Supplying War LOGISTICS FROM WALLENSTEIN TO PATTON Second Edition

Martin Van Creveld

SUPPLYING WAR Why did Napoleon succeed in 1805 but fail in 1812? Were the railways vital to Prussia's victory over France in 1870? Was the famous Schlieffen Plan militarily sound? Could the European half of World War II have been ended in 1944? These are only a few of the questions that form the subject matter of this meticulously researched, lively book. Drawing on a very wide range of unpublished and previously unexploited sources, Martin van Creveld examines the 'nuts and bolts' of war: namely, those formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration, so often mentioned but rarely explored - by the vast majority of books on military history. In doing so, he casts his net far and wide, from Gustavus Adolphus to Rommel, from Marlborough to Patton, subjecting the operations of each to a thorough analysis from a fresh and unusual point of view. The result is a fascinating book that has something new to say about virtually every one of the most important campaigns waged in Europe during the past two centuries. Moreover, by concentrating on logistics rather than on the more traditional tactics and strategy, Dr van Creveld is able to offer a reinterpretation of the whole field of military history. In this new edition with a new postscript, van Creveld revisits his now-classic text, commenting on the role of logistics in high-tech modern warfare. Martin van Creveld is a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His previous books include The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge, 1999), The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (2002), Air Power and Maneuver Warfare (2002), and Transformation of War (1991).

SUPPLYING WAR Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton Second Edition

MARTIN VAN CREVELD The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521837446 © Cambridge University Press © Martin van Creveld 2004 1977 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1977 Second edition first published 2004 Reprinted 2005, 2006 (twice), 2007, 2008, 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data van Creveld, Martin L. Supplying war : logistics from Wallenstein to Patton / Martin van Creveld. – 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-83744-8 – ISBN 0-521-54657-5 (pbk.) 1. Logistics – History. 2. Military art and science – History. 3. Military history, modern. I. Title. U168.V36   2004 355.4´11´09–dc22        2003069665 isbn 978-0-521-83744-6 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-54657-7 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third–party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

To Louis and Francien Wijler

CONTENTS

rrejace Introduction

page xi 1

1 The background of two centuries The tyranny of plunder Rise of the magazine system The age of linear warfare 'An umbilical cord of supply"? 2 'An army marches on its stomach!' The end of siege warfare Boulogne to Austerlitz Many roads to Moscow Conclusions

40 40 42 61 70

3 When demigods rode rails Supply from Napoleon to Moltke A joker in the pack Railways against France Logistics of the armed horde Did wheels roll for victory?

75 75 82 89 96 103

4 The wheel that broke State of the art Logistics of the Schlieffen Plan The plan modified Logistics during the compaign of the Mame State of the railroads

109 109 113 118 122 128

5 5 17 26 36

viii

Contents Strength and reinforcement of the right wing Conclusions

134 138

5 Russian roulette Problems of the semi-motorized army Planning for 'Barbarossa' Leningrad and the Dnieper 'Storm to the gates of Moscow'? Conclusions

142 142 148 155 166 175

6 Sirte to Alamein Desert complications Rommel'sfirstoffensive 1942: Annus Mirabilis Conclusion; supply and operations in Africa

181 181 182 192 199

7 War of the accountants The pitfalls of planning Normandy to the Seine 'Broad front" or 'knifelike thrust'? Conclusions

202 202 206 216 227

8 Logistics in perspective

231

Postscript: Where are we now?

239

Note on sources

263

Bibliography

265

Notes

277

Index

309

MAPS

1 The operations of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, 1630-2 page 15 2 The Campaign of 1704 31 3 From the Rhine to the Danube 48 4 The Campaign of 1812 69 5 The War of 1870-1 93 6 German Railway Supply Network in Germany and France, 5 September 1914 131 7 German operations in Russia, June-December 1941 156 8 The North African Theatre 188 9 'Broad Front' 218 10 'Narrow Thrust' 219

PREFACE

This study owes its existence to a book, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff, 1865-1941, by Larry H. Addington, which first excited my interest in logistics. Professor Addington has also kindly answered some queries, as did Mr David Chandler and Mr Christopher Duffy, both of the Department of Military History, Sandhurst. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Laurence Martin and Mr Brian Bond, of King's College, London, for aid and encouragement. Material for Chapter 7 was made available on behalf of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives by Lady Kathleen Liddell Hart, for whose kind hospitality I am most grateful. Some financial support during my stay in London came from the British Council. Above all, however, I thank Rachel my wife; it was she who typed out some of the chapters, and suffered for the rest. London, 28 July 1976

M. v. C.

INTRODUCTION

Logistics are defined by Jomini as 'the practical art of moving armies' under which he also includes 'providing for the successive arrival of convoys of supplies' and 'establishing and organizing.. • lines of supplies'.1 Putting these together, one arrives at a definition of logistics as 'the practical art of moving armies and keeping them supplied', in which sense the term is used in this study. The aim of the study is to arrive at an understanding of the problems involved in moving and supplying armies as affected through time by changes in technology, organization and other relevant factors; and, above all, to investigate the effect of logistics upon strategy during the last centuries. Strategy, like politics, is said to be the art of the possible; but surely what is possible is determined not merely by numerical strengths, doctrine, intelligence, arms and tactics, but, in the first place, by the hardest facts of all: those concerning requirements, supplies available and expected, organization and administration, transportation and arteries of communication. Before a commander can even start thinking of manoeuvring or giving battle, of marching this way and that, of penetrating, enveloping, encircling, of annihilating or wearing down, in short of putting into practice the whole rigmarole of strategy, he has - or ought - to make sure of his ability to supply his soldiers with those 3,000 calories a day without which they will very soon cease to be of any use as soldiers; that roads to carry them to the right place at the right time are available, and that movement along these roads will not be impeded by either a shortage or a superabundance of transport. It may be that this requires, not any great strategic genius but only plain hard work and cold calculation. While absolutely

