history

No Standing Army

Up until the end of the Second World War the United States did not maintain a standing army. America‘s founding fathers warned about the dangers a standing army presents should it become the instrument of tyranny. The American military history is a series of mobilizations and demobilizations.

After the the First World War the U.S. reduced its forces to approximately 100,000 soldiers, equal to the limit imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. American mobilization after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 took up to an entire year.

Although American armed forces have been present in many countries since the end of the Second World War, it does not have a European-type tradition of officer corps and militias with long-standing doctrines, training and fighting methods.

In many ways, Americans have had to retrain themselves for the wars they fought – enlisting, training and managing young men at short notice and within short periods of time. It could also be argued that the average education level of the average American enlisted soldier is/was not as high as his counterpart in northern European countries.

These factors – a tradition of demobilization, the need to enlist and train rapidly, a broad spectrum of levels of education – may have forced the American military to develop leadership approaches which make necessary close management of personnel and operation.

German Kleinstaaterei

Klein, small. Staaterei, many states. From roughly 1650 until 1850 Germany consisted of some 350 independent states, most very small, with only a few kingdoms such as Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. The Kaiser had little direct power over this patchwork of states. His influence was reduced to that of a moderator.

While England and France were well advanced in becoming unified centralized states, Germany remained a country of loosely affiliated independent territories. And although many of these territories developed their own modern governmental bodies, there was little progress made to coordinate or integrate them at the national level.

One of the causes of the German Kleinstaaterei was the German tradition of inheritance which divided up possessions among all male heirs, and not the just the oldest. This led to more and smaller states. Complicating matters was the tradition of dividing up the inheritance equally. This led to the creation of non-contiguous states with en- and exclaves.

Although two large states were formed – Prussia led by the Hohenzollern dynasty and Austria-Hungary led by the Hapsburg dynasty – both had non-contiguous territories which made it difficult for Germany to consolidate as a nation-state similar to England and France.

The German Bund – created after the Napoleonic Wars – reduced the Kleinstaaterei to just under 40 independent states. But it wasn‘t until 1871 when Germany finally became a nation-state in the modern sense after Prussia defeated France and declared itself a Reich. In the years before the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia had consolidated most of the German states via war.

Führen im Auftrag – Quotes

„The mistakes of senior commanders are often rectified by the troops below.“ Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), Prussian General, author of On War.

In reality, the Germans owe their final victory to the enormous amount of independently-minded and innovative junior-officers in all positions all the way down to the very lowest ranks.“ Russian General Woide on the Franco-Prussion War of 1870/71

„War demands iron discipline of troops and exceedingly tight coordination of forces. In the heat of battle, however, of highest importance are officers and soldiers trained to think and act independently and spontaneously.“ Prussian officer training manual of 1906

„Führen mit Auftrag is an extraordinarily broad and involved term, which includes all-encompassing aspects of current doctrine concerning the essence of war, characteristics of leadership, tactics, the leadership of troops, the relationship of senior to junior officers to each other and to soldiers, as well as training and education. In addition, these aspects are formulated systematically in a way which allows them to both mutually support each other and to make them inseparable.“ An American Officer (1987)

Führen mit Auftrag

Führen mit Auftrag, a multifaceted leadership concept roughly translated as Leading by Mission, has been the foundational leadership principle in the German military over the last two hundred years. It has its roots in the famous Prussian Reforms of the early 19th Century when the Germans did a comprehensive root cause analysis of why they were so suddenly and thoroughly defeated by Napoleon‘s armies.

Führen mit Auftrag – leading by mission – is how Germans define Menschenführung or leadership of men. The officer issues to his troops a mission, a goal. It is generally formulated, includes a time component and an indication of forces required. It is then up to the next level to devise how they will complete the mission independent of their leadership.

Unique about Führen mit Auftrag is the degree of freedom on the tactical level given to those issued the mission. As long as they complete the overall mission, they decide independently which approach is best, including significant adjustments to possible changes in the situation. Required at the tactical level are flexibility, creativity and executing independent of next-level leadership.

Of critical importance to Führen mit Auftrag is that the tactical level understand clearly and thoroughly the strategic thinking of their commanding officer, and are trained to act independently of that commanding officer, yet in the spirit of his strategic intent.

Those on the tactical must also possess both good judgement and the will to make independent decisions. They must have a strong sense of responsibility and duty. The commanding officer, for his or her part, must make their strategic thinking clear, transparent and understandable for those on the tactical level.

Immigrant experience

All Americans are descendants of immigrants. And the immigrant experience begins with risk-taking. All immigrants risk, to one degree or another, what they own and know. Taking that one great risk, that leap of faith, makes small most later decisions in life. Immigrants are, or have become, by their very nature risk-takers. Americans are risk-takers.

The American economic system encourages entrepreneurship. It pays in the U.S. to establish your own business. Businesses owners who enjoy high success do very well financially. Owners who enjoy medium success do well financially. Those, however, who enjoy low success do very poorly financially. “No risk, no reward.”

Small businesses – firms with fewer than 500 employees – drive the American economy by providing jobs for over half of the nation’s private sector workforce. Small businesses are job creators, representing 99.7% of all firms. They make up the following: 64% of net new private-sector jobs, 49.2% of private-sector employment, 46% of private-sector output, 43% of high-tech employment, 98% of firms exporting goods and 33% of exporting value.

