An almost unchallenged postulate of modern military thought is the elevation of the offensive form of war. Every list of the so- called Principles of War incorporates a “Principle of the Offensive”—indeed, few of the traditional principles can be applied unless one employs the strategic or tactical initiative. U. S. Army official doctrine in 1954 put the matter bluntly: “Only offensive action achieves decisive results.”
Over the centuries, theorists and philosophers of conflict have endlessly compared the respective strengths of offense and defense. The two forms of war have accordingly alternated in favor, underlying doctrine for tactics, weapons, and organization. The process has not always been rational; codes of valor like those of Europe’s medieval knighthood have sometimes blocked a thoughtful approach to war. Almost without fail, on those occasions when nonrational elements have intruded, it has been on behalf of the offensive form. The defensive, despite its classic advantages when employed intelligently and with balanced judgment, has seemed a pallid and distasteful last resort.
Without question, the combat unit must, above all, preserve its fighting spirit—that zest for battle which plainly occurs only when keen offensive spirit exists among the men. Perhaps the ideal military system is one in which uncritical enthusiasm for offensive action exists within the combat units, while at the same time the higher command apparatus is guided by thoughtful rationality. Such was the Prussian army of Count Helmuth von Moltke in 1870; such was Napoleon’s army at Austerlitz. Danger comes when the higher commander allows his own decision-making to be guided by the offensive emotions he cultivates within his units. The danger is intense in modern military establishments, where the path of promotion to high responsibilities depends on vigorous, positive, and aggressive performance in the intermediate grades. Thus, the successful officer who thinks in terms of aggressive action becomes the higher planner, inclined to address problems of strategy and doctrine with equally vigorous habits of thought.
Twentieth-century land, sea, and air warfare has repeatedly demonstrated the strength of the nonrational appeal of the offensive. Indeed, the allure of the offensive has become a dangerous penchant for modern military minds. We intend here to examine several situations in the recent past which are strongly marked by this tendency. We seek perspective toward the treachery of the unthinking approach, and toward one of its most insidious forms—the irrational offensive.
1914: Weapons and Theory for Land Warfare. In the decades before 1914, prevailing weaponry for land warfare lent enormous strength to the tactical defensive. Recent wars repeatedly offered examples of the dominance of rifle infantry and artillery firepower in fixed defensive positions; proof of the power of the modern defense should have been plain to any careful and open-minded observer. Yet, a sound appraisal of trends in weapons and tactics was impossible, so overwhelming was the preference for offensive methods.
A critical point in the evolution of the faulty offensive doctrine was the Franco- Prussian War of 1870-71, which many saw as proof of the efficacy of the bold attack. In two months, the power of the French field armies had been conclusively broken by von Moltke’s generals, who knew how to “march to the sound of cannon.” The stunning decisiveness of the first Napoleon Bonaparte’s victories seemed reincarnated, and the penchant for the offensive took strength. In actuality, the power of the new missile weapons in defensive action was strongly foretold, particularly in the fighting at Gravelotte-St. Privat before Metz on 18 August 1870. On this occasion, the French force under Bazaine held trenches and defensive positions along a ridge, and, although outnumbered by the Prussians nearly two to one, broke the back of determined and repeated enemy attacks. Assault after assault reeled back in confusion. The fire of emplaced longer range breechloading rifles and primitive machine guns brought the French their most successful day of the war. The affair led strategically to the entrapment of Bazaine inside Metz, but the tactical evidence clearly favored the defensive deployment of the French.
Further proof of the strength of the modern defense emerged in 1877 from the prolonged defense of the field fortifications at Plevna by 40,000 Turks against 100,000 Russians. Three decades later, during the Russo- Japanese War, the trend was once again affirmed about Port Arthur and Mukden, where entrenchments, modern artillery, machine guns, and stalemates of exhaustion foretold conditions on the Western front of World War I. Actually, the same preview had been offered much earlier, in the tough campaign of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at the climax of the American Civil War.
