Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 44

(Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Imperial German Army Gen. Karl von Bülow, 1915

Delayed reports meant Moltke issued directives that
were already obsolete, compelling his subordinates
to use their discretion and initiative in an attempt to
divine the current operational situation and concept.
Nevertheless, despite such obviously serious flaws in
the system, Moltke steadfastly remained at his headquarters well distant from the battlefield. Presumably,
this was to keep the Kaiser, who would have insisted on
accompanying him to the field, out of harm’s way, but
also it was because this was Moltke’s command style.

Exercise Disciplined Initiative and
Use Mission Orders
As a consequence of technological and organizational
impediments, and a senior leader with a highly detached
command style, the fog of war was omnipresent in the
German chain of command. Since Moltke could exercise
control only in a very detached way, the commanders
of the field armies on the German right wing were left
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to their own devices to interpret Moltke’s intent from
vague or outdated communiques.
While such a situation allowed for the field army
commanders to exercise initiative, that initiative was
only disciplined within the scope of each separate
army’s operations, and it lacked an overall current
operational concept among the armies. As a result,
the German forces as a whole were not synchronizing
their activities with each other to achieve operational
effectiveness. For example, while Kluck continued to
advance ever y day, Bülow rested his troops, placing
them a day’s march behind. Kluck’s reorienting of most
of his army on the Ourcq River front while leaving a
large gap screened only by cavalry lacked the prudence
that disciplined synchronization with other armies
(especially Bülow’s) would have mitigated. But in this
situation, Kluck felt the risk was justified.
Also, bad communications had adverse effects
both ways. Frustrated by a lack of timely information
coming to him, Moltke developed an overly pessimistic
view of his operations in early September. From his
perspective, the Allied forces were not being destroyed
at an adequate level, as the few prisoners being sent to
the rear seemed to indicate, and the defeated enemy
forces as a whole still seemed to be retaining unit
cohesion. What Moltke did not understand was that
mass armies had changed operational conditions.
It was now very difficult for an attacking marching
army to destroy a defeated marching army except by
encirclement because the lethality and effective standoff range of weaponry, as well as unit mobility, had
become too great.
Strategically, Moltke’s main objective was to completely envelop the Allied forces and push them back
upon the German forces on Moltke’s left flank. While
such a maneuver was probably beyond the capabilities
of the German army, based on the number of troops
available, Moltke lost sight of this and feared an enemy
trap. The net result was that the German commander
became very pessimistic and soon believed his right
wing was in far greater danger than it actually was.
In any case, by the end of the campaign the commander’s intent coming from Moltke was only reaching his commanders sporadically, based on days-old
situation updates. Since events had generally overcome
such directives by the time they were received, the
field commanders, who were trained in a system that
November-December 2015  MILITARY REVIEW