Playing War: The Development and Early Use of Kriegsspiel

(Host: Samantha) 

Games are amazing. They teach us how to engage with the world through play. They’ve also been used to train some of the greatest military minds. Chess is notoriously the game of the aristocracy, used to teach strategy and forward thinking. In the 19th century, a Prussian father and son, George Leopold von Reisswitz and Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz, brought strategic gaming to a whole new level with profound results.

 

For further reading suggestions and more, please visit: https://www.footnotinghistory.com

 

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Games are amazing. In addition to being fun, they teach us how to engage with the
world through play. They’ve also been used to train some of the greatest military minds. But,
in the 19th century, a Prussian father and son brought strategic gaming to a whole new level with
profound results. Join me today on Footnoting History as we learn more about their game.

(00:23):
Welcome to Footnoting History. I’m Sam and I will be your host today.
As always, if you want to learn more about our podcast (including how you
can keep us going) please check our website www.footnotinghistory.com.
Today, I get to talk about games – or about one game in particular – but it’s an important one:
Kriegsspiel. In many ways this game was rooted in the military ethos that was

(00:46):
hardwired into the Prussian aristocracy. Our first protagonist, a minor baron named Georg
Leopold von Reisswitz, was the son of a military captain who had served in Fredrick the Great’s
army during the War of Austrian Succession before settling in the newly conquered Silesia.
While Reisswitz planned to follow in his father’s footsteps, an injury in his left

(01:06):
arm made that impossible so he pursued a career as a military strangest instead. As a student,
Reisswitz enjoyed playing games but he couldn’t afford the decorative sets of his youth,
so he used painted blocks instead and by 1785 he had developed his own kind
of simple war game. After that he worked for a few years in the local government

(01:27):
but he lost his civic post in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, which left him with
time to really focus on the game that he had devised and now played with his teenage son.
Sometime around 1810, Reisswitz decided he wasn’t satisfied by the traditional grid-based gameplay
that was common to military games like chess. Instead, he began to mold three-dimensional

(01:48):
landscapes out of wet sand to simulate more accurate troop movement. Once he had a working
model, Reisswitz travelled to Berlin to try to popularize his new game and by 1811 he was invited
to demonstrate his new game to the Prussian princes at Berlin Castle. The princes, who
had recently lost their beloved mother, Louise, liked what they saw and invited the inventor back

(02:10):
to demonstrate his new game for their father. Embarrassed to come before the Prussian ruler
with a table of sand, Reisswitz spent close to a year developing a higher quality model. What
he developed was a square table roughly six feet wide that could be fitted with moveable terrain
pieces made of painted plaster representing roads, villages, swamps, and rivers. The set
came equipped porcelain pieces and a rule book bearing the title Taktisches Kriegs-Spiel – or,

(02:36):
Tactical War-Game. All of the pieces could be stored in draws in a convenient cabinet set
under the table top. The improved version, though much too expensive for mass production, was both
realistic and customizable, though it did not have a mechanic to account for large differences in
elevation. Unlike conventional games, pieces did not move by the square but rather by the

(02:58):
distance which could be measured with the rulers that were conveniently included with the set.
The royal family enjoyed the game and continued to play it even as the Napoleonic wars progressed.
And in the winter of 1817, on a visit to Moscow, Prince Wilhelm showed the game to his cousin Grand
Duke Nicholas (who would soon become Tsar Nicholas I of Russia). Nicholas would also,

(03:19):
later, receive demonstration of the fully realized game. But in the meantime,
Reisswitz kept playtesting his game and produced a more elaborated version of it in 1816.
In the meantime, Reisswitz’s son, Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz, had enlisted in the
Prussian army to fight the French. He had advanced quickly through the military ranks,

(03:41):
especially after earning his Iron Cross in 1813. After Napoleon’s defeat the younger Reisswitz,
who was apparently a talented violinist among other things,
joined the Guard Artillery Brigade of Berlin. And by 1816 the younger Reisswitz had taken
over development of his father’s game. He added more pragmatic military experience
to the game and enhanced its realism. He also shortened its name to Kriegsspiel – or, Wargame

