States, he was an established scholar and author on ethics and government by the time the American Civil War broke out.

Late in 1862 he was asked to draft guidelines for the Union Army’s conduct during that conflict which was published in April of 1863.  Lieber’s draft guidelines included reference to the concept of ”military necessity” which while not intended to allow acts of cruelty or ‘perfidy’ – though deception is allowed – functions as a big loophole allowing military commanders to carry out actions necessary to achieve their military goals, i.e. win the war.  As the Lieber Code became the basis for the modern laws of war, this ‘military necessity’ clause was repeatedly further limited and hemmed in by treaty, amendment, and alteration of meaning and still “Military necessity” has been invoked by most armies in most conflicts since 1863.  Nevertheless, the surprise of finding language specifically authorizing the taking of civilian hostages in certain circumstances does appear to me to place the Wehrmacht far over to one side of the spectrum of how war is made.  As far back as the Franco-Prussian War, there are accounts of Prussian/German forces interacting with local enemy civilian populations with what can only be called harshness, but it never occurred to me before reading this manual that there might be a matter of policy behind those actions – or is it just that the manuals placed the Wehrmacht too close to the top of the slippery slope?

"III.  Reconnaissance"

"188….Quick and skillful interrogation of prisoners is vitally important.  They should be questioned about their unit, adjacent units, higher units, the names of their commanders, their last bivouac position, movements and means of transport, the condition and morale of their units, and any deployments of special weapons.  Use of coercion is not permitted by international law.  After examination, papers that have no military significance must be returned to prisoners."

"XII.  Quartering"

"684.  When the attitude of the local population is uncertain, it may be necessary to initiate special security measures.  These may include threats of punishment, the seizure of hostages, and the requirement that all houses remain unlocked and accessible.

The inconsiderate treatment of a passive population is wrong.  In all situations, restraint and reserve toward the population is the best policy."

"XXIII.  Logistical Support in the Area of Operations"

"1027.  During a withdrawal, the sick and wounded who cannot be moved should be put under the care of local civilian doctors.  Otherwise, they will be left behind with the necessary medical personnel, under the protection of the Geneva Convention on the Wounded of 27 July 1929."

"1061….Military police missions include the maintenance of order and traffic control at distribution points, depots, dumps, rail stations, and along routes.  They also are responsible for collecting and forwarding stragglers; the prevention of looting and unauthorized requisitions; the supervision of the civilian population, as well as their protection against atrocities; and the enforcement of police measures to control contagious diseases."

A Film Review - Fury

I went to see Fury today and I can highly recommend it, especially for the lovers of tanks and World War II movies.  My personal MOS when I attended the Fort Knox School for Boys was Armored Scout Observer, though being National Guard oh those many years ago, I never served in that role in anger.  I enjoyed the film very much and it held my interest so well that I hardly noticed the film’s over two hour length. 

It is a fantastic thing to watch a movie about World War II in which I am not asked to pretend that an M-48 Patton tank is a German Tiger tank or that an M-24 Chaffee is a Sherman.  The last movies that come to mind to do that were “A Bridge Too Far” and before that “Kelly’s Heroes” (courtesy of the Yugoslav army and Tiger mock ups built out of Soviet MT-LBs) or some of the various Soviet era movies about their “Great Patriotic War.”  Of course, Soviet filmmakers had an advantage because the Red Army never threw away any of their T-34s, etc (they gave away a lot of them and one could get nit-picky about what year different model T-34s entered service, but hey they were still T-34s!).

The depiction of the weaknesses and strengths of the Sherman tank and the tactics that had to be used to overcome or take advantage of those are also reasonably well portrayed (as are the tricks and habits of living and fighting in the same place – your tank).  This was especially true of the battle by 4 Shermans against a lone Tiger tank firing from ambush.  Obviously, it helps when you are able to draw upon the resources of The Tank Museum at Bovington in the UK which has the only running model of the Tiger tank in the world plus the staff who know how to fight those two model tanks against each other.  (The Tank Museum at Bovington ranks as one of the top armored fighting vehicle museums in the world.  Two others are the Central Museum of Armored Fighting Vehicles at Kubinka, Russia and the Tank Museum at Saumur, France.  Much of the collection at the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky has been moved to Fort Benning, Georgia and is not yet on display there.  I've had the happy opportunity to visit all of these museums personally, though there are others still on my bucket list.)