In spite of this accumulation of evidence, every army of Europe in 1914 stood in some degree pledged to doctrines of the offensive. Russian and Austrian war plans envisioned advances into the territory of their neighbors. Germany planned a grand offensive in the west. But it was in the army of France that elevation of the offensive went to extreme degree.
Among French officers, the idea of attack fitted well a recent trend to elevate the psychological and spiritual elements of battle above the physical. Interest in the moral aspects began with the 19th century French theorist, Ardant du Picq; human fear remained the basis of military action, he felt. It therefore followed that “Success in battle is a matter of morale.” Soon after 1900, Ferdinand Foch at the higher war college took both from du Picq and from the recently popular Karl von Clausewitz, stressing spirit and will in war. Foch paraphrased an earlier writer, using italics: “A battle won is a battle in which one refuses to acknowledge defeat.” Foch envisioned the infantry assault:
They march straight to the objective, increasing their speed as they draw nearer, preceded by violent fire, in order to assault the enemy bodily and close the argument with cold steel by greater courage and determination.
It was but a short step from such ideas to the exaltation of the offensive. Defensive battle, wrote Foch, “is unable ever to create victory.” The campaigns of Napoleon and von Moltke proved for Foch the necessity for offensive action. Foch decided after a kind of arithmetic analysis, amazingly, that “any improvement in firearms is bound to add strength to the offensive.” While the writings of Foch contained many other and highly rational aspects, his emphasis on the offensive gained greatest attention. A school of ardent pupils emerged, obsessed with the virtue of the offensive and utterly committed to the conviction that elan—the will to conquer— offered France the key to victory.
Lieutenant Colonel de Grandmaison of the French General Staff crystallized the new philosophy, dazzling his audiences with his “idea with a sword.” The offensive a outrance— the unlimited offensive—would strip the enemy of the initiative and force him to conform to one’s own will. Grandmaison wrote: “In the offensive, imprudence is the best safeguard. If we push the offensive spirit even to excess it won’t perhaps be enough.”
These were the years of greatest vogue for the writings of von Clausewitz. Disciples of the philosopher were troubled by his preference for the defensive, which conflicted with the current worship of the attack. One French writer rationalized this contradiction with dubious logic:
We regret that Clausewitz has not set forth in such bright fight the advantages of the attack. ... It is here that many officers believe they have found a vulnerable point in Clausewitz’s doctrines. ... In truth, Clause- witz’s idea is that the defensive must not be adopted except by a people very inferior in material resources, but that the sole strategy which is appropriate to the army of a great, strong, energetic, warlike people is the fearless offensive.
The new ideas quickly began to color official policy in France. The new Army Field Regulations of October 1913 opened: “The French Army, returning to its tradition, henceforth admits no law but the offensive . . . The offensive alone leads to positive results.” The French War Plan XVII accordingly expressed the inflexible intention to attack. A proposal to change the red trousers of French soldiers in favor of some less visible color was rejected in the belief that elan would be compromised. Maneuvers were marked by the absence of field fortifications and earthworks. The President of France announced in 1913 that “the offensive alone is suited to the temperament of French soldiers.” General Michel, who called for a more sober approach to strategy, was relieved from high position. The file of another dissenter, Major Henri Petain was allegedly marked, “Not to be allowed to go above the rank of brigadier general.”
The 20th century thus opened with a remarkable demonstration of the appeal of the offensive. Despite the strong testimony of recent wars, planners in all countries before 1914 gave small heed to the possibility of defensive stalemate; nowhere did military men seek new technologies for overcoming such a deadlock. The cost of error was catastrophic—four years of horror and death so terrible as to strain the foundations of civilization. Weapons to overcome the dominance of the defensive—weapons like the tracked and armored, mechanized vehicle—might have been devised before 1914. But the tank was yet unborn, its conception checked by the prevailing exaltation of the offensive.
