Military Misfortunes
Page 38
17. Gen. Edmond Ruby, quoted in Shirer, Collapse, pp. 737–38.
18. Quoted in Benoist-Méchin, vol. 1, p. 212.
19. General Order to the Troops, May 25, 1940. Quoted in ibid., 2, p. 11.
20. Quoted in P. M. H. Bell, A Certain Eventuality: Britain and the Fall of France (London: Saxon House, 1974), p. 84.
21. Benoist-Méchin, vol. 2, p. 382.
22. Luçien Robineau, “L’armée de I‘air dans la bataille de France,” in Les armées françaises pendant la seconde guerre mondiale 1939–1945 (Paris: Fondation pour les études de Défense nationale, 1986), p. 42.
23. Patrice Buffotot, “Le moral dans l’armée de l’air française (de septembre 1939 à juin 1940),” in Français et Britanniques dans la drôle de guerre (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, 1979), pp. 173–96.
24. Shirer, Collapse: 690–91.
25. Gunsberg, 234; Eleanor M. Gates, The End of the Affair: The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1939–40 (London: Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1981), p. 161.
26. The contrast with German care and forethought, exemplified in Guderian’s careful coordination with his Flieger Korps commander, Bruno Loerzer, is striking: Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1939–1945 (Maxwell, Ala.: Air University Press, 1983), p. 37.
27. For further details on the French air campaign, see Patrice Buffotot and Jacques Ogier, “L’armée de l’air française dans la campagne de France (10 Mai-25 Juin 1940),” Revue historique des Armées 2 (1975): 88–117.
28. Home, p. 113. See also Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 140, 439.
29. Murray, Strategy for Defeat, p. 31.
30. Henri Dutailly, “Faiblesses et potentialités de l’armée de terre (1939–1940),” Les armées françaises, p. 28.
31. Michel Garder, La guerre secrète des Services speciaux françaises 1939–1945 (Paris: Plon, 1967), pp. 153, 175–76.
32. R. Macleod and D. Kelly, eds., The Ironside Diaries 1937–1940 (London: Constable, 1962), p. 117.
33. Gunsberg, Divided and Conquered, pp. 92–95.
34. Quoted in Shirer, Collapse, p. 601.
35. Gunsberg, Divided and Conquered, pp. 104–6.
36. Beaufre, 1940, p. 175.
37. Col. J. Defrasne, “L’attitude du commandement français face aux repercussions militaires de la révolution technique et industrielle de 1919 à 1940: le facteur de ‘renseignement,’” in Le haut commandment français face au progrès technique entre les deux guerres (Paris: Service Historique de l’Armée de l’Air, 1980), p. 41, 52–54.
38. For an uncompromising view that the French were dogged by the past, see Robert J. Young, “Preparations for Defeat: French War Doctrine in the Interwar Period,” Journal of European Studies 2 (1972): 155–72.
39. David B. Ralston, “From Boulanger to Pétain: The Third Republic and the Republican Generals,” in Brian Bond and Ian Roy, eds., War and Society: A Yearbook of Military History (London: Croom Helm, n.d.), pp. 178–201.
40. Ladislas Mysyrowicz, Autopsie d’une défaite: Origines de l’effondrement militaire français de 1940 (Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 1973), p. 20.
41. Quoted in Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster, p. 93.
42. See Robert J. Doughty, “The French Armed Forces, 1918–1940,” in Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds., Military Effectiveness (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988), pp. 39–69.
43. Eugene Carrias, La pensée militaire française (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), p. 331. For an excellent summary of de Gaulle’s book, see Mysyrowicz, pp. 201–13.
44. Benoist-Méchin, vol. 3, pp. 266–67, 269.
45. Brian Bond and Martin Alexander, “Liddell Hart and de Gaulle: The Doctrines of Mobile Defense and Limited Liability,” in Peter Paret ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 620.
46. Garder, La guerre secrète, p. 31.
47. Robert J. Young, “French Military Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1938–1939,” in E. R. May, ed., Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 302.
