Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 41

MARNE

were able to retreat in an orderly fashion and set up
new positions on high ground overlooking the Aisne
River and the city of Reims. When French and British
troops caught up to what they expected to be dispirited and broken German soldiers in disarray, they ran
into a buzz saw of prepared defensive positions that
halted their advance (see figure 4). The defensive positions each side subsequently established facing each
other were the harbinger of the coming years.
The practical outcome of this series of engagements was a geographic front between the German
and Allied forces that stayed essentially unchanged
for the remaining four years of the war, as the conflict
evolved into static trench warfare. With a few exceptions, the German and Allied forces maintained the
defensive positions they had established at the end of
that six-week period until the end of the war in 1918.

Analysis of the Campaign’s Mission
Command Aspects
Since it is in vogue today to assert that mission
command, with its emphasis on individual initiative
by commanders at all levels, is, and historically has
been, a panacea for succeeding in the chaos of the
battlefield, one might conclude that prewar German
indoctrination in mission-command-type operations
should have guaranteed success. However, since
success was not forthcoming, following this line of
reasoning leads to the conclusion that German execution of mission command must have been badly
flawed. This intriguing hypothesis invites detailed
analysis using the six modern principles of mission
command espoused by the U.S. Army today:1
1. Build cohesive teams based on mutual trust.
2. Create shared understanding.
3. Provide a clear commander’s intent.
4. Exercise disciplined initiative.
5. Use mission orders.
6. Accept prudent risk.

Build Cohesive Teams Based on
Mutual Trust
At the start of the war, by any objective standard,
the Germans were well trained and led—despite having
not been in a major war for more than forty years. This
was clearly evident in the resilience and discipline of
the troops who were able to march great distances for
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

long periods and, upon arriving at their destinations,
fight and win consecutive engagements. In conjunction, there existed a high degree of mutual trust and
shared understanding of the operational environment
among German officers, made conspicuous by the use
of mission-type orders as a matter of course. Thus, at
both the tactical and operational levels, the Germans
surely had built cohesive teams, sharing a high degree
of mutual trust between various echelons of command
that, together, had confidence in the doctrine developed by their General Staff in the prewar period. Such
German operational and tactical doctrine, based on
its appreciation of the effect of modern weapon ry on
warfare—primarily heavy artillery, quick-firing field
artillery, and machine guns—proved to be generally
appropriate until trench warfare turned the western
front into a massive siege.
A high level of mutual trust and cohesion was also
evident in the decentralized structure of the prewar
German army, where corps commanders usually were free
to train their troops as they saw fit. In such training, two
schools of tactical thought were present. The first was the
newer mission-command style of conducting operations,
promoted by Moltke the Elder, that officially extended
mission command to the tactical level, directing infantry
to attack using advances by bounds and emphasizing
“fire and movement.” The second was the “old Prussian”
school—similar to the French concept of élan—that believed German infantry held an inherent moral superiority that could overcome the effects of modern weaponry
by courage and audacity. This latter concept tended to
emphasize the use of close formations, where the troops
advanced shoulder-to-shoulder, in the belief doing so
would enhance control. Therefore, at the tactical level
in the campaign, German units sometimes used more
open (spread-out) formations and fire-and-movement
tactics, and at other times they used more closed formations, although most traditionalists soon turned to the
decentralized approach after the older tactics proved to
be very costly in terms of casualties when facing modern
weapons such as machine guns. Ultimately, the German
forces would universally adopt mission-command style
at the tactical level, with the espousal of infiltration
tactics and the creation of specially trained Sturmtruppen
(Stormtrooper) units later in World War I. However, in
either case, the Germans emphasized close coordination
between infantry and field artillery.
35