The later aftermath for France was no less unhappy. By 1939, the French, so wholly wrong in worshiping the attack in 1914, had swung fully to the opposite extreme. The terrible losses of the 1914-18 holocaust produced a determination never again to sacrifice the nation’s manhood to offensive theories of war. As in 1914, the French in 1940 were terribly mistaken. True, the great steel and concrete fortifications of the Maginot Line fought on long after the rest of France had fallen: German armor avoided, not assaulted, the Maginot Line. But the Maginot mystique —the French nation’s abhorrence for offensive methods—rendered sound assessment of the latest weapons and tactics impossible, a harvest of the extremity of error in 1914.
The Problem of the Submarine. As the 20th century began, the grand concepts of naval warfare introduced by the American theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, earned rapid and broad acclaim. Mahan saw a navy’s strategic task as principally offensive and straightforward—to meet and defeat the enemy’s force of capital ships, thereby assuring control of the vast areas of ocean communication. Having thus won command of the world’s sea routes, the victor might then attain ultimate wealth and world power. Direct attack on commerce without first neutralizing the enemy’s battle fleet—the guerre de course—had in history proven generally ineffective.
Mahan’s writings proved enormously popular, and helped bring about a preoccupation in the world’s navies with capital ship development. His theories accorded small recognition to the newest instrument of naval warfare, the submarine, which like the tank and airplane had come of age with the emergence of the internal combustion engine. Mahan’s dismissal of the guerre de course obscured recognition of the submarine’s most effective role, that of commerce destruction; the world’s navies saw the submarine, not as an independent strategic weapon, but as a supporting agent in grand fleet operations.
Germany’s leaders during World War I held back from all-out strategic use of the submarine because of concerns in diplomacy and international law, and because of their preconceived doctrines based upon Mahan. Finally, rejecting these considerations, Germany in January 1917 decided to unleash her U-boat fleet in unrestricted commerce warfare. The stunning success of the U-boat campaign at once confronted the Allied Powers with a grave problem, one for which application of Mahan again led to wrong conclusions. The British Navy’s early reply to the submarine threat was to install a system of offensive patrols in those waters bearing the heaviest merchant traffic Enemy U-boats, were to be sought out and destroyed, and thus driven from the world’s sea lanes. Mahan had stressed direct confrontations of battle forces and the importance of commanding sea routes; his influence reinforced the intrinsic attractiveness of the offensive approach, to rule out an essentially passive system of escorted convoys. Properly vigorous naval officers, bred in the tradition of Nelson, found the “seek out and destroy” idea appealing.
The offensive approach to antisubmarine warfare failed utterly. The U-boat’s inherent ability to evade detection easily thwarted the primitive antisubmarine weapons of the day, while substantial numbers of badly-needed Allied destroyer craft remained reserved for duties with the main battle fleet. The antisubmarine patrol efforts sometimes only aided U-boat commanders, by marking out the routes soon to be used by merchantmen. Despite these failures, certain American and British naval officers still considered escort of convoy as defensive, and argued that shipping capacities would be wasted by inefficient convoy scheduling, that losses to collision would be severe, and that convoys would only bunch targets for enemy torpedoes. In June 1917, the U. S. Secretary of the Navy cabled that: “In regard to convoy, I consider that American vessels having armed guard are safer when sailing independently.”
By the summer of 1917, however, it had become plain that the only hope rested in a system of escorted convoys. The immediate success of the convoy system once it was generally introduced quickly silenced all opponents; losses to U-boats by the end of 1917 fell well below half the earlier rate. One final gesture toward offensive methods occurred late in the war, in the form of an attempt to block the U-boat ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge by naval and amphibious sorties. The operation utterly failed to slow U-boat operations, and cost the British over a thousand casualties.
The lesson was only incompletely appreciated at the start of World War II. Although the British promptly instituted convoys on certain routes with notable success, at the same time other so-called “offensive” patrol operations yielded only disaster—the loss of one aircraft carrier and a narrow escape for another, both on antisubmarine patrol in the first month of the war. Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty badly misread events in the war’s first weeks, telling the House of Commons “a good tale” of declining losses to U-boats, down from 46,000 tons the first week to 9,000 tons in the fourth. Furthermore, Churchill went on, “the British attack upon the U-boats is only just beginning. Our hunting force is getting stronger every day.” In fact, the spiraling monthly losses to U-boats would soon approach 600,000 tons.
