Military analysts separate battle from what the U.S. calls "maneuver" and the Europeans call "operations." Operations is the preparation for battle, or the process of bringing opposing armies to battle at a favorable time and place. This is a form of strategy, and when we think of a "strategic" war game we usually mean one in which operations and maneuver dominate. In actuality, strategy includes a great deal more.

General d'armee Andre Beaufre has traced the relationship between battle and operations from classical times to present in his work Introduction to Strategy (Praeger, 1962; Preface by B.H. Liddell Hart). The following discussion draws heavily from General Beaufre's works.

FIRST PHASE: Operations and Battle as Distinct Phases

The first phase covers the period from ancient times to the end of the XVIII Century. During most of the history of war, operations and battle were entirely different things. The major reason for this was that "military equipment was such that an isolated detachment had only a limited capability to exist. To move in security the army had to be concentrated." Moreover, armies fought only after forming a battle order, and when two armies did meet one or both could generally refuse battle by withdrawing. Battles took place by mutual consent, or when forced on one side by brilliant operations.

This entire period in the history of war is characterized by the absence of "fronts." Armies were small in comparison to the areas in which they moved, and it took enormous numbers of men to hold a single mile of ground. Even the Roman Empire at its height could not defend its frontiers: the Emperors had to rely on punitive operations, conquest of the enemy bases, or, at a later and more degenerate period, pursuit of the invader.

In the classical period "the object of operations was to force the enemy to accept battle under conditions favorable to him. This was done by invading and ravaging his country. Eventually the defense took refuge in a system of strong points, and the attacker had to force the defender to give battle by laying siege. This method of campaigning based on a network of fortified towns became the ultimate expression of the art of operations in the seventeenth century.',

The XVII and early XVIII Centuries were "The Great Era of Strategy.,' They were the time of Marshal de Saxe, who said "I am convinced that a competent general can make war for a lifetime without being forced to fight a battle." They were characterized by men like Vauban, who never beseiged a place he didn't take -- and never defended a place that was taken. Marlborough, the Great Conde, Turenne, Montrose and the "Year of Miracles," all flourished then. Clausewitz in his time rejected war by operations without battle, but he had not in fact discovered a new and universal principle of war; the times had changed.

SECOND PHASE: Operations and Battle Distinct but Interconnected Acts

By the end of the XVIII Century new weapons and rising populations gave commanders new capabilities. Armies could be dispersed and thus live off the country. They could also be much larger thanks to development of agricultural science by the Monasteries. The industrial revolution had begun, and technology gave armies more power. The resulting firepower and mobility combined to make dispersed armies viable entities.

Napoleon was the first of the Great Captains to recognize just how much these factors would change the art of war. He used them to create an entirely new kind of warfare; and so long as only he understood it, he remained invincible.

Operations in the Napoleonic Period

Napoleon took the mass army created by the Revolution and developed his famous "divisional" or Corps system. Dispersing his armies in relatively small units, each capable of limited combat, he forced his enemies to do the same; then he swiftly concentrated his armies for the knockout blow. He used the system to win victory after victory, but eventually his enemies caught the drift of the times, and the victories became more costly.

Napoleon's campaigns were hampered by his almost total lack of the science of logistics. He relied on a system of banditry to supply large armies, and his troops said "A good soldier should have the strength of a horse, the heart of a lion, and the appetite of a mouse."

By contrast, Wellington once wrote to his War Minister that "To guide a biscuit from Lisbon to a man's mouth is a matter of vital importance, for without the biscuit no military operations can be carried out."

Wellington understood the new science of tactics and operations as well as Napoleon, and he added logistics to his quiver. There were many factors involved in Napoleon's defeats, but certainly the lack of supply organization was as significant in the destruction of the Grand Armee at Leipzig as any combat; while at Waterloo, Napoleon's troops marched to battle having eaten nothing but stolen potatoes. They faced an army which had breakfasted on 'stirabout,' biscuit, hot tea, and rum.

Napoleon's greatness lay in discovering methods by which war and battle could again be decisive acts. Prior to his time wars were "long, indecisive, and punctuated by sieges." The result of all of Louis XIV's half century of warfare was the transfer of a few provinces and fortresses; in seven years, Napoleon remade the map of Europe forever.

When, however, his opponents learned his system, it was all up. Decisive victory through operations became more and more difficult, and eventually the overall inferiority of French resources led to Napoleon's defeat. What had begun as an era of decision by maneuver became, finally, one of decision by attrition and materiel.

