Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings

INTRODUCTION

Count Helmuth von Moltke is most famous for his accomplishments as a field commander during the Prussian army’s victories over the Austrians in 1866 and, with other German contingents, over the French in 1870–71. His celebrated victories have been the subject of numerous studies, including at least two of the best single-volume campaign studies ever written.¹ Moltke’s other dimension has been relatively neglected since the Second World War. In addition to being one of the most successful field commanders of the nineteenth century, Moltke was a military intellectual of great importance to Prusso-German military theory. Termed the ablest military mind since Napoleon by David Chandler, Moltke laid much of the institutional and theoretical foundation of the modern German military system.² Gunther Rothenberg argued that Moltke may be considered the most incisive and important European military writer between the Napoleonic era and the First World War.³ Moltke’s influence extended far beyond his own times. Although the army of Molkte’s lifetime was a royal Prussian rather than an imperial army, its power was at the core of Prussian dominance of the German Empire and its influence extended to the other armies (those of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg) of Bismarck’s federal state. The subsequent armies of the Weimar Republic and of Nazi Germany were truly German. The continuity in personnel, military thought (much of which was Moltke’s), and institutions from the Prussian to the German armies justifies the common reference to a single Prusso-German approach to warfare. This volume has the purpose of making Moltke’s thoughts on the art of war available in English to a wider audience.

Helmuth von Moltke was neither a Prussian by birth nor a military officer by basic inclination. His nephew, Helmuth von Moltke (the younger), related that his uncle had told him that he had been forced into the Danish cadet corps and thus had his profession determined for him. He would have preferred, the elder Moltke said, to have studied archaeology and to have become a professor of history. Moltke served in the Danish army until 1822, when he entered Prussian service.⁴ This was a risky undertaking, as he had to resign his Danish commission and pass a rigorous examination before being accepted by the Prussians. For the privilege of acquiring his new commission, he thus gave up his Danish seniority and became the most junior lieutenant in the Prussian army.

For the next thirty-five years Moltke pursued a successful if unspectacular career. He gained admittance to the General War School, as the War Academy was then called, in 1823. His application and acceptance were notable because he was allowed to take the entrance examination before he had completed the required three years of service and because his main essay was so good that it became part of the General Staff’s research archive.⁵

Moltke’s years at the General War School were not particularly noteworthy, although he was quite successful. One of the ironies of those years was that young Moltke, who subsequently was the most important person in incorporating Carl von Clausewitz’s basic thoughts into Prusso-German military theory, apparently had no personal contact with the author of On War. Clausewitz held a purely administrative position at the General War School, and the two great thinkers probably took no notice of each other. During those years Moltke was a very junior and largely unknown officer, so there was no reason for Clausewitz, who normally had no contact with the students at the General War School, to have taken note of him. Nor would Moltke and other students have known about Clausewitz’s ongoing studies of war. Clausewitz, in any case, confided in only a very limited circle of close friends.⁶ While at the General War School, Moltke apparently limited his reading in the military literature to the minimum required by the course of study. Instead, he concentrated on geography, literature, and languages.⁷

For the next twelve years Moltke served as a typical junior General Staff officer and spent some time with his regiment (the 8th Life-Infantry).⁸ In 1835 he terminated his service with tactical units when he set off for Turkey. Upon his return, Moltke began a long series of assignments in high-level staff positions and acquired important connections with the Prussian royal family. He became well known to the future King of Prussia and German Emperor William I, and to his son, the ill-fated King and Emperor Frederick III. Moltke served as an aide to the latter and accompanied him on several lengthy trips through Prussia’s eastern provinces and to England. Moltke also established his reputation as one of the most able General Staff officers in the army. During his long career, in a pattern he later denied to other General Staff officers as much as possible, Moltke never commanded a unit, not even a company.⁹

When Prince William of Prussia assumed the responsibility of rule from his ailing older brother in 1857, one of his first and most important acts was to appoint Helmuth von Moltke as chief of the Prussian General Staff.¹⁰ Building on the solid foundation established by his predecessors, Wilhelm von Krauseneck and Carl von Reyher, Moltke wasted no time in placing his stamp on the General Staff and, to a lesser extent prior to 1870, on the entire army.¹¹

Although Moltke’s role in institutional development between 1858 and 1888 is not a major topic of this volume, some mention of it is important for understanding the practical significance of his military philosophy, as well as the overall context of his writing. Prior to Moltke’s becoming chief of the General Staff, neither that position nor the institution as a whole enjoyed the power, influence, or prestige which they enjoyed by the end of the campaign of 1870–71.

