Prussia's Use of Railways

Introduction

Europe in the Nineteenth Century was in flux: Napoleon Bonaparte’s star was in descent, and the Industrial Revolution was beginning to yield technical advances. This paper investigates how Europe’s armies adapted to this fluid situation.

We begin by considering how various European armies emulated the Grande Armeé under Napoleon, and how theoreticians analyzed his logistics systems.

Next, we examine how Prussia prepared for future wars and started to utilize railroads for military purposes. Leading the way in the latter was Friedrich List[1], a German economist who proposed that a network of railways could allow troops to concentrate over vast distances, and Helmuth von Moltke, who would later become the First Chief of the German General Staff.

Two campaigns of the Prussian army are then surveyed. As Moltke wrote, “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force,” and these two campaigns are examined with an eye to the logistics failures that were encountered. The commonalities of these difficulties are listed, and we conclude with a note that these types of failures continue to the present day.

Graf Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800 - 1891) in full uniform of a Generalfeldmarschall of Prussia

European Armies After Napoleon

Armies were trying to duplicate logistical aspects of the Grande Armeé even before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. For example, the Austrian army limited the amount of baggage authorized in 1799-1800 and again after the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz. As a result, the Austrian army was able to match the Grande Armeé’s marching performance in 1809[2].

Not everyone was seeking to emulate the Grande Armeé, however. The two primary critics of Napoleon were André de Roginat and Carl von Clausewitz.

André de Roginat argued[3] that Napoleon paid insufficient attention to lines of communication during his campaigns. While de Roginat believed that penetration deep into enemy territory could be successful when executed by small armies, he maintained that large armies faced problems due to their great need for subsistence, ammunition, and replacements. These problems forced the large invading army to live off the land, which resulted in desertions, indiscipline, and conflicts with the local population. De Roginat went as far as labeling the Austerlitz Campaign the “height of madness” due to the number of deaths by starvation, even though Austerlitz was Napoleon’s most successful campaign.

De Roginat proposed[4] an alternative to Napoleon’s reliance on magazines, requisitioning, and living off the land: the army was to be loaded with 8 days’ provisions and advance 30 to 40 leagues (90 to 120 miles). They would stop, take stock, then wait for the Armeé de Reserve to arrive. Stores would be accumulated, and a new base would be established. Once this was all complete, the process would repeat.

Von Clausewitz’s criticisms[5] were less specific. He acknowledged the speed of Napoleon’s troop movements and argued that the need to requisition supplies could cause delays comparable to those in a base supply system. He believed that the requisition system became more advantageous for longer distances, noting that war conducted by requisitions was superior to one by magazines.

Russians implemented reforms favoring requisitions starting in 1812, but commanders were unable or unwilling to follow, resulting in “much suffering” during the campaigns of 1828-1829 (against Turkey) and 1831 (against Poland). Russia introduced “ambulant magazines” in 1846 and established trains of bakeries and butcheries. These proved ineffective during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, and the result was “innumerable carcasses of men and horses lined the routes to Bulgaria and Sebastopol.”[6]

Prussia Prepares for War

Van Creveld describes Prussia’s logistics system as “sketchy” from 1814-1815[7]. There was no formal body of train officers until 1816, and even then, a body of NCOs was established. This remained until Wilhelm of Prussia wrote that logistics was the weakest part of the Prussian army. Reforms were initiated in 1853 to bolster the train system. This included designating a staff officer in each corps to create a “nuclei” of train personnel that would train 14 days per year. In 1856, these “nuclei” were expanded into battalions consisting of five provision columns, a field bakery, one main hospital, and four field hospitals.

As all this was happening, a product of the Industrial Age was making its debut: the railroad. The Prussian military was initially hesitant to use railroads, their hesitation being rooted in the fear that “good communications only made a country easier to overrun.”[8] The army even opposed commercial railroads. The Prussians took interest in railroads in 1848-1849 when moving troops by road became unsafe, for whatever reason.

