Germans and Counterinsurgency
I’d been wondering all week what I should ask the German foreign policy and defense officials I was scheduled to talk to today, so at the suggestion of Spencer Ackerman I asked what they thought about General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency concepts and the general doctrinal shift toward COIN in the United States.
Bundeswehr photo by Martin Stollberg
Unfortunately, nobody in the German government seems to have any interest whatsoever in talking to a room full of American journalists on anything other than off-the-record terms. Nevertheless, a few points emerged:
One is that there’s disagreement about terminology. It was explained to me that one challenge NATO has is that sometimes different national militaries will agree on an idea but have different names for it, or else will be agreeing on some words but actually mean quite different things. German public opinion is very pacifistic and the German military doesn’t like the term “counterinsurgency” which I think it regards as too alarming. They prefer to say that you need a comprehensive approach, rather than just killing the bad guys.
They also seem to sort of resent the idea circulating in the American press and apparently to some extent in the U.S. government that (to exaggerate a bit for effect) COIN doctine was something invented in the U.S. military in 2004-2005 then perfected in 2007-2008 and now General Petraeus has come down from the mountaintop to enlighten the allies. As the Germans see it, these had been familiar ideas in Europe for a while.
There’s also some really evident bitterness about the way the US government handled the Kunduz aistrike situation. I deliberately tried to not ask about this since I figured I’d just get a defensive response, but Germans wanted to drag the conversation about COIN doctrine back to this point. Few people really dispute the basic point about the need to avoid civilian casualties, but I think there’s a feeling that the Bundeswehr was being made into an example by American commanders and publicly humiliated in a way that would never have been done to an American military unit operating in a hostile situation.
21 Responses to “Germans and Counterinsurgency”
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September 28th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Well, when I talked to an old friend who’s a retired military officer what he told me about counterinsurgency was that the US Army had built up an excellent counterinsurgency capacity at the end of the VietNam war when it was too late to do any good (thanks, Westy) and then thrown it away in the 80’s (thanks, Cheney) and had spent the last few years rediscovering it.
Given the attention span of the press, that could translate to its being invented by Petraeus.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:33 am
A very good book on Counterinsurgency was written by a German named Johann Ewald. In 1785!! Titled Abhandlung Uber den kleinen Krieg (Treatise on Partisan Warfare )
Based on lessons learned trying to suppress the American Founding Fathers in the American Revolution. Ewald was a Hessian Jager commander.
See http://www.greenwood.com/books/printFlyer.aspx?sku=EEP%2F&location=international
Had lots of good lessons for Iraq. Measures to maintain operation security , assuming there are spies among the native population. Emphasis on maintaining strong discipline over your men, to prevent them from abusing the native population and thereby creating recruits for the insurgents. Emphasis on the misery war brings to the civilians , on providing food and money to the civilians in order to gain their friendship so that they will warn you of insurgent’s plans to ambush you, etc.
George III didn’t listen , of course, and ran up huge debts. George W didn’t listen either.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Re “As the Germans see it, these had been familiar ideas in Europe for a while.”
———
Yes, you could say that. Ask the Hessians what it was like fighting the hillbillies in the Carolinas circa 1780.
Cornwallis’s hardened combat veterans were aghast at the death and destruction visited on the Tory sympathizers by the Patriot terrorists. The Patriots got their asses kicked at standup battles –but they sure as shit could ensure that Cornwallis could not establish a puppet government in the South that would support commerce and enable collection of taxes and profits. The Dutch bankers saw that as well, cut off George III’s line of credit and the American Revolution was written off by the English aristocracy as the stupid venture of an insane monarch.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:45 am
The Germans, of course, adopted a different approach to counterinsurgency in Eastern Europe in WWII.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Which may account for the shifty eyes and footshuffling when Jewish American Matthew asked the German politicans about “counterinsurgency theory”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto#Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_and_destruction_of_the_Ghetto
Spencer Ackerman has a weird sense of humor.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Germany is NOT a Zionist Occupied Government. There’s only one of those in the West. They’re NOT keeping Apartheid Israel afloat. Re Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever – they have no fear of terrorism nor any interest in shaping their foreign policy to suit Joe Lieberman or Binny Netyanahu.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Don Williams,
Interesting stuff about Johann Ewald’s counterinsurgency book. Curiously, the best “how to” guide on running an insurgency, Der totale Widerstand, was also written in German.
