United states military academy learning from Lightning

Contents

I: Introduction

The U.S. Army today faces a set of present and potential challenges of ever increasing complexity. Even as the Global War on Terror (Global Overseas Contingency Operations?) continues, new threats to national security menace just over the time horizon. The world is currently witnessing several geo-political trends that promise to drastically alter the strategic environment in the near to midterm.² The disproportionate population growth in the developing world and associated youth bulges, the increasing scarcity of such essential resources as water and oil, and the explosive urbanization and growth of Third World metropolises, are just a sampling of the processes that have the potential to create serious and complex security dilemmas. ³ These challenges face the nation at large but hold special significance for the nation’s army. The Army must come to grips with a future in which it is likely to face greater and more uncertain demands.

Further complicating the situation is the fact that the Army will face resource constraints in the future that are much more serious than anything experienced within the last decade. The nation’s burgeoning debt and the rapid expansion of entitlements will exert strong downward pressures on defense spending in the future. If the latest budget projections released by the White House hold true, defense spending will fall to a historically low three percent of the gross domestic product before the close of the current decade.⁴ This contraction of overall defense spending will affect the Army particularly hard as the fastest growing part of defense budget is personnel related expenditures. ⁵ While the American tradition has always been to reduce military spending in times of relative security to reap a “peace dividend”, the near future promises to present the U.S. Army with a dilemma unprecedented in its history. Unless there is either a significant change in the trajectory of strategic trends or projected spending levels, the Army is facing a future in which it will need to be prepared to accomplish significantly more with significantly less. As First Sea Lord John Fisher said when faced with declining funding for the Royal Navy on the eve of the First World War, “Gentlemen, the money is gone. Now we must think.”⁶ The present situation certainly calls for a good deal of thought on the part of the Army, but where should the Army’s attention be turned?

History is replete with examples of militaries that were able to stretch the resources at hand further than their contemporaries in order to achieve their operational and strategic goals. Even the most casual student of military history knows of the brave stand of the Spartans at Thermopile, the exploits of Frederick the Great’s grenadiers in Prussian blue, or the excellence of Swiss pike men. However, upon deeper consideration it is difficult to think of a more effective fighting force, man for man, than the German Wehrmacht that fought World War II. During the war’s early years, the Wehrmacht racked up a string of victories that are truly impressive. In the space of 2 years, German troops marched triumphant through Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France, the Balkans, Greece, and much of the Soviet Union. The later stages of the war represent a different matter entirely. 1942 and 1943 witnessed a series of major German reversals in North Africa and the Eastern Front. In 1944, the Wehrmacht was steadily pushed back on the Eastern Front, in Italy to the south, and in France to west.⁷ All the while, shortages of ever increasing intensity in weapons, ammunition, fuel, transport, and manpower constrained the German ability to respond to Allied and Soviet attacks.⁸ What is truly remarkable is that the Wehrmacht continued to fight on and continued to outperform their opponents even in the extreme conditions they faced towards the end of the war.⁹ It is based on this outstanding performance, that the Wehrmacht, and the German Heer or German Army in particular, serves as the case for this study.

While the Wehrmacht consistently outperformed its opponents throughout World War II, the gap in comparative performance was obviously wider during certain phases of the conflict than others. By almost any reckoning, the gap between the Wehrmacht and its opponents reached its pinnacle during Fall Gelb, the first and decisive phase of the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940. The feats of the Wehrmacht and Panzergruppe Kleist, German 12^th Army in particular, are unparalleled in military history.¹⁰ Fully 72% of all Allied personnel involved in the defense of France, no less than some 1.2 million soldiers, were either killed or captured during the course of the campaign. ¹¹ But while the magnitude of this success is beyond question, the reasons for this success are hotly debated. It is the secret of this success that is the theme of this study. Mainly, the paper seeks to answer the question, “What are the underlying causes of the Wehrmacht’s success during Fall Gelb and what are the lasting lessons that would serve the American Army today?”