The Franco-Prussian War

The evolution of warfare along human history is marked in several places with revolutions that often radically alter the fundamental interactions between states. One such milestone was discovered through the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871. Before this time, warfare was an action controlled by the state almost completely separately from the nation at large. This form of warfare, called cabinet warfare, often utilized limited means to achieve limited results. The hundred years before the Franco-Prussian War had seen startling changes in the methods of warfare. These events climaxed with the war between France and Prussia and set the world on a path towards Total War.

Cabinet warfare was something resembling a large-scale duel by proxy. One nation would send its army out into the field, hoping to outmaneuver or outgun the enemy. The opposing nation would naturally respond in kind. After those armies met, and one was defeated, the nation of the victor claimed whatever spoils it had been fighting for; land, shipping rights, et cetera. Once one nation had displayed the fact that it could field a superior army, the contest was over. Civilians were seldom affected unless they had the poor luck to host such a war in their backyard.

Total War on the other hand, is a theoretical form of warfare in which the nations involved are wholly committed in resources and manpower to the war effort. The widely respected Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote about Total War in his unfinished book "On War." He describes war as something that should require "Maximum exertion of strength." According to Clausewitz, when a nation goes to war with another nation, it is matching its strength with its enemy's net resources and will to continue the fight. [1] Often, however, a nation's objectives are met well before it completely defeats either of these variables within its opponent.

One of the first steps towards total war occurred immediately after the French Revolution, when a poorly armed and largely untrained army of zealous, patriotic French citizens resisted and defeated the professional armies of foreign powers whose goal it was to restore the Monarchy of France. Never before had the world seen a levee en masse, a rise of the people as a whole in the form of an army. Certainly no one of the time suspected that undisciplined, outgunned peasants could hope to make a stand against trained soldiers. The world had learned a lesson then about the effectiveness of both numbers and the spirit of a people. The technology, however, was not ready to support armies of the masses effectively.

Total War requires a nation to be fully behind a war, not just its armies and government, but also its private industry. Advances in technology required Prussia and its German allies to utilize the private sector more and more. The invention of cast steel by Alfred Krupp allowed for cannon to be more easily mass produced. The problem faced by army engineers was that this process was expensive and beyond the means of the standard army factories and armories. Not only were cannons created using this process, but the Prussian breech-loading needle gun that had been so effective against the Austrians in the Seven Weeks War was also more easily mass produced using Krupp's method of cast steel. So the private sector became involved in the war effort.[2]

Another change in war technology was the utilization and expansion of the rail system. Throughout the first half of the Nineteenth Century, Prussia, along with most of the German states, organized a massive industrial boom. Necessary to this was a massive network of rails. This network allowed for the quick mobilization of troops across a long border. It was part of the plan of the Prussian Army's Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke to beat France to the battlefield by being able to mobilize faster utilizing rail.[3]

These advancements in technology coincided with a widespread reform of the Prussian military. Set into motion by Prussian Minister of War, Albrecht Roon in the early 1860's, these reforms helped place the military on the path to Total War. First of all, Roon shifted the Landwher, or citizen's militia, into the main body of troops, an action that was no doubt a hedge against revolution. By consolidating the militia into the main body of the army, Roon ensured that the Prussian government, meaning the Kaiser, had a monopoly on armed forces within the nation. To a reactionary government that is terrified of a people's uprising similar to the French Revolution, that monopoly on force is vital. Also, by altering the number of years of service required in the reserve, the Minister of War managed to increase the wartime strength of the army from 532,700 men, to 615,900 men.[4]

This increase in manpower added to the expensive processes of mass producing high quality guns and cannon, meant that war was a much more expensive process than it had been a century ago. Manfred Messerschmidt charts in his article "The Prussian Army from Reform to War" that in 1816 the total expense of the Prussian military was 66.95 million marks. By 1862, that figure had skyrocketed to 118.8 million marks. This meant that war was no longer something you could fund directly from a war chest set aside specifically for this purpose. War was now an action that had to be funded by the nation itself, through taxes and industry. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War, the people of Prussia had to support the war. This was not Total War, but the trends towards that eventuality could be seen.[5]

The successfulness of the campaign against Austria had greatly increased the confidence of Germans in Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, with the result that most Prussians (and Germans) were more aggressive about considering a war with France. Moltke himself declared, "The present situation is favorable. It has a national character, so let us use it." Despite these bold words, the Minister of War questioned the ability of Prussian officers to adapt to the new type of war he suspected they might face. In the end he was content to wait for Bismarck to conclude diplomatic negotiations, though he proceeded apace with preparations for war.[6]

The Prussian strategy of the Franco-Prussian War stemmed from Moltke's vision of a swift decisive action that would achieve victory. For the first part of the war, his plan worked as well as he could have hoped. The well organized Prussian troops had a significant advantage over the un-coordinated French armies. Within four weeks, the French armies were contained in Metz, and Napoleon III had been captured. By the rules of cabinet warfare, the French were defeated, and should have surrendered to the terms of Prussia. Instead a people's republic was declared in Paris and a new citizen's army was armed.[7]

In addition to the resistance government, continuous guerrilla warfare plagued the Prussian troops and their supply lines. The occupying Germans were ordered from the top to treat them harshly, with the hope that executions would prove an effective deterrence, but these sparked even more reprisals. Though these homegrown fighters were undoubtedly given weapons and direction by remnants of the French army, their willingness to fight shows that the populace was choosing to be involved in the fate of their country, a trend of Total war.

