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SEGMENT YOUR FORCES THE CONTROLLED-CHAOS STRATEGY The critical elements in war are speed and adaptability–the ability to move and make decisions faster than the enemy. But speed and adaptability are hard to achieve today. We have more information than ever before at our fingertips, making interpretation and decision making more difficult. We have more people to manage, those people are more widely spread, and we face more uncertainty. Learn from Napoleon, warfare’s greatest master: speed and adaptability come from flexible organization. Break your forces into independent groups that can operate and make decisions on their own. Make your forces elusive and unstoppable by infusing them with the spirit of the campaign, giving them a mission to accomplish, and then letting them run. Finally, a most important point to be considered is that the revolutionary system of command employed by Napoleon was the outcome not of any technological advances, as one might expect, but merely of superior organization and doctrine. The technical means at the emperor’s disposal were not a whit more sophisticated than those of his opponents; he differed from them in that he possessed the daring and ingenuity needed to transcend the limits that technology had imposed on commanders for thousands of years. Whereas Napoleon’s opponents sought to maintain control and minimize uncertainty by keeping their forces closely concentrated, Napoleon chose the opposite way, reorganizing and decentralizing his army in such a way as to enable its parts to operate independently for a limited period of time and consequently tolerate a higher degree of uncertainty. Rather than allowing the technological means at hand to dictate the method of strategy and the functioning of command, Napoleon made profitable use of the very limitations imposed by the technology. COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985 CALCULATED DISORDER In 1800, by defeating Austria in the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon gained control of northern Italy and forced the Austrians to sign a treaty recognizing French territorial gains there and in Belgium. For the next five years, an uneasy peace held sway–but Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France, and many in Europe began to suspect that this Corsican upstart had limitless ambitions. Karl Mack, the Austrian quartermaster general and an older and influential member of the Austrian military, advocated a preemptive strike against France, with an army large enough to guarantee victory. He told his colleagues, “In war the object is to beat the enemy, not merely to avoid being beaten.” Mack and like-minded officers slowly gained influence, and in April 1805, Austria, England, and Russia signed a treaty of alliance to wage war on France and force her to return to her pre-Napoleonic borders. That summer they formulated their plan: 95,000 Austrian troops would attack the French in northern Italy, redressing the humiliating defeat of 1800. Another 23,000 troops would secure the Tyrol, between Italy and Austria. Mack would then lead a force of 70,000 men west along the Danube into Bavaria, preventing this strategically located country from allying itself with France. Once encamped in Bavaria, Mack and his army would await the arrival a few weeks later of 75,000 troops from Russia; the two armies would link up, and this unstoppable force would march west into France. Meanwhile the English would attack the French at sea. More troops would later be funneled into each war zone, making for an army totaling 500,000 men overall–the largest military force ever assembled in Europe up to that point. Not even Napoleon could withstand an army more than twice the size of his own, moving in on him from all sides. In the middle of September, Mack began his phase of the campaign by advancing along the Danube to Ulm, in the heart of Bavaria. Having established his camp there, he felt hugely satisfied. Mack loathed disorder and uncertainty. He tried to think of everything in advance, to come up with a clear plan and make sure everyone stuck to it–“clockwork warfare,” he called it. He thought his plan was perfect; nothing could go wrong. Napoleon was doomed. Mack had once been captured and forced to spend three years in France, where he had studied Napoleon’s style of war. A key Napoleonic strategy was to make the enemy divide his forces, but now the trick was reversed: with trouble in Italy, Napoleon could not afford to send more than 70,000 French troops across the Rhine into Germany and Bavaria. The moment he crossed the Rhine, the Austrians would know his intentions and would act to slow his march; his army would need at least two months to reach Ulm and the Danube. By then the Austrians would already have linked up with the Russians and swept through the Alsace and France. The strategy was as close to foolproof as any Mack had ever known. He savored the role he would play in destroying Napoleon, for he hated the man and all he represented–undisciplined soldiers, the fomenting of revolution throughout Europe, the constant threat to the status quo. For Mack the Russians could not arrive in Ulm too soon. We find our attention drawn repeatedly to what one might call “the organizational dimension of strategy.” Military organizations, and the states that develop them, periodically assess their own ability to handle military threats. When they do so they tend to look at that which can be quantified: the number of troops, the quantities of ammunition, the readiness rates of key equipment, the amount of transport, and so on. Rarely, however, do they look at the adequacy of their organization as such, and particularly high level organization, to handle these challenges. Yet as Pearl Harbor and other cases suggest, it is in the deficiency of organizations that the embryo of misfortune develops. MILITARY MISFORTUNES: THE ANATOMY OF FAILURE IN WAR, ELIOT A. COHEN AND JOHN GOOCH, 1990 Near the end of September, however, Mack began to sense something wrong. To the west of Ulm lay the Black Forest, between his own position and the French border. Suddenly scouts were telling him that a French army was passing through the forest in his direction. Mack was bewildered: it made the best sense for Napoleon to cross the Rhine into Germany farther to the north, where his passage east would be smoother and harder to stop. But now he was yet again doing the unexpected, funneling an army through a narrow opening in the Black Forest