Too important to be left to the Generals: The Politics of the Western Front

‘War is too important to be left to the generals.’ This aphorism, commonly attributed to the French Premier Georges Clemenceau, captures one of the most significant dilemmas to confront the states that went to war in the summer of 1914: should the prosecution of the war be directed by politicians or by soldiers? This was hardly a novel question in 1914. While rulers such as Frederick the Great and Napoleon had once combined political and military leadership in their own hands, the increasing bureaucratic complexity of the nineteenth-century state had led to the disaggregation of political and military functions. This inevitably created the potential for tension. The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously declared war to be a ‘political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means’. But this did not necessarily imply the subordination of military matters to civilian political control. Even if the political purpose of war remained ‘the supreme consideration in conducting it’, Clausewitz argued, policy must also ‘adapt itself to its chosen means’. The political objectives in war had to be moderated by what was militarily feasible. Political and military considerations thus interacted with one another in complex ways. Indeed, one of Clausewitz’s practical recommendations was that the military commander-in-chief should be a member of the cabinet, so that he could help shape policy in time of war.