The Planner"A surveyor--even a tourist, if you will--has at least a wide perspective and can take in the general lie of the land, where the miner only knows his own seam."
Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart
". . . the officer who has not studied war as an applied science, and who is ignorant of modern military history, is of little use beyond the rank of Captain."
Field Marshal Garnet
By modern standards, Albert Coady Wedemeyer had reached the twilight of a relatively undistinguished career when he reported to the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff in May 1941. Until very late in his military service, he did nothing that made him stand out from the crowd; in fact, the only early distinction he enjoyed was an entirely negative one. As a lieutenant in his first assignment at Fort Benning, Georgia, he had been court-martialed for involvement in a minor drinking incident. After twenty-one years and eight months as a company grade officer, Wedemeyer became a major in 1940. An infantryman who had never led troops in battle, he had spent a disproportionate amount of time as an aide but had only sketchy experience on staff.1 He had never commanded a battalion.2
Undistinguished to that point he might have been, but Major Wedemeyer nonetheless wrote an estimate that became one of the fundamental planning documents for the United States Army in World War II. In it, he demonstrated an extraordinary grasp of strategic issues and a clear perception of a way to grapple with them. The question immediately arises as to how an officer of such limited practical experience in the art of war developed such capacity. Certainly American domestic politics, as well as the condition of the Army in 1941, circumscribed the possibilities Wedemeyer could consider and thus helped to shape the Victory Plan. But his intellectual preparation was even more significant because it determined the kinds of options he would consider and the kinds of choices he would make. In common with many of his peers, much of Wedemeyer's professional and intellectual education was less the product of military schooling than of personal initiative and experience in the interwar Army.
By the standards of his day, Wedemeyer's career was unexceptional, at least until 1936. Indeed, long years as a company grade officer were the rule for his generation, and officers in the interwar years followed no set career pattern. The product of long years of service in the junior grades was quite often an officer who knew exactly what to do when given an important and demanding job. Such capacity was never an accident, of course, and Wedemeyer's career illustrates the care some of those men took to prepare themselves for duties that, in the mid-1930's, many expected never to hold. In Wedemeyer's case, years of military routine marked steady intellectual growth.
Albert Wedemeyer grew up in Nebraska, the son of a strict Lutheran father and an Irish Catholic mother. He had a strong warm family relationship in which both parents guided his education and shaped his ethical and moral beliefs. A Jesuit schooling that was Spartan in its severity reinforced strong concepts of obligation and duty that Wedemeyer assimilated from his father. While he enjoyed a sound secondary education, Wedemeyer was perhaps more profoundly affected by his father's example of a life of learning. The elder Wedemeyer was an omnivorous reader who encouraged in his son a habit of what the latter called "kaleidoscopic" reading, reinforced by serious discussions based upon that reading.
The Development of a Strategic Thinker
Wedemeyer grew up in a stimulating atmosphere of ideas and frequently conversed with the distinguished men who visited his father. By the time he finished his secondary education, young Wedemeyer had obtained a broad general understanding of economics and had read widely in history and biography.3
Senator George W. Norris appointed Wedemeyer to the military academy; he reported to West Point in June 1916, graduating in April 1918 with one of the classes abbreviated by the First World War. By his own admission he did not do particularly well academically, later remarking the Jesuit schooling made him proficient in Latin, but that Latin was of very little utility in a world dominated by calculus. Although graduated and commissioned, Wedemeyer and his classmates were returned to West Point in the awkward status of student officers in November 1918. The following year they finally left the academy, and the entire class made an observation tour of European battlefields before going to their first duty stations. While visiting Paris, young Wedemeyer first met both General John J. Pershing and George C. Marshall, then a lieutenant colonel.
Wedemeyer reported to the Infantry School in September 1919 as a student. After graduation, he was assigned to the 29th Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning in June 1920 and began his military service as an instructor, living in the tents of an extremely primitive new Army post. In 1922 he became involved in the minor drinking incident that culminated in the court-martial that appeared to spell the end of his brief military career. Despite the court-martial, however, Brigadier General Paul Malone selected Wedemeyer to be his aide-de-camp, a duty that lasted two years. When Malone moved from the Infantry School to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Wedemeyer continued as his aide but also contrived to meet the requirements for graduation from the Artillery Batter Officers' Course. He then moved to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where Malone assumed command of the 2d Field Artillery Brigade of the 2d Infantry Division, while Wedemeyer assumed command of the headquarters battery of that brigade.
With experience as an aide and as an artilleryman behind him, Wedemeyer moved to the Philippine Islands in 1923. He served briefly with the 31st Infantry Regiment in Manila before taking up
duties in the 57th Infantry at Fort McKinley. He spent three years in Philippine Scout infantry companies, and then returned to Fort Washington, Maryland, where he commanded a company in the 12th Infantry. In 1927 he became aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Herbert Williams, commanding general of the Military District of Washington. In 1930 Wedemeyer went to China, where he was a staff officer in a battalion of the 15th Infantry at Tientsin. From China he returned to the Philippines, where he became aide-de-camp to Major General Charles E. Kilbourne at Corregidor. When Kilbourne was succeeded in command by Major General Stanley D. Embick, Wedemeyer remained as Embick's aide.
During his first tour of duty in the islands, Wedemeyer courted and wed Embick's daughter while her father commanded a regiment on Corregidor. In the intervening years, his father-in-law became Wedemeyer's professional mentor, influencing his thinking on strategic issues, General Embick particularly excited Wedemeyer's interest in the economic aspect of warfare and the economic war-making potential of the nation.
Even before his marriage, Wedemeyer had enjoyed a professional relationship with Embick. Wedemeyer's parents sent him parcels of books with which to educate himself about the Philippine Islands, and he had exchanged these books with then-Colonel Embick on the troopship taking them to the Far East in 1923. Embick later encouraged Wedemeyer to organize discussion groups of officers during the years on Corregidor. Professional reading served as the context for such social gatherings of Wedemeyer's peers--intelligent and articulate men who met periodically to discuss current events, the books they had been reading, and professional interests. The highlights of such meetings were the occasional sessions in which distinguished guests such as General Leonard Wood spoke with Wedemeyer and his friends.
