 Good day. I'm Colonel Jerry Moorlach, the Director of the Combat Studies Institute. You're about to use a video series which our instructors have prepared for the sole purpose of approving your presentation of M610, the Evolution of Modern Warfare. We've taken care to make the course that you teach as similar to the one taught at Fort Leavenworth as possible and choose to add these tapes to your libraries in order to give you every advantage as you prepare to teach this new course. These tapes are similar to the weekly train-up sessions, which we utilize to prepare our instructors here at Fort Leavenworth. My intent for the tape sessions was to provide you insights and tips on ways to approach the lessons of M610 that were not available in the instructor notes. I've drawn various instructors, military and civilian into the sessions based upon their specific expertise and historical background. They were asked to just talk to the lesson structure and content, giving you some additional information on the historical context and differing views on how to approach the lessons. These tapes will provide you a wealth of knowledge and direction that will significantly improve your readiness to teach our new history course. One word of caution regarding how to use these training tapes, they are not designed to be substituted for your instruction during the individual lessons of the course. As instructor preparation tapes train the training material, if you will, they are inappropriate for direct instruction to students and are not intended for that purpose. Our intent with these tapes is to improve your ability to lead the student seminars by sharing tips and advice from some highly qualified experts. The Combat Studies Institute stands ready to provide whatever additional expertise or assistance that you may require and we've included the institute's phone, mail and email contact information on the tape if you should need it. Good luck with the evolution of modern warfare course. Have a good time. Hello, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Scott Stevenson, the course author for the resident version of the course that you're going to be pitching to your reserve students. With me today is my office mate, esteemed colleague Dr. George Gavrick, who among other things is our Middle East expert and a guy who has no kidding history and again I'm the administrator of the course. He gives us our little session today, a little academic credibility. What we want to do is set the stage for you for teaching the first class of MS 610. The most important class you're going to teach, at least for this course, one that will determine in a large part the success or failure of the course. And I say that because you're going to walk into a classroom where there are three kind of people. There are people who believe in history and you've got them sold, they're going to be with you no matter what you do. There's another group of people who won't see any relevance in this, who won't see any value in it and I'm afraid there's not much you can do short of banging their heads against the desk. And there's the third group and maybe the most important group and those are the folks who come in with open mind, not sure whether history is going to be relevant and important to them or not. And those are the guys you want to reach. If you can hook them in lesson one, get them interested, start to work on showing them the relevance of what you're going to talk about in this course then you're a long way toward making your overall efforts in this course to be successful. So what we want to do today is talk about what you might use, the approaches you might use, the kind of topics you might cover. Maybe talk a little bit about some background information that might be useful to you. George and I will do a little dialogue about the things we think are important. Each of us has a different approach and that's one thing I want to encourage you is okay. Don't go away from here thinking man I've got to follow strictly what these guys have told me. We allow a lot of freedom in our instructors here in the department about how they pitch the course and I encourage you to model what we say or adapt what you see here, adapt what you read in the course, adapt what you see in the instructor's notes, your own personal style, your own background, what you find interesting and also what you're getting from the students about what they're interested in. It's going to be a constant feedback mechanism going on in the classroom between what you're giving to them, what they're receiving and what they're interested in and what you talk about. Again this course is intended here at CGSC to be a graduate level seminar. A lot of free-ranging discussion guys bringing in their own experience guys trying to establish relevance between the issues of the past and what's going on in the current military today so again you're going to have to adapt this thing to what you see works in the classroom for you. I see and I'll ask you to comment on this George. I see four things you've got to cover in this first lesson. Number one the administrative part that's the painful tedious repetitious stuff you know this is how the course is conducted this is how the course is graded this is what I'll expect you to do to prepare all those kind of things that has got to take place and you really can't give it short shrift in the first lesson the administrative of this particular course. The second thing is talk to them about military history in general. Again this goes back to what I was seeing about putting a hook into them about hey why is this relevant why is this going to be useful to me. Third thing and this is one of your learning objectives is the relationship between military history, military theory and military doctrine. The bulk of what they're going to get in your reserve school is going to be doctrine. What military history does for you what this course ideally should do for you is give you some insights on where doctrine comes from and how history through theory feeds into it and the fourth thing is the readings and the readings in this case talk about one of the first great captains of what we call modern warfare Freud the Great. I emphasize you're going to have to find some time and you want to find some time in this first lesson to talk about Freud the Great and what's discussed in these readings because if the students start to see that they're assigned readings that aren't covered that aren't the subject of discussion they're going to start blowing it off very early on. So you want to get to these readings right here and there's some provocative things some interesting things to talk about. So anyway so George what I've laid out the four things I think they have to cover the administration, the nature and value of military history, the relationship of history theory and doctrine and then the subject the key subject to the readings for this go around and that's Freud the Great. Any thoughts about that? I agree with you wholeheartedly and no sense in belaboring that point. Go ahead. Well thanks. Go ahead. I can tell he's going to be really useful today. George I don't want to spend any excessive amount of time on the administration but I do want to talk about the value of military history and in your experience going into the classroom how do you approach how do you go about getting that hook into students that hey this is something valuable and useful? First of all I think you could approach the class and just ask the students your officers what do they think is the value of history why the greats like Frederick Napoleon a famous person like Patton plays tremendous value on history and see what kind of reaction you get from them because I think one of the purposes of this course is not just to impart information and and give insights into the past but to create a burning love for history or an appreciation of the value of history for the profession of arms. Now what value does military history have for