Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 234

An elusive command philosophy and a different command culture

This guy is coming at the U.S. military from such a
different perspective that I am going to ask those who comment to read the
twice piece before hitting send on their responses.

And you thought I was tough on U.S. military education!

By Jörg Muth

Best Defense department of Auftragstaktik
affairs

Auftragstaktik. The word
sounds cool even when mangled by an American tongue. What it means, however,
has always been elusive to Americans. The problematic translation of that core
German military word into "mission type orders" completely distorts
its meaning. Auftragstaktik does not denote a certain style of giving
orders or a certain way of phrasing them; it is a whole command philosophy.

The
idea originates with Frederick the Great, who complained after more than one
battle that his highly experienced regimental commanders would not dare take
action on their own but too often ask back for orders and thus waste precious
time.

Nearly
one hundred years later the military genius Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von
Moltke was the first to formulate the concept of Auftragstaktik. Moltke
was a diligent student of Frederick's campaigns, of military history in general
and philosophy. At a time when he was not yet famous and, not yet the victor of
three wars, he observed the annual General Staff war games in 1858. The
paperwork and the detailed orders appalled him because he knew that in war
there was no time for such nonsense. During the war game critique he decreed
that "as a rule an order should contain only what the subordinate for the
achievement of his goals cannot determine on his own." Everything else was to
be left to the commander on the spot.

In
the following decades, when he rose to the highest rank of the Prussian and
then the German Army, Moltke and his disciples promoted the concept in the
military. However, the British military writer Basil H. Liddell Hart noted
correctly, "that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into a military
mind is to get an old one out." Thus Auftragstaktik, not yet known under
a single name, was heavily embattled and discussed in German military journals
who were then leading in the world. In 1888, the year Moltke retired, it
finally manifested itself officially in the field manual of the Prussian Army.

Interestingly,
the literally hundreds of American observers who were regularly send to the old
continent during the course of the 19th century to study the constantly warring
European armies completely missed out on the decade long discussion about the
revolutionary command philosophy of Auftragstaktik. Instead they focused
on saddle straps, belt buckles and drill manuals. This is one reason why the
most democratic command concept never found a home in the greatest democracy.
The U.S. officers simply missed the origins because of their own narrow-minded
military education. [[BREAK]]

Auftragstaktik,
a command concept in which even the most junior officers were required to make
far reaching decisions, demanded a significant change in officer education. In
the German Kadettenschulen (cadet schools) hazing was squelched in a
short time. The educational reforms for the officer's training in the
Prussian/German army, because of the new command philosophy, have so far been
overlooked in historiography. An officer had to be taught self-confidence,
independent thinking and responsibility and not to be denigrated. In addition
the seniority system was not set in stone as at West Point. At a Kadettenschule
younger cadets could with excellent performance overtake older ones. This,
together with the exemplary behavior of the teaching officers, was one of the
greatest safe guards against hazing. At West Point no real will ever existed to
eradicate it, even though nothing is more harmful to the leadership education
of a future officer.

Because
the U.S. Army did not possess the command culture of the Germans and Auftragstaktik
the differences of two operations should exemplify this. The instructions for
the American Forces to land in North Africa had the size of a Sears Roebuck
shopping catalogue.

But
when the Germans attacked France Oberst (Colonel) Kurt Zeitzler, then
Chief of Staff of Panzergruppe Kleist told to the assembled subordinated
commanders of the fast troops and their staff officers: "Gentlemen, I demand
that your divisions completely cross the German borders, completely cross the
Belgian borders and completely cross the River Meuse. I don't care how you do
it, that's completely up to you."

Generalleutnant
(Lieutenant-General) Heinz Guderian, commander of XIX Panzerkorps, which
was subordinated to Panzergruppe Kleist, gave an even more famous order
to his units in the spirit of Auftragstaktik when he told them they all
had a "ticket to the last station," which were the respective towns on the
French coast. How his troops got there was entirely up to them. As a result the
German fast troops made unrivaled progress.

