By Jörg Muth
2011 in Foreign Policy
Best Defense department of Auftragstaktik
affairs
Auftragstaktik. The word sounds cool even when mangled by an American tongue. What it means, however, has always been elusive to Americans. The problematic translation of that core German military word into "mission type orders" completely distorts its meaning. Auftragstaktik does not denote a certain style of giving orders or a certain way of phrasing them; it is a whole command philosophy.
The
idea originates with Frederick the Great, who complained after more than one
battle that his highly experienced regimental commanders would not dare take
action on their own but too often ask back for orders and thus waste precious
time.
Nearly
one hundred years later the military genius Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von
Moltke was the first to formulate the concept of Auftragstaktik. Moltke
was a diligent student of Frederick's campaigns, of military history in general
and philosophy. At a time when he was not yet famous and, not yet the victor of
three wars, he observed the annual General Staff war games in 1858. The
paperwork and the detailed orders appalled him because he knew that in war
there was no time for such nonsense. During the war game critique he decreed
that "as a rule an order should contain only what the subordinate for the
achievement of his goals cannot determine on his own." Everything else was to
be left to the commander on the spot.
