firewalls. The Ardennes in 1944 and Hungary in 1945 wereFahrten ins Blaue,
military excursions to nowhere in particular with no serious operational objec-
tives, much less strategic ones.
That pattern was replicated in the rearmed Federal Republic. Institutionally and
technologically, the Bundeswehr in its developed form closely replicated panzer
formats and experience. Ten of its twelve divisions were armoured or mechanized.
Its Leopard tanks were a near-optimal combination of gun power, mobility, and
reliability. Its Marder armoured personnel carriers were full-tracked fighting plat-
forms as opposed to the half-track battle taxis of the Second World War.
In general terms, that strength and structure represented to both domestic
and foreign analysts a reasonable balance between a meaningful and a non-
threatening West German commitment to Atlantic security. During the Cold
War, the Bundeswehr evolved along the same lines as the armed forces of Britain
and France: stronger than those of the Benelux countries, Denmark, or Norway,
better equipped than those of Greece or Turkey, but essentially unable to function
independently without the consent of its allies. NATO’s Central Front was
integrated at the army-corps level; the Bundeswehr’s three corps were deployed
in separate sectors. With neither a general staff nor any higher commands,
the prospects for developing operational art were limited to the point of non-
existence.
That was seldom perceived negatively in a Bundeswehr just as committed to a
forward defence, as had been its late-war predecessor in Russia. With thirty per
cent of the Federal Republic’s population and a quarter of its industrial capacity
within a hundred miles of the eastern frontier, trading space for time in the
Manstein tradition was impossible. Analysis of the defensive operations in Russia
between 1943 and 1945, however, strongly suggested that mechanized forces
properly trained, equipped, and commanded retained the capacity to check
effectively any conventional offensive in Central Europe.
The Bundeswehr doctrine correspondingly called for quick ripostes, trip-
hammer blows executed at the lowest possible levels. The Bundeswehr planners
increasingly referred to the Eastern Front after 1943, when a few tanks and a
handful of men boldly led, committed at the right time, regularly proved worth
more than tenfold their number a few hours later. Implemented across the NATO
Front, these counter-attacks were expected to stabilize the battle line to a point
where nuclear escalation became a calculable option as opposed to a logical
development. 79
The Bundeswehr’s approach was never put to the test. It is, nevertheless,
significant because it concludes the story of operational art in Prussia and
Germany by returning it to its tactical and grand-tactical matrices. German
operational art is best understood not as an organic development but as a
situational response—arguably a series of responses—to particular circum-
stances. Beginning in a context of limited wars for limited objectives, it metasta-
sized into a means of conquest and expansion that encouraged and enabled
ambitions that ultimately lay outside the capacity, and the will, of society, state,
and army alike. That overstretch, in turn, repeatedly impelled regression to grand
Prussian–German Operational Art, 1740–1943 57