Kriegspiel on the Eve of War

As seen by an American psychologist

Oct 25, 2024

Adalbert von Rössler *A Conference of Senior Soldiers*

Soon before (or, perhaps, soon after) the outbreak of First World War, a professor of psychology at Clark University (in Worcester, Massachusetts) wrote a substantial essay about the two-sided director-driven wargames played by military officers of the German Empire. The piece that follows offers a free paraphrase, bolstered with links, explanations, and illustrations, of the painfully pedantic, awfully academic, and terribly Teutonic text of this otherwise admirable article.

In the original sense the term, Kriegspiel applied to all tactical exercises, executed on a map or terrain model, with a view to fostering the theoretical knowledge needed by commanders of combined arms formations. In some cases, the instructor took one side and the players the other. In other instances, the players formed two teams.

Recently, however, the Kriegspiel shed its original purpose. Thus, instead of being a tool for the teaching of theory, it has become a representation of actual conditions of warfare, to the point that, from a cognitive point of view, ‘playing at war’ differs little from ‘being at war’.

The resulting understanding owes less to instruction than experience. In particular, it stems from contemplation of the consequences of the decisions taken in the course of the game. Indeed, because the player enjoys a broader perspective, the learning that takes place during a Kriegspiel complements the lessons learned from mistakes made in maneuvers.

While the movement of forces taking part in maneuvers ends as soon as contact takes place, action in Kriegspiele continues until the end of the exercise. Thus, rather than being obliged to imagine the results of an engagement, players can see the results of their decisions. Moreover, since an officer can take part in far more war games than field maneuvers, he enjoys many more opportunities to exercise his judgement.

Maps and Terrain Models

Some Kriegspiele use paper maps to represent terrain. Others employ three-dimensional terrain models.

While maps are cheaper than terrain models (and thus far more popular), terrain models bear a closer resemblance to actual ground. In particular, players need only a glance of the eye to make sense of changes in elevation and depression.

A soldier who wishes to make a terrain model can do so at modest cost. He can use blue paint to represent rivers and lakes, sand painted green to depict woods, and putty to make hills. Moreover, if he plans the model carefully, he cut it into geomorphic sections that, in turn, can be combined to create a wide variety of battlefields.

Counters

Pieces of painted sheet zinc represent units, events (such as a fire in a village), and anything else (such as an overturned wagon) that might affect the game. As the size of these counters should match the actual footprint of the unit in question, the war game director should equip himself with a small magnet. To measure fine distances, the director should also provide himself with a small compass.

Choosing the Game Director

Ideally, the best person to lead a Kriegspiel is the commanding officer of the regiment to which the players belong. However, the director must possess so many virtues that the field service regulations of the Prussian Army recommend that he be chosen without regard to rank, position, or seniority.

The aforementioned virtues include:

a comprehensive knowledge of military history
a solid understanding of tactics
a lively imagination
a good memory
an ability to speak in a vivid, concise, and effective manner
an ability to foster reflection
tact

Preparatory Exercises

Players new to Kriegspiele should prepare for the exercise by working through a number of tactical decision games. These will provide practice in the giving of orders, as well as experience with combined-arms formations and task forces.

For more about tactical decision games, see Eugen Zöllner Taktische Aufgaben für Kriegspiel [Tactical Problems for Wargames] and Rüdiger von Briesen Taktische Entwickelungsaufgaben [Problems in Tactical Deployment].

Participants

Experience teaches that the ideal number of players in any given Kriegspiel hovers in the vicinity of fifteen to twenty. As an infantry, cavalry, or field artillery regiment has more than twenty officers, a commander may want to begin by limiting participation to clever officers, thereby creating a cadre of players who can assist their colleagues to learn how to play the game.

Size of Formations Depicted

Players new to Kriegspiel should start with scenarios in which the forces on each side consist of small task forces. Once, however, they become au fait with the art of playing the game, players can move on to games in which they command complete divisions. In much the same way, the problems posed to players in Kriegspiele for beginners, and the situations in which they are set, should be simpler than the conundrums in games designed for veteran players.