This prolonging of the war past Prussia's plans brought to light its true claims; the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. In addition to this, Bismarck and Moltke's goals had been forced to adapt with the declaration of a new French republic. These reactionary conservatives and the government they served could not tolerate a democratic neighbor. To that effect, the Prussian army actually began working with the French monarchy and those who supported it to contain this new revolution. Bismarck agreed that France was allowed an army of 80,000 men to help put down the commune. Paris was besieged and bombarded, and in coordination with Prussian artillery, the French army put down the communards. 30,000 revolutionaries were shot, with many more jailed or shipped off to penal colonies.[8]

The conclusions we can draw from the siege of Paris and subsequent brutal suppression of the commune are multifarious. Firstly what can be seen is the uselessness of untrained militia against the new model of the conscripted army. An army of conscripts achieves a balance between the small, purely professional armies of the past, and the vast, but untrained levee en masse that was superior to both. Secondly was the sudden legitimacy of striking civilian targets. Not only were the guerrilla franc-tireurs targets, but also any citizen that could conceivably influence the outcome of the war. In a democratic republic of any sort, this includes a vast proportion of citizens. In the Franco-Prussian War, this included the entire city of Paris which had set up a people's commune, a government that was by definition in the hands of civilians.[9]

This acceptance of attacking civilians was one result of the Franco-Prussian War is part of a larger philosophy called Military Realism. This axiom states that rules such as international laws and treaties are irrelevant next to military objectives. The most glaring example of this is found in Adolf Hitler's betrayal of the peace agreement he made with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and later of his sudden attack upon the USSR, despite a non-aggression pact between the two nations.[10] This philosophy that states "victor above all else" is a necessary element of Total War.

An aspect of Total War similar to Military Realism is the supremacy of military priorities over domestic political forces. In Total War the stakes at risk are very high; many times the literal fate of the nation in question hangs in the balance. Naturally military necessities take far greater precedence than non-war political policies. War Minister Moltke was of the fierce opinion that politicians have no place in directing war. He went so far to say at one point that, "no civilian minister can judge what the army can bear."[11] If a nation must be completely behind a war, it by needs must be completely behind its military. This does not necessarily mean however, that the nation as a whole must be subservient to its military. Clausewitz said that "war is an act of policy," and that the military objectives are subservient to the political objectives. Total War is no exception to this rule.[12]

The Franco-Prussian war had started out as war with two main objectives: to unite as many German principalities as possible under Prussian rule, and, though this was hidden at the beginning of the war, to annex the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. When the French refused to follow the rules of Cabinet Warfare and set up a new state, the objectives had to be adapted to quash the threat of democracy. Regime change implies a far more comprehensive type of war than a simple dispute over territory.[13]

The Franco-Prussian War, despite its tendencies towards Total War, did not come near actually achieving that theoretical state. An example of this lies in the fact that in its victory Prussia did not install a puppet regime in France. Instead of installing even a German-friendly government, Prussian troops helped bring France back under the power of its previous monarchy, a monarchy that no doubt held a great deal of enmity towards the new German Reich. This is where the War more closely resembles a Cabinet war: there were limited goals at the outset, annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and the unification of Germany. Once Germany was declared a state from the palace at Versailles, the German troops got out.

The closest that the modern world has seen to Total War was the aggression of Germany's Third Reich, or World War Two. The countries involved in that incredibly bloody conflict were required to place all their resources and manpower into the war effort. To do anything less would have meant state suicide, especially for the European nations. Civilians on both sides played a massive role in the war effort, not only by working in munitions or artillery factories and buying war bonds, but also as targets. The massive bombings of German and English cities, probably a waste of munitions, did much to bring the populaces of either nation into the war. World War Two could not be a cabinet type war as seen in the days before the Franco-Prussian War once citizens of the nations involved were as legitimate targets as military targets. This is also what brought World War Two closer to Total War than World War One: the widespread bombing of cities.[14]

The Franco-Prussian War was a crossroads of military reform and advancing technology. It combined aspects of both the Cabinet War, and the newly emerging Total War. Though it cannot be classed as either, it provides enough examples of both to give historians a clearer understanding of the evolution of warfare, and by extension, to predict the possible changes that exist within our own lifetimes.

Works Cited

• Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton University Press; 1976
• Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War. Houghton Mifflin Company: 1959
• Kitchen, Martin. A Military History of Germany Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975
• Tombs, Robert. "The Wars Against Paris." On the Road to Total War, the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871. ed. Forster, Nagler
• Messerschmidt, Manfred. "The Prussian Army from Reform to War." On the Road to Total War, the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871. ed. Forster, Nagler
• Wengenroth, Ulrich. "Industry and Warfare in Prussia" On the Road to Total War, the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871. ed. Forster, Nagler

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, chapter 1, section 5

[2] Wengenroth, Ulrich. "Industry and Warfare in Prussia." On the Road to Total War ed. Forster, Nagler

[3] Kitchen, Martin. A Military History of Germany Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975

[4] Messerschmidt, Manfred. "The Prussian Army from Reform to War." On the Road to Total War ed. Forster, Nagler.

[5] Messerschmidt, Manfred. "The Prussian Army from Reform to War." On the Road to Total War ed. Forster, Nagler

[6] Kitchen, Martin. A Military History of Germany Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Tombs, Robert. "The Wars Against Paris." On the Road to Total War ed. Forster, Nagler

[10] Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War. Houghton Mifflin Company: 1959

[11] Messerschmidt, Manfred. "The Prussian Army from Reform to War." On the Road to Total War ed. Forster, Nagler

[12] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton University Press; 1976

[13] Kitchen, Martin. A Military History of Germany Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975

[14] Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War. Houghton Mifflin Company: 1959