In 1934 Wedemeyer returned to the United States to attend the Command and General Staff College and was an honor graduate of his two-year course. At that time, the United States and Germany had a reciprocal agreement whereby their respective armies exchanged staff college students, and the Leavenworth commandant, impressed by Wedemeyer's performance and noting from his record that he had studied German, recommended him for attendance at the German staff college, the Kriegsakademie. After graduation from Leavenworth, Wedemeyer filled in the few months before he was due to arrive in Germany by serving on the general staff in
Washington, temporarily assigned in the Intelligence Division, G-2, in June and July of 1936.
In the course of his sojourn in Washington, Wedemeyer made the acquaintance of Colonel Friedrich von Boetticher, the military attaché at the German embassy and, by virtue of his seniority, dean of the attachés on duty in the capital. Colonel von Boetticher, like any attaché cultivated friendships with many American officers. In time, Wedemeyer got to know him socially and visited the von Boetticher family occasionally. It happened that the attaché's daughter and the daughter of General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German General Staff, were both at that time enrolled in Sweetbriar College. Wedemeyer's chance meeting with Beck's daughter through von Boetticher's hospitality gave him an entrée to German military society that von Boetticher guaranteed by sending ahead letters of introduction to officers in Berlin.
After he arrived in the German capital in the summer of 1936 Wedemeyer immersed himself in the German language and in the complex German military studies. Far more than the American Command and General Staff College, the Kriesgakademie stressed the strategic factors in warfare, with particular emphasis on those elements that are understood today to be a part of grand strategy. Wedemeyer appreciated the relationship of economic power to war potential and was impressed with the German understanding of the role of war as an instrument of national policy.
The years in Berlin also afforded Wedemeyer a chance to do a great deal of serious reading, and he studied both the great captains and the traditional military classics, thoroughly grounding himself in the theory of warfare. The books that impressed him most were those that emphasized the importance of flexibility and mobility, topics of immediate concern in the German Army of 1936. The curriculum of the Kriegsakademie stressed the application of technology to maneuver, reflecting the German preoccupation with avoiding another positional war. Military history, a topic of weekly study at the Kriegsakademie, served to illustrate contemporary doctrinal concerns. Instructors consciously linked the historical examples to students' tactical discussions, reinforcing their academic appreciation of the issues involved through study of specific battles. Staff rides were accordingly an essential part of tactical instruction; Wedemeyer's staff group went to Tannenberg.
In his final summer in Berlin, Wedemeyer was assigned to a tour with troops, as were all Kriegsakademie graduates. Although an
American should probably have been excluded from such duty, Wedemeyer found himself attached to an antitank battalion, where he exercised command of a Panzerabwehrkompanie during the annual maneuvers. In the process, he learned a great deal about the mobility of German units, as well as about the German Army's approach to the technical problem of antitank defense.4 He had the rare opportunity to see German maneuver doctrine, for which he had acquired a thorough academic appreciation, put into practice. Wedemeyer was deeply impressed with German battle doctrine, and explained it with great care in his final report on his two years of schooling in Berlin.5
While the Kriegsakademie had a profound bearing on Wedemeyer's professional development, the personal relationships he enjoyed in Berlin were just as important. While visiting von Boetticher in Washington,he had been struck by the attaché's depth of understanding of the French Army and its doctrine. In Berlin, he found that such professionalism was a characteristic of the German general staff officer. He was impressed by the professional credentials of his classmates, all of whom were well read and thought deeply about the military issues of the day. His friends in Berlin, many of whom wound up in the opposition to Hitler by 1944, included Wessel Freitag von Loringhoven,with whom he was socially close, and Claus Graf von Stauffenberg, Major Ferdinand Jodl,the director of his staff group, was the brother of Alfred Jodl, later a general and chief of staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Perhaps most important of his contacts,however, was Ludwig Beck himself, the chief of the General Staff. Building upon the introduction von Boetticher provided and his chance meeting of Beck's daughter, Wedemeyer occasionally visited Beck's home for dinner and wide-ranging discussions of strategic and military issues in Europe.
In August 1938, Wedemeyer returned to the United States and presented his report on the Kriegsakademie to General Malin Craig, the Army chief of staff. Craig had the paper circulated to all of the staff, but the only serious evaluation came from the chief of the War
Plans Division, Brigadier General George C. Marshall.6 When he met with Marshall, Wedemeyer discussed Germany's determination to avoid a repetition of World War I and briefed him in greater detail about German plans to increase the tempo of battle, avoid trench warfare, conduct deep turning movements directed at objectives far behind the line of contact, and use armored forces supported by tactical aviation for exploitation.
Declining an assignment at the War Department, Wedemeyer then returned to Fort Benning, where he was assigned to the 29th Infantry. In January 1940, he became executive officer of the newly formed 94th Antitank Battalion. He remained in Georgia until September 1940, when he was recalled to Washington to work in the training section of the Office of the Chief of Infantry, where he wrote antiarmor doctrine. Shortly thereafter, in May 1941, he was reassigned to the plans group of the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff.
Experience, military schooling, influential personal relationships, professional study--each contributed to Albert Wedemeyer's eventual ability to serve the Army as a strategist. Although his career scarcely differed--until his assignment to Berlin--from that of scores of other officers in the 1920s and 1930s, he seems to have made the most of every posting. In two assignment with the 29th Infantry, Fort Benning's school regiment, he mastered the skills of an infantryman and commanded a war-strength company. In the Philippine Islands he served with the Philippine Scouts for almost three years,learning the arts of leadership and taking the opportunity to study the problems of the Far East at firsthand, a self-imposed curriculum he continued in his two years as a battalion staff officer in Tientsin. He had a rich and diverse experience of troop duty, again commanding an infantry company in Maryland and an artillery battery in Texas, and serving as executive officer of an antitank battalion at Fort Benning. In three tours of duty as an aide-de-camp, Wedemeyer had the unusual opportunity, as a very junior officer, to see how the Army functioned at much higher levels. He came to understand the Army as a system, to appreciate the high-level perspective on day-to-day operations, and to observe top flight, experienced leaders.
The two years he spent as a student at Fort Leavenworth applied
a polish to his already extensive understanding of the Army. its missions, its operations, and the functioning of its staff. His attendance at the Kriegsakademie had a direct bearing on his eventual duties, inasmuch as Wedemeyer studied, in the years immediately preceding World War II, the battle doctrine of the nation that was to become America's chief enemy.