Total Resistance (Der totale Widerstand: Eine Kleinkriegsanleitung für Jedermann) is an official Swiss manual for resistance to enemy occupation of Switzerland (presumably in a Soviet general occupation of all central Europe) that was issued in 1957-1958.
It was written by Hans von Dach of the Swiss military and is a crash course in irregular resistance by ordinary civilians, rather than a plan for resistance by defeated soldiers operating as guerrillas within their homeland. It notably presumes a form of irregular resistance involving nothing beyond rifles, hand grenades, and mines that very much resembles the Iraqi insurgency 50 years after the book was written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_%28book%29
September 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The US Marines published a “Small Wars Manual” in the 1930’s based on its experiences with insurgency in Central America.
It also advocated the “inkblot” strategy in Vietnam in the early-60’s, essentially securing a small geographic area, allowing it to stabilize politically, then expanding further outward.
I’ll never forget my battalion commander’s (highly decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam era) statement of intent the night we invaded Grenada. Paraphrased; make sure the people of Grenada know we’re here on their behalf to rid the island of dangerous elements for their safety and for which we’ll need their help. Don’t do anything to make them an enemy.
So, it appears this particular military strategy (now called COIN) gets dusted off every few years and trotted out with a new book cover. It seems the only people who are astonished this strategy works is a benighted media that has to package something old as “new(s)”.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
All due respect to the Bundeswehr, but when I think of German arms and counter-insurgency what tends to come to mind is Southwest Africa, Yugoslavia, and the Eastern Front; all real funfests.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
The glorification of the “underground” in western Europe in World War II tends to obscure the most important aspects of irregular war:
1) An efficient government can readily handle an efficient insurgent movement.
2) Insurgent movements are usually helpless without outside assistance.
3) Any government or army of occupation can defeat insurgents if it is willing to kill enough civilians.
The Nazi German state only had problems with insurgents in countries where it could not spare the manpower to suppress them. If a resistance movement came out in the open, or did enough damage to force the German army to act, they would move in and crush it in short order.
This is one of the areas of warfare where the evil guys have a definite advantage. Which is why Inglorious Bastards is the stupidist concept for a movie in recent memory. Like its influential predecessors Dirty Harry, The Dirty Dozen, and The Untouchables, it teaches people the wrong lesson.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Re Midland at 10: “The glorification of the “underground” in western Europe in World War II tends to obscure the most important aspects of irregular war”
———–
Valid points all. However, you overlook that insurgencies –especially when working in conjunction with outside foreign armies — can cause damage and strain on an occupier out of all proportion to the resources they require.
Insurgencies require much less funding than do regular forces.
They provide a unique synergy with regular forces — it is one thing for the enemy to move his forces to meet and fight with an outside army , it is something else to do so when his lines of communication, line of transport and stockpiles in the rear are under attack at the same time.
Which is why Great Britain fought hard to convince the French Resistance to not arise until D-Day.
On D-Day, one of Hitler’s top armor units — Das Reich — was delayed for DAYS from reaching the Normandy beachhead because two French teenage girls rode on bicycles past German soldiers and stuffed abrasive powder into the axle gears of the railroad cars deployed to transport Das Reich’s heavy German tanks. The train moved only a few miles before seizing up. Nor only did it take a lot of time to unload the tanks off the railroad cars, the tanks broke down trying to rush across the countryside.
It’s difficult to trip someone standing on guard who is alert. It is easy to trip someone rushing down a staircase to meet a threat.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
There was always a strong conflict , however, between Great Britain’s Direct Action forces (SOE) and her intelligence collection service (SIS aka MI6).
It is highly important to collect info on the enemy in hostile , denied areas. However, intel collection networks in such areas tend to be uncovered and destroyed if the enemy security forces are aroused by sabotage, assassinations,etc.
