![]() ![]() While the last chief of that organization, Walter Nicolai, and some of his former subordinates wrote a number of books and articles after 1918 in which they described the functions of the N.D. The army intelligence service of Imperial Germany-officially known as the Geheime Nachrichtendienst des Heeres or, more simply, as the “N.D.”-was no exception to this rule. In institutional terms, modified autocratic politics defined politico-military jurisdictions and the limits of higher-level coordinating authority in ways that precluded optimal collaboration during strategy development, war planning, and resource allocation.īecause of the politically sensitive and often quite unsavory aspects of their work, but also because they wish to protect their former agents, secret services usually do not like to say very much about their past activities and try to keep their records out of the hands of historians and other outsiders for as long as possible. In Russia, prevailing notions of statecraft and monarchical prerogative often inhibited the effective linking of ends, ways, and means according to a mature understanding of higher, or grand, strategy. ![]() Setting the Terms These outcomes testified to anomalies and dysfunctions that lay below the surface of the apparent system. The result during the initial period of conflict was catastrophic failure against Germany and only partial success against Austria-Hungary. When war did come, this system's inadequacies and internal inconsistencies meant that Russia would enter hostilities as it had entered nearly all its past wars, like a chess player with poor opening moves. However, only the second, sometimes called the “Sukhomlinov System” after Russia's last pre-1914 war minister, would be put to the test. For various reasons, neither period's system fully met requirements for engagement in a Great Power war. Some knowledgeable observers termed these stages “systems,” because in varying degrees each period gave rise to an overarching scheme with a governing strategy that flowed from geopolitical circumstance, threat assessment, alliance commitments, course of action development, detailed planning, and resource allocation. The first was very long and the second very brief, and there was a jagged transition between the two. Between 18, Russian preparation for a European war evolved through two stages. ![]()
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