The story told in the movie takes place in April, 1945 though perhaps they don’t make that sufficiently clear, especially how every combat arms soldier in the American (and British) armies by that time is  desperately trying to not be the war’s last casualty.  The characterizations are all pretty well presented within the world view framed by the film though a couple of moments might be considered rather overdrawn and exaggerated, especially by those accustomed to the more classic Hollywood portrayals of American GIs.   Just about every incident depicted in the film can probably be demonstrated to have actually happened during the war – but the filmmakers exercise fully their capability to concentrate them all within a roughly two hour film rather than burden the viewer with the long hours and even days of military routine and boredom that were also a part of the reality of World War II.  The film also makes every effort to expose the viewer to the mud, blood, gore, and noise of the war, though the movie cannot share any of the myriad smells of war and a battlefield nor the blinding feel of the smoke from fires and explosions.

SPOILER ALERT:  The climactic battle of the movie brings to mind a Soviet tankisti epigram learned from the film “The Beast” (aka “The Beast of War”) about a Soviet tank crew (including a World War II veteran) fighting in Afghanistan, “Out of commission, become a pillbox. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes.”  With complete recognition that “it’s only a movie” I would suggest that it also shows why a cannon-armed armored vehicle will remain an important battlefield weapon for some time to come as five men in a tank engage several hundred lightly armed infantry supported by man-portable anti-tank rockets, crew-served weapons, and thin skinned vehicles.  (Personally, I might have dismounted the two turret mounted machine guns and positioned them to either flank of the tank and the road it sat on – but that’s perhaps just me and we never learn whether or not they have the mounts to use.)  

Patton Writes About the Bulge - Lieutenant Patton, That Is

I don't normally take up this page with my book reviews. There are plenty of other venues for that and you can find my reviews on Amazon.com and sometimes on my FaceBook pages. I picked up this book because it had a tank on the cover. There are far fewer war novels written in the U.S. about tanks than there are submarines or fighter pilots. The UK does far better by its tankers in the fiction world than we do, I blame that on Tom Clancy. But this book caught my interest because its author, Oliver B. Patton, was a Class of 1944 West Point graduate and career Army officer, retiring with the rank of Brigadier General. During the Battle of the Bulge, he was a lieutenant in command of a rifle platoon in the hard-luck 106th Infantry Division, much of which was overrun and destroyed in the initial German attack of that Battle. Lieutenant Patton was badly wounded and captured by German forces. He spent the rest of the war as a German PoW, in either German hospitals or prisoner-of-war camps.


“The Silent Snow” is the last of five historical novels he wrote after his retirement from the Army, the other four all set on the American frontier. This is not the story of the Battered Bastards of Bastogne or a paean to General George S. Patton’s Third Army tankers. Instead, this is the story of a lieutenant, separated from his unit in the 106th Infantry Division as it is being overrun in the unexpected German assault. As such it draws heavily upon the author’s experiences in the original battle, though his principal character spends much of the book evading capture as the war rages on in the Ardennes Forest battlefield. Patton’s own story is available online for those interested in it at http://www.freewebs.com/106thinfantry-part2/oliverbpatton.htm.

Patton presents a workmanlike narrative told in a clear readable style. The story told here is not a full-up war novel, but an account of what happens (or happened) to the men and women who experienced this portion of the Second World War. The book benefits greatly as it reflects Patton’s personal experiences, offering the reader both familiar and some surprising aspects of what was one of the greatest battles fought by U.S. forces during the war. Patton also makes clear the degree to which the American forces were a citizen-army made up of average Americans who wanted most of all to go come again but knew that that road ran through Berlin as they said.

Patton would go on to serve in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars and was wounded again in Korea. He served as assistant chief of staff for XXIV Corps in Vietnam and as Assistant Chief of Staff for Army intelligence at the Pentagon in the late 1960s. He received three Purple Hearts and three Bronze stars during his active military service. His writing career began in retirement. Upon his death in 2002 he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
There are not that many works of war fiction that can claim to be authored by an actual veteran of the battle or conflict being written about. For that reason alone, The Silent Snow is worth reading for the general reader interested in the stories surrounding the Battle of the Bulge. It should also interest to scholars examining the historiography of the battle and the nature and evolution of its numerous literary offspring.

General Wavell Speaking Generally on Generals

My library includes titles on the general subjects of war, warfare, military science, the art of war, strategy, tactics, leadership, and the art of command, among related subjects. The arts of leadership, command, generalship are a long time study, for professional and personal interest. I have had the pleasure of knowing and even working for a few leaders over the years, but it is a rare pleasure and most of the time the best you can hope for is a boss who at least grasps the concepts of good management.

I was delighted last year to add a slim little 63 page paperback to my library. This was the Penguin Special paperback edition (1941) of General Archibald Wavell’s three lectures on Generals and Generalship. This wartime edition looks great among the other paperbacks of similar vintage that I place on display to support my portrayal of a somewhat overage British Army captain during World War II.

Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell was certainly someone in a position to write knowledgeably on the subject, having by 1941 spent almost 40 years as an officer - first in his regiment, The Black Watch, and then in higher command positions. These lectures were first given at the Royal United Services Institution beginning in 1936 and, as presented in this volume, were delivered at Cambridge in early 1939.

Wavell admits that in preparing for these lectures, he sought out what all of the great captains and military thinkers had said on the subject and yet found only one that he thought worth sharing, from Socrates, which appealed to his own views about a general’s need to be practical, energetic, and adaptable.

“The general must know how to get his men their rations and every other kind of stores needed for war. He must have imagination to originate plans, practical sense and energy to carry them through. He must be observant, untiring, shrewd; kindly and cruel; simple and crafty; a watchman and a robber; lavish and miserly’ generous and stingy; rash and conservative. All these and many other qualities, natural and acquired, he must have. He should also, as a matter of course, know his tactics; for a disorderly mob is no more an army that a heap of building material is a house.”

The future Field Marshal rather diminishes the importance of physical characteristics that might be desirable in a general, but did identify the essential moral qualities (which he clearly rated as more important):

• Character – in “that he knows what he wants and has the courage and determination to get it.”

• A genuine interest in and real knowledge of humanity, which is “the raw material” of his trade in the form of the officers and men under his command.

• Fighting spirit – i.e., the will to win.

• A spirit of adventure, a touch of the gambler – citing Napoleon, “If the art of war consisted merely in not taking risks glory would be at the mercy of very mediocre talent,” for “the general who allows himself to be bound and hampered by regulations [in waging war] is unlikely to win a battle.”

With regard to intellectual or mental qualities, Wavell emphasized the need to have a sense of what is possible to do in battle, especially with regard to the administrative and logistical aspects of warfare. He noted that the lack of this sense was where most critics of warfare and of generals (as well as most generals who fail) go wrong.

Wavell offered two simple rules for every general:

1) never try to do your own staff work, and

2) never let your staff get between you and your troops.

A general should also know his subordinate commanders and their key characteristics – does one need to be restrained and perhaps another pushed, which of them can be used effectively and decisively in an independent role?

He also discussed whether, and how, a general should address the troops under his command, including whether he should do so collectively or individually. In either situation, Wavell noted, each officer will have to find his own way and manner of doing either but always risks leaving behind an impression other than the one sought. He also notes that a certain of show of temper is not automatically received unfavorably but that sarcasm is “always resented and seldom forgiven.”

Having worked for superiors at various times who used sarcasm, I agree completely with Wavell’s elaboration that “sarcasm…is being clever at someone else’s expense” but believe he might have gone even further to note that a superior thus exercising his (or her) sarcasm upon a subordinate is in reality simply abusing their position of authority and targeting someone who has no recourse or response other than to stay silent and “take it” – but they will remember and resent that moment.

The General concluded his final lecture with a last admonition. He called to mind “the pious Greek” who erected altars to all the known great gods and then added one more, enscribing it “To the Unknown God.” Wavell asked that we add one further military altar to those already erected to Hannibal, Marlborough, Napoleon, et al, and upon this one enscribe “To the Unknown Leader” – understanding this to mean the “good company, platoon, or section leader who carries forward his men or holds his post, and often falls unknown.”

Amen.

The Universal Soldier – the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys of the infantry

Having recently written a blog about books on tanks and armored vehicles, my more recent readings have focused on the infantry, so I will now present several postings on books on the subject. (And don’t worry tread heads and tankisti, I will return to the subject of tanks for I am also fond of the great metal monsters myself.)

Ultimately, every individual who goes to war is an infantryman (or infantrywoman where applicable and accepted) for the individual soldier and his personal weapon is the fundamental building block of the military. The lot of an infantry soldier of any army of any period of history is recognizable to any of his counterparts, comrades, or foes who are also infantry. Some years ago, a colleague shared a text that illustrates this point as it describes the lot of an Egyptian infantryman (it was reportedly used as a practice text for Egyptian scribes learning their art and perfecting their craft):

Come, [let me tell] you the woes of the soldier, and how many are his superiors: the general, the troop-commander, the officer who leads, the standard-bearer, the lieutenant, the scribe, the commander of fifty, and the garrison-captain. They go in and out in the halls of the palace, saying: "Get laborers!" He is awakened at any hour. One is after him as [after] a donkey. He toils until the Aten sets in his darkness of night. He is hungry, his belly hurts; he is dead while yet alive. When he receives the grain-ration, having been released from duty, it is not good for grinding.

