The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 1

way in which fighter and ground attack planes were deployed. They wrought havoc on Allied

forces in the open field. Brigadier Sir John Smyth of the BEF recounted:

Movement by day on the roads was becoming ever more open to air attack as the

German air superiority grew. One had to keep a sharp lookout for enemy aircraft the

whole time, and, when they were spotted, there was always a difficult decision as to

whether to continue driving on or to halt and take to the ditch. Although the latter

procedure meant delay, which was what the German aircraft were striving to impose, I

saw some dreadful shambles caused by continued movement. In one case a lorry full of

men was hit and several other lorries piled up on top of it. It was difficult to lay down any

hard and fast procedure for all eventualities, as it might then have been possible for the

Germans to paralyse movement by day completely, simply by threatening the roads with

quite a small number of aircraft. (Smith 1957, 62)

However, German air supremacy was considerably less impactful against well-fortified,

camouflaged and entrenched Allied forces.

Competing Concepts of Resilience

The German Wehrmacht of 1940, as compared with the opposing armed forces of

France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands, was more akin to a middleweight boxer

going up against a heavyweight. (May 2009, IX)

And yet, from the outset, the Germans showed greater resilience in breaking through the

French front line and triggering a collapse of what was known as one of the most powerful

armies in the world. This book aims to review these events from the perspective of

Organisational Resilience, broken down into different levels and disciplines of management.

In contemporary military science, a synthesising expression of how military forces

conduct campaigns, major operations, battles and engagements is doctrine (see Figure 1.6):

Doctrine is defined as ‘fundamental principles by which military forces guide their actions

in support of objectives. It is authoritative, but requires judgement in application’. The

principal purpose of doctrine is to provide Alliance Armed Forces with a framework of

guidance for the conduct of operations. It is about how those operations should be

directed, mounted, commanded, conducted, sustained and recovered. It captures that

30 | P a g e