But his studies in Berlin were even more important because they had a more elevated focus than did his work at Fort Leavenworth. The Kriegsakademie assumed a thorough knowledge of minor tactics and staff procedures on the part of its students. Rather than teaching the methods of staff work, it asked its students to think through operational problems and posit solutions to them. Reaching beyond the purely operational level, the Kriegsakademie curriculum sought creative thought on the problems of conducting modern, mechanized, mobile warfare, both in terms of operations and in terms of the logistical arrangements necessary to support such operations. At a time when the United States Army and its air corps were developing their doctrines separately, the Kriegsakademie taught that operations plans must routinely provide for tactical air support.7 At yet a higher level, the Kriegsakademie student learned the classical definitions of strategy--not just military strategy, but national strategy, of which military strategy was only one component.
"I was impressed with the practicality and thoroughness of the purely military work, as well as with the intellectual breadth of the curriculum," Wedemeyer said many years later of his studies in Berlin.8 Certainly the personal contacts he enjoyed among the German officers at the Kriegsakademie and on the General Staff contributed to his enjoyment of the course and enriched his understanding
of the subjects he studied. To have direct access to the chief of the General Staff and to be able to approach him on a social basis was an incredible stroke of fortune for an aspiring strategist. Wedemeyer recalls that Ludwig Beck was exceptionally well informed about the European military situation, the conditions prevailing in foreign armies, and the strategic options that presented themselves to the various European powers in those years. Beck discussed such matters freely with his young guest, who admired the intellectual power of his host and his grasp of national policy issues.
Beck's influence on Wedemeyer was significant enough for the latter to comment upon it almost fifty years later, but he was also influenced by others. Not least among them was the series of able generals for whom Wedemeyer served as aide-de-camp. In some cases, they merely set the example of what a good officer should be. But in the case of Major General Stanley Embick, the example was more direct. Embick was a scholarly officer who encouraged Wedemeyer's natural bent in history and international relations. Embick's concern with Pacific strategic issues, in preference to European, also accorded with Wedemeyer's experience and service, although it clashed with his intellectual grasp of geopolitical reality that saw Europe as the place in which issues of worldwide importance would be settled.9
As important as all of these things were, they were still secondary influences; the man's character determined the uses he made of the opportunities that fate placed in his path. Raised to value knowledge for its own sake, and of a naturally enquiring nature, Wedemeyer was not content to take his opinions secondhand. I his early years as a soldier, he continued the reading habits established in his youth, and the influences that bore upon him through those years helped to direct his reading. It is to his reading, rather than to external influences, that one must turn to understand the intellectual preparation that Albert Wedemeyer brought with him to his job on the general staff in 1941.
Professional reading undertaken as recreation was a congenial base for professional reading undertaken for its own sake. While studying at the Command and General Staff School and at the Kriegsakademie, Wedemeyer continued to read widely, in the latter case drawing on the excellent European libraries available to him. Now, however, his studies sharpened the focus of his reading, and he surveyed the field of strategic studies and traditional military classics. His earlier reading of history, economics, and political science gave him a thorough understanding of the context in which wars are fought. With such preparation, he found it easier to grasp the essence of the ideas of the major philosophers of war.
Student of Applied Strategy:
The Reading Program of a Professional Officer
Generally speaking, it is an uncertain proposition to point to a certain book and assert that it had a specific and undeniable impact on a public figure's later work. In this case, however, it is tempting to suggest a direct connection between Wedemeyer's eventual strategic plans and his earlier reading. General Wedemeyer in 1987 emphasized a number of books that affected his work during World War II: Karl von Clausewitz, On War; Sun Tzu, The Art of War; Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals; and the works of Ardant du Picq, Colmar von der Goltz, and Sir Halford J. Mackinder. He read J.F.C. Fuller's books while and student at the Kriegsakademie.10 An element common to most of those books is that they concern themselves, by and large, with strategic issues and the larger questions of how wars are won or lost. WHen they descend to the tactical or operational level, they do so as an extension of general principles of a strategic nature. At all events, the strategic matters were the ones to which Wedemeyer paid the most attention, because strategy interested him far more than tactics. Surveying these books,one can trace the development of many important themes in twentieth century warfare. It is also possible, using Wedemeyer's specific comments about his readings as mileposts, to chart through these books a path that finds most of the key points in the Victory Plan.
Wedemeyer's strategic education began with Clausewitz. Early
Grant Hall, main academic building of the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth while Wedemeyer was a student there. (U.S. Army Collection, National Archives)
Early construction at Fort Benning--29th Infantry Barracks, circa 1924. (U.S. Army Collection, National Archives)
Brig. Gen. Paul Malone, commandant of the Infantry School and Wedemeyer's early sponsor. (U.S. Army Collection, National Archives)
Maj. Gen. Stanley D. Embick, whom Wedemeyer served as aide-de-camp, and who encouraged his early study of strategic issues. (Center of Military History)
Friedrich von Boetticher (right), German military attaché in Washington whose letters of introduction paved the way for Wedemeyer's talks with General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German General Staff. Here, von Boetticher presents his credentials at the War Department. (U.S. Army Photograph)
Capt. Albert C. Wedemeyer as a student at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin, 1936-1938. (Courtesy of General A.C. Wedemeyer)
in his career, he was impressed with the classical doctrine that "war was the continuation of politics by other means--that the ends of war were not slaughter and destruction per se, but the achievement of rational goals."11 If that were so, then reliance on military strategy alone would be a mistake, and the planner had to consider the broader implications of military action. Clausewitz wrote that national policy is "the womb in which war is developed,"12 and Wedemeyer thereby understood that strategy is the handmaiden of policy. He noted that
strategy, properly conceived, thus seemed to me to require a transcendence of the narrowly military perspectives that the term traditionally implied. Strategy required a systematic consideration and use of all the so-called instruments of policy--political, economic, psychological, et cetera, as well as military--in pursuing national objectives. Indeed, the nonmilitary factors deserved unequivocal priority over the military, the latter to be employed only as the last resort.13
Many of the authors Wedemeyer studies reinforced the idea that war was a political phenomenon, reiterating Clausewitzian dicta. One of the foremost popular interpreters of Clausewitz in the last half of the nineteenth century was Lieutenant General Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, a Prussian general staff officer whose books made Clausewitz accessible to the average serving officer. Again and again in his writings he emphasized that "war serves politics both before and after," explaining that "an end and aim that is of permanent value to the State, be it only a question of ascendency, must be existent; and this can only arise from political considerations."14 For von der Goltz, the key was that "without a good policy a successful war is not probable." Policy was so important, in fact, that attainment of the goals posited by that policy defined success in war.15