In 1859, the first Eisenbahntruppe formation was established to make minor railroad repairs and to build small bridges, leaving larger work to civilian experts. They were expected to guard the rails was well as restore them; the task of guarding the rail was taken away from them in 1866.[9]

The importance of railroads became painfully apparent to Moltke as Austria was amassing forces along the border in 1866. Prussia was slow to mobilize due to Bismarck’s desire to avoid limiting diplomatic options until the last moment[10]. The five railways to the front allowed Moltke to rapidly deliver three Prussian armies and their supplies to the front. This arrangement worked well for Moltke, who had an unusual working definition of “concentration of forces”: concentration was “achieved not when men and units stood shoulder to shoulder on a given spot, but when the distance between units permitted their concentric cooperation and mutual support.” [11]

Prussian Campaign of 1866

As part of the Austro-Prussian War (also called the Seven Weeks War), the Prussian Campaign of 1866 revealed many problems in the train company organization[12]. Supply trains had to share the roads with infantry, cavalry, and artillery columns, with supply trains given lowest priority. Supply trains were thus separated from the troops they were supposed to supply. Further, unauthorized vehicles joined the supply trains, and individual vehicles rested on the roads, thus blocking them. Congestion became acute in defiles and other narrow passages.

In parallel with utilizing supply trains, the Prussians also employed railroads during this campaign. As mentioned above, Prussia was late in mobilizing but compensated for this by utilizing all five railways leading to the frontier. This enabled deployment along a 200-mile arc, giving rise to Moltke’s innovative “strategy of external lines,” a decentralized approach to maneuvering multiple armies toward a unified goal[13].

This campaign encountered significant logistical hurdles, particularly the “last mile” problem: while transporting supplies to railheads was efficient, distributing them from there to the troops proved far more challenging. To address this, Moltke brought his railway expert, Von Wartensleben, into the field, a decision that inadvertently stripped the supply system of centralized oversight. Without direction, corps quartermasters flooded the railheads with excessive supplies, sending forward vast quantities that overwhelmed the endpoints.

This lack of coordination led to severe congestion, with 17,900 tons of supplies trapped on the railway lines, unable to move forward or back. Rail cars, intended for transport, became makeshift storage units, causing bread to go stale, fodder to rot, and horses to starve as troops advanced beyond the reach of their lagging supply convoys. The breakdown exposed the limitations of relying heavily on railways without solving the final distribution stage. Van Creveld argues that, despite Prussia’s extensive use of rail, it did not significantly influence the campaign’s progress, as the system faltered under pressure. Compounding the issue, Prussian forces could not utilize Austrian railways, which were strategically blocked by fortresses, further limiting their logistical flexibility.

The Campaign of 1870 of the Franco-Prussian War

During the Campaign of 1870, the Prussians (now called Germans because of the unification) continued to use railroads, though they faced an opponent with a more advanced railway system. The French railway[14] was widely considered superior to Germany’s due to its purposeful strategic design, prioritizing military utility over commercial interests. In contrast to Germany’s "geometric network" of north-south and east-west lines, the French system featured lines running parallel to the frontier, connecting the major forts and forming a complex web of routes extending from a central hub. This configuration offered significant military flexibility, facilitating swift troop and supply movements along fortified borders and throughout the country. By focusing on defense and mobilization rather than compass directions, France gained a clear logistical advantage.

Still, Moltke was able to penetrate hundreds of miles into enemy territory. Prussian forces encountered similar problems to the Campaign of 1866: suppliers rushed materials forward without considering the unloading stations’ capacity to manage them. A shortage of unloaders, combined with the inability of the army’s horse-drawn transport columns to clear accumulating stock, exacerbated the problem. Local commanders worsened the situation by commandeering railway wagons to serve as temporary storage, leading to trains being backed up for hundreds of miles. To mitigate this, Moltke instructed his commanders to deploy cavalry to seize French wagons and locomotives, though these efforts were hampered by sabotage, further disrupting operations.

By the war’s end, the Prussians captured and operated 2,300 miles of French track.[15] This railway operation was marked by chaos, including frequent crashes, derailments, and even trains plunging into the Meuse River. These incidents stemmed from poor maintenance and the Germans’ lack of experience with the French railway system.

As a side note: just as the Campaign of 1866 inspired Moltke’s external lines strategy, the Campaign of 1870 inspired[16] Moltke’s Auftragstaktik, a command-and-control style that focuses on individual initiative. This is similar to the U.S. military’s concept of mission command but differs in that Auftragstaktik is based on the virtues of “knowledge, independence, and the joy of taking responsibility.”[17]

Common Failures

Despite the four years between the two campaigns, and even though railroads became more common, the same problems were encountered and remained unsolved.

