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 19th 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.
