German General Staff
The German General Staff, originally the Prussian General Staff and officially the Great General Staff (German: Großer Generalstab), was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army and later, the German Army, responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war, and for drawing up and reviewing plans for mobilization or campaign. It existed unofficially from 1806, and was formally established by law in 1814, the first general staff in existence. It was distinguished by the formal selection of its officers by intelligence and proven merit rather than patronage or wealth, and by the exhaustive and rigorously structured training which its staff officers undertook.
Great General Staff
1806–1945
The Prussian General Staff also enjoyed greater freedom from political control than its contemporaries, and this autonomy was enshrined in law on the unification of Germany and the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. It came to be regarded as the home of German militarism in the aftermath of World War I, and the victorious Allies attempted to suppress the institution. It nevertheless survived to play its accustomed part in the German rearmament and World War II.[1]
In a broader sense, the Prussian General Staff corps consisted of those officers qualified to perform staff duties, and formed a unique military fraternity. Their exhaustive training was designed not only to weed out the less motivated or less able candidates, but also to produce a body of professional military experts with common methods and outlook. General Staff–qualified officers alternated between line and staff duties but remained lifelong members of this special organization.
Until the end of the German Empire, social and political convention often placed members of noble or royal households in command of its armies or corps but the actual responsibility for the planning and conduct of operations lay with the formation's staff officers. For other European armies which lacked this professionally trained staff corps, the same conventions were often a recipe for disaster. Even the Army of the Second French Empire, whose senior officers had supposedly reached high rank as a result of bravery and success on the battlefield, was crushed by the Prussian and other German armies during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871. That outcome highlighted poor French administration and planning, and lack of professional education.
The chief of staff of a Prussian formation in the field had the right to disagree, in writing, with the plans or orders of the commander of the formation, and appeal to the commander of the next highest formation (which might ultimately be the king, or emperor, who would be guided by the head of the Great General Staff). This served as a check on incompetence and also served for the objecting officer to officially disassociate himself from a flawed plan. Only the most stubborn commanders would not give way before this threat.
For these reasons, Prussian and German military victories were often credited professionally to the chief of staff, rather than to the nominal commander of an army. Often the commander of an army was himself a member of the General Staff, but it was now institutionally recognized that not only was command leadership important, but effective staff work was a significant key to success in both pre-war planning and in wartime operations.
History[edit]
Early history[edit]
Before the nineteenth century, success on the battlefield largely depended on the military competence of the sovereign. Duke Frederick William introduced the term Generalstabsdienst (General Staff Service) for the Prusso-Brandenburgian army in 1640.[2] While Frederick the Great brought success to the Prussian arms, his successors lacked his talent, so generalship in the Army declined, even though they were assisted by a Quartermaster General Staff of adjutants and engineers established by Frederick the Great. Reformers in the army began to write and lecture on the need to preserve and somehow institutionalize the military talent that Frederick had assembled in his army. They argued that a carefully assembled cadre of talented officer staff could plan logistics and train the Army in peace as well as in war. In the last years of the eighteenth century, it became the practice to assign military experts to assist the generals of Prussia's Army, largely at the instigation of comparatively junior but gifted officers such as Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August von Gneisenau. Nevertheless, such measures were insufficient to overcome the inefficiency of the Army, which was commanded by aged veterans of the campaigns of Frederick the Great, almost half a century earlier.
In 1806, the Prussian Army was routed by French Armies led by Napoleon's marshals at the Battle of Jena. In the aftermath of this debacle, the Prussian Army and state largely collapsed. "Seldom in history has an army been reduced to impotence more swiftly or decisively."[3] After the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, King Frederick William III appointed Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prime Minister Baron vom und zum Stein and several promising young officers to his Military Reorganization Commission.[4] This commission acted as a general staff to plan and implement the reconstruction of the Prussian Army. They persuaded the king that to match the French commanders, who rose by merit, each Prussian commander of an Army, Corps and Division should have a staff-trained officer assigned as his adjutant. Scharnhorst intended them to "support incompetent Generals, providing the talents that might otherwise be wanting among leaders and commanders".[5] The unlikely pairing of the erratic but popular Field Marshal Blücher as commander in chief with Lieutenant General Gneisenau as his chief of staff showed this system to its best advantage: Blücher lauded Gneisenau for his role in maneuvering the Prussian Army during a difficult retreat through the Harz mountains.[6]
Gneisenau is recognized as the first "great Chief of Staff". He institutionalized the right of the commander's adviser to take part in command and control by advising the commander until he makes a decision. Gneisenau also founded mission tactics (Auftragstaktik), in which the commander determines the objective of an operation and allocates the forces used, while the subordinate on the spot determines how the objective will be attained.[7][2][6]
In 1816, the reformer Karl von Grolman organised the Staff into Eastern (Russia), Southern (Austria), and Western (France and the other German states) Divisions.[8][2] Sixteen staff officers served in the Prussian Ministry of War and six staff officers worked in the main embassies. Each army corps had one chief of staff and two other staff officers. In 1821 the Quartermaster General Staff was renamed to the General Staff, and its officers were identified by distinctive uniform markings, including a crimson trouser stripe.[9] Staff positions did not depend on lineage. "General von Krauseneck, who was the Chief of the General Staff from 1829 to 1848, was the son of a Brandenburg organ player and had been promoted from the ranks. General von Rheyer, Chief of the Prussian General Staff from 1848 to 1857 was a shepherd in his youth."[10]
The General Staff continually planned for likely and unlikely scenarios. In 1843, when Europe had been largely at peace for nearly thirty years and most major nations had no plans for war, observers noted sheaves of orders at the Prussian War Ministry, already made out to cover all foreseeable contingencies and requiring only a signature and a date stamp to be put into effect.
Selection and education of staff officers[edit]
The Military Reorganization Commission opened military schools in Königsberg and Breslau. On 15 October 1810 Scharnhorst opened the General War School (Allgemeine Kriegsschule), on the same day that the new University of Berlin opened nearby.[11] The General War School trained selected officers for three years. One of its first directors was Carl von Clausewitz, who served until 1830. His monumental work On War (Vom Kriege) was published posthumously. From his studies and experiences during the Napoleonic Wars, he wrote a syllabus which became the staff's central doctrine. This standardization of doctrine — which was an attempt to grasp the philosophy underlying warfare, rather than setting a narrow set of rules such as those laid down by Antoine-Henri Jomini — was one of the distinguishing features of the Prussian General Staff.