4. Adapting to the Massive Increase in Numbers and Scope of Modern Warfare
Helmuth von Moltke is often known as Moltke the Elder to distinguish him from his nephew Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, who led Germany’s army at the start of World War I. The elder Moltke made the commander’s staff a professional and permanent body. He created an infrastructure to handle basic matters such as logistics and supply, transport, intelligence, and coordination. The commander, relieved of such chores, was thus freed to concentrate on strategy and tactics. Moltke’s Great General Staff concept was copied by armies the world over, all of which eventually established their own general staff.
Moltke was one of the first to realize that the days when a commander could exercise complete control over an army, such as in the Napoleonic Wars, were over. By the second half of the nineteenth-century armies had simply gotten too big. Their fields of battle and theaters of operations had also grown massive, to such an extent that an army commander could no longer see all his forces from a command post atop a hill. In this new environment, senior commanders had to explain their intent to subordinates, then grant them autonomy and trust them to use their own initiative to realize the commander’s intent.
