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Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (26 October 1800, Parchim, Mecklenburg - Schwerin – 24 April 1891) was a German Generalfeldmarschall. The chief of staff of the Prussian Army for thirty years, he is regarded as one of the great strategists of the latter 19th century, and the creator of a new, more modern method of directing armies in the field. He is often referred to as Moltke the Elder to distinguish him from his nephew Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, who commanded the German Army at the outbreak of World War I. Moltke was born in Parchim, Mecklenburg - Schwerin son of the Danish Generalleutnant Friedrich Philipp Victor von Moltke (1768 – 1845). His father in 1805 settled in Holstein, but about the same time was impoverished by the burning of his country house and the plunder by the French of his town house in Lübeck, where his wife and children were during the Fourth Coalition. Young Moltke therefore grew up under difficult circumstances. At nine he was sent as a boarder to Hohenfelde in Holstein, and at the age of eleven to the cadet school at Copenhagen, being destined for the Danish army and court. In 1818 he became a page to the king of Denmark and second lieutenant in a Danish infantry regiment. At
twenty-one Moltke resolved to enter the Prussian service, in spite of
the loss of seniority. In 1822 he became second lieutenant in the 8th
Infantry Regiment stationed at Frankfurt (Oder). At twenty - three, he
was allowed to enter the general war school (later called the Prussian
Military Academy), where he studied the full three years and passed in
1826. For a year Moltke had charge of a cadet school at Frankfurt an der Oder, then he was for three years employed on the military survey in Silesia and Posen.
In 1832 he was seconded for service on the general staff at Berlin, to
which he was transferred in 1833 on promotion to first lieutenant. He
was at this time regarded as a brilliant officer by his superiors, and
among them by Prince William, then a lieutenant - general, afterwards king and emperor. Max Boot says of Moltke in his War Made New: Moltke
loved music, poetry, art, archaeology, and theater. He knew seven
languages (German, Danish, English, French, Italian, Spanish, and
Turkish). He was a prolific artist who filled sketchbooks with
landscapes and portraits, as well as a popular author... his account of
travels in Turkey, released after his return to Berlin in 1840 and
illustrated with his own drawings, turned him into a literary
celebrity, a role that he embraced by donning a Turkish and giving
public lectures... For all his catholicity of interests, Moltke was no
closet liberal. He was a nationalist to the core who was appalled by
the liberal revolutions that swept Europe on 1848. He placed his faith
in the king and the forces of the old regime. Moltke
was well received at court and in the best society of Berlin. His
tastes inclined him to literature, to historical study and to travel.
In 1827 he had published a short romance, The Two Friends. In 1831 he wrote an essay entitled Holland and Belgium in their Mutual Relations, from their Separation under Philip II to their Reunion under William I. A year later he wrote An Account of the Internal Circumstances and Social Conditions of Poland,
a study based both on reading and on personal observation of Polish
life and character. In 1832 he contracted to translate Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire into
German, for which he was to receive 75 marks, his object being to earn
the money to buy a horse. In eighteen months he had finished nine
volumes out of twelve, but the publisher failed to produce the book and
Moltke never received more than 25 marks. In 1835 on his promotion as captain, Moltke obtained six months leave to travel in south - Eastern Europe. After a short stay in Istanbul he was requested by the Sultan Mahmud II to help modernize the Ottoman Empire army, and being duly authorized from Berlin he accepted the offer. He remained two years at Istanbul, learned Turkish and surveyed the city of Constantinople, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. He travelled through Wallachia, Bulgaria and Rumelia, and made many other journeys on both sides of the Strait. In 1838 Moltke was sent as adviser to the Ottoman general commanding the troops in Anatolia, who was to carry on a campaign against Muhammad Ali of Egypt (Ali's rebellion).
