Ferdinand Foch and the Operational Level of War, Part 1: “Scientific” Battle and Operational Effectiveness on the Industrialized Battlefield

This article explains the first stage of a two-stage process by which Ferdinand Foch, France’s pre-eminent pre-war military theorist, mastered the First World War’s static industrialized battlefield and delivered victory by rethinking warfare from first principles. At the emergent operational level of war, battle had to be appropriate to the forces, abilities, and objectives of armies. Evaluating his early operational command experience in 1914 and 1915 in the light of his pre-war thought, Foch advocated a new “scientific” battle operational method attuned to battlefield realities. The scientific method ensured appropriate command and control and the integration of material and manpower that restored operational effectiveness by the late 1916 Battle of the Somme.