The first difficulty encountered was the problem of unloading - how to rapidly remove supplies from a rail car? The standard way was to unload cargo from the side. The Prussian army experimented with wooden ramps to unload them from the rear instead of the side.[18]

Next, there is the problem of one-way tracks. Track can only have one train operating on it in a single section, and this entailed either having the tracks arranged in loops; or that trains could operate only as shuttles with loading and unloading at the ends of the segments; or that side rails be built to allow trains to pass each other; or that only one train was permitted to use the entire rail line. The latter is the most impractical approach. Unfortunately, Van Creveld does not indicate which method was adopted.

Breakdowns along the rail were a real possibility and were addressed by Moltke in his reforms of 1859 that created the Eisenbahntruppe. There was also the problem of sabotage. To address this, Moltke had hostages carried along in the locomotives to dissuade saboteurs.[19]

Then there is the problem of congestion. Breakdowns and sabotage accounted for some congestion, but the fundamental source is that more supplies were being sent than the transport method (train rails) or destination (railhead) could manage. Congestion can be mitigated by having the railhead signal to the rear the quantity of supplies they can manage. It isn’t clear what forms of communication existed along any individual line of Prussian military rail, but at the time couriers and semaphores were used and telegraphs were coming into use. The simplest form of communication – sending messages back to the rear carried by the railroad engineers – would have helped.

Finally, there is the “last mile problem.” This is a term from information technology and transportation logistics that describes how the delivery of goods or services becomes extremely difficult or expensive as the package nears its destination. In the situations encountered in the two campaigns discussed here, the last mile problem was exacerbated by the fact that the destinations are troops, and they are constantly in motion.

Conclusions

All the difficulties encountered during the two campaigns, especially the problem of congestion and the last mile problem, are still with us today. Anyone who drives during rush hour has encountered congestion; anyone whose plane had to circle an airport instead of landing has encountered congestion. The fact that delivering supplies to a distribution center takes a few large trucks, while getting packages to a customer’s home takes many delivery vans is an example of the last mile problem.

In a sense, Moltke made contact with universal phenomena, problems that the transition from supply trains to railroads did not solve, problems that continue to this day. Van Creveld discredits Moltke’s optimism for railways, stating that promised supplies didn’t catch up to the troops until after the major battles were won. During the Campaign of 1866, for example, the supply trains fell behind the troops on 29 June and did not catch up with them until after the Battle of Königgrätz was fought and won on 3 July 1866[20]. What Van Creveld misses, though, is that railways allowed for rapid concentration of troops and supplies before fighting began in both campaigns. He also underappreciated how, under Moltke, the Prussians captured and operated 2,300 miles of French track. Moltke was thus able to use the enemy’s own resources against itself.

Endnotes

[1] Lechner.
[2] Van Creveld, p. 75.
[3] Ibid, p. 75.
[4] Ibid, p. 76.
[5] Ibid, p. 76.
[6] Ibid, p. 77.
[7] Ibid, p. 77.
[8] Ibid, p. 82.
[9] Ibid, p. 91-92.
[10] Showalter, p. 63.
[11] Ibid, p. 62.
[12] Van Creveld, p. 80.
[13] Ibid, p. 84.
[14] Ibid, p. 86.
[15] Ibid, p. 96.
[16] Coumbe, p. 92-95.
[17] Vandergriff.
[18] Ibid, p. 83.
[19] Ibid, p. 96.
[20] Ibid, p. 80.

Bibliography

Coumbe, A. “Operational Command in the Franco-Prussian War.” U.S. Army War College, 1991. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA527978.pdf

Lechner, J. “Developments in Logistics after Napoleon.” [Video], n/d. https://libertyuniversity.instructure.com/courses/764197/pages/watch-developments-in-logistics-after-napoleon?module_item_id=83250132

Showalter, D. “Mass Multiplied by Impulsion: The Influence of Railroads on Prussian Planning for the Seven Weeks' War.” Military Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Apr. 1974), pp. 62-67. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1987237

Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Vandergriff, D. “How the Germans defined Auftragstaktik: What mission command is – and – is not.” Small Wars Journal, 21 June 2018. https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/how-germans-defined-auftragstaktik-what-mission-command-and-not

Napoleon’s Logistics Systems

Introduction

Napoleon Bonaparte, a military genius renowned for his strategic brilliance, faced some of the most defining moments of his career during the Austerlitz Campaign of 1805 and the Russian Campaign of 1812. These campaigns demonstrate both the heights of his logistical ingenuity and the limits of his ability to adapt to unforgiving environments.

