Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings

Prussian hero Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke was the architect of the German way of war.

INTRODUCTION
 
Count Helmuth von Moltke is most famous for his accomplishments as a field commander during the Prussian army’s victories over the Austrians in 1866 and, with other German contingents, over the French in 1870–71. His celebrated victories have been the subject of numerous studies, including at least two of the best single-volume campaign studies ever written.1 Moltke’s other dimension has been relatively neglected since the Second World War. In addition to being one of the most successful field commanders of the nineteenth century, Moltke was a military intellectual of great importance to Prusso-German military theory. Termed “the ablest military mind since Napoleon” by David Chandler, Moltke laid much of the institutional and theoretical foundation of the modern German military system.2 Gunther Rothenberg argued that Moltke “may be considered the most incisive and important European military writer between the Napoleonic era and the First World War.”3 Moltke’s influence extended far beyond his own times. Although the army of Molkte’s lifetime was a royal Prussian rather than an imperial army, its power was at the core of Prussian dominance of the German Empire and its influence extended to the other armies (those of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg) of Bismarck’s federal state. The subsequent armies of the Weimar Republic and of Nazi Germany were truly “German.” The continuity in personnel, military thought (much of which was Moltke’s), and institutions from the Prussian to the German armies justifies the common reference to a single Prusso-German approach to warfare. This volume has the purpose of making Moltke’s thoughts on the art of war available in English to a wider audience.
 
Helmuth von Moltke was neither a Prussian by birth nor a military officer by basic inclination. His nephew, Helmuth von Moltke (the younger), related that his uncle had told him that he had been forced into the Danish cadet corps and thus had his profession determined for him. He would have preferred, the elder Moltke said, to have studied archaeology and to have become a professor of history. Moltke served in the Danish army until 1822, when he entered Prussian service.4 This was a risky undertaking, as he had to resign his Danish commission and pass a rigorous examination before being accepted by the Prussians. For the privilege of acquiring his new commission, he thus gave up his Danish seniority and became the most junior lieutenant in the Prussian army.
 
For the next thirty-five years Moltke pursued a successful if unspectacular career. He gained admittance to the General War School, as the War Academy was then called, in 1823. His application and acceptance were notable because he was allowed to take the entrance examination before he had completed the required three years of service and because his main essay was so good that it became part of the General Staff’s research archive.
 
Moltke’s years at the General War School were not particularly noteworthy, although he was quite successful. One of the ironies of those years was that young Moltke, who subsequently was the most important person in incorporating Carl von Clausewitz’s basic thoughts into Prusso-German military theory, apparently had no personal contact with the author of On War. Clausewitz held a purely administrative position at the General War School, and the two great thinkers probably took no notice of each other. During those years Moltke was a very junior and largely unknown officer, so there was no reason for Clausewitz, who normally had no contact with the students at the General War School, to have taken note of him. Nor would Moltke and other students have known about Clausewitz’s ongoing studies of war. Clausewitz, in any case, confided in only a very limited circle of close friends. While at the General War School, Moltke apparently limited his reading in the military literature to the minimum required by the course of study. Instead, he concentrated on geography, literature, and languages.
 
For the next twelve years Moltke served as a typical junior General Staff officer and spent some time with his regiment (the 8th Life-Infantry).8 In 1835 he terminated his service with tactical units when he set off for Turkey. Upon his return, Moltke began a long series of assignments in high-level staff positions and acquired important connections with the Prussian royal family. He became well known to the future King of Prussia and German Emperor William I, and to his son, the ill-fated King and Emperor Frederick III. Moltke served as an aide to the latter and accompanied him on several lengthy trips through Prussia’s eastern provinces and to England. Moltke also established his reputation as one of the most able General Staff officers in the army. During his long career, in a pattern he later denied to other General Staff officers as much as possible, Moltke never commanded a unit, not even a company.
 