Intel can have enormous impact on the direction of war (see: Great Britain’s acquistion of the Enigma machine and her exploitation of the resulting ability to read German military traffic in near real time. See also the Rosenberg/Cohen’s delivery of the atomic bomb designs from Manhattan to Stalin).
PLus, Intel organizations argue that air force bombers can do a better job than saboteurs once a target is identified.
So high command has to make a series of complex tradeoffs.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Re Shrike at 9: “All due respect to the Bundeswehr, but when I think of German arms and counter-insurgency what tends to come to mind is Southwest Africa, Yugoslavia, and the Eastern Front; all real funfests.”
————
On the other hand, a German officer named Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, almost singlehandly drove the British apeshit in East Africa during WWI. Diverted enormous British resources from the European theatre.
Waging guerrilla war using mostly native African forces, von Lettow conducted one of the greatest guerrilla operations in history.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Emil_von_Lettow-Vorbeck.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
All due respect to the Bundeswehr, but when I think of German arms and counter-insurgency what tends to come to mind is Southwest Africa, Yugoslavia, and the Eastern Front; all real funfests.
Funny, when I think of American arms and counter-insurgency I think of the Indian genocide, the torture and massacre of Filipino resistance fighters, the deaths of millions of Vietnamese and the illegal attack on Iraq. All, I’m sure, equally fun for the victims.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
@8 Michael Brown: “It also advocated the “inkblot” strategy in Vietnam in the early-60’s, essentially securing a small geographic area, allowing it to stabilize politically, then expanding further outward.”
Yeah, it had a chance, didn’t it. The inkblot strategy. But we chose Search and Destroy, body counts, Agent Orange and firepower instead.
Inkblot is the only way forward. Alexander figured it out. Essentially, he put up just enough inkblots in Afghanistan that he was able to extricate his forces, guard his train and rear, and continue his march east, toward India and future jungle battles.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Germany has killed more civilians than any other western country.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Re beowulf at 7:
I’m not sure that Total Resistance is a book that anyone wants to be on record in the Internet Archives as having read. heh heh
Do me a favor. Send a copy to Dick Cheney. Use a yellow marker to highlight the pages on oil facilities.
September 28th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Max424 (#15), while the Marines were running I Corps, the inkblots were in the form of combined action platoons that basically lived out among the villages. The results were promising, to the point where the NLF stopped screwing with the CAPs, and redeployed elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Gen Westmoreland didn’t do business that way, and won the pissing match. From late ‘66 onward he had the Marines focus on creating a cordon sanitaire along the DMZ. Made for great combat photography at Khe Sanh, but otherwise worthless.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
“Funny, when I think of American arms and counter-insurgency I think of the Indian genocide, the torture and massacre of Filipino resistance fighters, the deaths of millions of Vietnamese and the illegal attack on Iraq. All, I’m sure, equally fun for the victims.”
Let’s not forget the few million we killed across Latin America overthrowing democratically-elected leftists and propping up puppet regimes from Guatemala to Chile throughout the twentieth century. We really give ourselves way too much of a pass on that particular national disgrace, especially with regard to the prominent role played by Saint Ronald of California. Iran-Contra was just the tip of a horrific iceberg.
Check out The Last Colonial Massacre and any of a number of good books on the School of the Americas for a taste of why, for many of our southern neighbors, we are not the good guys.
September 29th, 2009 at 10:23 am
What someone needs to do is put together a generic list of American sins for the Ameriphobes and flagellents to copy for their little sermons on “Why We Are Too EVIL to Discuss Other Countries in Public Forums.”
Lessee, we’ve got colonisation, Christianity, measles, smallpox, the Powhatans, King Phillips War, slavery, the Conestogas, capitalism, sexism, the Year Without a Summer . . . Wounded Knee . . . lynching, Internment camps, Iraq, Waco, sexism, global warming, Gitmo, the Indian Ocean tsunami . . .” Yep, we need to put bags over our faces and walk around banging our heads with boards instead of discussing foreign policy, politics, morality, etc.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
14 & 19: And a good time was had by all. As they say: War made the state and the state made war.