the professional officer is a thing that I think you have to come to grips with and really internalize the belief that it is tremendously valuable because that will then influence the officers who come to your classes they'll see that you believe in the subject you think it's valuable and they'll catch on in their hearts. If I was going to choose a profession out there in the real world that needs history the military profession would certainly be near the top of the list if not the first one if you look at virtually every profession people in that profession practice what they're supposed to do surgeons perform operations policemen drive on streets in patrol areas and deal with criminals in the military profession your job is to defend the country and that requires being prepared to face death and destruction on the battlefield how much time really in a 20 year career 25 year career does an officer does a soldier actually experience combat rare indeed the other problem that you have even if you've had some combat experience and it's tremendously valuable how far can you go with it if you experience shooting at the platoon level will that translate into direct relevance if you're now at a division in the rear 10 years later therefore what you are experiencing in the profession of arms is really a lack of that fundamental experience of combat even though your whole career is preparing to face combat what the military what military history does is it gives you the experience of others who have faced death and destruction on the battlefield to put the context of battle or put battle in a larger context you get that from history and I can think of one book by actually it's put together by George C. Marshall called infantry in battle and in there he puts into the introduction of that book that the purpose of history of what he's doing is to give the officer something of the viewpoint of the veteran so by studying military history you're gaining from the combat experience of others putting it into your being putting it into your memory bank so when you do go face combat or you prepare for combat you have the experiences of years before you of the past to draw upon to make your better professional let me challenge on that George in this lesson we're going to talk about some armies getting together at some obscure places called Roosbach and Leuton and we're now uh eastern germany uh poland uh guys wearing powdered wigs firing muskets um what possible use is that going to be to a modern guy who's going to be fighting with m ones and m r s's and bradley's and and f 16s and all that other stuff i mean how can how can they relate how can that be a value to them you think it's interesting if you for example look into next week's lesson when we have the french revolution the polionic warfare you have what tremendous combat experience over a span of a couple decades and in there you have the great theorists come out germany and claus fits and though they have a wealth of combat experience as they're trying to come to grips with what is going on around them they base a lot of their insights by going into the past to look to study february the great what we're going to look at today to see what combat is about not just around them because you miss a lot of things about what is what makes combat go what motivates people to fight what seems to be transitory that's going to pass away and what are the eternal principles if you will the fundamentals of of combat of leadership you only get that by getting outside of your own experiences getting outside of your own time frame and looking to the others and if you find for the last 200 years people have identified these are the important traits in leadership no matter if they're from china germany poland wherever you start to realize that maybe there is this wealth of wisdom that we can draw upon and i could emphasize these things as eternal these things seem to be more american things that maybe shouldn't be emphasized and you only can get that by drawing upon the wealth and experience and wisdom of others and history provides you with that that's one thing i think that you could make a case from and if you get to frederick the great as you see today there are a lot of things to learn about what made him a great leader and those things are applicable today and maybe some of those things we don't see in our leaders we don't see to the same depth with frederick be careful where you go now and that and that is valuable and it helps to shape how you will perform in your own profession well the thing i like to point out my students too there's there's a tendency among us to look at our most recent experience for us as a gulf war and peacekeeping missions in places like samalia and haydee to say hey these are lessons of recent warfare this is going to teach us about how i get ready for the next one and the danger is that the experience that experience is fairly narrow and it also doesn't tell us where warfare has come from one of the reasons and i can constantly harp on this throughout the school year one of the reasons we we go so far back in time is we want to show a record of change we are advertising now that our military is going into the new millennium facing huge changes we're advertising force 21 and the army warfighting experiment and the army after next we're saying this we're we're embracing what we're calling a military revolution we're saying the battlefield that the junior officers today will face in the future is going to be vastly different from what ever been seen before okay change and i think your students will generally agree that we're seeing an enormous amount of change across across the side and especially in military affairs if that's true how do people adapt to change massive radical change this is another place where going back and getting some perspective will help us we can see change over the long term we can see change happening in spurts we can see technological change economic change social change all affecting what goes on in the battlefield and this is perspective i think the students badly need an ability to kind of reach back and say okay i've seen how people have adapted to these situations i've seen how people have adapted new technology i've seen how a social upheaval may change the way that that armies are built wars are fought this is a perspective that can be useful but it requires an inquisitive mind some critical thinking you're going to have to prod students throughout this thing to do some thinking about these subjects some tough stuff here i think you'll find too that what can happen is and don't get frustrated is you don't see direct responses from officers about i could understand why this is important i think as one british officer once told me said i know i've learned a great deal but once i get back into the real world i'll know what i picked up as problems will be getting to occur in the field you have to address certain issues you might find all of a sudden something you got out of your history course just pops up it doesn't tell you exactly what to do but it may give you a question to ask it may make you look at things a little bit differently raise more questions to others and that's what it's all about is to give you some more things in your mind bag to draw upon in your experience from others so that you can look at problems differently you can be challenged in different ways and and have some solutions that you otherwise would not have you know students tend to come to this this business of military history especially ones with limited background we're calling what they had in high school uh and maybe some freshman uh history in college and that in those as a requirement to remember some dates and some figures and some places and things like that and you want to emphasize in this course that's that's really not appropriate if this is going to be a vehicle uh this course is going to be a vehicle for causing guys to do critical thinking about the profession you you don't