Baron Antonie-Henri Jomini, Theories of War

I'm bill Johnson I have the great privilege of being a member of the department of national security and strategy as well as I said earlier this morning being the course director for theory of warn strategy and I'm a proud member of seminar 9 the silent seminar so purpose today is to talk about obviously the the man of the hour baron antoine re germany that's about as good as my french gets and so probably a person that a number of you have not heard of and even if you have heard of him may not be aware of the influence that he has had over your professional life and hopefully that will become apparent to you as we talked this morning again I want to talk for about 3540 minutes maybe a little bit longer than that and then leave time for any questions that you might have just a reminder that if you decide that you want to ask a question because we are broadcasting elsewhere in the building please press and hold the button on the microphone so that we can set everybody else can hear your question so this is a little bit of a different perspective this is in the midst of the discussion of the theorists and strategists of the theory of war strategy course we tend to speak in terms of Clausewitz as being a philosopher and a theorist of war who does spend some time talking about strategy in it you'll see that tomorrow in your lesson Germany by and large is a theorist of strategy who occasionally talks about war in the broader sense so who is this man and why is he important to you well part of why is important to you is I think that there's a story a narrative that we can talk about in the theory of war in strategy course and you have now entered starting today actually starting with the lesson eight the question of how our wars fought whether that's in domain by type of strategy in accordance with what theory or what level of strategic constraint might be placed on your ability to operate in those type of activities what we talked about the question of strategy being an offensive or defensive annihilation or exhaustion all of these theorists or strategists that we're going to talk about through the end of next week will have an influence on how you actually conduct war and that's our focus so who is this other than an old dead guy we have a long series of them for you to look at he's only the latest you'll read tomorrow or tonight for tomorrow's lesson a short passage by John Shai in the makers of modern strategy that will give you some context in background so I'm going to just go briefly over it he is Swiss not French he lived a long time that's becomes an important aspect of the conversation because as opposed to Clausewitz who dies relatively early in life Germany lives a long time which gives him an opportunity to publish more and write more and oh by the way he lives another 38 years past Clausewitz's death and so showman he has the opportunity to promulgate his ideas to make them known to criticize Clausewitz and Clausewitz has no opportunity to criticize back because he's an even deader old guy so his Swiss not French though he serves in the French army that's not unusual if at this date and time officers oftentimes went with a variety of national affiliations chose the army that they wish to fight for originally he's a bit of a very intelligent young man he's considered a child prodigy and is sent by his parents to work in the banking system in Basel Switzerland Swiss banks have been around a long time that was the most prestigious thing that you could do even at that time however Germany gets caught up in the fervor of the French Revolution and he decides that he wants to be part of this new set of ideas this new way of the involvement of the people engagement in their governance and how could he become part of this large revolutionary movement so he goes to Paris where eventually he becomes a protege of marshal named for those of you that don't know neh is one of Napoleon's favorite generals Napoleon dubbed him the bravest of the brave and after the campaign in Russia was probably more than a little insane but in 1803 this very enterprising young man wields his way into a staff where he see as you see there is a staff officer for the major campaigns of the Napoleonic era particularly of Napoleon's early successes so he is a first-hand observer of how Napoleonic warfare is conducted and is able to actually serve on the staff of Napoleon himself so he has firsthand observation of how the great captain waged warfare and as you can see later in life he leaves France where he's not as well accepted because he runs counter to Clausewitz and Napoleon places himself in the service of the Russian army and is an advisor to a series of czars there what this allows him to do is it gives him the freedom to write and publish and that's an important thing to remember about Germany Clausewitz writes because he wants to understand and explain this great revolutionary activity how did warfare change from the age of limited warfare aristocrats to this idea of a nation at war Germany is trying to do the same thing he's trying to explain but he's also making money this is his livelihood he doesn't have a rich wife like Clausewitz does he doesn't have access to the court and so this is how he earns his living and he's trying to figure out how is it that all of this change occurred and why did it occur and what is it going to mean for the future of warfare it's not enough for either Clausewitz or germany to simply understand what happened they're trying to apply it more along the lines of what is this going to mean for the future of war and warfare now I already talked about that a little bit clarify the nature how was this guy Napoleon so successful what were the secrets of his success the idea that if you can distill down the key principles of war that allows you to understand through some scientific study remember Germany is a product of the Enlightenment moving from a period of simple belief in things to a scientific explanation as to why things occur the way they do and so he sets out with this attempt a scientific study to come up with a solution set principles that any officer can use to determine the future conduct of war and war and as you saw from his long service with the Russian army how to educate the office corps in these basic principles so that they would be successful into the future last but not least Germany's experience in the Napoleonic Wars particularly in the Spanish campaign