Delbrück may have had a hand in bringing about the most sophisticated wargaming of the interwar or any other period.

von Schlieffen and (bottom): Moltke the Younger.

Delbrück testified before a government panel that poor grand strategy was the root cause of Germany’s defeat, and the General Staff’s purely military analysis of war plans was a cause of this poor grand strategy. Their wargames could only show the attrition effects of invading neutral Belgium or conducting unrestricted submarine warfare. They could not predict the political effects of these actions or the subsequent military consequences.

The German government soon established strategic-level wargames, not at the shadow general staff level but at the Ministry of Defense. These wargames were truly comprehensive, with industrialists brought in to advise on the speed of industrial mobilization, attachés brought back from their assigned countries to play their countries’ militaries realistically, and diplomats integrating their actions with the militaries. Even journalists participated, commenting on likely world public opinion. Limited to a skeletal military, Germany could still wargame with forces it did not yet possess. In addition, the Germans took an extremely pragmatic and detailed look at the history of the war. From this history they derived theories about what would and would not work in future wars. As the theories were rigorously compared to the historical facts, a new doctrine began to emerge. In turn, this doctrine was rigorously tested in wargames — all with forces that did not physically exist. The Germans called the concept they developed “mobile operations”; the rest of the world would soon call it Blitzkrieg.

Germany’s World War II preeminence in armor is all the more remarkable because at the end of World War I, the United Kingdom had the world’s most potent armored force. Britain also produced the interwar period’s most prominent armor theorists, JFC Fuller and BH Liddell Hart. How did Britain fall so far behind? While many factors worked against the development of British armor, wargames that did not reflect the tank’s true value appear to have played a crucial role. Although it did not reach the depths of British wargaming during the interwar period, US Army wargaming also reached a low point during that time. Little is written or known about it, and all that is known is bad. Perhaps due to the malaise born of slow promotions and low budgets, most Army wargames stopped being wargames and instead became one-sided scripted exercises. The outcome was always the same regardless of brilliance or stupidity, diligence or laziness of the participants.

Some true wargaming did survive both at the Army’s staff and war colleges and in the field, though here there were problems. In 1934, six faculty members of the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), Maxwell Field, Alabama, including Major Claire L. Chennault, were called to testify before a commission on the Army’s use of airpower. They were originally told that they would have to pay their own way, as the Army had insufficient funds to pay for their travel. At the hearings, Chennault stated that during Army field maneuvers airpower had not been allowed to attack enemy forces before, during, or after amphibious landings but was only used in close support after trench lines had formed.

The Army’s response was that their learning objective was to practice trench warfare. If airpower were used too soon, the trench lines might not form.

Chennault argued that these wargames needed to include airpower precisely because airpower would prevent World War I trench systems from forming. If the Army did not learn how to fight the more mobile style of future war through wargaming, it would have to learn those lessons at a far higher cost on actual battlefields.

When Chennault returned from testifying, he was informed that his orders to attend the Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC) were canceled. Not seeing a chance for advancement without attending CGSC, Chennault left the service. This was not an isolated incident. The faculty of the Air Corps Tactical School participated in Army War College (AWC) annual wargames, starting in 1923, hoping to educate senior Army officers in the doctrinal use of airpower. The results were uniformly disappointing. Despite the gradual inclusion of air officers in the planning process, AWC restricted air participation to activities in the combat zone and not against vulnerable enemy rear-area targets. The artificial nature of the depiction of airpower disgusted the ACTS participants and may have actually been negative training for the Army’s future leaders.

Things were not perfect in the Army’s air arm, either. At Maxwell Field, ACTS was evolving the doctrine and educating the airpower leaders for fighting World War II. On the surface, their teaching methods appeared outstanding. Periodically, the students would apply what they learned by writing a plan to attack a real target. The faculty would then pick one of these plans and the entire student body would climb into aircraft and execute the plan. Not since Moltke’s staff rides did planning receive such a fast real-world confirmation. There was just one problem: ACTS was simulating actual missions; they were not wargaming them. The bombers always got through to Selma, which was to be “bombed,” as there was no enemy resistance. One can guess how this caused doctrine to evolve, or more likely not to evolve.

There was one bright spot. 1n 1929, a young captain named George Kenney recognized the need for airmen to understand how airpower fit into overall theater campaigns. On his own initiative, he developed an air/sea/land wargame that took maintenance, supply, and even airfield construction into account. Student feedback to his wargame was mixed. Immediately after execution, the wargame received a lot of criticism for being difficult to play. However, it was rated much higher in graduation surveys.

Unfortunately, the wargame was so complex and cumbersome that after Kenney’s departure in 1932, no other faculty member was willing to take it over. How much impact could such a short-lived wargame have? Many historians believe General Kenney was the prime architect of General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific air, sea, and land campaign in that theater. How much impact, indeed?

Clearly, the wargaming success story

Toward a History-Based Doctrine for Wargaming

Introduction
1811-1904: Wargaming Beginnings
1905–18: Wargaming and the Great War
1919–38: Interwar Wargaming: The Visionary and the Blind
1939-1945: World War II
1946-1980s: Decline and Revitalization
1990s: Gulf War and More