(04:06):
The younger Reisswitz, who, unlike his father, had real world battle experience, sought to create a
realistic picture of combat. Instead of using expensive and elaborate imagined landscapes,
he used maps of real battle fields that had been scaled down so that one inch of the board
represented 400 paces. The maps selected were the ones produced for the Prussian General Staff

(04:28):
in the 1820s by the cartographer Johann Georg Lehmann. These maps were familiar to military
men of the day. They were extremely accurate and in addition to taking into account all
of the physical features that had been present in the original game they included differences
in elevation which could then be factored into strategic calculations. The updated game also
took time into account allowing for troops to move only as far in each turn as a real soldier

(04:54):
could march in two minutes, which meant that infantry could move only about 200 paces (or half
an inch). The pieces (now painted red and blue) were also scaled to match the size and footprint
of standard infantry, cavalry, and artillery blocks. The new game rendered total victory
almost impossible. When pieces faced each other, they would take points worth of damage rather than

(05:15):
wiping each other out entirely, which is, again, a fairly accurate reflection of real combat.
The younger Reisswitz also introduced umpires and dice to his game. Effectively now there
would be three players (or more often, three teams of players). These players were the two
opponents and an umpire who was charged with creating natural scenarios. The two sides,

(05:35):
moreover, would not necessarily be equal at the start of the game (as, indeed,
opponents are not always evenly matched) and the objectives (which were determined by the
umpire) would not necessarily be consistent from one game to the next nor did they always
entail total victory. In order to play the game, the players had to transmit their orders to the
umpire in writing and the umpire was empowered to interpret these directions as they saw fit.

(05:59):
Unclear instructions could be misunderstood, and the player might not even know that things had
gone array. This game mechanic really drove home the necessity of devising specific and
accurate instructions on the real field of battle. Moreover, while the umpire had a bird’s eye view,
he only placed pieces on the gameboard if both sides were aware of them. Therefore,

(06:20):
it was possible for troops to be lying, unseen, in wait for an opponent’s misstep (or, indeed,
for troops to be out of position without the commander’s knowledge). So we can see that the
umpire (which was frequently Reisswitz himself) played a critical role.
The dice were also essential because they added in an element of chance. Now, to be fair here,
Reisswitz was not the first person to use dice in a wargame. They had also

(06:43):
been incorporated into a chess-like game developed by Johann Hellwig in the late
18th century that the elder Reisswitz had played in his youth. Dice were not, however,
employed in the first iteration of Kriegsspiel. Unlike his father, the younger Reisswitz had been
in combat and he understood (and here I quote him) “that the results [of artillery fire] can
differ considerably, even when circumstances are the same.” The rolling of dice was a way

(07:08):
to replicate this element of uncertainty that a field commander would experience in real life.
Much like in modern games like Dungeons and Dragons the players could add to or subtract
from their roll depending on factors that would either advantage or disadvantage their troops. So
if the artillery was firing from an elevated position, they would have an advantage but

(07:30):
if their enemy was concealed or partially concealed they might have a disadvantage.
Thus, while the use of dice ensured that there was some unpredictability, they were not totally
random. Players could use probability. If you’re playing a game with two 6-sided dice,
for instance, you know that you’re much more likely to role a 7 than say a 2 or a

(07:50):
12. Players of Kriegsspiel could make similar calculations, especially since probability had
been a mathematical discipline for roughly two centuries before the advent of Kriegsspiel,
but that’s a topic for a whole separate episode. It suffices for now to recall that Reisswitz would
have expected that his players could make basic calculations based on probability.