of 1808 to 1810 where he is introduced to guerrilla warfare and people's warfare at its basis it frightens him and he's trying to figure out a way that you can return Worf err back to Kings and limited warfare and remove out some of this necessity to bring the people and all of their passions and the violence that can comes with those passions back into warfare to bring some form of control over how wars were waged give you a chance to read a little bit of that bottom line from his perspective is it was scientifically possible to determine this small number of principles and if you just knew what those principles were and you executed them properly you would be successful regardless of the type of war or where warfare in which you were engaged and it was these ideas that if applied appropriately would ultimately yield and bring success on the battlefield now again this is back to my earlier point that he is more a strategist than a philosopher of war that was his primary goal he was not like Clausewitz trying to distill a theory that would apply to all wars he's trying to help the current very practical oriented how do you help current officers and professionals become successful in this difficult art of war and if you boil it down to the one offensive mass decisive point all those things that you should be familiar with in your time in the military now having said all of that he is a practitioner but for him war is an intellectual exercise he wants the officer corps to be educated and his principles of war being the primary means of that education for an issue that will have some concern or influence Iver Eamon this question of politics and war Clausewitz says war is continuation of policy with the addition of other means Germany is view is nope there's politics the king decides when to go to war the king and the general decide on what the general objectives are going to be and then the general goes off to fight the war without interference from the king wins the war goes back to the king says over to you you figure out the piece I've done my part of the job not like Clausewitz at all with this idea that in war the result is never final because even when you have a military victory it does not necessarily translate into winning the political objective so his four basic principles a lot of what Germany is doing is based on what we would almost think of as a geometric construction a very simplistic approach to what strategy is which for him was the movement of armies on the map so you see a whole series of terms that you should be familiar with in terms of joint operational art or how you learned about operational design or if you went to Fort Leavenworth to the companion General Staff school these were the things that were part of your intermediate level education to get the right number of people at the right place at the right point at the right time in overwhelming mass to overwhelm your opponent if you can do that you will be successful in all battles and then after talking about battle he actually looks back up at this question of what is war and the ideas that you see here not necessarily a very similar way to the way Clausewitz would have looked at the question of what is war he is the first one to make the distinction between strategy movement of on the map and grand tactics what we would probably describe is operational level maneuver or the idea of once you maneuver the force onto the field this is how you actually fight the battle you'll see some of this as we go to Gettysburg on the 19th or 20th of September and talk about how the opposing Confederate and Union forces engaged to his great credit I think Germany is one of the first theorists or strategists that elevates logistics to one of the key principles of war for him it's about lines of communication now some of that is because of the geometric nature of how he thinks about things but he is really the first one that bring the idea that you must supply the army as well as fight it now again part of this is getting back to his desire to control warfare because under the Napoleonic concept armies simply foraged in the field whereas in that in route and rages the peasants and the population and brings the passion of the people if you can have suitable number of logistics that allows you to reduce that ravaging and pillaging that's going to take place but at the same time it constrains your movements because from Germany's perspective you have to have a base of operations and that base of operations provides for your lines of communication and the lines of communication become the most important aspect of how he approaches strategy he does talk about different forms of war most of this need not concern you these are a variety of things that's just tried to give you a little bit of a flavor on how he looked at the concept of war which is very different from how Clausewitz looks at it he's actually trying to break it out into various parts so that you can describe them more fully and then apply his basic principles to ensure that you've got an understanding of how Wars take place and why do you go to war in this goes back to this earlier chart on what is war why do you go to what causes war how to war start our wars fought how to wars in and he has a whole series of things there you know lucidity boiled that down to three for you your honor an interest Germany's going to take that apart and look at it in even different ways now all sorts of things he'll talk about the context the environment in which warfare occurs and how that may affect what he called the nature of war what we call here at the War College the character of war how each of these wars are different from another first one that really begins to talk about the question of the theater of war where that may be and what you need to do in order to secure that theater he's beginning to think in terms of not just battles like occurred in the 1700s the limited warfare of Frederick the Great but thinking in terms of campaigns because that's what made Napoleon great the idea that he was not thinking in terms of a single battle but how did those battles meld into a campaign and how did he then use his army to be able to do that any elements of strategy now you're starting to see the geometric nature of his approach to war very set and you should be familiar with these terms you've studied them for much of your career but the whole idea that you've got to understand what the theater of war looks like both in its