Applications of Military Chess Drill in various countries

After World War II, a senior German general wrote an article to the U.S. Army in which he said, "The German Army uses chess as a widely used tool. The word kriegsspiel means many different activities. In addition to its primary purpose of assisting in the training of officers at all levels, it was also a means of testing new methods of warfare and testing operational principles." The earliest use of it as a means of testing new methods of testing principles of warfare occurred in the Prussian/German Alfred Graf Schlieffen Corps.

Schlieffen led the German army corps from 1892 to 1906, a period during which fierce wars orchestrated by the European powers were being fought. Schlieffen relied on chess and chess technology, on staff officers and on live maneuvers to test his plans against France, and not only against the French army, which was likely to be assisted by Britain and Russia. Despite the disastrous defeat of Schlieffen's plans in 1914 due to their modification and implementation by the German army under the young general Moltke Jr. the German army continued to use a high level of chess maneuvering, even in the actual battles of the First World War. The most famous example is the final German invasion of 1918, in which the Germans tested and rehearsed their last move attack plan in many strategic-level chess games, all of which predicted an unlikely and decisive victory. During the war there was a wide variety of German military chess, categorized as tactical and strategic. In addition, Germany pioneered the invention of a new set of military chess, now known as political-military chess.In 1929, an officer named Manstein proposed a chess scenario that assumed a situation in which the Neo-Polish Army, fresh from a major defeat of Bolshevik Russia, marched into German territory. Manstein went on to become one of Hitler's best generals.

The game was not purely military, and foreign ministers were brought in to play the role of generals of the Allied Powers, as well as important political and diplomatic leaders in Germany and Poland. There were also traditional reasons for Germany's use of military chess, where the flexibility and firepower of the new principles of warfare were put to the test, and where the strategies and tactics used had to be compatible with the hypothetical enemy. Other wargames have to some extent dispensed with tactical rehearsal and concentrated on exploring the problems of logistics and transportation.

In the early 1930s, Field Marshal Blomberg designed several high-level chess sets. The study of "the problems posed by the military and political situation for the defense of Germany, and in particular to lay a doctrinal basis for the joint action of the Supreme Naval, Army, and Air Force Command and the high commands of the Army, Navy, and Air Force in all important areas of the war." At the battle level, General Baker conducted a projection in 1936 that sought to prepare a new modern battle-level military chess handbook for the entire Army. Agreeing that the strategies they had come up with would be useful for the new conditions of war in that era, he and his peers called on experienced officers to "test these strategies with military chess." "General Baker has always emphasized, however, that he found that the knowledge gained in military chess could never replace the experience gained in actual warfare. ...... Military chess was only one of the many means used to recognize the specific needs of future warfare." Two years later, in 1938, this same Mr. Baker, as an army general, directed the completion of a chess set to explore the feasibility of a German invasion of Czechoslovakia. He used the results of this chess exercise to try to convince Hitler that an invasion of Czechoslovakia "would only have disastrous consequences for Germany and even for all of Europe." Baker's failure to convince Hitler, and his consequent dismissal from his post, and the Munich Agreement prevented the Germans from discovering how prescient Baker's military chess was, but the result led to a defeat in 1939 that was even more disastrous than Baker had described. In the period after the Munich agreement, political tensions mounted.

German admiral Admiral Karl D?nitz gave serious thought to how his U-boats should hold off the British in future wars. He had already invented the "Wolfpack" in raids on convoys, and as the war approached he explored the tactical and operational aspects of his theory of war through the use of chess. During the winter of 1938-39, I held a wargaming exercise to test problems concerning operations in the vast Atlantic Ocean, including problems of command and organization, the orientation of enemy escorts, and the build-up of U-boats for the eventual attack. There were few restrictions on either side, and the officer in charge of the convoys was allowed to set up throughout the Atlantic and was free to choose different routes for his individual convoys.

The points to which this military game responds are summarized as follows:

1-If, as I expect, the enemy organizes his merchant ships in convoys, we should require at least three hundred U-boats capable of military operations if we are to succeed in initiating a battle against his ships ......If these can be done, I believe I can achieve victory.

