Wargames
Page 31
100 The caricatures are reproduced in H. Dollinger, Wenn die Soldaten, Munich: Bruckman, 1974, pp. 43, 49.
101 F. Engels, Anti-Duehring: Herr Eugen Duehring’s Revolution in Science, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954 [1878], pp. 188–98.
102 F. Foch, Les principes de la guerre, 5th edn, Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1918, pp. viii−ix; E. Ludendorff, The Nation at War, London: Hutchinson, 1936, pp. 11–24.
103 On the constituents of national power as they were understood during those years, see H. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1948, pp. 115–64.
104 See M. van Creveld, Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Conflict, New York: Free Press, 1993, pp. 32–65.
105 A. H. D. von Buelow, Geist des neuern Kriegsystem, Hamburg: Hofman, 1799; A. H. de Jomini, Précis de l’art de la guerre, Paris, 1838.
106 Clausewitz, On War, pp. 133–6, 214.
107 H. von Moltke, Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente, Stuttgart: Der Kommende Tag, 1922, pp. 349–50.
108 See Shenk, The Immortal Game, pp. 171–7; and Brady, Endgame, pp. 145–8.
109 W. Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff, New York: Praeger, 1953, p. 237.
110 See F. Von Rabenau, Seeckt, Leipzig: Hasse & Koehler, 1940, pp. 228–9.
111 See on this J. Wallach, Kriegstheorien: ihre Entwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/Main: Bernard & Greafe, 1965, pp. 84–6, 95–101.
112 G. Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter, London: Allen Lane, 1972, vol. II, pp. 193–206.
113 Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, pp. 28–9.
114 D. Blasius, Buergerkrieg und Politik: Weimars Ende, 1930–1932, Goettingen: Vanderhoek, 2006, pp. 126–43.
115 Hoffmann, German Army War Games, p. 27.
116 McHugh, Fundamentals of Wargaming, pp. 2–18.
117 See on him Allen, War Games, pp. 148–52, as well as Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, pp. 54–5.
118 H. Goldhammer and H. Speier, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” World Politics, 12, 1, October 1959, p. 77.
119 See, on the way it was (and is) done, W. M. Jones, On Free-Form Gaming, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1985 , available at: www.rc.rand.org/pubs/notes/2007/N2322.pdf; S. Ghamari-Tarbrizi, “Simulating the Unthinkable: Gaming Future War in the 1950s and 1960s,” Social Studies of Science, 30, 2, April 2000, pp. 172–6 ; and S. F. Griffin, The Crisis Game, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965, pp. 71–86.
120 Allen, War Games, p. 310; Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, pp. 52–3.
121 J. McDonald, “Secret Weapons: Theory of Games,” Science Digest, December 1960, p. 7; M. de Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, New York: Swerve, 1991, pp. 87, 97.
122 B. O’Neill, “A Survey of Game Theory Models on Peace and War,” 1990, pp. 1, 3, available at: http://pi.library.yorku.ca/dspace-jspui/bitstream/10315/1425/1/YCI0083.pdf.
123 Quoted in E. van Damme, “On the State of the Art in Game Theory: An Interview with Robert Aumann,” Games and Economic Behavior, 24, 1998, p. 184.
124 L. Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, New York: St. Martin’s, 1983, pp. 182–9 , and M. Nicholson, “Games and Simulation,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 3, 3, December 1980, p. 82.
125 Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, p. 151.
126 Nicholson, “Games and Simulation,” p. 85.
127 Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, p. 55.
128 Ghamari-Tarbrizi, “Simulating the Unthinkable,” p. 172.
129 Caffrey, “Toward a History-Based Doctrine of Wargaming,” p. 48.
130 See, for this and what follows, Allen, War Games, pp. 151–2.
131 Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, p. 52.
132 See H. Averch and M. Lavin, Simulation of Decision-Making in Crisis, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1964, pp. 30–1 , available at: http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai%3Fverb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0605476.
133 T. C. Schelling, “An Uninhibited Sales Pitch for Crisis Gaming,” in R. Levine, T. C. Schelling, and W. Jones, Crisis Games 27 Years Later, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1991 [1965], p. 23.
134 Allen, War Games, pp. 196–7.
135 Ibid., pp. 198–208.
136 N. Tannenwald, “Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 29, 4, August 2002, pp. 681–2.
137 See on this debate R. A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, pp. 174–211; M. Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam, New York: Free Press, 1989; and H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, New York: Harper, 1998.
138 D. A. Rosenberg, “Being ‘Red’: The Challenge of Taking the Soviet Side in War Games at the Naval War College,” Naval War College Review, 41, Winter 1988, pp. 86–92.
139 Dunnigan, Wargames Handbook, p. 346; Allen, War Games, p. 288.
140 B. Hay and R. H. Gile, Global War Game: The First Five Years, Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1993 , “Note for readers” and passim.
141 D. Delillo, Underworld, New York: Scribner, 1997, p. 421.
142 R. H. Gile, Global War Game: Second Series, Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2004, p. 11.
143 Ibid., pp. 127–8.
144 See J. Baylis, “NATO’s Strategy: The Case for a New Strategic Concept,” International Affairs, 64, 1, Winter 1987, p. 44. It is only fair to add that Rogers was not specifically referring to the wargames.
