Blitzkrieg, the Revolution in Military Affairs and Defense Intellectuals

Abstract

This article examines the unspoken assumptions behind the ideal image of Blitzkrieg to be found in the literature on the Revolution in Military Affairs. This image has little in common with current historical research into the Wehrmacht's way of war. It is based on an isolated operational analysis of the German victory over France in 1940, a comparison of doctrine which ignores strategic and economic factors, and the removal of the Eastern Front from the picture of Nazi warfare. This image of Blitzkrieg in fact reflects post-Vietnam American warfighting ideals. Taken together with a widespread and uncritical admiration for the Wehrmacht, it raises the question of the extent to which defense intellectuals are disciplined by a methodology designed to weed out bad theory and self-serving assumptions.

Key Words:

• US Strategy
• Think Tanks
• Nazi Warfare

Notes

¹The ‘s’ in ‘defense’ acknowledges American dominance in the field. I define defense intellectuals as academically trained theorists who circulate among think-tanks, branching off in the course of their careers into the military, the arms and security industries, universities or administrations. Their work draws heavily on the classics of military theory, uses historical illustrations and applies political science models. Whether or not this specific mix of disciplines is itself disciplined, in the sense of being subjected to a rigorous methodology designed to weed out bad theory, is a question this article seeks to raise. Given the astounding lack of studies of the think-tank universe, it can probably not be answered at present.

²(For reasons of space, references throughout the article are limited to significant studies or syntheses.) Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Military-Technical Revolution: A Preliminary Assessment (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002– written 1992), 5, 30; Andrew F. Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions’, The National Interest (1994), 37; James R. Fitzsimmonds and Jan M. Van Tol, ‘Revolutions in Military Affairs’, Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 1994), 24ff.; Eliot A. Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, Foreign Affairs 75/2 (1996), 46; Williamson Murray, ‘Armoured Warfare: The British, French and German Experiences’, in idem and Allan R. Millett (eds.), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, (Cambridge: CUP 1996), 6–49: 40ff.; Williamson Murray, ‘Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs’, Joint Force Quarterly (Summer 1997), 70; Richard O. Hundley, Past Revolutions, Future Transformations: What Can the History of Revolutions in Military Affairs Tell Us About Transforming the US Military? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1999), 11; Clifford J. Rogers, ‘“Military Revolutions” And “Revolutions in Military Affairs”’, in Thierry Gongora and Harald Von Riekhoff (eds.), Toward a Revolution in Military Affairs? Defense and Security at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2000), 23; Williamson Murray, ‘May 1940: Contingency and Fragility of the German RMA’, in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds.),The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 (Cambridge: CUP 2001), 155; Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (New York: Gotham Books 2006), 13, 234ff.

³Larry H. Addington, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff, 1865–1941 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP 1971), 122ff.; Trevor N. Dupuy, A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807–1945 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1977), 212–15, 237–40, 255ff.; Edward N. Luttwak, ‘The Operational Level of War’, International Security 5/3 (Winter 1981), 61–79; Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1984), 205–19; Williamson Murray, ‘German Army Doctrine, 1918–1939, and the Post-1945 Theory of ‘Blitzkrieg Strategy’, in Carole Fink, Isabel V. Hull, and MacGregor Knox (eds.), German Nationalism and the European Response, 1890–1945 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press 1985), 71–94; James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press 1992); Robert Michael Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-1939 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1999); Mary R. Habeck, Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–1939, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003); Robert Michael Citino, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare, Modern War Studies (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2004).

⁴Matthew Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945: Its Political and Military Failure (London: Macdonald and Jane's 1978), 113–66. Cooper describes in detail the growth of the ‘armoured idea’ before the war but emphatically rejects the notion that any revolutionary theory of Blitzkrieg supplanted the traditional strategy of envelopment and annihilation. Michael Geyer, ‘German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914–1945’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton UP 1986), 585ff.; J.P. Harris, ‘The Myth of Blitzkrieg’, War in History 2/3 (1995), 335–52; Karl-Heinz Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende: Der Westfeldzug 1940, 2. Aufl. ed., Operationen Des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1996). Frieser's study is fundamental and an English translation was published in 2005. Azar Gat, British Armour Theory and the Rise of the Panzer Arm: Revising the Revisionists, St Anthony's Series (London: Macmillan Press 2000), 83ff.; Azar Gat, ‘Ideology, National Policy, Technology and Strategic Doctrine between the World Wars’, Journal of Strategic Studies 24/3 (Sept. 2001), 10; Denis E. Showalter, ‘More Than Nuts and Bolts: Technology and the German Army’, The Historian 65 (Fall 2002), 123–43; Gil-li Vardi, ‘The Enigma of German Operational Theory: The Evolution of Military Thought in Germany, 1919–1938’, PhD dissertation, The London School of Economics and Political Science 2008.

