Wargames

by Martin van Creveld

  What little information can be gleaned from the sources suggests that a mixture of “rigid” and “free” games was used, the former to simulate larger operations and the latter, smaller ones. Most were apparently played on maps of different sizes. A few, however, such as the ones held at the US Naval War College, Rhode Island, during the interwar period, used squares (in this case, the tiles on the floor of a large room devoted to the purpose). Much naval combat takes part on the high seas, ship against ship or ships. While it is true that some parts of the sea are more dangerous to navigation than others, the absence of terrain features makes naval wargaming simpler than that which simulates land warfare. For the same reason, seadogs were more likely to resort to miniatures than were landlubbers who continued to prefer counters made of wood or metal. Every game seems to have had an umpire or umpires. Some still used dice to determine the outcome of combat. Occasionally the umpires saw fit to overrule the dice – with interesting results, as we shall see later on.

  Whatever the differences among them, all the manuals in use never tired of emphasizing that each game ended, or was supposed to end, with a thorough discussion. The objective was to find out what had been simulated, what had not been simulated, what had worked, what had not worked, why, and what was needed to make what had not worked this time do so next time. Whether that advice was always followed is impossible to say; then as today, as each game ended people were likely to be tired and want to go home. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of scenarios were never translated into reality. Nor can one really blame the game designers for that fact. Scenarios that are possible in theory far outnumber those that actually take place; as a pre-World War I German joke had it, if there were two conceivable ways of solving a problem his Imperial Majesty was certain to find a third. Indeed it could be argued that, since the future is unpredictable, one of the most important – possibly the most important – objective of holding wargames in the military is precisely to allow participants to try their hand at dealing with the unexpected: to that extent, the question of whether a scenario is ultimately realized or remains imaginary is almost irrelevant.

  Contrary to legend, the German chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen (served 1893–1905), never gamed the famous plan that has been named after him. What he did do was to make his staff officers, including fairly junior ones, game all sorts of lesser campaigns. When told that the games made players command forces and conduct operations on a scale far beyond their actual rank, he would respond that he could see no reason why the officers in question should not one day be in a position to translate the games into reality.54 Most scenarios seem to have been concerned with the possibility of French or Russian invasions coming from this direction or that and threatening this objective or that. It was up to the players, working either at General Headquarters in Berlin or in some inn during a staff ride, to use the forces at their disposal to contain the invaders and throw them back.

  Among the scenarios thus examined, not once but several times, was a French invasion of Belgium which had to be turned back.55 One objective was to simulate what might happen in order that, if it in fact did happen, commanders would not have to reinvent the wheel. Another was to impress subordinates with a number of simple but essential ideas, such as the advantages of operating on interior lines; the importance, in case a smaller army was confronted by a larger one, of taking the opponent in the flank rather than attacking him head-on; and the need, even in the age of the telegraph, for subordinate commanders to take the initiative rather than allow time to be wasted.

  As it happened, a scenario that was gamed and did turn into reality was the invasion of East Prussia by two Russian armies, one coming from the east and the other from the southeast. Given that the Germans intended to use the bulk of their forces in the west, such a campaign, with Berlin as its ultimate objective, would put the Reich in mortal danger. In 1894, twenty years before the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes were fought and won, Schlieffen, in a truly prophetic exercise, had his officers game precisely the scenario that was later to ensue.56 Eleven years later another wargame with the same scenario was held; in his critique, Schlieffen said he could see no reason why the operations it portrayed could not succeed in actual war.57 Decades afterwards, German officers were still pointing to these episodes as outstanding proof of what wargames, properly and competently handled, could accomplish.58 Surely their pride is both understandable and justified. However, it is important to realize that Schlieffen used to hold two major wargames each year, and that the vast majority of scenarios worked out in those games were not realized.

  What makes all this even more interesting is the fact that the Russians also gamed the scenario in question. They too concluded that their invading armies were too far apart to be able to support one another and could therefore be defeated in detail. However, nothing was done to modify the plan, and the rest followed.59 Something similar happened to the French during the 1930s. The governing idea behind the Maginot Line was to force the Germans to go through Belgium, which would result in Britain entering the war as it had in 1914 (if the need to invade Belgium could deter the Germans from going to war in the first place, of course, so much the better). That much having been decided upon, a whole series of wargames were held. The objective was to determine what kind of attack the Germans might launch and what the French Army would do to repulse it. The trouble was that, under the French system, a single team played both sides. As a result, when the pieces had been put in place in such a way that the Line appeared to be doing its job, there was nobody around to suggest ways in which the Germans might nevertheless try to breach it.60

  During the 1920s the German Army was laboring under severe restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The outcome was to increase interest in wargames. One figure deeply involved with them was General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German Army General Staff from 1935 to 1938. He used them in preparing the famous 1936 manual, Truppenfuehrung, with its emphasis on interlocking mobile operations coming from several directions at once. As so often, it would be hard to say whether it was wargames that helped formulate doctrine or doctrine that governed the wargames; however, there is no doubt that the games were used to test the doctrine.61 That was not the end of the matter. When Hitler started pressing for a German invasion of Czechoslovakia from March 1938 on Beck held a whole series of wargames. They pointed, as indeed they were designed to do, to Germany’s ability, or rather inability, to wage war on two fronts.62 The results were incorporated into memoranda and submitted to Hitler, who called them “childish.” Two months later, Beck resigned.