want them memorizing dates names places stuff like that you want them thinking critically about the profession now if they're going to make an argument in the classroom it helps to know the specifics the facts and they come in there uninformed and shoot from the hip you have to punish them for that uh you know or challenge them at least in the classroom but again the the actual the actual facts of history are not nearly as important as as what you can learn from it what you can what you can use by thinking about it um and again this is a challenge because history looks like there's a this enormous mac mass of facts and and occurrences and if if i if i come to you and i say okay you tell me military history is going to be useful for me i see a record of thousands of years hundreds thousands of battles the records of thousands of commanders how do i make sense of this how do i make it useful for me i know what what tools what vehicle do i use to make all this great mass of of experience useful in a way that i can i can apply it given what i know what do you think well i was thinking well let me just say one thing before you get into evading my question yeah because one of the thoughts too that hit me is if you look at the way this course is designed you might want to think well sure i can see value of learning from the past but why don't we just focus on tactics battles uh campaigns what leaders do i think it's important to realize that uh cgsc is teaching officers at a point in career where they need to just not think about military matters purely but we're training officers educating officers to think along political economic social and not just military lines and what we're seeing in this course is we're trying to see how the profession of arms changes in the way business is done on the battle how the battle has changed how armies have changed how the context in which they fight has changed how the strategic environment has changed those are the things that are all interrelated as you go up the ladder in the military hierarchy somewhere in a military career if you're going to go to a rank of major lieutenant colonel you have to start looking along those lines you're going to get that by just reading the paper today and talking about the interrelationship of military and non-military matters as they affect what's going on today but in terms of how it affects the profession of arms and what wealth and experience you've learned from the past we have to have a course like this that looks at the interrelationship of non-military and military matters as they change the profession influence in how battles are fought armies are organized etc. now come back to that question I asked you how do you make all this massive stuff useful well I think there are analogies that can be made if you look at the profession of arms there are certain basic issues that have to be dealt with and training organization of an army how you lead in battle how you motivate as you look at some of the material from the past you raise questions draw parallels to today and see what similarities and differences there are it's never exactly the same history is always changing keep in mind history doesn't repeat itself the only people who really repeat it are the historians because always the people are different the circumstances are different the enemy is different whatever it's not exactly the same but it's but it's that wealth of experience that you need now the question is how to make it relevant for example if you look at Frederick the Great what qualities of leadership did he have that we can use today what were some of his strengths and weaknesses as you look at him in battle it's pretty impressive how he wins outnumbered what are the keys that he did in peacetime to get his army to perform better for him what did he do in peacetime to make himself a better leader obviously there are some things in there that I know most officers are not doing today to make themselves better you could you could draw from that and make it relevant to you and change how you do business because we'll see he did some pretty amazing things for a king what about theory theory well I think the way I look at it I'll give you my thoughts on it okay you were yeah I was setting you up but hey and fall for it one of the things we like to emphasize the students early in the course is is that look at it this great mass of sometimes unrelated facts people through history have been struggling to put some structure to it and say okay there's some enduring things that I can pull out of all this great mass of facts that'll be useful for me if I try to carry this great kit bag of names dates and places around I'm going to be overwhelmed but if I can I can distill out of it some some useful principles some useful ideas some some things that reoccurb I can I can develop a body of knowledge that organizes and predicts I may have something and people been struggling from that Frederick himself is going to struggle with that he has he studies history extensively he has his own experience in a series of war and eventually he's going to start distilling out of that some some lessons that he'll be passing on to his generals when the enemy captured that they say hey we're starting to get the secret away Frederick operates we're getting into his head but he is trying to give his generals the the benefit of his accumulated knowledge he's he's groping somewhere in between the area of theory and doctrine and simplify for students this is what I tell them in in the case of military history history itself is a record of what happens theory is is our attempt is military people to give it some meaning what does it mean and then in turn doctrine is okay if I decide this is what it means this is what I'm going to do about it an analogy you might draw is to a football team preparing for a football game a pro football team for a football game will probably look at a whole hours and hours of tapes on their opponent and their tendencies what do they tend to do on third down and along what defense do they use in a blitzing situation and who comes in as the nickel back they and they try to establish some trends some tendencies about that and and they'll put that probably on some charts these the tendencies of a way that that team tends to play given these situations okay so the the history piece of that is the game fills the the theory piece is this is how they act usually the tendencies then out of that those tendencies you superimpose what you know what your strength and weaknesses are you come up with a game plan which would be analogous to some extent I think to doctrine okay history is the game film theory is what does that teach me about this my opponent the doctrine piece is what do I do about it what do I cover what I put in as a series of plays to handle the opponent that I'm facing this upcoming week and you can make that case that each individual fits into that frame we each consciously or unconsciously have a theory a philosophy if you will about life about how we fit in how we raise kids we're attempting now here to make you reflect on the profession and theory is going to make you ask the more basic questions what is the profession about what makes it tick what is war what are the essential ingredients of war what are the essential ingredients of leadership deep in your understanding about that because how you approach those basic issues whether you've thought about them or not you send messages to the people around you that you have some attitude some assumptions about the profession yeah yeah theory theory is going to be a very important part of the course that we talk about and we'll ask you within a few lessons to grapple with some of what we call the classical theorists the guys who come out of the Napoleonic revolution claus witz and germany these are the guys to this day still shape the way we think about military affairs and you will find them either noted or plagiarized in in our doctrine our current hundred dash