The Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

Author:William S. Lind [Lind, William S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Castalia House
Published: 2014-11-14T08:00:00+00:00

“Strafe the antiaircraft positions.”

They tried that. Didn't work. What do you do now?

The lieutenant landed his ME-110s on the enemy-held airfield, pulled them up with the heavy nose-guns to the Norwegians positions and hosed them. He turned his fighters into tanks. All that counts is getting the result. How is up to you.

That kind of move is how you win the Iron Cross. I don't know if he did, but he should have. It wasn't by falling on a grenade and saving the commander. It was by seeing a situation for which you are totally unprepared, thinking, high-up, what's the result we're trying to get, not just for me, but levels up, and acting in a way that makes that happen.

In 1914, this Prussian-German Army with this outward-focus culture that is highly decentralized and accustomed to mission-type orders, and prefers initiative to obedience, hits the trenches. They spoke of the inherent right of the lieutenant to make rash, brash mistakes... but only rash, brash mistakes. The lieutenant who sat there with his thumb up his butt was clearly not officer material. And specifically prefers self-discipline to imposed discipline; the German training literature in World War II says that imposed discipline is useful, if at all, only in the earliest stages of training. This kind of military doesn't sit around waiting to be told what to do. Everybody starts experimenting.

Any of you ever used a flamethrower? Ever seen one? Invented by a bunch of reserve firemen from Leipzig. Everyone is experimenting. There's a captain sitting back in the German headquarters in the west who is collecting what these guys are trying, because when they get something, they write it up and pass the information around. Not just up, but laterally. Division newspapers and things, it's all being passed around laterally. This kind of military has tons of lateral, not hierarchical communication. And this captain, he's collecting all of it. And when Ludendorff takes over in 1916, after van Falkenhayn is finally relieved for Verdun six months after trying it and failing, he goes to Ludendorff and says, “look at this, it's something we ought to do.”

Now, it's an army where a captain can go to the guy running the army and say that. Ludendorff reads it, says, “you're right”, and they twice pull the army out of the line in the middle of World War I and completely retrain it in new tactics. The new defensive tactics, which first come in in 1917, instead of trying to hold the line, when the British come over the top, there's nobody there. Piece of cake. As they advance, they begin hitting, not solid trench lines packed with men, but little resistance-nests, as the Germans called them, little groups of guys fighting shellhole to shellhole. And machine gun nests designed for 360 degree defense; they don't give up when you surround them.

The British crest a hill, they're on the other side where their artillery observers can't see them, and now the German mass batteries open up.

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