Even
after studying the Prussian and German armies for decades, American officers
showed a "difficulty interpreting" the concept of Auftragstaktik and
most would not come closer to it when they attended the next higher military
education institute.

Only
a very few American commanders -- George C. Marshall, George S. Patton, Matthew
B. Ridgway and Terry de la Mesa Allen -- understood the concept, even though it
has never been taught to them in American military schools. In these schools
doctrine reigned and not free independent thinking. Doctrine, however, is
either based on past wars or on theory and thus can be no guideline for an
officer in a present-day conflict.

In
World War II the result was a sluggish and almost timid operational and
tactical command of most U.S. units with the exception of Patton's Third Army.
The dean of U.S. military history, Russell Weigley, noted correctly that when
an American commander showed ferociousness or wanted to put "unrelenting pressure"
on the enemy he usually had to do so "despite every discouragement from his
superiors."

The
Germans didn't know such hampering on the tactical level and U.S. intelligence
officers noted that 22-year old German lieutenants would command battalions with
great success when their superiors had fallen in battle. It is one of the core
concepts of Auftragstaktik that the commanding officer is on the
frontlines and fights and dies with his men. German generals wounded in battle
many times, sporting a close quarter combat badge or a tank destroyer badge,
were no rarity in World War II. More than 220 German Generals died in combat in
World War II, in contrast to only 10 percent of that number on the American
side -- and of these, less than a handful died fighting.

Auftragstaktik
is such a core part of the German command culture that until recently no German
has ever written a book about it. An American has never done it because it was
never understood.

If
you have read thus far and still don't know what Auftragstaktik means,
here is an example:

In
a hypothetical case an American company commander would get the order to attack
and secure a certain village. He would be told to use first platoon to flank
the village and third platoon to attempt a frontal assault. Four tanks would be
attached to his company to support the frontal assault which would be the main
effort. After several hours the company succeeded and the commander radioed
back for further orders, the company commander all the while observing the
actions from behind.

A
German company commander would get the order to secure the village by 1600
hours period. Before the attack he would ensure that even a private knew what
was expected of him during the attack. If his platoon commander and sergeant
would fall, the enlisted man had to take over. The German company commander
might put the allocated tanks on the heights adjacent to the village to provide
covering fire or might drive them around the settlement to block the escape of
the village defenders. He might take the village by frontal assault,
infiltration or pincer attack -- whatever he saw fit the situation best and he
would lead the attack that he had devised. After he secured the village he
would pursue the remnants of the defenders and push forward with those of his
elements who would not be immediately needed because he knew the overall idea
of his superior was to attack and within the idea of Auftragstaktik all his
actions were covered by the simple order to take the village at 1600 hours.
Because of his training a German officer simply did not require detailed
instruction.

So
why the heck did the Germans lose the war if they had such a revolutionary
command culture? As the name denotes, Auftragstaktik is a tactical and
at most an operational concept, it has no advantage on the strategic level.

The
other main reason for the defeat of the Wehrmacht is the sheer boundless
arrogance of its officer corps. Being for so long the most famous and prominent
group in a nation and admired by their countrymen and international observers
alike left its pathological marks. The result became "a persistent tendency of
most German Generals to underestimate the size and the quality of the opposing
forces."

In
the time of greatest crisis the German officer corps became its worst enemy.
Traditionally, the most battle experienced officers would gain the highest
ranks in the Prussian/German armies, but that had changed with the new officer
selection system introduced after the Versailles Treaty. No staff officer who
had never even held regimental command, and in the worst case only commanded a
desk, would reach the highest ranks. That led to ridiculous situations.

During
one of the many desperate situations of the Wehrmacht in August 1942 the Chief
of Staff of the Army Generaloberst Franz Halder asked Adolf Hitler to
allow units of Army Group North to pull back. The dictator replied that he
deemed it not feasible and that "we must hold out in the best interest of the
troops." Halder remarked angrily in return that "out there brave rifleman and
lieutenants are falling in the thousands as senseless victims" because of
Hitler's inflexibility. That, however, caused the dictator to boil over and he
screamed at his chief of staff: "What do you want, Herr Halder, you who only,
and in the First World War too, sat on the same revolving stool, telling me
about the troops, you, who have never once worn the black wound badge?!"

