Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between World Wars

288 Pages·1984·4.641 MB·English

by  Barry R. Posen

The Sources of Military Doctrine
A volume in the series
Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
edited by Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis, and Stephen M. Walt
A full list of titles in the series appears at the end of the book.
The Sources
of Military
Doctrine
FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND GERMANY
BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS
BARRY R. POSEN
Cornell University Press
ITHACA AND LONDON
This book was written under the auspices of the
Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.
Copyright © 1984 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press,
Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1984 by Cornell University Press.
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1g86.
International Standard Book Number 978-o-8014-9427-7 (paper)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-7610
Printed in the United States of America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information
appears on the last page of the book.
@ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39-48-1984.
Paperback printing 10 9
Contents
Preface 7
t. The Importance of Military Doctrine 13
2. Explaining Military Doctrine 34
3. The Battles of 1940 81
4. France 105
5. Britain 141
6. Germany 179
7. Conclusions 220
Notes 245
Selected Bibliography 269
Index 277
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Preface
This book explains how military doctrine takes shape and how it
figures in grand strategy-that collection of military, economic, and
political means and ends with which a state attempts to achieve se­
curity. I weigh the bureaucratic, "power political," technological, and
geographic influences that shape the grand strategies and military
doctrines of states. A comparative investigation of French, British,
and German military doctrine between the World Wars is the sub­
stantive core of the study. Particularly, I focus on explaining the two
great military successes of the period, the German Blitzkrieg and the
British air defense system, and the one great failure, the French
Army's defensive doctrine, often associated with the Maginot Line.
Within grand strategy, military doctrine sets priorities among vari­
ous military forces and prescribes how those forces should be struc­
tured and employed to achieve the ends in view. I have selected three
important aspects of military doctrine for close scrutiny: its offensive,
defensive, or deterrent character; its coordination with foreign policy
(political-military integration); and the degree of innovation it con­
tains. These aspects are explained in chapter 1.
I use organization theory and balance of power theory to analyze
interwar French, British, and German military doctrine. Both types of
explanation have achieved widespread currency in the study of inter­
national relations and foreign policy. Advocates of each have at vari­
ous times criticized the perspective of the other. In the realm of theory
these explanations are competitive, not complementary. The debate
is best framed by Graham Allison in Essence of Decision and Kenneth
Waltz in Man, the State, and War and Theory of International Politics.
Allison explains a state's actions in international politics as the out­
come of pulling and hauling among various self-interested, semi­
autonomous military and civilian bureaucracies. He contrasts this ap-
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Preface
proach with explanations consistent with Waltz's statement of bal­
ance of power theory, which view such actions as reasonable re­
sponses to the real security threats thrown up by the lawless
environment outside the state's borders.
I test these two theories by deducing specific propositions from
them about the three aspects of military doctrine selected for study�
then applying the propositions to French, British, and German inter­
war military doctrine to see which theory better explains/predicts
what happened. The two theories and their implications for military
doctrine are discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 2 also contains an exam­
ination of some popular propositions about the impact of technology
and geography on military doctrine. Chapter 3 summarizes the Battle
of France and the Battle of Britain, the two great military confronta­
tions of 1940 that throw into vivid relief the real-world consequences
of each nation's doctrine. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are case studies of
French, British, and German doctrine respectively.
The comparative case method allows the scholar to sample a range
of causes identified as important by each theory, and to see if varia­
tions in those causes do indeed produce variations in outcomes.
When they do, the theory gains in credibility. Organization theory
and balance of power theory frequently predict very different out­
comes, so the tests are quite suggestive of the power of each theory.
When the predictions conflict, we can examine the real outcomes to
see which theory predicts more reliably. Of course, no test can be
definitive, and the presence of perturbing variables (such as domestic
politics) unaccounted for by either theory makes this test less than
perfect. That caution duly acknowledged, the test shows that both
theories have great utility in the study of military doctrine; both are
more powerful than simple propositions that stress the direct causal
impact of technology or geography; and finally, of the two, balance of
power theory is the more powerful.
This "theory resting" exercise produces an important dividend for
our substantive understanding of interwar military developments.
The competitive application of the two theories is analogous to the
use of different lenses, tools for the apprehension of reality. By using
two explicit theories, each of which highlights the influence of differ­
ent causes, we can gain a more focused understanding of military
developments between the wars than by a conventional historical
treatment. Each theory allows us to view some aspects of the same
phenomenon more clearly (albeit at the cost of reducing the visibility
of other aspects). Each theory tells us something useful and impor­
tant about the military doctrines in question. Although the explicit
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Preface
purpose of the theoretical exercise is to come to some conclusion
about which theory is more powerful, it is clear that substantively the
two theories provide complementary explanations of a complicated
and important aspect of state behavior.
This book fills three gaps in the literature on international politics
and strategy. First, for nearly twenty years a debate has been sus­
tained among international relations theorists between those who
would locate the causes of state behavior at the level of the state and
those who would explain it in terms of the constraints and incentives
that all states face in their attempt to survive in the unregulated
"anarchical" environment of international politics. This book ex­
plicitly tests theories of both types against each other, a task rarely
undertaken.
Second, with the exception of D. C. Watt's rather impressionistic
Too Serious a Business, no single work has systematically examined
and explained in comparative perspective the grand strategies and
military doctrines of the major western European actors in the inter­
war period-France, Britain, and Germany. I hope that by doing so
here I have sharpened our understanding of the origins of World
War II.
Finally, there are few general guides to the study of national strat­
egy. This book not only offers such a guide, but illustrates in three
cases how to employ it. It offers a set of categories, questions, and
explanations useful for studying the grand strategy and military doc­
trine of any state.
Many individuals and organizations contributed to the completion
of this book. The Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Regents
of the University of California, and, at Harvard University, the Center
for Science and International Affairs and the National Security Stud­
ies Program of the Center for International Affairs all gave financial
support. The Brookings Institution, the International Institute for
Strategic Studies, the Center for Science and International Affairs,
and the Center for International Affairs provided office space and
research support.
I thank Professors Walter McDougall, Todd LaPorte, and especially
Kenneth Waltz of the University of California at Berkeley for their
assistance during the initial work on this book. My friends and col­
leagues Michael Mandelbaum, John Mearsheimer, Steven Miller, and
Jack Snyder offered invaluable advice on the development and pres­
entation of the book's central themes; I particularly thank Stephen
Van Evera. The editors of this series, Robert Jervis and, especially,
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