The emergence of the General Staff began soon after Moltke became staff chief, although this was hardly apparent in the early years. In 1858 he succeeded in gaining substantial control over corps staff rides. New guidelines established two points that became the hallmarks of Moltke’s ideas on command. Commanders should order as little as possible (leaving details to subordinate commanders) and they should take care to limit their orders to what was practicable. Similarly, a royal order in 1861 extended the General Staff’s influence to the maneuvers of large units.¹² In 1872 Moltke succeeded in placing the War Academy directly under the chief of the General Staff.

Moltke’s contributions to Prusso-German military theory can only be outlined in broad terms here. Although he wrote no single integrated work on warfare, his views became the foundation of Prussian military thought, particularly in the areas of strategy and large-unit operations. The selections printed in this volume focus on his teachings concerning the nature of war, the relationship between war and politics, and the conduct of war. He wrote many other essays on tactics, and either wrote or directed a number of important historical studies of nineteenth century campaigns. These are beyond the scope of this collection and, in many cases, are already available in English.¹³

Although Moltke did not follow Clausewitz’s teachings on the proper relationship between war and politics, on many other points he was the key link between On War’s philosophical speculations and the theory and practice of the Prussian army. Writing after the Second World War, General Staff officer Hermann Teske wrote that Moltke was the incarnation of Clausewitzian theory.¹⁴ In the essays printed here, the reader will find ample confirmation that Moltke employed Clausewitzian thinking and specific terms in numerous cases. Both Clausewitz and Moltke emphasized the primacy of battle and annihilation of the main enemy army. Both accepted uncertainty in warfare and emphasized improvisation over permanent or binding doctrine. Both emphasized the need for speed in making and executing decisions rather than lengthy searches for ideal solutions. Both emphasized moral factors in war and the need for independent action by local commanders, although Moltke certainly carried this farther than did Clausewitz.¹⁵ Both rejected the idea that systems could ever replace individual talent, and neither believed that any firm rules were possible in warfare.¹⁶

Nevertheless, this should not be the only focus in reading Moltke’s writings. Some German thinkers argued that his concept of concentric operations conducted by separated armies which converged only during the course of a battle was a radical departure from Clausewitz’s ideas. Many of Moltke’s tactical concepts differed from those of Clausewitz because of the vast changes in infantry weapons and advances in the application of new technologies to the battlefield. The Prussian general and theoretician Sigismund von Schlichting argued that Moltke’s methods marked a radical departure from those of Napoleon and launched an entirely new era in the development of the art of war. Although Schlichting’s views were not entirely new, his penetrating analysis touched off a seemingly endless debate within the Prussian army. Schlichting’s own concepts, based on Moltke and Clausewitz, later became vastly important in their own right as a main pillar of modern operational thought.¹⁷ Herbert Rosinski concluded that Moltke was the man who applied Clausewitz’s pure theory to the sphere of practical action. Waldemar Erfurth, an important German military writer and general in the Second World War, argued that Moltke freed the Prussian General Staff from Jomini’s theories, led it into the intellectual world of Clausewitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau, and developed Clausewitz’s operational teachings in light of nineteenth-century developments.¹⁸ In any case, a comparative reading of the writings of Clausewitz and Moltke is certainly helpful in understanding the nature of the thought behind the methods and system of the Prusso-German army.

