“The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich”, by Robert M. Citino

428 pages, University Press of Kansas, ISBN-13: 978-0700614103

The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich by Robert M. Citino is one of a whole series of books from the “Modern War Studies” collection published by the University Press of Kansas (guess I’ll have to hunt down a couple more titles now). Citino’s central theme is that from the day of its founding in the 1640s, the Brandenburger, then Prussian, and then German armies had a specific philosophy of combat: give your subordinates near autonomy, be aggressive, keep the war “short and lively” – or kurz und lebendig – and go for flank and rear attacks (I should note here that, subtitle aside, this book really starts with 1675 and the birth of the Prussian Army). This philosophy has its upside, as tiny and impoverished Brandenburg-Prussia eventually became a major power, but the ultimate downside was that these armies had little idea of what to do if the war became prolonged. The three Prussian wars in the 19^th Century proved the validity of the quick war, and the strategy for defeating the Entente in World War I followed along the same lines; unfortunately for the Germans, the campaign of 1914 against the French and British did not achieve a quick victory and, in some respects, its failure doomed German aspirations.

In World War II, Hitler, the Oberkommando des Heeres (Supreme High Command of the German Army) and Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces) all constructed plans for rapid campaigns and, initially in Poland, Holland, Belgium and France they were successful. Barbarossa did not achieve its ends in Russia, however, and the turning point was reached following the setbacks before Moscow. A single chance remained: that of defeating the remaining Soviet armies in the summer offensive of 1942, but by July (well before Stalingrad) the handwriting was on the wall. The German logistical concepts were also oriented towards quick campaigns, and both in the winter of 1914–15 and 1941–42 the German armies experienced severe supply problems. What had gone wrong was simply that a long campaign was not planned for, and commanders were forced to improvise to an extreme degree.

A second major point in Citino’s work is the development of the officer corps with its Auftragstaktik (Mission-type tactics); that is, the issuing of orders specifying the mission and leaving execution up to the field commanders. Bolstering this was the Army’s excellent training of officers, both in staff and line functions, and the pushing of authority and responsibility for accomplishing the mission all the way down to the squad leader and assistant squad leader level. Although American films like to present German officers and men as blindly following orders, in actual reality German officers and NCOs enjoyed more freedom in decision-making than American officers. Not surprisingly, after World War II the American Army adopted German training and testing methods on a wholesale basis. With respect to discipline and ruthlessness, Citino noted that the German Army carried out 22,000 death sentences in World War II as compared to only 48 in World War I. These are undebatable statistics, but the vast majority of death sentences were carried out on the Eastern Front while the Wehrmacht was in retreat, and commanders such as Schörner and Model consistently resorted to draconian methods to maintain effective resistance.

If I have any qualms with the book it is that it focuses on the Prussian-German way of war, not going into other traditions of the German States, i.e. Bavaria, Saxony, etc. That would have been interesting – very interesting in fact – but might have made the book prohibitive in length and discourse. Still, I’d like to know what influence, if any, the Bavarian military tradition had on the army established in 1871 by the German Empire and afterwards. This is a small qualification for a first-class book as The German Way of War brilliantly sets out its thesis of a steady and somewhat predictable (attack the enemy wherever they are) military tradition in the German Army from the Great Elector through 1945. Relevant examples are given to support the thesis, and Professor Citino convinced me of his point of view. Fascinating sections on personalities that influenced the German Army through the ages – Frederick the Great, Helmuth von Moltke, Alfred von Schlieffen, Hans von Seeckt and so many others – are interesting and enlightening, while his analysis of the willingness of the German General Staff to accede to the wishes of Hitler – and their later attempts to expunge their record after 1945 – is eye-opening.