Small businesses create more than half of the private non-farm gross domestic product and create 60-80% of net new jobs. 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics small firms accounted for 64% of the net new jobs created or 11.8 million of the 18.5 million net new jobs between 1993 and 2011. Since the latest recession, from mid-2009 to 2011, small firms, led by the larger ones in the category (20-499) employees, accounted for 67% of the net new jobs.

American Entrepreneurs

Scottish-American Andrew Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century with the Carnegie Steel Company. Carnegie established public libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and other English-speaking counties.

He funded approximately 3,000 libraries in 47 states in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and Fiji. He donated 50,000 British pounds to help establish the University of Birmingham in 1899.

British- and Irish-American Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company and was sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His development of the assembly line allowed many middle class Americans to afford and buy automobiles. Ford left most of his wealth to the Ford Foundation.

William “Bill” Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company. He co-founded Microsoft with colleague, Paul Allen. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. After studying the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Gates sold some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the William H. Gates Foundation.

In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is currently the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.

The American culture admires risk-takers. They are considered to be courageous, ingenious, hard-working, forward thinking. The American experience is one of trial and error. It begins with how parents raise their children to try things, to attempt more than before, to experiment. A mistake is only one when one doesn‘t learn from it. Trial and error is moving forward, is getting better at something. It is synonymous with learning by doing.

Frederick August the Procrastinator

Frederick August, the King of Saxony, was one of history’s great procrastinators. While he began as one of Napoleon’s greatest foes, he soon became his greatest ally. In return, Napoleon elevated him from prince elector to king.

But by 1813, his alliance with Napoleon would cause him to lose the Battle of Leipzig. Though Frederick August was careful in attempting to side himself with the great forces who opposed him, a treaty that he had made with Austria eventually dissolved. Taken into captivity by the Prussians, Frederick August was forced to turn more than half of his territory over to his archrivals.

But why was Frederick August on the losing side of the Battle of Leipzig? Historians consider him to have been incapable of making decisions. He is credited with coining the phrase “no decision is better than a bad decision.”

During the revolt he spent his time sitting almost apathetically in the basement in the city hall of Leipzig. To add to the confusion, Frederick August was an exceptionally unpredictable monarch; very few rulers changed their mind so often.

Not only was he incapable of making decisions, but as soon as a decision was made it essentially would have lost all meaning in the moment of its creation, having already been undermined in significance and seriousness by the probability that Frederick August would again change direction.

Limitless Resources

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) – French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America – wrote: “The country appears to stretch on forever and is of limitless resources. But, no matter how fast it grows, it will remain surrounded by resources it cannot possibly exhaust.”

Energy: The United States has more coal reserves than any other country in the world and represent one-quarter of the world’s total coal supply. The U.S. has 272 billion tons of coal reserves and uses about 1.1 billion tons of coal per year. At this rate, America’s 272 billion tons of coal reserves would last nearly 250 years.

According to the 2012 article “American Oil Growing Most Since First Well Signals Independence“ by Asjylyn Loder on bloomberg.com domestic output of oil grew by a record 766,000 barrels a day to the highest level in 15 years, government data shows, putting the nation on pace to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer by 2020.

Net petroleum imports have fallen by more than 38 percent since the 2005 peak, and now account for 41 percent of demand, down from 60 percent seven years ago, moving the United States closer to energy independence than it has been for decades.

Key natural resources: One-third of U.S. land is covered by forests (302 million hectares), making forestland the number one type of land use in the United States. One-fifth of U.S. land is timberland (204 million hectares), which is land capable of producing 1.38 cubic meters per hectare of industrial wood annually. 71 percent of all timberland in the U.S. is privately owned, while 29 percent is publicly owned.

Land: The United States has a land area of 3.8 million miles² (9.8 million km²) compared to 9.7 million km² in China, 0.36 million km² in Germany and 0.38 million km² in Japan.

Population density: United States population density per square mile is 84, compared to 365 for China, 609 for Germany, and 836 for Japan.

Entangling Alliances

As a nation-state, in their international relations, Americans warn against becoming involved in complexity. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) – an English-American political theorist-activist, author, and revolutionary – instilled non-interventionist ideas into the politics of the American colonies.

His work Common Sense (1776) argued in favor of avoiding alliances with foreign powers and influenced the Second Continental Congress to avoid forming an alliance with France.

George Washington’s farewell address restated Paine’s maxim: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation.

Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.“

Thomas Jefferson extended Paine’s ideas in his inaugural address on March 4, 1801: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

In 1823, President James Monroe articulated what would become the Monroe Doctrine: “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.“

Short. Mid. Long.

Germans think mid- to long-term. Short-term thinking and action is almost always viewed negatively. Germans associate short-term with ungrounded, fleeting, incomplete. When they make decisions they want to know, at least anticipate, what the effect (Auswirkungen) will be in other areas, on other processes, on other colleagues. They strive to understand the mid to long term effects.

Middle High German vrist. Old High German frist: what is current, about to occur; time period in which something should happen; to postpone briefly. Kurz- , mittel- , langfristig means short- , mid- , long-term.