And
it was Halder, and not the Dictator Hitler, who basically nullified Auftragstaktik
on the Eastern Front because he was no longer able to deal with the
independence of the commanders of the fast troops. Hitler just took over the
same system after he fired Halder.

All
those immense flaws of the Wehrmacht senior officers counterbalanced the
excellence in command, tactics and leadership German officers displayed in
World War II. The latter explains why the German army was such an outstanding
fighting force on the tactical level but still unable to win the war.

Though
the mediocre professional military education of the U.S. Army has taken leaps
and bounds since those dark times, never has it been attempted to introduce the
most effective command philosophy ever invented into the U.S. Army.

An
American brigade commander with more than two decades of experience still has
to ask his division commander for permission to operate, who in turn asks the
corps commander, who in turn asks the theatre commander. The latter two are
usually - as it is unfortunate custom in the U.S. Army -- far removed from the
battlefield. And decisions are made in an air-conditioned command bunker in
Doha about a combat situation in Fallujah -- sometimes the results are merely
comical, but sometimes they are fatal.

If
the most important verb and the most important noun should be found for the U.S.
Army and the Wehrmacht according to the vast amount of manuals, regulations,
letters, diaries and autobiographies I have read they would be 'to manage' and 'doctrine'
for the U.S. Army and führen (to lead) and Angriff (attack) for
the Wehrmacht. Such a comparison alone points out a fundamentally different
approach to warfare and leadership.

Because
especially in the War on Terror there have been more and more swift actions by
small units, a rigid inflexible command system has been hampering the progress
of US forces all over the globe. It is time the U.S. Army assesses again its command
culture.

Jörg Muth is the author of Command
Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces,
1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II. (University of North
Texas Press, 2011.)

No, this isn't a recession, it's a long, hard, debt-driven 'Great Contraction'

Ezra Klein had a
good summary
of an economist's argument about why the current situation is not a recession,
with a predictable quick recovery pattern, but rather a contraction caused by
excessive debt, with a recovery that takes many years and likely is followed by
slow growth.

Here's the money
quote, as it were:

"Debt de-leveraging takes about seven years. That's the
essence," she says. "And in the decade following severe financial crises, you
tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before,
because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not
all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies
after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five
percentage points above what it was in the decade before."

If you are not
depressed yet, try this
from the Financial Times.

pHoNy GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD

This blog turns out to be produced not
by an individual but a collective. A friend asked me why I was not more
bothered by the deception. I think it is because I consider it 90 percent
artistic license and just 10 percent an integrity violation -- the 10 percent
being the e-mails the group sent pretending to be an individual. So I am less
upset and more just impressed that a group could consistntely produce prose
with that power.

This is a piece
I ran by the group.

Libya: 'Here's why I was wrong'

That's the article
I'd like to read
by everyone who
predicted
a stalemate or quagmire
in which
the United
States eventually would
have to insert
ground troops.
(For those of you too hurried to click through to all them links, I am calling
out the following members of the diverse quagmire/stalemate coalition: Dov
Zakheim, Andrew Sullivan, Alexander Cockburn, Anne Applebaum, Richard
Norton-Taylor, Melanie Clarke, the German government, the editorial page of the
Wall Street Journal, the Xinhua news service, and the Beirut Daily
Star.)

Who wants to go
first?

Meanwhile, from
Fareed Zakaria, here is one of
the best summaries I have seen of the meaning of the Libyan war:

The Libyan
intervention offers a new model for the West. It was a humanitarian mission with
strategic interests as well -- support for the Arab Spring and the new
aspirations of the people of the Middle East. It was also a new model in that
it involved an America that insisted on legitimacy and burden sharing, that
allowed the locals to own their revolution. That means, however, that it is in
the hands of the Libyans. They can avoid the mistakes of Iraq, which makes the
challenge before them even more daunting. But it is a challenge they have
eagerly sought and one for which they will find help from friends around the
world.