48. Gunsberg, Divided and Conquered, p. 269.
49. Bloch, L’étrange défaite, pp. 63–64.
50. Maurice Gauché, Le deuxième bureau au travail (1935–40) (Paris: Dumont, 1953), p. 101.
51. Garder, La guerre secrète, p. 185; Gauche, Le deuxième bureau, p. 189.
52. Quoted in Douglas Porch, “French Intelligence and the Fall of France 1930–1940” Intelligence and National Security 4 (1989): 42.
53. Quoted in Shirer, Collapse, p. 669.
54. F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War (London: HMSO 1979–88), vol. 1, p. 131.
55. Shirer, Collapse, p. 669; Garder, La guerre secrète, p. 182; Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, p. 135.
56. Harold C. Deutsch, The Conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), pp. 328–29.
57. Doughty, Seeds of Disaster, pp. 58–59; Garder, La guerre secrète, pp. 178–79.
58. Brian Bond, France and Belgium 1939–40 (London: Davis Poynter, 1975), p. 79.
59. Garder, La guerre secrète, pp. 146–47.
60. Home, To Lose a Battle, p. 170.
61. Beaufre, 1940, p. 179.
62. Gamelin to Gauché, September 1, 1939. Quoted in Benoist-Méchin, vol. l, p. 51.
63. Quoted in Chapman, p. 88.
64. Elisabeth du Reau, “Haut commandement et pouvoir politique,” Les armées françaises, pp. 77–78.
65. Gunsberg, Divided and Conquered, pp. 178–79.
66. Ibid., pp. 55, 135.
67. Shirer, Collapse, p. 809.
68. Beaufre, 1940, p. 182.
69. John C. Cairns, “Some Recent Historians and the ‘Strange Defeat’ of 1940,” Journal of Modern History 46 (1974): 81.
70. Chapman, Why France Collapsed, p. 160.
71. Home, To Lose a Battle, p. 406.
72. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence, vol. 1, pp. 143–64.
73. Shirer, Collapse, p. 747.
74. Mysyrowicz, Autopsie d’une défaite, p. 43.
75. Macleod and Kelly, Ironside Diaries, p. 206 (January 14, 1940).
76. Bond, France and Belgium, pp. 146–48.
77. J. R. Colville, Man of Valour: Field Marshal Lord Gort (London: Colllins, 1972), p. 168.
78. Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, “L’opinion français devant la guerre,” Les armées françaises, pp. 53–66.
79. Ibid., p. 64.
80. Benoist-Méchin, vol. 2, pp. 10–11.
81. Lt. Col. P Le Goyet, “Evolution de la doctrine d’emploi de l’aviation française entre 1919 et 1939,” Révue d’Histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale 19 (1969): 3–41. For a survey of the popular literature on air war, see Robert J. Young, “The Use and Abuse of Fear: France and the Air Menace in the 1930s,” Intelligence and National Security 2 (1987): 88–109.
82. Robert J. Young, “The Strategic Dream: French Air Doctrine in the Interwar Period, 1919–39,” Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1974): 57–76.
83. Cot to Daladier, September 25, 1937. Cited in Patrice Buffotot, “La doctrine aerienne du haut commandement français pendant l’entre-deux guerres,” in Le haut commandement français face au progrès technique, p. 30.
84. Dutailly, “Faiblesses,” pp. 25, 27.
85. Doughty, Seeds of Disaster, pp. 96–97.
86. E.g., Beaufre, 1940, p. 198.
87. Home identifies it as the afternoon of May 15; Home, To Lose a Battle, p. 516.
88. Robineau, L’armée de l’air, p. 44.
89. Colville, Man of Valour, p. 188; Macleod and Kelly, Ironside Diaries, p. 302.
90. Baudouin, p. 27.
91. Mysyrowicz, Autopsie d’unc défaite, p. 236.
92. See Harold C. Deutsch, “Commanding generals and the Uses of Intelligence,” Intelligence and
National Security 3 (1988), 194–260.
Chapter 9
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
1. Michael Howard, “The Forgotten Dimension of Strategy,” in The Causes of War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 101–15.
2. By no means all, however. See for example Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, eds., Military Effectiveness, 3 vols. (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1988). In addition, political scientists have done a great deal of work attempting to bring organization theory to bear on the study of the military, although rarely have they looked closely at battle outcomes, as opposed to prewar planning and civil-military relations, for example.
