The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 3

the rear, new lines of defence were established; this was time the defenders in 1940 had not been

given.

As a result, the German advance lacked the support and thus the ‘punch’ to disorganise an

enemy. Over the years, the Wehrmacht suffered terrible losses on all fronts. Resources and

capabilities eroded and depleted over time. In December 1944, the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and

Luftwaffe were shadows of their old selves. In addition, their enemies had enhanced their capabilities.

The defenders could bolster their defences to slow down, halt, and ultimately repulse the last German

offensive in the west with ease. In this respect, the German COG had too little disruptive effect.

A progressive COG requires imagination, a focus on the weakest point of an enemy. However, it

also requires disruptive power, to prevent an enemy from deploying defensive capabilities. If the

Schwerpunkt principle breaks down and the concentration of efforts cannot be resumed or quickly

changed to another ‘focal point’ (Plan B), an enemy can either circumvent his opponent’s COG and

attack his flanks, or just wait until the impact of COG is absorbed.

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Outlook

After WWI, the French, and to some degree their Allies, massively expanded their military

forces, although this was more a matter of quantity than of quality. As a predominantly

citizen army, their fighting ability was limited. Men and material were also dispersed along

the border to Germany, being tied down in the Maginot Line and to a lesser extent along the

Dutch and Belgium border fortifications. During the interwar years and during the eight

month-period of the Phoney War, little training and few exercises were carried out to widen

their response repertoire. From the Allies’ perspective, the COG was, and had to be, in the

north. In any case, once hostilities commenced in May 1940 the Centre was too thin to even

slow down a German advance long enough until reinforcements could bolster defences.

Second, the allied COG could not be moved from the north to the centre and reinforcements

linked with the Centre failed to materialise on time to prevent the Germans from crossing the

Meuse.

The Allies applied an operational way of working that focused predominantly on

dispersion of effort, and a limited, ill-defined use of COG. In essence, their Schwerpunkt

indeed inflicted serious losses on the Germans, but even in the north, their COG was not

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