Wilson Blythe, Jr. |
Review of Terence
Zuber, The Moltke Myth: Prussian War Planning, 1857-1871.
Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 2008. Pp. viii, 330. ISBN
978-0-7618-4161-6. |
Captain Wilson C.
Blythe, Jr. is an artillery officer in the U.S. Army. His service
includes a deployment to Iraq from January 2004 to February 2005. He
is currently pursuing a Master's degree in History at Eastern
Michigan University. --Ed.
* * *
In
The Moltke Myth, retired U.S. Army Major Terence Zuber
challenges what he feels to be unnecessarily laudatory treatment
given by historians to Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke. His
book originated as the first half of a doctoral dissertation
(Würzburg 2001).[1] It
is well researched, making extensive use of primary
sources from German archives, especially Moltke's own plans and
orders. Zuber relies heavily on French and German studies of
Moltke's campaigns and his own on-site inspection of the major
battlefields. More generally, he states that experience as an
infantry officer allowed him to conduct a "professional analysis" of
the relevant historical material.
The
author disputes the orthodox opinion of Moltke as a military genius,
what he terms the "Moltke Myth." He believes this myth is based on a
simplistic formula: Moltke was always victorious, therefore he was a
genius. Historians typically blame any crises or mistakes of the
Prussian army on the inability of subordinates, especially Prince
Fredrick Karl, to understand and execute Moltke's plans (1). In
place of serious study of Moltke's plans and orders, we find
sweeping generalizations or "little maps, big arrows" (2). This is
little more than uncritical hero worship that prohibits the drawing
of useful lessons from military history (3).
Many
of the original documents relating to the wars of German Unification
were lost in the Reichsarchiv fire in April 1945, thereby requiring
scholars to rely on general staff histories. Zuber insists that
these are highly technical works demanding specialist knowledge in
order to divine what occurred, implying that only officers or former
officers are fit to write military history (7). He attacks German
historians of the post-Second World War era, especially Gerhard
Ritter, as promoting Moltke merely because he was a military figure
unblemished by the disastrous World Wars (8). He also criticizes
Gordon Craig, Geoffrey Wawro, Dennis Showalter, and Michael Howard for failure to undertake serious examination of Moltke's
campaigns and the planning for them, and the Prussian Army's
preparation for combat (9-10, 38). Zuber feels the "Moltke myth"
provides a facile explanation of Prussian success in the wars of
German unification to historians, many of them well regarded
scholars, who have not worked diligently in the primary sources
(11-12).
Zuber is especially hard on Arden Bucholz, author of Moltke,
Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning,[2]
who lists no general staff histories in his bibliography and is
overly reliant upon secondary sources (11). Bucholz claims that
Moltke used war games to develop his campaign plans, but Zuber goes
to great lengths to point out that the games were largely
tactical in nature. He successfully shows that early general staff
rides were not used to teach strategy or validate war plans, though
he does credit Moltke for beginning what would be a lengthy process
towards that end (35). Zuber's critique of Bucholz is more
compelling than those he makes of other historians, chiefly because
he offers more and better evidence to support his charges.
Much
of the book investigates the war games conducted and war plans
conceived while Moltke was chief of the general staff. These games
used only a small portion of Prussia's forces and their primary
purpose was to teach staff officers how to move units. Tactics, the
use of terrain, and local security also played a major part, but
little consideration was given to supply and logistics (41,
68). Zuber asserts the games and staff rides were poor training
devices because of their small scale and their focus on the wrong
skill sets. Logistics had never been a Prussian strong suit and
Moltke took great pains in the 1867 general staff ride to draw
lessons from the recent war with Austria. This training event was
the first army-level staff ride and also the first where logistics
played a part in the exercise. Clearly, Moltke had learned from
Prussia's seven-weeks campaign and was set upon improving army
organization, which should be commended (163). The frequent poor use
of the road network and difficulty in planning the movement of large
units justified Moltke's decision to emphasize these skills as
essential parts of training. During the 1860 general staff ride,
Moltke chose not to play a period of mobilization and deployment,
which Zuber harshly condemns. But, as a former professional officer,
he should know that this is not an unusual decision and merely means
Moltke wanted to stress other areas, using time normally spent
simulating mobilization and deployment (59).
