OCR Specification focus:
‘The development of strategy and campaign aims guided operations and priorities.’
Strategy and campaign aims were central to the planning, direction, and outcome of wars, shaping decisions, priorities, and military actions from the late eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.
Understanding Strategy and Campaign Aims
Strategy in Warfare
Strategy refers to the overarching plan by which military and political leaders seek to achieve victory in war through the use of available resources and forces. It is distinguished from tactics, which concern the conduct of individual battles and engagements.
Strategy: The overarching plan that coordinates political objectives, military forces, and resources to achieve victory in war.
Strategy is inherently linked to campaign aims — the specific goals set within a war or conflict, often reflecting broader political or ideological objectives. Together, these elements shape the course of military operations and the allocation of resources.
Political Aims and Strategic Direction
The Primacy of Political Objectives
The formulation of strategy is deeply influenced by the political aims of the state. As the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz emphasised, war is a continuation of politics by other means. Strategic plans must therefore align with national goals, such as:
Territorial expansion or defence
Protection of trade routes and imperial interests
Ideological objectives, such as spreading revolution or defending monarchies
Securing favourable peace terms
For example, during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), France’s strategic aims extended beyond territorial defence to include the export of revolutionary ideals and the destabilisation of monarchies across Europe. This political dimension shaped its campaigns into wider European conflicts.
The Development of Strategy, 1792–1945
Napoleonic Era: Grand Strategy and Decisive Battle
Under Napoleon Bonaparte, strategy became more ambitious and integrated. Napoleon sought decisive victories that would rapidly compel enemy surrender and achieve political aims without prolonged conflict. His campaigns were characterised by:
Concentration of force at critical points
Rapid manoeuvre to outflank and encircle enemies
Use of corps organisation to allow flexible, coordinated advances
These strategic approaches reflected his aim of reshaping the European order under French dominance. The 1805 Ulm campaign and the Battle of Austerlitz exemplify how strategy guided campaigns to achieve swift and decisive results.
A clear, labelled operational map of the Austerlitz campaign (late November 1805), depicting force groupings and axes of movement just before the battle. It helps students visualise concentration of force and rapid manoeuvre, key to Napoleonic strategic aims. The legend and unit markers provide extra battlefield context beyond the narrow syllabus scope but remain directly supportive of strategic analysis. Source
Mid-19th Century: Strategy and Industrial War
The American Civil War (1861–1865) marked a shift in strategic thinking due to industrialisation and the expansion of state resources. Strategies had to consider vast distances, large armies, and new logistical challenges. Leaders such as Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman recognised that defeating the enemy required more than battlefield victories — it demanded the destruction of the enemy’s capacity and will to fight.
Key strategic principles included:
Anaconda Plan: A Union strategy to blockade the Confederacy and control the Mississippi River, cutting off supplies and dividing the South.
Total war: Sherman’s March to the Sea targeted not just military forces but also economic infrastructure, illustrating how campaign aims expanded beyond traditional battlefield objectives.
Strategy in the First World War: Attrition and Total War
The nature of strategy underwent profound change in the First World War (1914–1918). Early expectations of a short, decisive war gave way to prolonged attritional strategies, reflecting the stalemate of trench warfare and the scale of mobilisation.
Campaign aims became broader and more industrial in nature:
Breakthrough strategies, such as the Somme and Verdun, aimed to wear down enemy manpower.
The Blockade of Germany targeted economic resources, demonstrating the integration of naval and economic strategy.
The concept of Total War — mobilising all aspects of society and economy — shaped strategic planning, with civilian production, propaganda, and national morale all part of achieving victory.
Total War: A form of warfare that involves the complete mobilisation of a nation’s resources — economic, industrial, and human — to achieve victory, blurring the line between military and civilian targets.
Strategic Planning and Campaign Aims
Planning Campaigns
A campaign is a series of military operations intended to achieve a specific strategic objective within a theatre of war. Effective campaigns required careful planning, coordination, and adaptability. They often reflected changes in technology, logistics, and the nature of war.
Common components of campaign planning included:
Defining the objective: Clear campaign aims, such as capturing a capital or cutting supply lines.
Assessing resources: Aligning military strength and logistics with strategic objectives.
Coordinating forces: Synchronising land, sea, and air power as warfare became more complex.
Adapting to conditions: Modifying aims in response to enemy actions or changing circumstances.
For example, the Schlieffen Plan (1914) aimed to achieve a swift victory by encircling Paris and defeating France before turning east to fight Russia. Although it failed due to logistical overreach and underestimation of resistance, it shows how defined campaign aims shaped early operations in the First World War.
A schematic map of the Schlieffen Plan showing the German envelopment through Belgium against France and the opposing Plan XVII dispositions. The arrows make the encirclement aim explicit and help students connect strategic intent with planned manoeuvre. Note: the base layer also shows elements of Plan XVII, which exceeds the strict syllabus focus but aids comparison. Source
Interwar and Second World War Strategy
Interwar Strategic Thought
Between 1918 and 1939, strategists reassessed the failures of attritional warfare and sought alternatives. Theorists like B. H. Liddell Hart promoted the concept of the indirect approach, emphasising speed, manoeuvre, and psychological dislocation over frontal assaults.
