Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " History/Military The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (Strategy & History S.) " from UseNet for FREE!

More

David T. Zabecki, "The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (Strategy & History S.)"

At the tactical level of war the Germans are widely regarded as having had the most innovative and proficient army of World War I. Likewise, many historians would agree that the Germans suffered from serious, if not fatal, shortcomings at the strategic level of war. It is at the middle level of warfare, the operational level, that the Germans seem to be the most difficult to evaluate.

Although the operational was only fully accepted in the 1980s by many Western militaries as a distinct level of warfare, German military thinking well before the start of World War I clearly recognized the Operativ as a realm of warfighting activity between the tactical and the strategic. But the German concept of the operational art was flawed at best, and actually came closer to tactics on a grand scale. The flaws in their approach to operations cost the Germans dearly in both world wars.

Through a thorough review of the surviving original operational plans and orders, this book evaluates the German approachto the operational art by analyzing the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918. Taken as a whole, the five actually executed and two planned but never executed major attacks produced stunning tactical results, but ultimately left Germany in a far worse strategic position by August 1918. Among the most serious operational errors made by the German planners were their blindness to the power of sequential operations and cumulative effects, and their insistence in mounting force-on-force attacks, instead of attacking key Allied vulnerabilities.

Buy Book at Lowest Price on Amazon

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123