Curbing Innovation / 2 / 2.2

2.2 THE PRUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF

In 1808, at the insistence of Gerhart Johhan David von Scharnhorst, intellectual achievement and proven capability were declared by royal proclamation to be the desirable model for the Prussian Army officer. To facilitate this drive towards intellectual excellence in the officer corps, special schools were set up in which cadets might qualify for commission and in which serving officers might qualify for promotion to higher rank. The Prussian General Staff was created to provide an organizational stronghold within the Prussian Army for the intellectually vigorous officers created by the new system. Appointment to the General Staff came only after a man distinguished himself in these schools.

The General Staff was responsible for planning during peacetime the possible campaigns of the future. It did so by collecting topographical information, by studying past campaigns, and by applying the lessons learned from history to the planning process [6]:

The staff officer thus became a kind of collective brain for the Prussian army, seeking systematically to apply reason and calculation to all aspects of army administration and operations.

Generals, such as Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher and Helmut von Moltke, found in the General Staff led by Scharnhorst and then by von Gneisenau a most valuable tool for planning their campaigns. General Staff planners could improve the detailed conduct of war in significant ways by calculating in advance the factors that most affected the success of a campaign and then devising specific instruction for the troops that would avoid failure. No field commander could exercise such control over the evolution of the battle without the benefit of General Staff work. The Austro-Prussian war of 1866 demonstrated overwhelmingly just how General Staff planning could speed up and control strategic deployment of vast numbers of men by calculating everything ahead of time.