"An attack without a Schwerpunkt ..."

Eine Fussnotenfahrt

Walter Petersen Unser Hindenburg (Detail)

Writing in Escaping Flatland, Henrik Karlsson recommends “writing up,” working “at the edge of your knowledge, it needs to address the most fascinating people you know or can imagine.” Inspired by this advice, I offer the following account, written en route, of a quest for the source of a catchphrase I have been quoting for most of my adult life.

In keeping with the spirit (if not the letter) of the Trades Descriptions Act, I feel obliged to warn you, Gentle Readers, that the adventure in question involves neither planes, trains, nor automobiles, let alone encounters with dragons, trolls, or family-size spiders. (While I refer to the arachnid who spins her web near my front door as Shelob, she has yet to trouble any of the Hobbits who have come to visit.) Rather, as the subtitle proclaims, the journey [Fahrt] I describe takes place entirely in the realm of footnotes [Fußnoten.]

So, with those things in mind, let us begin.

My task calls me to trace, to its origin, the oft-quoted (at least in my circles) sentence “An attack without a Schwerpunkt is like a man without character.” Often attributed to Paul von Hindenburg, this adage also appears, albeit less often, as “An attack without a Schwerpunkt is like a man without character, who leaves everything to chance.”

My first encounter with the dictim in question took place in 1984, when, as a boy lieutenant of Marines, I found myself enthralled by A Perspective on Infantry.¹ The work of John A. English, of the Canadian Army, this (now classic) work used the shorter version of the dictum as the centerpiece of his discussion of the concept of the Schwerpunkt.²

The latter idea, which requires expanding, is probably best explained by the two German words Schwerpunkt and Aufrollen. Together, they represent a single main pattern of German World War II tactics, a pattern into which most operations in the attack were fitted, whatever the size of the units involved. The word Schwerpunkt, first used by Clausewitz, is literally translated as center of gravity; however, this simplistic translation does not convey the exact sense of the German meaning into English. According to F. O. Miksche, a more militarily correct interpretation would be “thrust-point,” to indicate the principal effort or concentration of force aimed at seeking out the weakest point of enemy resistance.³ In this regard, the concept was similar to the French effort principal, which was a course or direction of effort decided on before an attack and afterward seldom changed. The German Schwerpunkt principle differed dramatically, however, insofar as the weight or “thrust” of the effort was constantly altered during the attack to fit the circumstances of seeking a line of least resistance; it could mean the flexible switching away from the original direction of attack. Furthermore, whereas the French considered the principle as mainly applicable to grand tactics, the Germans regarded it as equally relevant to the movement of a section of infantry as to the maneuvering of an army corps. By such continual switching of the direction and place of thrust, the attention of the opposing defense was constantly confused as to real objectives and consequently tied down everywhere. A German attacking force, even in the smallest details of combat, maintained in this manner superiority, initiative, and surprise.” This concept of operations has been referred to by some commentators as the principle of the “unlimited objective,” “and it so permeated the German army that Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg’s quip ‘An attack without a Schwerpunkt is like a man without character’ was often quoted.”

Colonel English attributes the culminating quotation of his paragraph to Herbert Rosinski, and, in particular, to the latter’s history of the German Army in the two centuries leading up to 1940. Bearing the title The German Army, this short book was written while the author, living as a refugee in Great Britain and the United States, enjoyed little in the way of access to recently published German books. Thus, it is not surprising that, rather than citing a source for the adage, Rosinski describes it as a “famous saying of Field Marshal von Hindenburg, constantly quoted in the German Army.”⁴

Professor Rosinski makes amends for his codicillary neglect by nesting the Schwerpunkt within the broader idea of “the deep-rooted German tradition that the Whole determines the Part.” Thus, while English stresses the flexibility of the concept, Rosinski emphasizes its upward-looking aspects. (I find myself thinking that, if Germany and the Next War had been close at hand, Rosinski might have mentioned Bernhardi’s quotation of Schiller’s homage to holistic thinking: “For he who grasps the problem as a whole, has calmed the storm that rages in his soul.”)⁵

In the forty years that followed, the phrase that began with “an attack without a Schwerpunkt” found a home in my ready-rack of martial maxims. And, as is so often the case with such things, it became so familiar to me that I eventually forgot where I had found it. One day, however, I was struck by the desire to locate the source of the aphorism.

As is my wont, I began this walk down memory lane by entering the phrase into the bibliographic search engine of the Hathi Trust. Of the three unique results turned up by this query, two reminded me of my earlier encounters with English and Rosinski, and, in doing so, inspired me to go looking for the translation of The German Army into the language of the Fußnotenfolk. (Investigating the third appearance of the phrase, in a short piece written by an old enemy of mine, would have to wait for my next visit to a proper research library.)

The Germanizers of Die Deutsche Armee: Vom Triumph zur Niederlage [The German Army: From Triumph to Defeat] had provided that edition of the work with a number of useful appendices. (My favorite is the series of pocket biographies of the personalities who play important roles in the story.) Alas, in making these improvements, neither the editors nor the translator (who may have been Rosinski himself) saw fit to retrofit references.⁶ Thus, it was back to the Hathi Trust with me, this time to look for appearances of “Angriff ohne Schwerpunkt ist wie ein Mann ohne Character.”

To be continued …

1. I would later enjoy the very good fortune to participate in the preparation of the second edition of this work, which would be published, in 1995, under the title of On Infantry (Second Edition.)

2. John A. English A Perspective on Infantry (New York: Praeger, 1984) pages 73 and 74

3. In the footnote to his mention of Ferdinand Otto Miksche and the "thrust-point,” Colonel English cites two works Blitzkrieg (London: Faber and Faber, 1941) and Atomic Weapons and Armies (New York: Praeger, 1958).

4. Herbert Roskinski The German Army (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1944) pages 187 and 188

5. Friedrich von Bernhardi Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg [Germany and the Next War] (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1913 ) page 235 (The quotation, from Schiller’s Huldigung der Kunst [Homage to Art] appears without credit. The translation used here is my own.)

6. Herbert Rosinski Die Deutsche Armee: Vom Triumph zur Niederlage (Munich: Wilhelm Heine Verlag, 1977)