This essay examines the logistical innovations implemented by Napoleon and the Grande Armée during those two campaigns. Following this, a quick comparison of two analyses of the defeat in Russia is made and a tentative alternative theory is proposed.

English translation of Charles Joseph Minard's 1869 figurative map of Napoleon's Russian Campaign. The thickness of the lines on top indicate the size of the Grande Armée, showing how it was decimated as it marched into and out of Moscow. The bottom line shows the temperatures the army encountered.
Graphic by DkEgy on Wikipedia.

The Austerlitz Campaign of 1805

During the War of the Third Coalition (1805-1806), Napoleon encountered one of the weaknesses of the magazine system when used for extended forays into enemy territory. It was a chicken-and-egg problem: the advancing troops required magazines ahead of them, but the magazines needed to be built and pre-stocked.

Napoleon solved this problem with a combination of logistics techniques: the head of the advancing troops would operate using supplies they carried, by wagon, or foraged. They then established magazines for use by the middle and tail of the advancing troops, as well as for the army on their return. These magazines would be stocked using a modified contribution system - instead of forcing the locals to contribute supplies to the army, the French would provide receipts that could later be redeemed. “Treat the inhabitants as if they were French”[1] was the idea.

Napoleon also established a series of relay stations after crossing the Rhine. Positioned every 15 to 18 miles, these secured stations established a line of communication. It was bidirectional: supplies moved from France to the advancing army, and sick, wounded, and prisoners were moved back into France.[2]  He created a second line of communication from Strasbourg to Augsburg. It was divided into seventeen sections, with 60 four-horse wagons operating between each. Van Creveld calculated that between 60 and 120 tons of clothing and ammunition could be shuttled per day in this manner.[3]

Van Creveld hints at a modification to the magazines themselves undertaken by Napoleon: instead of just being supply depots, they were also production locales: for example, Braunau was originally a depot that would bake 50K-60K rations per day in anticipation of a Russian advance. The Russians never came, so Braunau was converted to an advanced center of operations, where 100K rations per day were baked.[4]

Even with these modifications, Napoleon would be forced to modify his campaign: instead of passing through the Black Forest (sparsely populated and resource-poor), he would travel through the rich territories of Baden and Württemberg[5]. This indicates that it was still necessary to rely on foraging and plundering, even with these logistical improvements.

Regardless, Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz is considered a tactical masterpiece. As a result of the victory, the Third Coalition collapsed.

The Russian Campaign of 1812

Preparation for the Russian Campaign began over a year before it started: Napoleon had been collecting Intelligence since April 1811[6], he ordered rations, and he amassed ammunition. Earlier, in 1807, he established a military train service that replaced the civilian owned and operated wagons with military counterparts. He expanded this train service in preparation for the Russian Campaign, and he improved the logistics system in Poland through which his army must pass on its way to Moscow.

Napoleon still had to rely on foraging, but only as a supplement to the supplies that would be delivered via wagons and river barges.

The campaign encountered difficulties almost immediately: thunderstorms turned the roads into deep mud, hindering the movements of horses and wagons. The River Vilnya, which Napoleon relied on shipping supplies to Vilna, was too shallow. Laying ahead were further problems: “the country is so wooded that one has trouble to find room for a considerable number of troops”[7]. Finding water would also be difficult[8] for both France and Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia realized that given the size of the Grande Armée and the genius of its leader, to defeat Napoleon required using techniques that to a modern reader appear to be irregular warfare tactics. The French army could only be defeated by distance, climate, and supply. Thus, the Russian army retreated away from the oncoming Grande Armée towards Moscow and in fact had destroyed that city so as to leave nothing for Napoleon to plunder. Further, the Russians swept the fields adjacent to the roads, forcing the French to forage at a distance[9].