In The Conduct of War, arguably his most important book, von der Goltz discussed such issues in detail, repeatedly pointing out that military actions must always be regulated by the higher considerations of national objective. War cannot deviate from the political
goals, because it is after all only politics in another form. The political situation, rather than purely military considerations, should always govern the assumption of the strategic offensive or defensive, and the forms that such military actions might take.16 The trick, as von der Goltz pointed out, was to be able to come up with the right strategy at the right time, so that the enemy could be confronted with the greatest possible strength at the critical time and place.17 The hand-in-glove relationship between politics and military effort found its way over the years into the writings of many of the authors who considered the military problems of the twentieth century. Even a man such as J.F.C. Fuller, more directly concerned with the evolution of armored warfare, found occasion to write that "wars, it must be remembered, are means to an end, the end being peace,consequently this end largely influences their nature."18
The changing nature of modern war, which Wedemeyer clearly perceived and described in his report on his year in Berlin, complicated the matter. Warfare in the twentieth century lost the restraint characteristic of the previous centuries and evolved into total war. "War nowadays generally appears in its natural form," von der Goltz wrote, "as a bloody encounter of nations, in which each contending side seeks the complete defeat, or, if possible, the destruction of the enemy."19 Von der Goltz proceeded to a discussion of total war as a characteristic of the modern age, describing future warfare as aiming at the "annihilation" and "destruction" of the enemy, so as to "reduce him to such a physical and moral state that he feels himself incapable of continuing the struggle."20 The characteristics of such a war emphasized the need for overwhelming military power. The military resources of the nation had to be marshaled to such an extent that it could enforce a favorable peace without delay, once military victory was gained. In order to accomplish this, all military forces had to be fully ready to fight at the outbreak of the war and prepared to prosecute the war ceaselessly and untiringly until decisive
victory should completely break the organized resistance of the enemy.21
Obviously, such conditions argued for the strongest possible standing military force, but few nations could afford to maintain such a force. The question was one of resilience and endurance, von der Goltz wrote, for "the side which is in a position to support the strain of war the longest enjoys a great advantage."22 Because of the enormous expense of professional armies, von der Goltz recommended the cadre army as the most efficient military organization. He cautioned, however, that the attempt to skimp forces could be dangerous. "A state is not justified in trying to defend itself with only a portion of its strength, when the existence of the whole is at stake," he warned. Economies in military preparation therefore had to be weighted against the risks incident to such economies. The national spirit could compensate for certain material deficiencies through willingness to serve and sacrifice when necessary, and von der Goltz saw the best military organization as the one that mobilized the intellectual resources of the nation, as well as the material and military.23 Writing years later, Fuller agreed that a nation must have the will to win, as well as the ability to do so, and must make the exertions necessary to win.24
Transition from peace to war was therefore a complex process which, to be done efficiently, von der Goltz wrote, "is previously worked out down to the minutest detail."25 That process of mobilization was the essential first step to war. The nation that could mobilize its forces most swiftly had an enormous advantage. Without it, surprise was impossible; with it, great economies became possible because a small, concentrated, prepared army could defeat the nation that had a larger army not yet ready to fight. The point, according to von der Goltz, was that a mobilization plan by itself was of little merit unless it were coordinated with the plan of operations the army meant to execute. The mobilization process had to concentrate the army in a position from which useful operations could begin.26
Not only must an army mobilize rapidly, but its plans must allow
it rapidly to strike decisive blows. For a variety of reasons, as von der Goltz pointed out, haste is an essential of success. When attacked, the defender has only to hold out, while the attacker must win; the former is generally easier than the latter. The defender's advantages multiply with time. He is familiar with the theater of war and in possession of the key terrain when war begins; he is operating in his own country and has the sympathetic support of the civilian population; and the normal administrative machinery of his own nation is available to help him. "In a broad sense," von der Goltz summarized, "the defender receives the assistance of a whole nation, whilst the assailant is moving away from similar help."27 He therefore insisted upon the necessity of moving rapidly and with surprise, utilizing the advantages swift mobilization gives an army. An army needs large forces and decisive operations, he wrote, because of the "ever-diminishing power of the strategical offensive . . . which has to be taken into account, and which invariably becomes more pronounced the longer the line becomes over which the attack advances."28
Modern warfare is not only complex and fast-paced, but also the stakes were much higher because national survival was at issue when nations clashed. In such circumstances, careful and elaborate planning to provide against every contingency is essential. Thousands of years earlier, Sun Tzu advised against relying on the enemy not coming. Instead, the wise general relied upon his readiness to receive the enemy by making his positions unassailable.29 Sun Tzu believed that the successful general should place his enemy in such a position that victory would elude him and perceived the ability to envision such possibilities as the highest skill of generalship. Fighting soldiers had their place in the scheme of things, but those who
could first see the possibilities of victory were the more talented. "To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence," Sun Tzu wrote, adding that "to lift an autumn leaf is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with east."30 The ability to see victory before battle is fought is a talent, and that vision is translated into practice through careful planning. Planning, then, was the essential, for the successful general never sought battle without first having a plan that indicated that victory was possible.31
Good planning, essential for successful military operations, had the object of defeating the enemy swiftly. Sun Tzu expressed the ideal poetically. "In war," Sun Tzu said, "let your object be victory, not length campaigns."32 He warned that men tire and lose their enthusiasm for fighting if victory is long delayed. Nor can the state stand the expense and strain of a protracted campaign. Many difficulties and dangers arise when war goes purposely on; enemies arise to take advantage of the situation and "no man, however wise, will . . . be able to avert the consequences that must ensue." Thus, Sun Tzu wrote, "though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays. THere is no instance of a country having been benefitted from prolonged. warfare."33
