Napoleon Series Archive 2017

Re: Prussian General Staff -> Massenbach's plan
In Response To: Prussian General Staff ()

In Knesebeck's (not the general!) biography of Massenbach (*) a summary of Massenbach's memoire (Denkschrift) of 1802 is given. According to Knesebeck, Massenbach dealt with:

1) rules for generic war / operation plans
2) the division of Prussia in 3 war theatres (mirrored by 3 departments ["Brigaden"] in the general staff)
3) the problem of the existing cartography of Prussia (need for scale unification of existing maps)
4) travels of general staff officers (later: "Generalstabsreisen")
5) transition of officers from the army into the general staff and vice versa
6) many detailed questions, e.g. the problem of securing secrecy of general staff topics
7) the right of the Generalquartiermeister to refer (orally) to the king ("Immediatvortrag")

Massenbach's memoire was commented by several higher officers (on request by the king), e.g. Prince Hohenlohe, FM v. Möllendorff, Gen. v. Geusau, Gen. v. Zastrow, Gen. v. Grawert, Gen. v. Holzmann, Gen. v. Rüchel, Gen. v. Tempelhoff. Due to this critics the memoire underwent in total four versions, before it was accepted as "Instruktion für den Generalquartiermeisterstab" in November 1803. In fact it was baseline for the organization and tasks for the Prussian general staff for the next 100 years.

Best regards, Thomas

(*) Knesebeck, L. G. v. d., Das Leben des Obersten Christian Ludwig August Reichsfreiherrn von und zu Massenbach. Leipzig: Baustein-Verlag, 1924, pp. 37-41

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