Beaufre points out that "lessons drawn from Napoleon's operational strategy have frequently been false lessons because people thought they saw in his manouevres a repertoire of universally valid solutions, when in fact they were valid only under the conditions of the time." Napoleon, in other words, was victorious because he understood the war of his time far in advance of his enemies. When they eventually learned what he had discovered, he was lost.

THIRD PHASE: Operations and Battle Merged

Firepower eliminated the Napoleonic system. The ratio of forces to space fell from 20,000 men to the mile at Waterloo, to 2,000 men/mile before Richmond. Meanwhile, rising populations and increased production of both farms and industry made very large armies feasible. The art of operations nearly vanished because there were continuous lines. The "front" was born.

During this era the key operation was envelopment of an unprotected flank. When that failed, logistics dominated, and war could still be won by proper understanding of the vital role of railroads and telegraph. The general who "gets there fustest with the mostest" could still win; but by 1914 even that became impossible. The reserves could move faster than the front.

The Battle of the Marne ended the Schlieffen Plan. It is debatable whether the original plan could have succeeded, for it depended on French willingness to plunge ahead on their right flank against a deliberately weakened German defense. In the event, "reserves were moved by rail to the Paris area and there formed a force capable of outflanking the enemy's outflanking movement. This was the battle of the Marne; but the enemy now in turn saved himself by withdrawing. True to the teaching of the period the Germans replied by a new outflanking movement which was itself once more outflanked. This was the Race to the Sea and it set the final seal of bankruptcy on the tactics of envelopment. The kinetic period of operations was at an end."

FOURTH PHASE: The Fighting Front Coterminous with the Theatre of Operations

In the Trench War phase of WWI "war appeared to be a question not of movement but of firepower." Breakthroughs failed because attacks, made on foot, could not move as fast as the reserves could come up by rail. War became a competition in material resources and this doctrine dominated up to 1940.

FIFTH PHASE: Battle as Preparation for Operations

We end this brief examination of the history of operations with the opening of WW II. The new factor in tactics was aircraft and tanks, and "the attack had at last reached a satisfactory level as compared with the strategic mobility of reserves. Decisive operations were preceded and prepared by the act of battle. There were no operations involving purely military movements on the XVIII model except perhaps in Libya, where the forces were small in relation to the size of the theatre."

Instead, there was battle, followed by maneuver -- and as Liddell Hart points out, Guderian's system eliminated further battles entirely. Operations became decisive.

The Fall of France came about because Guderian fought in what Liddell Hart calls "tank time" while the French and British still thought in terms of reserve movements. The enormous firepower of modern weapons required supply trains for battle; and when the Allies were cut off from these they assumed the battles were over.

Their plight was compounded because they didn't know what was going on. Enveloped troops were assumed to be beaten troops. In many cases Guderian's lead elements had less fuel and ammunition than the forces he had "trapped," but the Allies never had the right equipment concentrated in the right place to face him. The Allied army was not so much beaten as dissolved by operations, terrified by air power, and written off by generals too overwhelmed to know what to do.

It didn't have to be that way. The French had generals who understood the modern tempo of war, and the equipment with which to fight properly. However, their General Staff system, and the deep wounds left in France from the days of the Revolution of '89, undermined their ability to learn. This was certainly not the case with the British, who had invented the technique of Blitzkreig.

On May 28,1937, Leslie Hore-Belisha became His Majesty's Secretary of State for War. Three days later Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Military Correspondent for the London Times, was asked to prepare a paper on the reorganization of the Army. A week later the paper was given to Hore- Belisha, who asked Liddell Hart to become his advisor.

The partnership failed for a variety of reasons; but had it succeeded, the British Expeditionary Force would have consisted of Armored and Mobile Divisions, adequately trained in the new science of tactics, provided with anti-aircraft weapons, and commanded by men taught by Liddell Hart. We can only speculate on what the results might have been.

The games Afrika Korps, Battle of the Bulge, 1914, Jutland, Panzerblitz, Stalingrad, and France, 1940 are available from the Avalon Hill Company, 4517 Harford Road, Baltimore, Maryland 21214. We gratefully acknowledge Avalon Hill's kind permission to use their game titles in our articles and variants.

More Simulation and Psychology

Introduction
What Are We Trying to Simulate?
Strategy
What Can We Simulate?
A History of Operations
Panzerblitz and Jutland