Naval Postgraduate School

This book analyzes the political role of the German General Staff as well as civil-military relations in Germany from the late 19th century until 1933. Specifically, it examines the rise and fall of Kurt von Schleicher. Together with Generals Paul von Hindenburg, Erich Ludendorff, and Wilhelm Groener, Schleicher shaped the politics of the Weimar Republic, right up to the end that he-unintentionally-hastened when his intrigues paved the way for Adolf Hitler's dictatorship. During World War I, the German army completed its control over the civilian administration and bureaucracy. In the Republic of Weimar 1919-1933, the military remained a powerful governmental player-as the self-anointed protector of the nation against external and internal threats, including democracy. Thus, Germany's political situation in the winter of 1932-1933 and the activities of the key players stemmed from a long-term anti-democratic socialization process amid an entrenched civil-military imbalance. As the present book demonstrates, Schleicher's life-from his military background to his experience as a member of Prussia's noble Junker class-coincided with Germany's tumultuous modernization. The fateful lessons that he drew from this experience ultimately spelled the end of Germany's first democracy and ushered in the calamity of the Third Reich.

Communications is a critical enabling capability that is interwoven into every facet of every military operation. Assessing what communication capability is most valuable to the operation is a vital planning requirement to avoid using the word process twice in the same sentence] that currently resides in several processes that produce differing outcomes within the DoD. This thesis examines these planning processes, particularly the capability-based approach, assessing which process is optimum for determining communication shortfalls. An in-depth comparison of the Joint Capabilities Integrated Defense System (JCIDS) and USNORTHCOM's Capability Review and Resource Assessment (CRRA) was conducted, examining the respective strengths and weakness of each process. This thesis then recommends an optimized hybrid solution of the CRRA and JCIDS, thus providing an intuitive methodology that can be used to model what communication capabilities are essential to the DoD and its interagency partners.

The United States has repeatedly engaged in irregular warfare-including counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, and unconventional warfare-throughout its history. However, despite its familiarity with irregular warfare, there is reluctance on the part of U. S. presidents, military leaders, and even the general public to engage in this form of war. This work asks why the U. S. security mindset is focused on traditional large-scale warfare, even when the threats the United States has faced, and will continue to face, are mostly irregular. To answer this question, this work uses Arregu n-Toft's strategic interaction model-which looks at why same-approach and opposite-approach strategies (direct and indirect) favor strong and weak actors differently-to analyze the U. S. Revolutionary War, when the United States was the weak actor, and the Vietnam conflict, when the United States was the strong actor, and to assess whether the United States implemented the correct forms of strategic interaction in each conflict. This study finds that the United States' propensity for traditional large-scale warfare is based upon its desire to achieve victory in the shortest amount of time. Furthermore, a preponderance of resources and instruments of war has also impelled the United States to employ overwhelming mass, maneuver, and firepower, instead of irregular warfare with a protracted timeline strategy.