Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II

Although the United States Army was victorious in World War 2, many books and studies have emerged in which it was pointed out that the quality of the Army's officer corps was very low and that the victory was due more to the incredible industrial might of the United States. Studies have pointed out that American officers were timid, lacked aggressiveness, and seemed hidebound and rigid in their ideas and consequently, victories resulted in the expenditure of many more American lives than were necessary. This book focuses on the question of what caused these kinds of behaviors by comparing and contrasting the professional education of American officers with their German foes of the same timeframe.The book pulls no punches and is a scathing indictment of how poorly the U.S. Army trained and prepared its officers over the years. A culture which was directly responsible for the creation of unimaginative, timid, and inflexible commanders. It focuses on two institutions in the U.S. and compares the process of selecting and preparing officers through those two institutions to the three similar schools operated by the German Army between the two world wars. On the American side, the author puts the microscope to West Point and the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. On the German side we learn of the Kadettenschulen, then the Hauptkadettenanstalt, and finally the Kriegsakademie. In addition to these, the author spends some time on the one American institution that he felt did a good job of training American officers, but only for a short period of time - and this was the Infantry School in Fort Benning.His main complaints about West Point was that it supported sadistic hazing and focused on the - poor - teaching of mathematics instead of on leadership. He provides many examples from alumni's memoirs (written many years later and mostly be highly successful ex-Generals) of the kinds of abuse they were subjected to. The author's argument was that what was conveyed during these four years of torture was how to become a conformist and a master of spit and polish - not exactly the kinds of traits that are important when the bullets start flying in anger. The other main result of a West Point education was to create a sense of elitism and class-superiority amongst the young cadets, who were then thrown into command of Platoons without ever having to interact with enlisted men. This resulted in a very strong separation between enlisted and officers in the American army which was disastrous in many cases to the enlisted men and the officers themselves.The Command and General Staff College was another exercise in conformity and narrow mindedness. What was emphasized during that training was that there is only one "good" solution to any problem encountered in the field, and that solution was the "school solution." Innovative thinking was discouraged and a focus was instilled in all these field grade officers that their proper place was in a map room at headquarters far to the rear of the actual fighting. It also did not help that while passing through this school was considered a pre-requisite for higher command, the selection process to get into the school was opaque and misunderstood by all.A major contributor to these problems, in the author's opinion, was that the teachers at the schools were long-term tenured folks who resisted change in their ways of teaching and the contents of what they taught every time an improvement was sought. One can only shake one's head in disgust reading his descriptions of some of what was considered - teaching.The contrast with the German schools was immense. The picture the author paints is of a much more well-coordinated system that focused on training people on how to lead soldiers by being amongst them and then of how to be aggressive, take initiative, but still think through what is going on from personal observation at the front. He claims that this resulted in why the Wehrmacht was able to outfight almost everyone during World War 2 until overwhelmed by the masses of the Soviets and the industrial output of the U.S. His harshest words on the German side are reserved to the General Staff which had atrophied from what it used to be and became an instrument of the Nazi party, rather than a viable strategic think-tank and coordinating body.This book was originally conceived as a doctoral thesis and it therefore contains a huge bibliography and numerous endnotes. In fact, there are over 120 pages devoted just to those. So, anyone who wants to perform some back checking on his work, has the means to do so. Overall, I found his arguments quite convincing. He probably exaggerated the stories somewhat to make his point, but as someone who has led organizations, I agree that the West Point approach does not produce good leaders, nor does his description of how the Command and General Staff College operated. While one would hope that the U.S. Army has significantly improved matters in this regard, there is a cautionary tale given in the last chapter of the book which shows that as recently as Operation Iraqi Freedom, many of the bad traits described before are still part of the bedrock of U.S. Army's operations. This is the story of the "Thunder Run" that brought about the final collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad. The initial reconnaissance had been proposed by a Brigade commander who then had to get approval for it from four higher-level HQs, each of which did its best to discourage the idea and shoot it down. The success of it was due to that particular officer refusing to follow the orders he was given and took the initiative to attack the city - and he succeeded. As the author writes "The U.S. Army still does not trust an officer with more than twenty years of experience to independently command his Brigade."This is a very important book that anyone who cares about how the U.S. Army operates, and is looking for ways to improve it, should read. It is also very well written, and one can overlook the sometimes cumbersome grammar and focus on the ideas that it contains. Definitely a book that I recommend to be read.

