Inventing the Railroad and Rifle Revolution: Information, Military Innovation and the Rise of Germany

Abstract

States' military adaptations to the Industrial Revolution offer intriguing parallels to the contemporary information technology-driven revolution in military affairs (RMA). The new instruments of war (the rifle, railroad and telegraph) perfectly embodied the character of the industrial age. They were the result of new techniques of mass-production, huge in scale, and powered by new motive resources like steam and electricity. Yet successful adaptation by states required an ‘informational revolution’ – new ways of thinking, organizing, and linking technological and social processes. The nineteenth-century RMA was also an information RMA.

Notes

The definitive history of the Industrial Revolution remains: David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: CUP 1969).

Ibid.

Other possibilities include rifled artillery, smokeless powder and other high explosives such as TNT. They did not have the same degree of tactical, strategic and operational impact as the three under consideration, so for reasons of space, they have been left out.

For example, the framework laid out in the introductory essay to this volume: MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (Cambridge: CUP 2001).

William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since A.D. 1000 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1982) p.231.

The rifles, even prior to the introduction of industrial production techniques, still had an effective range of about 1,000 yards compared to less than 200 for a smooth-bore musket. Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London: Allen & Unwin 1983) p.112.

Dennis E. Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany (Hamden, CT: Archon Books 1975) p.73.

McNeill (note 5) p.231.

Martin Van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: CUP 1977) p.112.

Hajo Holborn, ‘The Prusso-German School: Moltke and the Rise of the General Staff’, in P. Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1986) p.287.

George Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System (NY: John Wiley & Sons 1977) p.78.

Gordon A. Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz: Prussia's Victory over Austria, 1866 (NY: J.B. Lippencott 1964) pp.32–6.

Van Creveld (note 9) p.96.

Hunters had long used rifled barrels for specialized hunting rifles, but while incredibly accurate and long-ranged, they were time-consuming to load and ill-suited for combat. The use of rails or grooved tracks for transport dates back millennia.

The concept of the socio-technical system comes from Thomas Hughes. Hughes' work has spawned a rich literature in the history of technology. Some representative examples: Thomas P. Hughes, ‘The Order of the Technological World’, History of Technology 5/ (1980) pp.1–16, Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm (NY: Penguin 1989); Renate Mayntz and Thomas Hughes (eds.), The Development of Large Technical Systems (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1988); Olivier Coutard (ed.), The Governance of Large Technical Systems (London: Routledge 1999).

A word should be said about the use of the term ‘best’ to describe certain adaptations. This should not be confused with optimal. These adaptations were the best examples in the international system to the new industrial environment. But in no way should this be construed to mean the best possible, or optimal, adaptations. As will be shown below, the ‘best’ adaptations still left a great deal to be desired – especially in the area of railroad mobilization.

For a fuller treatment of revolution in tactics, see Showalter (note 7), and Geoffrey Wawro, ‘An “Army of Pigs”: The Technical, Social, and Political Bases of Austrian Shock Tactics, 1859–1866’, Journal of Military History 59/3 (July 1995) pp.407–33.

Wawro (note 17) pp. 418–19.

Showalter (note 7) p.134.

See, e.g.: Gary Hawke and Jim Higgins, ‘Britain’, in P. O'Brien (ed.), Railways and the Economic Development of Western Europe, 1830–1914 (NY: St Martin's Press 1983) pp.170–202; Richard H. Tilly, ‘The Political Economy of Public Finance and the Industrialization of Prussia, 1815–1866’, Journal of Economic History 26/3 (1966) pp.484–97; and Rainer Fremdling, ‘Germany’, in P. O'Brien (ed.), op cit., pp.120–47.

Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Hapsburg (NY: Viking Press 1963) p.143.

Christopher Bellamy, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge 1980) p.68; Van Creveld (note 9) p.82; Crankshaw (note 21) pp.148–9.