Instead of learning from the early British experience, the Americans in 1942 stumbled even more badly. As losses to U-boats mounted off the U. S. east coast, Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. Fleet, revealed his inclinations toward offensive action by blaming the situation on Britain’s failure to make sustained and effective attacks on U-boat bases. The defensive taint of convoy methods became an effective talking point used by the Army Air Forces in controversies with the Navy over antisubmarine roles and missions. The U. S. Navy during 1942 tried hunter groups, “offensive” patrols, and decoy gunships, without perceptibly affecting the developing catastrophe. President Franklin D. Roosevelt complained that his naval officers were “unwilling to think in terms of any vessel of less than two thousand tons.”
Desperate measures to organize escorted convoys abruptly reversed events, and by the end of the year the U-boats moved elsewhere in search of happier hunting. Meanwhile, extensive and costly aerial bombing attacks against U-boat bases on the European coast scarcely disturbed German operations. Admiral King concluded:
Escort is not just one way of handling the submarine menace, it is the only way that gives any promise of success. The so-called hunting and patrol operations have time and again proved futile.
It is true that later in the war hunter-killer operations played a role in virtually driving the U-boats from the seas. But this came after the German threat to Allied communications had been plainly broken by increased numbers of escort craft, supported by a family of new weapons giving the airplane a decisive role. The efficiency of the hunter patrol operations in terms of the resources expended remains suspect, but the appeal of such offensive tactics at war’s end was high. Debate over offensive opposed to convoy tactics persisted in the 1950s and 1960s.
Theories of Air Warfare. Prior to 1914, the youthful and primitive air weapon appeared mainly an instrument of reconnaissance. Amid the prevailing popularity of the offensive in land warfare such a role seemed prosaic and indeed unnecessary, since in theory the enemy, lacking the initiative, could only maneuver to parry one’s own offensive thrusts. Concerned over the lagging development of the air weapon, certain French aviation writers argued that reconnaissance best aided the attack, and had little to offer the defense. Advanced theories of the offensive employment of air power, however, awaited the rapid maturing of military aviation during World War I.
The Italian officer, Giulio Douhet, became the best known and most systematic theorist of air power after the war. Douhet began with the assumption that the aircraft possessed superlative qualities in an offensive role—that because of the air weapon’s unprecedented mobility it represented the offensive instrument par excellence. Effective air defense could be attained only at prohibitive cost. A nation should therefore point its military preparations entirely toward the offensive use of aircraft, Douhet reasoned. Defensive interceptor aviation was wasteful, since it subtracted resources from the bomber arm. Escort craft to protect the bomber force were unnecessary, given the ineffectiveness of defensive aviation against the all-out attack. Indeed, armies and navies needed only be sufficiently strong to maintain a defensive on the surface, while the bomber fleets pursued the verdict aloft. Enemies in war would exchange hammer blows against one another’s industrial and population centers, until utter social disorganization of one ensued.
Douhet’s writings became a foundation for strategic bombing doctrines in the world’s air forces. He correctly sensed that the social organization and economic viability of an enemy had become the ultimate objective of war, thereby fundamentally changing the nature of conflict. Meanwhile he miscalculated the physical effects of bombs and the fragility of civilian morale, and looked toward the use of poison gas in bombs. These errors, along with his concept of totality in war, bolstered his theory of the air offensive. Other leaders of the world’s air forces, seeking purpose and role for their new weapon, would become strongly attracted by the offensive idea.
William Mitchell, the American crusader for air power, like Douhet, saw the offensive as superior, but initially with substantial reservations. Mitchell at first envisioned a balanced air force, which would conduct air superiority operations with fighter aircraft before launching the offensive bombardment program. Although he sensed that defensive aviation could never guarantee full immunity from air attack, Mitchell never rejected intercept and warning possibilities. It seemed clear that the American public would react unfavorably to talk about strategic bombing. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker in 1918 had warned the Air Service that the United States would not join any bombing plan that involved “promiscuous bombing upon industry, commerce, or population, in enemy countries, dissociated from obvious military needs. ...” Mitchell therefore appealed to the public and Congress by stressing the defensive role of aviation in protecting our shores against hostile air or naval attack. In 1924, Mitchell began talking openly of strategic bombing as the central element in future war. After his resignation from the Army in 1926, his ideas moved close to those of Douhet, and his demand for sweeping military reorganization became rooted in the idea of strategic bombing. Mitchell never completely rejected pursuit development, however, if only because he guessed that the public desired some sort of defensive effort.
