Military Review English Edition November-December 2015 | Page 43

MARNE

solutions and contingencies for a specific military problem that politicians had given them—the high probability of a two-front war. Aggressive German foreign policy in the late nineteenth century had alienated several
other powers, which had resulted in the creation of military alliances designed to counter potential German
military adventurism. But in an ironic twist, by 1914
the German military, led by the younger Moltke, was
so we dded to its high-risk plan to win a two-front war
that even state political decisions dealing with nonmilitary issues were made based on the primacy of military
considerations in anticipation of such a war. In this
way, when simmering nationalist passions erupted on
the continent, the two-front war became a reality—not
because it was necessarily needed, but largely because it
had been planned for.
German senior leadership. Kaiser Wilhelm II
had selected Moltke to lead the Imperial German
Army primarily for his congeniality rather than for
his military prowess. In 1914, the Kaiser, although
technically the commander in chief of the armed forces, elected to let his highly trained military professionals do their jobs with minimum interference, offering
only occasional common sense comments—that were
generally ignored.
For his part, Moltke also trusted decentralization of
execution authority. As a result, his faith in the mission-command-type approach led him to plan by giving
only minimal direction to the activities of his subordinate field army commanders, but he did not anticipate
how minimal his control would become as the campaign
progressed.3 A weak technological communications
system, together with an unwieldy organization, were
vulnerabilities that helped create a command and control environment that largely went out of his control.
Communications technology. Organizationally,
eight field armies reported directly to Moltke and
his headquarters, the Oberste Heeresleitung, without
any intervening army group headquarters. The great
challenge of managing such a large span of control was
exacerbated by poor communications technology as
well as Moltke’s decision not to move his headquarters
forward, closer to his subordinates, which would facilitate giving his personal guidance at critical times when
the technical communication capabilities broke down.
Communications technology in 1914 included the
telephone, telegraph, and radio. In a pinch, aerial or
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2015

ground couriers could also be used. Typically, many
national armies in 1914 used the telephone for local
communications and the telegraph for longer distances.
However, the German army had abandoned the telegraph in 1910, planning instead to depend on a combination of the telephone and the radio. As a result, at
the outset of war in 1914, the telephone was supposed
to be the primary means of communication, with signal
troops laying semipermanent lines to each field army
headquarters; temporary lines and personal contact
supported units below that level.
However, peacetime maneuvers and planning had
failed to provide an adequate appreciation for the
extreme difficulties swiftly moving units in combat—advancing under fire from modern weapons
across foreign territory—would encounter using the
telephone in circumstances where existing civilian
systems would not be available. Experience soon
showed that the field-wire troops could not lay lines
as quickly as the army advanced, and within six days,
the radio had become the primary mode. However,
the radio also proved to have significant shortcomings
in actual use. The greatly expanded volume of radio
transmissions that resulted from its having become
the primary means of communication between echelons, combined with the need to encode and decode
each transmission, resulted in a time delay of up to
twenty-six hours for messages. Such delays meant that
situation updates and directives passed each other in
transmission, and both were obsolete by the time they
reached the recipient.4 Additionally, contemporary
radios were bulky, sensitive, and prone to breakdowns,
and they were only issued in limited quantities down
to the army level.5 As a backup to the electronic system, couriers were available, but using them was time
consuming. In addition, a limited number of airplanes
were available for carrying messages between headquarters, but the potential for using them in such a
role was ignored.6
The technological vulnerabilities and limitations,
frequent equipment failures, and failure to use alternate means to communicate vital instructions all
combined to greatly disrupt the German field-command routine, which was based on nightly meetings
where subordinates produced situation reports and
commanders planned for the next day’s operations.
The systemic breakdown particularly affected Moltke.
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