five and the one that's coming out here in a matter of months we'll be looking down the line at some other important doctrinal thinkers one worth highlighting maybe is jfc fuller who gave us a raw version of the principle of war we we use today but but but in mentioning jfc fuller the principles of war it's worth mentioning the theory is something that's constantly changing military theory based you get new experience that's inputs that cause you reevaluate what are the enduring lessons of our profession we're going to come out with a new principles operation do a hundred dash five the guys who work upstairs in this building have decided okay our experience in the gulf war the new technology that's emerging the possible threats that we're facing our experience in peacekeeping all suggests that we've got to reevaluate the principles of war they're not engraved in stone we're going to have to come back and reevaluate that's the nature all military theory is constantly or should be constantly reevaluate to say oh this is still reflect the best possible knowledge about our profession in turn as you reevaluate in theory of course you're going to have to reevaluate doctrine periodically that's one of the reasons why we're rewriting our manuals every three or four years reflect the new thinking what you have in front of the great here's a guy who's changes his mind throughout his career about what's important how to fight wars he's he's got a first class mind he's evolving theories and you'll see the doctrine that he's putting out his generals the way he fights battles are going to evolve as he goes along as he faces new circumstances as he changes his mind about what's what's important what's not important so again come back to this history theory in doctrine one way to get at it and it's covered a little bit in your instructor notes is compared to the experience theory doctrine that that are used in other fields for example in case of history carl marks and it looks at the history of mankind's economic interaction so that hey i can i can pull some principles out of this okay about class struggle and the nature capitalism all these things to come up with a theory about about the way people interact economically and politically from that i'm going to come out with a manifesto that says a doctrine that says we as as leaders of the underclasses are going to have to call for a world revolution a world revolutions that that's inevitable according to my theory but it also drives a call for action as well and there's nothing wrong with theories needing to be adjusted or even thrown out sometimes they're useful in that regard Galileo and that's a scientific world we have what knowledge accumulating theory comes to explain it and after so many hundreds of years we find that inadequate and then comes a theory of relativity and undoes it yeah so there's nothing wrong with theories changing being adjusted or even thrown out they serve their usefulness yeah and the bulk of what students are going to get in your reserve course they're going to is going to be doctrinal stuff they ought to know is a part of professional perspective where they come from now histories and theory are not the only feeders into it there are things like current threat assessment it's going to feed the doctrine the current political situation is going to reflect the doctrine the lessons that are coming out of the combat training centers will have an impact on doctrine emerging technology will have an impact on doctrine the simulations that we're increasingly using in the military are going to have an effect on doctrine but throughout history the experience and the theory have been the key feeders into the doctrine that armies end up using and that's something how you handle that how much time you spend on that you you're going to have to play that one by ear a little bit and you have to get to the administrative stuff but I believe and you have to talk about the value of history I think you want to spend a little time on on the relationship of military history theory and doctrine great any thoughts on that no well um the key figure the central fit figure for this list lesson that every uh old Fritz Frederick the great Frederick II of Prussia where does he come from who who is he and and what's the military background and here's where I believe the instructor's got to carry a little bit of the load maybe want to do a little outside reading where's this guy come from and where does he fit in the evolution of modern warfare I think we've got to start by kind of establishing a baseline where you the world that he lives in the 18th century and the kind of warfare that's this in existence when it comes on on the scene any thoughts about that joy well one concept that's used to capture what warfare is like is the concept of limited war this is the age of limited war and what ways is war limited if you look at societies and here's where the political economic social factors really weigh heavily in how you fight we're dealing with agrarian societies which means limited resources that can be used to maintain armies limits on manpower limits on the treasury therefore you're not going to go for the gust of trying to conquer all of europe so it's an age of limited war limited because of the economic system it's also limited because there are no great states in most of europe the big empires are the ottomans which are in the Balkans and Russia which is out east really we have a lot of small states in central europe uh france though looks big on a map is still rather inefficiently run so we really don't have a large powerful states with large powerful armies that can project power far so when warfare is fought it's often for limited objectives fighting over the terrain next to you a province next to you or a couple provinces down we're not going to see when we get to the napoleon wars where you have armies marching to russia and still fighting down in spain again without going too much and you've got to establish a baseline for for a course someplace when we say down a modern warfare the first question you might want to ask your students is what is modern warfare how can we characterize this this period with powder wigs and muskets as being modern warfare and i'll give you some ideas at least how things i pitched to my students one is um they're all familiar with the roman empire they know that under the way of barbarian invasions and its own uh its own internal contradictions it collapses for europe you have a period of dark ages you evolve into a medieval period and they can all picture the nights and and the round table and all the things that come out of movies about that uh for a long time there's a power struggle there's a lot about what we're going to talk about is about power struggle between uh nobility and and and kings or who's going to be the biggest dog uh you know and what determines the biggest dog is a lot large part is taxation this is where we get into the the economic piece and the medieval period you know that the nobility will offer their military services to to a king perhaps or a higher level noble for use in whatever wars he's fighting the amount at night is is the picture perfect of a noble in his military role and he offers services to the king in return for various favors or land or what have you that system starts to break down in in the 1314 15th century with appearance on a scene of got people infantry for a long time again the noble cavalry the king of battlefield but infantry comes along swiss pikeman or again the picture we normally associate with an infantry that now can be can be dominant on the battlefield and so also the nobles position is challenged and also at the same time he's being challenged from below is also being challenged as above as kings start to to gain a little more power and in that that power struggle for who's going to be the dominant political force no war king and who's going to have the power to taxes in most of the modern states that we know about