Upon rereading books from my youth, it amazes me what a poor reader I once was. Perhaps, once one has written, then we conduct readings at a higher level? From age 21 to 26, roughly, I took one vacation week a year between Christmas and New Years, which was a dead week in retail food. For about five of those years, there was enough money for the wife, oldest son and I, to drive back to Washington, Pennsylvania and stay with her parents. My brother-in-law had read interesting material as a teenager. But, like most, as soon as he went to college, he stopped reading books. He owned Armies of the Ancien’ Regime, a history of French military affairs prior to 1700, Clausewitz, On War and A Genius For War by Dupuy. I read each of the three books annually for five years in a row. Finding a copy of this book in Rick’s closet two weeks ago, I took it with me to read on the train.
I had previously recalled in a podcast that the author related speaking to a Kraut officer about why he had been captured. That was misrecalled. That person was quoted on page 294 and was U.S. Army Colonel David H. Hackworth, who described himself as “a pimply faced kid,” a “punk” and the kraut as tough and speaking perfect English. In answer to Hackworth’s question as to German inferiority in combat, the man noted that he had fewer shells for his canon than the Americans had tanks. All studies accessed by Dupuy, by American military thinkers, came to the conclusion that the German officer and soldier, performed very well, and had a level of trust in each other lacking in Allied forces. Indeed, a reading of Audie Murphy’s To Hell And Back demonstrates a pointed lack of regard by American officers for their men. There was also a great lack in applied imagination by U.S. officers on the front. Audie depicts them as brave, but down right stupid, with U.S. performance often depending on the initiative of private soldiers, not that of officers.
Dupuy cites the fact that all commercial war games, such as Panzer Blitz and Squad Leader, that I played when I first read this book, had to assign higher values to German units to account for the actual results of battles and provide a realistic simulation game. I recall that in Panzer Blitz, this was solved by the German counters representing platoons and Russian counters companies. In Squad Leader, once the American weapon superiority was taken into account, with small arms so overwhelming in fire power, that the game had to be balanced by granting higher morale to German troops and better leadership modifiers to the all important squad leader.
Dupuy points out that the “half truth” is “the Great Enemy of History,” and provides, instead of a glossed projection, an investigation of German military development during the period relevant to its remarkable success. I recall from playing Napoleonic games that the Prussian army was average, with poor generals. Dupuy points out that German military successes, to include Prussia, in the 1700s were modest if one controlled for Frederick the Great, a military genius. The crisis faced by Prussia in the 1790s was the burden of a tradition of excellence of previous generations, combined with stupid and weak national leadership.
In 1807, Scharnhorst, lead a group of five national military reformers, to include Clauswitz in one mission, to find a way to institutionalize the brilliant qualities that had been embodied in Frederick the Great, and were currently demonstrated by Napoleon, who schooled every nation on the battlefield for a generation. Key to success was the invention of war games! This was done on tables for officers and in sand boxes for soldiers. A combination of national/warrior pride was instilled in the officers from the top down, with the goal of every officer embracing the men under him as a paternal charge. This created a great masculine handle for whoever ran the German government.
The subordinate aspect of the institution of fatherly war excellence constituted standards of ethical and academic achievement on the General Staff, an institution that was invented by Scharnhorst and copied by other nations. An idiot like George Armstrong Custer, an amateur like Freemont, dolts like Burnside, Hooker, Bragg and the entire crop of idiot British Empire generals who expended brave soldiers like so much red-hot lead, and often lost to stone age and iron age tribesmen were not possible under the German General Staff. The secret of The German General Staff was that it was designed to provide competent to genius level service at all levels, at all times and in all circumstances. This was important, as most national level German policy was either weak or incompetent or both. Under a genius like Bismarck, great things would be done by the German Army. Under a weak King, which was the German norm, the army provided stability and protection. And, even under the military idiocy of Hitler, who although a political genius, was a strictly emotional military decision maker and therefore retarded, the German General Staff and army would consistently outperform its foes on the offense and defense. For this reason American military thinkers studied their methods. Dupuy though, was politically blocked from presenting his finding by the very army that funded his research!
The history of the German General Staff, from its creation under the boot of the genius Napoleon down to its destruction by its final maniacal master, was a last glimmer of Arete, a last gasp of warrior excellence in the face of terminal social decline.
Some numbers provided by Dupuy, who also did an excellent gaming-oriented book with his son in the 1980s:
Significant Wars Between 1815-1945
-Prussia/Germany = 6
-France = 10
-Russia = 13
-Great Britain = 17
-America = 7
So, the least war-like, least-experienced nation, when it faced the more warlike, larger nations in war, outperformed them. This is an incredible achievement in a career of combat. This indicates that the empires of France, Russia and Britain did not improve their military decision making or even correct for past mistakes, but rather stood on the courage of their soldiers and superior material resources for what success they managed.
Also, in terms of the racial pride answer, that Germans make better soldiers, page 10 and 11 provides an example from the American Civil War, in which many Germans eagerly participated as Americans and as German nationals. A review of the XI Corps of German volunteers and General John Gibbon’s 2nd Division of the II Corps of German conscripts is hilarious. These units were notoriously cowardly and were regarded as the worst formations, with Grant disbanding the corps to “dilute” the German content!
Finally, how did the German army perform in WWI and WWII?
15 WWI Battles
Score effectiveness by Nation
French = 1.31
German = 2.01 or 1/1.54
British = 1.07
German = 1.56 or 1/1.45
Americans = 0.45
Germans = 0.46 or 1/1.02
Russian = 1.50
German = 13.26 or 1/8.84 this horrendous number EXCLUDED Russian POWs taken. We see here that 1 German soldier was worth almost 9 Russians.
The WWII Workload is Mind-Numbing, with 78 battles studied by HERO or the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization.
Western Allies = 1.45
Germans = 2.25
Average German Preponderance = 1.59, so a single Kraut was roughly one and a half Americans, controlled for offense and defense, and often executing idiotic grand strategies.
I intend to mail this book to Richard Barrett for further study. I would encourage others to read Dupuy’s book coauthored with his son in about 1986.
Thank you, Rick.