American doctrine for employment of air power underwent sharp clarification during the 1930s, particularly at the Air Corps Tactical School. Although the War Department officially held that military aviation existed primarily to support the ground battle, by 1940, America’s air leaders had become thoroughly, even emotionally, committed to doctrines of the strategic bomber offensive. The matured strategic warfare theory grew from several developments: the rapid progress in heavy bomber technology culminating in the B-17, the belief that the pursuit arm had reached its technical limit, the recent availability of Douhet’s writings, and the shift in Mitchell’s ideas. Public opposition to mass civilian bombings was headed off by the concept of precision attack by daylight, using the Norden Mark XV bombsight demonstrated in 1931. Mitchell kept in touch with Major Harold George at the Tactical School and with officers like Lieutenant Colonel Frank Andrews, giving encouragement to the bomber doctrine. Forgotten were Mitchell’s earlier concepts for a balanced establishment, one which would include a strong fighter arm for attaining command of the air. Rejected was the noisy dissent of Claire Chennault, who insisted that pursuit could intercept bombers if given an adequate warning and control net. A 1933 report of the provisional GHQ air force revealed the faith of America’s air leaders in the offensive use of air power:
Bombardment aviation has defensive fire power of such quantity and effectiveness as to warrant the belief that with its modern speeds it may be capable of effectively accomplishing its assigned mission without support. . . . No known agency can frustrate the accomplishment of a bombardment mission.
It is true that the American theorists of the 1930s had no knowledge of the imminence of radar, a decisive innovation which would vastly strengthen air defense. In 1939 and 1940, several Air Force studies indicated concern over possible loss rates among unescorted bombers, but at the same time reflected the view that the more advanced bombing planes would need no escort. As it was, confidence in the unescorted bomber “was based more on hope than fact.”
Central to the theories of both von Clausewitz and Mahan had been the idea of the grand climactic engagement—an ultimate test of strength between the opposing main battle forces. The bomber theorists easily rejected this classic concept, since they had already dismissed the capability of enemy air defense. An air force should proceed to attack the enemy’s industrial strength upon the opening of hostilities, they reasoned, without first meeting the enemy air force in battle for command of the air. Harold George wrote in 1935: “The spectacle of huge air forces meeting in the air is the figment of imagination of the uninitiated.” A long-range fighter force, capable of defeating an enemy defensive fighter force, remained non-existent. Those officers who sensed a need for escort fighters were halted by the apparent design range limitations of the type. The publication of plan AWPD/42 in September 1942 omitted mention of escort, estimating that American day bombers could attack Germany unescorted with acceptable loss rates.
Obsession in the British Air Force with offensive bomber doctrine paralleled the trend in America. The vast influence of Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard during the R.A.F.’s formative years in the 1920s firmly planted the offensive idea. Trenchard’s intense belief in the air offensive caused him to reject long- range escort development and to hold fighter defense forces to the barest minimum. London could best be defended by the threat of retaliation posed by a bomber force of the greatest possible capability, he insisted.
. . . although it is necessary to have some defence to keep up the morale of your own people, it is infinitely more necessary to lower the morale of the people against you by attacking them wherever they may be.
Trenchard planned only one defense squadron for every three of bombers.