Geographic sense and in its military sense how do you set up what is your base of operations remembering for him logistics is the key so where is your base where are your lines of communications and in a Joe minion sense where those lines of communications are will limit your ability to move maneuver at the operational and theater level so for him it's a constraining influence Napoleon through all those things off and he maneuvered where he needed to and supplied himself off the land Germany takes a very different approach to that and it's those lines of operations based heavily on your base that determines how you can conduct a campaign so for strategy again very mechanistic here's the steps you go through in order to determine how you're going to fight select the theater of war it seems pretty straightforward but now where are the decisive points inside that theater of war and are they Geographic decisive points are they enemy force related decisive points geographic terrain all of these things for Germany it's almost all terrain oriented it's not force oriented a very different perspective there where's your fixed base and then how are you going to conduct the lines of operations to your front again thirteen points you've got to get through all of these things make sure the checklist is done right or you're not going to be successful see again this idea of depots lines of communication and the fact where your logistics bases are located will drive how you can plan for and conduct the campaign very practical again simply looking at the idea of what a theater contains and then the geography that's included with it so in a very geometric sense this is how he this is actually a drawing from his work his primary work the art of war you can see he sees the theater of war as a box in his thinking the adversaries usually each control two sides of the box and the objective is to control three sides of the box and cut across your opponent's lines of communication because if you break the lines of communications the supply routes the enemy will be forced to retreat back to their base of operations and it's when they begin that retreat that can allow you to engage in the pursuit and to eventually break the opponent's force and break his will now Joe many does not take into account what happens if your opponent if you cut your opponent's lines of communication and he doesn't go back to the base doesn't take that no they're going to very formalistic if we cut them they will go back doesn't always happen that way any of you familiar with grants of Vicksburg campaign cuts his lines of communication entirely and begins to move cross-country against the advice of his subordinates but he does so quite successfully so some practical application of that this is the Battle of Vienna our stop which if you'll remember professor Bellinger discussed with you in terms of this was thought traumatic event that shaped the ideas of Clausewitz and why it caused him to go back and study the nature of these campaigns to help understand how the great prussian army was defeated well Germany was a staff officer at llena and so he was actually present at the battle and his formation here this geometric application looks very close to what actually happened and so he's trying to take a real-world Advent and extrapolate out the principles that are going to look at it so for example here's the box the French control the Rhine and the mine River they control two sides of the box the Prussians control the other two sides of the box both sides are conducting a movement to contact from their bases of operation they meet at llena and our stott and the french prevail cut across in this direction break the Prussian lines of communications the Prussians immediately begin to try and fall back towards Berlin where they are pursued by Napoleon's army destroyed piecemeal cut up into pieces and eventually surrender and so for Germany this is the perfect example of how you can employ the principles if Napoleon did it and it worked then these are principles that are good for all time and you can continue to use those principles in any war so let's fast forward again looking at where to act logistics brings the troops to the right point grant a stick decides the manner of execution and operational what he would call strategic we would call operational maneuver is the key to success that's how you're going to maneuver from your base cut your opponent's lines of communication and in Germany's view you don't need to fight if you can cut the lines of communication and cause them to retreat that's that's even better now what's is the influence over time a couple of inches Clausewitz writes in German I've had several of our German international fellows tell me that it's easier for them to read the Howard / a translation in English than it is for them to read Clausewitz in their native German okay so not many people are out there reading Clausewitz Germany on the other hand writes in French that is the language of the military that is the language of the ruling classes and he writes very well clearly he's not engaged with this well on this hand and on the other hand and if this then that no he's very straightforward he's a bottom line up front guy here's what you need to do so readily accessible readily available and his critical influence on this development of an idea of strategy as opposed to war because many of the armies of the 19th century are less concerned with this idea of war which everybody knows what war is that's what we've been engaged in for the last several hundred years but the question of strategy how do you employ forces on the battlefield to achieve the political objectives and so his writings over the period of 50 years are very influential in how people look at the evolution of strategy in the military art he's the first one that really looks at embracing and linking ends ways and means remember the introduction of logistics and ideas and that the idea that there are strategy operations and tactics so you can see that it's easy to trace contemporary u.s. views on the level and nature of war and strategy operational art and tactics and the idea of ends ways and means back to Germany now also has a significant influence on the United States and this may be one of those where you have an influence that you're not aware of our history Dennis Hart Mahon was for many years the principal military history instructor at the United States Military Academy he taught for over I