German General Staff

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Politics of Prussia

German General Staff

The German General Staff, (Großer Generalstab, literally, Great General Staff) was an institution whose rise and development gave the German military a decided advantage over its adversaries. The Staff amounted to its best "weapon" for nearly two centuries.

In a narrow sense, it was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian and later, German army, responsible for the study of all aspects of war, and for drawing up plans for mobilization or campaign. It existed unofficially from 1806, and was formally established by law in 1814, the first General Staff in existence.

In a broader sense, the Prussian General Staff represented a unique military fraternity. Though other European powers eventually created their own General Staffs, the Prussian General Staff was distinguished by the formal selection of its officers by intelligence and proven merit rather than patronage or wealth, and the exhaustive and rigorously structured training which staff officers undertook. This training was designed not only to weed out the less motivated or able candidates, but also to produce a body of professional military experts with common methods and outlook, and an almost monastic dedication to their profession.

The Prussian General Staff also enjoyed greater freedom from political control than its contemporaries, and this autonomy was enshrined in law on the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. It was to be regarded as the home of German militarism in the aftermath of the First World War, and the victors attempted to suppress the institution. It nevertheless survived to play its accustomed part in the rearmament of Germany and the Second World War.

General Staff-qualified officers would alternate between line and staff duties but would remain life-long members of this special organization. As staff officers, their uniform featured distinctive double-wide crimson trouser stripes. In the field, the Chief of Staff of a formation had the right to disagree, in writing, with the plans or orders of the commander of the formation to which he was attached, and appeal to the commander of the next highest formation. Only the most stubborn commanders would not give way before this threat. For these reasons, Prussian and German military victories would often be credited to the Chief of Staff, rather than to the nominal commander of an army.

1 History
2 Chiefs of the Prussian General Staff (1808–1871)
3 Chiefs of the German General Staff (1871–1919)
4 Chiefs of Troop Office (1919–1933)
5 Chiefs of the General Staff (1933–1945)
6 Notes
7 Readings
8 See also

[edit] History

[edit] Early History

The development of a corps of full-time military professionals, in peace and war, working to assist the army on all aspects of operations and logistics planning was the outgrowth of experience on the battlefield the 17th and 18th Centuries. Prior to this string of defeats, success on the battlefield was largely the result of the military competence of whichever king was in power. While Frederick the Great brought success in battle to Prussian arms, the decline in military aptitude of later monarchs led to an inevitable decline in the generalship of the Army. Without competent operational and logistical planning, no amount of individual soldierly discipline or battlefield bravery could save the army from the combination of superior generalship and staff work of a talented adversary. Reformers in the army began to write and lecture on the need to preserve and somehow institutionalize the military talent found in the talented German generals that had brought martial glory to Prussia. For a small group of reformers, critical decision making had to be removed from arbitrary winds of chance and placed in the hands of institutionalized military excellence. No longer could the country afford to wait until a war started to gather military staff talent. One carefully selected professional staff would do the work of planning logistics and training the Army in peace as well as in war.

From the last years of the eighteenth century, it became the practice to assign military experts to assist the generals of Prussia's Army. This was largely at the instigation of comparatively junior but gifted officers such as Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau. Nevertheless, such measures were insufficient to overcome the inefficiency of the Army, which was commanded by aged veterans of the campaigns of Frederick the Great.

In 1806, the Prussian Army was defeated by Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Jena, and in the aftermath of this defeat, the Prussian Army and state largely collapsed. This made the reform of its institutions possible. An informal body which nevertheless acted as a General Staff planned the reconstruction of the Prussian Army, and advanced military academies, uniquely open to all applicants of merit, were founded for the intellectual training of officers. (In most academies of the time, the military syllabus was restricted to parade-ground drill.)

Although commanders of forces were still appointed by rigid seniority, they now had staff officers to guide and advise them, in addition to undertaking routine administrative tasks. The unlikely pairing of the erratic but popular Field Marshal Blücher as Commander in Chief with Lieutenant General von Gneisenau as his Chief of Staff shows this system to its best advantage.

[edit] Establishment

After the defeat of Napoleon, the General Staff was formally established. Entry to it followed completion of a course at the Preußische Kriegsakademie (the Prussian War Academy, an early Staff college). One of the early directors of the Kriegsakademie was Karl von Clausewitz. From his studies of the Napoleonic Wars, he provided a syllabus which became the central doctrine from which the staff worked. This standardisation of doctrine (which itself was a philosophy, rather than a narrow prescribed set of rules such as those laid down by Henri Jomini) was one of the distinguishing features of the Prussian General Staff model.

The General Staff continually planned for likely and unlikely scenarios. As early as 1843, when Europe had been largely at peace for nearly thirty years and most major nations had no plans for war, observers noted sheaves of orders at the Prussian War Ministry, already made out to cover all foreseeable contingencies and requiring only a signature and a date stamp to be put into effect.

