You could mail me or go to my home page, or my main strategy page. Last modified 1998 January 8.

On Initiative

There are usually two sides to a war, and one of them (at least locally) will usually be said to be attacking, or have the initiative, or whatever. This conceals a host of subtle distinctions, which I propose to go into here.

In general, one side will be proposing to change the status quo, while the other is proposing to keep it, more or less. This is less clear politically: in the Russo-German part of World War II, both sides wanted to destroy the government of the other side. Strategically, one side was usually trying to drive the other side back, and the other side was trying to stand in place. This was certainly not consistent among levels, as an attacker must usually defend against counterattacks, and the counterattacker against counter-counterattacks, and so on down. This is probably closest to what we consider "attacking".

The significance is that it is harder to change things than to keep them the same, in philosophical terms. In practical terms, the attacker is usually moving much more than the defender. This means that the defender is on familiar (and likely changed) ground, while the attacker is on unfamiliar ground; it also means that the attacker is continually moving, and must keep finding good positions and evaluating such things as lines of sight, while the defender gets leisure to figure out all the terrain advantages.

The next main point is initiative. The side with initiative acts, and the side without reacts. This is rarely absolute, but usually one side will have the initiative. The advantage of the initiative is that the side with it can determine what is going to happen and plan for it. The value of this varies dramatically. If one army is more agile than the other, in the sense of being better able to operate in chaotic conditions, being able to predict what happens is much more advantageous to its opponent. Consider the German and Soviet armies in World War II. German command and control was usually much better, and in a fluid situation the Germans would be better able to react. If the Soviets were able to plan and execute an attack, they would be using the initative, and they would be pitting their advanced planning against the German ability to improvise.

While it is usually an advantage to have the initiative, it is usually coupled with attacking, which nullifies some of its advantage. It is possible, at times, to have the initiative and force the enemy to attack, usually by holding vital terrain. This can be very useful.

The third main point is one I have no good name for. It is the question of how local success has to be to create overall success. Assume that our goal is to penetrate the enemy line. Assume further that we attack at several points. If we are successful in one of these attacks, then we are successful. Our enemy is only successful if he is successful everywhere. This is usually associated with attacks and initiative, but is a possibly separate consideration.

This factor governs the proper disposition of reserves. One usually sees the advice "don't reinforce failure" or the action of reinforcing those units that are suffering most, or some such. A more sophisticated concept is to reinforce success on the attack, failure on the defense. The real answer is to reinforce in a way that will further one's overall goal.

In order to justify my original claim that these are potentially different aspects of war, I need to provide four separate examples (although I have eight combinations, each example will provide two). Therefore:

Attacker has initiative, needs to win somewhere: This is the normal condition. Consider the winter of 1942 in the Soviet Union. The Red Army had the initiative, since the Germans were stretched very thin. They launched two great offensives. We almost never hear about the northern one, but the southern one trapped the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad.
Attacker has initiative, needs to win everywhere: von Mellinthin's book Panzer Battles refers to the need to eradicate Soviet bridgeheads fast. Clearly if a Panzerkorps faces three bridgeheads in a Soviet attack that has temporarily spent itself, the Korps can do as it likes in detail, but must attack and destroy all three bridgeheads.
Attacker does not have initiative, needs to win somewhere: The Persians under Darius had cut Alexander's line of communication at Issus. All they had to do was stay put and repulse Alexander's attack, and his army would disintegrate. Alexander was forced to attack, and, as it happened, won.
Attacker does not have initiative, needs to win everywhere: This is rare; it is unusual to be forced to advance on a broad front. Consider the Panzerkorps example, above, with knowledge that the Soviet advance will be resumed shortly.

In addition, let's consider the ability of either side to decide what sort of battle will be fought, in general terms. Armies are not usually mirror images of each other, and a general should strive to fight a sort of battle that favors his army (when a battle must be fought). In the Allied campaign in France in 1944, for example, the Allied troops were very mobile but lacked a certain amount of grinding power. Whenever the battle depended on speed and maneuver, the Allies won. Whenever it turned to a slugfest, the outcome was more in doubt. The Polish army of 1939 had few and weak tanks, and did (relatively) best when fighting in rough terrain, where an entire Panzer division could be stopped by a cavalry brigade.

The side with the initiative can certainly choose what sort of terrain the battle will be fought on, provided that terrain exists somewhere along the front. The defender usually has the choice of how fluid the battle should be. The side with the initiative can normally control the scale of the battle. Let's look at examples.

The ability of the side with the initiative to control the terrain depends on the availability of the desired terrain. Since the side with the initiative is usually the attacker, the defender may be able to modify the terrain or adjust his dispositions to fit. The goal of the defender, in this case, is to make all the terrain equally unappealing. The Maginot line was not of equal strength all across the Franco-German border, but the intent was to make any such attack unappealing. (It did, in fact, work very well, but the rest of the French defense plan failed miserably.) Similarly, the Allied attacks in Italy were limited by the fact that it was essentially impossible to advance far in the plains without clearing the mountains, so that the highly mobile Allied forces had to give battle in unsuitable terrain.

The defender is the side that is trying to preserve the status quo, and would be just as happy if nothing ever happened. When an attack comes, the defender usually has some choice of action of what to do about it. One common method is to try to hold the front static, applying reinforcements as indicated. Another is to maintain strongpoints to limit the attack, and as support for the cutting off and destruction of the attacker's forces. The attacker has to be prepared for whatever the defender intends, and therefore needs to be ready to commit sufficient force to break through a hard crust, or to have sufficient exploitation forces to continue through with sufficient mop-up forces to reduce critical strongpoints. As above, this does not always hold. In the NATO-WP confrontation, NATO faced the problem that any sort of flexible defense would put large German cities into the front lines, and therefore had to try a strategy of holding fast.

The side with the initiative does have control of the scale of the combat, at least while that side keeps the initiative. The side with the initiative can determine where, and over how large an area, the attacks occur, and can control how deep the fighting is to go. The only caveat is that the side with initiative can lose the initative, and may not like the scale imposed by the other side. Both Germany and Japan suffered this problem when attacking to the East in World War II: as they were unable to force peace on their own terms, and were unable to keep pushing further east, their efforts perforce stalled, and they lost the initiative, the ability to control the scale of the combat, and eventually the war.