today the king's going to win frances is probably the best example that the one that appears is that is the big figure on the scene at the first that approaches what we call a nation state in the last part of the 17th first part of the 18th century louis the 14th in france is able to put 400 000 men in the field to fight his various dynastic wars with england and other powers in or austria other powers in europe 400 000 men out of a population about 20 25 million that is a staggering figure and history hasn't seen numbers like that before what makes it possible well a couple of things one is he's won his bet there's been a series of religious and and civil wars in france where the king has emerged triumphant he's going to be the biggest dog that the nobility is going to be in second place and they have to trade their powers of taxation for for other perks you know political power rights to do the local taxation things like that along with that louis the 14th is one of the first to have a system of bureaucrats now it's real inefficient and it's real Byzantine compared to modern standards but by standards of europe at that time it's a pretty efficient system he has a system of intendant guys who go around and inspect his army to hold it to a higher standard and the armies which had at that point been largely composed of mercenaries and again the swiss python comes out as the example there of the the typical soldier of the mercenary period louis forces the 14 says i can do better than that i can keep a standing army in place and i got enough money now through my power taxation that that i don't have to disband my armies in between wars i can keep the army in place i can uh i can feed them i can pay them i can keep them in uniforms i can drill them and drill is is one of the key ideas is going to come out of this period drill as a vehicle for building cohesion and discipline uh i'm going to have a standing professional force and that's going to be tremendously effective in the various wars i'm going to use this is a new idea you know again in during the mercenary period the idea was you raise the troops you need during the wartime because they're expensive you disband them soon as the war is over well where did these unemployed guys do well they go around ravages the countryside burn loot pillage you know that's sort of their stock and trade that's one of the reasons it made the 30 years war so horrible is these mercenary armies that really weren't under much control they're only loosely affiliated with one side or another and and part of the limited war period that George talks about is reaction to the horrors of 30 years war which decimated and devastated large parts of central europe uh i think you could draw on our own experience in our history why are our founding fathers a lot of them against the standing army because standing army needs taxes taxes collected by the government the government grows the army grows and pretty soon the power of the government grows at the expense of the state this is what is happening in europe the kings and monarchs are moving some of them at least the more efficient they are the more they're becoming absolute in terms of all powerful and they're able to maintain an army so there are two important elements that emerged that are of a non-military uh well one's military one's non-military that bring about what we call modern warfare one is a growing centralized state with power at the center able to collect taxes and then a standing army now what does a standing army give you that you didn't have before well as you get a standing army means you maintain it all year round you've got to give it something to do in the off season in the off season you train it as you're training it pretty soon eventually standardization starts to come in you're not just going to take mercenaries or like we call upon the states each state has organized its militia a little bit differently it's trained to a different level you see that in national guard today so now you're able to what standardize raise the level of training pretty soon you start seeing schools emerge to train officers for combat it raises the level of performance and less and less do you rely on free agents and more and more you rely on your own people not to mention the benefits of having a big army is now you can turn around and use them to coerce even more taxes that's right that's right it's a nice feedback loop is built in there that's why the founding fathers were against standing army and because once it started you can't stop it that's right they'd be yeah the recruiters come around they start building troops in your houses and they start levying more taxes and they start putting the squeeze on you and who knows where it's going to end you don't want them to nationalize your yeah Michael Howard has a nice nice little description of what has happened in these rise of standing professional armies responsive to a central political authority he says you go in Europe from a period where armies are kind of wolf packs out of control to to a point by furtich time he calls them well trained hunting dogs or maybe even some cases trained poodles but the armies are now under control they're responsive political authority and that as much as anything is why we think this this lesson deserves to be called the beginning of modern warfare to me it's interesting because this happens in Europe these trains standing professional forces they allow Europe by the end of this period by the end of the 18th century Europe goes from being a backwater of civilization to dominating a third of the world's land mass and then when you when you superimpose these standing professional armies that are able to go out and dominate parts of Asia large parts of Africa large parts of North America and then the industrial revolution comes along and gives them even more fire power and even better means of transportation and communication they go out and dominate two thirds of the world's land mass by the end of the 19th century something something has gone on here unique in Europe that allows it to be to to feel the dominant military forces in history and it's an important stuff for us to know our military institutions to in a large part come out of this period and come out of these these first standing professional armies we model a lot of what we do in our army after the British army which is very much a product of this period it's worth it's worth thinking about you know why is it a handful of British British soldiers are able to go out and dominate the entire Indian subcontinent large parts of Africa take over all in North America it's it's what they've learned in the battlefields of Europe and places like fighting alongside Frederick the Great for example and George Washington is smart enough to go out and get some for agents to come over here and train his army well indeed Von Stuyben is is a product of the Prussian system that we talk about in the spherical lesson the first drill master the u.s. army is a guy who's learned in this school here of the the european way of wars it's established here in the 17th and 18th century in a large part two the limited war peace you talk about is reaction to the horrors of what has gone on before hey let's let's let's establish a war war system where we limit the costs limit the violence let's this is after all intellectual terms this is the age of reason and a war without bounds a war of absolute violence is something we want to steer clear of and this is another argument for having limited war and you don't want to overthrow your brother monarch because after all he rules like you do by divine right and you start knocking off other kings all of a sudden you you've challenged the whole basis for the system so the wars this period and especially Frederick's wars are a case in point tend to be a wars over a province here a fortress here a county here but never about i'm going to march in the guy's capital and plant my flag on his palace it's not about that there