Kriegsspiel - past and present

The Prussian Kriegsspiel, probably the world's first wargame in official use for educating military decision makers, turns 200 in 2024. Its developmental history which had what was originally a tactical simulator designed for recreating a army manoeuvres on a map turn into a variety of specialized tools covering a wide arrange of subjects from battalion-level army tactics to operational-level naval warplans and train logistics, and all within about half a century. Due to Prussian successes in the wars of 1866 and 1870/71, the Prussian Kriegsspiel was adopted throughout the industrialized world, in which by the time of the outbreak of WW1 the use of wargaming for educating decision makers was quite ubiquitous. Of course, this lies all well in the past now, yet the Prussian Kriegsspiel continues to have relevance to the training of military decision makers even 200 years after its invention. While teaching officers how to properly employ squadrons of cavalry is no longer high up on the agenda when it comes to educating military decision makers, exposing them to the difficulties friction and fog of war can cause still is, and the Prussian Kriegspiel is particularly well-suited to make participants confront these difficulties.

BIO

Jorit Wintjes currently works as a professor for Ancient History in the department of history at Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany. He also teaches in the Digital Humanities program at Julius-Maximilians-Universität and works as a guest lecturer both at the German armed forces staff academy (FüAkBw) and the Helmut-Schmidt-Universität in Hamburg. A co-founder of the Conflict Simulation Group, he has reconstructed and developed Kriegsspiel-type wargames for training decision-making processes which have been run at various German army institutions like the Warfighting Simulation Centre (GefSimZH) or the Military Police and Headquarters Service School (SFJg/StDstBw). His research interests include Roman military – and specifically naval – history, 19th c. military history, the history of wargaming and the role of women in warfare; he is a long-time member of the British Commission for Military History (BCMH).