Russo-Ukraine war and Auftragstaktik

The Russo-Ukraine war is now in its eighth month. Despite initial territorial losses in the northeast, east and south, the Ukrainian military has been able to not only bring the Russian offensives to a grinding halt, but through brilliant planning and deft execution, mounted counteroffensives and liberated some territory.

How has this come about, especially given the asymmetric advantages enjoyed by the Russian military at the beginning of the war?

To begin with, there is the US/NATO military support to Ukraine in terms of training and state-of-the-art weapon systems and platforms. But battlefields are disorderly and a commander is not just the ‘conductor of an orchestra’ employing infantry, armour and artillery in a ‘conducted battle.’ It’s not just about ‘putting steel on target’.

Similarly, equipment and real-time information, while vital, do not win battles per se. There are a number of other factors, including wedding technical capabilities to how and where force is employed and to what end. What are the organisational advantages or, alternately, disadvantages of a force going into war? Is Force X smart enough to avoid playing to the adversary’s strengths and force the adversary to respond to X’s planning and execution? How is the force trained, i.e., how has a force decided to fight, against what odds and whether its training and the way it will fight imbricate. Put another way, if a force doesn’t know how to fight smartly, equipment can only do so much.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the world saw images of hapless Ukrainian troops being herded and confined to the barracks by small numbers of lightly-armed Russian soldiers. What happened between then and now? Was Crimea a turning point for Ukraine?

The ongoing war can be analysed from many angles. But I want to focus here on just one aspect: the difference between how Russia has fought and is fighting and how the Ukrainian military is planning and executing its operations.

That difference is between central planning and initiative at the level of fighting echelons. Russian troops wait for orders from higher command echelons. The Ukrainians, from what is being evidenced, operate and take initiative as the battle unfolds. This does not mean there’s no overall planning: it simply means the overall plan is being executed by junior commanders while thinking on their feet in the din of disorder and chaos.

To understand how important this is and what it really means, one has to go back to how Prussia — over a long period — evolved the concept of what has come to be known as Auftragstaktik, mission-tactics or as the US military translates it, mission command. There’s been much discussion of Auftragstaktik and in some ways it can be elusive and also misleading, though not so for the Germans. It had its meaning in the professionalism and an entire military culture as it evolved over a long period of time in Prussia and later the unified Germany.

In his Instructions for Large Unit Commanders, Helmut Karl Bernhard von Moltke (the Elder) wrote in 1869: “In general, one does well to order no more than is absolutely necessary and to avoid planning beyond the situation one can foresee. These change very rapidly in war. Seldom will orders that anticipate far in advance and in detail succeed completely to execution.”

“The higher the authority, the shorter and more general will the orders be. The next lower command adds what further precision appears necessary. The detail of execution is left to the verbal order, to the command. Each thereby retains freedom of action and decision within his authority.” (Quoted in “How the Germans Defined Auftragstaktik” by Donald E Vandergriff, a former US Army major.)

Vandergriff writes: “The overall commander’s intent is for the member to strive for professionalism. In return, the individual will be given latitude in the accomplishment of their given missions.”

According to William Lind, “During 19th-century wargames, German junior officers routinely received problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders. Orders themselves specified the result to be achieved, but never the method (Auftragstaktik). Initiative was more important than obedience. Mistakes were tolerated as long as they came from too much initiative rather than too little.”

It seems that the Ukrainians have managed the connection between an overall plan and its flexible, innovative execution on the ground. That is a great achievement and allows local commanders to ‘add what further precision appears necessary’.

In a talk given to students at Fort Leavenworth in April 2002, Major-General Werner Widder of the German Army explained Auftragstaktik and Innere Führung (leadership development and civic education) as “Trademarks of German Leadership”. He opened his talk thus: “In May 1940, the seizure of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael was critically important to the successful conduct of the French campaign by the German Wehrmacht in World War II. And yet, preparation and conduct of this special operation were entrusted to a first lieutenant of the paratroopers, which at the time was a branch of the air force.”

As it happened, Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig’s glider had “to make an emergency landing in a field near Cologne, which was approximately 100 kilometres from the objective”. Then, “During the landing approach to Eben Emael, another glider had to force-land approximately 60 kilometres from its objective. The assault section leader, Staff Sergeant Meier, took decisive action by appropriating two vehicles and then threading his way through the columns of the main attack divisions marshalled at the border”.

Meier then reached Maastricht and crossed the Meuse River before advancing to Eben Emael. But he couldn’t storm the fortress because of the canal surrounding it. What did Meier do? He “decided on his own initiative to attack the Belgian forces in the environs of the fortress. Wounded in the course of the fighting, Meier captured 121 Belgian prisoners of war, whom he turned in the following day against a receipt as proof that he had done everything in his power to complete his mission”.

Interestingly, as MG Widder noted, the term Auftragstaktik was coined in the 1890s by critics who thought that giving so much initiative to lower-level commanders would threaten military discipline. But Moltke looked at the concept differently. The subordinate’s actions or initiative were not to be wayward or outside the overall operational plans. Should the subordinate units and sub-units or their commanders wait for orders in pressing situations where they couldn’t get those orders?

The key principle of Auftragstaktik for Moltke was that “the subordinate is to act within the guidelines of his superior’s intent. Knowing his superior’s intent, the subordinate thus works toward achieving it.” The performance of the German military in subsequent wars proved the effectiveness of the concept and the culture and professionalism that evolved around it.

The difference between the Ukrainian military in Crimea in 2014 and now reflects the transformation of a poorly-trained and badly-managed military into an effective fighting force that can utilise the help it is getting and exploit the adversary’s weaknesses. This is not a final verdict on the ongoing war. Speaking purely in operational terms, Russians could begin to learn lessons, rethink their plans and put better effort into executing them. For now, however, they are being bested by the Ukrainians who have shown themselves to be better planners and flexible in execution.

The writer is interested in security and foreign policies