Supplying War:
Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton

book

Reviewed by Anthony Wacker

Glamor has never attended the study of logistics. Popular histories, including even military histories, usually relegate logistics to a last chapter or include it in a couple of sentences along with other preliminary material. This casual treatment of logistics is disproportionate to its importance.

Supplying War - Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton by Martin Van Creveld is about the importance of logistics in the conduct of war. its 284 pages do not cover the logistical arrangements of every campaign from 1600 to 1944. Instead, Van Creveld reviews certain campaigns in great detail in order to illustrate the logistical methods of each era. The 17th and 18th Centuries are covered generally, then the Napoleonic campaigns of Austerlitz and Russia, followed by the Franco-Prussian War, then the World War I battle of First Marne, and finally the World War II campains of Russia 1941, North Africa and France.

Throughout, Van Creveld shows how logistics have influenced and even dictated the conduct of war. In the 17th and early 18th Centuries, logistical reality, not military fashion, gave rise to the much maligned practice known as maneuvering. The low agricultural productivity in this era meant that any given region could support an army concentrated for battle for only a limited period of time. The primitive style of land transportation prohibited resupply from adjoining regions.

As a result, hunger was an ever present hazard of campaigning. Maneuvering used hunger as a weapon by ideally forcing one's opponent to choose between three undesirable options: to fight at a disadvantage, to retreat, or to starve. Maneuvering is often ridiculed as so much posturing, as was sometimes the case. But the practice began not with military theory, but because soldiers had to find something to eat.

To release their armies from the shackles of living off the land, governments, led by that of Louis XIV, started organizing magazines. Ironically, the modern perception of 18th Century magazines is not one of freeing armies from supply-imposed restraints, but of increasing them by chaining armies to convoys and pre-stocked magazines. Van Creveld disputes the modern view. At best, magazines could supply only a small fraction of an army's requirements except in very unusual cases. Provisions would be obtained locally by living off the land; ammunition and items such as weapon parts together with some supplementsl provisions could derive from magazines.

The arrangements Van Creveld describes for supplying Frederick the Great's army differ only slightly from those used to supply Napoleon's troops. Van Creveld's description of 18th Century armies living off the land is certainly contrary to the system usually identified with that period.

Implicit in Van Creveld argument, but unstated, is the conclusion that French and Allied supply methods must have been very similar throughout the Napoleonic wars. He hints at this by noting that in the Austerlitz campaign, the French service of supply was as large and extensive as its counterpart in the army of General Mack. At least in the early part of the Napoleonic Wars, the Allies are usually assumed to have had an 18th Century supply mechanism. However, if this supposedly outmoded system in fact operated on a live off the land basis, Napoleon's enemies must accordingly have supplied their troops pretty much as he did.

One cannot help but wonder why we have wallowed in misconception so long. Van Creveld could, of course, be wrong. However, the conventional views may have arisen as a result of efficiency in practice rather than actual differences in methods. French armies attained a strategic superiority because their execution was better. Both sides lived off the land, but the French did it so much better they seemed to be doing things differently than their opponents. In the 18th Century, wars were fought in a different mode than in the Napoleonic era, due to political rather than logistical reasons.

Although this review is limited to the pre-1815 era, Supplying War covers other eras as well. In fact, Van Creveld devotes nearly one- half the book to World War II. In demonstrating the importance of logistics, he points to the need to include logistics in wargaming. Campaign wargaming especially is impossible without some provision for logistics. Campaign wargame design must reflect logistical reality and more than a little ingenuity may be essential to avoid bogging the game down in bookkeeping. However, the alternative is an unrealistic game. Supplying War is recommended to all wargamers wishing to add to their understanding of military history.

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #2
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com