Sascha Möbius. Mehr Angst vor dem Offizier als vor dem Feind?: Eine mentalitätsgeschichtliche Studie zur preußischen Taktik im Siebenjährigen Krieg. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller e. K., 2007. 160 S. EUR 49.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-8364-4860-4.

Reviewed by Brian G.H. Ditcham (Independent Scholar)
Published on H-German (April, 2008)

Just Cogs in the Military Machine?

Sascha Möbius's slender but ambitious book launches an assault on two well-entrenched historiographical arguments about the Prussian army in the Seven Years War. The first of these maintains that the Prussians entered the war with a seriously deficient tactical doctrine that privileged linear assaults at bayonet point over firepower. This doctrine, it is argued, led to such catastrophic losses in the early engagements of the conflict that it had to be modified substantially during the course of the war. The second proposition is that these tactics could only have been implemented because they were executed by troops who--through brutal discipline and fear of their commanders--had been transformed into virtual robots, obeying orders in a state of numb acquiescence.

The first view comes with the imprimatur of a highly placed and unexpected source--the history of the Prussian involvement in the Seven Years War produced by the historical section of the Prussian General Staff in the years around 1900. Nevertheless, Möbius argues that it is mistaken. He claims that the doctrine developed by Frederick II before the outbreak of war was more flexible than generally recognized and that, in any case, Prussian units on the battlefield were thoroughly pragmatic in their tactical methods. The former proposition is somewhat unpersuasive; despite the author's best efforts to find nuance in Frederick's statements, it remains clear that the Prussian king was strongly convinced of the overwhelming merits of a well-delivered bayonet charge, which was not an entirely new perspective in the 1750s. His approach was based partly on calculations that a unit advancing rapidly through the relatively narrow "killing zone" in front of the defending forces (effective musket range was little more than one hundred yards) would sustain fewer losses than if it had paused to engage in a firefight with its opponents. Primarily, however, Frederick's position was based on psychology and a belief that opposing forces would break and run rather than face the point of the bayonet--though expressed in somewhat more sophisticated terms, Frederick shared the view that Corporal Jones of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard articulated in the BBC series, "Dad's Army": cold steel was the ultimate weapon because "they don't like it up 'em."

Möbius is on much stronger ground in arguing that, whatever orders from the top stated about the primacy of the bayonet, Prussian units were prepared to engage the enemy in a variety of ways depending on terrain and circumstance. He provides a detailed analysis of the Battle of Prague (May 6, 1757) to illustrate this point (a map would have been helpful in illustrating his narrative) and suggests that the same flexibility in combat could be found throughout the war. Bayonet charges on the classic Frederician model were far from unknown, but neither were they an obsession. He points out that this is not surprising; for all Frederick's theorizing, the Prussian army continued to be trained in ways established by his father, who had focused on maximizing the rate of fire attained by the troops. Bayonet tactics were not integrated into training (even though the Prussian army had a standardized drill and training manual) and rare experiments with bayonet tactics during exercises were somewhat impractical parade ground drills rather than serious training for the battlefield. It would be interesting to explore both why the Prussian army apparently failed to its training manual to meet clearly stated royal preferences and why the members of the Prussian General Staff of 1900 were happy to articulate a perspective implicitly critical of their otherwise revered "Alter Fritz." These issues,however, are not investigated in the book.

Möbius scrutinizes surviving correspondence and diaries of men in the Prussian ranks as well as the views of officers and other well placed contemporary observers, such as military chaplain and proto-psychologist C. D. Küster. Far from being a troop of brutalized automata, the members of the Prussian soldiery emerge from this examination as men with a genuine sense of professionalism and pride in their service. While perfectly capable of feeling fear in battle, they were sustained by sincere religious sentiment of a distinctly Protestant hue (though the content of this religion was varied, ranging from the internalization of pietist principles to a somewhat un-Protestant folk religion of incantations and instrumental prayer). Units that were not directly involved in action were able to watch the unfolding battle with informed interest. They were also sustained by patriotic sentiment (albeit a patriotism strongly focused on the king rather than more abstract ideals). Hatred of the enemy played a role, though Möbius suggests that Franco- and Russophobia were rather less salient than later writers claimed, while anti-Austrian sentiment based on religion was rather stronger. Carefully targeted material inducements also helped to sustain fighting spirit. On the other hand, Möbius is inclined to minimize the role of direct coercion in keeping men on the battlefield. For instance, he tends to discount the role of summary executions in keeping troops in line. Instead, he suggests the existence of a set of unwritten conventions shared by officers and men over what it was reasonable to expect soldiers to do in battle (a proposition which deserves further examination).

Overall, he makes a persuasive case. One can certainly quibble at the margins. Accidents of documentary survival mean that the voices from the ranks come from limited geographical areas, all of which were "heartlands" of the Prussian kingdom. This material was consciously sought out and published in the early twentieth century in response to the less favorable view of Prussian service articulated in the memoirs of the Swiss soldier (and ultimately deserter) Ulrich Bräker. The bulk of the evidence examined here also relates to the first two years of the war. It is reasonable to wonder whether the balance between coercion and more positive sentiments would have been the same for units consisting of men formerly in the Saxon service who had been obliged to change sides after capture. As Möbius's account of the Battle of Prague makes clear, such troops might well desert wholesale to the enemy in mid-battle. One also wonders about the mood of Mecklenburgers forced into the Prussian army, or of the increasingly makeshift units cobbled together as the war continued and casualties soared. Möbius himself notes the existence of early forms of "blocking detachment" designed to keep men on the field by force, and one cannot quite overlook the fact that the Prussian drill manual explicitly ordered officers and non-commissioned officers to march behind their men in line of battle. One should see Möbius's account as representing the best-case scenario, one that may have reflected the experience of the hard core of the Prussian forces, rather than as universally valid across Frederick's armies. Nevertheless, it is an important corrective to exaggerated claims about the brutality of the Prussian military still made in modern research.

Möbius raises many important issues, not all of which he has the space to address fully. Indeed, this book would have benefited from being more extensive. The content of training and discipline in peacetime and away from the battlefield is important but gets less coverage than it deserves. Möbius argues that officers and men were subject to different expectations: for example, coolness under fire was valued more in officers, while aggressive fighting spirit was more valued in soldiers. Was there a specific ethos for noncommissioned officers (overrepresented among the voices from the ranks, key figures in imposing discipline and probably in setting the tone of individual units)? Is the flexibility in battle (even at the cost of disobeying direct royal orders) that Möbius records at Prague an early adumbration of what was seen as one of the great strengths of the German military tradition? Furthermore, what happened after peace returned? Möbius' title consciously refers to one of Frederick's notorious reflections on military matters. As he points out, however, it dates from the 1760s, after the Peace of Hubertusberg and does not necessarily reflect Frederick's views in the 1750s. It may, however, indicate the conclusions that Frederick had drawn from the Seven Years War; ones not necessarily conducive to the long-term survival of the relatively open and flexible approach to battle that Möbius documents in the present book. One hopes that he may explore these issues further in future writings.

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Citation: Brian G.H. Ditcham. Review of Möbius, Sascha, Mehr Angst vor dem Offizier als vor dem Feind?: Eine mentalitätsgeschichtliche Studie zur preußischen Taktik im Siebenjährigen Krieg. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14461

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