2- It does not seem feasible to have complete control over the range of U-boats during military operations, or to control their joint operations with the U-boats under the commander's command. So I have come to the conclusion that the actions and tactical organization of U-boats in the search for convoys should be directed by the U-boat command, but the actual operations should be directed by the next level of leadership of the U-boat formation, as far away from the enemy as possible, away from the surface of the sea.

3-We already have U-boat formations available, and more are expected based on construction priorities and speed of construction, so we should have no difficulties to speak of in the war against merchant shipping for the next few years.

I put my conclusions in a memorandum to the then Fleet Command and the Admiralty. The fleet command supported my ideas in no uncertain terms.

The war eventually came, much sooner than Denniz had anticipated, and the military chess helped flesh out his concepts, all of which proved to be too effective for joint operations.

Faced with the advent of World War II, the German Army made extensive use of military chess in a variety of situations. Prior to the outbreak of war between France and the Low Countries in 1940, and then before the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, various types of chess were used to "prepare officers and non-commissioned officers to theorize military operations. Everyone, down to the company commander, had a clear understanding of the enemy forces and terrain he would face, and was familiar with his priorities and the difficulties he would have to overcome. As a result of this preparation, the first few days of the war proceeded methodically and according to the original plan, and nowhere did it require the intervention of a superior."

In conclusion, it is most appropriate to close with Hoffman's words as a description of German soldier chess during World War II. He gives a description of one of the most famous or at least infamous military chess maneuvers of all time. It took place on Nov. 2, 1944, during the U.S. attack on the Siegfried Line in Germany, and the game was set in the scenario of the Fifth Panzer Army, as described by Gen. Hoffman:

Under the direction of the group, the troops trained in a defensive role to resist the U.S. attack on the junction of the 5th and 7th Panzer Armies. Commanders and key officers assembled at headquarters. The map push had just begun when they received a notice that indications were that a strong American force had launched an attack in the Holden-Gomot area. Field Marshal Modell ordered all participants to continue the military chess projection, using the latest news from the front line as a reference for the projection, except for the generals of the units under direct attack, who were to meet the attack immediately.

Over the next few hours, the situation on the front, as projected in the wargame, became so tense that even the reserve (116th Armored Division) had to be used to resist the enemy. General Vandenberg, the commander of the division at the time, was in his command post playing out the game of chess when he received order after order from his group that the battlefield was in a state of emergency. A few minutes later, Vandenberg gave his subordinates orders to act on the situation, which he had just obtained from the game of war and which was in no way on paper. The legions were immediately put into action, and the battlefield situation thus turned a simple maneuver into a grim reality. Russia came to accept military chess a little later than other European countries. Nevertheless, by the mid-1870s the technique had become a widely accepted part of the officer training program in Russia. According to War Department Orders No. 28 of 1875 and No. 71 of 1876, the systematic training of officers should be advanced by means of written exercises and tactical lectures under the direction of regimental and battalion officers. Given sufficient time, space, and appropriate facilities, military chess was able to be practiced as it was instructed. In the early 20th century, more senior officers became involved in large-scale military chess exercises, and naval military chess was on the agenda.

However, the results of Russian chess were unsuccessful, and in 1903 War Command Document No. 85 officially attributed the failure of the promotion to "the inability of the instructors to arouse interest in the game; and too much adherence to a fixed form, and the lack of good instructors; the lack of interest of the senior generals; and the lack of familiarity of the participants with the tactical mastery of the three armies. familiar with it." Russia's defeat to the Japanese in the 1904-1905 war galvanized the interest of senior generals in military chess. As the dark clouds of war loomed over the world in 1914, the Russian General Staff extrapolated a chess set to test their battle plans against the Germans and their first attack on East Prussia.