First, up front, let me say that I believe Jorg Muth's book definitely adds to the body of literature that examines the pre-war training of West Point, especially as it compares to the Prussian/German model for training officers, and as such I would recommend it. (As he states, the US did look to Prussia particularly after Prussia's success in a series of wars in close succession against Austria, France, and Denmark in the mid-1860s.) Essentially Muth's argument is that German leadership in WW2 was superior to that of the Americans, and he credits the German military education system for why the Germans were so good, and he harshly criticizes West Point and Leavenworth for why the Americans were so bad.The book is divided into three parts in which he compares and contrasts the way the German and American military trained their officers. Part One focuses on the selection and commissioning of officers, Part Two addresses, "Intermediate Advanced Education and Promotion," and Part Three is the conclusion. It all cases is very clear that Muth believes the German system was far superior to the American.I certainly found it a fascinating read, and I recommend it, however, I believe it has some serious issues that perhaps can be addressed if the book is ever reissued. ("Command Culture" is based on Muth's research as a PhD student -- it's an extended thesis and demonstration of his research abilities.)In order to agree with Muth's thesis you have to accept his base assumption that the Germans performed better on the battlefield than their counterparts and that this was due to the system that created German officers.One basic issue is that he focuses on West Point when the institution provided a minority of the American officers during WW2. In order to make his argument he would have to examine the training and contribution of the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC), and Officer Candidate School (OCS). Without this consideration you cannot make large claims about the "failure" of West Point as an institution and the poor performance of American officers in WW2. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was a career Army officer and a product of ROTC.)Another issue is that Muth relies almost exclusively on individual letters and memoirs to provide the data from which he derives his conclusions. This is fine to a point because it does demonstrate his ability to conduct research of basic documents, and it's ok to derive conclusions from that data, but the limitation to this type of documentation is that it does not allow a complete picture. For a more complete picture he would need to include some hard data about the performance of West Point officers on the battlefield and tie that performance to their (lack of) education. (And to prove German superiority he would have to do the same and somehow tie it back to education as a key factor.)At the same time he presents his data in such a way that you walk away believing that the Americans truly were horrible, and there was no good about the education system at all, and that the Germans were near perfect, without a flaw in their system.Another problem is that Muth never identifies the criteria against which he is judging the two systems. By identifying the factors he believes makes a good officer or the factors that make for a good education you should see the standards against which the author is making his judgments. At best, these factors are inferred and, at worse, they are not identified at all.In the end Muth fails to pull the threads together to explain, if the Germans were so superior, why did they fail? German senior leaders were poor logisticians, tended to risk all on the throw of a dice, and were poor strategists. He tends to explain it all away with the traditional, "the Nazis and Hitler were to blame," and, "the allies had more equipment," arguments, but given the subject, at no point does he demonstrate that the educational systems on either side were directly tied to the result.In fact the conclusion chapter only does two things: first it summarizes the poor American system and superior German systems for educating and selecting officers. Second, Muth heads off onto a tangent on how the American system, although improved, still has faults demonstrated on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is fine, but to draw these conclusions based on a few comments from memoirs or news articles is a bit of a leap, especially when nothing else in the book is related to Iraq or Afghanistan. I suspect this was an attempt to try to make the research relevant to today, but he would have been better served demonstrating how the two educational systems succeeded or failed on the battlefields of WW2.Bottom line: a great research paper with an appropriate narrow focus, and certainly worth reading, and, appropriately, it addresses one battlefield factor. But you'll need to know far more about WW2 to understand where this book fits, or to see its weaknesses.

Excellent description of the differences between American and German command cultures that evolved in their respective military academies and staff colleges in the first four decades of the 20th century. The book provides a revealing comparison of the German and American systems of officer education that explains clearly the superiority of the German system over that time period.

Dieses Buch ist NICHT das Wunderwerk als das es in verschiedenen Rezensionen verkauft wird. Jörg Muth hat sicherlich einen interessanten Aspekt der alten "Kampfkraft"-Diskussion herausgegriffen, der einer tiefgreifenden Analyse Wert wäre. Allerdings ergeht er sich, nach einer einleitenden Beschimpfung der für ihn offenbar nachteilig empfundenen Verhältnisse im deutschen Wissenschaftsbetrieb, im Wesentlichen in Wiederholungen seiner initialen Thesen.Immer wenn der interessierte Leser denkt: "Gut Ansatz, jetzt mal los...", wird er bitter enttäuscht. Denn letztlich treibt der Autor in jedem Kapitel die selbe Sau durchs Dorf, die da lautet: die Amerikaner haben das preussische Kriegsschul-System schlecht kopiert.Dies allein überrascht wohl allerdings kaum jemanden. Bleibt die Frage, welchen Qualitativen Unterschied gab es zwischen den beiden Führerkorps denn wirklich, auf welcher Ebene manifestierte dieser sich und welchen Anteil hatten daran die Kriegsschulsysteme? Welche Faktoren spielten darueber hinaus eine wesentliche Rolle und darf man diese wirklich weitgehend ausblenden?Tatsache ist, das ein komparativer Ansatz der Schulsysteme rasch an seine Grenzen kommt, wenn die hoehere Anzahl der überlegenen deutschen Truppenführer plausibel gemacht werden soll. Letztlich müsste der Vergleich hier sicher weiter ausholen.Außerdem wäre es überzeugender, wenn weniger Behauptungen wiederholt und dafür besser und anekdotisch belegt werden wurden ( i.e. Die Amerikaner haben mit schlechten Paukern Mathe gelernt und die Deutschen mit Truppenfuehrern Militärisches Führen erlernt). Darüber hilft leider nicht hinweg, dass beinahe die Hälfte des Buches aus Anhängen und Fußnoten besteht.Letztlich bleibt nach Lektüre des Buches ein fader Beigeschmack. Dem Nichthistoriker bleibt das Gefühl, ohne dies exakt fassen zu können, dass es dem Buch auch methodisch an Qualitäten mangelt. Ein guter Ansatz wurde versemmelt, es wurde vom Autor laut gebrüllt und zu kurz gesprungen.Sehr schade!