were clearly defined limits an ideal war in front of his time is a war where you can march an army through a province friendly or enemy and the civilians don't even know about it because you will provision that force you will keep it under strict discipline you keep the soldiers uncontrolling you may fight a battle but you're going to avoid having the violence spill over like you did in 30 years war across the countryside i think it's interesting too if you look at combat during this period to get a sense of how fragile these armies and states are good point uh sieges take time and they're the the the standard kind of battle that you have but a lot of time and the sieges spent digging getting ready to attack but when you go to open battlefields which are on the rarer side compared to sieges or less of them they're usually one day affairs uh part of the day is spent getting your forces organized to face each other then there's the shooting uh close range hundred yards or less lots of blood lots of screaming and then how do you tell who one or sometimes the only way you can tell is who's left on the battlefield to pick up the loot one side is retreating the other side's disorganized as well except it's picking up the pieces you don't have two three four day long battles nothing like uh at verdun where it goes on for months uh you cannot really it's very difficult to have to pursuits because people are disorganized about everybody's tired the expectation is to do the one battle the winner gets to pick up the spoils the the one defeated withdraws and then you fight another day but it takes time to heal yeah yeah and it's not going to be tremendous political results that kind of battle it's not going to change the the and it takes let's go it takes two years to train a soldier to fight in in the the rigidly linear uh tactics of the time the the complex drill the uh you know what Frederick took the greatest pride in is how well drill his army war but it took two years to get a bring a guy up to his standards a drill a guy who could fire uh two or three times a minute maybe 40 percent faster than his enemy and could deploy from from call him in the line rapidly it took years and years to prepare this guy you take him out in the battlefield you get a bunch of them killed off there is a huge investment down the drain quickly and every time you go into a battle with an enemy you put you throwing you throwing yourself open to chance something could go wrong you could lose the battle this is the the to me the attractiveness of the siege especially uh under a master like Bobo who's the number one engineer of the period if you put an enemy under siege Bobo told you if you tell me how big his walls are how many cannon i have uh how many guys i have digging i can tell you down to the day when that fort will throw up a white flag i can reduce it to a science i can predict accurately when i will make the breach in the wall the enemy will put the white flag up and he'll march out okay because this is a civilized business uh students may recall uh that kind of stuff happening at the last moheke is the most recent movie that talks about an 18th century style siege once the breach had been made in the fourth the british troops came out the french uh the french commander offered them honors of war and it looked like everything was going well of course a little did they know the indians hadn't bought into all this european ideas about civilized conduct of warfare but that's i think another story you know in north america but uh monarchs and generals in this period tended to avoid the open fight the fighting in the open field they much preferred to maneuver against each other maneuver against each other is a line of communication uh especially because armies in this period tended to be tied to magazines or depots and they rarely could get beyond about two or three four days march beyond one of these depots before they had to establish another one again they don't want to send send their guys out pillaging across the countryside like napoleon is going to do later on to feed themselves because in a large lot of cases these guys would just desert i mean it's only rigid discipline that's keeping these guys at the ranks so he keeps these guys under strict control he feeds them from these decentralized depots uh and they become his vulnerability as well and a limitation on on the operational art if you will that that commanders can practice in this period and you'll see frederick coming to cropper when he tries to violate that in 1744 when he goes into into what we now call a check republic he doesn't have a good good logistic system loses half his men without fighting a battle that's that's typical of that age uh you want to avoid that situation again so it's economics it's the social structure it's the political structure it's it's the mindset of the time that makes us the age of limited warfare frederick's going to come along he's going to play beyond within those rules occasionally he's going to try to play beyond them and i think by the end of his career you're going to see a guy for all his genius is still constrained by the limitations of the period still a product of his age i think very much so well what would you offer the students about frederick as an intro some thoughts about well let me just remind me in terms of this lesson i think it's exciting to get into frederick the great and and what makes him tick and why is he so successful there may be some of the things we've talked about you might consider uh there's several approaches you could uh try to get some discussion going about standing army state or some of the issues we call we talked about or summarize and set the stage for frederick take 10 minutes and just tell him what warfare was like what the political system like what the economy was like what made this a limited war and they say okay now we've got someone out here who is going to be recognized the great in his time for a person to be recognized by his peers by his contemporaries is great it's pretty good question is why why is he why is he so great does he have to bet a thousand on the battlefield or can he get win the world series with only a well at 60 percent victories in the regular season okay he has defeats but he has victories and the victories are pretty impressive and the system that he has in the way he wins forces others to try to figure out what makes him tick what is his army like he becomes the model he's like the west coast offense now that has to be analyzed looked at and reacted to if you want to beat him so he is changing to some degree the way the game is played on the battlefield what makes him tick well if you look at his personal background you might ask is this a saga of child abuse that he should have ended up you know in some loony models for future leaders yeah that's right what are the strengths and weaknesses of his upbringing yeah yeah i yeah that piece by luvas is going to give you a plenty to talk about and we in america tend to think that that you can you can make leaders that everybody starts out differently than there are no we tend to be a little skeptical a little suspicious a genius and we think probably that the the houses of europe restricted the talent pool by limiting general ship to the nobility in the case of supreme command to the monarch himself well in the case of frederick the doesn't look that way it looked like their system worked pretty well because you create the one great capitol period using drawing from a very limited gene pool that is of the house of holens on and i like to talk with my students about hey where does pressure come from and what are they about as as kind of a start to this whole lesson and why is it that pressure later this it this dirt poor little second rate little country that is the doormat of europe i mean it it's a speed bump for armies during the 30 years war why does that arise a century later to become the dominant military system and why does it rise later to lead all