Russia planned to attack with two fronts, one marching to the north side of Lake Masurian and the other to the south side of Lake Masurian (see Figure 1). They tested this plan with chess, and the process revealed a fatal flaw: due to the separation of the two armies and the characteristics of the terrain in the area, a timely advance was essential. If one of the armies was too late, the other would be subject to a massive German attack. This wargame demonstrated that to avoid total annihilation, the Russian Second Front would have to start moving three days before Renningkampf's First Front. "The military chess came to such a clear conclusion, but this action was not included in the plan and was not taken into account at all during its implementation."

German military chess projections encountered the same problem when they went out against Russia, but Germany took the lesson to heart. In what would become known as the Battle of Tannenberg, the German Eighth Army, under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, wiped out two Russian corps in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, the role that military chess played in the development of the Russian military before the end of World War II is rarely documented. Although it had been practiced sporadically earlier, it was not until after the Franco-Prussian War that it began to grow in popularity in the British Army, having previously been little inquired about. Colonel Banning of the Royal Artillery introduced a set of rules to the army in 1872. Colonel Banning's rules were derived from those of Von Chischwitz, the German School of Military Chess, which later became known for its rigor.

In the following decade or so, military chess gained much recognition in the British army, enough so that the Chancellor of Cambridge University formally promulgated it to the army by official order in 1883. A few more years later, an official set of rules for professional British military chess was printed and issued under the name Rules of Conduct for Military Chess on Maps. In the late 19th century, perhaps the most important and influential British military chess figure to emerge was the highly regarded military reformer Spencer Wilkinson.

In his book "Essays on Military Chess," Wilkinson depicted military chess as a military strategy on a map, which is basically the same premise used by Mr. Sayre. He assiduously states, "Without proper instruction, it is possible that any form of military study is no more than a paper exercise. Nothing is reliable if it cannot be properly applied." For Wilkinson, military chess is beneficial in principle to participants in terms of improving their understanding of technical and tactical levels. "It is only less dangerous, less fatiguing, less conflicting in terms of duty and adherence to military discipline than real war." The minor details of what happens in real war are often crucial. "The question then arises, how many must have been killed or wounded before the rest were persuaded to change their minds and return?" This emphasis on "conflict," and on "assuming that unpredictability is equal for both sides," appears again and again in different guises.

Colonel Philip H. Columbus invented and patented a "ship-to-ship" chess game in 1878, and the Royal Navy became obsessed with the game. Colonel Columbus's game was called 'The Duel', and it simulated the specific details of a duel between two sworn enemies of the fleet. Perhaps the first true naval chess game, it attracted considerable interest from the French and Italian navies, as evidenced by the appearance of the reviews "Revue Maritime et Coloniale" and "Rivista Marittima".

Wells argues that there was a general lack of interest in German pawns in the British army, and that pawns never really attracted much attention in the regular British Aces. Similarly, Columbus's pawn chess did not take hold in the Royal Navy.

Soldier's pieces, especially those of a strategic grade, were not popularized by von Schlieffen and his contemporaries. Schlieffen and his contemporaries, but its impact on British preparations for the First World War was not as profound as that on Germany. Perhaps this was due to the British tendency to "keep to tradition, to trust intuition, and to the resistance to 'professionalism' that prevailed in the army." "There is at least one exception here, however, and that is that there was a moment when the typical German mindset was being used to study major problems, and the potential of the British army to fight was stimulated in a major European war."

British foreign and military policy was y affected by fear of the Tsarist Russian Empire after the Crimean Peninsula War of 1854-1856. Indeed, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Russian naval fleet set sail from the Baltic Sea to the Tsushima Strait, but it was destined to be a voyage of doom and gloom as the danger of a series of head-on clashes between Britain and Russia loomed large. However, as the new century dawned, some far-sighted officials began to take note of the trade rivalry between Britain and Germany, and the significant change in Germany's attempts to seek equal control of the seas or to act as a maritime empire, which they saw as a more serious threat.

"Exploring the Sources of a Direct German Invasion of Britain," an article discussing it, appeared in the German press but gave way to another possible event in 1905. That possibility was that the war between Britain and Germany might have originated when Germany violated the peace treaty of Belgian neutrality and attacked France at the same time. That was the year that the new British army hierarchy decided to explore this possibility in the context of military chess. "We thought that the original intent of Soldier Chess was educational, but it became the immediate basis for British military planning for years to come."