Indirect Approach: A strategic principle advocating for avoiding the enemy’s strongest points and instead targeting vulnerabilities to achieve decisive outcomes.
This thinking influenced the development of blitzkrieg (lightning war) by Nazi Germany in the Second World War, combining fast-moving armoured units, air power, and coordinated attacks to achieve rapid victories, as seen in the 1940 campaign against France.
Strategic Aims in the Second World War
The Second World War (1939–1945) saw strategy expand into a truly global context, integrating military, economic, and ideological dimensions. Key strategic aims included:
The Axis Powers’ expansionist aims, such as Lebensraum for Germany and imperial dominance for Japan.
The Allied strategy of unconditional surrender, announced in 1943, which defined the ultimate objective and shaped campaigns from D-Day to the Pacific island-hopping campaigns.
Strategic bombing campaigns, aimed at crippling industrial capacity and undermining civilian morale, reflected the integration of air power into overall strategy.
The Grand Alliance coordinated vast resources and multi-theatre operations, demonstrating the evolution of strategy from individual battles to global coordination.
The Evolution of Strategic Thought
From the limited wars of the eighteenth century to the global conflicts of the twentieth, strategy and campaign aims guided operations and priorities. They evolved from decisive battle doctrines and territorial objectives to encompass political ideology, economic warfare, and total national mobilisation. Understanding this evolution reveals how strategic thinking shaped not only military campaigns but the broader course of history itself.
FAQ
Logistics — the supply of troops, equipment, and provisions — was a fundamental constraint on strategic planning. Leaders had to design campaigns around what their armies could sustain in terms of food, ammunition, and movement.
For example, Napoleon’s strategic plans often relied on rapid movement to secure local resources (living off the land), but logistical overreach contributed to the failure of his 1812 Russian campaign. In the First World War, the vast scale of supply networks influenced decisions on where offensives could be launched, while in the Second World War, strategic bombing of supply lines became a means to disrupt enemy campaigns.
Grand strategy is the coordination of all national resources — military, economic, diplomatic, and political — to achieve long-term war aims.
Military strategy focuses specifically on how armed forces are deployed and used to achieve objectives within a war.
For example, Britain’s grand strategy during the Second World War included securing sea lanes and maintaining alliances, while its military strategy involved specific operations such as the D-Day landings. Grand strategy often shaped military decisions, ensuring that campaigns served broader political and economic objectives.
The emphasis on decisive battles reflected the influence of Napoleonic warfare, where swift, concentrated engagements often determined the outcome of campaigns. Victory in a single major battle could secure political objectives and compel enemy surrender without protracted conflict.
This approach was also practical in an era before total mobilisation, when states preferred limited wars due to financial and political constraints. However, the growth of mass armies and industrial resources in the later nineteenth century made decisive battles harder to achieve, leading to the rise of attritional strategies by 1914.
Alliances significantly influenced strategic priorities and coordination. Strategic plans had to account for the capabilities, commitments, and objectives of allied powers, which could both enhance and complicate campaigns.
For example:
During the Napoleonic Wars, coalitions against France required careful synchronisation of multiple armies.
In the First World War, the Allies coordinated offensives on several fronts to stretch German forces.
In the Second World War, Allied leaders developed joint strategic aims, such as prioritising victory in Europe before focusing on Japan.
Alliances often expanded the geographical scope of campaigns and required compromises in strategy to maintain unity.
Imperial ambitions added global dimensions to strategic planning. Campaign aims increasingly focused on protecting overseas territories, trade routes, and resource supplies essential to sustaining war efforts.
Britain’s naval strategy aimed to defend imperial trade and maintain maritime dominance.
France and Britain targeted colonies of rival powers to weaken their global influence.
Japan’s expansionist strategy in the 1930s and 1940s sought to secure resource-rich territories in East Asia to support prolonged conflict.
Imperial considerations meant that wars were no longer confined to Europe but became global in scope, influencing where and how campaigns were planned and executed.
Practice Questions
Question 1 (2 marks):
Define the term strategy in the context of warfare between 1792 and 1945.
Mark scheme:
1 mark for a basic definition (e.g., “Strategy is the overall plan used in war.”)
2 marks for a developed definition that mentions coordination of political objectives, military forces, and resources to achieve victory.
Example of a 2-mark answer: “Strategy is the overarching plan that coordinates political objectives, military forces, and resources to achieve victory in war.”
Question 2 (6 marks):
Explain how political objectives influenced the development of military strategy between 1792 and 1945.
Mark scheme:
1–2 marks: Limited explanation with general points about politics influencing war without clear examples (e.g., “Politics shaped how wars were fought.”).
3–4 marks: Some explanation with at least one relevant example (e.g., “France’s aim to spread revolutionary ideals shaped its campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars.”).
5–6 marks: Clear and detailed explanation showing how political aims directed strategic planning, supported by two or more specific examples from different periods.
Indicative content (not exhaustive):
Clausewitz’s idea that war is a continuation of politics by other means.
France’s aim to export revolutionary ideals shaping campaigns in the 1790s.
Napoleon’s strategic aim to dominate Europe influencing his use of decisive battles.
Union strategy in the American Civil War shaped by the political objective of preserving the Union and ending slavery.
Allied insistence on unconditional surrender in the Second World War shaping strategic aims and campaigns.