Napoleon was pursued by the Russian army, militias, and Cossacks as he retreated back towards France. Their target wasn’t the Grande Armée itself, but rather their logistics system. Napoleon was reduced to foraging, and the Tsar’s forces wanted to deny them even that: the Russians controlled the Grande Armée’s movements, pushing them to retreat along the same roads it used to enter Moscow - paths that were already foraged and stripped bare during Napoleon’s advance.

This was not only Napoleon’s first major defeat but also his most disastrous. Approximately one million military and civilian fatalities were recorded. The result was not only a numerically smaller and demoralized military, but it also marked the first stage of failure of Napoleon’s designs for European conquest.

Why the Defeat?

A defeat of the magnitude Napoleon experienced during the Russian Campaign is rightly the subject of numerous historical and military analyses. Van Creveld attributed it to logistics concerns:

First, the army’s supply vehicles proved too heavy for the Russian ‘roads’, a problem aggravated still further when thunderstorms during the first fortnight of the campaign turned them into bottomless quagmires.  Secondly, the river Vilnya, on which Napoleon had relied for shipping supplies to Vilna, turned out to be too shallow to allow the barges through. Thirdly, discipline in the army was lax, with the result that the troops plundered indiscriminately instead of carrying out orderly requisitions, the outcome being, paradoxically, that the officers - at any rate, those who refused to take part in such excesses - starved even when the men found enough to eat.  Furthermore, the troops’ indiscipline caused the inhabitants to flee, and made the establishment of a regular administration in the army’s rear impossible. Fourthly, some of the troops, notably the German ones, simply did not know how to help themselves. Finally, there was deliberate destruction by the Russians. This sometimes assumed disastrous proportions, e.g. early in July when Murat reported he was operating in ‘very rich country’ which, however, had been thoroughly plundered by the Tsar’s soldiers.[10]

Clausewitz provides a different list of factors that contributed to the defeat:

a. The uninterrupted movement in advance (120 miles in 81 days), which prevented all following of sick, wounded, or tired.
b. Continual bivouacking.
c. Very bad weather in the first five days.
d. Want of precaution in supply, which, so early as upon reaching Witebsk, caused the issue of flour in place of bread.
e. A very hot and dry summer in a country scantily watered.
f. The bloody and extravagant offensive tactic by which Buonaparte always endeavoured to overwhelm his adversary.
g. The great deficiency in hospital preparations, making impossible the recovery and restoration to their corps of sick and wounded, which, indeed, first showed itself during the great halt in Moscow.[11]

Suggested in both these lists are a number of intelligence failures: a lack of detailed maps[12], the depth of relevant rivers at the time of the campaign, the dry conditions near Moscow, the thick forest, the rainy weather and what it did to the roads, the presence of militias and Cossacks, the scorched-earth mindset of the Russians, and so on. Napoleon had been gathering intelligence since April 1811, but all this was missed. All these intelligence gaps would have been discovered in preparation for the campaign, had Napoleon dispatched scouts.

Conclusion

Napoleon implemented great advances in logistics, and through his example downplayed the importance of siege warfare. His modifications to the magazine system, and the improved contribution system, allowed him to move an army as large as the Grande Armée on to enemy soil. He invaded a country then built a logistics system behind him while also establishing multiple lines of communication. Napoleon was apparently the first to create a continually resupplied ammunition depot.[13]. His planning contributed to his success in the Battle of Austerlitz, but his defeat in the Russian Campaign showed that logistic planning was insufficient to guarantee victory.

Footnotes

[1] Van Creveld, p. 53.
[2] Ibid, p. 53.
[3] Ibid, p. 56-57.
[4] Ibid, p. 60.
[5] Ibid, p. 50.
[6] Ibid, p. 62.
[7] Clausewitz, p. 148.
[8] Ibid, p. 193.
[9] Ibid, p. 178.
[10] Van Creveld, p. 65-66.
[11] Clausewitz, p. 97.
[12] Ibid. p. 193.
[13] Van Creveld, p. 57.

