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Mythos revisited: American Historians and German
Fighting Power in WWII
by Thomas E. Nutter
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Chapter Four
MARTIN VAN CREVELD, FIGHTING POWER
Among those targeted by the self-appointed defenders of the honor of the U.S.
army for their alleged bias in favor of the Wehrmacht, none has incurred more
vilification than Martin van Creveld. Creveld is the author of several
well-received works on the general subject of warfare.(47) He has also written,
however, Fighting Power: German and U.S. army Performance, 1939-1945.(48)
It is this latter work that has earned him the opprobrium of those historians
who cannot abide anything, real or imagined, that smacks of criticism of the
U.S. army. Doubler characterizes Creveld as arguing that the American army
regarded war as a contest in which machines and firepower would largely
determine the outcome; that it viewed its soldiers as subordinate to their
machines, overlooked their most fundamental human needs, and favored
bureaucratic efficiency over troop morale. According to Doubler, Creveld found
American leadership mediocre at best.(49) Mansoor calls Fighting Power
"the most extreme case for the combat superiority of the Wehrmacht"
and "a damning indictment of the American army of World War II". His criticisms
of Creveld's work are identical to those of Doubler.(50) The most virulent
attack on Creveld, however, is mounted by Keith Bonn. Bonn calls Fighting
Power "notorious", saying that it is "limited by …basic flaws",
"contain(s) gross historical inaccuracies" and "represent(s) the worst kind of
revisionist history". Of Creveld's work, Bonn comments that "[S]o many factual
flaws regarding the U.S. Army exist in this book that it is impossible to list
them all here." According to Bonn, Creveld's observations about the U.S. Army
are "typically bizarre." Bonn recites the same litany of criticisms of
Creveld's work listed by Mansoor and Doubler, but maintains that the "most
dangerous of all" Creveld's assertions is "that the German doctrines for
operations and tactics were so far superior to those of their bumbling Ami
opponents that the contemporary U.S. Army should emulate the practices of the
very foe their forebears so soundly defeated!" Bonn concludes that Creveld's
book and others like it (not identified, it may be noted) "are actually most
useful mainly for instruction in how NOT to write comparative history."(51)
It is no exaggeration to say that the criticisms leveled at Creveld,
particularly those described in the foregoing paragraph, result from
grotesquely shallow analyses of his work. They amount, in fact, to nothing more
than total mischaracterizations of his work, designed to serve the agendas of
his critics by setting up yet another straw man to be knocked down. The notion
that Creveld sets up the German army as a model to be emulated is a palpable
falsehood. Even the most cursory reading of Creveld shows this to be true. In
his concluding chapter, for example, Creveld has this to say:
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Precisely because its power rested almost solely on
the excellence of its organization per se, the German army was capable
both of fighting with the utmost stubbornness and of cold-bloodedly butchering
untold numbers of innocent people. So strong was the grip in which the
organization held its personnel that the latter simply did not care where they
fought, against whom, and why. They were soldiers and did their duty,
regardless of whether that duty involved carrying out an offensive in the
south, a defensive in the north, or atrocities in the center.(52)
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It is indeed true that Creveld refers to the American officer corps as "less
than mediocre". The critics, however, have jerked this phrase totally out of
context, for the purpose of serving their own agendas. The broad context of the
phrase in question is that Creveld's work is an HISTORICAL comparison of the
ways in which two nations, the United States and Germany, created their armies
during the Second World War. The particular context is as follows:
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If it is indeed true, as is so often said, that the
officer corps counts for everything in war, then the American officer corps of
World War II was less than mediocre. Owing partly no doubt to pressure of time,
the methods used to select and train officers were none too successful. Far too
many officers had soft jobs in the rear, far too few commanded at the front.
Those who did command at the front were, as the official history frankly admits
and the casualty figures confirm, often guilty of bad leadership. Between them
and their German opposite numbers there simply is no comparison possible….Yet
when all is said and done, the fact remains that the American GI did win World
War II. He did so, moreover, without assaulting, raping and otherwise molesting
too many people. Wherever he came---even within Germany itself---he was
received with relief, or at any rate without fear. To him, no greater tribute
than this is conceivable."(53)
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Creveld's detractors purposely do not bring these comments to the fore, since
they do not serve the purposes of the critics.