⁵Raymond Aron, Penser la Guerre, Clausewitz, 2 vols., Bibliothèque des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard 1976), Vol. I, 122–42, 412–24; Arden Bucholz, Hans Delbrück and the German Military Establishment: War Images in Conflict (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press 1985); Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford: OUP 2001), 371–7.

⁶This is the approach adopted by Stephen Biddle in his critique of Blitzkrieg as a putative RMA, Stephen Biddle, ‘The Past as Prologue: Assessing Theories of Future Warfare’, Security Studies 8/1 (1998), 51.

⁷Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende, 117.

⁸Karl-Volker Neugebauer, ‘Operatives Denken zwischen dem Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Operatives Denken und Handeln in deutschen Streitkräften im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Vorträge Zur Militärgeschichte (Herford, Bonn: E.S. Mittler 1988), 97–122.

⁹Gerhard P. Gross, ‘Das Dogma der Beweglichkeit. Überlegungenzur Genese der deutschen Heerestaktik im Zeitalter der Weltkriege’, in Bruno Thoss and Hans Erich Volkmann (ed.), Erster Weltkrieg, Zweiter Weltkrieg: Ein Vergleich: Krieg, Kriegserlebnis, Kriegserfahrung in Deutschland (Paderborn: F. Schöningh 2002), 143–66: 153f.

¹⁰Cf. Gat, British Armour Theory and R.L. DiNardo, ‘German Armour Doctrine: Correcting the Myths’, War in History 3/4 (1996), 384–97.

¹¹Vardi, ‘The Enigma of German Operational Theory’, 183.

¹²F.O. Miksche, Blitzkrieg (London: Faber 1941). For the permutations of the term, see George Raudzens, ‘Blitzkrieg Ambiguities: Doubtful Usage of a Famous Word’, War and Society 7/2 (1989), 77–94.

¹³Quoted in Karl-Heinz Frieser, ‘Die deutschen Blitzkriege: Operativer Triumph – strategische Tragödie’, in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, ed. Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Munich: Oldenbourg 1999), 192.

¹⁴For a survey of recent research, see Joel Blatt, The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books 1998). Cf. Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende and Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France (New York: Hill & Wang 2000).

¹⁵Denis Showalter, ‘Ce que l'armée française avait compris de la guerre moderne’, in Maurice Vaïsse (ed.), Mai-Juin 1940: Défaite française, victoire allemande, sous l'œuil des historiens étrangers (Paris: Autrement 2000), 38.

¹⁶Don W. Alexander, ‘Repercussions of the Breda Variant’, French Historical Studies 8/3 (Spring 1974), 459–88; Jeffrey A. Gunsburg, ‘Coupable ou non? Le rôle du Général Gamelin dans la défaite de 1940’, Revue historique des armées 4 (1979), 145–63; Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende, 106–10, 135; Showalter, ‘Armée française’, 56.

¹⁷E.g. Philippe Garraud, ‘L'idéologie de la “défensive” et ses effets stratégiques: le rôle de la dimension cognitive dans la défaite de 1940’, Revue francaise de science politique 54/5 (2004), 796 and 804ff.

¹⁸A similar point with regard to the comparison between German and Soviet doctrine is made in Gat, ‘Ideology’, 13ff.

¹⁹Showalter, ‘l'armée française’, 54ff.; Douglas Porch, ‘Military “Culture” And the Fall of France in 1940’, International Security 24/4 (Spring 2000), 157–80.

²⁰Gat, British Armour Theory, 27–30.

²¹Discussion of the economic pressures and constraints on Blitzkrieg has continued for more than 40 years. A few stepping-stones are Alan S. Milward, The German Economy at War (London: Athlone Press 1965), 1–27; Timothy W. Mason, ‘Internal Crisis and War of Aggression, 1938–1939’, in Jane Caplan (ed.), Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class (Cambridge: CUP 1995), 104–30; R.J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994), 177–256; Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Allen Lane 2006).

²²Frieser, Blitzkrieg-Legende, 439 (Frieser's emphasis).

²³Wilhelm Deist, ‘The Road to Ideological War: Germany, 1918–1945’, in MacGregor Knox, Williamson Murray, and Alvin H. Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge: CUP 1994), 389. Also Bernhard R. Kroener, ‘Der ‘erfrorene’ Blitzkrieg. Strategische Planungen der deutschen Führung gegen die Sowjetunion und die Ursachen ihres Scheiterns’, in Bernd Wegner (ed.), Zwei Wege Nach Moskau: Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt Bis Zum ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’ (Munich: Piper 1991), 145.

²⁴Wilhelm Deist, ‘“Blitzkrieg” Or Total War? War Preparations in Nazi Germany’, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939. (Cambridge: CUP 2003), 271–84.

²⁵Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945, Studien Zur Zeitgeschichte Bd. 13 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1978).