Moltke regarded war both as one of the worst disasters that could befall human societies and as an inevitable part of the divine world order. In a letter written in 1880 to a professor at the University of Heidelberg, Moltke made his famous statement that eternal peace was a dream, and not even a pleasant one. He was equally pessimistic about the possibility that international law would be able to banish war from the earth or even lessen its fearful consequences. The only hope for improving the conduct of armies in war, he thought, lay in the gradual progress of civilization and in bringing the better parts of the population into modern armies through universal military service.¹⁹ He was under no illusions, moreover, that future wars would be won as cheaply and quickly as had been those of 1864, 1866, and 1870–71. Moltke feared a repetition of the popular uprising, the people’s war, which had prolonged the Franco-Prussian War at great cost to both sides, as well as a long struggle between regular armies. Moltke’s impatience and frustration with the second phase of the struggle against France emerges clearly in the texts printed here.²⁰

Given that war was an inevitable part of the divine order, and even a positive force in developing and disciplining humanity, Moltke developed one-sided views on the relationship between politics and war. While Clausewitz argued that war was merely an extension of politics by other means and that military considerations and men must be subordinate to political factors and leaders, Moltke held the opposite opinion. Although he recognized that political matters were the reason for conducting war and gave lip service to Clausewitz’s dictum that war must serve policy, in practice his views were quite different. He believed that once war had begun, political advisors and their considerations should play no role in military strategy and the conduct of operations. Moltke’s own statements offer scant support for Eberhard Kessel’s efforts to reduce the differences between Bismarck and Moltke to a question of which office should retain ultimate responsibility for advising the head of state during war.²¹ Moltke’s efforts to prevent political leaders and their interests from determining military strategy were consistent with his written views that upon mobilization the king’s political advisor should step into the background and remain there until the conclusion of the war. As Rudolf Stadelmann demonstrated, in 1871 Moltke, despite all his comments about the importance of political considerations in military questions, attempted to exclude all political influence from Prussian decision making.²² Michael Howard pointed out in his introduction to On War that Moltke refused to accept Clausewitz’s insistence on the subordination of military means to political ends.²³ The result was Moltke’s celebrated conflict with the minister-president of Prussia and chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck.²⁴ In subsequent years Moltke at times seems to have been in favor of preventive war against France, although his efforts to influence national policy cannot be compared with those of his successor, Count Alfred von Waldersee.²⁵

Moltke’s views on the art of war established the basic principles of the Prusso-German way of war and endured, with some changes, to the end of that tradition in 1945. First and foremost, like Clausewitz, Moltke had no faith in systems of any kind. His system consisted of a pattern of thought rather than a series of procedures to be followed or successive tactical acts to be performed under all circumstances. Moltke placed his faith in the ability of Prussian officers to use their education and judgment to adjust to concrete situations as they came up. His famous statement that strategy was a system of expedients typified his belief that no simple rules or formulas existed for determining military plans. Moltke’s statements should be taken against the background of the detailed systems of the eighteenth century and may be seen as a rejection of such systems. Strategy, Moltke believed, was based on concrete situations rather than upon mathematical or other rules to be applied in every case. This line of thought extended to his concepts of campaign planning and tactics, as the texts included here demonstrate.²⁶

Despite his aversion to systems, which could too easily degenerate into dogma, Moltke believed in a few fundamental principles to guide an army’s conduct of war. He never reduced these basic principles to lists of slogans or catchwords so familiar to modern American officers. One must therefore read his works carefully to find those concepts that he stressed or mentioned repeatedly. For this, his 1869 Instructions for Large Unit Commanders is probably the most important single document.²⁷

One of Moltke’s most fundamental points was that battle was both the means of winning wars and the dominant consideration in conducting war. In this he laid the foundations of German theory through the end of the Second World War. His views on this drew upon Clausewitz’s ideas on the necessity of fighting great decisive battles and of annihilating the main enemy force. Moltke endorsed these articles of faith and carried them further than did Clausewitz. Moltke argued that the decision by force of arms was the most important means to reach the goal of a war and the most important part of war. His writings frequently discuss the need to annihilate the enemy’s armed forces in a rapid campaign. Moltke clearly contributed to the Prusso-German emphasis on annihilation as much as did any other man.

