auftragstaktik

Anyone have any particularly good example of its success? I'm writing a paper on mission-type orders in business.

The Spring Offensive seems like a pretty big example. As are the Poland and Low Country campaigns.

I'm pretty sure the Israelis made damned excellent use of them too. Irony is funny that Israeli military doctrine prior to Peace for Galilee was based almost entirely in pre-war German doctrinal theories.

Can you recommend any easy-to-find and to-the-point references? This part of the paper will only end up being a page or two, and I unfortunately don't have the time for much history reading right now.

Easiest to find stuff is what Guderian mentions in Achtung Panzer. In the first half of the book he goes nicely into it.

If you want to avoid Guderian, Fuller also covers it a little in Machine Warfare, and The Whites of Their Eyes by Ford and Ripley goes into it nicely.

Hmm, Achtung Panzer is available at a nearby university campus, and The Whites of Their Eyes at a nearby state library...Machine Warfare isn't available.

Any specific history texts to demonstrate that it actually worked?

Thanks!

I read that as Eye of the Tiger.

Those texts will carry on (The first subtly, the second in depth) an analysis of it, how it worked, and that it did work. From there you can only use references to specific actions, which can be found in too many texts to be worth noting. Just about any book on WW1 will cover the Spring Offensive, for example, but off the top of my head I don't know of any (English) books that cover it explicitly, or for that matter in such specific detail.

If you want specific occasions, you might do to look at the St. Michael Offensive on Mar.21 1918 (Opening phases of the Spring Offensive) around the Saint Quentin Canal. I mention this as it's the first use of a German-produced tank in history (The A7V first saw combat here), and a prime indicator of both combined arms and mission-based tactics in the prime of the time, without many complications.

Just about any text that details battles of, for this example, WW1 will tell you the results. Guderian gives his analysis, as do Ford and Ripley, but they are only analysis's. You can only really say they worked by the overall outcome, which can be found in any WW1 history book.

I'm confused. I was under the impression the Kruats decidely avoided this type of structure in most instances? Or do I ahve this particular issue inverted?

Mission-type tactics have been at the forefront of German military planning since the 1800s.

The German military very strongly encouraged to have initiative and creativity, in contrast to their enemies like the Soviets who had a very centralized command structure where commanders were shot by their commissars so often they were afraid to do anything without approval from Moscow. The problem that developed in the German system was Hitler's interference; he declared orders that took away options from his commanders in the field: no retreat, no giving up territory, this place must be defended at all costs, and more or less arbitrarily threw around units and changed objectives mid-campaign.

The German military very strongly encouraged to have initiative and creativity, in contrast to their enemies like the Soviets who had a very centralized command structure where commanders were shot by their commissars so often they were afraid to do anything without approval from Moscow. The problem that developed in the German system was Hitler's interference; he declared orders that took away options from his commanders in the field: no retreat, no giving up territory, this place must be defended at all costs, and more or less arbitrarily threw around units and changed objectives mid-campaign.

Ok, then it was the term that confused me--because I thought that term meant the exact opposite of what you are saying it means.