(This is Part 6 of a series. Go back to Part 5.)
The year was 1812. Napoleon and his army of 125,000 were in a field outside the town of Borodino, on the road to Moscow, and facing General Kutusov, commanding the Russian Army of about 120,000.
The date was September 7, and Kutusov, at the urging of Tsar Alexander and his advisors, was making a last-ditch stand to stop Napoleon before he occupied Moscow.
Because his army outnumbered Kutusov's, Napoleon make a grave mistake that September day—he decided to make a straight frontal attack.
With many successful battles under his belt, Napoleon had grown arrogant and blind. He had basically reached a point where he was surrounded by advisors who only told him what he wanted to hear. Rare was the man who dared to disagree with the Emperor any longer.
In the old days, at Castiglione in 1796, Marengo in 1800, Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805, Jena in 1806, Friedland in 1807 and others, Napoleon—at times outnumbered 2-to-1 or more—had used wily and indirect approaches in both strategy and tactics to achieve victory.
But now, at Borodino in 1812 and with his massive army, Napoleon got lazy and simply ordered a frontal assault on the Russians. His most trusted corps commander, General Davout, tried to talk him out of it but Napoleon was adamant. A straight frontal attack it would be.
Napoleon and his army basically came to a draw with the Russians at the Battle of Borodino, at a horrific loss of life on both sides. The Russian Army, though damaged, withdrew intact. Borodino showed the world for the first time that Napoleon's star was sinking and that this brilliant military genius could be held at bay after all.
But really, Napoleon defeated himself that September day by ordering a direct frontal attack—a type of attack, as discussed in the last article, that throughout history has normally produced mediocre or disastrous results.
The same happened in Korea in 1951, as the U.S. Army assaulted "Bloody Ridge," and the ridge behind it, called "Heartbreak Ridge"—ridges given those names because they lived up to those descriptions. The loss of life was horrific, and yet no strategic gain whatsoever was accomplished.
In fact, the U.S. Army did not stop using these useless frontal attacks in Korea because of any great intellectual awakening on the part of its generals. Rather, the loss of life was so horrific that they finally had to stop for that reason, just as the generals in World War I finally had to stop for that reason.
How is it that generals can order direct frontal attacks again and again? How can they do it when the merest study of military history suffices to show that direct frontal attacks almost never work, and almost always result in tremendous casualties on both sides?
The reason is that military organizations, like other large organizations, tend to promote and reward the nail that doesn't stick out. The person who "goes along," who's a good team player, who doesn't make waves, is the one who usually gets promoted.
In contrast, the person who stands out, who is a maverick, who doesn't do things in the accepted way, tends to be shunned, passed over or disgraced. This is why it is rare that great geniuses rise to the top of an organization, in the military or anywhere else.
As just one example, most of the great pioneers in medicine were disgraced or hounded out of the profession by their colleagues. Again, most executives in large organizations are just run-of-the-mill executives, unnotable, unexceptional. It has to be this way; the bell curve demands it.
Moreover, there's another factor at work in the proclivity for direct frontal assaults: Human societies tend to idealize the direct confrontation.
After all, the standard hero in western movies is the gunman who confronts his opponent directly at "high noon." Our action movie heroes are "Rambo" or "The Terminator" and so on, who pull out their blazing guns and directly attack the enemy. It's human nature to want to defeat our opponent in a direct confrontation.
But great generals don't work that way. They almost always seek indirect methods or unusual methods or surprising methods. In the words of Stonewall Jackson, the greatest general of the U.S. Civil War, they seek to "mystify, mislead and surprise."
Without glorifying war, we can learn a lot from great generals about strategic and tactical principles useful in other areas of life. As we'll see in subsequent articles.
(This is the end of Part 6. Go to Part 7.)
—jim sloman, 7.23.03 for 12.11.03
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