Abstract
Theoretically, military doctrine is dynamic, changing to create new capabilities and improve new missions. History, theory, contemporary controversies, technological developments, and constantly emerging threats to national security lead to modifications in military doctrine. Many factors have influence upon the pace of doctrinal change, but a war almost unavoidably speeds up the process. Doctrine develops rapidly in wartime or periods of heightened readiness because obstacles to change vanish during the wars. The most short-lived of the military doctrine manuals existed during World War I and World War II, with average lives of only about three years. Changing military doctrine requires combination of new equipment and systems and changes in the way soldiers think about battle.
This essay’s analysis of the wars doctrines is intended to enhance understanding of the army’s mission, organization, operational concepts and the theory that shaped the doctrinal development. It also identifies the effectiveness of the doctrine developed by military planners as well as the reason the for the doctrine’s effectiveness and shortcomings.
Military Doctrine – Army
Introduction
Through the whole of history, military organizations have developed established tactics, techniques, practices, and procedures to make certain that subordinate elements efficiently acted together in order to combine forces and fires at a decisive time and place. These tactics, techniques, practices, and procedures, ranging from small-unit drill to orders for large-unit operations, still are present in the army. Since World War II, the United States has referred to these tactics, techniques, practices, and procedures as doctrine. Reference to doctrine is found in earlier documents, but usage of the term regulations was more widespread. Military doctrine includes the “fundamental principles by which military forces guide their actions in support of national objectives” (HQDA). It is the fundamental statement of an army’s perception of war and serves as a widely known guide for the conduct of military operations.
Following doctrinal evolution in the U.S. Army throughout the period of time after 1900 is not difficult task (see Table 1). The army has distributed official doctrine in the twentieth century through official War Department publications. The War Department published the first Field Service Regulations in 1905. Since that time, the army has changed or amended its principal doctrinal manual eighteen times. After 1939, the army produced the Field Servire Regulations in three volumes. Even though the army continued to call the three volumes together as Field Service Regulations, it gave each volume a separate field manual (FM) number: FM 100-5 for operations, FM 100-10 for administration, and FM 100-15 for large units (Summers 1982, p. 63).
The pre-World War II Field Service Regulations provided a sound frame of reference for the conduct of war:
The conduct of war is the art of employing the Armed Forces of a nation in combination with measures of economic and political constraint for the purpose of effecting a satisfactory peace . . . The ultimate objective of all military operation is the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces in battle. Decisive defeat in battle breaks the enemy’s will to war and forces him to sue for peace which is the national aim . . . (FM 100-5)
Main Body
In 1914, Knox wrote that the “object of military doctrine is to furnish a basis for prompt and harmonious conduct by the subordinate commanders of a large military force, in accordance with the intentions of the commander‐in‐chief” (Offner 1971, p. 89). Palmer, a figure of crucial importance in American army, claimed that modern warfare needed a doctrine that went above training procedures. Yet, the progressive doctrine that Knox and Palmer had imagined was impossible. By war’s end, military doctrine had been completely domesticated: its role was not so much the improvement of military concepts and strategies as the ratification of orthodox beliefs or practices. Therefore, it can be said that tremendous military knowledge during World War I advanced without the great assistance of military doctrine.
Military organization of the U.S. in World War I was built on the previous experiences of the U.S. Army, especially in the American Civil War and many Indian wars. It gave special emphasis to the use of maneuver in aggressive attacks, in which American armies were to break the enemy units and after that rout them with an unflinching pursuit. At the same time, it was the first war conducted with the full weight of modern industry supporting military strategies, organization, and technology; almost all of the weapons and maneuvers of World War II first were used in World War I. Tanks, airplanes, radios, motor transport, elastic defenses, rolling barrages, infiltration maneuvers, and chemical warfare were among the many new devices and new ideas that first appeared before the soldiers. Never in the military history had the battlefield changed in such a rapid manner. In World War I, this new scale, pace, and complexity of warfare dropped out of previous war theories and demanded sound doctrine understood by all. The doctrine in FSR 1939 did not keep pace with technological advances.
Army reform and reorganization were central issues confronted by the War Department during World War I. The most important task for U.S. military planners was to be able to retain the ability to mobilize as quickly as possible a mass army. Compulsory military service had provided ample manpower for the American Expeditionary Forces, but procedures for training and equipping the soldiers had lagged far behind. During the war, most soldiers had need of additional instruction in France. Besides, U.S. weapons and equipment had not begun to come to battlefield in required quantities until well over a year after the declaration of war. These shameful shortcomings demonstrated American unpreparedness for war in the twentieth century (Hart 2001, p. 84).
