5 ms·

Patton once said "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." If the author's third point is an

by gpcz 14y ago

Patton once said "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." If the author's third point is an accurate representation of reality in the Air Force, I wonder how the armed forces went so far to the other extreme since WW2.

philwelch 14y ago
Militaries are like any large bureaucracy--they stagnate in the absence of competition. It's been a long time since the US military got its ass kicked.
eru 14y ago
> "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." I guess they learned that from the German army.
- davidf18 14y ago
  http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/106656 http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/106... Harry Yeide. Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies Patton was also a keen student of translated German military literature, such as the World War I memoirs of Hans von Seeckt, the chief of staff of the German 11th Army, and Adolf von Schell’s Battle Leadership. According to military historian Harry Yeide, Patton’s style of commanding comes close to the German concept of Auftragstaktik, or mission-type orders: In German, whereas ein Befehl is a direct order, eine Direktive, a directive, is something broader and less detailed, where the commander states what he wants to achieve but leaves it up to his men how to go about it. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity,” runs a famous Patton quote. On meddling generals, he noted, “The tactics belong to battalion commanders. If generals knew less tactics, they would interfereless.”
tanzam75 14y ago
Because the United States won World War II, and because it outclassed every opponent it fought after World War II. Winning has a very bad effect on innovation. In contrast, it's when you lose that the old doctrines get discredited and innovation has a chance to take hold. Patton was essentially describing the famous German system of Auftragstaktik (mission tactics), in which junior officers are given an objective and permitted the freedom to decide how to accomplish that objective. The Prussians developed mission tactics and the modern general staff because they were so shocked by their defeat at the hands of Napoleon. It took Napoleon just three weeks to march into Berlin, winning every battle along the way. Three weeks? Frederick the Great had held out for five years! Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out and fixed it. In the late twentieth century, the Israelis have been the foremost practitioners of German-style mission tactics. And it's because they faced the same situation than the Germans faced, but worse -- surrounded by enemies, and outnumbered. They cannot win on numerical superiority, so they must win on the superiority of their military leadership.
- eru 14y ago
  > Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out and fixed it. For more than a century the secret weapon of the Prussian (and then German) military was the General Staff. Whereas other powers started planning once war was declared, the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers: Want to attack Austria tomorrow? Just tell me whether we can assume France and Russia are neutral or not, and the time of the year you want the campaign, and I tell you which drawer to get the plans from. The birth of the modern university system happened around the same time after Prussia's defeat at Napoleon's hands.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers We (the US) learned to do the same thing, even to the extreme of War Plan Red, the plan to fight the UK and its colonies, beginning 1927 and updated through 1939. It broke down into sub-plans, one for the UK itself and one for each major colony, including War Plan Crimson, the plan to invade Canada. Did we imagine we'd have to actually fight the Brits? No, not really; we were just being prepared. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

by gpcz 14y ago

philwelch 14y ago

Militaries are like any large bureaucracy--they stagnate in the absence of competition. It's been a long time since the US military got its ass kicked.

eru 14y ago

> "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." I guess they learned that from the German army.

davidf18 14y ago
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/106656 http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/106... Harry Yeide. Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies Patton was also a keen student of translated German military literature, such as the World War I memoirs of Hans von Seeckt, the chief of staff of the German 11th Army, and Adolf von Schell’s Battle Leadership. According to military historian Harry Yeide, Patton’s style of commanding comes close to the German concept of Auftragstaktik, or mission-type orders: In German, whereas ein Befehl is a direct order, eine Direktive, a directive, is something broader and less detailed, where the commander states what he wants to achieve but leaves it up to his men how to go about it. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity,” runs a famous Patton quote. On meddling generals, he noted, “The tactics belong to battalion commanders. If generals knew less tactics, they would interfereless.”

tanzam75 14y ago

Because the United States won World War II, and because it outclassed every opponent it fought after World War II. Winning has a very bad effect on innovation. In contrast, it's when you lose that the old doctrines get discredited and innovation has a chance to take hold. Patton was essentially describing the famous German system of Auftragstaktik (mission tactics), in which junior officers are given an objective and permitted the freedom to decide how to accomplish that objective. The Prussians developed mission tactics and the modern general staff because they were so shocked by their defeat at the hands of Napoleon. It took Napoleon just three weeks to march into Berlin, winning every battle along the way. Three weeks? Frederick the Great had held out for five years! Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out and fixed it. In the late twentieth century, the Israelis have been the foremost practitioners of German-style mission tactics. And it's because they faced the same situation than the Germans faced, but worse -- surrounded by enemies, and outnumbered. They cannot win on numerical superiority, so they must win on the superiority of their military leadership.

eru 14y ago
> Clearly, something was very wrong with the Prussian army -- so they figured it out and fixed it. For more than a century the secret weapon of the Prussian (and then German) military was the General Staff. Whereas other powers started planning once war was declared, the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers: Want to attack Austria tomorrow? Just tell me whether we can assume France and Russia are neutral or not, and the time of the year you want the campaign, and I tell you which drawer to get the plans from. The birth of the modern university system happened around the same time after Prussia's defeat at Napoleon's hands.
- derleth 14y ago
  > the Germans had plans for _everything_ in their drawers We (the US) learned to do the same thing, even to the extreme of War Plan Red, the plan to fight the UK and its colonies, beginning 1927 and updated through 1939. It broke down into sub-plans, one for the UK itself and one for each major colony, including War Plan Crimson, the plan to invade Canada. Did we imagine we'd have to actually fight the Brits? No, not really; we were just being prepared. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red