  Another German officer who held wargames during the same period was the commander of the submarine fleet, Admiral Karl Doenitz, as part of his attempts to devise new tactics for operating his vessels.63 Instead of working alone waiting for prey, as they had done in World War I, submarines were to operate in so-called wolf packs. Having discovered a convoy, a submarine would inform General Headquarters, which would direct others to intercept it. Only when enough submarines had been brought together would the attack itself begin. At that point far more torpedoes would be launched at the convoy than a single submarine could carry, confronting the defense with a formidable challenge. Apparently a whole series of games was held, some tactical/operational, others strategic. Two essential conclusions emerged. First, the actual attacks should be commanded not from headquarters but by a senior captain aboard a submarine situated near the scene of action, but sufficiently far away from it to retain an overview. The motto, in other words, was “centralized command, decentralized execution.” Second, submarine warfare was capable of defeating Britain, but only if three hundred submarines were available, one-third of which would be on station at any time. In fact, when World War II broke out, Doenitz disposed of exactly forty-seven.

  Preparations for the German offensive against the West involved a whole series of map- and sand-table wargames. They began in December 1939 and lasted until Ma
rch the following year.64 In overall charge was the chief of the Army General Staff, General Franz Halder, who observed several of the senior-level games but did not participate in them. Others were the commanders of the two army groups involved, Generals Feodor von Bock and Gerd von Rundstedt, as well as their respective chiefs of staff: General Erich von Manstein, the operational genius who is generally considered the brain behind the plan that eventually emerged; General Heinz Guderian, the creator of the German Panzerwaffe or armored corps; and Colonel Ulrich Liss, head of Foreign Armies West who played the French commander-in-chief. Each time a game was held the scenario took the latest available intelligence into account.

  The main question to be resolved was whether the center of gravity (Schwerpunkt) should rest with Army Group B opposite Belgium and the Netherlands or with Army Group A opposite Sedan in the Ardennes. The option of building in sufficient flexibility to leave the question unanswered until the last moment, which was Hitler’s own favorite solution to the problem, was also considered. However, it proved impractical owing to the sheer size of the forces involved. Possible French and British reactions to each of these moves, as well as the critically important problems of transportation and logistics involved, were repeatedly simulated. Halder personally submitted the results to his Fuehrer who ultimately decided in favor of Army Group A and the Ardennes. Further down, army, corps, division, and regimental commanders held similar games. Particular, attention was paid to the question as to what Guderian’s tanks should do once they had reached the river Meuse.65 In the event the cardinal assumption behind the games, namely that the Allies’ first reaction to any German move would be to invade Belgium so as to stop Army Group B as far forward as possible, proved correct. This fact alone justifies the claim of one expert on Kriegspiel, writing after the war, that they had made an immense contribution to victory.66

  Wargames also played a major role in planning Operation Sea Lion for invading Britain. They showed that the landing faced formidable obstacles in the form of insufficient embarkation ports, insufficient shipping space, and the difficulty of getting men and equipment off the beaches and into the interior.67 Doing so would take so much time as to enable the British, using their well-developed system of roads, to concentrate against the invader. The conclusion, namely that the operation should be cancelled, was definitely correct. Another series of wargames was held in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union.68 The man in charge was General Friedrich von Paulus of Stalingrad fame. In November 1940 he was serving as deputy chief of the General Staff for operations; unlike many others, the Germans felt that wargaming was too serious a business to be left to junior or even medium-ranking officers. Another round was held in February 1941. This time the games predicted, correctly as it turned out, that in November of that year, six months after the beginning of the invasion, the Wehrmacht would reach the gates of Moscow. They also predicted, incorrectly, that the Red Army would be all but finished. The error can be traced to the fact that German intelligence had vastly underestimated the number of divisions Stalin could command. They believed he had 200, whereas in reality there were 360.69

  As an episode of November 1944 shows, the Germans maintained their faith in the method to the end. By an extraordinary coincidence, the US Army attacked the front of the German Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal Walter Model, in the midst of a wargame designed to simulate just such an offensive. Instead of breaking off the game, Model made it go on. The relevant orders were fed straight to the front, thus saving precious time.70 Numerous technical details apart, German wargames were governed by three basic principles. First, great emphasis was put on friction – superabundant reports (“information overload”), incorrect reports, out-of-date reports, unintelligible reports, unexpected requests by neighboring units that interfered with one’s own operations, and the like. Second, everything had to be done to avoid “schematicism,” i.e. school solutions, specifically including those derived from military history. Third, not merely the possible but the impossible was to be gamed, the reason being that, as one expert on the subject pointed out, in war very little is impossible.71