3. For two fine examples, see John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York: Viking, 1987), and Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
4. Marshall to Lieutenant General Stanley Embick, May 1, 1940. Larry I. Bland, Sharon R. Ritenour, and Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr., eds., The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. II, “We Cannot Delay.” July 1, 1939-December 6, 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 205–6.
5. Richard A. Gabriel, Military Incompetence. Why the American Military Doesn’t Win (New York: Hill & Wang, 1985), pp. 6–33, appears to take this approach.
6. Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 270–73.
7. James Brian Quinn, “Strategic Change: ‘Logical Incrementalism,’” Sloan Management Review (Fall 1978): 8. See also Richard F. Vancil, “So You’re Going to Have a Planning Department!” Harvard Business Review (May/June 1967): 88–96; Richard F. Vancil and Peter Lorange, “Strategic Planning in Diversified Companies,” Harvard Business Review (January/February 1975): 81–90; Robert H. Hayes, “Strategic Planning—Forward or Reverse?” Harvard Business Review (November/December 1985): 111–19; Daniel H. Gray, “Uses and Misuses of Strategic Planning,” Harvard Business Review (January/February 1986): 89–97.
8. Our approach in this matter is very similar to that of James Q. Wilson in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York: Basic Books, 1989), and owes a debt to his writing on the subject.
9. A point made by Peter K. Kemp, in “War Studies in the Royal Navy,” The Royal United Services Institute Journal 111:642 (May 1966): 151–55.
10. On sonar see Arthur J. Marder, “Influence of History on Sea Power: The Royal Navy and the Lessons of 1914–1918,” in From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in War and Peace, 1915–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 40.
11. See, inter alia, T. Harry Williams, “The Military Leadership of North and South,” in David Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 33–54. The same occurred in many militaries—in Europe even more than in the United States—following the wars of German unification, which led to a wave of imitation of Prussian organization and methods, down to the wearing of spiked helmets.
12. W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. E. Frizzell, eds. The Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977), p. 22.
13. Herbert Rosinski Papers, Box 7, R-l 32, (1943?) Naval War College Historical Collection (emphasis added).
14. See Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 20. For a contrary view, see Stephen Peter Rosen, “New Ways of War. Understanding Military Innovation,” International Security 13:2 (Fall 1988), p. 135.
15. See Rosen, “New Ways of War,” pp. 158–66.
16. Jeter A. Isely and Philip A. Crowl, The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 33–71.
17. D. Clayton James, A Time for Giants: Politics of the American High Command in World War II (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), p. 179.
18. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), vol. 2, p. 824.
19. Quoted in Isely and Crowl, U.S. Marines, p. 3.
20. B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, Paul Findlay trans. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953), pp. 521, 523.
21. See Eliot A. Cohen, “Analysis,” in Roy Godson, ed., Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s (Washington: National Security Information Center, 1989), pp. 71–96.
22. “Israel’s Combat Arms,” Armed Forces Journal International 111:2 (October 1973): 64. Rafael Eitan describes angry exchanges with the chief armored officer, Major General Avraham Adan, when he (Eitan) refused to give up his red paratrooper’s beret for the black beret of the tank corps upon taking over a divisional command. See Eitan and Goldstein, Raful, pp. 124 ff.
23. Williams, ed., Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, p. 248.
24. Ya’akov Chasdai, “Milchemet yom hakippurim: hafta’a? nitsachon?” [“The Yom Kippur War: Surprise? Victory?”] Ma’arachot 275 (August 1980): 10. Chasdai was a highly decorated paratroop colonel and historian, who taught at the IDF staff college and was a researcher for the Agranat Commission. See also Avraham Adan, “Eichut v’kamut b’milchemet yom hakippurim” [“Quality and Quantity in the Yom Kippur War”] in Zvi Offer and Avi Kober, eds., Eichut v’kamut: dilemmot b’binyan hakoach hatsva’i [“Quality and Quantity: Dilemmas in the Development of Military Forces”] (Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 1985), pp. 262, 288.
25. Paul H. Herbert, Deciding What Has to Be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100–5, Operations, Leavenworth Papers #16 (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1988), p. 3.
