The line “No plan survives contact with the enemy” is usually credited to Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. He did not write it in that form. In his essay Ueber Strategie of 1871, Moltke wrote: Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus. (No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.) The next sentence reads: Nur der Laie glaubt in dem Verlauf eines Feldzuges die konsequente Durchführung eines im voraus gefaßten in allen Einzelheiten überlegten und bis ans Ende festgehaltenen, ursprünglichen Gedankens zu erblicken. (Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent execution of an original idea, thought out in advance in every detail and held to the end.) Moltke saw strategy as a system of expedients. He gave his subordinate commanders wide freedom of action in carrying out their mission. The familiar English wording, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”, is found in 1961, attributed to Moltke, in Correlli Barnett’s book The Desert Generals.