145 Gile, Global War Game: Second Series, p. 85.
146 See D. Ford, The Button: The Pentagon’s Command and Control System, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985, pp. 90–3.
147 Allen, War Games, pp. 220, 250.
148 Gile, Global War Game: Second Series, pp. 37–67.
149 See E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991, New York: Vintage, 1996.
5 From bloody games to bloodless wars
Toil and sweat (but no blood)
As Clausewitz never tires of telling us, combat is the very essence of war. Paradoxical as it sounds at first sight, the same may be even more true of wargames. Throughout history, the intricacies of higher strategy, intelligence, logistics, command and control, and similar aspects of war have only appealed to a relative handful of people. Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, for every person who took an interest in the above-mentioned fields, a hundred roared their heads off as blows were delivered and parried, blood was shed, and some combatants stood triumphant even as others went down to defeat. To be sure, there have always been some wargames, such as chess and its relatives, which did not involve physical combat and focused on the more intellectual aspects of war instead. That was precisely why they never became nearly as popular, or generated nearly as much excitement, as their bigger brothers did.
The spread of firearms put an end to the great fights/nothing fights, agona, ludi, jeux, Ritterspiele, jousts, or whatever else the more violent wargames were called. For almost five hundred years after that, violent wargames were not two-sided and two-sided wargames were not violent. What weapons could still be used in the latter tended to be rather childish, as when early nineteenth-century Prussian troops facing each other in mock battle used clappers to simulate the sound of musket-fire,1 and when H. G. Wells enlisted children’s toy guns to help him play among fortifications made out of volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica strategically positioned on the floor. It was only the spread of simulators and shooter-type computer games – as we shall see, the two, originally separate, ended by becoming practically the same – from the 1960s on that finally enabled two-sided games to become violent again: albeit only in the form of blips “firing” at other blips on the screen.
Furthermore, war has always been the domain of thirst, hunger, heat, cold, discomfort, and fatigue. Whoever cannot cope with these factors need not try his or her hand at it. Surprising as it may appear to some, technological progress has done remarkably little to change this fact. In most
wars, for every pilot and other soldier-technician whose weapon system is almost indistinguishable from the machine that simulates it there are perhaps a hundred grunts on the ground. Carrying a heavy pack – given the computers and batteries needed to realize the vision of a “networked army,” recently packs have become heavier, not lighter – they gasp for breath as they enter combat.2 Nor does it look as if things are about to change. If, as some believe, future warfare will be overwhelmingly urban, then it may well become physically more grueling still.3
Two-sided wargames that are held in the field, thus providing at least a semblance of the fatigues of war, are known as maneuvers. Originally the term meant the various ways in which a commander could deploy and move his troops prior to, into, and during combat.4 Later it also came to stand for a two-sided military exercise, and it is in this sense that the term will be used on the following pages. Remarkably little has been written on maneuvers, and their origins remains somewhat of a mystery. Xenophon in his Cyropaedia, the work in which he describes the ideal king as he raises and trains the ideal army, may be referring to something of the sort.5 However, it is impossible to be sure. The same applies to the famous passage in the first-century AD Jewish-Roman historian Josephus where he says that Roman military exercises were bloodless wars and Roman exercises bloody games.6 Behourds, assuming they represented some form of riding exercises in which two sides were made to operate against one another without the use of sharp weapons, may also have fallen into this category. Certainly neither Machiavelli in his Art of War nor any of the numerous seventeenth-century drill books refer to maneuvers in our sense of the term.
Equally certainly, eighteenth-century commanders with their standing armies did hold large-scale exercises, often on an annual basis. The favored season for doing so was the autumn, by which time the harvest would have been brought in. September, incidentally, has remained the favorite season for maneuvers right down to the present day. Major exercises might last as long as a couple of weeks. In them thousands and even tens of thousands of troops, carrying full pack and equipped as if for war, took to the field and were put through their paces. One drill-book after another was published, going into minute detail as to the best formations to be adopted and advocating this system or that.7 Following the outstanding performance of the Prussian Army during the Seven Years War (1756–63) its exercises were held in particularly high regard. It was during that period that the word “maneuver,” specifically referring not only to troop movements in general but to those carried out as part of a training schedule, came into vogue. The objective was to allow both the troops and their commanders to practice the complicated evolutions that the tactics of the age demanded.