In point of fact, Creveld is not only highly critical of the German army, as
noted above, but also makes clear that he does NOT hold it up as a paradigm to
be followed by more modern armies. Creveld argues that modern technology
requires more specialized human and material resources, with the result that it
is critical to carefully employ those resources and make them mutually
supportive. Taking into account the complexity of modern armies, it is no
wonder that they rely to a large extent indeed on data control systems unheard
of fifty years ago, but clearly anticipated, as Creveld points out consistently
in his work, by the personnel methods of the U.S. army in the Second World War.
The effect of this development is "to turn the Wehrmacht's entire
loose and decentralized personnel management system into a historical
curiosity", and to make "an organization as specialized for operations as was
the German army…inconceivable under modern conditions…", comments hardly
indicative of the slavish adulation of the German army of which Creveld is
accused. Those attributes of the German army which Creveld does in fact
advocate are, as he describes them, "eternal in the sense of being largely
independent of technology". They include such things as the notion that
officers should be leaders and teachers of their soldiers, a system of
terminology and customs conducive at once to unity and distinction among
officers and their men, a pay and promotions system that favors those on the
sharp end, an equitable system of military justice and a respect for human
rights. Surely no one could seriously contend that these are characteristics
peculiar to the German army, and many would argue, Creveld among them, that
certain of these elements were to a large degree absent from that force.(54)
The fact of the matter is that Fighting Power is not, as Creveld's
critics would have it, a paean to the Wehrmacht. It is, rather, an
attempt at careful comparative analysis of two important twentieth century
fighting forces, and in particular an effort to understand why one of them, in
spite of various serious obstacles, some of its own making, managed to
persevere and fight effectively until the bitter end. The easy answer to this
question---the one advocated by Josef Goebbels during the war and now adopted
by an entire school of historians---is that the common soldier of the German
army, who did the hard work of fighting, did so because he believed
wholeheartedly in the ideology of Nazism.(55) This approach to the problem,
which amounts to little more than the conversion of wartime propaganda and
postwar caricature into an historical theory of facile answers, is not the one
adopted by Creveld. Instead, he employs a thoughtful comparison of two fighting
forces by looking at aspects of their makeup that had nothing to do with
combat. Creveld's method is nothing if not mundane. It focuses on such
manifestly unheroic topics such as the place of the armed forces in society,
military doctrine, command principles, organization and personnel
administration, rewards and punishments, troop indoctrination, rotation and
medical treatment, and the role of leadership, as embodied in both commissioned
and non-commissioned officers. His work includes a myriad tables and figures
related to all of these subjects, and is grounded on published and unpublished
primary sources, including those in the US National Archives and the Bundesarchive/Militararchiv.
The result of all this focus on detail is that Fighting Power is
frankly often heavy going, certainly not a bracing account of Teutonic military
virtue, as one would expect from reading Creveld's critics.
The "problem" with Creveld's work, of course, is not with his methodology, but
with his conclusions. Creveld concludes that the "German army was a superb
fighting organization. In point of morale, elan, unit cohesion, and resilience,
it probably had no equal among twentieth century armies." He attributes this
conclusion principally to that army's internal organization, which he sees as
"creating and maintaining fighting power." His view of the German soldier also
makes him a marked man among historians, for he opines that the landser
was motivated not by Nazi ideology, but by the reasons that men have always
fought: because the German soldier saw himself as a member of a
well-integrated, well-led team whose structure, administration and functioning
were perceived by him as being generally equitable and just. In his view "the
German army …[developed] a single-minded concentration on the operational
aspects of war to the detriment, not to say neglect, of everything else." It
sent its best men to the front; "its organization was designed to produce and
reward fighting men." This, in Creveld's opinion, was the secret of its
fighting power. Creveld concedes that even by the standards of the U.S. army in
World War II, and indeed "by modern and even contemporary standards", the
German army was a crude organization. Some of the reasons for this were
negative: innate conservatism, lack of interest in innovation, and outright
adherence to Nazi ideology. On the other hand, this crudeness reflected a
positive element, namely "a conscious determination to maintain at all costs
that which was believed to be decisive to the conduct of war: mutual trust, a
willingness to assume responsibility, and the right and duty of subordinate
commanders at all levels to make independent decisions and carry them out." In
short, Creveld concludes, the German army "was built around the needs, social
and psychological, of the individual fighting man. The crucial, indeed
decisive, importance of the latter was fully recognized; and the army's
doctrine, command technique, organization, and administration were shaped
accordingly."(56)
Creveld is indeed critical of the U.S. army, as his critics charge. But as we
have seen, he is equally critical, if not more so, of the German army, while at
the same time full of high praise for the fundamental role played by the
American soldier in defeating the Nazi regime, as well as for his high moral
character. In his section entitled "Reflections on the U.S. Army", Creveld
observes that "[B]etween 1940 and 1945 the U.S. Army grew from 243,000 officers
and men into a force numbering over 8 million. With eighty-nine divisions, made
up of men who had shortly before been civilians in one of the world's less
militarized nations, it crossed the oceans and played a decisive role in the
defeat of two of the most highly militarized powers the world has ever known.
