Simulation and Wargaming

2A School for War – A Brief History of the Prussian  Kriegsspiel

Jorit Wintjes

Julius‐Maximilians‐Universität, Würzburg, Germany

Introduction

In March 1914, the Bavarian general staff ran a major wargame making operational use of the whole Bavarian Army.¹ Given the overall political situation on the eve of the First World War as well as German war plans for a future conflict involving the major European powers of the day – France, Russia, Austria, and Britain – the scenario that was used for what may well have been one of the last big peacetime wargames of the Bavarian general staff is at first somewhat surprising: instead of being based on the assumption that Germany would have to face both France and Russia, it was in fact set both in the past and in an alternative reality.² Designed by major Rudolf Ritter von Xylander, aide‐de‐camp to the Bavarian Army’s chief of staff,³ it assumed a different outcome for the war of 1866 – Prussia, instead of trying to limit the impact of its victory on Austria and its allies, had in fact pushed for territorial concessions, gaining most of northern Bavaria up to the Danube; a Prussian general governor was installed in Nuremberg and forces conscripted in Franconia. The civilian population, the scenario specified, was rather unhappy about it all, with anti‐Prussian sentiment rampant both in occupied Franconia and in Bavaria itself. Three years later, on 1 May 1869, Austria declared war to Prussia and the North German Confederation, leading ...