Although Moltke thus further elaborated the principles of decisive battles and annihilation, which had become commonplace in the 1830s, by the end of his life he had developed doubts that a rapid decision would be possible under the conditions prevalent by the century’s end. His mobilization plans written after 1871 contain many passages indicating his growing doubts about the prospects of achieving quick victories by annihilating opposing armies. Nevertheless, Moltke should receive credit or blame for the basic concept of annihilation, which some writers have wrongly attributed exclusively to Count Alfred von Schlieffen.²⁸

As a natural consequence of belief in the necessity of seeking a rapid and decisive battle, Moltke emphasized the offense over the defense, even though he fully recognized the advantages afforded the defender by modern firearms. In stressing the importance of mobile operations and conducting wars offensively, Moltke reversed Reyher’s emphasis on using fortresses to defend railroads and other important installations.²⁹ Not a system of fortresses, Moltke argued, but a mobile field army was the nation’s best defense. Nevertheless, he never lost sight of Clausewitz’s dictum that the defense was the stronger form of war. Both men favored the offensive, even though it was more difficult and more costly, because only the offensive offered prospects for a decision. Moltke’s early writings in particular stressed the need for taking offensive action at all levels.³⁰

In the sphere of tactics, Moltke had always warned of the devastating effects of defensive firepower and the necessity of finding appropriate ways to overcome them. His second major concern, closely related to the first, was the role of cavalry, whose traditional function in delivering the final decisive attack had become obsolete because of improvements in firearms. Moltke saw the cavalry’s primary utility in the areas of reconnaissance and exploitation of victories already won by the infantry and artillery.³¹ Although this selection of readings does not reproduce the bulk of Moltke’s writing on defensive firepower, his views are evident even in his essays on other topics.

It was in the area of large-unit operations that Moltke made his most lasting contribution to German theory and practice. One of his most controversial innovations, whose newness many denied at the time and later, was his concept of separated armies. The German term most frequently used was getrennte Heeresteile, literally meaning separated parts of the army. Moltke himself occasionally used this precise term, which later became the shorthand reference to his entire system of moving and concentrating armies before and during battles. Moltke argued that large concentrations of units had become inherently disadvantageous, even disastrous, because of the size of modern armies and the resulting difficulties of moving and provisioning them. In the tactical sphere, moreover, modern weaponry had virtually eliminated turning movements within the range of the enemy’s artillery or even rifle fire.³² Thus, in order to conduct operations (in the German sense) and to strike deep into the enemy’s flank, concentration of separated parts of the army should take place only on the battlefield after the battle had begun. Moltke thus added a new dimension to Scharnhorst’s old dictum march divided, fight united.³³

Separating one’s armies in this manner and in immediate proximity to a strong enemy presented the great danger of defeat in detail if the enemy were able to mass the bulk of his forces to crush one of the smaller parts of the divided army. Moltke recognized this danger but thought the potential gain, a decisive victory, to be well worth the risk.³⁴

Under such a system, the supreme command had to allow its subordinate commanders considerable independence to exercise their own judgment. The primitive communications means of the time frequently could not overcome the distances separating armies from their main headquarters. Commanders of far-flung detachments had to make important decisions without consulting with the high command. Moltke turned this necessity into a virtue by emphasizing the advantages of developing commanders who could exercise initiative within the framework of the high command’s overall intent. He did this by leading his army commanders primarily through directives (Weisungen) rather than detailed orders, although he was quite prepared to issue very detailed and strict orders if necessary. Moltke frequently issued such restrictive orders in 1866 and 1870–71. The reader will find references to some of these instances in the selections printed here. Moltke was willing to allow subordinate commanders to deviate from the details of his directives so long as their actions were consistent with his overall concept. Like almost everything else in Moltke’s approach, however, this was dependent upon the situation and the personalities involved. In 1866, for example, Moltke would have preferred to command the Prussian forces opposing Hesse and Hanover with general directives. The incompetence of the Prussian commander, Maj. Gen. Eduard Vogel von Falkenstein, forced Moltke to interfere in the details of that campaign.³⁵ Moltke consistently taught his subordinates to march to the sound of the cannon and join in local battles. He believed that a tactical success was to be seized whenever possible—even if it came about in a largely unforeseen manner. He was remarkably tolerant of the resulting disruptions of his plans and refused to modify his position—even after very serious problems both in 1866 and in 1870 had jeopardized everything. Moltke held firmly to his original view, which became a fundamental basis of German theory through the Second World War.