26. Ibid., p. 54. DePuy was bitterly opposed by Major General John Cushman, the head of the Army’s Command and General Staff school at Fort Leavenworth. See p. 55, and also Kevin P. Sheehan, “Preparing for Imaginary War: Examining Peacetime Functions and Changes of Army Doctrine,” unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1988.
27. M. A. Gareev, M. V. Frunze: Military Theorist (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey’s 1988), pp. 378–79. Colonel General Gareev was deputy chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces when he wrote this book.
28. See Eliot A. Cohen, “Toward Better Net Assessment,” International Security 13:2 (Fall 1988): 50–89.
29. Tim Travers, “The Hidden Army: Structural Problems in the British Officer Corps, 1900–1918,” Journal of Contemporary History 17:3 (July 1982): 523–44; Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), pp. 23, 107; Gerard J. De Groot, Douglas Haig, 1861–1928 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), pp. 191–92.
30. E. K. G. Sixsmith, British Generalship in the Twentieth Century (London: Arms & Armour, 1970), p. 43.
31. De Groot, p. 333.
32. Sixsmith, pp. 110–12, 139.
33. What follows is largely based on Bradley J. Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System in World War I,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1988.
34. Brian Holden Reid, “Major General J. F. C. Fuller and the Decline of Generalship,” British Army Review 90 (December 1988): 12–19.
35. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle: “Command,” December 23, 1921, p. 6. Army War College Lectures, 1921–1922.
36. Marshall to Morris Sheppard, June 5, 1940. Marshall Papers, vol. 2, p. 236.
37. See, for example, Field Marshal Lord Wavell, Generals and Generalship (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1941).
38. John F. Lehman, Command of the Seas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), pp. 19, 21.
39. Ibid., pp. 36–38.
40. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976), p. 17.
41. Bloch to Rear Admiral James O. Richardson. Quoted in James, A Time for Giants, p. 54. As we have pointed out in chapter 2, Bloch bore some measure of responsibility for the failure.
42. Ibid., p. 190.
43. Quoted in Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932), p. 424.
44. William Slim,
Defeat Into Victory (New York: David McKay, 1961). pp. 98–99.
45. We reject the view expressed by Gabriel (Military Incompetence, p. 188) that political leaders have no responsibility for the competence of the forces under their control. Cf. Lehman, Command of the Seas, pp. 423–24.
46. See Eliot A. Cohen, “Churchill at War,” Commentary 83:5 (May 1987): 40–49.
47. Speech to the House of Commons, October 8, 1940. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), vol. 6, p. 6293.
48. This point is further amplified in Rosen, “New Ways of War.”
Index
Abbeville, 203–4, 219
ABC meeting, 72
Adan, Avraham, 109–10
Adaptability, importance of to military organizations, 94, 111
Afghanistan, 6
Agincourt, 6
Agranat, Shimon, 112
Agranat Commission, 107, 112–17, 128
Airpower: see France, air force; Germany, air force; Japan, Imperial Japanese Navy; Royal Air Force; U.S., air force
Korean War, 179–80, 192–93
Middle East wars, 99, 104–12, 114–16, 121–23
Aisne, 226
Alam Halfa, 42
Ali, Ahmed Ismail, 99, 102
Almond, Edward M., 187
Amiens, 219
Andrews, Adolphus, 74
Antisubmarine warfare, 59–94, 129, 233
ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps), 133, 137–38, 140, 142, 149–52, 155–59, 162
Arab-Israeli wars
Six-Day War, 96, 110, 112, 123
War of Attrition, 96, 103, 115
Yom Kippur War, 33, 43, 95–131, 232, 237–38
Ardennes offensive of 1940, 127, 201–3, 207, 218–20
Armengaud, Paul, 210–11
Army air forces: see U.S., air force
Arras, 204, 225
Artillery Road, 103, 109
see also map, 97
Aspinall-Oglander, Cecil, 145, 151
Asquith, Herbert H., 133, 154
Assad, Hafez, 99
Ataturk, Kemal: see Kemal, Mustafa
Atlantic, Battle of the, 59–94
Attrition
in Battle of the Atlantic, 59–60, 68–71, 91. 93