Von der Goltz summarized with great precision the goal of military operations when he wrote that "We already know its first objective, the enemy's main army. Our first step will be to invade the theatre of war occupied by this army, seek it out, and to force it to a battle under the most favourable conditions possible."34 The strategist cannot think simply of the battle, however, and von der Goltz returned frequently to the point that military planning must always proceed from the national objective. "An absence of clear knowledge of the object aimed at engenders a weak method of conducting war," he wrote. Moreover, it "contains the germs of future defeat." In any operation, "vagueness as to our intentions produces irresolution
in our decisions and uncertainty in the orders."35 He insisted that planners must always look beyond the war to the question of enforcing the peace, for the inability to do that raises the possibility of having to fight another war, perhaps at a disadvantage. It was of the first importance to decide what sort of political arrangements would arise after a war, and von der Goltz concluded that "the possibility of having to perform this further task must be reckoned with at the time when war is decided upon."36
That the accomplishment of such goals in an age of total war would be difficult was something that von der Goltz foresaw, but that Fuller articulated with particular clarity. Total war leads almost inevitably to great destruction, which is normally justified by propaganda in order to sustain a people's resolve to fight the war. Cognizant that mobilization of public sentiment in Britain was a weapon of war in World War I, Fuller recognized that, once aroused, that sentiment became virulent and difficult to satiate. He therefore insisted that the wiser course was to limit the "destructive mania" that total war engenders.37 Victory involved the moral submission of the enemy, but an enemy should be destroyed only when that course of action was unavoidable, or when it would lead to a "profitable state of peacefulness." War to the knife, when avoidable, is criminal, because the true object of battle is rather the mental submission of the enemy than his destruction. In reviewing World War I, he identified a failure to prosecute the war for goals of peace as a potentially fatal flaw. War's devastation so unhinged the victors and so disturbed European society that a lasting peace was impossible to achieve. "The reason for this fatal dogma," Fuller wrote, "was ignorance of the true object of war, which is to establish a more perfect peace."38
The swift attainment of a desirable peace invariably resulted from carefully planned military operations that were conducted with dispatch, economy, and focus on the essential objectives. Sun Tzu counseled great concentration on the most important goals when he wrote that "there are roads which must not be followed armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged,
positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.39 Military operations conducted purely for the sake of fighting were anathema. Economy of action, like economy of movement, characterized the good general and typified the successful campaign. Sun Tzu advised not to move without some clear advantage, and not to fight unless the position was critical. Unless some specific advantage could be gained from battle, no general should fight.40 The most insidious vice, according to Sun Tzu, was the vary natural tendency of a general to dispatch troops to meet every enemy threat--to attempt to be strong everywhere. "If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will be everywhere weak," Sun Tzu wrote.41
Centuries later, Frederick the Great of Prussia returned to this theme in a set of confidential instructions that he issued to his generals. Frederick had to fight with great economy, inasmuch as he was surrounded by enemies, and he taught his generals that it was invariably wrong to disperse the army.42 "Numbers are an essential point in war," Frederick believed, and he demanded that his generals keep away from sideshows. "Always sacrifice the bagatelle and pursue the essential," he insisted.43 Fuller discussed the same problem in a different way when he formulated the principles of war. The idea that Sun Tzu and Frederick the Great discussed is encapsulated in two of Fuller's principles: mass and objective. Fuller believed that the successful general always kept the final objective in mind and did not allow himself to be diverted by attractive, but transient, opportunities; and he always kept in hand a sufficient force to deal with that final objective.44
Those general principles constituted nothing new in the military art, although Fuller expressed them very clearly and concisely, drawing together disparate ideas of many of the great philosophers of war. The doctrines of mass and objective were implicit in the works of Clausewitz, and explicit in von der Goltz's gloss of Clausewitz. He repeatedly wrote about the need to pay attention to
the enemy's main army and to "fall upon the enemy's weakest point with superior force" as the first principle of the military art.45 He conceded that small detachments of troops might hold larger bodies of the enemy in check while the enemy's main force was brought to battle, bust insisted that every detachment that had no connect with the decision of the main battle was "invariably faulty." He believed that every such detachment from the main force was a blunder, for "a single battalion may turn the scale in a battle."46
And yet no army could possibly have enough battalions to ensure victory under all possibly circumstances, for manpower is always limited. Frederick the Great, confronted with that dilemma, suggested ways to manipulate the combat power of a smaller army to cope with far larger enemies. Sheer numbers, according to Frederick, were far less important than the situation and the tactics that a general chose to use. In every age, the ingenious commander had some technique or technology available to him to overcome the limitations imposed by the size of his army.
Frederick the Great used the advantages of interior lines and superior battlefield discipline--and not a little luck--to stave off his several enemies. In the twentieth century, other possibilities suggested themselves. Foremost among them was superior mobility, which prophets of armored warfare such as Fuller believed would revolutionize battle. The smaller army that had superior mobility could still concentrate mass at the decisive place and time to engage and defeat the enemy's main body. Higher mobility would give the smaller army the critical advantage in space and time so that it could act faster than its enemy could react. Colmar von der Goltz stated the requirements in 1899, writing that a high degree of mobility was essential because movement was the "very soul" of the strategic offensive.47 In a series of books, Fuller proceeded from that truism to demonstrate how an army could sustain mobility in the face of the enormous firepower that World War I had shown the defense to possess. In general terms, Fuller believed that the army had to design its organization and equipment with an eye to the enemy's mobility, the nature of the country in which the army was intended to fight, and the issue of command of the air. If, for example, an army enjoyed complete superiority in the air, then its mobility
would be enhanced in proportion as the enemy's freedom of action was restricted by air attack.48 Wedemeyer read Fuller while stationed in Berlin and emphasized in his report the same basic theme Fuller addressed: the problem of avoiding another long war of attrition by restoring mobility to the battlefield.
Fuller was convinced, moreover, that superior mobility had to have some purpose other than continuing to bludgeon the enemy on the line of contact--the bankrupt solution of the First World War. Therefore he wrote that the army should always strike strategic objectives as a way to win wars. That pointer came once again from Frederick the Great, who stressed that the foundation of an army was its belly, and that no army could function without being able to nourish itself.49 Frederick's words rang particularly true in the case of World War I, where large armies fought great, costly, but ultimately inconclusive battles. The war finally ended because the belligerents could no longer sustain the fighting; exhaustion, rather than battle, decided the issue. The war might surely have been ended sooner and at less cost if the armies had been able to find some way to interrupt the essential supplies that sustained the divisions on the line.