Literature

Game directors can learn much from the following works:

William Balck Taktik [Tactics]
Rüdiger von Briesen Taktische Entwickelungsaufgaben [Problems in Tactical Deployment]
Jakob Meckel Grundriss der Taktik [An Outline of Tactics]
Wilhelm von Scherff Studien zur Neuen Infanterie Taktik [Studies in Modern Infantry Tactics]
Sigismund von Schlichting Taktische und strategische Grundsätze der Gegenwart [Tactical and Strategic Fundamentals of the Present Day]

Recommended collections of tactical problems:

Hugo von Gizycki Strategisch-Taktische Aufgaben nebst Lösungen [Exercises in Strategy and Tactics]
Gottlieb Graf von Haeseler Taktische Aufgaben und Besprechungen [Tactical Problems and Discussions]
Friedrich Immanuel Taktische Aufgaben [Tactical Problems]
Helmuth von Moltke Taktische Aufgaben aus den Jahren 1858-1882 [Tactical Problems from 1858-1882]
Eugen Zöllner Taktische Aufgaben für Kriegspiel [Tactical Problems for War Games]

Duties of the Game Director

The game director begins the Kriegspiel by presenting a ‘supposition’. This describes both the general situation and the tasks that each of the teams is supposed to accomplish. [The author does not say whether the assignment of missions to teams takes place in private, or whether the director explains all tasks to all players.]

Once the director has delivered his supposition, the players on each team proceed to solve their respective problems. Once this is done, the director provides both teams with a critical overview of the entirety of the game.

In conducting a Kriegspiel, the director must act in a strictly neutral fashion, dealing with facts on the ground in a purely mechanical way. He does this, in part, in order to convince players that the outcomes of their decisions could easily have occurred in real life.

Small War or Big Battle?

In games which employ relatively small formations, some game directors choose suppositions that give players missions of the sort encountered by detachments operating at some distance from the main bodies of their respective armies, tasks like the evacuation of towns and the protection of officials engaged in the requisitioning of supplies.

They do this because officers commanding small bodies on detached service enjoy greater leeway when it comes to making decisions. Such ‘small war’ missions, moreover, provide opportunities for players to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the fighting arms (infantry, cavalry, and field artillery) as well as the influence of terrain.

That said, many authors of recent works about the Kriegspiel recommend that, rather than dealing with problems faced by a battalion task force, players should play games in which they command reinforced brigades and complete divisions. This, they argue, will introduce them to the highest of the military arts, the use of formations for the purposes of a campaign.

[The diagram shows an infantry battalion reinforced by a single field artillery battery, an infantry brigade reinforced with a group of three batteries, and an infantry division of two infantry brigades and twelve batteries.]

Publishers sell large-scale maps of the type used in Kriegspiele. Other vendors sell the other items needed to conduct such an exercise: ready-made counters, compasses, and longimeters.

A longimeter uses a calibrated wheel to measure the length of curves.

Choice of Scenarios

The scenarios chosen for a Kriegspiel should meet the needs of the unit in which it is played. In addition to this, officers should play games in which they deal with the operations and engagements of cavalry formations, long lines of field artillery batteries, fortress warfare, garrison artillery, the work of engineers, river crossings, encounter battles, and outpost duty, as well as the delivery of ammunition, the supply of food and fodder, medical services, and the quartering of units.

Orientation

Before the players enter the room in which the Kriegspiel takes place, orients any spectators who may be present. In particular, he uses a blackboard to provide a sketch of the operational [operative] and tactical situation at the start of the game. He also describes the sort of problems that the players might encounter.

After the players arrive, the director provides them with information about things that will effect visibility, movement, and the effects of weapons. These include the season of the year, weather (both actual and expected), the materials (whether wood, wattle, stone, or brick) used to build houses, the state of forests (whether well-kept or full of undergrowth), the width and depth of streams, and the condition of river banks and fords

The Roles Played by Participants

This done, one of the teams retires while the members of the other gather around the map (or terrain model).

One of the members of this team takes on the role of the commanding officer. The others play the roles of subordinate officers, such as the commander of the cavalry, the commander of the artillery, the commander of the engineers, and the commanders of various infantry units.

