This workshop is designed to compare what we know about the relationship between military exercises and operational plans in the 20th century. For example, we know about German military exercises and ”Kriegsspiele” on the eve of World War I and also about their relationship to concrete military planning (operational plans). Foley, Robert T. (ed.): ‘Schlieffen’s Last Kriegsspiel’, War Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 117–133 For the Warsaw Pact, however, we know infinitely more about military exercises than about operational plans. With NATO it is the inverse: documents about exercises are not yet generally available (to my knowledge – does anyone have different information?), while key strategy documents are. The workshop is designed to derive generalisations that might be made about the relationship between the two, on the basis of a comparison of historical case studies. This will help us look for conclusions about one set of documents that might be derrived from the other.
Please send proposals for papers by 1 June 2004 to
Prof. DBG Heuser
Director of Research
MGFA (=Military History Research Institute of the Bundeswehr)
Zeppelinstr. 127/128
D-14471 Potsdam
e-mail beatriceheuser@bundeswehr.org
We have a limited budget with which we can invite speakers to attend this small workshop.