When Prince William of Prussia assumed the responsibility of rule from his ailing older brother in 1857, one of his first and most important acts was to appoint Helmuth von Moltke as chief of the Prussian General Staff.10 Building on the solid foundation established by his predecessors, Wilhelm von Krauseneck and Carl von Reyher, Moltke wasted no time in placing his stamp on the General Staff and, to a lesser extent prior to 1870, on the entire army.
 
Although Moltke’s role in institutional development between 1858 and 1888 is not a major topic of this volume, some mention of it is important for understanding the practical significance of his military philosophy, as well as the overall context of his writing. Prior to Moltke’s becoming chief of the General Staff, neither that position nor the institution as a whole enjoyed the power, influence, or prestige which they enjoyed by the end of the campaign of 1870–71.
 
The emergence of the General Staff began soon after Moltke became staff chief, although this was hardly apparent in the early years. In 1858 he succeeded in gaining substantial control over corps staff rides. New guidelines established two points that became the hallmarks of Moltke’s ideas on command. Commanders should order as little as possible (leaving details to subordinate commanders) and they should take care to limit their orders to what was practicable. Similarly, a royal order in 1861 extended the General Staff’s influence to the maneuvers of large units. In 1872 Moltke succeeded in placing the War Academy directly under the chief of the General Staff.
 
Moltke’s contributions to Prusso-German military theory can only be outlined in broad terms here. Although he wrote no single integrated work on warfare, his views became the foundation of Prussian military thought, particularly in the areas of strategy and large-unit operations. The selections printed in this volume focus on his teachings concerning the nature of war, the relationship between war and politics, and the conduct of war. He wrote many other essays on tactics, and either wrote or directed a number of important historical studies of nineteenth century campaigns. These are beyond the scope of this collection and, in many cases, are already available in English.
 
Although Moltke did not follow Clausewitz’s teachings on the proper relationship between war and politics, on many other points he was the key link between On War’s philosophical speculations and the theory and practice of the Prussian army. Writing after the Second World War, General Staff officer Hermann Teske wrote that Moltke was the incarnation of Clausewitzian theory. In the essays printed here, the reader will find ample confirmation that Moltke employed Clausewitzian thinking and specific terms in numerous cases. Both Clausewitz and Moltke emphasized the primacy of battle and annihilation of the main enemy army. Both accepted uncertainty in warfare and emphasized improvisation over permanent or binding doctrine. Both emphasized the need for speed in making and executing decisions rather than lengthy searches for ideal solutions. Both emphasized moral factors in war and the need for independent action by local commanders, although Moltke certainly carried this farther than did Clausewitz.15 Both rejected the idea that systems could ever replace individual talent, and neither believed that any firm rules were possible in warfare.
 
Nevertheless, this should not be the only focus in reading Moltke’s writings. Some German thinkers argued that his concept of concentric operations conducted by separated armies which converged only during the course of a battle was a radical departure from Clausewitz’s ideas. Many of Moltke’s tactical concepts differed from those of Clausewitz because of the vast changes in infantry weapons and advances in the application of new technologies to the battlefield. The Prussian general and theoretician Sigismund von Schlichting argued that Moltke’s methods marked a radical departure from those of Napoleon and launched an entirely new era in the development of the art of war. Although Schlichting’s views were not entirely new, his penetrating analysis touched off a seemingly endless debate within the Prussian army. Schlichting’s own concepts, based on Moltke and Clausewitz, later became vastly important in their own right as a main pillar of modern operational thought. Herbert Rosinski concluded that Moltke was the man who applied Clausewitz’s pure theory to the sphere of practical action. Waldemar Erfurth, an important German military writer and general in the Second World War, argued that Moltke freed the Prussian General Staff from Jomini’s theories, led it into the intellectual world of Clausewitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau, and developed Clausewitz’s operational teachings in light of nineteenth-century developments.18 In any case, a comparative reading of the writings of Clausewitz and Moltke is certainly helpful in understanding the nature of the thought behind the methods and system of the Prusso-German army.