{"id":65004,"date":"2023-11-05T01:00:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T05:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=65004"},"modified":"2023-11-04T10:00:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T14:00:20","slug":"qotd-the-auftragstaktik-principle-of-the-third-reich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/11\/05\/qotd-the-auftragstaktik-principle-of-the-third-reich\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Auftragstaktik<\/em> principle of the Third Reich"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>[The Nazis], being Social Darwinists to the core, applied the military principle of Auftragstaktik<\/em> to civilian life. “Mission-oriented” tactics means that the overall commanders leave as much as possible to the on-the-spot commanders, be they officers or noncoms, on the theory that properly-trained leaders will have a much better understanding of what needs to be done, and how to do it, than some general back at HQ. It’s the main reason the Wehrmacht<\/em> could keep fighting so well, for so long, in the face of overwhelming opposition \u2014 tasks that would fall to an American company, or a Russian regiment, were often undertaken by a Wehrmacht<\/em> platoon under the command of a senior corporal.<\/p>\n

Obviously civilian life isn’t as goal-directed as the military in wartime, but a similar principle applied \u2014 given a vague set of generalized objectives from the top (Kershaw’s famous “working towards the F\u00fchrer<\/em>” thesis), everyone at every level was encouraged to move the ball downfield as he saw fit … with the added twist that, in the absence of a clearly defined, military-style chain of command, the various “subordinates” would ruthlessly battle it out with each other, Darwin-style, for bureaucratic supremacy.<\/p>\n

Thus the Nazis’ infamous plate-of-spaghetti org charts. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure there were more than a few guys who held wildly different ranks in various different organizations simultaneously<\/em>. He might be a mere patrolman in the Order Police, but an officer in the SS, a noncom in the SA (you could be in both, at least in the early days), and so forth. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than one guy who technically reported to himself<\/em>, somewhere deep in the bowels of the RHSA [Reich Security Main Office]. You could spend a lifetime trying to sort this stuff out …<\/p>\n

Severian, “The Crisis of the Third Decade”, Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2021-03-18.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[The Nazis], being Social Darwinists to the core, applied the military principle of Auftragstaktik to civilian life. “Mission-oriented” tactics means that the overall commanders leave as much as possible to the on-the-spot commanders, be they officers or noncoms, on the theory that properly-trained leaders will have a much better understanding of what needs to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1118,7,5,41,230],"tags":[31,457,572,1462],"class_list":["post-65004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","category-ww2","tag-army","tag-fascism","tag-leadership","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gUs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85536,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65004\/revisions\/85536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}