Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds., Military Effectiveness Volume 1: The First World War (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Defining and assessing military effectiveness is a challenging yet necessary task. Armed forces taking stock of previous performance need to study examples from the past to focus education and resources for future conflicts. Sponsored by the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, Military Effectiveness Volume 1: The First World War is the first in a three-volume set edited by renowned military historians Allan Millett and Williamson Murray. These three works examine how the militaries of seven primary belligerents—Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan—performed during World War I, the interwar period, and World War II. The authors selected to contribute to this volume are stalwarts in the field who bring an immense amount of expertise from their respective specializations into this work.
Military effectiveness has often been analyzed through either a sociological approach focusing on cohesion and camaraderie, or an operational approach focusing on how doctrine and systems are used on the battlefield. Murray and Millett acknowledge this trend yet attempt to look deeper and broader at the constraints and capabilities that preclude effectiveness in war. The introduction lays out a coherent framework by which the subsequent authors structure their essays. The editors ask the authors to examine the preparation for and conduct of war at vertical levels of analysis while also analyzing proficiency horizontally across organizations. Murray and Millett define military effectiveness as “the process by which armed forces convert resources into fighting power.” (2) A fully effective military thus derives maximum combat power from its available resources—combat power referring to the ability to destroy the enemy while limiting damage to oneself. Murray and Millett argue that effectiveness occurs at four levels: tactical, operational, strategic, and political. Each overlap but must be assessed separately to gain a full picture of a nation’s effectiveness.
The chapter authors use the aforementioned four-tier vertical system of analysis to analyze a given nation’s effectiveness during the war. Political effectiveness refers to a nation’s ability to obtain and allocate resources for military activity. It depends on how legitimate political leaders regard military operations to then allocate national resources to meet military ends. Strategic effectiveness involves the employment of national armed forces to meet national goals. Operational effectiveness is how well a military develops and employs institutional concepts and doctrines to meet strategic objectives within the theater of war. Tactical effectiveness involves the method of fighting to achieve operational objectives. Effectiveness at one level is not enough for success. As demonstrated in Holger Herwig’s essay on the German Army in World War I, the political and strategic efforts are of primary importance. No amount of tactical effectiveness could make up for strategic and political blunders. On the other hand, Britain eventually made up for tactical and operational deficiencies thanks to its strategic and political effectiveness.
During the war, the major powers experienced similar levels of ineffectiveness at the tactical level. Tactical and operational plans stymied by attritional trench warfare limited strategic options. The German Stoßtruppen provide the most salient example. However, without the requisite resources—such as armored, mechanized vehicles—German tactical advancements did not result in operational or strategic gains. Those who managed their political and strategic problems the best—provided necessary resources to meet realistic strategic goals—emerged victorious. (330) The Americans had little time to develop and improve on tactical and operational flaws, yet like their British allies, benefited from political and strategic strengths that allowed the American Expeditionary Force to impact the war. Political decisions drove tactical performance, as Timothy Nenninger states. (153) Military effectiveness is a complicated, multi-layered phenomenon that requires a flexible system to adapt to emerging conditions—at all levels. Because militaries rarely realize the requirements of the next war until they are engaged in conflict, they must build problem-solving capabilities at various levels to deal with future unforeseen problems.
Logically organized, each chapter tackles the four levels of analysis with convincing examples. The concluding chapter offers a compelling summation from Paul Kennedy—author of the analysis of Great Britain. As assessing and achieving military effectiveness in war is inherently complicated, this book highlights some of the myriad factors involved to offer examples for future policymakers. Because the set traces effectiveness across the entire thirty-year period from World War I through the end of World War II, it focuses on those nation-states heavily involved in both wars. As such, this project omits some critical players from one war or the other, such as the Ottoman Empire, China, or Austro-Hungary, that might offer interesting examples in their own right. Regardless, this work provides convincing cases for historians and others to understand what makes nations effective, or not, at wielding national military power to support their goals. This book is a must-read for defense and policymaking professionals due to its genesis as a set of comparative case-studies intended to inform current and future military organizations. Anyone wishing to learn more about World War I or these belligerents’ abilities to wage full-spectrum combat operations would do well to read this book.