During the summer Moltke made extensive reconnaissances and surveys,
riding several thousand miles in the course of his journey. He
navigated the rapids of the Euphrates and
visited and mapped many parts of the Ottoman Empire. In 1839 the army
moved south to fight the Egyptians, but upon the approach of the enemy
the general refused to listen to Moltke's advice. Moltke resigned his
post of staff officer and took charge of the artillery. In the Battle
of Nizib (modern day Nisibis)
on 24 June 1839, the Ottoman army was beaten (Muhammad Ali was defeated
only once or twice in his lifetime). With great difficulty Von Moltke
made his way back to the Black Sea, and thence to Istanbul. His patron,
Sultan Mahmud II, was dead, so he returned to Berlin where he arrived,
broken in health, in December 1839. Once home Moltke published some of the letters he had written as Letters on Conditions and Events in Turkey in the Years 1835 to 1839. This book was well received at the time. Early the next year he married
a young English woman, Mary Burt, the stepdaughter of his sister. It
was a happy union, though there were no children. In
1840 Moltke had been appointed to the staff of the 4th army corps,
stationed at Berlin and he published his maps of Istanbul, and, jointly
with other German travellers, a new map of Asia Minor and a memoir on
the geography of that country. He became fascinated by railroads and he
was one of the first directors of the Hamburg - Berlin railway. In 1843
published an article What Considerations should determine the Choice of the Course of Railways?. In 1845 Moltke published The Russo-Turkish Campaign in Europe, 1828 - 1829;
this book was also well received in military circles. Also in that year
he served in Rome as personal adjutant to Prince Henry of Prussia,
which allowed him to create another map of the Eternal city (published
in 1852). In 1848, after a brief return to the great general staff at
Berlin, he became chief of the staff of the 4th army corps, of which
the headquarters were then at Magdeburg, where he remained seven years, during which he rose to lieutenant colonel and colonel. In 1855 Moltke served as personal aide to Prince Frederick (later Emperor Frederick III). He accompanied the prince to England (for his marriage), as well as to Paris and to Saint Petersburg for the coronation of Alexander II of Russia. In 1857 Moltke was given the position Chief of the Prussian Großer Generalstab (military
staff), a position he held for the next 30 years. As soon as he gained
the position he went to work making changes to the strategic and
tactical methods of the Prussian army; changes in armament and in means
of communication; changes in the training of staff officers; and
changes to the method for the mobilization of the army. He also
instituted a formal study of European politics in connection with the
plans for campaigns which might become necessary. In short, he rapidly
put into place the features of a modern General Staff. In 1859 the Austro - Sardinian War in
Italy caused the mobilization of the Prussian army, though it did not
fight. After the mobilization, the army was reorganized and its
strength was nearly doubled. The reorganization was the work not of
Moltke but of the Prince Regent, William, and the Minister of War, Albrecht von Roon.
Moltke watched the Italian campaign closely and wrote a history of it
(published in 1862). This history was attributed on the title page to
the historical division of the Prussian staff (yet another first in
military affairs). In
December 1862 Moltke was asked for an opinion upon the military aspect
of the quarrel with Denmark. He thought the difficulty would be to
bring the war to an end, as the Danish army would if possible retire to
the islands, where, as the Danes had the command of the sea, it could
not be attacked. He sketched a plan for turning the flank of the Danish
army before the attack upon its position in front of Schleswig. He suggested that by this means its retreat might be cut off. When the Second Schleswig War began
in February 1864, Moltke was not sent with the Prussian forces, but
kept at Berlin. His war plan was mismanaged and the Danish army escaped
to the fortresses of Dybbøl and Fredericia, each of which commanded a retreat across a strait to an island. Dybbøl and Fredericia were besieged, Dybbøl taken by storm,
and Fredericia abandoned by the Danes without assault - but the war
showed no signs of ending. The Danish army was safe on the islands of Als and Funen. On
April 30, 1864, Moltke was sent to be chief of the staff for the allied
(German) forces. After a two month armistice, the German army attacked
the Danes in the island of Als (June 29). The Danes evacuated Als and
shortly thereafter agreed to the German peace terms. Moltke's
appearance on the scene had transformed the war, and his influence with
the king had acquired a firm basis. Accordingly, when in 1866 the
quarrel with Austria came to a head, Moltke's plans were adopted and
executed. A disciple of Clausewitz, whose theory of war was more an effort to grasp its essential nature, rather than of Jomini,
who expounded a system of rules, Moltke regarded strategy as a
practical art of adapting means to ends, and had developed the methods
of Napoleon in
accordance with altered conditions of his age. He had been the first to
realize the great defensive power of modern firearms, and had inferred
from it that an enveloping attack had become more formidable than the
attempt to pierce an enemy's front. Moltke had pondered the tactics of Napoleon at the Battle of Bautzen, when the emperor brought up Ney's
corps, coming from a distance, against the flank of the allies, rather
than to unite it with his own force before the battle; he had also
drawn a moral from the combined action of the allies at the Battle of Waterloo. At
the same time Moltke had worked out the conditions of the march and
supply of an army. Only one army corps could be moved along one road in
the same day; to put two or three corps on the same road meant that the
rear corps could not be made use of in a battle at the front. Several
corps stationed close together in a small area could not be fed for
more than a day or two. Accordingly he inferred that the essence of
strategy lay in arrangements for the separation of the corps for
marching and their concentration in time for battle. In order to make a
large army manageable, it must be broken up into separate armies or
groups of corps, each group under a commander authorized to regulate
its movements and action subject to the instructions of the
commander - in - chief as regards the direction and purpose of its
operations. Moltke's main thesis was that military strategy had
to be understood as a system of options since only the beginning of a
military operation was plannable. As a result, he considered the main
task of military leaders to consist in the extensive preparation of all
possible outcomes. His thesis can be summed up by two statements, one
