Abstract
Matthias Strohn, The German Army and the Defence of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle 1918–1939, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010; xiii + 277 pp.; US$95.00/£55.00 hbk; ISBN 9780521191999
On 12 November 1929, General Hermann Geyer, head of the Truppenamt’s army office, succinctly described the strategic dilemma facing the Reichswehr: ‘even if the Poles, Czechs, Belgian, Italians or French come alone, we cannot defend our borders, cannot even fight to gain time, without having to fear a military catastrophe in a short period of time’ (183). Geyer’s concern highlights the most pressing issue facing German military leaders during the interwar era: the defense of the Reich.
In this cogently argued monograph, Matthias Strohn begins his examination of German military thought by detailing the development of defensive doctrine from Clausewitz up through the First World War. An important theme that emerged during this formative period and continued throughout the history of the Prusso–German army was its emphasis on the tactical or operational offensive in service of the defensive. This reflected the army’s traditional belief that recognized the importance of the defensive, yet held that it alone could not secure final victory. This subtly shifted during the late nineteenth century as Helmut von Moltke the Elder acknowledged the importance of the tactical defensive due to advances in firepower, but, as 1914 approached, his successors reverted to a more aggressive policy and believed that Germany ‘had to choose the strategic, operational and tactical offensive if it was to prevail in a major European war’ (28).
The experiences of the First World War demonstrated the utter bankruptcy of German defensive doctrine and forced first Erich von Falkenhayn and then the Paul von Hindenburg–Erich Ludendorff duumvirate to revise significantly the static defensive principles that predominated at the tactical level. Strohn identifies the resulting developments as ones that closely corresponded to Clausewitz’s formulations on the importance of the tactical offensive within the larger strategic defensive. Thus, while the Germans fought the battles of Chemin des Dames and the Third Battle of Ypres defensively, they stressed the importance of flexibility and mobility to maintain the local initiative on the battlefield.
Three key figures emerge in Strohn’s examination of the Reichswehr: William Groener, Hans von Seeckt, and Ludwig Beck. The former realistically appraised interwar Germany’s strategic situation, as he clearly recognized the futility of armed conflict. Nonetheless, he believed that in case of war, only a combination of the tactical offensive and the strategic defensive offered Germany a slim chance of defending the state. Even in the darkest days of Weimar, the Army’s reliance on the offensive to secure the Reich remained intact. Groener’s realism, however, was soon replaced by the Seeckt era, which Strohn tellingly describes as the ‘years of ignorance’ (87).
The manual developed in 1921–3, Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen, clearly indicated Seeckt’s focus on offensive operations at the expense of the defensive. He looked to construct a small, professional and technologically advanced mobile army to carry out offensive operations. While defensive thinking did appear in the document, it focused on measures designed for an ill-trained militia to carry out, and this meant positional warfare replaced the mobile defensive for the mass of armed German forces; in other words, the defense-in-depth system developed during the latter years of the First World War was now discarded. As Strohn points out, Seeckt’s notions of warfare served as the basis for German success during the Second World War, but they were completely unsuited to the strategic situation facing the Reich during the 1920s, as the 1923 Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr made clear.
According to Strohn, ‘the German army was too weak to achieve even limited victories against the French’ (137), and this led numerous officers to criticize ‘the building of castles in air’ (140) that characterized Seeckt’s vision. While Joachim von Stülpnagel’s call for People’s War, or wholesale guerilla war against invaders, was the most striking example of the Reichswehr’s shift away from Seeckt’s ideas, the army also tried to improve its potential by working more closely with the civilian government. The army that had existed under Seeckt’s leadership as a relatively independent institution now became much more amenable to serving as ‘a tool for the political leadership’ following his dismissal in 1926 (182).
Most importantly from a purely military perspective, the new 1933–4 Truppenführung regulations replaced the earlier manual and demanded a newfound emphasis on the defensive; as Strohn notes, ‘defense was no longer simply a prerequisite for the vital attack; the functional subordination to the attack was no longer as apparent as before’ (188). Ludwig Beck, later Chief of the German General Staff, was the individual most responsible for the new manual, and he resurrected Groener’s realism concerning Germany’s relative power on the continent. Beck’s adamant belief that the German army was simply too weak to engage in combat was not seconded by the much more aggressive Nazi leadership, and it was the clash over the impending invasion of Czechoslovakia that led to Beck’s resignation in 1938.
Strohn’s stimulating study of German military thought during the interwar period ably tracks the development of a defensive doctrine in which the offensive remained paramount at the tactical level. It will appeal not only to military historians interested in the nuts and bolts of the tactical defensive but also to scholars more generally interested in military decision making and diplomacy during the interwar period.