2

Supplying War

basic, this kind of calculation does not appeal to the imagination, which may be one reason why it is so often ignored by military historians. The result is that, on the pages of military history books, armies frequently seem capable of moving in any direction at almost any speed and to almost any distance once their commanders have made up their minds to do so. In reality, they cannot, and failure to take cognizance of the fact has probably led to many more campaigns being ruined than ever were by enemy action. Though it has been claimed that civilian historians are especially prone to overlook the role of logistics,2 the present author has not found this fault confined to any class of writers. Napoleon's tactics and strategy have attracted whole swarms of theoreticians, historians, and soldiers who between them were able to show that both were natural, indeed necessary, outgrowths of previous developments. The one field of Napoleonic warfare that is still believed to have been fundamentally different from anything that went previously is the logistic one, which is itself enough to suggest that the subject has been neglected. Similarly, no one has yet made a detailed study of the arrangements that made it possible to feed an ambulant city with a population of 200,000 while simultaneously propelling it forward at a rate of fifteen miles a day. To take another example: though Rommel's supply difficulties in 1941-2 are probably mentioned as a crucial factor in his fall by every one of the enormously numerous volumes dealing with him, no author has yet bothered to investigate such questions as the number of lorries the Africa Corps had at its disposal or the quantity of supplies those lorries could carry over a given distance in a given period of time. Even when logistic factors are taken into account, references to them are often crude in the extreme. A glaring instance is Liddell Hart's criticism of the Schlieffen Plan which, while concentrating on logistic issues, does so without considering the consumption and requirements of the German armies, without saying a word about the organization of the supply system, without even a look at a detailed railway map.8 All we find is a passage about the circumference of a circle being longer than its radii, which reminds one suspiciously of that 'geometrical' system of strategy so beloved of eighteenth-century military writers. And this passage is put forward by some, and accepted by others, as 'proof' that the Schlieffen Plan, the details of which took scores of highly-trained

Introduction

3

general staff officers half a generation to work out, was logistically impracticable! Clearly, this will not do. Instead, the present study will ask the fundamental questions: what were the logistic factors limiting an army's operations? What arrangements were made to move it and keep it supplied while moving? How did these arrangements affect the course of the campaign, both as planned and as carried out? In case of failure, could it have been done? Wherever possible, as in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, an attempt is made to answer these questions on the basis of concrete figures and calculations, not on vague speculations. Yet even where, as is often the case, the sources available make it impossible to go into such detail, one can at least analyse the main logistic factors at work and assess their effect on strategy. And one can do this without adhering to stereotypes such as eighteenth-century 'magazine chained' or Napoleonic 'predatory' warfare. An undertaking to study logistics and its influence on strategy during the last century and a half is very ambitious. To compress the topic into the space of a single book, and yet avoid mere generalities, this narrative concentrates on a number of campaigns between 1805 and 1944 (with an introductory chapter on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) selected to present different aspects of the problem. Thus, the Ulm campaign is commonly regarded as the most successful example ever of an army living 'off the country', whereas that of 1812 represents an attempt to utilize horse-drawn transport in order to cope with a problem that was too big to be solved - if it could be solved at all - by anything but the means offered by the modern industrial era. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870, of course, is said to have witnessed a revolution in the use of the railway for military purposes, while 1914 allows a glimpse into the limits of what could be achieved by that means of transportation. The German campaign against Russia in 1941 is interesting as a problem in the transition towards a wholly mechanized army; whereas, in the Allied forces of 1944, that transition had been completed. Finally, Rommel's Libyan campaigns of 1941 and 1942 present some aspects worth studying because unique. From beginning to end, we shall be concerned with the most down-to-earth factors - subsistence, ammunition, transport - rather than with any abstract theorizing; with what success, remains for the reader to judge.

W

hy did Napoleon succeed in 1805 but fail in 1812? Were the railways vital to Prussia’s victory over France in 1870? Was the famous Schlieffen Plan militarily sound? Could the European half of World War II have been ended in 1944? These are only a few of the questions that form the subject matter of this meticulously researched, lively book. Drawing on a very wide range of unpublished and previously unexploited sources, Martin van Creveld examines the ‘nuts and bolts’ of war: namely, those formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration, so often mentioned – but rarely explored – by the vast majority of books on military history. In doing so, he casts his net far and wide, from Gustavus Adolphus to Rommel, from Marlborough to Patton, subjecting the operations of each to a thorough analysis from a fresh and unusual point of view. The result is a fascinating book that has something new to say about virtually every one of the most important campaigns waged in Europe during the past two centuries. Moreover, by concentrating on logistics rather than on the more traditional tactics and strategy, Dr van Creveld is able to offer a reinterpretation of the whole field of military history. In this new edition with a new postscript, van Creveld revisits his now-classic text, commenting on the role of logistics in high-tech modern warfare.

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION “Military buffs, even those who disagree with the author’s conclusions, will find this an original and stimulating work.” – Business Week

“I recommend this work for every professional army officer, but particularly those in the operational field who are used to moving units with the stroke of a grease pencil.” – MAJOR MICHAEL D. KRAUSE, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

“Impeccable scholarship and major new interpretations characterize this work destined to become a classic in military history.” – Technology and Culture

“This slim volume, unique of its kind, not only iterates the value of the study of logistics to the understanding of any war, any campaign, or any battle, but presents significant historical reinterpretations and revisions on practically every page.” – The American Historical Review

Martin van Creveld is a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His previous books include The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge, 1999), The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (2002), Air Power and Maneuver Warfare (2002), and Transformation of War (1991).

Cover design by David Levy