(08:10):
The incorporation of dice was not the only way that Reisswitz used math. In fact he
put a lot of thought into military statistics and used them to help improve the accuracy of
game play. He wasn’t by any stretch the first person to try to apply mathematics
to warfare or to realize that mathematics could enhance military strategy. In fact,
the younger Reisswitz relied heavily on Gerhard von Scharnhort’s 1813 book that

(08:34):
quantified the performance of guns on the battlefield to determine outcomes in his
game. He also used data from historical battles to help create realistic outcomes.
The system Reisswitz devised was extremely complicated (it involved the use of five 6-sided
dice). It would be simplified in later wargames, but the principle that use of statistics and dice

(08:58):
rolls could improve the accuracy of game play was transformative and has since become standard
(though games now typically have conventional dice with corresponding tables to give outcomes whilst
the original Kriegsspiel dice had specific outcomes inscribed on them in tiny writing;
this was possibly a way to help distance the game from any association with gambling).
In 1824, Prince Wilhelm, who was by then the commander of the Second Guard Division

(09:23):
and the Third Army Corps, rediscovered the game he had played in childhood. At
his request the younger Reisswitz demonstrated the new and improved
version of Kriegsspiel at Berlin Castle in 1824. The demonstration took weeks to
complete and during this time the palace cats were banished lest they overturn a piece. The
prince was so impressed that he invited Reisswitz to demonstrate his game to the

(09:45):
highest levels of the military command as a training tool. Following the demonstration,
the chief Prussian General (Karl Freiherr von Müffling) was so enthusiastic about the game that
he had it distributed throughout the military and gameplay became compulsory for certain officers.
Thereafter, the game maker had to organize a workshop to mass produce the game.
The game was re-packaged into a box that was 10 inches long and 6 inches wide,

(10:08):
which rendered it both more portable and more affordable than the old version.
In recognition of his game-making achievement, the king elevated Reisswitz to the Order of
Saint John, making him the first member of the artillery branch to receive this honor. And soon
there were Kriegsspiel clubs formed within the Prussian military – one of the early adopters was
none other than the legendary Prussian tactician Helmuth von Moltke (who we’ll come back to soon).

(10:33):
But while some were some enthusiastic adopters, others worried about possible
misuse of the game and still others simply found it too fussy and annoying to play.
The inventor, it turns out, was not the best advocate for his game. Reisswitz
rubbed people the wrong way often making hostile remarks. Moreover, encouraged,
perhaps, by the warm royal reception he had received Reisswitz did not refrain

(10:55):
from criticizing men above his station. At one point he even chose to recreate the Battle of
Lützen with one of the commanders effectively being re-forced to replay a past defeat. As
you can imagine there were some high-ranking officers who resented the fact that they had
to defer to their subordinate’s judgement when he served as the umpire in these mandated games.

(11:16):
So when Reisswitz was promoted to the rank of captain in 1826, he found himself effectively
banished to a distant outpost at Torgau. This new assignment, it seems, crushed his spirits.
And on September 1, 1827 the younger Reisswitz killed himself. His father died a year later.
In the wake of this tragedy, Kriegsspiel was distanced from its inventor and from

(11:40):
the dishonor of suicide. A new edition was released by the Berliner Kriegsspiel-Verein
(or the Berlin Wargame Association) in 1828 and it had no mention of the name Reisswitz.
The BKV’s PR campaign worked and people kept playing Kriegsspiel as a training tool. By 1873,

(12:00):
when a magazine ran a feature on Kriegsspiel it claimed that it was a traditional game “amongst
the officer corps of the artillery” and suggested that its rules did not appear in print until 1846.
This claim was simply untrue and it was corrected by an anonymous letter to the editor which
many historians have suggested may have been written by Kaiser Wilhelm I who had, after all,

(12:24):
played Kriegsspiel throughout his childhood having been introduced to it by both of the Reisswitzes.
The truth is that even after the tragic demise of its inventor, Kriegsspiel remained a central
part of the training for the German artillery officers. Its use of chance was recognized as
an indispensable tool to help military leadership learn how to deal with the unexpected. Moreover,

(12:47):
although it went through numerous rule changes and had to be updated as new
weapons and technologies were introduced, it remained a standard part of the German
military education for half a century. It was not, however, kept as a trade secret
and editions also appeared in Dutch and in Russian and later in additional European
languages (though it didn’t actually gain much of a following outside of Germany until the 1870s).