Here again, Moltke’s views were similar to Clausewitz’s teachings. In book six, chapter eight of On War, Clausewitz wrote that all strategic planning rested on tactical success alone, because only tactical successes could produce a favorable outcome. Wilhelm Balck’s multivolume work on tactics, the most comprehensive statement of German thought before the First World War, used Moltke’s phrase that strategy grows silent in the face of the need for a tactical victory.³⁶

Moltke’s insistence that the supreme commander must allow his local commanders such freedom of action later became one of the most controversial aspects of his methods. A number of subsequent writers, most notably John F. C. Fuller, harshly criticized Moltke for unleashing his commanders and abdicating his own responsibilities. Most German authors defended Moltke’s command methods by arguing that the large armies of his and later eras made such a loose system of command necessary. Nearly all Prussian and German capstone regulations published after 1869 contained versions of Moltke’s statement that hesitations in reaching decisions and inaction were worse than mistakes in choosing means.³⁷

Linking the original mobilization with the deployment and the opening moves of a campaign was another of Moltke’s innovations. His famous statement that a mistake in the original deployment could hardly be made good in the entire course of a campaign reflected his concern over flexible deployments linked to the subsequent campaign. This did not mean, however, that Moltke thought that a campaign could be planned in detail before it began. On the contrary, he insisted that no plan lasted beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main army. Only a layman, he argued, would believe that a commander developed a plan and followed it exactly, foreseeing all developments, to its successful conclusion. Although Schlieffen has received most of the credit for inventing this process of inextricably linking deployment to the campaign plan, the concept definitely began with Moltke.³⁸

In making his original plans and deployments, Moltke relied upon the new and expanding system of railroads in Prussia. This was in marked contrast to his predecessors, who had shown but little interest in railroads. Although General Reyher noted how much more skillfully the Austrians had exploited railroads during the mobilizations of 1850 than had the Prussians, he moved very slowly and made little effort to establish a basis for full use of the railway system in wartime. Moltke substituted vast energy and diligence in exploiting railroads in place of Reyher’s lethargy. The General Staff’s greatly increased involvement in planning for and utilizing railroads was one of the hallmarks of Moltke’s term as chief of the General Staff.³⁹

A large portion of Moltke’s literary legacy has been published. Translations of some of his letters have appeared in various editions.⁴⁰ Sections of his historical and official writings have also appeared in English, notably his one-volume history of the Franco-Prussian War.⁴¹ In 1974, Greenwood Press assembled three selections from Moltke’s military works under the title Strategy; Its Theory and Application: The Wars for German Unification, 1866–1871. This volume actually contained a short selection of early planning papers from prior to the war of 1866, a selection of his correspondence from that war, and excerpts from Moltke’s very extensive correspondence during the Franco-Prussian War. None of these books contain any of Moltke’s theoretical writings.⁴²

The selections of Moltke’s writings published here are a fair representation of his views on the art of war. The reader must use them with caution, however, because they are but a small part of his diverse writings.⁴³

More serious is the question of the texts’ authenticity. The Prussian General Staff edited and published Moltke’s official writings in a series of volumes released between 1892 and 1912.⁴⁴ Since Moltke had left no definitive collection of his writings, the military history section of the General Staff assembled his works from a variety of sources. These included his previously published memoirs, the official histories of his campaigns, previously published books and articles, documents from the archives of the General Staff, and a scattering of other sources.⁴⁵ In assembling these volumes, the General Staff frequently printed an essay by Moltke, followed by historical examples illustrating the principles discussed in the text. These historical examples may or may not have been written by Moltke. Those that Moltke did not write personally came from the official histories written by the General Staff under his close personal supervision. The fact remains, however, that the resulting product reflected what the General Staff wanted the Prussian officer corps and others to regard as Moltke’s teachings. Moltke himself, who resisted the writing of any such collections of his teachings or theories, might have assembled such volumes quite differently.