It is doubtful whether any other nation would have been capable of such feats:
not for nothing, indeed, has General Marshall been called ‘the organizer of
victory'." Nevertheless, there were problems with this magnificent fighting
machine, some of which, Creveld concludes, resulted naturally from overrapid
expansion and inexperience. In Creveld's view, the U.S. Army "was for the most
part as good as, and often vastly superior to, the German one" in "mechanical
performance", as evidenced, for example, by the fact that the U.S. Army
developed logistical capabilities "that the Germans could only dream about",
and by the fact that American divisions contained no more "fat" than those of
their German enemies. Creveld's criticism lies not with the valor, resilience,
or even fighting power of the U.S. army, but with what he perceives to be its
reliance on firepower to defeat its foe at the expense of the psychological
welfare of its soldiers.(57)
It may be stated categorically that nowhere in Fighting Power does
Creveld assert that "German doctrines for operations and tactics were so far
superior …that the contemporary U.S. Army should emulate" them, as Keith Bonn
has claimed. What Creveld does, instead, is to suggest that latter day soldiers
might learn from the German experience in a few areas. We have already
discussed his view that certain aspects of manpower management "are eternal in
the sense of being largely independent of technology." He argues also that
"overemphasizing the role of technical and supporting services" to the
detriment of focusing on the military's primary job, namely fighting, ought to
be avoided. He advocates organization based on regional structures (e.g., U.S.
national guard units) and the use of a regimental system based on the British
model. He favors a delegation of important responsibilities, such as the
selection of officers and NCOs, to regimental, battalion and company
commanders. In opining thus, however, he issues the following warning:
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"The German army had extremely high fighting power,
it is true, but only at the cost of producing troops to whom an order,
regardless of its nature, was an order and who could therefore be relied upon
not only to fight hard but to commit any kind of atrocity as well. To produce
fighting power without paying as high a price: that is the true challenge
facing the armies of the West."(58)
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Footnotes
(47) Van Creveld, Martin, Command in War (Harvard University Press, 1985);
Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (London, 1978); Technology
and War from 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York, 1989).
(48) Van Creveld, Martin, Fighting Power: German and U.S. army Performance,
1939-1945 (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1983).
(49) Doubler, p.7.
(50) Mansoror, p. 7.
(51) Bonn, p. 8.
(52) Creveld, p.166.
(53) Ibid., pp.168-9.
(54) Ibid., p. 171.
(55) See, for example, Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army; Gerhard Weinberg, Germany,
Hitler & World War II; and Fritz, Stephen G., Frontsoldaten: The German
Soldier in World War II (The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), among others.
(56) Creveld, pp. 163-165
(57) Ibid., pp. 166-169. It is noteworthy that Creveld is sharply critical of
the failures of the American replacement system, an approach shared even by his
harshest critics. The inadequacies of that replacement system are addressed in
Robert Sterling Rush's recent book, Hell in Huertgen Forest: The Ordeal &
Triumph of an American Infantry Regiment (University Press of Kansas, 2001),
which deals with the experiences of the U.S. army in the battle of the Huertgen
Forest in 1944-45. Rush's analysis shows that the American replacement system
did NOT fail, even in such a notorious meat grinder as the Huertgen.
(58) Ibid., pp. 171-173.
Copyright © 2004 by Thomas E. Nutter.
Please send comments to Thomas E. Nutter at: tenutter@gmail.com.
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