Wanting to settle, as we usually call it today, suppose that war had broken out between Germany and France in 1905. For two months the Germans had been forcibly attacking the same area that had also been attacked during the Franco-Prussian War, the line between Sedan and Belfort (see Figure 2). As a result of the attacks in this area, Germany decided to send over 25,000 men through Belgium to attack France from the flank. Britain, as the overseer of the Belgian neutrality peace treaty, would inevitably be forced into the war.

This is a tripartite chess set.Colonel C. E. Callwell (who may have suffered from severe hallucinatory memories when he became acting commander in 1914) plays the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces. Major General Robertson (head of the Foreign Military Branch of Military Intelligence) played the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. The Belgian army is commanded by a man named A. Lyndon Bell. Several military operations and intelligence staff officers assisted in the military chess exercise.

Where Soldier's Chess shines the brightest is in a couple of interesting insights, one of the most painful of which is the smooth transportation of Britain's sharpest troops across the Channel to the other side in a set time frame according to a set course of action. "The most far-reaching conclusion drawn from the military chess, however, was that since the German invasion of Belgium could be expected to succeed, then France alone must not be able to withstand a German attack. This led to a dialogue with France after 1906, leading to the Anglo-French Agreement, by which France mobilized in 1914."

There is limited information about more about professional British chess projection before and during World War I and World War II. Perhaps the best known example of the use of military chess projection techniques centers on the activities of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery during World War II.

Montgomery, the supreme commander of the British Army who went head-to-head with German Nazi General Rommel in the El Alamein region of northern Egypt, invented a bizarre approach to command. Particularly during the critical phase of formulating battle plans, Montgomery would leave his command and find a secluded spot where he could deliberate on his options and refine his plans so that his thinking could not be interrupted by the hectic business of one day after another. His chief of staff made regular visits to his private quarters, bringing with him some of the latest operational updates and returning with some of his latest orders to issue to the troops.

During this intense planning phase, Montgomery would test his ideas with his corps generals in a military chess-style drill. "Each participant was tested on specific details, abilities, requirements, reactions to enemy forces, and what he could contribute when faced with relevant situations and plans. Montgomery demanded that his intelligence officers be able to win the coming war, and he laid out on graph paper the deployments of the enemy and those of his own forces. The officers were to visualize themselves as the enemy, to react like the enemy, to take a stand against Montgomery, to play out this strangely mesmerizing indoor game, with a view to following in the footsteps of the British army. Unlike Montgomery, who generally treats this as a planning exercise, Montgomery dedicates himself to it and tries his best to put himself in Rommel's place. He foresaw the enemy's movements accurately by careful study of the enemy; and he always asked himself: what would he have done in Rommel's place?"

In a sense, during and after World War II, British military chess projection was imperfect, and would even be superseded by the new techniques of so-called operations research. American military chess projection encountered a similar, if not more precarious, situation than the British side. The development of military chess in the United States has been even more convoluted. The United States has traditionally been distrustful of the status of so-called military experts. Moreover, there seems to have been no pressing need for them to develop the game, and with the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the American force reverted to its original form of small garrisons. The large number of troops that had fought in the South during the Civil War disappeared, and it did not look as if they would be needed again in the near future. Yet a few prophets cried out, realizing that the few professional soldiers in the United States had become the core of the Union and Allied Command. In the event of another threat from a European power, these few professional soldiers will once again have to be called upon to lead this nation's forces into battle. If U.S. forces were to prepare for this, then they would need to be supplemented with some experience in leading large-scale forces into battle. The emerging game of Wargames in Europe seems to be a good tool to supplement that experience. W. R. Livermore was a prime example of the introduction of German-style military chess to the U.S. In 1879 he published his book, American Military Chess. Based on the work of Captain Naumann, Livermore's system was a derivation of Strictly Military Chess. In order to solve the common problems of military chess, especially the problem of long rehearsal times, Livermore did not work on the program, but directly on the search for a technical approach. The pieces representing combat units were filled with porcelain, metal and wooden blocks. They were colored in the traditional red and blue, while a few other colors, such as gold or green, were employed to differentiate between different combat units and special units such as engineers. The size of the pieces was carved so that pieces of the same material could be used to represent different sized combat units. According to the specifications of the map, the longest of the pieces could represent a regimental infantry column (equivalent to 1,000 men standing elbow to elbow in two lines), or the equivalent of a 64-man detachment spread out over an area of 160 yards. The different faces of the pieces are inscribed with small lines or blocks called points. The number of points clearly indicates the fraction of a unit's lost strength. Special pieces were used to keep track of arms and ammunition levels, logistical strength, and time spent in constructing trenches and bunkers. In these ways, Livermore hoped to cut down on some of the paperwork that can make a strictly military chess game seem more complicated. To show the maneuvering and firing of troops, Livermore borrowed two different physical indicators. The "arrow" is pointed at one end and rounded at the other; the "indicator" is shaped like a sword. Both the arrows and the indicators are labeled with vertical lines, and the vertical segments divide the icons into 10 equal parts, also called points.

