Patterns of Conflict Slide 74

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 74

Quantico Transcription

Look at that. And I’m quoting General von Rundstedt. I mean, excuse me,
Blumentritt, said the wrong name. And note what he said. According to him, presupposes a common outlook based upon, and I’m quoting him directly here— and incidentally, those are his underlines, “body of professional officers.” The same training during the long years of peace, the same type of education, the same way of thinking, et cetera.

And the second thing, furthermore, according to Blumentritt, “an officer’s training which allows the subordinate a very great measure of freedom of action, and freedom in the manner of executing orders.”

Now, when he talks about a body of professional officers, who’s he really talking about there? It’s a euphemism for what? General staff officers. That’s what he’s talking about, the general, they gave it to the other officers too, but that’s what he’s talking about.

Audience: Other than historical fact, is there any significance to that?

Boyd: Well, there’s a very big significance. I’m going to make it significant.

Audience: Well, no, to the fact that it was only in their case it was the general staff.

Boyd: No, it wasn’t only the general staff. He’s just making that point. I mean, they were sort of the cadre that also gave the other guys the same thing. Because the other guys who were not general staff officers got this training too.

But when he’s using that body of— he’s one of the aristocracy in the German Army. Okay. So now let’s look at that. Let’s examine that. Let’s assume that we didn’t do that. We didn’t give a guy going through all this, and therefore you said okay, let them run on their own. Christ, that thing won’t hold together. You’ve got to give them detailed orders if you don’t do that.

So the only way you can give a guy freedom of action is when you have a common scheme. If you give him freedom of action without a common scheme, the whole thing flies apart. It’s when you have the common scheme, you can give these lower-level people the freedom of action, because they have the overall scheme of the thing like the other people, and they can then use their own initiatives in that.

[10:00] And that’s my point. Without a common outlook, superiors cannot give subordinates freedom of action and maintain the coherence of an ongoing operation. That’s the key idea. They can give them the freedom of action, but if they don’t have the common scheme, the whole operation will fly apart. You can’t maintain a coherent operation.

In other words, in a sense, what am I saying here? Anybody? What I’m really trying to say is you not only want to have individual fingerspitzengefühl, in a sense you want to have organizational fingerspitzengefühl.

You all remember the word I used last night, right? That’s what we’re talking about here, that intuitive feel. They all got it among one another too. Now I get into it deeper when I get in my Organic Design for Command and Control. Some of you people you’ve heard that, how you do that.

That’s a very important idea.

Therefore, the implication is very clear. A common outlook, possessed by a body of officers, that represents a unifying thing that they use to simultaneously encourage subordinates to initiative, yet still be inside superior intent.

Think about it. Just run through the logic. If you do not have that common theme, how can you give freedom of action? If you do, the whole operation’s going to fly apart. You’re not going to maintain a coherent operation. And so you say, well, I’m not going to give them that. Fine, then you’re going to have to have detailed orders. Now you’ve got a slow as molasses operation. Christ, it’s going to take forever now to realize your purpose.

So in that sense, and I’ve never said this before, it just occurred to me right now I’m thinking about it. In that sense, how do you exercise control? This is very important. How are you— think about this. When you like to use the word control, knowing that, how are these people really exercising control?

Audience: Self-discipline through the common—

Boyd: Say it again. You said it.

Audience: Self-discipline to the common—

Boyd: The control is through the common theme. In other words, they all have the same mindset.

In other words, they work in the same way. The same way. That’s the discipline. It works through that. Excuse me, that’s the control mechanism. The common outlook. The common outlook’s the control mechanism, not the individual guy, whether he goes down this road, or does this zigzag, or whatever he does out there.

Audience: How do you explain the German ability, say, in the last months, say the last ten months of WWII, to maintain this common goal and common outlook, even though they had very little time to train junior officers and their NCO corps?

Boyd: You should read— incidentally there’s a good book out on that. You ever read the Van Creveld’s Fighting Power? He goes into that. Even when it was down toward the end of the war, they still trained those guys real well, because they recognized that was important. They curtailed some of it, but they didn’t stop that. Behind the lines, getting the guys ready, so they could go into combat instead of just feeding them in there like cannon fodder.

Of course, probably very near to the end they had to, because the SS men were commanding them. So under very trying circumstances, they still caused us a lot of problems. A good book on that is— in fact I think it’s Van Creveld’s best book, is that one, Fighting Power, where he gets into that.

Remember, instead of putting in individual replacements, how’d they put them in?

Audience: In by unit.

Boyd: You’re goddamn right. And why did they put them in by unit? They wanted those moral bonds so when they do things, they can act. They have that unit fingerspitzengefühl. That’s what they were really doing whether they said it or not, that organic harmony.

We don’t like to do that. Say, oh, Christ, it causes all problems with personnel. Well, screw personnel. They’re supposed to serve the combat forces. The combat forces don’t serve personnel.

Yet, we’d rather throw that away. It’s the American way. Fuck ‘em. Those guys out there, they’ll get along. We’re going to send them who we want, when we want, and it’ll be individual, and shut your mouth.

It’s inconvenient for the personnel troops. After all, you’re a dummy anyway. Otherwise, why in the hell’d you get in the infantry? All you’re going to do is lose your life. I mean, that’s the way some people think. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t take that personal. I understand where the argument is.

Of course, they think I’m a dummy because I was a fighter pilot. What’s that asshole out there screwing around for?

Audience: I think we’re all grasping it, but I want to see if these things are coequal or how they all fit together. The communications we have comes from three things. One is the common body of knowledge.

Boyd: In a sense, that common body of knowledge, that is your control mechanism. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

Audience: Okay.

Boyd: That’s very important.

Audience: [unintelligible] two more, i.e. intent, self-discipline—
Boyd: Oh yeah, you want to inculcate that self-discipline. That’s correct.

Audience: But how are they three things that we look at equally or— Boyd: I didn’t hear the— I only heard two.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: Common outlook and then self-discipline. What was the other one?

Audience: Yeah, and intent, the commander’s intent.

Boyd: Intent. Well, the point is, if you treat— in a sense they’re all together. If you take the common outlook, part of that common outlook is a commander’s intent, I’ll get to that in just a minute, and the self-discipline. It all plays together. It’s part of the organic harmony. That’s part of the overall common outlook. That’s right.

Audience: And implicit communications and—
Boyd: Yeah. Yeah, it’s all part of the common outlook. [15:00] But now, you still, even though we say, oh, we’ve all got a common outlook, we still got to execute the thing. You can’t say just do it, because it may still come apart.

And so you need what I call, the word, shaping agents. We’ll get into it deeper. We haven't gotten to that yet. All we’ve talked about is overall mind-time-space scheme. So let’s get into that now.