(13:13):
Even at the time, many believed that Kriegsspiel was responsible for honing
the skills of the Prussian military leadership and have concluded that it may have allowed for
their remarkable victories when fighting Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1871.
It was no coincidence, perhaps, that the military genius behind all of these astounding victories,

(13:36):
von Moltke, was not just a Kriegsspiel enthusiast but also the leader Kriegsspiel club in Magdeburg.
After these victories, Kriegsspiel became something of a fad world-wide but there were many
who felt that there were too many rules to make it really applicable in real world situations.
One way to compensate for this flaw was to allow the umpire to have more discretion

(13:58):
in directing game play. Others (particularly in Britain) adapted the concept of wargames
to create more popular entertainment rather than using them exclusively as training exercises for
professional military men. For example, H.G. Wells created a commercial wargame (horrifically titled

Little Wars (14:16):
A Game for Boys from Twelve Years  of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More
Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys’ Games and Books). Well done, Wells, well done. Wells,
as many of you may know, was a staunch pacifist and his game was intended to invoke such horror
in its players that it would prevent all future wars. But that it didn’t really work as planned.

(14:41):
In the end one of the most famous Little Wars enthusiasts was none other than Winson Chuchill,
who was not exactly opposed to warfare. But I’m getting ahead of myself now.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Germans were still using Kriegsspiel to train officers,
to keep their skills sharp, and even to inform promotion decisions. But they were no longer the
only nation doing this work. Kriegsspiel and other war simulations had become so

(15:06):
popular that by the time he retired in 1888 von Moltke cautioned the German government
that other nations were nearly as well trained as the German staff. He suggested that Germany
should avoid future military entanglements because they would not have such easy victories
as they had had in the 1860s and 1870s. It turns out he was right, because their next
major entanglement would be World War I and we all know how that turned out for the Germans.

(15:31):
There are historians who have insinuated that Kriegsspiel might even have played
a role in the overly aggressive stance taken by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914. Like his grandfather,
Wilhelm II enjoyed playing Kriegsspiel but unlike von Moltke who ensured that teams
were balanced (at least in terms of military expertise) the ruler tended to attract the most

(15:54):
experienced men to his team and he always won. There has been some speculation that
these easy victories may have encouraged the Kaiser’s fantasy that he was a military genius,
which may in turn may have made him less cautious about entering into the First
World War than he might have been otherwise. This hypothesis, however, cannot be confirmed.

(16:15):
Kriegspiel was also influential in planning the early phases of World War I. It helped
the army (now under the leadership of another von Moltke – the nephew of the previous one)
to organize their ammunitions and fueling operations. It was also responsible for
the much-famed Schlieffen plan (and for the deviations from it). There were, however,

(16:36):
some flaws to Kriegsspiel and they really showed here because while the game could
help military leaders gage how much fuel and ammunition they needed, it could not assess
social or political repercussions which, in this case, included the British entry into the war.
Over time Kriegsspiel had to be adapted to account for new technologies,

(16:56):
but new editions continued to be played even after World War I. Though temporarily hobbled
by the treaty of Versailles, the Germans were able to use Kriegsspiel to help plan
the Blitzkrieg strategy that worked so effectively in 1939. Nazi wargames also
correctly predicted that the Battle of Britain would end in a draw. Kriegsspiel
was also played with some success by one of Stalin’s Generals (Georgy Zhukov) and

(17:19):
is said to have played a role in causing that dictator to ramp up recruitment in Russia, which
ultimately may have forestalled a Nazi victory. So Kriegsspiel’s being used by both sides here.
Militaries and security agencies around the world still use wargames for training purposes.
Kriegsspiel was not the first or the last game of its kind, but its emphasis on realism,

(17:41):
its incorporation of the role of chance, and its insistence on removing the grid
from game play were all game changers. I’ve never played Kriegsspiel but now I kind of
want to (or maybe I don’t if it’s really as finicky as its detractors say). In any case,
I am glad that it inspired a plethora of civilian wargames that we still play,
ranging from Stratego, to Risk, to Settlers of Catan and, of course, to D&D.

(18:05):
That’s it from me today, but I hope that if you’ve enjoyed this episode,
you’ll listen to more stories in the Footnoting History Archives
or learn more about our podcast at www.footnotinghistory.com.
Until next time remember, the best stories are always in the footnotes.