Ruminating upon that problem, Fuller and others concluded that warfare of the future would be fought over large areas, rather than on more or less rigid lines.50 Fuller believed that the fighting typical of the Great War was archaic. He suggested the simile of the boxer, who wears himself out trying to batter the strong arms of his opponent, while he might more profitably strike the other man in the head. Fuller expressed the idea more prosaically when de described the correct way to win a war in terms of delivering a "pistol shot to the brain" of the enemy's army, rather than fighting the great, expensive, dangerous battles typical of World War I.51 What, then, should be the objective of military operations--an objective that would satisfy the description of the enemy's "brain"?
The proper objective was almost always the enemy's command structure and his lines of communications. Fuller's reply to Frederick the Great's observation about an army's needs was that the wise commander should destroy the other army's logistics. The decisive
point, he believed, was always "that point in an army, generally the rear, from which its line of communications to its supply base runs."52 While, therefore, the object of all military operations must be the enemy's main body, technology had changed the way to achieve that goal. No longer were great decisive battles to be fought out on the line of contact, although Fuller agreed that battle was important in order to hold the enemy in place, reduce his mobility, and constrict his freedom of action, so that the critical attacks directed against his rear could prove successful.53
Traditionally organized armies could never conduct the operations Fuller described because they were too large and too ponderous. The modern army had to exploit the advances that changes in civil society had wrought, particularly those changes in science, industry, and engineering that intimately affected the nature of weapons.54 The great failure of armies in 1914 was that they imperfectly assessed and applied the technological advances with which they were confronted. The slaughter that followed was the direct result of the failure to appreciate that an army must keep pace with the progress of industry. "The war we had prepared for," Fuller eventually concluded, "was a phantom, a will o' the wisp, which literally led us off the highway of progress. . . ."55 In solving the problem, he rejected the conventional wisdom of the orthodox military mind that WOrld War I proved conclusively the superiority of the defense; that the offense could never again overcome the inherent advantages of the defense; and that future warfare would necessarily be positional. If soldiers failed to recognize the changes that technology had wrought in war, they would again prepare to fight the wrong sort of war. In short, Fuller believed that the great lesson of World War I was that mobility was essential and that the power of defensive fire could be overcome by combining mobility with armored protection.
The revolution in technology provided the answer. Fully wrote that weapons change tactics, organization, and the training of armies. Whatever changes might arise, however, the first necessity was always to develop mobility through "protected offensive power," a consideration to which all other tactical functions were subordinate.56
"Protected offensive power" lay at the heart of the matter. The rifle and the machine gun created the conditions that dominated World War I. In the face of the modern bullet it was impossible for the cavalry and dismounted infantry to conduct the kinds of operations that Fuller described as being decisive. Once pinned down by deadly rifle fire, formations were decimated by even deadlier artillery barrages. Technology produced the answer: the tank.
Armor defeated the bullet57 and gave the army the mobility it needed to win a war that ranged over great land areas. The tank of World War I was designed to accompany the infantry and overcome the obstacles the infantry faced, but that tank was an immature weapon. Fuller, by contrast, envisioned fast, lightly armed and lightly armored vehicles to be used in exploitation of an enemy's immediate tactical defeat. His concept strongly resembled the conduct of war at sea, and he believed that tank formations could achieve decisive strategic results when properly organized and employed.58 Other forces might have many missions, but the armored force was purely offensive in nature. The arms that supported the tanks--the infantry, engineers, signal troops, and artillery--had to be similarly mounted if they were to be of any use.59
The experience of the First World War demonstrated, moreover, that ground forces could no longer operate independently. Fuller believed deeply in joint operations and thought that advances in the capabilities of one of the armed forces significantly affected the operations of the others. Modern soldiers had to learn to think of the combined use of the three services, rather than of their individual employment. That meant one could not consider the army without thinking of the air force, or about the impact of science and industry on civil life and politics. Genius lay in fitting all of those factors together.60 He saw immediate application for air power in the conduct of future warfare.
The air force, Fuller argued, "is the thunderbolt of future war." The soldier's task was to determine the correct targets so that the power of an air force could be used to help deliver the knockout blow.61 If mobility were the key to success in war, then one should
attempt to reduce the enemy's mobility as the corollary, and in that task air forces could excel. Even a modern mechanized army, Fuller said, was vulnerable because it was "a slow-moving horde" when compared to the speed of airplanes, especially vulnerable because it had to be supplied by hundreds of vehicles tied to roads and railways.62 The second important function of air power was scouting. Fuller emphasized the reconnaissance role of airplanes, particularly their ability to find enemy tanks, so enabling friendly armor to attack them. Without the airplane, the tank was blind, according to Fuller, and he deduced that cooperation between tanks and airplanes would be characteristic of future wars and far more significant than cooperation between tanks and infantry.63
Future warfare, as Fuller described it, would be fast-paced, with the consequence that its practitioners would have increasingly little time available to make decisions. Fuller believed that the mobile forces he described had to be used in a much less structured way because a fixed plan could never survive in such a flexible, rapidly developing situation.64 Time was therefore the decisive factor in warfare. To conserve time was a goal to be attained through thorough preparation, not only in tactical training and well-exercised troops, but also through a thorough knowledge of the enemy and the conditions under which the army had to fight.
Fuller believed that audacity won wars, but that success was founded upon sound information and a psychological grasp of the enemy's intentions.65 Frederick the Great wrote that "war is not an affair of chance," but of preparations, although ill fortune can confound a general's prudence.66 Audacity, then, should always proceed from a cold appreciation of the circumstances of battle. Thus the general had to know his enemy and the country in which he fought.