The bomber remained the backbone of R.A.F. doctrine into the mid-1950s, when the menace of German rearmament stirred a critical re-examination of British air policy. R.A.F. and Air Ministry officials remained steadfast in their faith in the bomber offensive idea. Rearmament Scheme J, submitted by the airmen in 1937, called for a substantial increase in the size of Bomber Command, reequipping the force with the newest heavy bombers. Sir Thomas Inskip, appointed to the newly created post of Minister for the Coordination of Defence, strenuously opposed Scheme J, insisting that a defensive force of many fighter squadrons be created at the expense of the enlarged bomber fleet. A capability for destroying German bombers over Britain, denying the Nazis’ hope of quick victory and gaining time for Bomber Command to build up for retaliation, Inskip felt, was essential. Air Staff chiefs replied that to lay emphasis on the defense was to accept defeat at the outset.
In its decision the Cabinet embraced In skip’s view over that of the airmen. Fear of the effects of strategic bombing (publicized by the airmen themselves) and the appeal of economy (fighters cost less than bombers) prevailed; accordingly, Britain’s air leaders without notable enthusiasm set about a series of defensive measures, bringing to reality the radar, the modern interceptor fighters, and the organized air defense apparatus upon which survival of the island kingdom would rest in 1940.
The penchant for the offensive was thus strong among air leaders in Britain and the United States. In few areas have prewar concepts proven so wrong. The R.A.F. learned quickly in 1939 that their bombers in daylight became easy victims for the defending fighters of the Luftwaffe. The lesson was rejected in America, and a vast strategic bombing campaign featuring unescorted daylight attack went into motion. The terrible American losses in 1943 to enemy defensive interceptors nearly broke the effort; only the belated appearance of high performance, long-range escort craft, coupled with the determination of the American commanders, reversed the course of defeat. The German fighter force commander, Adolph Galland, wrote that the increased range and depth of American fighter escort represented “the only possibility for successfully continuing the strategic air war by day.” The technical problems in designing the long-range fighter had been hastily met late in 1943 by modifying the existing P-38, P-47, and P-51 types, increasing fuel load at some sacrifice in stability and auxiliary equipment. Combat performance over the target remained equal or superior to that of the earlier-generation German interceptors. The Americans thus won the Air Battle of Germany in early 1944 in spite of, and not because of, an important part of their prewar doctrine. Air supremacy over Europe was thereby achieved, making possible the invasion of Europe and the final devastating year of strategic bombing. The appeal of the offensive had been narrowly and at substantial cost overcome.
The German approach to air power, too, had stressed the undeniable offensive capabilities of the new weapon. The Luftwaffe of 1939 was designed, however, not as an instrument for strategic bombing, but as a superb weapon for tactical interdiction and ground support operations. A long-range escort fighter arm, capable of defeating Britain’s defensive fighter force, was overlooked. Galland blamed the short range of the Me-109 in escort operations for the Luftwaffe failure in the Battle of Britain. This shortcoming of the Germans in 1940 strikingly foretold the American difficulties during the Air Battle of Germany—air leaders in both countries had dismissed the power of air defense.
Hitler's Obsession for the Offensive. The German Army’s succession of brilliant blitzkrieg victories early in World War II constituted stunning vindication of the offensive in modern land warfare, and of Adolph Hitler as a military strategist. Each of the campaigns had been ordered by Hitler himself, often against the warnings of his military advisors. As one success followed another, Hitler became more and more convinced of his own infallibility, and of the overwhelming advantages of the offensive in war. These convictions were from the beginning impassioned; eventually they came close to madness.
The German Army in Russia paid heavily for Hitler’s obsessions. The Fuehrer’s refusal to permit withdrawal caused the death of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad. In the years of retreat which followed, Hitler denied his generals a strategy of elastic defense, insisting on rigid resistance and premature counterattacks. His belief that attack was the best form of defense blocked the bold plans of Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein and others for baited withdrawals, which might have seriously sapped enemy strength and certainly prolonged the war. He insisted that construction of defensive lines behind the front would cause his generals to think only of retreat. Ultimate German exhaustion and collapse were the inevitable results of such delusion.