and sending it straight at Mack. Even if this move were just a feint, Mack had to defend his position, so he sent part of his army west into the Black Forest to stem the French advance long enough for the Russians to come to his aid. A few days later, Mack began to feel horribly confused. The French were proceeding through the Black Forest, and some of their cavalry had come quite far. At the same time, though, word reached Mack of a large French army somewhere to the north of his position. The reports were contradictory: some said this army was at Stuttgart, sixty miles northwest of Ulm; others had it more to the east or even farther to the north or–quite close, near the Danube. Mack could get no hard information, since the French cavalry that had come through the Black Forest blocked access to the north for reconnaissance. The Austrian general now faced what he feared most–uncertainty–and it was clouding his ability to think straight. Finally he ordered all of his troops back to Ulm, where he would concentrate his forces. Perhaps Napoleon intended to do battle at Ulm. At least Mack would have equal numbers. In early October, Austrian scouts were at last able to find out what was really going on, and it was a nightmare. A French army had crossed the Danube to the east of Ulm, blocking Mack’s way back to Austria and cutting off the Russians. Another army lay to the south, blocking his route to Italy. How could 70,000 French soldiers appear in so many places at once? And move so fast? Gripped by panic, Mack sent probes in every direction. On October 11 his men discovered a weak point: only a small French force barred the way north and east. There he could push through and escape the French encirclement. He began to prepare for the march. But two days later, when he was on the point of ordering the retreat, his scouts reported that a large French force had appeared overnight, blocking the northeastern route as well. On October 20, finding out that the Russians had decided not to come to his rescue, Mack surrendered. Over 60,000 Austrian soldiers were taken prisoner with hardly a shot fired. It was one of the most splendidly bloodless victories in history. In the next few months, Napoleon’s army turned east to deal with the Russians and remaining Austrians, culminating in his spectacular victory at Austerlitz. Meanwhile Mack languished in an Austrian prison, sentenced to two years for his role in this humiliating defeat. There he racked his brains (losing his sanity in the process, some said): Where had his plan gone wrong? How had an army appeared out of nowhere to his east, so easily swallowing him up? He had never seen anything like it, and he was trying to figure it out to the end of his days. The fact that, historically speaking, those armies have been most successful which did not turn their troops into automatons, did not attempt to control everything from the top, and allowed subordinate commanders considerable latitude has been abundantly demonstrated. The Roman centurions and military tribunes; Napoleon’s marshals; Moltke’s army commanders; Ludendorff’s storm detachments…–all these are examples, each within its own stage of technological development, of the way things were done in some of the most successful military forces ever. COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985 Interpretation History should not judge General Mack too harshly, for the French armies he faced in the fall of 1805 represented one of the greatest revolutions in military history. For thousands of years, war had been fought in essentially the same way: the commander led his large and unified army into battle against an opponent of roughly equal size. He would never break up his army into smaller units, for that would violate the military principle of keeping one’s forces concentrated; furthermore, scattering his forces would make them harder to monitor, and he would lose control over the battle. Suddenly Napoleon changed all that. In the years of peace between 1800 and 1805, he reorganized the French military, bringing different forces together to form the Grande Armee, 210,000 men strong. He divided this army into several corps, each with its own cavalry, infantry, artillery, and general staff. Each was led by a marshal general, usually a young officer of proven strength in previous campaigns. Varying in size from 15,000 to 30,000 men, each corps was a miniature army headed by a miniature Napoleon. Patton’s philosophy of command was: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” PATTON: A GENIUS FOR WAR, CARLO D’ESTE, 1995 The key to the system was the speed with which the corps could move. Napoleon would give the marshals their mission, then let them accomplish it on their own. Little time was wasted with the passing of orders back and forth, and smaller armies, needing less baggage, could march with greater speed. Instead of a single army moving in a straight line, Napoleon could disperse and concentrate his corps in limitless patterns, which to the enemy seemed chaotic and unreadable. This was the monster that Napoleon unleashed on Europe in September

1. While a few corps were dispatched to northern Italy as a holding force against Austria’s planned invasion there, seven corps moved east into Germany in a scattered array. A reserve force with much cavalry was sent through the Black Forest, drawing Mack to the west–and so making it harder for him to understand what was happening to the north and easier to entrap. (Napoleon understood Mack’s simple psychology and how the appearance of disorder would paralyze him.) Meanwhile, with Stuttgart as a pivot, the seven corps wheeled south to the Danube and cut off Mack’s various escape routes. One corps marshal, hearing that the northeastern route was weakly held, did not wait for Napoleon to send orders but simply sped and covered it on his own. Wherever Mack went, he would hit a corps large enough to hold him until the rest of the French army could tighten the circle. It was like a pack of coyotes against a rabbit. Agamemnon smiled and moved on, Coming next to the two captains Who shared the name Ajax As they were strapping on their helmets. Behind them a cloud of infantry loomed…Agamemnon Was glad to see them, and his words flew out: “Ajax, both of you, Achaean commanders, I would be out of line if I issued you orders. You push your men to fight hard on your own. By Father Zeus, by Athena and Apollo, If all of my men had your kind of heart, King Priam’s city would soon bow her head, Taken and ravaged under our hands.”