Sun Tzu wrote that "what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and to achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge."67 That meant that the general had to know the enemy as well as himself: "If you know the
enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."68 Significantly, Sun Tzu warned against entering into alliances until well acquainted with the neighboring country's plans, lest the allies work at cross purposes.69 Frederick the Great advised the general to know the enemy's country as thoroughly as possible. For Frederick, that injunction included understanding the enemy terrain, population, and economy. Without such a careful study of the enemy, a general can never understand what the enemy is capable of doing. Frederick always believed it important for the general "not to think so much about what he wishes to do as about what his enemy will do," so as never to underestimate the enemy.70 Clausewitz, as interpreted by von der Goltz, reiterated those ideas, the latter writing that "our own plan of strategical concentration must take into consideration that of the enemy."71
The ultimate question was where military operations should be conducted in order to produce decisive results. Both the United States Navy and many senior Army officers believed in the 1930s that the interests of the United States lay in the Pacific, where Japan had emerged as the chief prospective enemy. The American conquest of the Philippines in 1898 and the Japanese defeat of the Russians in 1905 placed the two new great powers in potential opposition. The spokesmen of the isolationist movement were particularly eloquent in their arguments that the country should take no part in European wars. When he chanced to read the works of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, however, Wedemeyer considered favorably arguments to the contrary.
Mackinder was a geographer who was the first director of the London School of Economics. His thesis was that there was a "world island" consisting of eastern Europe and central Asia that constituted the "heartland," and land power growing in importance and ascendancy over the "maritime lands" of the other continents. Mackinder reasoned that the military importance of navies was in decline and that the maritime powers could not compete with the
potential economic and industrial development of Asia, particularly Siberia.
As a result, he believed, only those military and political actions directly affecting the "heartland" could be decisive in world history. After the Treaty of Versailles, Mackinder urged that the United States and the United Kingdom accept the task of assuring the balance between the great powers that were attempting to dominate the heartland. Mackinder further opined that the political chaos attendant upon a lost war and political revolution in Central Europe would inevitably lead to dictatorship and war.72 The consequences of war and its attendant political instability were so great that, for Mackinder, the critical theater of any war was always strongly influenced by considerations of heartland. By implication, any nation's strategy would definitely involve the heartland.
Albert Wedemeyer's professional reading gave him an excellent foundation in strategic thought. He preferred study of the strategic level of war to that of the tactical and early concluded that military strategy was only a part—and not necessarily the most important part—of national strategy. He accepted that war arose from political causes and had always to be conducted with the ultimate political goal in mind and that a war must be concluded with a peace that could be enforced. Clear understanding of the national policy was thus for Wedemeyer the precondition of successful strategic planning. While he never studied mobilization planning per se, his professional reading offered a comprehensive survey of the chief problems of mobilization and strategic planning.
Wedemeyer's reading, both classic and modern, offered a description of modern war that almost always inclines toward total war and encompasses all aspects of society. In order to fight such a war in which national survival may be at stake, the military forces must be fully prepared to prosecute the war aggressively and unceasingly until its conclusion. The expense of modern armies made it necessary to find ways in which to employ smaller armies to meet such a goal, however, and to plan for a nation's rapid and efficient transition
from peace to war. Mobilization therefore was of the first importance for any army, as was the preparedness generated by careful and thoughtful military planning. Wars had to be fought and concluded quickly, in order to avoid the vagaries of chance, and they had to be fought efficiently. Effective warfare boiled down to directing military effort against the main objective, eschewing side issues and military filibustering.
The principal objective an any army was the main body of the enemy's army, but the experience of World War I taught Wedemeyer that the way in which the enemy should be brought to battle was through deep attacks to destroy his command, logistics, and communications, rather that through great pitched battles between more or less equally balanced forces. Rapid advances in technology gave armies the tools with which to conduct mobile warfare of that sort, and the serious students of mobile warfare described the use of the tank and the airplane to accomplish those ends.
Of critical importance were intelligence and careful study of the enemy, his capabilities, intentions, territories, and the probable theater of operations. Equally important were the goals and intentions of one's allies. Finally, there was the emerging and persuasive idea that the theater in which decisive operations might be conducted was the Eurasian land mass, where the struggle for control of the heartland was going on.
What is to be made of this recitation of key points from the books to which Wedemeyer acknowledged intellectual debts? However attractive it may be to conclude that he gleaned these specific concepts when he read them, the question can only remain an open one, possible--even probable--but unproven. What is certain is that Wedemeyer's professional reading was in some measure responsible for developing what Clausewitz termed the educated judgment of the mature soldier. Without that educated judgment, Wedemeyer would have been in capable of carrying through the planning tasks assigned to him in 1941.
The good counsel of his careful professional reading, when combined with the experience of his diverse assignments and formal professional schooling, gave Albert Wedemeyer an unusually good preparation for the job he came to hold. All of General George Marshall's officers in the War Plans Division were bright, intelligent, dedicated, and capable men, no one of whom stands out more than the others. In Wedemeyer, however, chance had delivered a difficult
planning task to the man whose combination of intellect, education, and experience made him almost perfectly suited to draft the mobilization estimate for national defense forces that in 1941 were wholly inadequate for global military action.
Table of Contents ** Previous Chapter (Introduction) * Next Chapter (2)
1. Repetitive tours as aide were suspect, George Marshall, in declining the position of aide-de-camp to the Governor General, Philippine Islands, wrote that "if I became an aide for the fourth time I fear, in fact I feel sure, that to the army at large I would be convicted of being only and aide and never a commander." Letter, G.C. Marshall, to Henry L. Stimson, 22 December 1927, in Larry I. Bland and Sharon R.Ritenour (eds.), The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Vol. I, "The Soldierly Spirit" December 1880-June 1939 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 322.
2. Battalions were commanded by majors in the interwar Army. Biographical data concerning General A.C. Wedemeyer are drawn from his memoir: Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1958), and from other materials cited in the bibliography.
3. Col. Don H. Hampton (Interviewer), "Interview with General Albert C. Wedemeyer" (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: USAWC/USAMHI Senior Officer Oral History Program, 14 March 1984), p. 2.
4. Wedemeyer summarized what he had learned about the subjects in "Antitank Defense," Field Artillery Journal 31 (May 1941), 258-72, an article also published as "Stopping the Armoured Onslaught," Infantry Journal 48 (May 1941), 22-31.
5. Memorandum, Captain A.C.Wedemeyer for the Adjutant General, 3 August 1938, Subj: German General Staff School, NARA RG 165, G-2 Regional Files--Germany (6740), Washington National Record Center, Suitland, Md.
6. Forrest C. Pogue, in George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope. 1932-1942 (New York: The Viking Press, 1966), p. 141.