²⁶Felix Römer, Der Kommissarbefehl: Wehrmacht und NS-Verbrechen an der Ostfront 1941/42 (Paderborn: Schöningh 2008). The war in the East has been the subject of a major research programme recently concluded by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, see Johannes Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer: Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2006); Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht: Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2008); Christian Hartmann, Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941/42 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2009).

²⁷Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (ed.), Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 1995); Jürgen Förster, ‘Wehrmacht, Krieg und Holocaust’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität. (Munich: Oldenbourg 1999), 948–63.

²⁸Rolf Hobson, Krig og strategisk tenkning i Europa 1500–1945: samfunnsendring – statssystem - militær teori (Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag 2005), 296.

²⁹Omer Bartov, ‘From Blitzkrieg to Total War: Controversial Links between Image and Reality’, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (eds.), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: CUP 1997), 174ff.; cf. Tobias Jersak, ‘Blitzkrieg Revisited: A New Look at Nazi War and Extermination Planning’, The Historical Journal 43/2 (2000), 565–82.

³⁰Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht: Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 2002). For a more nuanced exposition of German views of Russia, see Gerd Koenen, Der Russland-Komplex: Die Deutschen und der Osten 1900–1945 (Munich: Beck 2005).

³¹Aspiring brain surgeons now have the opportunity to practise on one of the heroes of RMA literature, Erich von Manstein, thanks to Oliver von Wrochem, Erich Von Manstein: Vernichtungskrieg und Geschichtspolitik (Paderborn: F. Schöningh 2006). Unfortunately, the greatest hero, Guderian, has not yet received the same treatment.

³²Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London: Allen & Unwin 1983), 163ff.

³³Ulrich Herbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge: CUP 1997). The Nazi leadership actually believed in the ‘stab in the back’ legend which did so much to bring them to power; the loyalty of the German population had therefore to be preserved by plundering the resources of others. For the reality of societal dissolution and military collapse in 1918, and the widespread belief that only the former had brought about surrender, see Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste 2003).

³⁴Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 2005).

³⁵Asa A. Clark, The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1984); William S. Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook, Westview Special Studies in Military Affairs (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1985); Robert R. Leonhard, The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver-Warfare Theory and Airland Battle (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1991); Richard D. Hooker, Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology (Novato, CA: Presidio Press 1993).

³⁶Vincent Desportes, La guerre probable: penser autrement, Collection stratégies and doctrines (Paris: Economica 2007), 100–14; H.R. McMaster, ‘On War: Lessons to Be Learned’, Survival 50/1 (Feb.–March 2008), 19–30.

³⁷Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy’, Survival 47/3 (Autumn 2005), 33–54; Hew Strachan, ‘Civil-Military Relations after Iraq’, Survival 48/3 (Autumn 2006), 60ff.

³⁸Twenty-five years separate two important studies of RAND, Fred M. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster 1983); Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (Orlando, FLA: Harcourt 2008).

³⁹An exception is Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford UP 2010).

⁴⁰Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass 2002), 17ff.

⁴¹Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: the Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP 1957), 99–124.

⁴²In lieu of a vast literature, a succint synthesis can be found in Klaus-Jürgen Müller, ‘Die Reichswehr und die “Machtergreifung”’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schönigh 1984), 137–51.

⁴³Three fundamental studies published in the 1950s were John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power; the German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 (London/New York: Macmillan/St Martin's Press 1953); Gerhard Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk; das Problem des ‘Militarismus’ in Deutschland (Munich: R. Oldenbourg 1954), Vol. I; and Gordon Alexander Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1955). Although Huntington quoted them, he left out the cautionary tale about Prussia being ‘an army with a state’, as well as the deleterious political consequences of the General Staff's war planning and the militarisation of state and society, and concentrated on the politicisation of the military. On the Reichswehr's contribution to the destruction of democracy, he could also have quoted Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung Der Weimarer Republik: Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie, Institut für politische Wissenschaft (Stuttgart: Ring-Verlag 1955).

⁴⁴Bernd Wegner, ‘Erschriebene Siege: Franz Halder, die “Historical Division” und die Rekonstruktion des Zweiten Weltkrieges im Geiste des deutschen Generalstabes’, in Ernst Willi Hansen et al. (ed.), Politischer Wandel, organisierte Gewalt und nationale Sicherheit: Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte Deutschlands und Frankreichs: Festschrift für Klaus-Jürgen Müller (Munich: Oldenbourg 1995), 287–304.

⁴⁵There is a nascent awareness of the problematic aspect of Huntington's treatment of Germany in Williamson Murray, ‘Professionalism and Professional Military Education in the Twenty-First Century’, in Suzanne C. Nielsen and Don M. Snider, American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 2009), 134. But it should be noted that Huntington chose to ignore not only the Wehrmacht's crimes against humanity, but also its crimes against democracy.

⁴⁶Kurt Pätzold, Ihr waret die besten Soldaten: Ursprung und Geschichte einer Legende (Leipzig: Militzke 2000).