Organising for War: Strategic Culture and the Organisation of High Command in Britain and Germany, 1850–1945: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the concept of strategic culture has (re‐)gained scholarly attention in International Relations theory, offering a supplementary or alternative explanation for state behaviour. Using this concept as an analytical tool and drawing on International Relations theory, military history and organisational theory literature, this article examines the organisation of High Command in Britain and Germany between 1850 and 1945 from a comparative perspective. It demonstrates the explanatory power of strategic culture by identifying the enduring character of key attributes in the way both nations organised their strategic decision‐making bodies and processes. With the next theatre of war unclear, Britain as an island nation preferred flexible and adoptable High Command structures in which the incontestable primacy of political control was key. On the contrary, the organisational choice of Germany was driven by its precarious geographical setting in the centre of the European continent and the idealisation of a personalised unification of political leadership and military command which contributed to the narrowed a‐politicised, technical and operational focus of the German High Command.