Decentralization And Improvisation In The German Army

The Power of Decentralization and Improvisation When looking back at the German Army and the concepts of decentralization and improvisation used you see just how more advanced the German Army was compared to the allied force. The German Army was not necessarily more advanced in a technological aspect but more so in an aspect of command and control. The German Army was outnumbered two to one in most cases when it came to the numbers the allies could supply compared to the Germans. The allies had more tanks, fighters, bombers, and heavy artillery compared to the Germans. The one technological advantage the Germans had was they had a radio in every tank and every command vehicle had a transmitter. This gave the Germans an advantage because of decentralized control. The German Army could communicate through its ranks giving every soldier a sense of responsibility while the allies did not have

An offensive called Case Yellow was the means of operation. A plan that started as a virtual replay of the Schlieffen plan quickly changed when a German transport plane crashed in Belgium carrying an officer who had details of case yellow with him. “The German high command now had to assume that their scheme was known to the allies.” (War Made New 226.) The Germans began planning a new strategy playing war games until they came up with a new final version of Case Yellow. This is where you first start to see the flexibility of the German Army. Faced with friction Hitler devised a new strategy that would ultimately prove to be effective. Even though Hitler could not predict that his original plan would be discovered by the allies he remained flexible and proved that patience and fluidity are an important role in war. Hitler remained confident in his plan and smelled out the inability of the French and English foes to act quickly and