  Few other countries took wargaming as seriously as the Germans did. For example, in 1872 one Captain Baring, of the Royal Artillery, tried to introduce it to Britain. His game derived from one developed by Captain Werner von Tschischwitz in Germany, who in turn had published rules for a somewhat simplified von Reisswitz-type game, complete with tables and dice.72 An official set of British Army war game rules was published in 1895, but regular officers showed little interest it.73 A game developed by a naval officer and writer, Captain Philip H. Colomb, which represented a duel between two ships, did no better. Royal Navy officers, incidentally, also did what they could to prevent the creation of a naval staff college where they might have to play such games and, which was much worse still, listen to a civilian professor.74

  Amateurs took a different view. The moving spirit was Spenser Wilkinson (1853–1937), lawyer, art critic, and military writer. He sat on the commission that created the Territorial Army, a sort of reserve, and ended up as Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford.75 His best-known work, The Brain of an Army (1895) is credited with pushing the British Army to establish its first General Staff. His influence was also brought to bear by way of the volunteer corps, of which he was a member, as well as several gaming clubs. His Essays on the War Game were published in the Manchester Guardian on which, as if to emphasize the link between games and theater, he also served as the drama critic. His starting point was Verdy du Vernois as “the ablest writer who ever dealt with war games.” The actual rules were adapted from another German officer, Captain Nauman, whose Regimental Wargame, based on a close study of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1, was published in 1877. As Wilkinson wrote, no other form of training was potentially more useful and no other was so easily misused. He was thoroughly aware of the danger, the fatigue, the responsibility and the friction which govern real warfare and which can never be reproduced in games of this kind. However, he believed that this should not prevent them from playing an important role in teaching officers the basics of strategy and tactics.

  The most important wargame known to have been played by the British military took place in early 1905, not long after the entente with France had drawn Britain out of its so-called splendid isolation. The scenario was a German−French war. Initially the Germans tried to advance by way of Verdun. Having been repulsed, they sent a 250,000-man army through Belgium instead. In charge of the game was General James Grierson, chief of operations. The role of British commander was played by Colonel C. E. Calwell who nine years later served as deputy director of operations. That of German commander was played by Major General William Robertson, a truly remarkable soldier who had risen from the ranks, was serving as chief of the western section of military intelligence, and later rose to become chief of the Imperial General Staff. Both Grierson and Robertson had visited the theater of operations. Other intelligence officers were also involved. The games pointed to three conclusions. First, France on its own would probably go down to defeat. Second, current plans would not enable the British Army to be mobilized and deployed to France fast enough to assist that country. Third, the army was too small to make a difference and might well be annihilated. These pessimistic conclusions did not prevent unofficial, but highly important, Anglo-French staff talks from getting under way the next year. In the event the estimate of what the Germans would do proved right on the mark. Not so, as hindsight shows, of what the British could and would contribute.76

  Decades later, a British officer claimed that it was the inability of wargames to capture the stress and friction of real-life warfare which prevented them from becoming very popular among the military of his country.77 Similar considerations do not seem to have disturbed US Army officers who took up German-type wargaming and sought to develop it. Various systems, each named after its originator, were tried. However, all were caught in the now familiar dilemma bet
ween realism and playability and none seems to have grown very popular.78 Instead of being used for planning and rehearsing future operations, as in Germany, they were considered mainly as training devices. When Military Review, the official journal of the Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, published a condensed translation of a book of rules by a certain General von Cochenhausen in March 1941 they wrote that the game would provide commanders with the “semblance of actual battle.” It demanded “definite decisions and orders for the commitment of troops . . . within the realm of time and space, thereby leading to exactitude in troop leading.”79 Not a word was wasted on other possibilities.

  Until 1945 the most important wargaming center in the US was the Naval War College. The moving spirit was William McCarty Little, a friend and protégé of the College’s founder and first president, Admiral Stephen B. Luce.80 The first games were held in 1887, just three years after the institution opened its doors. Catching on quickly, during the 1890s they became extremely popular, attracting visits by senior officials from the Secretary of the Navy, Hilary Herbert, and the Assistant Secretary, Theodore Roosevelt, down. As so often, the inspiration was provided by the now famous German Kriegspiel which everybody else either imitated or adapted for his – not yet her – own purposes. Games were divided into duels, meaning ship against ship, tactical, meaning force against force, and strategic, meaning navy against navy. The latter two could be played either separately or together, as part of a single exercise.

  Ship-to-ship duels were “fought” with the aid of dice, but in tactical and strategic games the outcome of battles was decided with the aid of rather simple rules that reflected the numbers involved on each side. It was a question, in other words, of “getting there fustest with the mostest.” The larger the game the more challenging it was, intellectually speaking. Each game was followed, or at any rate was supposed to be followed, by a thorough analysis of what had gone right, what had gone wrong, and why. In Little’s own words, wargames were the only form of training which provided “[an] enemy, a live, vigorous enemy in the next room waiting feverishly to take advantages of any of our mistakes, ever ready to puncture any visionary scheme, to haul us down to earth.”81 To prevent players from learning more about their opponents than they should, separate rooms, screens and umpires were employed. All this made the games as valuable as, or more valuable than, any other form of fleet exercise.82