Moltke's war plans are carefully scrutinized. Zuber disparages the
(unprecedented) planned use of railroads in the 1859 war. The
general staff quickly learned that the rail network was inadequate
and that systems to leverage any technological advantage were altogether
lacking (22). Moltke sought to remedy this in part by forming the
goal of a double-track rail line for the deployment of each corps
and by implementing organizational changes within the general staff.
The
mass army and rail deployment dominated Prussian war planning until
1914. Zuber acknowledges that the Prussian Army under Moltke was the
leader in exploiting the possibilities of both but criticizes him
for taking six years to realize their potential and never perfecting
their use (23). These criticisms ring hollow: Moltke did incorporate
new technologies and sought to squeeze every possible advantage from
their use through the creation of systems to attain realistic
goals. His appreciation of the advantages of the railroad and new
deployment systems played a role in Prussia's victory in two major
wars.
Often overlooked in any discussion of Moltke is his politics. As
Zuber rightly observes, Moltke felt strongly that Prussia should
unify Germany, through war if necessary (32). But he is wrong to
belittle Moltke's fear that conflict within Germany could initiate a
European-wide war and to claim he was too preoccupied with
France (62, 20). Neither of these concerns was without reason:
internal strife had in fact led to war in the past and no Prussian
could forget his country's humiliation at Jena-Auerstedt and the
resulting Treaty of Tilsit (1807). Though often inaccurate, Moltke's
grasp of the international situation is no surprise, given German
history and the lack of input from the foreign ministry (33).
In
many ways, this book attempts to transfer Moltke's laurels to Prince
Frederick Karl. The Red Prince's role in the Prussian Army and his
contribution to Prussia's victories in the wars of German
unification are undoubtedly underappreciated outside of
Germany. Fredrick Karl did in fact help to modernize the Prussian
Army's training by using inspections to evaluate combat readiness
and by focusing on tasks such as marksmanship, field craft, and
mobility (82). He also made the radical move of conducting combined
infantry and artillery exercises (79).
In
step with his excessive criticism of Moltke, Zuber goes overboard in
his praise of Fredrick Karl, maintaining, for example, that his
pamphlet "On French Tactics" had a huge influence within the
Prussian Army; yet only seventy-five copies were published (84). He
also confidently pronounces the prince the greatest trainer of
troops in modern times and says his tactical leadership brought
victory in the wars of unification (88). Zuber even credits him
with foreshadowing the reverse slope defense used in both World Wars
(87).
Almost all of the sources used in the chapter on Fredrick Karl are
biographies; Zuber wants the reader to believe these are credible
while works on Moltke's life are not. For example: "While Steinmetz
and Moltke were bickering over the telegraph, from 5 to 7 August
Frederick Karl was moving his army across the Pfälzerwald. The
difficulty and danger inherent in this operation has not been
adequately appreciated; Moltke's admirers were neither interested in
showing the faults in Moltke's deployment plan, nor in emphasizing
how much Moltke owed to Frederick Karl's tactical and administrative
skill" (222). Zuber sees a conspiracy among biographers and
historians to credit Moltke for victory at Königgrätz by making
Fredrick Karl into a military idiot (139). The obvious stumbling
block is that it would have been better for the Prussian monarchy to
have a Hohenzollern prince, like Fredrick Karl, receive the praise
for defeating the Austrians.
The
strongest parts of this book deal with the Prussian army's combat
performance, as it related to training and doctrine. In Chapter 3,
Zuber argues that the Prussian infantry's proficiency at the
regimental level and below was a key to victory in the wars of
German unification, contending that tactical acumen can be explained
by examining peacetime training. He describes in great detail what
made Prussian training unique for the period, with special attention
to III Corps under Fredrick Karl, whom, of course, he judges the best
trainer and tactical thinker in the army (73). Zuber's comparison of the
training of the 1st Brigade, 1st Guard Division, with its combat
experience during its attack at St. Privat (278) is superb, as is his
treatment of differences between the army's formal and informal
doctrine and its habitual--almost instinctive--use of an offensive
battle drill (77). He sees traditional Prussian battle drill, rooted
deep within the army's culture, as a fluid sequence consisting of
making contact with the enemy, developing the situation, and then
attacking (53). The ability of Prussian infantry and artillery
commanders at the tactical level to adapt this battle drill so
successfully at such places as Sedan was remarkable (298).
