American Mission Command vs German Auftragstaktik

When considering the role that command philorophies played in the Battle of France, one must ask if our current concept of mission command matches Germany’s Auftragstaktik?

Taken at face value (commanders specify objective while leaving means up to individuals), mission command is brilliant for skirmishes as performed by the French Maquis and other insurgency forces. The mission goal and timeframe are set by de Gaulle or other distant allied commanders, the maquisards kill the bad guys and break their stuff, while semi-politicians like Jean Moulin endeavored to hold together the non-rural factions (the French Resistance, not the Maquis who operated primarily in rural areas). Given the perhaps romanticized psychology of the Maquis, as well as the necessity for decentralized organization and the faster OODA looping that comes from local control, mission command is a perfect match for them.

Vandergriff (2018) gives a more comprehensive description of Auftragstaktik – instead of focusing on command and control, he describes it primarily as a form of professionalism and cultural philosophy expected of all members of the German Army: “subordinates could be trusted to take the action he thought appropriate, rather than stopping and waiting until contact could be re-established. This aggressive attitude allowed units to take advantage of fleeting opportunities and local successes.”

Vandergriff (2018) goes on to identify three virtues that German officers required: “knowledge, independence, and the joy of taking responsibility.” These virtues are expressed in Innere Führung, which the German Major General Werner Widder (2002) describes as leadership and civic education and is the foundation of the relationship between the individual soldier and society.

Thus, Vandergriff’s virtues not only describe the character of German officers but makes Auftragstaktik a natural corollary instead of a forced doctrine: German professionalism implies mission command, but not necessarily the reverse.

It is interesting to note that while command and control has been official doctrine in the U.S. Army from 1980 (Kiser 2015), a set of corresponding virtues wasn’t released until 2023 in the Air Force’s doctrine on mission command. These virtues - character, competence, capability, cohesion, and capacity (U.S. Air Force, 2023) - show a maturation of U.S. doctrine to something closer to a complete version of Germany’s Auftragstaktik.

References

Kiser, A. J. (May 2015) “Mission command: The historical roots of mission command in the US Army.” Defense Technical Information Center. Last retrieved on 28 January 2024 from https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1001514.pdf

U.S. Air Force. (14 August 2023). “Air Force doctrine publication 1-1: Mission Command” Retrieved on 28 January 2024 from https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/AFDP_1-1/AFDP%201-1%20Mission%20Command.pdf

Vandergriff, D. E. (21 June 2018). “How the Germans defined Auftragstaktik: What mission command is – and – is not” Small Wars Journal. Retrieved 28 January 2024 from https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-germans-defined-auftragstaktik-what-mission-command-and-not

Widder, W. (2002). “Auftragstaktik and Innere Führung: Trademarks of German leadership” Military Review, September-October 2002. Retrieved on 28 January 2024 from https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot-Spots/docs/MC/MR-Sep-Oct-2002-Widder.pdf

Explaining Gamelin's Defeat at the Battle of France

General Maurice Gamelin’s hubris and self-delusion certainly played a role in France's defeat, but were those the only reasons for that defeat?

The willful ignorance of the geography and history surrounding the Ardennes Forest wasn’t limited to just a few military leaders but seemed to be widespread throughout the top levels of the French military. How did this institutional rot become so widespread? Here are two theories that may explain this:

1. The “blinded by science” theory: the French saw Germany’s use of blitzkrieg in the invasion of Poland in 1939, and they failed to grasp the significance of it. This is akin to when one chess player doesn’t understand his opponent’s strategy mid-game. The world was seeing a revolution in heavy mechanized warfare, and the French didn’t understand the scope of its applicability.
2. The “historical materialism theory”: during the interwar years, France was a hotbed of Marxist-influenced thought, and Marxists are extremely comfortable with revising history to fit their narrative. The result is that history becomes detached from reality and is instead grounded in wishful thinking and the eternal Year Zero. This may be why Gamelin discounted the results of the 1939 summer exercises – the historical materialist would say that what happened last year has no bearing on the present beyond the repositioning of economic classes, followed by even more word salad.

Both theories may be grasping at straws, and it would be very difficult to either prove or disprove them. A little scrap of information supporting the second theory comes from Pétain, who attributed the French defeat to “the work of 30 years of Marxism,” (Langer, 2013) but this can be his attempt to shift the blame. Another quote of his (Giannelia, 1941) is that “France will become again what she should never have ceased to be, an essentially agricultural nation. Like the giant of mythology, she will recover all her strength by contact with the soil,” thoughts that would be echoed by Pol Pot 30 years later.

References

Giannelia, P. (1941). “France returns to the soil”. Land and Freedom. Retrieved 28 Jan 2024 from https://cooperative-individualism.org/giannelia-pavlos_france-returns-to-the-soil-1941-jan-feb.htm

Langer, H. J. (2013). World War II: An encyclopedia of quotations. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Military Geography of Operation Sickle Cut

Introduction

Germany’s invasion of France in May and June of 1940 could cross the border at three locations: the Maginot Line, the Ardennes Forest, and the Plain of Flanders. The French considered the Maginot Line to be secure. They believed that Ardennes was impassible by German Panzers, and so they defended it with minimal forces. French General Maurice Gamelin thus designed his Dyle-Breda Plan to defend Flanders by amassing troops along the Franco-Belgian border.

