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Hitler’s Decisions

Faced with the failure of their grand offensive, Bock and the senior commanders had little idea of what to do next. One minute they ordered a retreat, the next they thought it was better to make a stand. Guderian confessed he did not know how to extricate the army from the situation it was now […]

Germany, Strategy

Hitler’s Strategic Options

In May 1940 Adolf Hitler stood at the apogee of his power. The self-styled artist and architect visited Paris as a tourist, gawked at the Eiffel Tower, and stood silently before the tomb of Napoleon I. But the conqueror of Poland and France had exhausted the strategic inheritance of the Reichswehr. Hitler was virtually clueless […]

Strategy

McClellan versus Lee

The essential difference between Lee and McClellan was that the former established cordial relations with his political masters, and that Lee’s military outlook was offensive, not defensive. Although his methods have often been compared by historians to those of Napoleon, Lee was essentially Scott’s pupil. He took the latter’s methods and developed them further in […]

Germany, Strategy

Hitler and the OKW

It is probably true that Hitler and the OKW were also more comfortable planning a land campaign into Russia than a cross-Channel invasion of Britain. The German Führer and his generals shared a view that the Red Army was ineptly led and ill-prepared for defense. That was not entirely inaccurate. But a larger point is […]

Strategy

Defense Projection: Post-Vietnam Changes

After Vietnam the role of military power in American foreign policy became less pronounced than it had been previously, a clear sign of popular misgivings over the war and of diminished confidence in military solutions to problems abroad. Indicative of the trend was the decision by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (1969-1973) in 1970 to […]

Germany, Strategy

Führer Directive 21

The final German plan for the invasion (Operation `Barbarossa’) was contained in Führer Directive 21, issued on 18 December 1940. Its basic concept was one that had already proved successful in the previous campaigns: deep penetrations by pincer movements of armoured and motorised infantry divisions would encircle enemy forces between them and the bulk of […]

Germany, Strategy

‘September Programme’

On 9 September 1914 Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg announced Germany’s ‘September Programme’ of war aims. Whether this statement of territorial demands and military and economic ambitions was a triumphant response to early victories, or a pragmatic recognition that the war would not be short, and that the German people had to be made aware of what […]

Strategy

D-Day 1943 – A Roundup I

Casablanca As weather slowed operations in Tunisia, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to meet again to sort out the next steps in their world war. The Anfa Hotel, five miles outside Casablanca, served as the conference site. Considerable optimism surrounded the conference, a far cry from six months previously. Now the Allies stood firmly ashore in […]

Strategy

D-Day 1943 – A Roundup II

Operation ROUNDUP While the Germans retreated toward the Dnieper, Mountbatten and his staff finalised their plans for the cross-Channel assault, now scheduled for early September. Mountbatten’s plan called for two widely separated landings, Patton’s 1st Army near Dieppe and Montgomery’s near Dunkirk. The two armies would expand their beachhead; drive on Paris, then on toward […]

Germany, Strategy

LUDENDORFF’S CHOICES

LUDENDORFF’S CHOICE: THE EAST These plans and preparations for massive operations in the west appeared to require that the German High Command would devote all its attention and resources to that theatre. Yet this was not Ludendorff’s response. During 1918, about one million of his men (fifty divisions) were actually retained on the Eastern Front. […]