Thoughts as I watched my friend Ray Odierno become Army chief of staff

By Emma Sky

Best Defense roving Middle East
correspondent

I took my seat alongside hundreds of others yesterday at
Fort Myer for the ceremony to mark the Change of Responsibility from General
Dempsey to General Odierno, the new 38th Chief of Staff of the Army.



The Units that paraded before us were reminders of America's history: the 3rd
United States Infantry (The Old Guard), the United States Army Band (Pershing's
Own), the Fife and Drum Corps, the Commander-in-Chief's Guard, Salute Battery,
Continental Color Guard, State and Territorial Flags.



There is no other country in the world where a grandson of an immigrant could
rise to the highest level of the military. General Odierno is the American
dream. With General Odierno at the helm, I have every confidence that the Army
will become smarter, more agile, and fitter to face future threats --
while taking significant cuts to its budget. General Odierno has proven himself
a versatile commander, leading both the surge of troops into Iraq and also the
draw down. There is no one who better understands the Army as an institution or
its soldiers as people.



But as we have witnessed since 9/11, America cannot impose its will by force,
and how America wields its power determines how it is perceived around the
world. There had to be a response to 9/11. Some will argue that we should have
treated it as a criminal act, rather than an act of war. The responses would
have been different. And many question whether the way in which we went about
trying to make ourselves safer did in fact serve to create more enemies.



What I have no doubts about, however, is the extraordinary endeavors of America's
men and women in uniform, who year after year volunteered to serve in war
zones, and who went to such efforts to make America safer and to bring
stability to the areas in which they operated. Many lost their lives, and many
more their limbs. The cost has been great. We get to chose the way we live our
lives -- but not how we die. And for many soldiers, if they had one day left to
live in this world, they would volunteer to spend it out on patrol, with their
comrades on their right and on their left, who would be willing to take a
bullet for them, and vice versa.



Before 9/11, I had never met an American soldier. Today, at Fort Myers it was
wonderful to be back among so many familiar faces, soldiers I served with in
Iraq and Afghanistan year after year - soldiers who welcomed me into their
tribe and made me feel one of them.



There is no one who understands soldiers better than General Odierno, and the
stress this last decade has put on the military and their families. He will
ensure that his term as 38th Chief of Staff of the Army marks the
transformation of the Army into a leaner but smarter organization, able to
defend the nation and to take care of its soldiers.



"First to fight for the right

And to build the Nation's might

And the Army goes rolling along."

Baroness Sky has served several tours in the Middle East,
including one as General Odierno's political advisor in Iraq during the surge.

Comment of the day: Why do we have so many lousy Command Sgt. Majors?

From Hunter, an interesting
reponse to Col. Bob Killebrew's appreciation
yesterday of NCOs:

I don't know how we
can have so many great PSGs and 1SGs and have so many lousy or mariginal CSMs.
Throughout my career I was always dumbfounded by that glaring gap. Now some
might say, well you were just a dumb LT, CPT or MAJ. But positive reflection
after the fact results in my very same assessment. I can list almost everyone
of them that I worked with by name and it isn't due to admiration.

I've served in IN,
AR, and CAV BNs and BDEs and found perhaps 10% of the CSMs I worked with
actually worthy of the position. COL Killebrew obviously had a very different
experience than I did. The conundrum remains, why were so many of the great
PSGs and 1SGs I worked with never elevated to CSM? Or alternately, how did so
many duds get elevated to that position? Make no mistake, I know what is good
and bad in an NCO and I saw far too much of the latter than the former in the
top of the NCO ranks.

The Navy fires number 18: It's a good thing his crew weren't better shots

The Navy fired
the commander of the USS the
Sullivans after his ship fired on a fishing boat. They were doing a
gunnery exercise off the coast of North Carolina last month and mistook the
civilian vessel for a towed gunnery target. Luckily they missed.

The Navy now has passed
last year's total of 17 fired COs.

