Pre World War 1 military planning

I found this article https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/pre-war_military_planning_great_britain in my travels through the intermanet and thought that the introduction, while it isn't AH, has relevance to our regular threads on WW1 war plans.


For many years scholars studied the war plans prepared by the armed forces of Europe as evidence of long-term belligerent intent. If states planned to go to war to fulfil policy objectives, then armies and navies ought to have prepared operational plans to carry out those intentions. By the same token, when the crisis of July 1914 broke, those plans had the capacity to determine the pace and direction of the crisis in its latter stages: “war by railway timetable”, as A.J.P. Taylor (1906-1990) put it.[1]

This approach suffered from three major defects. First, it assumed that states had the governmental machinery to integrate general staffs within their policy-making structures. Most did not as it required the experience of war itself for states to learn how to manage the making of strategy at the civil-military interface. Secondly, it assumed that general staffs focused upwards on the links between operations and their policy effects. In reality, they tended to look downwards to tactics and how their forces would fight. Thirdly, and consequently, the schemes that resulted from these staff exercises were not “war plans”, but campaign plans. As a result, they failed to address the real demands of a fully-fledged war plan: the need for economic mobilisation, alliance coordination, and integration across theatres and fronts and between land and sea.

Collectively, these sorts of criticism have downplayed the role of the general staffs in the coming of the war. The more recent works on the war’s origins have little to say about what sort of war states thought they might be risking in July 1914.[2] This is equally misleading. Europe did not go to war “by railway timetable”, but it had experienced arms races on land and sea, and a wave of popular and professional literature described future war. Moreover, the lack of governmental structures to manage general staffs gave those bodies leeway, which meant that what they did and said had political effect.
 
That bit was written by Hew Strachan, certainly not a nobody in the field and is a good little piece of insight.

I think the WW1 East First is a bit of projection backwards from WW2 and afterwards where complete 'War Plans' were a thing so we get bogged down criticising the calls of men on the spot by criteria that hadn't been invented.
 
That bit was written by Hew Strachan, certainly not a nobody in the field and is a good little piece of insight.

I think the WW1 East First is a bit of projection backwards from WW2 and afterwards where complete 'War Plans' were a thing so we get bogged down criticising the calls of men on the spot by criteria that hadn't been invented.

Indeed, I think the fact was that once the leadership agreed upon war they turned to the Generals and said, make it so! The Generals pull out the campaign plan and set off for war with the railways kicking into gear. Only later does anyone really ask the hard questions. And as someone toying with the "East First" I try not to fall into that trap of making it the grand plan, rather I think it was a valid option, if called for the German staff could and would reorient, events before the war could have produced better planning for a bigger force in the East from day one or forbade the use of Belgium so that the thinking itself was predisposed. But as to an actual plan, I think none of these leaders had grown into the higher level strategy that came later, therefore I grow more open to just making my Great War as much accident as design.
 
I think none of these leaders had grown into the higher level strategy that came later,

I agree, and I think Britain was the first and the best for developing this governmental-military organisation, the War Council being their first attempt.

I had this discussion a while ago and kept it because I thought it was handy.

The War Council existed from August 1914 to May 1915 only, and was a Cabinet subcommittee, spun off from the Committee for Imperial Defence. The original composition was Asquith (PM), Grey (Foreign Sec), Churchill (1st Lord), Lord Kitchener (Sec of State for War), David Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer), and Colonel Maurice Hankey as Secretary. Fisher and James Wolfe Murry (then at the War Office, but soon to become Chief of the Imperial General Staff) were the technical advisors. Others were added later – ex-PM Arthur Balfour (probably to stiffen Asquith’s resolve) and Andrew Bonar Law (representing Labour), amongst others. Sometimes only a few of them met – one important meeting in the lead up to Gallipoli was on 6/4/1915 attended only by Asquith, Churchill, Kitchener and Hankey. At other times, additional people were invited along ad hoc. It’s activities are quite poorly documented given the extent of its influence in the first 9 months of the war, because no formal minutes were kept and it is very hard to reconcile the post hoc recollections of its members about what went on (Churchill later referring to meetings which never took place, for example). After it was killed in May 1915, a succession of similar cabinet subcommittees of various names replaced it, but without much permanence until the War Cabinet.


The War Cabinet, was established in 1916 mainly to relieve the diffident Asquith of responsibility for actually making a decision (of which he was constitutionally incapable), and initially consisted of only four politicians:

David Lloyd George (Sec. of State for War),

Lord Curzon (Lord President of the Council, responsible for govt. business)

Andrew Bonar Law (Chancellor of the Exchequer),

Arthur Henderson (representing the Labour Party)

Lord Milner (without portfolio, but DLG’s political hatchet man).


DLG deposed Asquith and became Prime Minister, with the Earl of Derby (“like a feather pillow, bearing the mark of the last man who sat on him”) replacing DLG as the War. Other members were added later, but I’m not aware of any “technical advisors” from the services – by that stage the management of the war had improved (marginally) as more capable and experienced operators moved to the key positions, and the cabinet was more concerned with the civilian/military interface, rather than directing operations – things like diplomacy, manpower, resource allocation etc, the proper domain of government.
 
Part of this practice is that it is practice. National and international scale plans are needed for modern warfare, and no plan survives contact with the enemy, so the military has to practice planning in order to run the day to day war, definitely if they want to win.

Of course, sometimes you get lucky for six weeks, though, and it's enough.
 
I agree, and I think Britain was the first and the best for developing this governmental-military organisation, the War Council being their first attempt.

We agree, the British had a deeper institutional base to develop its civilian governance, the Cabinet learned faster and had more flexibility as well as inherent respect for its overall authority in my opinion. I think this is why Germany suffered, her civilian institutions were simply too immature and the Kaiser had filled too much of the authority that when he fell short the generals stepped into governing by command. I play with how Germany's institutions might evolve had she survived the war.
 
We agree, the British had a deeper institutional base to develop its civilian governance, the Cabinet learned faster and had more flexibility as well as inherent respect for its overall authority in my opinion. I think this is why Germany suffered, her civilian institutions were simply too immature and the Kaiser had filled too much of the authority that when he fell short the generals stepped into governing by command. I play with how Germany's institutions might evolve had she survived the war.

I agree, its interesting that DLG became British PM and the War Cabinet was formed in the same year as the 3rd OHL, the former led to victory and the latter to defeat.

But that's a hell of a long way from the middle of 1914.

Of course, sometimes you get lucky for six weeks, though, and it's enough.

I agree, the gains made by October 1914 were the key driver of the war, they gave the Germans options while removing options from the French and a bit less so from the British.
 
I agree, its interesting that DLG became British PM and the War Cabinet was formed in the same year as the 3rd OHL, the former led to victory and the latter to defeat.

But that's a hell of a long way from the middle of 1914.

Indeed, I think there is value to having a better leadership overall, the Germans arguably were winning battles and seemed capable of winning them more often than not but the overall ability to win the war was hampered by an ineffective civilian government, including the Kaiser himself. The presumptions that good generals made good leaders are flawed, the generals lacked the administrative ability necessary to marshal the national resources to supply victory, or at least those Germany chose for battle prowess rather than administrative ability. Britain was better at the task. Part of my attraction to an East heavy German effort is to avert the laurels laid upon Hindenburg, I feel a second Army in the field and the eyes looking that direction offers a normal victory rather than the "miracle of Tannenberg." It offers the argument that normal chain of command can survive and the Army remains subordinate to the Kaiser and existing government. I think Germany might develop better strategic leadership in those circumstances or at least avoid a purely military vision to the war.
 
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