famous and one less so, translated into English as No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength (no plan survives contact with the enemy) and Strategy is a system of expedients. However,
as can be seen from the descriptions of his planning for the war with
Austria and the war with France, his planning for war was very detailed
and took into account thousands of variables. It is a mistake to think
that Moltke thought war plans were of no use (which a simple reading of
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" would seem to
indicate). Moltke originated the use of the colors blue for friendly forces and red for hostile forces in strategy or war gaming. Hence the term blue on blue fire in friendly fire situations. Moltke planned and led the successful military operations during the Austro - Prussian War of 1866. In
the strategy for the war the main points are as follows. First Moltke
demonstrated a concentration of effort. There were two enemy groups
opposing the Prussians, the Austro - Saxon armies, 270,000; and their
allied North and South German armies, some 120,000 strong. The Prussian
forces were smaller by some 60,000, but Moltke was determined to be
superior at the decisive point. The army placed against Austria was
278,000 men, leaving just 48,000 men remaining to defend against
Austria's German allies. Those 48,000 under Falckenstein managed to capture the Hanoverian army in less than two weeks, and then to attack and drive away the South German forces. In
dealing with Austrian and Saxon army, the difficulty was to have the
Prussian army ready first. This was not easy as the king would not
mobilize until after the Austrians. Moltke's railway knowledge helped
him to save time. Five lines of railway led from the various Prussian
provinces to a series of points on the southern frontier. By employing
all these railways at once, Moltke had all his army corps moved
simultaneously from their peace quarters to the frontier. After marching into Saxony, the Saxon army retreated into Bohemia.
Moltke had two Prussian armies about 100 miles apart. The problem was
how to bring them together so as to catch the Austrian army between
them like the French at Waterloo between Wellington and Blücher. He determined to bring his own two armies together by directing each of them to advance towards Gitschin.
He foresaw that the march of the crown prince would probably bring him
into collision with a portion of the Austrian army; but the Crown
prince had 100,000 men, and it was not likely that the Austrians could
have a stronger force. The Austrians under Ludwig von Benedek marched
faster than Moltke expected, and might have opposed the crown prince
with four or five corps; but Benedek's attention was centred on Prince Frederick,
and his four corps, not under a common command, were beaten in detail.
On July 1, Benedek collected his shaken forces in a defensive position
in front of Königgrätz.
Moltke's two armies were now within a march of one another and of the
enemy. On July 3 they were brought into action, the first against the
Austrian front and the second against the Austrian right flank. The
Austrian army was completely defeated and the campaign and war were won. Moltke was not quite satisfied with the Battle of Königgrätz. He tried to have the Prussian Army of the Elbe brought up above Königgrätz so as to prevent the Austrian
retreat, but its general failed to get there in time. He also tried to
prevent the Prussian First Army from pushing its attack too hard,
hoping in that way to keep the Austrians in their position until their
retreat should be cut off by the crown prince's army, but this also did
not happen. During the negotiations, Otto von Bismarck opposed the king's wish to annex the Kingdom of Saxony and
other territory beyond what was actually taken; he feared the active
intervention of France. Moltke, however, was confident of beating both
French and Austrians if the French should intervene, and he submitted
to Bismarck his plans in case of need for war against both France and
Austria. After the peace, the Prussian government voted Moltke the sum of 30,000 marks, with which he bought the estate of Kreisau, near Schweidnitz (Świdnica) in Silesia. In 1867 The Campaign of 1866 in Germany was
published. This history was produced under Moltke's personal
supervision, it was regarded as quite accurate at the time. On December
24, 1868, Moltke's wife died at Berlin. Her remains were buried in a
small chapel erected by Moltke as a mausoleum in the park at Kreisau. Moltke again planned and led the Prussian armies in the Franco - Prussian War (1870 – 71), which paved the way for the creation of the Prussian led German Empire in
1871. The aspects of such a war had occupied Moltke's attention almost
continuously since 1857; documents published after his death show the
many times he considered such a war and the best arrangement of the
Prussian or German forces for such a campaign. The arrangements for the
transport of the army by railway were revised annually in order to suit
the changes in his plans brought about by political conditions and by
the growth of the army, as well as by the improvement of the Prussian
system of railways. The
successes of 1866 had strengthened Moltke's position, so that when on
July 5, 1870, the order for the mobilization of the Prussian and South
German forces was issued, his plans were adopted without dispute. Five
days later he was appointed Chief of the general staff of the army for
the duration of the war. This gave Moltke the right to issue orders
which were equivalent to royal commands. Moltke's plan was to assemble the whole army south of Mainz,
this being one district in which a single army could secure the defence
of the whole frontier. If the French disregarded the neutrality of
Belgium and Luxembourg, and advanced towards Cologne (or any other point on the Lower Rhine), the German army would be able to strike at their flank. At the same time the Rhine itself, with the fortresses of Koblenz, Cologne and Wesel,
would be a serious obstacle in their path. If the French should attempt
to invade south Germany, an advance by the Germans up the Rhine river
would threaten their communications. Moltke expected that the French
would be compelled by the direction of their railways to collect the
greater part of their army near Metz, and a smaller portion near Strasbourg. The German forces were grouped into three armies: the first under Steinmetz, on the Moselle below Trier; the second of 130,000 men, under Prince Frederick Charles, around Homburg (with a reserve of 60,000 men behind them); the third under the Crown Prince Frederick of 130,000 men, at Landau. Three army corps were held back in north - Eastern Germany, in case Austria - Hungary should make common cause with France. Moltke's
plan was that the three armies, while advancing, should make a right
wheel, so that the first army on the right would reach the bank of the
Moselle opposite Metz, while the second and third armies should push
forward, the third army to defeat the French force near Strasbourg, and
the second to strike the Moselle near Pont-à-Mousson.