THE ILIAD, HOMER, CIRCA NINTH CENTURY B.C. Understand: the future belongs to groups that are fluid, fast, and nonlinear. Your natural tendency as a leader may be to want to control the group, to coordinate its every movement, but that will just tie you to the past and to the slow-moving armies of history. It takes strength of character to allow for a margin of chaos and uncertainty–to let go a little–but by decentralizing your army and segmenting it into teams, you will gain in mobility what you lose in complete control. And mobility is the greatest force multiplier of them all. It allows you to both disperse and concentrate your army, throwing it into patterns instead of advancing in straight lines. These patterns will confuse and paralyze your opponents. Give your different corps clear missions that fit your strategic goals, then let them accomplish them as they see fit. Smaller teams are faster, more creative, more adaptable; their officers and soldiers are more engaged, more motivated. In the end, fluidity will bring you far more power and control than petty domination. Separate to live, unite to fight. –Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) KEYS TO WARFARE The world is full of people looking for a secret formula for success and power. They do not want to think on their own; they just want a recipe to follow. They are attracted to the idea of strategy for that very reason. In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by an expert or a guru. Believing in the power of imitation, they want to know exactly what some great person has done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking. To separate yourself from such a crowd, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does. Instead of grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or C depending on the circumstances. That is strategic depth of thinking, as opposed to formulaic thinking. Sun-tzu expressed this idea differently: what you aim for in strategy, he said, is shih, a position of potential force–the position of a boulder perched precariously on a hilltop, say, or of a bowstring stretched taut. A tap on the boulder, the release of the bowstring, and potential force is violently unleashed. The boulder or arrow can go in any direction; it is geared to the actions of the enemy. What matters is not following pre-ordained steps but placing yourself in shih and giving yourself options. Napoleon was probably unaware of Sun-tzu’s concept of shih, yet he had perhaps history’s greatest understanding of it. Once he had positioned his seven corps in their seemingly chaotic pattern along the Rhine and his reserve forces in the Black Forest, he was in shih. Wherever Mack turned, whatever he did, the Austrians were doomed. Napoleon had endless options while Mack had only a few, and all of them bad. It was during this period of post-war introspection and evaluation that one of the fundamental military concepts of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau coalesced into a clearly defined doctrine understandable to and understood by all officers in the Army. This was the concept of Auftragstaktik , or mission tactics. Moltke himself inserted in the draft of a new tactical manual for senior commanders the following lines: “A favorable situation will never be exploited if commanders wait for orders. The highest commander and the youngest soldier must always be conscious of the fact that omission and inactivity are worse than resorting to the wrong expedient.”…Nothing epitomized the outlook and performance of the German General Staff, and of the German Army which it coordinated, more than this concept of mission tactics: the responsibility of each German officer and noncommissioned officer…to do without question or doubt whatever the situation required, as he saw it. This meant that he should act without awaiting orders, if action seemed necessary. It also meant that he should act contrary to orders, if these did not seem to be consistent with the situation. To make perfectly clear that action contrary to orders was not considered either as disobedience or lack of discipline, German commanders began to repeat one of Moltke’s favorite stories, of an incident observed while visiting the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles. A major, receiving a tongue-lashing from the Prince for a tactical blunder, offered the excuse that he had been obeying orders, and reminded the Prince that a Prussian officer was taught that an order from a superior was tantamount to an order from the King. Frederick Charles promptly responded: “His Majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.” This simple story became guidance for all following generations of German officers. A GENIUS FOR WAR: THE GERMAN ARMY AND GENERAL STAFF, 1807- 1945, COLONEL T.N. DUPUY, 1977 Napoleon had always aimed at his version of shih, and he perfected it in the 1805 campaign. Obsessed with structure and organization, he developed the corps system, building flexibility into the very skeleton of his army. The lesson is simple: a rigid, centralized organization locks you into linear strategies; a fluid, segmented army gives you options, endless possibilities for reaching shih. Structure is strategy–perhaps the most important strategic choice you will make. Should you inherit a group, analyze its structure and alter it to suit your purposes. Pour your creative energy into its organization, making fluidity your goal. In doing so you will be following in the footsteps not only of Napoleon but of perhaps the greatest war machine in modern times, the Prussian (and later German) army. Shortly after Napoleon’s devastating defeat of the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806 (see chapter 2), the Prussian leaders did some soul-searching. They saw they were stuck in the past; their way of doing things was too rigid. Suddenly the military reformers, including Carl von Clausewitz, were taken seriously and given power. And what they decided to do was unprecedented in history: they would institutionalize success by designing a superior army structure. At the core of this revolution was the creation of a general staff, a cadre of officers specially trained and educated in strategy, tactics, and leadership. A king, a prime minister, or even a general might be incompetent at war, but a group of brilliant and well-trained officers on the army’s staff could compensate for his failures. The structure of this body was unfixed: each new chief of staff could alter its size and function to suit his needs and the times. After each campaign o