This geopolitical logic would be repeated in Russia and the US. Without an east-west rail link, knitting together such vast, continent-sized areas into a single, defensible nation-state would have been impossible. Russia's poor performance in the Russo-Japanese War, due in no small part to an inadequate rail network (the Trans-Siberian Railway was complete but for the stretch around Lake Baikal) makes the point well. See, for Kuropatkin's first-hand account: Aleksei N. Kuropatkin, The Russian Army and the Japanese War, Being Historical and Critical Comments on the Military Policy and Power of Russia and on the Campaign in the Far East (NY: E.P. Dutton 1909). See also a more recent piece of scholarship: Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1991).

William O. Henderson, ‘Friedrich List: Railway Pioneer’, in W. H. Chaloner and B. M. Ratcliffe (eds.), Trade and Transport: Essays in Economic History in Honour of T. S. Willan (Manchester: Manchester UP 1977) p.136.

Quotation cited in Edward Mead Earle, ‘Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List: The Economic Foundations of Military Power’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (note 10) p.248. William O. Henderson, The State and the Industrial Revolution in Prussia, 1740–1870 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP 1958) p.158.

This is a tricky area. At least until WWI, the railroad favored offensive operations over defensive ones. The WWI stalemate strongly suggests the pendulum swung back the other way (see, e.g., Stephen Van Evera, ‘The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War’, in S.E. Miller (ed.), Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1985) pp.58–107). But there are reasons to think that the stalemate was a result of new munitions, not increased operational mobility. The German army largely replicated its mid-century successes on the Eastern Front. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918 (NY: St Martin's Press 1997).

Cited in Showalter (note 7) p.21.

Ibid., pp.19, 23–6.

Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment’, in Paret (ed.) Makers of Modern Strategy (note 10) pp.296–325.

Many Prussian commanders either did not understand Moltke's plan, or thought it wouldn't work, so to call their movements prior to the battle ‘mistakes’ defines the problem incorrectly. For example, the Second Army arrived late in the afternoon of 3 July instead of the morning as Moltke planned because the commander Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm intentionally deviated from the schedule. See Craig, and Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (Cambridge: CUP 1996).

Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: OUP 1976) p.101.

Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, 1833–1914 (London: P.S. King & Son 1916) p.104; Strachan (note 6) p.126.

Walter Görlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945 (NY: Praeger 1953) p.96.

Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford: OUP 1964). This also shows how the organizational and cultural transformations were in many ways one and the same.

Ibid., pp.180–216, 226–30; Larry H. Addington, The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP 1994) p.50.

Craig (note 34), Politics of the Prussian Army Holborn, in (note 10) p.284.

Wawro, Austro-Prussian War (note 30) p.284.

Pratt (note 32) p.104.

Showalter, Railroads and Rifles (note 7) p.33; Eric Dorn Brose, The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of Antiquity, 1809–1848 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1993) p.231.

Helmuth Moltke, Graf von, ‘Considerations in the Choice of Railway Routes’, in W. Streckery (ed.), Essays, Speeches, and Memoirs of Field-Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke (NY: Harper & Brothers 1843 [1893]) pp.262.

Henderson, State and the Industrial Revolution (note 25) p.167.

Pratt (note 32) p.103.

Ibid., p.123; Showalter (note 7) p.47.

Moltke (note 40) p.225.

Dennis Showalter provides one exception: the Prussian army under Moltke did not pursue the development of field telegraphs as vigorously as they might have. He was concerned that the direct communications link to the field would tempt him to intervene too much in operations and thereby sap his field officers of their independence and initiative. Dennis E. Showalter, ‘Soldiers into Postmasters? The Electric Telegraph as an Instrument of Command in the Prussian Army’, Military Affairs 37/2 (April 1973) pp.48–52.

Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers (NY: Walker and Co. 1998).

Daniel R. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851–1945 (Oxford: OUP 1991) p.12; Maurice W. Kirby, The Origins of Railway Enterprise: The Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1821–1863 (Cambridge: CUP 1993).

Annteresa Lubrano, The Telegraph: How Technology Innovation Caused Social Change (NY: Garland Publishing 1997) p.43.

James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1986) p.17. Quotation appears in Jeffrey L. Kieve, The Electric Telegraph: A Social and Economic History (Newton Abbot: David & Charles 1973) p.239.