think almost thirty eight years and while he did not translate domini directly he went to France multiple times and he compiled and condensed French military thought which was largely influenced by Germany into the texts and lessons that he gave to the cadets at West Point who eventually became the military leaders on both sides of the Civil War now some people will say that that's an overstated case there's a historian at Penn State University named Carol Reardon who published a book with a sword in one hand in Germany in the other which disputes the myth that Germany had as much influence as he did because there was no active readings of his direct translations however I personally I've known professor Reardon for a long time I don't think she does a good job of making her case Dennis Hart Mahon and Alfred Thayer Mahon you're going to study Arthur Thayer Mahon undersea power interesting that a guy who's the son of somebody that taught at West Point for 38 years goes to the Naval Academy maybe there was good reason for that but Mahon is very show minion in his ideas and I think you will find that when you're reading the C power lesson you can see a lot of the threads of mahon that you can draw back to Germany and it says naturally his father's influence on the ability to help young Alfred understand warfare not least he is the most widely read military author in Europe in the first half of the 19th century everybody reads Germany everybody talks about Germany he is the source of the Salon Society he's writing lots of books he's making lots of money he's his own publicist he does very well and he influences the great armies of Europe so if you look at the American Civil War you look at the essential strategy that won the war for the Union here's the box the Union controls two sides of an once they capture the Mississippi River Valley and so the object of the game from an American person a union perspective at least is how do you seize that third size of the box and cut the lines of communication so in the West that's Sherman and the marched from Chattanooga to the sea in the East it's grant trying to get around Lee and get closer to Richmond but you can see throughout that influence the entire strategy from Winfield Scott on in 1861 was intended to how do you obtain the second side of the box and then seize the lines of communication look a World War one and the influence on the German army this is the Schlieffen Plan 1914 if you look here the Germans control the Rhine they attempt to control into Belgium and then swing that wide turning movement into the rear of the French army very much a Jew minion approach to how they were going to conduct the campaign totally divorced from the question of whether or not conducting that campaign was the right thing to do it's still very difficult to explain why it is that Germany invades France over Russia invading Austria because it's the only plan they had and it was based on the Romanian idea that we've got to crush the French quickly mass at the decisive place point in time overwhelmed the decisive point so that we can go take care of the Russians which are the real problem so into the modern day these are the current principles of joint operations I am sure that while you were in your pre commissioning or your basic course whichever you had someone talked to you about the nine principles of war Umi mousse mass mousse then whatever Manama that you were given to put those things in your memory so that you could always say alright what would I do according to the principles of war well now we've added the three for counter insurgency and insurgency so we're up to 12 but there Joe minion it's not closets here it's Germany his influence is readily apparent objective offensive mass maneuver security surprise all of those come straight from Germany in the art of war that he wrote in the 1830s expanded upon adapted but there his all of these terms of operational art that you routinely use go back to the art of war 1838 and so whether you understand it or realize it or not you are products of a Jew minion approach to strategy and warfare most of you think that your Clausewitz e'en because you've been force-fed Clausewitz and i le in someplace else well that's true when you look at joint doctrine and army doctrine it is very much a Joe minion approach to warfare now lots of good things that you can learn from Germany but there's some other things that created some problems the idea that you can take all of the experience of warfare and condense it down into nine or twelve principles that will apply universally even when some of those are contradictory to each other mass and economy of force for example can be contradictory very prescriptive if you do these things you will succeed well what happens if your opponent doesn't go along or the conditions of a particular war remember back to his nine types of war well what happens if these principles don't apply to the specific context of that conflict then you've got a problem you may be trying to I the hammer because you think everything's a nail as opposed to crafting your strategy for the context of the time he really was trying to put the revolutionary emotions of war back in the bottle trying to create this more limited form of structured warfare and he failed to realize that you can't put the cork in once the genies out those passions of the people's become involved it's almost impossible to go back to what it used to be and so that's one problem he also didn't understand the effects of technology and that's probably an unfair criticism because that's a hard thing to do but he lived in a period of time when we moved from the smoothbore buss smoothbore musket to rifles longer range quick firing artillery much broader application of technology and he did not recognize those changes as they took place importantly I think from your studies is he is focused almost entirely on the M part of the dime now that's all well and good because we want you to be experts in the M but we also want you to recognize that the DI any exists out there and that all instruments of national power are complimentary Germany also tended to as I said earlier divorced the decision from going to war to the conduct of war I think we could make the argument in this room that when you do that you set yourself up for strategic failure because the conditions of the time will always be in a certain amount of churn and change and so Clausewitz may be more appropriate for the