Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1094249 in Books
• Published on: 1987-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

Customer Reviews

Very good must have...
First of all if you are looking for this book contrary to what the used book sellers are telling you THIS BOOK IS NOT RARE OR HARD TO FIND! YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY $100 TO GET A GOOD COPY...you can get it new for about $4 at the Marine Corps Association book site or wait 4-6 weeks and pay $2.50 +s&h...The book itself is a very insightful report by an officer who obvserved the effects of war on his command. Even though almost 100 years old this is still a great book for any Soldier,Marine, or military historian.

Window on the Wehrmacht
In the mid 1930's German soldier and First World War veteran, Captain Adolf Von Schell, found himself on an exchange program at Fort Benning, Ga. During his tenure there he lectured extensivley on his wartime experiences which included first hand knowledge of the maneuver battles that had characterized the war against Russia and the earley stages of the war in the west. These lectures and two contemporaneously written articles on the U.S. Army and the Army of the Weimar Republic have been compiled into a remarkably provocative little book that should interest scholars and warriors alike.

It is not surprising that many readers have likened "Battle Leadership" to Rommel's "Infantry Attacks". Both books are exceptionly well written documents built on the experience of company grade German officers and designed to pass on lessons learned in blood. However, "Battle Leadership" differs from "Attacks" in its short proscriptive style. Where Rommel gives us a narrative of his war experience, Von Schell has highlighted five specific lessons each of which is explained in a short discussion of an actual combat experience:

1. The effect of tempo on military planning after hostilities commence.

2. The inaccuracy of nearly all intellegence at the commencement of hostilities.

3. The use of the attack in gaining timely and accurate intelligence.

4. The virtues and uses of veteran troops.

5. The cultivation of bravery by personal example.

For the most part Von Schell is restating-- albeit in his particularly lucid and accessible style-- truisms with which any well read militarist is familiar. However, in his analysis of two of these points he strikes out on somewhat novel ground.

Von Schell's discussion of tempo and its effect on combat planning answeres a problem that has nettled young subalterns for decades; what is the point of writing long operations orders in peace if they will seldom if ever be used in the heat of battle? Von Schell suggests that the value of such orders lies as much in shaping the young officers mind as in providing him with a tool for combat:

All armies of the world learn, in peace time,

how to write beautifully constructed orders.

I believe that it is correct to learn to think

of everything and to forget nothing, but

we must never lose sight of the fact that,

in a war of movement, our orders will be

brief and simple. PG 63-64

Perhaps Von Schell's greatest piece of wisdom regards the collection of tactical intelligence. Noting that the only valuable intelligence is timely intelligence and linking this idea with the absolute requirment of keeping up the tempo of the offensive, the author writes, "The best reconnaissance will always be the attack."

If "Battle Leadership" has any weaknesses they can be easily seen and understood if we remind ourselves of the authors perspective. Von Schell's almost obsessive interest in the value and uses of combat hardened veterens-- while of little value to untried junior officers in command of equally untried troops-- is quite understandable when we recall that he was one of a generation of German soldiers who had survived three years of the most intense conflict in human history. Likwise, the authors preference for poor tactical security and dispersion measures can be overlooked if we recall that Von Schell learned his trade at a time when military thinkers were just beginning to develop dispersion and security as an answer to the machinegun and long range artillery fires.

Indeed, it is in takeing a measure of the authors perspective that we begin to see the true importance of "Battle Leadership". More than a handbook of infantry tactics, "Battle Leadership" is a remarkably personal and unintentional account of how the German experiance of the First World War forged the Wehrmacht of the Second