Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II

6. Education, Culture, and Consequences

181 After the overwhelmingly successful wars of German unification, the U.S. Army switched its focus completely from the French to the vic­ torious Prussian/German Army. The American officers also changed their priorities from matters of equipment and weaponry to the supposedly war­ winning institution of the Great General Staff. They got it all wrong. Though it is evident that an army needs a top planning institution, such an organization does not guarantee success or superiority. Even when staffed with professionally trained officers, it will show only aver­ age performance—or even harm the war effort—if there is not out­ standing leadership in the highest positions. It is no coincidence that two of the greatest chiefs of staff ever, Moltke the Elder and George C. Marshall, were lauded for a trait they shared—common sense. The German Great General Staff saw a steady steep decline in performance after its founder and mentor, Moltke the Elder, retired. His successors tried in vain to emulate the habits and outward appear­ ance of the great old man but failed miserably in their basic tasks—to provide leadership, strategic planning skills, and sound advice for the six Education, Culture, and Consequences “If, in order to succeed in an enterprise, I were obliged to choose between 50 deer commanded by a lion or 50 lions commanded by a deer, I should consider myself more certain of success with the first group than with the second.”1 —SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL “Rules are for fools.”2 —GENERALOBERST KURT FREIHERR VON HAMMERSTEIN-EQUORD, commander in chief of the Reichswehr, 1930–1934 182 Command Culture head of state—until the whole organization collapsed in the apocalyp­ tic defeat of a two­front­war, which every sane staff officer would have thought to prevent with all his might. While so focused on the supposedly mighty planning organization, the observing American officers missed the small things that counted for much more in the German excellence in war. A sophisticated and nearly scientific officer education system was in place, focusing primarily on com­ mand, tactics, and leadership abilities. The German officer procurement and training system was of paramount importance to the army and worked under totally different premises then the American system. Whereas in the United States the officer was one cog among others in thehugemachine,onememberofthevastteam,inGermanytheofficerwas consideredtheswitchtothemachineoritswholepowersource.Accordingly, the utmost care was taken in selecting officers and no costs were too high or challenges too great. Indeed, during several army expansions in the his­ tory of Prussia and Germany, it was argued correctly that it was better to have a smaller army well led than more manpower but a mediocre officer corps.3 Duringtheriseofmassarmiesandthesupposedlyincreasingimpor­ tance of deployment speed over tactical and strategical flexibility, the Ger­ mans were forced to make amendments when they expanded their army, but the heritage and idea of the officer remained the same until 1942.4 Paradoxically,youngGermansgrewupinahighlyauthoritariansoci­ ety but would go through an advanced and nearly “liberal” professional mil­ itary educational system. Already at the Kadettenschule, rewards were used instead of punishment to get performance from the youngsters and these rewards—freedom, privileges, and entertainment—appealed directly to a teenager’s mind. The reverse was true for young Americans aspiring to become offi­ cers. They would grow up in a society that would grant them the greatest freedom in the world—as long as they were white—but they would sub­ mit to an extremely harsh and narrow­minded military educational sys­ tem when they decided to become cadets and attend a military academy. No American cadet had a chance to escape the four­year system whose hierarchy was set in stone and whose “greatest failing was in the area of practical leadership development among the upper classes. Like its coun­ Education, Culture, and Consequences 183 terpart in the preceding period, it cloaked the weak upperclassman with an authority which he neither merited nor knew how to use.”5 Those who survived the insults, humiliations, and sometimes out­ right torture of the first year would automatically become superiors to the younger cadets entering the academy after them and so on. At the Kadettenschulen by the beginning of the twentieth century, the hazing had by all accounts been eradicated because it ruined the cornerstone of Ger­ man officership—the officer as role model and comrade. In addition, the famous Auftragstaktik had been introduced into the army and, to employ it efficiently...