The leader of a team may ask one of the players to take on the role of his adjutant. Like a real-world adjutant, this officer maintains awareness of the forces involved in the game and the unfolding events. He takes charge of the delivery of orders, the movements of supply columns, the supply of ammunition, and the location of aid stations. He also assists the commanding officer to make plans, take decisions, and compose orders.

The Start of Play

The director starts the game by providing the leader of one of the teams with an update to the situation in which his command finds itself. He might, for example, say:

You are the commander of the advanced guard of an army corps.  Your command consists of one infantry brigade (which you command directly), a battalion of field artillery (of three six-piece batteries), a squadron of cavalry, and a platoon of engineers.

It is 8:00 am.  You have just arrived at Z Village.  With you are your adjutant, the commander of the first battalion of the first field artillery regiment and his adjutant, an orderly officer [Ordonnanz-Offizier], and two buglers.  In addition to this, you have six messengers, four on horseback and two on bicycles.

According to your computations, your cavalry squadron, which began to move at 5:45 am, has just arrived in the vicinity of N Village.  You have given it orders to refrain from crossing P Brook.

Reports

After doing this, the director provides the team leader with reports of the sort that he might expect to receive in the situation in question.

These reports should, as much as possible, resemble the sort of reports a commander might receive in wartime. In particular, rather than being precise, complete, and reliable, they should be impressionistic, spotty, and, at times, inaccurate.

Thus, the director should not say ‘the Western edge of Pournoy la Grasse has been occupied by two dismounted squadrons’, or ‘three batteries of the enemy have been mounted on the height North of the village’.

Likewise, the director should not ask a player for his plan. (Questions of that sort will tempt the player to answer in a narrative fashion, thereby drawing out discussions and delaying the game.) Rather, he should say, ‘What, Sir, are your orders?’ and, having done that, ask the same question of the players playing the role of subordinate leaders.

This done, the director tells the team to retire, and invites the other team to the table.

The Length of Turns

In games with a large number of short turns, players lose a great deal of time to overhead, thereby taxing the patience of both players and spectators. At the same time, games with longer, less frequent moves deprive players of opportunities to make timely decisions.

With that in mind, here are some rules:

The faster the unit, the shorter the move. Thus, all other things being equal, a move in a game about the actions of a cavalry squadron should be shorter than a move in a game about an infantry battalion.

As a game progresses, less time is needed to describe the situation. Thus, moves made at the start of a game will be longer than moves made towards the end.

The length of a turn depends upon the judgement of the director. Such discernment, in return, stems from experience conducting Kriegspiele.

Concluding a Kriegspiel

At the end of the game, the director provides all concerned, whether spectators or players, with a critical review of the exercise.

In particular, he answers the following questions:

Did the players understand the situations in which they found themselves?
Were the orders clear and concise?
Did the orders use conventional terms of art?
Did the players give due consideration to the condition of the ground?

In short, the critique of a Kriegspiel should resemble the critique of a field maneuver. It should be brief, matter-of-fact, and free of acrimony. Moreover, in addition to mentioning mistakes, the director should point out things that were properly.

Author’s Note: As a psychologist, the author would be interested in studies that look at the ways in which participation in Kriegspiel exercises fosters creativity, critical thinking, and imagination.

Author’s References

Emil Sonderegger Anlage und Leitung von Kriegspiel Übungen [Setup and Conduct of War Game Exercises]
Rudolf Anton Kunde Grundsätze für die Leitung des Festungs-Kriegspieles, mit Beispielen nach der Kriegsgeschichte [Principles for the Conduct of the Fortress War Game, with Examples from Military History]
Hans Oberlindober Anlage und Leitung von Kriegspielen [Setup and Conduct of War Games]

Editor’s Note

Where possible, I have provided links to electronic copies of the German works cited by Professor Meyerhardt and English-language translations of them. When I could not find a PDF of a book, the link will take you to an entry in a library catalog. Where I could find neither an Anglophone version of a book or a mention thereof in a catalog, I made my own translation of the title.