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Surrendering the initiative? C2 on the digitized battlefield
Military Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Jim Dunivan
The German military manual On the German Art of War: Truppenfuhrung articulates the doctrine of mission tactics the German Army used during World War II. (21) Parts one and two of the manual were in many ways a modern version of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. According to historian Williamson Murray, Truppenfuhrung "remains the most influential doctrinal manual ever written [and] represents one of the most thoughtful examinations of the conduct of operations and leadership." (22)
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German battlefield experience obtained from the harsh reality of World War I had proven directive control to be effective. While attending the Advanced Class at the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1930 to 1931, German Captain Adolf von Schell gave a series of informal lectures. According to Von Schell, the German Army used "mission tactics." Orders were not written down in the minutest detail; instead, a commander issued missions to subordinate commanders: "How [missions] shall be carried out is [the commander's] problem. This is done because the commander on the ground is the only one who can correctly judge existing conditions and take the proper action if a change occurs to the situation." (23)
Von Schell, and apparently many others in the post-World War I German Army, believed that commanders who were given the authority to make their own decisions within the limits of their mission felt personally responsible for the outcome and would therefore be successful and accomplish more. In the early 1930s, Von Schell wrote, "It is certainly evident from training in peace that the more freedom allowed a subordinate leader in his training, the better the result will be. Why? Because he is made responsible for the results and allowed to achieve them in his own way." (24)
The key to success, as alluded to by Von Schell and directed in Truppenfuhrung, was for subordinate leaders to exercise initiative through directive control within the limits of the mission and in accordance with the commander's intent. For directive control to work, a subordinate leader, or any soldier given a mission, had to fully understand his commander's intent and, in most cases, the intent of the next higher commander. (25) As long as battlefield decisions were made in accordance with the commander's intent, subordinate commanders had a wide degree of latitude and were expected to exercise great initiative. This doctrine of directive control established the framework of command and control for execution by the German Army that entered World War II. This superior doctrine led to initial German battlefield successes during the first half of the war.
Directive Control in the U.S. Army
U.S. Army General George S. Patton, Jr., was the leading proponent of directive control among U.S. generals during World War II. (26) His trademark phrase was, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." (27) Patton led from the front and drove the Third Army across Europe with a series of half-page-long operations orders. In the process, he "taught the auftragstaktik crowd a thing or two about their trade!" (28)
