Granite State posted: They did? Is this AirLand Battle doctrine, or something else? I thought Maneuver Warfare was such a big deal partly because the Marines were well ahead of the curve here, Lind certainly bangs on about that, calling the U.S. Army a "second generation force" all the time.
Yes, FM-100-5 (1982) first brought MW into Army doctrine, and is, as you say, essentially AirLand Battle (and if I am wrong on this someone please jump in to correct me). There are real differences between the Army’s and the Marine’s approach to MW – between FM 100-5 and MCDP-1 Warfighting- however. Lind’s view was the Army approach was nowhere near what it should have been (he gave up trying to convert the Army to focus on the Corps), whereas his view was (and is) the Marine’s approach was the right way to go. To oversimplify, greatly, FM 100-5 (1982) is a 'how to manual' and MCDP-1 is a philosophy or 'how to think' manual, which makes the Army from his perspective a 2nd Gen force. This difference is why the Marines are seen by some as being well ahead of the curve. As Gray observed in a meeting in early 1989 (as reported in the minutes of the meeting), to quote, ‘‘We can’t let the Army be perceived as the front runners in tactical thinking with their FM 100-5. They have a book and can’t do it, we can do it but don’t have a book’. I would add that the first sentence reflects to a degree the USMC cultural trait (as I deem it) of ‘organizational paranoia’.


Granite State posted: s it just me, or does this not sound a bit like how the German Army adopted stormtroop tactics in 1917-1918? Innovation at lower levels, a battle against resisters in higher command (albeit a much quicker battle for the Germans), someone at the top fortuitously seeing and agreeing with the new ideas (Webb/Gray vs. Ludendorff)?
Yes, ‘a bit like’ is about right. There is a degree of innovation at lower levels, for Gray was using MW when he was commanding at Lejeune (though he was a GO). But for the most part, what happens is officers from Capts through to Cols are advocating that the Marine Corps adopt MW as a better way to fight than through ‘methodical battle’. They are not really innovating per se, for Boyd provided them with MW (and Lind did as well – Lind was, as Ski noted above, a very central actor in all of this), as did their reading of military history, so they are rather, me being an academic, 'agents of change or innovation'. Another aspect where your ‘a bit like’ observation holds, I would argue, is that MW is what can be termed a ‘bottom-up’ driven process of innovation (as opposed to a top down process (driven either a senior officer or civilian leadership) and certainly the Germans got to MW through a bottom up approach. The process transforms into a top down process, of course, when Gray is appointed Commandant. But as one officer involved back then that I interviewed observed, ‘we never thought that one of us would be become commandant’.

Granite State posted: Did they? Can you provide info on this? My own understanding, based on some relatively light reading as an undergrad, was that blitzkrieg warfare was evolutionary, organic, arguably rooted in traditional German operational doctrine, and got its real base during the Reichswehr years. Do you mean being codified by Seeckt in the training and operations manuals of the day?
I have to plead guilty here to overstating the case when I used the term ‘systematized’. I used that term mainly because it was the only one that occurred to me at the time. Probably a 'coherent concept of' would be, and have been, better. Certainly the Germans had a terminology for aspects of MW (don’t ask what they are off the top of my head). I have a number of books on the German development of MW in my ‘would like to read pile’, which is somewhat higher than my huge ‘need to read’ pile. I am sure, however, someone here on the boards can provide a more specific answer.

My ignorance admitted, yes, my understanding from what I have read is that your point that the German’s development of MW was evolutionary is correct, starting with their development of infiltration tactics on the Central Front and developing thereafter (as you say in particular during the Reichstag era), whereupon the Allies saw it in full flower in the 1939 and 1940 (the Sedan, in particular) German campaigns. I confess that I am not sure whether they ‘codified’ it, or when, not least as ‘codifying’ MW seems to me to be at odds with MW being a mindset or philosophy (which is what MCDP-1). And yes, my use of ‘systematize’ is equally problematic for the same reason.

As you mention Seeckt, as an possibly interesting aside, I am sitting here trying remember if it was him, or another German general, that Gray brought over to solicit his views on and understanding of MW. I think it was when Gray was in command at Lejuene in the early 1980s but I honestly cannot remember if this is correct right now - it is somewhere in my copious notes (that I am still adding to) and it would take me a while, probably long while to find these (so sorry, but thought you might find the latter day connection to the Germans of passing interest).