While civilian people engaged in commercial and industrial business dealt with the problems of economic and industrial mobilization, the army investigated the state of manpower mobilization taking into account recent military experience. The planners tried to create a military organization that both met the readiness requirements of current warfare and fit the traditional theory. Army planners also encountered the challenge of developing forces that would be capable participating in changing quickly, open warfare, and with the ability to penetrate complex, organized defensive positions. These challenges shaped national military policy, army structure, and military doctrine in the war years.
The most obvious doctrinal changes during World War I were new tactical techniques, trenches and barbed wire, airplanes, gas, tanks, radio, indirect fire artillery, and machineguns (Offner 1971, p. 145). These innovations had introduced the American soldiers to a type of war that differed considerably from their previous experiences. Importantly, the War Department General Staff finally had the power and the means to control and regulate army training and doctrine. Before World War I, the War Department General Staff was too small, had need of experienced officers, and was without the administrative programs necessary to establish unified doctrine on the spacious units of the U.S. Army. With the war expansion and betterment of the military school system, the War Department General Staff possessed the ability to prescribe and direct the implementation of an integrated doctrine for the first time.
Publication of Field Service Regulations 1939 did not end the army’s doctrine revision effort happening in the period between World War I and World War II. In the two years before U.S. entry into World War II, the army made tremendous steps toward the development of an efficient fighting force. German victories in 1939 and 1940 ended much of the controversy over arrangement of war. With the example of modern war demonstrated by German operations, the army made huge efforts to revise its doctrine. The inflow of money, people, and equipment enabled the army to create systems and training programs that would generate some of the hard ground on which to base new doctrine. The army published Field Service Regulations 1941 based on experience taken from the world’s battlefields and its own constantly increasing experience with large-scale exercises. This recently published manual was a large improvement over its predecessor if only because it more precisely showed current technological possibilities and exhibited the characteristics of a truly amended military doctrine.
The most appreciable difference between the 1939 and 1941 versions was in stress on armored and air tactics. Use of air and tanks, in addition to means for antitank and antiaircraft defense, predominated in the work. However, the army now did not have the time required to reorganize itself. Despite considerable mobilization and readiness steps, the army was not capable to close the large gap that existed between its doctrine and the real capabilities of arms forces. As a result, the battlefield displayed the shortcomings of the army’s crash course in contemporary warfare. In many its actions, the army would learn from its defeats and in the end appear from World War II as the most skilful and effective fighting force of the war. But the price exacted in military men’ blood for lack of due peacetime training, weapons modernization, and doctrine improvement was high (Hart 2001, p.98).
Conclusion
Insufficient noncommissioned officer training significantly retarded their professional development. Disaster relief missions created a chance for training in mobilization and nonmilitary operations, but they could not replace field training exercises. The training during World War I was not perfect. Some criticized the Command and General Staff School for stifling creative thinking by rewarding only those soldiers who could produce the “school solution” to military problems. They indicated that special importance given to problem-solving methods was more significant than the problem itself. As a result, due to problems within the American army’s training and mobilization system, the American Expeditionary Forces training system was not able to unambiguously train the skills and create abilities necessary to execute military doctrine.
Between 1918 and 1923 the U.S. Army reconsidered its doctrine and organization taking into consideration the First World War’s lessons. By 1945 it had completed the evaluation and produced an exhaustive body of literature to guide training for fight operations. Field Service Regulations 1941 supported the effort by providing comprehensive doctrinal guidance to the army and serving as the ground for development of military strategies. Training now contained defense against the airplane and gas. Some units trained with tanks, included exercising with infantry, artillery, and in some cases airplanes. New soldiers learned required skills for doctrine development under the direction of noncommissioned officers.
References
FM 100-5, 1 October 1939, p. 27.
Hart, R. A. (2001). Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in Normandy. Lynne Rienner: Boulder, CO.
HQDA, FM 100-5 Operations, glossary-3.
Offner, A. A. (1971). America and the Origins of World War II, 1933-1941: New Perspectives in History. Houghton Mifflin: Boston.
Summers H. G. (1982). On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Presidio Press: Novato, CA, 1982.
Table 1 Life Span of Army Doctrine Manuals
Publication Year
Longevity in Years
1905
3
1908
2
1910
3
1913
1
1914
3
1917
6
1923
16
1939
2
1941
3
1944
5
1949
5
1954
8
1962
6
1968
8
1976
5
1981
5
1986
7
1993
5
1998
Current
