Can We Revive Auftragstaktik? (II)
Franz Uhle-Wettler
This post continues the serialization of What is Auftragstaktik? And Can We Revive It?, an article written by the late Franz Uhle-Wettler in the 1990s. To read the first installment of this series, please see
What is Auftragstaktik? And Can We Revive It?
Franz Uhle-Wettler
(Continued)
The Development of Auftragstaktik
Unfortunately, few books or articles provide us with an origin story for Auftragstaktik. Those who applied it, seem to have considered it the normal way, not as something that required specific explanation, theory and terminology. Even the term Auftragstaktik was applied after the fact. That is, it first came into general use in the 1950s, after the practice it described had passed into history.
Soon after the unveiling of the term in Germany, Americans began to translate Auftragstaktik as ‘mission-type orders’. This rendering drew attention towards the custom of allowing a subordinate maximum latitude in the execution of the missions assigned to him and, in particular, to the phrasing of orders in ways that made this clear. At the same time, it revealed little about the preconditions that made this practice possible or the historical conditions in which it came to be.
Auftragstaktik arose in Prussia, the foremost of the states that would later come together to create a unified German state. For more than seven decades (1713-1786), two kings ruled this kingdom as absolute monarchs, paying close attention to all matters, whether commercial, financial, legal, or military, related to the health of the realm. Thus, for example, each king would inspect every single regiment in his army every year, inquiring into details that the rulers of other states might consider the business of non-commissioned officers.
The younger of the two kings, known to history as Frederick the Great, expressed the philosophy behind this custom with the proverb: Soignez les details. Ils ne sont pas sans gloire. Ils sont les premiers pas qui mènent à la victoire. (‘Take care of details. They are not without glory. They are the first steps on the path to victory.’)
This approach differed greatly from that of other European monarchs, who viewed peacetime soldiering as a gentleman’s sport. Prussia, however, lacked the geographical advantages of states like Great Britain or France. Where those realms consisted of contiguous territories, the king of Prussia ruled over an archipelago of isolated possessions, spread out along the thousand or so kilometers that separated the territory of the Dutch Republic from that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In 1741, after a visit to the camp of a Prussian army on campaign, a senior servant of the King of France, the Duke of Belle-Isle, wrote a report describing the fruits of royal micromanagement.1
The king of Prussia exercises command not only in the major issues, but in the small ones as well. Always, he has his tent pitched in the center of the army camp. He issues all orders. He rises every morning at four o'clock, mounts his horse and personally inspects all outposts. He is fully dressed from morning to bed-time, wearing the ordinary blue uniform, distinguished from other officers by one medal only. The Duke of Holstein, the old lieutenant general of the army, spends eight months of the year with the regiment of which he serves as honorary colonel. He arrived here having marched 600 kilometers ... with his regiment like any ordinary colonel ... Even the royal princes and the king's brother serve as ordinary officers and wear the normal uniform. Since all senior officers act as described, you may imagine the attention to duty common among the junior officers. Thereby, the training standard of the army has been raised to a level simply incredible.The training standard, which Belle-Isle called ‘incredible’, seems to have instilled some of the self-confidence that empowers independent action. This, in turn, owed much to an effort, rare (if not unique) in the Europe of the eighteenth century, to reconcile subordination with pride and self-esteem. For example, when not on duty, Prussian officers enjoyed a degree of social equality that surprised contemporaries and, in particular, presented difficulties for some of the soldiers who, having served other sovereigns, transferred into the Prussian Army later in life. 2
The care taken by Prussian kings to preserve the dignity of their subjects extended to non-commissioned officers, private soldiers, and the lower classes of the civilian population. In 1740, a time when judicial torture played a central role in the legal systems of most European states, Frederick the Great banned the practice. In 1717, his father, the ‘Drill Sergeant King’ Frederick Wilhelm I, compelled the children of his realm to attend primary school. (This would not happen in England until 1880.)
In 1849, a time in which chattel slavery existed in half of the component states of the United States of America, a successor of the two soldier kings (Frederick William IV) introduced universal manhood suffrage (albeit of a type that gave greater weight to the votes of men who paid higher taxes). In 1871, a year in which but fifteen percent of the male population of the United Kingdom possessed the right to vote in Parliamentary elections, all adult male subjects of the freshly-formed German Empire obtained the franchise.3
During the eighteenth century, the flogging of a Prussian soldier required a sentence passed by a tribunal consisting of a legal advisor, three senior officers, three junior officers, three non-commissioned officers, and three privates, each of whom possessed an equally weighted vote. In the same era, a court martial, convened by a regimental commander and consisting entirely of officers, could impose the same punishment on a British soldier.4
To be continued …
Editor’s Note: In the three decades that have passed since Franz Uhle-Wettler wrote this paragraph, a number of historians have explored the origins of Auftragstaktik. Stay tuned to The Tactical Notebook for reviews of these works, as well as reports of my own research into the subject.
What is Auftragstaktik? And Can We Revive It?
Quoted in Gustav Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Der König (The King) (Munich : Wilhelm Langewiesche, 1913) pages 136-137 (Hathi Trust)
Christopher Duffy Friedrich der Grosse und Seine Armee (Frederick the Great and His Army) (Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1978) pages 27 and 55
Hans Setzer Wahlsystem und Parteienentwicklung in England (Electoral System and Development of Political Parties in England) (Frankfurt Suhrkamp, 1973) pages 73 and 87.
Harry Hopkins The Strange Death of Private White (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977)
Friedrich der Große was a very Prussian king who primarily spoke French - one of the great ironies of European history (Pour le Mérite? Seriously?). He also lived and interacted with his soldiers in a way no modern leader can or could hope to, so it is no wonder that the Prussians tended to do better.
Great series. Thank you for unearthing this.