1
THE ROOTS OF MODERN AMERICAN OPERATIONAL ART
By Colonel Michael R. Matheny
The Napoleonic Wars changed the nature of warfare. The
nation states of Europe summoned all their potential to field
massive armies. The increasing industrialization of Europe helped
to make this possible and in later years further changed the face
of war by providing more lethal technology. Theorists such as
Jomini and Clausewitz sought to explain this new nature of
Warfare and mark out new doctrines and truths about war. The
emerging professional armies of Europe took from the theorists
that which suited them and prepared for the next major clash of
arms, World War I.
In the 100 years, which passed between the end of the
Napoleonic wars and the next general European war, things had
changed considerably. A major lesson drawn from the Napoleonic
Wars was the importance of the decisive battle, but the generals
of World War I were unable to achieve it. Indecisive fighting
led to prolonged static warfare. Jomini’s definition of strategy
as the “art of making war upon the map,” seemed woefully
inadequate.
i
The armies were so large it was impossible for
tactics alone to crush the enemy and achieve strategic aims. On
the field of Waterloo some 140,000 men faced each other. By 1914
a combined total of 3.3 million men struggled in the Battle of
the Frontiers in France. As soon as the Great War came to an end
military thinkers began to ponder the new lessons of warfare.
In the aftermath of World War I the professionals began to
understand more completely the impact of the expanded
battlefield, industrialization, and mass armies.
ii
The old
framework of strategy and tactics was inadequate to comprehend
the new changes. This was the genesis of operational art in the
industrial age.
The Germans were among the first to grasp the need for a
new concept to link national strategy with tactics. As early as
1920 Baron Von Freytag-Loringhoven mentioned that the General
Staff increasingly used the term operative (pertaining to
operations) and thereby defined more simply and clearly the
difference from everything that is referred to as taktisch.
iii
The term strategy was confined “to the most important measures of
high command.”
iv
By the end of the interwar period this new
conceptual framework was well in place. In 1940 Colonel H.
Foertsch of the General Staff, described the German concept of
operations with a diagram. The diagram (see figure 1) emphasized
operations as the link between tactics and strategy.
