Since the earliest days of warfare, military operations have
followed a predictable formula: after a decisive battle, an army
must pursue the enemy and destroy its organization in order to
achieve a victorious campaign. But by the mid-nineteenth century,
the emergence of massive armies and advanced weaponry--and the
concomitant decline in the effectiveness of cavalry--had diminished
the practicality of pursuit, producing campaigns that bogged down
short of decisive victory. Great battles had become curiously
indecisive, decisive campaigns virtually impossible. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, the inability to achieve
decisive victories in warfare had become the single greatest
military problem facing modern armies.
Robert Citino now tells how European military leaders analyzed
and eventually overcame this problem by restoring pursuit to its
rightful place in combat and resurrecting the possibility of
decisive warfare on the operational level.
"Quest for Decisive Victory" chronicles the evolution of
European warfare during the first half of the twentieth century. A
study of war at the operational level, it demonstrates the
interplay and tension between technology and doctrine in warfare
and reveals how problems surrounding mobility--including such
factors as supply lines, command and control, and prewar campaign
planning--forced armies to find new ways of fighting.
Citino focuses on key campaigns of both major and minor
conflicts. Minor wars before 1914 (Boer, Russo-Japanese, and the
Balkan Wars of 1912-13) featured instructive examples of
operational maneuver; the First World War witnessed the collapse of
operations and the rise of attrition warfare; the Italo-Ethiopian
and Spanish Civil Wars held some promise for breaking out of
stalemate by incorporating such innovations as air and tank
warfare. Ultimately, it was Germany's opening blitzkrieg of World
War II that resurrected the decisive campaign as an operational
possibility. By grafting new technologies--tanks, aircraft, and
radio--onto a long tradition of maneuver warfare, the Wehrmacht won
decisive victories in the first year of the war and in the process
transformed modern military doctrine.
Citino's study is important for shifting the focus from military
theory and doctrine to detailed operational analyses of actual
campaigns that formed the basis for the revival of military
doctrine. "Quest for Decisive Victory" gives scholars of military
history a better grasp of that elusive concept and a more complete
understanding of modern warfare.
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