248 Chapter Sevenunprecedented prestige and authority. The General Staff, it will be
remembered, had been established by Scharnhorst as part of the re
forms that followed the collapse of the Prussian army in 1806. Pro
fessional training of staff officers had continued thereafter in the Prus
sian service, and a small group of planners, accustomed to calculate
carefully all the factors affecting an army’s mobility, maintained a level
of expertise other armies seldom equaled. But whether or nor a Prus
sian general chose to act on advice coming from staff officers assigned
to his headquarters depended on the personalities involved, and var
ied from case to case. In Berlin, the chief of the General Staff re
mained relatively obscure. He did not even report directly to the
minister of war, but was subordinated to the General War Department.
Soon after he became regent, Wilhelm, who took a lively interest in
all military matters, appointed Moltke chief of the General Staff. The
new chief’s prestige became firmly established during the Danish war
when he was called from Berlin to become senior staff officer to
Crown Prince Frederick, who, when placed in command of the Prus
sian forces at Düppel, relied completely on Moltke’s advice. The king
thenceforward added Moltke to the group of councillors who advised
him about questions of military importance. Then, when war with
Austria drew near, King Wilhelm decided not to delegate full author
ity to army commanders, as had become customary, but to revive the
glorious tradition of Frederick the Great and exercise command him
self. He did so by relying on advice and plans prepared by the General
Staff. To make Moltke’s new authority effective, the king decreed that
the chief of the General Staff had the right to issue orders in the field
without going through the Ministry of War or any other intermediary.
Thus, in military matters, Wilhelm’s sovereign authority for all practi
cal purposes became Moltke’s, though of course the king had to be
consulted about each important move and approve it before orders
went out.
Effective centralized command depended on new means of trans
port and communication. The electromagnetic telegraph, developed
in the 1840s, allowed an advancing army to keep contact with a distant
headquarters simply by paying out wire as it advanced. In this fashion
Moltke and the king could maintain accurate check on large-scale
strategic movements. Instructions could be sent instantaneously to
any subordinate headquarters that remained within reach of a tele
graph wire. To be sure, keeping many miles of wires in working order
was no simple matter, especially in an age when few understood the