Arrows are used to indicate the direction and number of shots fired. By the same token, swords are used to indicate the direction and speed of marching. In this way, the deducer only needs to place the icons correctly to be able to communicate orders to his troops. Unfortunately, the time saved by reducing writing is generally minimal; and how to place the icons, and where to place them, needs to be done carefully and precisely, which obviously requires the pusher to spend a great deal of time tweaking their device.

Despite Livermore's hopes that technology would solve the problem of speeding up the process of wargaming, actual experience proved the opposite. The complexity and artificiality of his device requires that the deducers - and especially the referees - spend a great deal of time mastering the method of deduction, no matter how clever they are. The detail and understanding of the rules and materials involved can encompass almost any actual combat situation that might arise.

But Livermore himself recognized that these devices and materials could not actually speed up chess projections to the extent he would have liked. Instead, he encouraged referees to rely more on judgment and experience, and on the guidance of the large amount of data he provided, than on calculations alone, writing in the 1882 edition that "it would not be too much to say that these calculations are superfluous, and are even undesirable, since in all cases, when the players and referees have had a little experience, and especially when they are well acquainted with the operations of military operations, they will be able to make a good deal of use of their experience, and will be able to make a good deal of use of it. well acquainted, they wish to facilitate and accelerate the derivation of the military game, and not to delay it unduly."

Livermore's military chess clearly belonged to the German school, and in the eyes of some U.S. soldiers, it was ill-suited to the particular circumstances of the United States. The sharpest critique goes to Lt. Charles A. L. Dorton, who published his own book on military chess techniques, Tactics: a Series of American Military Chess Based on Military Principles, in 1880, during the period when the first edition of Livermore was a best seller.

Dorton's purpose in writing the book is made clear in the extended title of his book: "(This book) is designed for learners -- both beginners and advanced -- of the study of tactics, of macro-tactics, of strategy, of military history, and of military operations in all kinds of war. Also included are studies in military statistical tables as applied to war on the map." What else could there be?

Since there was no foreign system of military chess in the United States until Dorton's work was completed, he was able to provide a truly unique American perspective. Unlike Livermore, he avoids jumping right into the intricate details of an already-written type of military chess; instead, he pushes his own chess forward from simplicity to complexity. Through his progressively more detailed approach to deduction, Dorton touches on different levels of deduction in his larger tactical and battle pawns. His desire to help beginners move forward to more advanced levels is recounted in his advanced book on military chess.

Modern chess enthusiasts will find many parallels with Dorton's game. The philosophy, physics, and even some of the basic concepts it uses (like the stacking of troop units and areas of dominion - called zones of control) are surprisingly similar to the basic elements of modern military chess.

Unfortunately, as the 20th century dawned, Dorton's balance-oriented, progressive research methods and military chess projections seemed to fall into blind approval of the German military. As a world war loomed, U.S. experiments in military chess continued with little success.

