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Authors: Martin van Creveld
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correct understanding and adoption of his system of strategic maneuvers would cause battle to disappear. Given that their growing dependence on magazines and lines of operations prevented armies from proceeding very far from their base, he even expected that war itself would be recognized as futile and come to an end, not that this was a rare belief in the years before 1789 or, more surprisingly, after 1815, 1918, 1945, and 1989.
Von Bülow and his fellow German strategists (for some reason the term strategy caught on much faster in Germany than anywhere else) have often been ridiculed. Nowhere more so than in Tolstoy’s great novel,
War and Peace
. The censure is undeserved. Even if wars did not come to an end, his prediction that the art of strategy would work in favor of large states and lead to political consolidation proved correct. What is more, to this day, even those who never heard of von Bülow use the concepts he pioneered such as base, objective, and lines of operations. What is more, they look at strategy in a manner which was largely his making.
From now on, as far as strategy on land was concerned, it only remained to work out the details. Nineteenth-century schools of strategy, the multiplying staff colleges, were soon to engage in endless arguments as to whether a single line of operations or a double one, converging or diverging ones, were preferable; and whether to drive them forward (in other words, attack) was easier than maintaining one’s base (in other words, defend). Furthermore, as we shall see, von Bülow was by no means the last to try and arrange things in such a way that strategy, expressed in the form of lines, or arrows, on a map, would the place of battle take.
Von Bülow’s direct, and much better known, successor was Antoine Henri Jomini. Jomini was a Swiss citizen who saw service under Napoleon and eventually rose to become chief of staff to Marshal Ney. He began his career as a military theorist by throwing his own early essays, written before he discovered Lloyd and von Bülow, into the fire. His military career was not a great success; still he developed into the high priest of strategy or, as he himself preferred to call it,
les grandes operation de guerre
. Acknowledged or not, his influence has probably not been surpassed even by the great Clausewitz.
Very much like von Bülow, Jomini conceived as strategy in terms of armed forces moving against each other in two dimensional space. Much more than von Bülow, whose mind tended to work in eighteenth century geometrical terms, he was prepared to take into account such complicating factors as roads, rivers, mountains, forests, fortresses, and the like which either facilitated maneuver or obstructed it. As with von Bülow, the problem was to discover a “system” which would guide a commander in conducting those maneuvers.
The most important elements of the system remained as before, i.e. bases, objectives, and lines of operations of which there could be various numbers and which stood in various relationships to each other. To these, however, Jomini added a considerable number of other concepts. Some, such as Theaters of Operations (assuming a country engaged against multiple enemies, each of its armies would operate in a separate Theater) and Zones of Operations (the district between an army’s base and its objective, through which its communications passed), were to prove useful and made their way into subsequent strategic thought. Others merely injected unnecessary complexity and, some would say, incomprehensibility.
All armies, then, necessarily had lines of operation or, as we would say today, communications. Earlier commanders such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, or even Gustavus Adolphus during the first half of the seventeenth century, had been able to survive and operate for years in enemy territory while maintaining only the most tenuous ties with home. Now, however, the whole point of the art of war was to cut one’s
Von Bülow and his fellow German strategists (for some reason the term strategy caught on much faster in Germany than anywhere else) have often been ridiculed. Nowhere more so than in Tolstoy’s great novel,
War and Peace
. The censure is undeserved. Even if wars did not come to an end, his prediction that the art of strategy would work in favor of large states and lead to political consolidation proved correct. What is more, to this day, even those who never heard of von Bülow use the concepts he pioneered such as base, objective, and lines of operations. What is more, they look at strategy in a manner which was largely his making.
From now on, as far as strategy on land was concerned, it only remained to work out the details. Nineteenth-century schools of strategy, the multiplying staff colleges, were soon to engage in endless arguments as to whether a single line of operations or a double one, converging or diverging ones, were preferable; and whether to drive them forward (in other words, attack) was easier than maintaining one’s base (in other words, defend). Furthermore, as we shall see, von Bülow was by no means the last to try and arrange things in such a way that strategy, expressed in the form of lines, or arrows, on a map, would the place of battle take.
Von Bülow’s direct, and much better known, successor was Antoine Henri Jomini. Jomini was a Swiss citizen who saw service under Napoleon and eventually rose to become chief of staff to Marshal Ney. He began his career as a military theorist by throwing his own early essays, written before he discovered Lloyd and von Bülow, into the fire. His military career was not a great success; still he developed into the high priest of strategy or, as he himself preferred to call it,
les grandes operation de guerre
. Acknowledged or not, his influence has probably not been surpassed even by the great Clausewitz.
Very much like von Bülow, Jomini conceived as strategy in terms of armed forces moving against each other in two dimensional space. Much more than von Bülow, whose mind tended to work in eighteenth century geometrical terms, he was prepared to take into account such complicating factors as roads, rivers, mountains, forests, fortresses, and the like which either facilitated maneuver or obstructed it. As with von Bülow, the problem was to discover a “system” which would guide a commander in conducting those maneuvers.
The most important elements of the system remained as before, i.e. bases, objectives, and lines of operations of which there could be various numbers and which stood in various relationships to each other. To these, however, Jomini added a considerable number of other concepts. Some, such as Theaters of Operations (assuming a country engaged against multiple enemies, each of its armies would operate in a separate Theater) and Zones of Operations (the district between an army’s base and its objective, through which its communications passed), were to prove useful and made their way into subsequent strategic thought. Others merely injected unnecessary complexity and, some would say, incomprehensibility.
All armies, then, necessarily had lines of operation or, as we would say today, communications. Earlier commanders such as Alexander, Julius Caesar, or even Gustavus Adolphus during the first half of the seventeenth century, had been able to survive and operate for years in enemy territory while maintaining only the most tenuous ties with home. Now, however, the whole point of the art of war was to cut one’s
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