War Games: A History of War on Paper

235 Pages·2012·2.63 MB·English

by  Philipp von von Hilgers

War Games

War Games
A History of War on Paper
Philipp von Hilgers
translated by Ross Benjamin
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Originally published in German by Verlag Ferdinand Sch ö ningh GmbH and Wilhelm
Fink Verlag GmbH & Co. KG under the title Philipp von Hilgers: Kriegsspiele: Eine
Geschichte der Ausnahmezustä nde und Unberechenbarkeiten . © 2008 Wilhelm Fink
Verlag GmbH
English language translation by Ross Benjamin © 2 012
The translation of this book was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—
Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint
initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, and
the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@
mitpress.mit.edu
This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hilgers, Philipp von.
War games : a history of war on paper / Philipp von Hilgers ; translated by
Ross Benjamin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01697-1 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. War games — History. 2. Games of strategy (Mathematics)— History. I. Title.
U310.H53 2012
355.4 ′ 809 — dc23
2011026383
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
If on Mars there were human beings and they waged war against each other in the
way chessmen do on a board, then their headquarters would use the rules of chess
for prophesying.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii
1 The Battle of Numbers in the Middle Ages 1
2 Power Games in the Baroque Period 11
3 The State of the War Game 31
4 Historiography in Real Time 57
5 Higher Mathematics and N omos of the Earth 89
6 From Formula Games to the Universal Machine 103

Notes 145

Bibliography 175

Index 199

Preface
Current cultural histories of the game generally exclude two spheres: the
battlefield and mathematics. Yet the groundbreaking role of games in these
domains could not be more serious and intensive. After the First World
War, if not earlier, mathematical and military discourses in Germany not
only struggled for the consolidation of their respective fields of operation,
but also simultaneously discovered the game as a productive concept. From
that point on, the term “ war games” was no longer an odd word combina-
tion tantamount to an oxymoron. Rather, it was probably the most effec-
tive and fateful concept the twentieth century produced in order to master
its crises.
It is not possible to do justice to the concept and the object of the war
game without taking into consideration its long, decidedly nonlinear and
not always transparent history. As a consequence, the time frame of this
study, which begins in the Middle Ages and extends to the Second World
War, is quite broad in scope. On the other hand, there is a clear delimita-
tion of the area of investigation: it ranges from the medieval game boards —
captured on parchment— of the German bishoprics, through the spaces of
play in the baroque principalities, to the paper map exercises of the German
and “ Third ” Reich.
A perspective that looks beyond national borders— as is often justified,
if only for purposes of comparison — is here largely excluded. Instead of
foregrounding relations, this study investigates quite specific constella-
tions. The decision to highlight states of exception solely from German
history seems warranted due to the fact that— from the beginning of the
twentieth century at the latest— an unequaled mastery arose there with
respect to both war machines and mathematics. 1