(HT to RD)

Iraq: The endgame begins

The war in Iraq continues.
Suppose we gave a war in Iraq and nobody here cared? Not
clear what the deal is to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. But keeping
just 3,000 troops worries me -- that's more like a big kick-me sign than a
force that can support and protect itself. (Unless it is a cover for about
12,000 more mercenaries.) I mean, Mookie already has threatened to whack
American advisors remaining into next year. Meanwhile, Turkey conducted a bunch of
airstrikes against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq.

It is also going
to be harder to see one more American die in Iraq now that Iraq has lined up
with Iran to support the beleaguered regime in Syria. Leaves a kind of even
emptier feeling. (But at least we got Iraq's stockpiles of WMD!) Old Juan
Cole sees an
emerging Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran alliance. A new axis of evil?

Ken
Pollack is worried
that Iraq is on the precipice, again:

There
is extensive scholarly literature on how civil wars start, end and recur, and
Iraq's experiences over the past eight years conform to these patterns
frighteningly closely. Historically, states that have undergone an
intercommunal civil war like the one in Iraq have an unfortunate tendency to
slip back into such conflict. This is especially true when the state in
question has major, easily looted resources-like oil.

This
same history demonstrates that a slide into civil war typically follows a
period of time when old problems come back to haunt a country but everyone sees
them as relatively minor and easily solved, and thus they do not take them
seriously or exert themselves to nip them in the bud. Then, seemingly small and
simple-to-overcome issues snowball quickly-much faster than anticipated-and a
resurgence of civil war that people believed was years or even decades away
reignites overnight. Unfortunately, the point where civil war became inevitable
typically is clear only in the rearview mirror.

Speaking of Iraq,
it is good to see old Joel Wing
come off the injured reserve list.

Military retirement (II): And a few more words about the role of NCOs

Here are a few words that follow on yesterday's
comments by Bob Goldich.

By Col. Robert Killebrew, U.S. Army (ret.)

Best Defense guest columnist

I might reinforce the thought that NCOs are the jewel in the
crown of the armed services; one old petty officer once said that it's harder
to be a good NCO than it is to be a good officer, and that's true. Within the
services, they are an entirely different class of people; less well paid than
officers, but aware of their specialness, tougher on each other than officers
are on one another, and masters of their trade.



In my experience in the Army, a command sergeant major exemplifies what the NCO
corps is. He or she is expected to be the expert on all things relating to the
training and leadership of young soldiers; in my battalion, he
"advised" on all assignments of enlisted personnel and officers -- I
mean he made them and I agreed -- and he ran the lives and careers of First
Sergeants and Platoon Sergeants with tact toward the company commanders and
other officers. (He also, behind closed doors, gave me NCO perspectives on the
development of my junior officers). First Sergeants have the same relationships
with company commanders. The world would be a much better place if we had more
retired CSMs and fewer retired colonels.



Years ago, when I was a major and we lived in Fayetteville, I took my lawnmower
to a small engine repair shop. The place was run by a retired Master Sergeant
who had gotten a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star and half a dozen
Purple Hearts in Vietnam. His body was a mess. Between his retirement pay,
disability and medical benefits and his repair shop, he and his Vietnamese wife
were doing okay (I think his kid was then an NCO in the 82nd, but can't be
sure).

These are the guys the retirement system has to serve, and
you can bet the younger soldiers notice.

Canadian Rangers giving up Lee-Enfields, moving to Winchester rifle

The Canadian Rangers, who as I understand it are kind of
the Eskimo wing of the Canadian military, are giving up the bolt
action Lee-Enfield rifles that were adopted by the British military in the
late 19th century. They like it just fine, but are having trouble finding spare
parts.

That's mighty old school technology. When I was a teenager
in Kabul I used to see a lot of Lee-Enfield knockoffs in the gun bazaar and
also down along the Pakistani border towns, such as Landi Kotal. Even
duplicates of the 1857 Enfield, if I remember correctly.

Next for the Rangers: The internal combustion engine? The
radio? Are they sure they want to go all Industrial Age just when
everyone else is leaving it?