military innovation in the latter part of the 19th century and why does it turn out to be such a formidable foe in the series of two world wars that we fight why are we constantly looking for them as a military example i think at the point you make two which is interesting we have an in in our course interview with a famous german general from world war two and they ask him what make germany so successful on the battlefield in world war two he says he thinks it evolves out of a military culture going all the way back to frederick the great so what is going on with frederick the great will be improved upon later in the 19th century with the emergence of the general staff and more genius for war and then again we'll see it in world war one and world war two we're seeing the development of a military culture that is going to change the way war is conducted and it goes back to frederick the great for this professionalization and he does some things that are important well you you point out an interesting modern analogy uh george again is our middle east expert and he likes to point out at least on the surface of real parallels between modern day israel and the pressure of the 17th and 18th century here's a tiny country that doesn't have any real wealth of natural resources surrounded by bigger more densely populated neighbors that have access to vastly much faster resources how does the nation in this situation survive we you know what the answer is in the case israel it develops the most efficient fighting machine in the region uh that's that has to be it looks on the surface that's the that's the reason why pressure survived again if i've driven through the country several times and i'm what was once prussia and i'm amazed at what poor farmland it is it's got scrubby pine forests lots of lakes i mean this is a country without natural resources and not particularly densely populated and you wonder how do these guys rise up to be mentioned in the same breath with the real great powers in europe at that time which are um france uh austria the austrian empire russia um that's what you might in england at this point become an important maritime empire but it's not very it's not big on the continent at this time the ottomans have been big up this time that's george one of george's pet rocks or the ottoman empire though they may be on the fade by the time that the frederick arrives on the scene i think the one thing that you do get from the reading that's going to be important is you get a sense that the father of frederick great is serious about his business of running the state and making sure his son is prepared to run the state to run the state he just cannot be a king sitting in versailles and having parties he has to be very knowledgeable in the art of war he forces him to learn from tutors that suggests what he appreciates the place of the military in prussian society he leaves him with the fourth largest standing army in europe a good military machine the best drill the best best organizer best organized so he is going to force his son to learn from war veterans about combat not a nice school night worrying about niceties like dancing and going to parties and reading philosophy books but to learn from the veterans what does a veteran tell you hey you could read all the manuals that you want i'm going to tell you what it's like out there in the field that's what he's getting direct combat experiences of people who have fought and that helps to shape his font of knowledge combat experience of others and his father does that i think that's an important element to help him later on yeah but it's not enough because what he wants to read he reads reads reads studies eventually military history and he forces his officers to study history remember that one book memoirs that deals with the nature of warfare really it's almost like a you get a sense not just a memoir but a theory of warfare what makes leadership how do you get an army ready for battle what is battle so he's looking to something that is very useful for his officer corps and it has a little bit of the theory in it and he is going to make sure that his officers underneath them get a good military education like he got so that they could be more competent and i think he's ahead of his time in the seriousness he places on military education the care he takes it would be sort of like rhymer coming down to a school and saying if education is important i'm personally going to get involved hand out degrees look at the professional reading list and make sure people are reading it and i've read it to start out with so i know it's good that's an important model i think for senior leaders to see in a guy like a king who has to lead in battle fabric in this case is going to be different from a lot of monarchs that he's a tactical commander and his armies sometimes get whittled down to what 13 000 on a battlefield which is much less than a division today so we're not talking about a monarch who's at the senior level leadership of multi-cores over a huge front he's really a tactical commander as well sees the battle as it unfolds and makes decisions during it so that would make him useful to look at for people who are tactically oriented yeah and for all this education though how does he do in his first experience on a battlefield as an independent commander not too good he gets ridden off the battlefield unfortunately the steady Prussian infantry had the pride the pride of his father is what saves the day while Frederick his miles down the road haven't been told to leave the battlefield aboard the fiasco uh first going to have to learn from the school of hard knocks too and how does he approach the learning i think to me is kind of useful uh how many times do we read memoirs of officers who have fought in battles and it's hard to find mistakes that i have made there's a tendency to explain away my mistakes fredwick if you read in that article says look at this guy trown in 1744 he gave me a hard time i made mistakes is basically saying not only is he admitting to mistakes like someone does in barba walters an actress is well i'm vulnerable but look at this other actor he did really well that that's hard for a person to say he's saying look at this general he gave me a hard time learn from him not from me then i think it's an important thing about uh any army it's so easy to what sanitize the mistakes that you make not embrace them uh sugar coat them and that's i think an important lesson we can learn today it can be done that's that's well said that's well said yeah and for all his genius though i like to point out my students he runs into an opponent that's going to give him fits uh he comes to power and he sees he wants to expand this little country he has he wants to expand the tax base he wants to give a little glory for himself in the battlefield wants to make the title of king of prussia mean something in the courts of europe and he sees that hey this teenage female has just arisen to the the throne of uh austria-hungary maria teresa you know while they're in confusion being run by this weak female i'm going to grab province from seligia it's a rich province it'll add lots to my uh my tax base uh my economic stability give me all these hard-working peasants that will uh be useful for me in building up my economic strength so he goes there and tries to snatch it in 1740 as i tell my students that you got to be careful which women you uh you uh you anger he was not a 90s kind of a guy and uh the results that he has to spend the next quarter century defending his ill-gotten gains in seligia fights a series of wars against a woman who turns out to be a very capable administrator a woman who inspires her subjects and a woman who who sponsors reforms in her army again there's there's the kind you'll see this all through history yeah one military system will rise up competitors will rise to meet at war's most some people say the most imitative uh human act and frederick will be constantly facing new threats