In 1912, William Chamberlain designed a maritime artillery chess set, which was designed for artillery and land defense units to use to train artillery officers for wartime needs. Chamberlain was not too happy with the title. Huff has quoted the preface to the first edition of this set of military chess: "It is a pity that a title could not be found which better describes its purpose, and the present one has been thoughtfully and carefully chosen." However, the troops' aversion to the term military chess did not stop them from loving the American Journal of Science, which had published an article in 1914 devoted to describing military chess at the Military Academy. The article spoke of the technique as "indispensable to any army in the world," and that military chess was not used "to see who would win, but to arrive at results, to gain experience, and to profit from failure."

Following in the tradition of Sayre, the Army General Staff School has published a book entitled "Solutions to Map Problems". The purpose of the book is said to be to bring about "the right state of mind in individuals so that when faced with a situation they will confidently seek a solution, see through the inevitable connection of things, weigh the pros and cons of conditions, and ultimately make the perfect decision in due time."

In the late 1930s, despite some claims that the Army War Planning Department should use military chess to explore U.S. mobilization plans, on the whole, U.S. military chess focused more on its training and educational functions and less on planning and analysis. The Naval Military Academy's experience is an exception, which we'll return to in the next chapter.

For the U.S. Army, chess is "Kriegsspiel," and "Kriegsspiel" is training. The March 1941 edition of Military Week showed the Army's attitude on the eve of America's involvement in World War II. That issue of the magazine published a translation of a pamphlet by General Kochenhausen on professional German military chess. According to the editors of the periodical, "There is no better method of training generals and corps officers than military chess, and it is also very close, for it resembles actual combat. It calls for the formulation of a clear determination of the task of the troops, and at the same time it can be used to make accurate guides in the time and space of the troops."

Like the UK, there is insufficient evidence for the history of the use of military chess (as distinct from operations research) in the US during the Second World War. One example is taken from the history of the U.S. Ninth Corps, which after the Ardennes War in December 1944 became the 12th Omar Bradley Regiment, under the command of the 21st Montgomery Regiment. As part of the process of integrating the units into the new command, the commanders and staffs prepared a complete and formal "situational estimate". The separate corps presented their plans to a joint conference in which all commanders and key staff officers were present. In this way, the units were made aware of their colleagues' plans and basic considerations. These plans "were instantly extrapolated on the map as a military chess game, and in this way a very detailed preview of future operations could be made, as well as some detailed discussion of contingencies." Of course, as in the case of Montgomery's projection of the military chess, this projection of plans concurrently with the battle did not unfold as it would have done if it had followed the formal system of military chess that had been in vogue before the war.

It seems that neither Britain nor the United States quite recognized the potential value of military chess before the end of World War II. Like the time when it was first invented in Prussia, it was difficult for military chess to really appeal to English-speaking people. Both the British and American militaries recognized the potential training value of chess, and they even used its techniques to test war plans. Yet the prominent role it played in the study of war operations was not well understood, making the proper contribution of this old method less obvious. The only exception is the development and application of military chess at the U.S. Naval Military Academy. At a time when relations between Taiwan and the Philippines were strained by the "Guangxing" incident, Ma Ying-jeou rode in a Clouded Leopard armored vehicle on May 28, 2013, and presided over a "military and political push" at his command post in Taipei's Yuanshan district. The drill also simulated and conducted contingency training for regional political, economic and trade, and transportation crises in response to a military conflict in the eastern and southern waters, triggering a lot of imagination from the outside world.　　For this military exercise related to the sea military conflict, Taiwan security department sources explained that the exercise is scheduled as early as in early 2013 on the formulation, not for the "Guangxing number incident". The exercise is aimed at verifying the operational mechanism of the authorities during the crisis phase, and has no practical relevance to "foreign relations" and cross-strait policy.

Taiwan's security agencies said that in 2013, the political and military military chess projections, is in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, military conflict, regional security, economic and trade traffic impact on Taiwan's security and cross-strait also has a significant impact on the relevant departments stationed in the "political and military centers", cross-departmental crisis management.