Strachan (note 6) p.124.

McNeill (note 5) p.249.

Showalter, Railroads and Rifles (note 7) p.37; McNeill (note 5) p.248; Wawro, Austro-Prussian War (note 30) p.151; Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning (NY: Berg 1991) p.183.

Quote is from Helmuth Graf von Moltke and Daniel J. Hughes, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1993) p.113. For more on Moltke's ambivalence, see Showalter, ‘Soldiers into Postmasters?’ (note 45).

Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (NY: Macmillan 1961) pp.186–8.

J.N. Westwood, Russia Against Japan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 1986) pp.80–81.

Howard, Franco-Prussian War (note 54) p.24. John Emmet O'Brien, Telegraphing in Battle: Reminiscences of the Civil War (Wilkes-Barre, PA: The Reader Press 1910) p.296.

Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence: Volume Two of A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1987) p.178; Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 1977).

Clarence B. Davis, Kenneth E. Wilburn and Ronald E. Robinson (eds.), Railway Imperialism (Westport, CT: Greenwood 1991); Daniel R. Headrick, Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: OUP 1981). Widespread complaining is probably evidence of success. Colonial Indian governors reportedly found the new telegraph lines linking them with London a tremendous burden. The degree of control the capital expected to have with the new lines over colonial administration was sharply at odds with the expectations of the governors. The complaints were bitter. P.M. Kennedy, ‘Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870–1914’, English Historical Review 86/341 (Oct. 1971) p.251.

For the ‘all-red’ system see Kennedy (note 58). For ‘information’ warfare during WWI, see Headrick, The Invisible Weapon (note 47) especially pp.138–52. The problem of secure cables is illustrated by the famous case of the Zimmerman telegram – the 16 Jan. 1917 message from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to Ambassador Eckhardt in Mexico City. The telegram charged Eckhardt to offer the Mexican president Carranza Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if Mexico would join the Germans in war against the US. But the cable was routed from the US embassy in Berlin to the US embassy in Copenhagen, on to Washington and from there to Mexico City. The message was intercepted and decoded by the British – possibly twice (in London and in Mexico City) – and its revelation helped move the US closer to war with Germany. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon (note 47) pp.167–9.

For a study of the brinkmanship angle see, Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1981); for an analysis of the crisis as an example of relations between democracies, see John M. Owen, ‘How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace’, International Security 19/2 (Fall 1994) pp 87–125 and Christopher Layne, ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security 19/2 (Fall 1994) pp.5–49.

Headrick, The Invisible Weapon (note 47) pp.84–5.

This is a more complex problem than it appears on the surface, and this paper can only address it superficially. The Prussian adaptations were not the best imaginable. By the time of WWI, in fact, the tight link between the emperor and the head of the general staff and the political isolation of the GGS turned the German system pathological.

Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz (note 12). Casualty figures are from Wawro, ‘An “Army of Pigs”’ (note 17) p.143 and Craig (note 12) p.166.

Given its long range, firing a rifle actually required a bit of calculation – first of distance to the target and then of the parabolic offset – something the Austrian officer corps felt their peasant conscripts could not do. Wawro, ‘An “Army of Pigs”’(note 17) pp.409, 415–16, 419.

Richard Holmes, The Road to Sedan: The French Army 1866–70 (London: Royal Historical Society 1984) p.200; Howard, Franco-Prussian War (note 54) p.35.

Holmes (note 65) pp.211, 204–5; Wawro, ‘An “Army of Pigs”’(note 17) pp.412–13; Allan Mitchell, ‘“A Situation of Inferiority”: French Military Reorganization After the Defeat of 1870’, American Historical Review 86/1, Supplement (Feb. 1981) p.56.

Bruce Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP 1992) pp.30, 41–44, 136–42, 186; Strachan (note 6) p.113; David R. Jones, ‘Imperial Russia's Forces at War’, in A.R. Millett and W. Murray (eds.), Military Effectiveness, Volume 1: The First World War (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin 1987) p.310.

Showalter, Railroads and Rifles (note 7) pp.59, 68; Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz (note 12) p. 7.