[edit] Von Moltke the Elder

In 1857, Helmuth von Moltke, a widely travelled officer who was a confidante of King William I, was appointed Chief of the General Staff. Under his control, the existing staff system was expanded and consolidated.

Each year, the Prussian Army's top 120 junior officers were selected by competitive examination to attend the Kriegsakademie. The academic standards at this institution were rigorous enough to fail more than half the entrants. From this elite, von Moltke selected the best 12 for his personal training as General Staff officers. They attended theoretical studies, annual manoevres, "war rides" (a system of tactical exercises without troops in the field), and war games and map exercises known as Kriegspiele.

Although these officers subsequently alternated between regimental and staff duties, they could be relied upon to think and act exactly as von Moltke had taught them when they became the Chiefs of Staff of major formations. Moltke himself referred to them as the "nervous system" of the Prussian Army. In the victories which the Prussian Army was to gain against Austria-Hungary and France, von Moltke needed only to issue brief directives to the main formations, leaving the staffs at the subordinate headquarters to implement the details according to the doctrines and methods he had laid down, while the Supreme Commands of his opponents became bogged down in a mountain of paperwork and trivia as they tried to control the entire army from a single overworked headquarters.

Von Moltke's wide experience also prompted the General Staff to consider fields of study outside the purely military, and rapidly adapt them to military use. Immediately upon his appointment, he established the Abteilung (section or department) which studied and promoted the development of railway networks within Prussia and incorporated them into its deployment plans. He also formed telegraph and other scientific and technical departments within the General Staff.

[edit] War with Denmark

This war, the political origins of which lay in Denmark's conflict with Prussia and Austria over the Schleswig-Holstein Question, vindicated von Moltke's concepts of operations and led to an overhaul of the command arrangements of the Prussian Army. Von Moltke envisaged a rapid attack to prevent the Danes falling back behind water obstacles which the Prussian Navy could not overcome. A rigid system of seniority placed General von Wrangel, generally regarded as being in his dotage, in command. He ignored all von Moltke's directives and his own staff's advice, and by allowing the Danish Army to withdraw at its leisure, prolonged the war for several months. The resulting post mortem was to ensure a better (though not infallible) system for appointing commanders.

[edit] Seven Weeks War

The War between Prussia and Austria became almost inevitable after the end of hostilities with Denmark. Many Prussians regarded the war as a sad necessity. Von Moltke, describing his reasons for confidence to War Minister Albrecht von Roon, stated, "We have the inestimable advantage of being able to carry our Field Army of 285,000 men over five railway lines and of virtually concentrating them in twenty-five days ... Austria has only one railway line and it will take her forty-five days to assemble 200,000 men". Although there were inevitable mistakes and confusion on the battlefield, von Moltke's pre-war calculations were proved correct, and the Austrian army was brought to battle at Königgrätz and destroyed.

In contrast to the Prussian staff, Austrian staff officers gained their posts either by membership of one of the six hundred aristocratic families which controlled the Austro-Hungarian Empire's wealth and patronage, or after uninspiring training which made them into plodding, rule-bound clerks. In all aspects of preparation, planning and execution, their muddled efforts compared badly with that of their Prussian counterparts.

[edit] Franco-Prussian War

The government of Napoleon III of France was undoubtedly startled by the Prussian victory over Austria, and urgently sought to reform their army to face the conflict with Prussia which seemed inevitable and imminent. Their senior officers entirely failed to grasp the methods of the Prussian General Staff. The Chief of Staff of the French Army, Marechal Edmond Leboeuf, fatuously stated in 1870 that the French Army was ready for war, "down to the last gaiter button". In the event, 462,000 German soldiers concentrated flawlessly on the French frontier, while only 270,000 French soldiers could be moved to face them, having lost (or mislaid) 100,000 stragglers before a shot was fired.

During the war, there were again the inevitable mistakes due to the "fog of war", but German formations moved with a speed and precision which French staff, accustomed only to moving battalion-sized punitive columns, could not match. In the French (and British) armies of the time, there was an anti-intellectual prejudice in favour of brave and unimaginative regimental officers over intelligent and well-trained staff officers. The French Army paid dearly for this bias in 1870 and 1871.

The end result of von Moltke's work was the unification of all the independent German states and the creation of a German Empire under Prussian control — King Wilhelm I was proclaimed "German Emperor" on January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles following the Prussian victory. This victory surprised many military professionals around the world, since France had been considered a great military power, while Prussia was widely considered a lesser power, despite its military successes under Frederick the Great and in 1813-15. Most states hastened to adopt Prussian staff methods and structures, with mixed success.

[edit] From Unification to World War I

With unification the Prussian General Staff became the German General Staff and began preparing for what seemed to be an inevitable war with France, which was intent on revenge and recovery of the provinces annexed by Germany. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck prevented any hostile European coalition forming against Germany, but with his departure in 1890, France eventually gained Russia as an ally.

