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12. Strategy "in a microcosm": Processes of tactical learning in a WWI German Infantry Division
- Author:
- Christian Stachelbeck
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Despite the defeat of 1918, the tactical warfare of German forces on the battlefields against a superior enemy coalition was often very effective. The heavy losses suffered by the allies until well into the last months of the war are evidence of this. The tactical level of military action comprises the field of direct battle with forces up to division size. Tactics – according to Clausewitz, the “theory of the use of military forces in combat” – is the art of commanding troops and their organized interaction in combined arms combat in the types of combat which characterized the world war era – attack, defense and delaying engagement.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
13. The German Army and the Defense of the Reich: Military Doctrine and the Conduct of the Defensive Battle 1918-1939.
- Author:
- Matt Bucholtz
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- For decades historical research dedicated to the study of the German army, or Reichswehr, before the Second World War has been dominated by a single overriding question: How did the German army create Blitzkrieg? Studies, both popular and academic, have focused on German offensive doctrine and the leading figures responsible for its creation, in an attempt to understand the stunning German victories of the first half of the Second World War. While this has led to a fuller appreciation of the various characteristics of combined arms warfare, it has also generated a skewed vision of the German army that does not accurately portray its operation, activities, strategic outlook, and doctrinal breadth. Matthias Strohn's work, The German Army and the Defense of the Reich provides a much-needed counter-weight to the existing 'Blitzkrieg' centric historiography of the Reichswehr between the First and Second World Wars.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
14. The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory
- Author:
- Matt Bucholtz
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Relying upon thousands of newly raised conscripts to augment the remaining professionals from the old monarchial army, Generals Kellermann and Dumouriez scored a decisive victory over the Duke of Brunswick and the forces of Prussia at the Battle of Valmy and thereby firmly established the foundation for the legacy of the volunteers of Year II and the military abilities of French citizen-soldiers. French victory at Valmy became the rationale for conscription laws across Europe in the following decades and served as the basis for a closer relationship between the military and society. Alan Forrest's book, The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars: The Nation-in-Arms in French Republican Memory, masterfully traces the evolution of the myths of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era through over 150 years of French and European military and political development. It stands as a concise single volume investigation of the nineteenth and twentieth century French political landscape and military affairs, as well as the ever-contested field of civil-military relations, expressed through a work centred on memory and myth.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, and Prussia
15. Military Strategy in War and Peace
- Author:
- Terry Terriff, James Keeley, and John Ferris
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- In recent years, there have been many analyses of warfare from the perspective of the battlefield, a trend initiated by John Keegan in 1976 with his book, The Face of Battle. These studies have focused on the tactical level, with the soldier. However, the tactical approach alone is not enough to explain the results of war.
- Topic:
- War
16. Military Strategy in War and Peace: Introduction
- Author:
- David J. Bercuson
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- In July of 2010 a small group of historians from the University of Calgary, the United States, and the German Armed Forces gathered for a workshop at the University of Calgary. For a day and a half the participants struggled with the question “what is the impact of strategy on battlefield outcomes?” in a wide variety of historical circumstances from ancient Greece to the 21st Century.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- United States and Greece
17. Bismarck, Wilhelm II., and German Military Leadership
- Author:
- Dr. Michael Epkenhans
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- At least twice in the history of Imperial Germany, December seems to have been a rather critical month: On 17 December 1887, the ageing German Emperor, Wilhelm I, convened his military entourage at his bed in the castle of Berlin to listen to the reports of his generals about the military situation of the Empire. Under normal circumstances, these reports by Germany's highest-ranking generals, the Chief of Staff and his Quarter Master General, the Prussian Minister of War, and the chief of the Military Cabinet were by no means unusual. Against the background of a political situation which seemed to be deteriorating for several years now, this meeting, however, turned out to be a war-council. For many months the Quarter Master General of the Prussian Army, General v. Waldersee had been pleading for a preventive war against Russia. Germany's eastern neighbour had been quarreling with the nation's most reliable ally, Austria-Hungary, over the Balkans for more than two years now, and according to secret reports about the redeployment of troops on its western border seemed to prepare for a war against the powers of the dual alliance. From a military point of view a solution to this problem seemed urgent, not the least because of the hostile attitude of Germany's western neighbour, France. Waldersee's plea for war was supported by the 87-year-old Chief of the General Staff, Moltke the Elder, and Prince William, whose influence had become ever more important due to his father's fatal illness.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Berlin, and Prussia
18. Strategic Thinking: The French Case in 1914 ( 1940)
- Author:
- Dr. Eugenia Kiesling
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- A common military history examination question at West Point is "Discuss the proposition that good strategy always beats good tactics." I tell my cadets that if they cannot answer an examination question, they should modify it they can. Behind our eight stimulating "Workshop Questions" lies a world view which I would summarize as follows. Strategy is literally crucial—the crux of war. Military failures, failures of what my friend Wick Murray calls "military effectiveness," usually being at the strategic level—or stem from a failure to integrate strategy with sound policy. Strategic effectiveness requires not only clear and achievable goals but good policy, sound institutions, and political will.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Germany
19. Military Strategy in War and Peace: Some Conclusions
- Author:
- Holger H. Herwig
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- “Everything in war is very simple,” Prussia's premier military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, famously stated, “but the simplest thing is difficult.” Strategy falls into that description. Almost no other term in military terminology has been so much and so often abused. Even the most fleeting scanning of major journals and newspapers, the briefest listening to national news casts, reveals a horrendous application of the term: the “strategy” of crossing a desert, the “strategy of storming a hill, the “strategy” of pacifying a village, the “strategy of securing a road, the “strategy” of winning the hearts and minds of indigenous populations—these are but a few of the misapplications of the term with which we are constantly bombarded by both reporters and so-called experts in the field. Not that the military has been much better in applying the term: two well-known modern commanders, Erich Ludendorff in World War I and Bernard Montgomery in World War II, never quite understood it either; the former thought of strategy as the act of merely punching a hole in the enemy's lines, while the latter cautioned his staff that strategy was strategy only if and when he, Montgomery, said it was.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Prussia
20. Editorial
- Author:
- James F. Keeley and John R. Ferris
- Publication Date:
- 01-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Welcome to the Winter 2008 edition of the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies (JMSS). As one of the few electronic journals dedicated to the study of security related issues in Canada, we are pleased to provide a forum in which security issues can be examined and discussed.
- Topic:
- Security, Politics, and War
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and Canada