as as his competitors start to get better they start to learn from him in turn uh and this this sort of sets the stage for the two battles that you'll talk about in this lesson roose bach and leuton uh during the the seven years war frederick faces arguably all the great land powers in europe gang up on him yeah and through a series of uh droid political maneuvers by maria teresa in her um in her her diplomats they array russia austria france and sweden all against frederick at the same time and by rights if you just look at the correlation of forces he's doomed he's had it you know this this young prussian upstart is about to have his head handed to it and somehow somehow throughout the seven years war he managed to stave off disaster through a series of battlefield successes some miracles some other things uh in this war and incidentally you'll see in your chronology we call it united states the french and indian war it's it's some people call it the first modern world war because the fate of north america has decided there's fighting down in the indian subcontinent there's fighting going on up and down the sea lanes around europe and then of course there's fighting going on all across central europe much of it on frederick's prussian his country gets uh it's stumped on pretty bad as he's trying to defend from these huge armies that are approaching from all four corners of the compass he's in a rough situation it's especially rough situation in 1757 when he's seeing a big french army approaching from the west big austrian army coming across the mountains from the south the russians are making noise on the eastern frontier in sweden is operating to the north of them so he's he's in a true trick bag and that's that's at the stage for these battles of roe spock and leuton i think that those battles could be used to analyze what is warfare like and also be used to look at what kind of leader is frederick and what kind of army does he have if you notice in the reading uh for rossbach he's able to pull camp in what 15 minutes to a half hour it is amazing the speed he does it what does it tell you about the military of his time that he has it better trained better disciplined when things are working well than his opponents the opponents think he's taken to flight because he's left so quickly and he leaves it kind of a little bit of a mess to give the feeling of he's in flight so all of a sudden there's the pursuit chase him let's go after him and the army strings itself out too long and it's going to be vulnerable to attack but it tells you what you could draw upon a little bit of information from a battle and ask him what does this mean 15 minutes why is that impressive must be impressive for its time because it's done quickly what does it tell you about the kind of military he has in comparison to the more disorganized army that's been used to looting on its way down living off the land as it goes to you bring a key point of and this is this doesn't come out in your readings this is something i would ask instructors to highlight the french army he faces the battle rossbach for one thing it's not really a french army there is a french contingent in it but it's there's a lot of contingents from these little minor german states and in a large part they look a lot like the old mercenary armies instead of the modern professional well-drilled army it's kind of a rag bag army it's it's an army that's kind of a throwback in some ways to the armies of the mercenary period so what you see when frederick with frederick's army is is an army at the peak of its efficiency a thoroughly modern army well-drilled well-disciplined well-organized and superb subordinate leaders like like frederick sadelitz and his brother there at the battlefield and then you see this rag bag collection motley collection you know they're described as appearing on the battlefield with with loaves of bread stuck on their bayonet and the and the french officers have their lady friends in tow as they appear in their well-perfumed both men and women at this time as they appear in the battlefield it is hardly a professional army the way we see it today and the result in large part is a route but but what happens at rossbach is in a way an anomaly and it stands in real contrast to what goes on at loyton in that same year 1757 when when frederick has to face an austrian army that has got the benefits of have haven't already seen the prussians in action and gone through a series of reforms to make itself better and when they appear on the battlefield they're going to be quite a bit more formidable than the the rag bag army that frederick defeats at rossbach at loyton he's going to have to have a hard fought fight he's going to have to use all the tricks in his bag and at the end of the day he's going to be fortunate with it fighting it right about one to two odds or a merged triumphant in large part it's his geniuses battlefield skill his ability his intuition about where to put troops and when to commit them at the same time i think it's it's a real testimony to the steadiness of prussian infantry that the kind of steadiness of prussian infantry that he inherits from his father he owes a lot to his father when it comes to the victories of this period any thoughts about yeah i mean you can make a comparison because you mentioned my interest with israel how can you win on the battlefield against your opponents and frederick's rifles aren't the best rifles compared to the opponents that he has he has one thing working for him he takes great care in training his troops at one point i can't remember the years the spandau maneuvers he puts 44 000 people in an ntc training two sides marching on the battlefield his neighbors thinks he's going to war so they start mobilizing their forces and they discover no it's just a training exercise and they laugh at him they ridicule him like he's playing uh with this he's looking at his soldiers as toy soldiers and he's just marching him because when he was little remember he marched around little kids as a captain his dad set him up that way he takes time to train his soldiers he knows his battalions because he visits them he takes care for the little things even though he's a senior commander he's the king and you'll find that a lot of your great commanders know the details but they don't get bogged down by them and in training them he trains them that he hopes that he can get faster march out of them and they do march at a faster pace and gets more volume of fire because they're trained to to shoot faster rate than their opponents so this gives him combat power that his opponents do not have and he could then do what if you know you've got good troops you can take risks with them like he does and he's good at flank attacks marching to the flank to get his opponent rather than a frontal assault which tended to be more the rule yeah he's got to because numbers are against him he is uh so we see him with these military innovations whether it's a faster rate of fire faster rate of march a bleak order uh seemingly to establish a new pillar of milk a new standard for military excellence in europe uh but at the end of the seven years war he finds that he can't keep on fighting these battles we said the generals avoided battles in our next period and then we give you example a guy who goes out and looks for battle during winter time when battles are normally not fought so you gotta does Frederick fit into this period or does he try to transcend it this question might ask at the end i think with these being besieged at all sides he's forced to fight into the box described by 18th century warfare he may be the best general of the period but uh again he has to he has to work with the limitations of the period it's going to take a different kind of genius to go beyond the box in this case to transcend the limitations of the period and bring on a new revolution of military affairs and that and that's what we'll talk about when we get to discussion Napoleon future lessons