Command in War

by Van Creveld, Martin L.

• ISBN13: 9780674144415
• ISBN10: 0674144414
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-03-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy.In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns--among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke's Kouml;niggrauml;tz campaign, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam--van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations.Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty--certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy's forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one's own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

Table of Contents

Introduction: On Command	1	(16)
The Nature of Command	5	(4)
The Evolution of Command	9	(2)
The Study of Command	11	(6)
The Stone Age of Command	17	(41)
The Parameters of Strategy	18	(9)
The Nonevolution of Staffs	27	(14)
The Conduct of Battle	41	(14)
Conclusions: Mars Shackled	55	(3)
The Revolution in Strategy	58	(45)
``The God of War''	62	(3)
Inside Imperial Headquarters	65	(13)
1806: The Campaign	78	(12)
1806: The Battle	90	(6)
Conclusions: Mars Unshackled	96	(7)
Railroads, Rifles, and Wires	103	(45)
A Watershed in Technology	104	(5)
The Birth of a Staff	109	(6)
1866: Planning and Deployment	115	(7)
The Campaign in Bohemia	122	(6)
The Campaign in Moravia	128	(4)
The Battle of Koniggratz	132	(8)
Conclusions: The Triumph of Method	140	(8)
The Timetable War	148	(41)
The Modern Alexander	148	(7)
Disaster at Somme	155	(13)
The Emperor's Battle	168	(16)
Conclusions: Machine-Age Warfare	184	(5)
Masters of Mobile Warfare	189	(43)
``The Fustest with the Mostest''	189	(5)
A System of Expedients	194	(9)
1973: Planning and Preparations	203	(15)
1973: The Counterattack	218	(8)
Conclusions: Reverse Optional Control	226	(6)
The Helicopter and the Computer	232	(29)
The Age of Complexity	234	(7)
How Much Is Enough?	241	(10)
The Misdirected Telescope	251	(7)
Conclusions: The Pathology of Information	258	(3)
Conclusion: Reflections on Command	261	(16)
The Quest for Certainty	264	(4)
The Essence of Command	268	(9)
Notes	277	(43)
Works Cited	320	(13)
Index	333