He is called up for Syria. He may not rest. There are no clothes, no sandals. The weapons of war are assembled at the fortress of Sile. His march is uphill through mountains. He drinks water every third day; it is smelly and tastes of salt. His body is ravaged by illness. The enemy comes, surrounds him with missiles, and life recedes from him. He is told: "Quick, forward, valiant soldier! Win for yourself a good name!" He does not know what he is about. His body is weak, his legs fail him.

When victory is won, the captives are handed over to his majesty, to be taken to Egypt. The foreign woman faints on the march; she hangs herself [on] the soldier's neck. His knapsack drops, another grabs it while he is burdened with the woman. His wife and children are in their village; he dies and does not reach it. If he comes out alive, he is worn out from marching.
Be he at large, be he detained, the soldier suffers. If he leaps and joins the deserters, all his people are imprisoned. He dies on the edge of the desert, and there is none to perpetuate his name. He suffers in death as in life. A big sack is brought for him; he does not know his resting place.

The American GIs, whom Ernie Pyle referred to as “the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys,” would recognize themselves and their lot in the lament of this ancient predecessor. Ernie was with and reported on the GIs in North Africa, Italy, and France and then moved on to report on the war in the Pacific. He was killed on April 18, 1945 by a Japanese machine gun on the small island of Ie Shima near Okinawa. Perhaps the most indicative comment on how well Ernie Pyle told the story of the American infantryman of World War II came from the soldiers themselves for they posted a sign board on Ie Shima bearing the following words: “At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a Buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”

You can read what Ernie Pyle wrote about the American soldier in the two published collections of his wartime columns. Since these were meant for newspaper syndication, Ernie did clean things up a little bit for the home front audience but you can still get a sense of what it was like from his writing and I highly recommend them.

This presents Ernie’s columns from the North African campaign, Algeria to Tunisia.

Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle, Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, 1944 © 1943, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York

The second volume presents Ernie’s columns from Sicily (June-September, 1943), Italy (December, 1943-April, 1944), and France (June-September, 1944) including a column actually written while he was in the Pacific as the war in Europe ended but that was not published. It was found when he was killed and not printed because its tone was considered too depressing at the time.

Brave Men, by Ernie Pyle, Bison Books Edition, University of Nebraska Press, © 2001, University of Nebraska Press (originally published 1944, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York)

There are other memoirs relating experiences of GIs that should be easy to track down. However, one of the best and now a classic standard work for those studying the WWII GI was written by an infantry officer:

Company Commander, Charles B. MacDonald, Ballantine Books, New York, © 1947 Charles B. MacDonald.

In September, 1944, at the age of 22, the author took command of Company I, an infantry company of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was wounded in January, 1945 and after two months convalescence was placed in command of a different infantry company, which he led until the end of the war in Europe. He received the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. His memoirs describing this experience were first published in 1947 but have remained available ever since. This book is widely considered a classic text for the study of command in the 20th Century and especially the American Army of the Second World War. After the war, MacDonald would rise to become Deputy Chief Historian at the Army Center for Military History at his retirement in 1979. Highly recommended.

Roll Me Over, An Infantryman’s World War II, by Raymond Gantter, Ivy Books, New York, © 1997 The Estate of Raymond Gantter.

Ray Gantter was a 30 year old draftee, after turning down his third draft deferment. As a result, he his jobs playing jazz piano and working as a program manager for a Syracuse New York radio station to join the army as a private, becoming an acting squad leader, and then acting buck sergeant, serving with the 1st Infantry Division where he earned the Silver Star and a battlefield commission. This book is based upon the wartime journal he kept from September 1944 to the end of the war and which he turned into a book manuscript in June 1949. The author’s wartime experiences covered northern France, Belgium, the Bulge, Germany, and finally Czechoslovakia. He also intersperses his descriptions of combat with discussions of the soldier’s daily life and its more mundane and less dramatic aspects. Recommended.

Night Drop, The American Airborne Invasion of Normandy, S.L.A. Marshall, © 1962 S.L.A. Marshall, published in 1962 by The Battery Press, Inc, Nashville, and in 1984 by Jove/The Berkeley Press, New York.

This work differs from the others discussed because it is neither a memoir nor autobiographical, and covers only one single combat operation rather than a longer period of the war. Noted military historian S.L.A. Marshall, Brigadier General, USAR, (ret.), based this book on the after action reports and his interviews with participants in the operation to tell the story of the American Airborne (parachute and glider) assaults in Normandy. Critics and scholars have found fault with some of Marshall’s work and you can find a great deal of material on that debate elsewhere on the internet and in the academic journals. Nevertheless, this is still a harrowing account of the confusion, chaos, courage, and desperation that surrounded the American paratroopers and glider troops in the D-Day operation. Recommended, with a caveat that Marshall’s methods as used in researching for this work have been challenged in connection with other books by him.