Hitler’s 1944 offensives in the West demonstrated the same fatal tendencies. During the summer, as General George S. Patton’s American Third Army rampaged over Brittany, Hitler insisted on pressing the Panzer thrust against Patton’s line of communications at Avranches, long beyond the point of hope. German strength was thereby drawn within the jaws of the developing Falaise pocket, and hopes became doomed for further effective resistance by the Germans in France. Hitler’s Ardennes assault in the final winter, launched over the doubts of his now compliant generals, caught the Americans badly off balance and dislocated immediate Allied plans. But overall failure of Hitler’s offensive was certain from the first because of fuel shortages, Allied resolution in defense, and Allied air supremacy once favorable weather returned. Exhaustion of Germany’s final resources, and certain collapse in the spring became the harvests of the affair.
As it was, despite Hitler’s faulty leadership, German resistance was remarkably enduring. Allied attacks, enjoying six-to-one tactical superiority of force including air supremacy, were frequently blunted. Liddell Hart analyzed the German Army’s resilience:
It was, above all, proof of the immense inherent strength of modern defence. .-. . With growing experience all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
It was also the main underlying lesson of the war as a whole.
The most remarkable example of Hitler’s mania for the offensive was his interference in the Me-262 jet aircraft development program. The technology of jet propulsion offered the Germans an asset of enormous possibility; in the war’s last weeks Me-262s, in brief appearances, destroyed dozens of Flying Fortresses. Had the jet interceptors with their superior speed and altitude performance been ready six months or a year sooner, the dominance of American long-range escort fighters over Germany would have ended.
In 1940, Hitler had ordered a halt to all research and development projects having expected readiness dates two years or more in the future. Despite this order, jet aircraft development continued, though without the highest urgency. Subsequently attracted by the promise of the jet, Hitler in July 1943 during a rare happy moment spoke of converting the 262 into a bomber. Willy Messer- schmitt, Galland, and the others involved in the 262 project, disregarded the Fuehrer’s seemingly chance remark, and the jet continued development as an interceptor, designed for the air defense of Germany. Use of
the plane as a bomber seemed an incomprehensible idea, given the limited range and high speed characteristics intrinsic with the new propulsion system. Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering told Messerschmitt in November 1943 that Hitler still thought of the 262 as a bomber, but neglected to press the matter.
Six months later, Hitler learned of the plans to mass-produce the Me-262 as an interceptor fighter, and quickly launched into one of his fits of anger. He announced, “I am not at all interested in this plane as a fighter,” and issued by telegram an order that the new jets were “to be in fact bombers and not fighters.” Galland’s removal as Inspector General of Fighters followed his disagreement with Hitler’s “Blitzbomber decision.” By January 1945, Hitler finally decided that the 262 should be a defensive fighter-interceptor, and wanted it at once operational on the largest scale. Hitler’s change came too late, for although numbers of jets were coming from production at last, combat ready interceptor units were yet months away. Germany had in effect rejected the one weapon which in 1944 might have broken the Allied air campaign.
Hitler’s interference in the jet aircraft program was only one manifestation of his obsession for the offensive in the air war. In 1943, Goering assembled leaders of the Luftwaffe and the air industry, gaining agreement that, in the face of the Allied air build-up, Germany should shift over to an air strategy of defense, focusing training, procurement, and doctrine toward effective defense of the skies over Germany. Hitler listened to these recommendations and totally rejected them, calling instead for increased bomber production and for renewal of the air offensive against Britain. Luftwaffe preparations for the Air Battle of Germany suffered, perhaps decisively. To the end, the sky over Germany remained hostile, while Hitler’s orders for air offensive action yielded only meaningless gestures; Allied command of the air, attained by victory over the German fighter force, proved decisive.
Offense and Defense in History. The balance between offense and defense has shifted back and forth throughout military history, inviting ceaseless interpretation by theorists and practitioners of warfare. The notion that only the offensive has brought decisive victory in the past is demonstrably false. The outnumbered English army during the Battle of Crecy in 1346 never moved from its original defensive positions—yet at the end of the day the forces of the French king entirely ceased to exist, destroyed by its own furious assaults in the face of English longbow fire. The classic demonstration of the strategic and tactical defensive remains Lord Wellington’s masterful 1810 campaign in Portugal. The defensive strength of the English lines outside Lisbon combined with French logistics difficulties to break the French force and cause it to stumble out of the country at the end of the winter. The antagonists fought no decisive battle. Elsewhere in the Peninsula, Wellington’s battlefield tactics were no less defensively inspired, and his succession of victories has led to a kind of tradition in British arms for skill in exploiting defensive tactics in land warfare.