7. For discussion of the limitations of Army Air Corps tactical doctrine, see Kent Roberts Greenfield and Robert R. Palmer, "Origins of the Army Ground Forces General Headquarters, United States Army, 1940-1942" (Historical Section, Army Ground Forces Study No. 1, 1946), Chapter 7; Greenfield, "Army Ground Forces and the Air-Ground Battle Team Including Organic Light Aviation" (Historical Section, Army Ground Forces Study No. 35, 1948), pp. 1-8, outlines the Air Corps preference for concepts of strategic aviation as proposed by Mitchell and Douhet. See also Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, PLans and Early Operations. January 1939 To August 1942. THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), Vol. I, pp. 17-74 and 101-150.
8. Quoted in Keith E. Eiler, "The Man Who Planned Victory: An Interview with Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer," American Heritage 34:6 (1983), p. 38.
9. Embick was opposed to American involvement in European wars. See, for example, letter, Embick to Marshall, 12 April 1939, in George C. Marshall Papers, FF 36, Box 67, Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia. Also see Mark Stoler, "From Continentalism to Globalism: General Stanley D. Embick, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and the Military View of National Policy during the Second World War," Diplomatic History 6 (Summer 1982), 303-21.
10. In his interviews with the author during the spring and summer of 1987, Gen. Wedemeyer discussed many books, but these were the ones upon which he laid special emphasis or mentioned frequently. In discussing the books, he occasionally gave a précis of the parts that seemed most significant to him.
11. Quoted in Eiler, "The Man Who Planned Victory," p. 39.
12. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), Book II, Chapter 3, p. 149.
13. Quoted in Eiler, "The Man Who Planned Victory," p. 39.
14. Lieut. Gen. Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, Nation in Arms (London: W.H. Allen, 1887), p. 117.
16. Lieut. Gen. Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, The Conduct of War. A Short Treatise On Its Most Important Branches and Guiding Rules (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner, 1899), pp. 2, 28-29.
17. Ibid., p. 35.
18. J.F.C. Fuller, On Future Warfare (London: Sifton, Praed, 1928), p. 212.
19. Von der Goltz, The Conduct of War, p. 5. On the "natural form" of warfare, see On War, Book I, Chapter 1, p. 75.
20. Fuller [sic: s.b. von der Goltz?], The Conduct of War, p. 8.
21. Ibid., p. 21.
22. Ibid., pp. 16-17.
23. Ibid., p. 3.
24. J.F.C. Fuller, The Reformation of War (London: Hutchinson, 1923), p. 22.
25. Fuller [sic: s.b. von der Goltz?], The Conduct of War, pp. 116-17.
27. Ibid., pp. 56-57.
28. Ibid., pp. 41-42. Modern experience indicates that von der Goltz did not appreciate the destruction modern warfare could visit upon the defender's country; with modern weapons in use, no nation would want to fight in its own territory. The general conclusion is valid, however, that the difficulties an attacker faces grow more numerous and more serious as his lines of communications grow longer.
29. Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Harrisburg: Military Service Publishing Company, 1944), p. 70. Citations in text refer to this translation, an edition of which Wedemeyer read before World War II. In each case, however, the citation for the superior translation by Samuel B. Griffith is also provided. See Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 114 (Hereinafter cited as Griffith translation).
30. Ibid., pp. 52-53. Griffith translation, p. 86.
31. Ibid., p. 43. Griffith translation, p. 71.
32. Ibid., p. 47. Griffith translation, p. 73.
33. Ibid., pp. 44-45. Griffith translation, p. 73.
34. Von der Goltz, The Conduct of War, p. 34.
35. Ibid., p. 119.
36. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
37. Fuller, Lectures on F.S.R. III. (Operations Between Mechanized Forces) (London: Sifton Praed, 1932), pp. 37-38.
38. Ibid., p. 36. Emphasis in original.
39. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 69. Griffith translation, pp. 111-12.
40. Ibid., pp. 94-95. Griffith translation, pp. 79, 85.
41. Ibid., p. 60. Griffith translation, pp. 79-80.
42. Frederick II von Hohenzollern, King of Prussia, Instructions for His Generals (Harrisburg: The Stackpole Company, 1944), p. 51.
43. Ibid., pp. 44, 52.
44. In The Reformation of War, Fuller devoted considerable space to elaborating upon the principles of war as he saw them; see pp. 28 et. seq.
45. Fuller, The Conduct of War, pp. 9-10, 132, 154.
46. Ibid., pp. 10-12.
47. Ibid., p. 43.
48. Fuller, Lectures on FSR III, p. 72.
49. Frederick the Great, Instructions For His Generals, p. 34.
50. Fuller, Lectures on FSR III, p. 356.
51. Fuller, On Future Warfare, pp. 93 et. seq. Fuller expressed the same point in various ways elsewhere in his writings as well.
52. Fuller, Lectures on FSR III, p. 85.
54. Fuller, On Future Warfare, p. 224.
55. Ibid., p. 114.
56. Ibid., p. 224.
57. Fuller, Lectures on FSR III, p. 39 et passim.
58. Fuller, On Future Warfare, pp. 8-10, and Chapter I.
59. Ibid., pp. 251-52, 370, et passim.
60. Ibid., pp. 144-45.
61. Ibid., p. 223.
62. Ibid., p. 328.
63. Fuller, On Future Warfare, p. 25.
64. Fuller, Lectures on FSR III, pp. 44-45.
65. Ibid., p. 87.
66. Frederick the Great, Instructions to His Generals, pp. 66, 96.
67. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p. 81. Emphasis in original. Griffith translation, p. 144.
68. Ibid., p. 51. Griffith translation, p. 84.
69. Ibid., p. 65. Griffith translation, p. 88.
70. Frederick the Great, Instructions to His Generals, pp. 24, 33, 47, et passim.
71. Von der Goltz, The Conduct of War, pp. 126-27.
72. Sir Halford John Mackinder, The Scope and Methods of Geography and the Geographical Pivot of History (London: The Royal Geographical Society, 1969 reprints of papers given in 1902 and 1904); and Democratic Ideals and Reality. A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1942 reprint of 1919 edition). "Round World and the Winning of the Peace," in Foreign Affairs 21 (1943), 595-605 is an exceptional summary of Mackinder's thought.