Administrative Military Wisdom — from a 1930s Anti-Nazi German General

© 2016 Peter Free

 

12 April 2016

 

 

Pertinent today?

 

Weimar Republic General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord — an avowed enemy of Hitler — once said:

 

 

I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined.

 

Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff.

 

The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.

 

Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.

 

One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.

 

© 2016 Wikipedia, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (visited 12 April 2016) (paragraph split)

 

 

Would not a “clever and lazy” elite best serve the peacetime military, rather than a wartime one?

 

Properly preparing Army groups for imminent combat, it seems to me, requires both diligence and problem-anticipating anxiety.

 

Ongoing front actions would also require extreme attention, but not micro-management, so as to let nothing vital slip.

 

That said, a critically important observation about desperate military circumstances comes from Soviet Union General Vasily Chiukov — who had done all he could to prepare his 62nd Army, while simultaneously under existence-threatening onslaught at Stalingrad in late 1942:

 

 

Even in the toughest fighting, a well-prepared soldier who understands the morale of the enemy is not afraid of him — even if his opponent is numerically superior.

 

There is nothing wrong in the fact that a soldier, who is fighting in a basement or under a staircase, and who knows the general task facing the army, is left on his own initiative, to accomplish his own task on his own.

 

The soldier is often his own general in street fighting. You can’t be a commander if you don’t trust your soldiers’ skills.

 

© 2007 Michael K. Jones, Stalingrad: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught (Casemate, 2007) (at pages 88-89) (paragraph split)

 

 

The (implied) moral? — Smart people from the past speak to those who listen

 

It is listening and thinking that most of us lack.

 

Consequently, we become no smarter. And history repeats itself on twisted tracks.