If the French army should be found in front of the second army, it
would be attacked in front by the second army and in flank by the first
or the third (or both). If it should be found on or north of the line
from Saarburg to Lunéville,
it could still be attacked from two sides by the second and third
armies in co-operation. The intention of the great right wheel was to
attack the principal French army in such a direction as to drive it
north and cut its communications with Paris. The fortress of Metz was
to be only monitored, and the main German forces, after defeating the
chief French army, would then to march against Paris. This plan was carried out in its broad outlines. The Battle of Worth was brought on prematurely, and therefore led, not to the capture of MacMahon's army, which was intended, but only to its defeat and hasty retreat as far as Châlons. The Battle of Spicheren was not intended by Moltke, who wished to keep Bazaine's army on the Saar until
he could attack it with the second army in front and the first army on
its left flank. But these unexpected victories did not disconcert
Moltke, who carried out his intended advance to Pont-Mousson, crossed
the Moselle with the first and second armies, then faced north and
wheeled round, so that the effect of the battle of Gravelotte was to
drive Bazaine into the fortress of Metz and cut him off from Paris. Nothing
shows Moltke's insight and strength of purpose in a clearer light than
his determination to attack on the 18th of August, at the Battle of Gravelotte,
when other strategists would have thought that, the strategic victory
having been gained, a tactical victory was unnecessary. He has been
blamed for the last attack of Gravelotte, in which there was a
fruitless heavy loss; but it is now known that this attack was ordered
by the king, and Moltke blamed himself for not having used his
influence to prevent it. During the night following the battle Moltke left one army to invest Bazaine at
Metz, and set out with the two others to march towards Paris, the more
southerly one leading, so that when MacMahon's army should be found the
main blow might be delivered from the south and MacMahon driven to the
north. On August 25 it was found that MacMahon was moving north - east
for the relief of Bazaine. The moment Moltke was satisfied of the
accuracy of his information, he ordered the German columns to turn
their faces north instead of west. MacMahon's right wing was attacked at Beaumont while attempting to cross the Meuse, his advance necessarily abandoned, and his army with difficulty collected at Sedan. At the Battle of Sedan,
the two German armies surrounded the French army, which on September 1
was attacked and compelled to surrender. Moltke then resumed the
advance on Paris, which was also surrounded. From
this time Moltke's strategy is remarkable for its judicious economy of
force, for he was wise enough never to attempt more than was
practicable with the means at his disposal. The surrender of Metz and
of Paris was just a question of time, and the problem was, while
maintaining the sieges, to be able to ward off the attacks of the new
French armies levied for the purpose of raising the Siege of Paris. The Siege of Metz ended with its surrender on October 27. On January 28, 1871, an armistice was concluded at Paris by which the garrison became virtually prisoners and the war was ended. In October 1870, Moltke was made a Graf (Count) as a reward for his services. In June 1871, he was further rewarded by a promotion to the rank of field marshal and a large monetary grant. He served in the Diet of the North German Confederation from 1867 – 71, and from 1871 - 91 he was a member of the Reichstag, the German parliament of the time. For the "Verdienste um das zur Einheit wiedergeborene Deutsche Vaterland" (merit of the unification of the reborn German fatherland), he was named an honorary citizen of Hamburg. After
the Franco-Prussian War, Moltke superintended the preparation of its
history, which was published between 1874 and 1881 by the great general
staff. In 1888 Moltke retired as Chief of the General Staff and was succeeded by Graf von Waldersee. His nephew, Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, was Chief from 1906 - 14. Moltke retired from active service on August 9. 1888 and died in Berlin in 1891. |