Yet little in the contemporary literature indicates that the exercises in question were meant to provide a more or less realistic simulation of a two-sided conflict. Instead, what stands out above all is their highly artificial nature. Much of this had more to do with the need to maintain discipline and present the world with a pretty picture of troops acting and marching like robots than with serious preparation for war. As one contemporary story had it, Gustavus Adolphus, while welcoming one particularly exacting eighteenth-century drillmaster to wherever commanders go after their death, commented that he had not been aware that, since he himself had been killed at Luetzen in 1632, the world had been made flat.8 As if to emphasize the total lack of realism, on one occasion Frederick II himself was treated to the spectacle of a battalion turning on its own axis, like a top, in the center of the market-square at Magdeburg.9 Much later, incidentally, forming a swastika and having it turn in the same way became a much beloved exercise among the Hitler Youth. When Napoleon said that Frederick had been cheating and that the annual Prussian maneuvers at Potsdam were merely meant to mislead the curious foreigners who flocked to watch them, he may well have had a point.10
Discussing friction, Clausewitz says that peacetime maneuvers only provide a pale reflection of the reality of war. But whether he was thinking of one- or two-sided exercises is not clear from his work.11 Large-scale, two-sided maneuvers by divisions and even entire corps appear to have been a nineteenth-century innovation. While their precise origins are hard to trace, probably the factor that really made them possible was the rise of the railroads for war and conquest. Certainly by the last decades of the century every major army was holding them on a more or less regular basis. The major exception was the British one which only acquired the necessary land on Salisbury Plain in 1898.12 Even so, British maneuvers remained relatively puny. For example, those of 1898 seem to have involved about 33,000 men, corresponding to the wartime strength of one corps and not of two as the scenario demanded. One division, the second, was represented by exactly 767 commissioned and non-commissioned personnel, forming the real-life equivalent of less than two battalions.13 Only in 1909 did anyone actually see a full British division taking the field at war strength, and even later most maneuvers were held on a considerably smaller scale.14
A fairly good idea of the way large-scale maneuvers were planned and executed may be obtained from a German publication entitled Bestimmungen fuer das Kaisermanoever 1908 (“Instructions for the Imperial Maneuvers, 1908”). The volume was prepared and issued by the headquarters staff (Generalkommando) of the XVIth Army Corps. It consists of about a hundred closely printed pages (in Gothic letters), plus several appendices.15 Subordinated to the XVIth Corps were two infantry divisions, the 33rd and the 34th, as well as “A” cavalry division. However, normally the number of corps participating in the maneuvers each year was four, two on each side. If that applied to those of 1908 too, then the forces assembled for the occasion must have totaled around 180,000 men, fully one-quarter of the entire peacetime army.
Normally the maneuvers were held in a different part of the country each year. Now East Prussia, now Silesia (both of which might become the objects of a Russian invasion from Poland), now the northwestern German plain was selected. The 1908 “theater of war” consisted of northern Lorraine, a hilly region that had seen much fighting during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. Having since been annexed to Germany, most people expected it to become the scene of fighting in the next war, too. However, depots and field hospitals were also set up much further east in Germany proper. The entire gigantic piece of theater was supposed to last for five days. Of these, the first and the last were devoted to approach marches and cleaning up, respectively.
The general outline having been determined, the document went on to deal with the necessary administrative arrangements. They included umpires, who were subject to specially issued regulations and were recognizable by their armbands; the disposition of formations and units, media contacts, uniforms and equipment, command and control, quarters, and supplies; the mail service, sanitary service, veterinary service, and much more. The responsible staffs were told to run all these as they would in real war and even to maintain war diaries as they did so. Specific provisions were made in case a sudden emergency required that the exercise be broken off. Unfortunately for the historian, the document does not explain the scenario (known, at the time, as a “general hypothesis,” which was divided into “special hypotheses”) for the maneuvers, which was kept secret and only distributed to the participants at the last possible moment. All it says is that, the scenario having been issued and “a state of war” declared, the various units, headquarters, and staffs were supposed to operate independently, following their own plans and estimates of the situation.16
Formally speaking, overall direction was in the hands of the emperor who was scheduled to take up quarters at Schloss (palace) Urville, not far from Metz. From there he and his suite would move around “exclusively by motor vehicle.” A balloon was even used to mark his location at all times. Earlier in his reign William used to command one side in person, always ending the maneuvers with a grand cavalry charge and always emerging victorious against generals who did not, could not, do anything to shatter their master’s delusions. However, by this time he ha
d been persuaded to cease doing so, with the result that his role was limited to visiting, inspecting, making speeches, and handing out decorations to those who had done best at various competitions such as riding and shooting. Still he remained very fond of maneuvers, causing a subsequent observer to comment that he much preferred them to war.17
To honor William, a special “Kaisermaneuvermarsch” was composed and presumably performed by some of the Imperial Army’s 560 bands.18 In Germany and elsewhere maneuvers tended to be festive occasions. They attracted swarms of observers, both unofficial and official. For example, in 1873, 150,000 people flocked to watch the rather small British maneuvers held at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. They behaved as if they were attending a fair, complete with stalls that sold food, drink, and souvenirs. Dignitaries of every sort did the same. Churchill twice attended the German maneuvers, once in 1906 and once 1908. In 1910 Emperor William personally invited former US President Teddy Roosevelt to do the same. Later, to commemorate the occasion, he presented his guest with signed pictures of the two of them on horseback, reviewing troops.19 The guest of honor at the 1937 Wehrmacht maneuvers to be discussed below was none other than Italy’s Duce, Benito Mussolini. Wherever maneuvers were held, all this publicity entailed the risk that participants, senior ones in particular, instead of focusing on their tasks, would use the exercise to curry favor with their superiors, politicians, and the press.