In the winter of 1923–4, Reichswehr manoeuvres incorporated cooperation
between motorized ground troops and simulated air forces. In 1925, the 1st
Division in East Prussia included armoured cars, motorized artillery, and
dummy tanks in its manoeuvre orders of battle. Such exercises highlighted the
Reichswehr’s limited achievements in motorization. They also offered opportu-
nities to consider problems as they arose—and foreign observers noted the Ger-
mans seemed well able to correct mistakes involving motor vehicles. 56
In 1930, the 3rd Motor Battalion was reorganized as a fighting formation
including trucks, cars, motorcycles, anti-tank guns—and mock-up tanks. That
year the Reichswehr manoeuvres incorporated simulated tank forces. The man-
oeuvres’ emphasis was on challenging ‘fog and friction’ by speed, manoeuvrabil-
ity, and flexibility. The fast paces and complex scenarios resulted in high levels of
confusion. But the resulting melees, nevertheless, in a sense reflected the outcome
sought by a developing German doctrine for combat against superior forces
through the use of ‘shock and awe’ as opposed to mass and firepower. 57
In 1924, the motor troops were also made responsible for monitoring devel-
opments in tank war and preparing appropriate training manuals. ‘If tanks were
not such a promising weapon’, one of their senior officers dryly asserted, the Allies
would not have banned them from the Reichswehr. 58 By the mid-1920s, the
Reichswehr was moving doctrinally beyond the concept of tanks as primarily
infantry-support weapons, and organizationally by considering their use in
regimental strength. In November 1926, Wilhelm Heye, Seeckt’s successor as
chief of the army command, issued a memo asserting that technical developments
improving tanks’ speed and range had repeatedly shown in foreign manoeuvres
the developing potential of mechanization. Operating alone or in combined-
arms formations, tanks were becoming capable both of extended manoeuvre
against flanks and rear, and of bringing decisive weight to the decisive point of
battle, theSchwerpunkt. 59
As early as 1926, however, the Reichswehr was focusing primarily on the use of
armoured vehicles as a component of mobile forces separate from the foot-
marching infantry. 60 By 1929, theoretical training schedules had been developed
for independent tank regiments. Beginning in the early 1930s, the war games,
historically central to officer training at all levels, became increasingly theoretical.
They dispensed with realistic troop levels and postulated artificial political con-
ditions in order to expand the learning experience of the game situation and
enhance the vision and capacity of future field commanders.
This abstraction encouraged wider acceptance of the concept that quality,
particularly when enhanced by technology, could overcome numbers. The issues
of mobility, surprise, and concentration of force that had initially been keys to
tactical survival became the basis of an operational concept depending on the
offensive—whose success in turn depended on surprise, deception, and, above all,
risk taking. 61
The Reichswehr did not withdraw to the airy empire of operational dreams. It was
still accurate to speak of mobile war developing in a framework of grand tactics
as opposed to operational art. Nevertheless, an important aspect of mechanization
Prussian–German Operational Art, 1740–1943 49