continuation of politics by other means than the separation of the king and the general again an unfair criticism most militaries for the last two centuries have been in pursuit of the napoleonic ideal where one battle equates the campaign wins the war so if you look in our stott you take the Prussians out oh you take the Austrians out Austerlitz you take the Russians out one battle one campaign per year and you eliminate all three of your major opponents we're still looking for that I will make the argument and I will offend some of our Air Force folks but John warden's idea of concentric warfare is if I can just find the right decisive point and take it out everything else collapses and I win the war varied Romanian in approach and so it may give us too much faith that if I can just find the right spot at the right place at the right time I can win anything which may or may not take the will of your opponent into account so I think Joe Mande still matters there's a certain aspect of the faculty and student body who says we shouldn't study this old dead guy we should only study Clausewitz because he's more relevant to the modern applications of war and warfare and I can't dispute that but if you don't understand from where you come intellectually it's difficult for you to have a comprehensive understanding of where and how you should approach the study of war and strategy and so at least understanding the basis for where much of joint and army doctrine comes from is important because all of the things that you can see there I believe to be true particularly on the influence on the contemporary US Army and so you can blame Germany for EM DMP so if you have an interest and you don't want to go to the library and check out the art of war and read Germany just for the pure joy of feeding Germany you can read these books that will talk about Germany and his influence you'll read on you'll read parts of John shy tonight and so with that my forty minutes are up what questions do you have remembering that if you have a question please press the button yes sir look down accomplishments go seminar six are you going to upload your slides yes I will make them available right now they are on the P Drive temp 90 day Johnson jo hn Sen P temp 90 day actually I guess it's the G now G public Tim 90 day Johnson and there are some additional backup slides that I didn't I didn't want to spend your time on but if you have further ideas you can look there as well most of these are provided if you want them for a reference set anything else any other questions yes sir hey Bill thanks arguably the next big thing after Germany was the rise of the German General Staff and is it possible to draw a line from Germany or even Clausewitz for that matter and just talk about the rise of the German General Staff and and how it affected things as well yes I think entirely so so Clausewitz talks about this question of military genius and in my mind Napoleon is the epitome of that genius well how many Napoleon's do we get and how often do they come around not very many in not very often and so how do you then create this military genius that Clausewitz talked about well Germany talks about you need this military you don't need as much military genius if you just master these nine principles of war but you still have to have somebody that's gonna do the logistics you're gonna have to have somebody that's going to maneuver on the map you have to have subordinate commanders and those commanders have to get instructions from somewhere and to me that's the staff and so the creation of the German General Staff system largely as a result of Clausewitz and the military reformers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau leads to the creation of this General Staff system because it's too complex anymore to simply have one person control the battlefield and remember the whole time that Napoleon is controlling operational maneuver and controlling the battlefield he's running the French Empire all from his head because his staff is incredibly small I looked it up once I forget the numbers but he's got less than 25 people making all this happen if you take away his guards and other things but his pure staff and the people that he sent out it's about 25 ish and so if you have Napoleon or you're Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great maybe you can do that folks like me no we can't do that we got to have a staff and so it leads to that creation of how do you maneuver these large forces on the battlefield others yes you mentioned about criticism his criticism towards Clausewitz could you elaborate more which which point the points were criticized mostly sure and there is a point when Klaus was is still alive he and Germany are aware of their writings and they are competing back and forth part I think of what Germany would say my words not his yeah why are you paying attention to this big egghead guy he's talking these big theories and it's hard to understand and I'm giving you the answer it's simple its straightforward you don't have to do a lot of this reading memorize these principles and you'll be fine so that's the primary competition one is a theorist of war he wants to be able to explain war in its totality so that it applies in any conflict regardless of time or age that's Klaus woods Germany wants to distill a set of principles that a practitioner can use with great utility for success on the battlefield and that to me is the critical difference between the two one is a theorist one is a practitioner it's going to look for principles Clausewitz would say it is impossible to distill these principles Germany would say your theory is so broad to be useless for the practitioner and so they they kind of come at the problem from different directions I believe you need both to help understand Klaus was predominantly for war and what it is in Germany for how you can approach strategy but it's not an either-or situation in my mind I mean out of moderation in all things kind of person take what's best from a variety of sources okay you've got another briefing to go to and some of you need lunch I'll be happy to stay down here if somebody has an additional question if not thank you for your time and I appreciate your coming

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Keywords: Jomini, Theories of War, bill johnsen, usawc, army war college

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Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017