Showalter, Railroads and Rifles (note 7) p.68.

Henderson, State and the Industrial Revolution (note 25) pp.167, 174.

B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970 (NY: Columbia UP 1975).

Howard, Franco-Prussian War (note 54) pp.26, 68.

Holmes (note 65) p.177; Thomas J. Adriance, The Last Gaiter Button: A Study of the Mobilization and Concentration of the French Army in the War of 1870 (NY: Greenwood Press 1987) p.107; Howard, Franco-Prussian War (note 54) p.68.

Adriance (note 73) pp.55–62; Holmes (note 65) pp.165–79.

Menning (note 67) pp.16, 19–20, 116–17

Quoted in Marks (note 23) pp.191, 200.

Ian Nish, The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Longman 1985) p.139; Marks (note 23) p.205. It took the army more than two years to return all of its troops from Manchuria. David G. Herrmann, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1996) p.62.

Figures from Mitchell, European Historical Statistics (note 71). Menning (note 67) p.257.

Howard, War in European History (note 31) p.101.

Mitchell, ‘A Situation of Inferiority’ (note 66) pp.49–62; Douglas Porch, The March to the Marne: The French Army, 1871–1914 (Cambridge: CUP 1981); Menning (note 67); Herrmann (note 77) p.92.

Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz (note 12).

Strachan (note 6) pp.127, 113; Scott W. Lackey, The Rebirth of the Habsburg Army: Friedrich Beck and the Rise of the General Staff (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1995) p.6–7.

Geoffrey Wawro, ‘The Rebirth of the Habsburg Army (Book Review)’, Journal of Military History 60/3 (July 1996) p.563.

N. Stone, ‘Moltke and Conrad: Relations between the Austro-Hungarian and German General Staffs, 1909–1914’, in P. M. Kennedy (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin 1979).

Ralston, easily the most sanguine of the monographs on the army of the Third Republic, concludes: ‘All the basic elements of a potent military machine were there, but the ultimate cohesive factor that would permit it to be set in motion, an organized high command, was held in abeyance’. Although he also argues: ‘That Freycinet did not go further in this direction is understandable, for an independent and virtually irresponsible high command on the German model was too much for a French government to accept in 1890, even if it was sponsored by a civilian politician of unimpeachable republican sentiments’. David B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1871–1914 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1967) pp.138–60; quotations from p. 92.

Mitchell, ‘A Situation of Inferiority’ (note 66) pp.58–60; Allan Mitchell, Victors and Vanquished: The German Influence on Army and Church in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 1984) p.83.

Mitchell, Victors and Vanquished (note 86) pp.106–7.

Porch's breakdown of the terms of service makes the point even more dramatically: between 1871 and 1914: 12 ministers had one-year tenures, 13 had two-year tenures, three had three-year tenures, one had a six-year tenure, two had seven-year tenures. Porch (note 80) pp.47, 53, 255; Mitchell, ‘A Situation of Inferiority’ (note 66) p.60.

The 1899 reforms in the wake of the Dreyfus affair actually set the general staff back. Regular meetings of the CSG were suspended and future meetings would come only at the request of the Minister. Porch (note 80) p.67.

Porch writes: ‘It is simply ludicrous to suggest…that Joffre was more powerful than Moltke. The government may have become reconciled in the face of the growing German threat to name a chief of the general staff. But Joffre's authority was hedged by so many safeguards…that the army continued to function, or not to function, largely as before. War ministers and ministry officials often simply ignored him’ (note 80) pp.172, 253; quotation from p.190.

John Shy, ‘Jomini’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (note 10) p.156.

Menning (note 67) pp.17–20.

Ibid., pp.96–7.

Ibid., pp.200–21; Strachan (note 6) p.127.

Jones (note 67) p.309.

Menning (note 67) pp.100–101.

Correlli Barnett, The Swordbearers: Supreme Command in the First World War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode 1963) p.61.

See Headrick (note 47).

Mark W. Zacher and Brent A. Sutton, Governing Global Networks: International Regimes for Transportation and Communications (Cambridge: CUP 1996).