Bibliography

Clausewitz, C. von. The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. London, 1843. https://clausewitzstudies.org/readings/1812/Clausewitz-CampaignOf1812inRussia-EllesmereTranslation.pdf

Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. 2nd ed. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

The Most Dangerous Form of Warfare

Introduction

Both symmetric and asymmetric warfare are dangerous, but to answer the question “what is the most dangerous form of warfare?” it is necessary to examine asymmetric warfare and its tactics. Once this is complete, a comprehensive and valid comparison can be made between symmetric and asymmetric warfare.

Characteristics

Asymmetric warfare is one where the two opponents have incomparable military strengths. Freedman¹ lists several qualities of the weaker party (guerrillas, insurgents, etc.): they are involved in a defensive war, fighting on home territory; they depend on popular support and use local knowledge of the terrain and other geographic factors; the insurgents employ a strategy of exhaustion, “gaining time on the hope that the enemy would tire or that something else would turn up.”

To all this it must be added that insurgents replace a traditional logistic system with popular support as well as “living off the enemy.”

Relation with Conventional Forces

None of the writers on asymmetric warfare – from theoreticians such as Clausewitz and Jomini, to practitioners such as von Lettow-Vorbeck, T.E. Lawrence, and Mao Tse-Tung – view an insurgency as effective by itself.

Tse-Tung saw⁶ guerrilla warfare as a “stop gap” until conventional forces could be stood-up: “during the progress of hostilities, guerrillas gradually develop into orthodox forces that operate in conjunction with other units of the regular army.”

T.E. Lawrence described³ guerrilla warfare as “…a war that might be won without fighting battles” and that the role of the Arab Revolt in WWI was a “side-show of a side-show”. He summarized the lack of conventional support by noting that “we had no base machinery, no formal staff, no clerks, no government, no telegraphs, no public opinion, no troops of British nationality, no honour, no conventions.”

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, in using guerrilla warfare in German East Africa during WWI, asked⁴ whether “it was possible for us in our subsidiary theatre of war to exercise any influence on the great decision at home.” His plan was to draw Allied forces away from Europe, and to do that “it was necessary, not to split up our small available forces in local defense, but, on the contrary, to keep them together, to grip the enemy by the throat and force him to employ his forces for self-defense.” He was able to do this for the duration of that war.

Asymmetrical Warfare Tactics

The tactics used by insurgents follow from their relative weakness: they do not have comparable weapon systems, nor do they have a stable base of operations. The general tactic used has been described⁵ by William S. Lind as the "DOCA loop” - disperse, orient, concentrate, act. Being dispersed except when executing an operation gives the guerrilla force survivability, whereas concentration gives the force the ability to focus its power on a target which a single insurgent cannot alone bring to bear.

What should these targets be? “The enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points,” Tse-Tung writes⁶, “and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted, and annihilated.” The insurgency must thus compensate for his lack of firepower with ingenuity in attacking the enemy’s communication and supply lines, as well as other weaknesses.

What is the Most Dangerous Form of Warfare?

Several metrics can be used to determine how dangerous a particular form warfare is:

• Number of combatant casualties
• Number of civilian casualties
• Infrastructure damage
• Economic cost
• Loss of freedoms
• Loss of political will or even destabilization of political system
• Prolongation of the war
• Reputation of the country doing the conventional fighting
• Destructiveness of the weapons used

In conventional warfare, civilian and combatant casualties are always present. Indiscriminate civilian deaths have decreased considerably with the recent availability of precision-guided weapons. Still there are non-combatant casualties. With asymmetric warfare, the primary targets of the insurgents are enemy soldiers and collaborators. The number of deaths is far fewer, to the point where the taking of a life by an insurgent is closer to targeted assassination than to indiscriminate killing.

Infrastructure has been a target in both symmetric and asymmetric warfare. In asymmetric warfare, when an attack on infrastructure fails, the insurgents either try again or move to the next target. Compare this with how failed infrastructure attacks evolve in conventional war. The “Bomber Mafia”² (a group of USAAF commanders who advocated using long-range heavy bombers to defeat Nazi Germany) wanted to use precision bombing against German industries and military targets; when this plan proved unworkable, they switched to using area incendiary weapons against cities in Japan.