Germany then was at risk of being at war on both Eastern and Western fronts. To meet this threat, Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen drew up and continually refined the Schlieffen Plan to meet this eventuality. The plan has been accused of being too rigid. Manuel de Landa, in War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), showed how the Prussian army now favoured the Jominian theory, which gave preeminence to the Army and to its autonomy compared to the civilian control advocated by Clausewitz. Thus, centralization of decision was preferred over decentralization allowing local initiative.

The plan committed Germany to an early outright offensive against France while Russia was still mobilising, and also required an unprovoked invasion of neutral Belgium, to make it possible to rapidly surround and annihilate the French army. The rigidity of the plan, based around a minutely detailed mobilisation schedule and railway timetable, prevented any political moves which might have averted hostilities, as Kaiser William discovered on the eve of the war when he considered not invading France in order to avoid Great Britain joining Germany's enemies. Additionally, it failed to take adequate account of logistics and the inability of horse-drawn transport to supply troops far from railheads.

The General Staff under von Schlieffen, and later von Moltke the younger, did not compensate for logistic flaws nor provide contingencies in case of the failure of their original plan to achieve quick success. Although superior German staff work throughout the First World War contributed to their continuous run of successes until very near the end of the war, the German nation collapsed under the strain. Thus the Prussian General Staff lost the war of attrition engaged against the Entente cordiale formed by France and the UK, in part due to logistics reasons. Focusing exclusively on military aspects of the war, the General Staff ignored political needs, which were to be discovered during the war itself, for example with the women on the home-front.

[edit] Between the Wars

When Germany was defeated in 1918, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles specifically forbade the creation or recreation of the General Staff. Despite this, the German officer corps carefully set about planning the next war in a camouflaged general staff hidden within the Truppenamt ("troop office"), an innocent-looking human-resources bureau within the small army permitted by the peace accord.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 all he had to do was to follow the Truppenamt-General Staff plan to build up the Nazi war machine. However, the General Staff advised Hitler that the German army would be fully modernised and ready in 1944–45 only. As a result most artillery pieces were still horse drawn at the outbreak of war in 1939. Also, for all the duration German industry could not furnish small arms in sufficient quantities, forcing the Army to rely heavily on older weapons, prizes of war, and adaptations of former designs produced in conquered countries, thus producing an arsenal filled with a stunning array of incompatible pieces, unlike the smaller number of standard small arms used by the Allies.

[edit] Chiefs of the Prussian General Staff (1808–1871)

Gerhard von Scharnhorst 1 March 1808–17 June 1810
Karl von Hake 17 June 1810–March 1812
Gustav von Rauch March 1812–March 1813
Gerhard von Scharnhorst March 1813–28 June 1813
August von Gneisenau 28 June 1813–3 June 1814
Karl von Grolman 3 June 1814–November 1819
Johann Rühle von Lilienstern November 1819–11 January 1821
Karl von Müffling 11 January 1821–29 January 1829
Wilhelm von Krauseneck 29 January 1829–13 May 1848
Karl von Reyher 13 May 1848–7 October 1857
Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) 7 October 1857–10 August 1888

[edit] Chiefs of the German General Staff (1871–1919)

[edit] Chiefs of Troop Office (1919–1933)

Hans von Seeckt 11 October 1919–26 March 1920
Wilhelm Heye 26 March 1920–February 1923
Otto Hasse February 1923–October 1925
Wilhelm Wetzell October 1925–27 January 1927
Werner von Blomberg 27 January 1927–30 September 1929
Baron Kurt von Hammerstein–Equord 30 September 1929–31 October 1930
Wilhelm Adam 31 October 1930–30 September 1933

[edit] Chiefs of the General Staff (1933–1945)

These were the Chiefs of the General Staff of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH):

Ludwig Beck 1 October 1933–31 October 1938^[1]
Franz Halder 1 September 1938–24 September 1942
Kurt Zeitzler 24 September 1942–10 June 1944
Adolf Heusinger 10 June 1944–21 July 1944
Heinz Guderian 21 July 1944–28 March 1945
Hans Krebs 1 April 1945–30 April 1945

[edit] Notes

^ With the creation of the Wehrmacht in 1936, it became the Generalstabs des Heeres (Army General Staff).

[edit] Readings

Addington, Larry H. The blitzkrieg era and the German General Staff, 1865-1941. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1971.
de Landa, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 1991.
Foley, Robert. Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings. London, Frank Cass, 2004.
Goerlitz, Walter. History of the German General Staff, 1657-1945. New York, Praeger, 1959.
McElwee, William. The Art of War: Waterloo to Mons Purnell, London, 1974
Dupuy, Trevor N., A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1897-1945. London, Pretice Hall, 1977.
Dyer, Gwynne. War. Toronto, Stoddart, 1985.

Category: Military history of Germany