When talking with allied officers one very often hears the argument that the Prussian-German Staff system weakens the authority of the commanding officers because of the strong position of the German General and Admiral Staff officers. Others believe that the cohesion of an officer corps is lessened when most of the high staff jobs and commanding officers' positions are reserved for a specially trained group of officers.
The founders of the Prussian-German General Staff system wanted to increase the quality of command and control skills of commanding officers from the higher nobility with insufficient military training by providing them with General Staff officers as their advisers. Before the outbreak of World War II, the Chief of the Army General Staff, General of the Artillery Franz Halder, explicitly dropped the joint responsibility of General Staff officers for command and control. However, they were responsible and accountable for the relevance of their advice. This restriction was justified because most of the top-level military leaders of the Wehrmacht were General Staff officers. Neither in the Wehrmacht nor in the Bundeswehr have high-ranking leaders ever felt their authority to be limited by their General Staff officers. They have always considered the General Staff system as a tool to increase their command and control authority. The few General and Admiral Staff officers who work within their formations make sure that their decisions are executed in the best way possible and are professionally tailored to the requirements of the respective levels of command and control. Their qualified staff work makes it possible for commanding officers to concentrate on their main efforts in the fields of military education, training and command and control in battle. Qualified advice during the whole decision-making process by General and Admiral Staff officers improves the quality of their final decisions. The commanding officers are to listen to their General Staff officers' advice. Since most of them are former General Staff officers themselves, they have no problems with this procedure and expect their General Staff officers to advise them. This cooperation, which was characterized as "military marriage," ensures that decisions are not based on wishful thinking but on qualified reasoning and thought. German commanding officers without General Staff officer training learn very quickly how the system works and use it to their benefit.
It is stressed again that no General and Admiral Staff officer is entitled to relieve his commanding officer from making a decision on his own and to develop the concept of operations. For both of these, he is alone responsible. Perhaps it can be said that the German-Prussian General Staff system permits the commanding general to make decisions more effectively. This is his most important task. It is felt that many allied armed forces still overestimate the role and function of commanding officers who make decisions without any advice, only based on their operational and strategic genius. Every insider knows that this is pure fiction. Commanding officers of today rely more than ever before on advice and proposals made by their subordinates. Military planning and command and control have become too complex to be handled by the leader on the top alone. In this light it seems to be an archaic facade if one maintains this fiction at all costs. It is therefore recommended that other armed forces find out how they can benefit by introducing the "commander's adviser" into their systems.
Another future development supports this recommendation. When German General and Admiral Staff officers come into the NATO headquarters, they are confronted by the following situation: The working methods are well-established and are more or less a copy of the staff procedures of those partners who dominate the respective headquarters. Still today, the SHAPE and CENTAG headquarters follow staff procedures of the United States Armed Forces, whereas NORTHAG headquarters is British dominated. In AFCENT Headquarters in Brunssum, the Netherlands, a mixture of American and British staff procedures are observable as well as some relics from the period when the commander-in-chief of the Central Region was a French general. The German newcomers willingly accepted the working methods in the respective headquarters. Although the German General and Admiral Staff officers have gained and exercised influence within the NATO headquarters, they have never tried to introduce their elements of the Prussian-German General Staff system. This has never been considered to be a major problem, because their number was small, and since they always found ways to come to terms with the staff system they had to work in. The requirement for NATO to develop multinational corps for the future defense of the Alliance has changed this situation. In future multinational formations, more German General Staff officers will work with their allied comrades-in-arms than ever existed in NATO headquarters. They will work together in all military sectors at the tactical and operational levels. It should, therefore, be a legitimate request from the German Armed Forces to consider elements of the Prussian-German General Staff system for inclusion in future staff organizations of these multinational corps. This approach is considered to avoid friction between allied and German officers who will have to work closer together in these new formations. It is therefore recommended that this request be considered as early as possible before implementation begins.
It was shown that 52.2 percent of the German 1,087 colonels and Navy captains, and 20 percent of the 202 generals and admirals of the Bundeswehr, have no General and Admiral Staff officer training. In this context, it is also interesting that most of the German battalions and regiments are commanded by officers without General Staff officer training. Those who criticize that most of the higher staff and commanding officers' jobs in the Bundeswehr are reserved for General and Admiral Staff officers are not aware of the surprisingly high number of senior officers in the Bundeswehr without General and Admiral Staff officer training.
In addition they have no understanding of another major advantage of the German system. Many allied armed forces are trying hard to select their future commanding officers and high staff officers with operational and strategic vision. For the selection of these officers, the Prussian-German General Staff system offers ways which have been effective for many generations. The selection for General and Admiral Staff officer training favors those officers who show talents early in these fields. The Fuehrungsakademie der Bundeswehr training gives them the tools for their future educational development. The most talented of them are given jobs early in their careers to provide exposure to the operational and strategic levels. These officers are about 10 years younger than many of their allied comrades-in-arms before these are trained to think and work at the operational and strategic levels. The future German generals and admirals are selected from this group. The 202 generals and admirals of the Bundeswehr are recruited from the best trained out of the 1,200 General and Admiral Staff officers. About 40 come from the group of the best officers without that training.
The Germans believe that this early selection process and the subsequent training of the future leading general officers who need operational and strategic vision are indispensable and have proved their value. The system ensures that talented "practitioners" without General and Admiral Staff officer training are given a fair chance to reach high positions of leadership as well. Personal positive experience with graduates of the "second year" at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth shows that the U.S. Army has obviously adopted similar ways for some of its future general officers.
At the end of this evaluation the question is asked, as so often before, whether the Prussian-German General Staff system can be introduced in other armed forces. This question leads back to Spenser Wilkinson's statement of 1887 which was quoted at the beginning of this paper: "It may well be doubted whether this feature of the Prussian (General Staff) System is suitable for imitation elsewhere." It was shown that attempts to imitate the system were often doomed to failure because the staff organizations of armed forces and their role as an instrument of military leadership are the result of historical processes that took different courses. However, in a period when the military strategy of NATO is being redefined and new challenges must be tackled, it is considered worthwhile to reflect on the elements of the Prussian-German General Staff system which could be used by Germany's allies to the benefit of all.