The loss of freedom through conscription, taxation, inward-pointing intelligence services, propaganda, and media manipulation have always been higher in conventional warfare. This damages the reputation of the country doing conventional fighting, weakening its presence on the international stage as well as damaging the political will (the consent) of the populace. Propaganda is also part of asymmetrical warfare, but it is aimed only against the conventional opponent.

While the longest wars in American history were asymmetric wars - the War in Afghanistan and the Vietnam War (lasting just under 20 years each) - there have been conventional wars that lasted far longer, such as the Roman-Germanic Wars (708 years). The most prolonged conventional war was the Reconquista, which lasted for 781 years.

Finally, the destructive power of the weapons used must be compared. Nuclear weapons have been used in conventional wars, as has mustard gas and other chemical agents. There are no analogs in asymmetric warfare.

For these reasons, conventional wars are the most dangerous. They are the costliest in terms of life, treasury, and political freedoms.

References

1. Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press.

2. Gladwell, M. (2021). The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War. Little, Brown, and Company.

3. Lawrence, T.E., (1920) The Evolution of a Revolt. Praetorian Press.

4. Lettow-Vorbeck, P. v. (2022). My Reminiscences of East Africa. Good Press.

5. Lind, W. S. & Thiele, G. A. (2015). 4th Generation Warfare Handbook. Castalia House. Retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://ia802901.us.archive.org/27/items/4thGenerationWarfareHandbookWilliamS.Lind28129/4th_Generation_Warfare_Handbook_-_William_S._Lind%25281%2529.pdf

6. Tse-Tung, M. (2015). Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, Samuel B. Griffith, trans. Hauraki Publishing.

Introduction to Symmetrical Warfare

To understand asymmetrical warfare, it is necessary to understand symmetrical warfare. Taken at face value, the phrase “symmetrical warfare” is warfare where the opponents have comparable military power and use similar tactics. But this is not what it really means!

Symmetrical warfare is where both sides use conventional tactics and strategies – they follow the “standard way of doing business.” Symmetric warfare is:

• Instigated and directed by sovereign powers (state actors)
• Seen as a “continuation of policy by other means.” (Clausewitz, Book 1 Ch. 1)
• Both sides have some sort of military force already in existence, with sufficient provisions (Tzu, Ch. 2)
• These military forces are hierarchically organized.
• For modern symmetric wars, both sides use supply chain logistic systems.
• Object is to destroy the enemy’s military capability (to win as opposed to “not lose”) at minimal cost. (Clausewitz, Book 3 Ch. 14)
• Lack of serious domestic opposition
• Both have the capability of attacking, invading, and occupying the other’s territory.
• There are clearly defined battle fields (“fronts”)
• There is a (more or less) clear separation between civilians and combatants.
• Targets are the enemy’s combatants, territory, and infrastructure (as opposed to political or psychological “targets,” e.g. “will to fight”)
• Both sides wish to avoid enemy escalation

There are a wide variety of tactics used in symmetrical warfare, broadly:

• Multi-modal attacks (land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace)
• Reliance on technological advancements
• Optimized logistic networks.
• Use of frontal offenses (not engaging in “hit and run” attacks)
• Close physical proximity for extended periods of time
• Discretize actions into battles and campaigns.

The United States has participated in both symmetric and asymmetric wars, using either conventional or irregular fighting styles. The paragon of symmetric warfare would for the US be World War II. The Korean War is an example of asymmetric warfare where the US used conventional fighting styles against an enemy who used unconventional means. Against the North Vietnamese, the US used both conventional and irregular fighting styles through the Special Forces. Examples where the US used unconventional tactics were the Revolutionary War and parts of the War of 1812.

An example of a war that transitioned from symmetric to asymmetric would be the second Iraq War – it was symmetric for a few months following the invasion in 2003 then became asymmetrical as the insurgency began. There are signs that the Russia-Ukraine War is undergoing a similar transition (Aslan, 2023).

References

Aslan, Murat. (2023). “Symmetric and Asymmetric Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War”. Politics Today. Retrieved 20 March 2024 from https://politicstoday.org/symmetric-and-asymmetric-warfare-russia-ukraine-war/

Clausewitz, Carl von, (1989). On War. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans. Princeton University Press.

Tzu, Sun. (2020). The Art of War: A New Translation by Michael Nylan. W. W. Norton & Company.