Zuber flatly states that Moltke had no influence on tactics in the
Prussian Army and that tactical doctrine and training were the
purview of commanders up to the corps level (73-74). He consistently
traces flaws in Moltke's views on tactical matters to his lack of
command experience (94). This leaves the reader wondering why so
much space is devoted to dissecting Moltke's tactical views if they
had no impact on the Prussian Army.
A
number of other fallacies undermine the argumentation. Zuber faults
Moltke for failing to prepare the Prussian Army to conduct army
group operations or to organize an army group advance guard (305,
261). However, the army group did not become a level of command
until the First World War and Moltke simply lacked the assets to
allow an army group commander to form his own advance guard. This
retrojection of current doctrinal and organizational concepts into
the past is curious, considering that the author so often stresses
that Prussian staff officers did not function like modern ones
(209).
Zuber descends into armchair generalship when he insists that the
Austrian commander, Benedek, should have used his central position
to defeat the Prussians in detail (6). Benedek did not attempt this,
because he (unlike Zuber) realized that the Austrian Army, moving as
one large unit, was incapable of rapid movement. Moltke's failure to
order a pursuit of the Austrians following the Prussian triumph at
Königgrätz is censured--Zuber even questions Moltke's strength of
will (147)—but armies of this age were incapable of conducting
pursuits and any attempt to do so would have met with failure.
Zuber, in recounting Moltke's deployment of the Prussian armies
prior to Sedan, maintains Marshal MacMahon could have pounced upon
the German armies from the north or, "had he been able to march at a
reasonable speed," reached Metz and relieved the Army of the Rhine
(290). This ignores that the Army of Châlons was a beaten force
before Sedan, neither effectively organized nor able even to supply
or move itself.
Perhaps Zuber's most outrageous statement is that Moltke would have
been soundly defeated by General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia, comparing his generalship to that of the inept Army of the
Potomac commanders Joseph Hooker and Ambrose Burnside (307). We are
not told how Lee's army of one hundred thousand men armed with
muzzle loaders could have defeated Moltke's five hundred thousand
equipped with breech-loading rifles and artillery. The comparison of
two failed Civil War commanders to Moltke, whose forces defeated the
armies of two of the most powerful nations in Europe, is absurdly
ahistorical.
While The Moltke Myth does raises interesting points, it
fails to diminish or "demythologize" Moltke's established
reputation. Zuber's contention that "wars are won by fighting, not
by planning, and an army fights the way it trained in peacetime" is
certainly valid, but he goes too far in claiming Prussian infantry
won in spite of, not because of, Moltke (175, 5). Tactical
excellence is meaningless unless it serves higher objectives,
something Zuber as an army officer should know. He misguidedly
calculates that glory is a zero-sum commodity, in which laurels must
be snatched from Moltke in order for Fredrick Karl to enjoy them
(308).
The
book's overall argument--that nothing positive may be learned
from Moltke's career--is ultimately unconvincing and results from
special pleading and gross overreaching. Significant portions of
Zuber's work depend upon Der 18. August,[3]
which the general staff under Schlieffen compiled and which, he is forced to concede, is highly critical of Moltke. Contrary to his
claims, there was no need to create a myth about Moltke's military
prowess to furnish the Second Reich with a military hero to
counterbalance Napoleon (3, 305). German history is full of great
military leaders such as Fredrick the Great. What is needed now is a
serious study of Prince Fredrick Karl's contribution to German
military history, one not based on a wrongheaded demotion of Field
Marshall Moltke.
Eastern Michigan University
| U.S. Army
wilson.blythe@gmail.com
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