Mission-type Tactics - Doctrine

Doctrine

Auftragstaktik can be seen as a doctrine within which formal rules can be selectively suspended in order to overcome "friction". Carl von Clausewitz stated that "Everything in war is very simple but the simplest thing is difficult". Problems will occur with misplaced communications, troops going to the wrong location, delays caused by weather, etc., and it is the duty of the commander to do his best to overcome them. Auftragstaktik encourages commanders to exhibit initiative, flexibility and improvisation while in command. In what may be seen as surprising to some, Auftragstaktik empowers commanders to disobey orders and revise their effect as long as the intent of the commander is maintained.

Interestingly there are cases cited where in combat the operational orders were a copy of orders that had been issued for an earlier operation or training exercise. It is claimed that almost the only thing that was changed were unit names and locations. This strongly suggests that long experience of operations had allowed senior commanders to be quite abstract in their orders, issued without great fear of being misunderstood. It also suggests that sequences of moves on quite a large scale were already familiar to the forces involved which probably made their execution better.