Germany instead believed that Ardennes was a viable invasion route and so amassed Army Group A at the least-defended part of the border: the Ardennes Forest, while placing the smaller Army Group B at the Belgian border. This was the starting arrangement of the German forces according to General Erich von Manstein’s Case Yellow, also called Unternehmen Sichelschnitt – Operation Sickle Cut.

French and German War Plans at the Start of the Battle of France
From Galgano (2009)

Germany indeed attacked through Belgium, and the Allies responded by sending their forces into Flanders to repel Army Group B. Germany’s incursion into Belgium was feigning maneuver, however.

Almost simultaneously, Army Group A with its seven Panzer divisions entered the Ardennes Forest on 10 May, crossing it in only three days. Once on French soil, the Germans turned north and reached the English Channel by 21 May. This encircled the Allied forces at Flanders, trapping them against the English Channel. This also separated the Allied forces at Flanders from those assigned to defend central France, including Paris. A little over a month later, almost half of France was occupied, and the armistice and cease fire between France and Germany went into effect on 25 June.

Geographic Analysis: Physical Component

Galgano (2009) argues convincingly that the Ardennes Forest was the most pivotal geographic element at the start of the Battle of France. The Ardennes, with its dense forest, rugged hills, and deep gorges, made the forest difficult to cross, restricting travel mostly to roads running along river valleys. There is one part of Ardennes, however, through which heavy armor could pass: the Losheim Gap (Winters, Galloway & Reynolds, 2001, p. 49). The Germans used this gap at the start of the sickle cut, sending seven Panzer divisions into France on 10 May 1940.

A physical component that played a role at the end of the sickle cut is the English Channel, which worked as a barrier against which the Germans pinned the French, British, and Belgian forces. Besides forcing the Allies to evacuate their troops, the English Channel also served as the German's right flank as they continued their march westward through France.

Geographic Analysis: Cultural Component

The most important cultural component was the French General Staff’s attitude that the Ardennes was impossible to cross using heavy armor. The analysis of prior commanders lent credence to this: the WWI French General Charles Lanrezac is quoted as saying that "if you go into that deathtrap of the Ardennes, you will never come out" (Winters, Galloway & Reynolds, 2001, p. 48), and Marshal Pétain in 1934 called the Ardennes "impenetrable," but amended this by stating that "if any enemy attacked he would be pincered as he left the forest. This is not a dangerous sector," adding "as long as we make special provisions" (Jackson, 2004, p. 32) - those provisions presumably being support from the Belgian Army as well as the use of French troops trained at slowing or halting an advancing force. This latter option was viable, for "the terrain also decentralized offensive command and control while favoring small-unit defensive operations" (Winters, Galloway & Reynolds, 2001, p. 49).

The belief that the Ardennes was impenetrable by heavy armor had solidified before the start of WWII, as the French halted construction of the most fortified part of the Maginot Line south of Ardennes (Galgano, 2009). Even the French 1938 summer exercises in which a notional German force defeated French forces in Ardennes (Galgano, 2009) was not enough to challenge this dogma, as General Gamelin attributed this loss to a lack of adequate reserves. Galgano (2009) attributed Gamelin’s self-delusion to “an unconscionable sense of intellectual lethargy.”

The assumption that Ardennes was impassible was held by French commanders right up to the start of the Battle of France. Even when it was clear that Germany would attempt an invasion, the French side of the Ardennes Forest was guarded by a force used in an inappropriate manner by the commanders who placed them there, which Galgano (2009) dismisses as "second-rate" and the "worst divisions in the French Army." Further, the French apparently did not perform reconnaissance (either aerial or even basic ground patrols) to monitor activity on the German side of the Forest.

Conclusion

Would these military geographic components still be considered important today? The physical components that made the Ardennes difficult to penetrate are still there (except maybe for deforestation and modernized roadways), but physical impediments are made less important due to improvements in heavy armor technology and the ability to deliver such armor through means other than over-land. The English Channel is still of value for its ports and the proximity of the Lille industrial district. To any enemy of France, those ports and the Lille district continue to be assets worth controlling. The fact that the English Channel is a body of water will forever constrain the movement of ground forces. (Galgano & Palka, 2010, pp. 50)

It is not clear whether the cultural components would still be in place: WWI ended more than a century ago, and the military commanders that saw the Battles of Flanders (and desired not to see it repeated) are long gone, as were the commander who wanted to refight the previous war. The institutional dogma about the impenetrability of the Ardennes Forest by heavy armor may still be in place as a form of command inertia, either ignoring the history and geography of the Battle for France or by ignoring basic infantry skills in favor of "high tech" approaches to area denial.

References

Galgano, F. A. (2009). " Sichelschnitt ": A geographical analysis of a decisive campaign, France, May 1940. In P. Nathanail, B. Abrahart and R. Bradshaw (Eds.), The History and Technology of Military Geology and Geography, Nottingham, United Kingdom: Total Graphics, Ltd.

Galgano, F. & Palka, E.J. (2010). (Eds.). Modern military geography (1st ed.). Routledge.

Jackson, J. (2004). The fall of France: The Nazi invasion of 1940. OUP Oxford.

Winters, H.A., Galloway, G.A., & Reynolds, W.J. (2001). Battling the elements: Weather and terrain in the conduct of war. John Hopkins University Press.