The emotional appeal of the offensive is scarcely new. The codes of valor of early Rome brought the downfall of the general, Quintus Fabius, because of his “cowardly and unenterprising spirit,” despite his classic strategy of evasion and harassment which dimmed the early victories of Hannibal in Italy. The successors of Fabius, possessed of plenty of offensive spirit, led Rome’s new dual-consular army to extermination at Cannae. Similar if less sudden results followed the removal of the skilled but careful soldier, Joseph Johnston, before Atlanta in 1864 by impatient Confederate authorities in favor of the gallant and impetuous John Bell Hood.
Unmistakably, however, the allure of the offensive has become inordinately strong in the 20th century. We have seen that Hitler’s irrational mental tendencies made him an easy victim of its appeal. The ravings of the French enthusiasts for the offensive a outrance before 1914 were no less irrational. Offensive concepts of antisubmarine technique, and theories of air warfare which neglected the defensive, too, proved seriously fallacious upon the test of war. Other examples might be cited. Soviet offensive military doctrine in 1941 led to heavy losses in the inelastic retreats of that summer, which paralleled Hitler’s later inflexibility in defeat. In 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt, feeling the need to gratify public opinion by putting American troops into offensive action at earliest opportunity, went ahead with the invasion of North Africa, overruling his top military advisors who sensed that the Mediterranean implied a strategic dead end. During the Korean ground stalemate, deficiencies in design and construction of defensive field works reflected neglect of this aspect in American training and doctrine. The French in Indochina in the early 1950s found offensive penetrations into Minh areas at first psychologically satisfying, but they discovered the inevitable fighting withdrawal costly if not disastrous. Certain Americans in the mid-1950s talked appealingly of “rolling back” the Iron Curtain by more vigorous foreign policies, but the West’s helplessness during the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 revealed the emptiness of these notions.
This has admittedly been a one-sided sketch of recent military history. There have, of course, been many examples of the correct and effective use of the offensive approach. American fighter pilots over Germany in 1944 were allowed to roam in free chase, and were not generally tied to close escort responsibilities. The results entirely justified this technique, in notable contrast to the failure of the Luftwaffe in tight escort during the Battle of Britain. American strategy in the Pacific theater during World War II showed how the initiative could be brilliantly exploited on a grand scale. American naval officers in combat situations displayed offensive instincts and zest for battle in ways reminiscent of the captains of Lord Nelson, with superb results. That such an approach must, however, be tempered at highest command levels was suggested by William F. Halsey’s nearly costly boldness in the Battle for Leyte Gulf, which constrasted with the studied caution of Raymond A. Spruance on earlier occasions.
The hazards of emotional decision-making are severe. Officers attain high responsibility through a process of selection wherein vigor and forcefulness are highly desired traits. To some degree, these qualities clash with the thoughtful brilliance needed by the strategist. Von Clausewitz was deeply interested in the moral and psychological aspects of war; yet he stressed that the commander must be of cool-headed rationality rather than of mercurial or uneven temperament.
Manifestly, an attraction has existed in meeting military problems, in favor of the bolder, the more vigorous, and consequently the offensive solution. We may presume that the future will provide new examples. Might not the vast offensive potentiality of the strategic nuclear strike force blind a nation’s leaders to the need for a strong passive defense capability, one which could render credible the over-all deterrent? In wars of insurgency, might not commanders tend to neglect the fundamental but prosaic task of protecting the loyal populace, meanwhile giving more earnest attention to offensive patrol activity against elusive insurgent forces?
The responsible future commander must thoughtfully assess nonrational and sometimes bombastic extollments of the offensive approach. This he must do, lest those whom he leads become further victims of the 20th century penchant for the offensive.