Some doubt exists as to the authenticity of at least one of the texts. Gerhard Ritter, who had access to the Prussian military archives before their destruction in the Second World War, challenged the accuracy of Moltke’s essay titled "On Strategy."⁴⁶ Ritter argued that the General Staff made serious alterations in those sections of Moltke’s writings dealing with the relationship of politics and military strategy during war. Nevertheless, the views presented in the essay seem quite consistent with Moltke’s other writings, the authenticity of which is not in question. There seems to be no reason to doubt that the essay is at least broadly representative of Moltke’s views on the relationship of war and policy. The differences between the various versions of the essay are minor.⁴⁷

The selections in this volume come primarily from volume four of the Militärische Werke, which consisted of three book-length parts.⁴⁸ The chapter titled Instructions for the Commanders of Large Units appeared in volume two, part two of the Militärische Werke.⁴⁹ To the best of the editor’s knowledge, these volumes have not previously appeared in English, although collectively they are among the half-dozen most fundamental documents of the Prussian army’s theory of war. Captain Harry Bell of the Army Service Schools at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, prepared rough translations of the three parts of volume four between 1912 and 1916. The current editor has retranslated selected portions of these three volumes for publication here. Although scarcely a sentence of Bell’s original translation remains intact, it seems only proper to include him as joint translator.⁵⁰

Excellent maps of the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars that will help the reader follow the discussions found in the historical examples are contained in Gordon Craig’s Königgrätz and Michael Howard’s Franco-Prussian War.

Each chapter contains a brief introduction and a number of explanatory footnotes. I have tried to hold these to a minimum, but some commentary is unavoidable given both the texts themselves and the nature of the historical questions involved. Many of Moltke’s statements will make no sense to readers who are not at least broadly informed about German history. Many of his comments about politics and political leaders, for example, should be understood in the context of his lengthy and bitter conflict with Otto von Bismarck.

Moltke’s writings, especially his letters and unofficial essays, have long been regarded as classics of German prose. Certainly he was a gifted writer, military thinker, and field commander. Still, he was human, as the selections printed here make clear. His views on society reflected both the social prejudices of his aristocratic profession and the social Darwinism so prevalent in Germany and Europe during his lifetime. His preference for the unreformed Prussian monarchical form of government added a further fundamental bias to much of his writing, both theoretical and historical. Despite the depth of the research and thought that stood behind much of his work, Moltke was above all a practical nineteenth-century German soldier rather than an objective historian. The reader must bear this in mind.⁵¹

The reader should not allow concern for Moltke’s personal idiosyncrasies to obscure the most fundamental fact about his writings: Moltke’s views, as taught in the Prussian army and printed in his publications, formed one of the pillars of Prusso-German theory. His Instructions for Large Unit Commanders, written in 1869 and revised slightly in 1885, remained largely in effect in 1914. In 1910 the army’s new version of that regulation correctly noted that its text preserved Moltke’s exact words wherever possible.⁵² Many of Moltke’s basic concepts carried over into the new German army after the Imperial army’s defeat and the nation’s collapse in 1918.

Moltke left an enduring legacy in that vague area known as the art of war. Although it might be going too far to say, as one recent author has, that Moltke’s methods in such areas as orders bore a striking resemblance to modern American methods, there is no doubt that much of modern military theory bears the mark of the Prusso-German system, to which Moltke was probably the most important contributor.⁵³

Nevertheless, this comparison must not be taken too far. The modern concepts of operational level of war and operational art contain many points of view, definitions, and assumptions that would have been foreign to Moltke. Moltke was a forerunner who laid the seeds of modern theory, rather than the creator of a full-fledged modern system. To find the origins of that, one must turn to Schlieffen, Schlichting, various theorists of the Imperial and Soviet armies, and to the growth of American technology and systems analysis.

1. They are by Gordon Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz: Prussia’s Victory Over Austria, 1866 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975 [1964]); and Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (New York: Collier Books, 1969 [1961]).

2. David Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy (New York: The Free Press, 1980), 198.

3. Gunther Rothenberg, Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment, in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 297. Along with the earlier essay by Hajo Holborn, cited below, Rothenberg’s majesterial essay is the best introduction to Prusso-German military thought available in English.

4. Eberhard Kessel, ed., Moltke Gespräche (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1940), 228–29. The original primary source for this note, Nachlass