Wargaming As a Tool

The Basic Problem: Recreation or Research?

When someone thinks about historic wargaming, they might envision a table covered in sweeping green shag carpet, an outcropping of building named after (but hardly resembling) a historic location, and dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of intricately painted miniatures pushed carefully and cautiously across foam terrain. Perhaps a fun afternoon but hardly the grounds for serious historic study, unless of course the subject is the culture of miniature wargaming itself. For decades, this mindset has dominated academic thinking regarding wargaming. Yet this sits incongruously with the history of wargaming, as well as its current institutional use. Indeed many decisionmakers turn to map exercises and more to shape their understanding of the world, all while the academy treats the tool as fodder for children and the ever dangerous ‘enthusiast buff.’

The name ‘wargame’ comes from its first modern example, the Prussian Kriegsspiel. Kriegsspiel was developed in the early 19th century by officer Georg von Riesswitz as a way to think about battles more rigorously than older games which he felt were too abstract and tied to chess. Von Riesswitz wanted his game to be modern, replayable, but which would also accurately reflect real-world organizations, doctrine, and geography. He showed the first edition of his game to other officers in 1811, and gifted King Friedrich Wilhelm III a sand table and equipment in 1812. After von Riesswitz the elder retired from service following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, his son von Riesswitz the younger, also an officer in the Prussian Army, picked the game back up. Where his father had created a method and a few ornate component sets for use by the royal court, the younger Riesswitz rebuilt the game to be cheaper, more accessible, and generally more suitable for the postwar army. His ruleset, published in 1824, utilized six sided dice, painted wooden pieces, and paper maps to simulate any battle fought within a century of Riesswitz’s life. Indeed his system is so robust and flexible as to be well suited for even battles fought in the early 20th century. A key component of early Prussian wargaming was the associated staff ride. Utilizing the 1824 system, groups of officers would mount their horses and ride out to famous battlefields where they would play through famous historic battles. Whenever results were ambiguous, or questions of feasibility arose, ‘commanders’ would ride out to the ground in question and apply their practical knowledge to resolve questions. In this way, Kriegsspiel exercised both the intellectual but also practical components of military operations, while also preserving a fundamentally aristocratic approach to officering. Von Riesswitz’s Kriegsspiel formed the foundation of the wargaming hobby. It was made widely available thanks to a large scale German print run, and was translated into English by William Livermore in 1879. Named American Kriegsspiel, this edition would be reprinted nearly a half dozen times and was widely popular. Novelist H.G. Wells became enamored with the Prussian system and fused it with his love of scale modeling to create the game Little Wars (1913), advertised for ages 8 to 150.

Within the Prussian Army, however, Kriegsspiel advanced as a planning tool. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the Prussian government formalized a number of institutions which became the great Prusso-German General staff. The Great Staff was responsible for the practical aspects of waging war including, in peace time, wartime contingency planning. These warplans were shaped, in part, by thorough gaming. In 1870 this practice paid off in the war with France. Likewise, gaming in the first decade of the 20th century shaped the ill-fated German invasion of France and accurately predicted the danger presented by attacking everywhere. The failure to heed these pre-war games helped to contribute to the defeats faced that summer, which in turn created stagnation of the trenches. Gaming has been used to explore the ramifications of nuclear war, and one might draw a connective line of thought from von Riesswitz the elder’s frustrations with chess and RAND’s work on ‘game theory’ in foreign policy and nuclear war in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 70s, the service branches used wargames to explore questions ranging from tactic and doctrine, to tank design and attack helicopter employment.

Excercises, simulations, and wargames have been demonstratively important in decision making processes for decades. We also can see that the language of play which so permeates wargaming lies not in its origins, von Riesswitz’s (father and son) desire to more rigorously experiment with battles and tactics, but by the popularization of a branch of Kriegsspiel designed specifically for enthusiasts by one of the greatest authors and futurists of the 20th century. The conflation of these two branches has unfairly stigmatized wargaming to the point that it is almost totally unused today within professional academic history. This I argue is a mistake. Since the end of the 20th Century, academic history has broken free of the Ranke-ist methodology. Yes, archival work is important and vital. But so too are other sources, from oral, to experimental, to quantitative history. It is time that historians also begin to think about how they might recreate historical events in the laboratory of the academy.

The Spectrum of Problem Solving

As weve explored, the language of wargaming remains tragically rooted in both the languages of play, but also of war. The images found on this page, and commonly across the field, fixate on battle simulations. But in the same way that a wargame does not have to resemble a game at all, neither do they have to have war as subject. RAND defines a wargame as “an exercise or simulation of any threatening situation.” This need not be an armed conflict, but could reasonably encompass most topics of interest to historians At the consumerist level, there are a number of games which attempt to simulate complex non-military historical events.

• The 18xx series explores both the technology and geography of railroad expansion alongside their financial and stock market dynamics.

• The Weimar Republic places players in the role of major figure and factions as they attempt to preserve, or topple, the post-1918 system.

• Cross Bronx Expressway puts players in the role of mid-century urbanists look to reshape the face of New York by precariously balancing economic and social forces

Consumerist games are often rooted at the extreme end of the wargame-simulationist spectrum. Many, but certainly not all or even most!, emphasize fun and reasonable play experiences over historic accuracy. They nevertheless represent the fertile possibilities of the field of non-military wargames. They can also form a departure point for researchers interested in approaching problems in a new light. As Kriegsspiel has formed the bedrock for military wargames and simulations, so too could these games form a foundation for developing more rigorous, more qualitative or quantitative approaches.

For some though, this conclusion is neither shocking nor new. Many think tanks and policy groups have long incorporated wargames into their strategic planning and decision making cycle. The RAND Corporation in particular has long pioneered the field on non-military wargames and simulations.

Here the work done at RAND serves as a model for both non-military and military gaming alike. It is flexible, adaptable, the company’s wargamers up to tackle any topic. The incorporation of new digital tools such as LLM software can increase fidelity and qualitative sophistication while also remaining fast to play and easy to create, as many quantitative games can be.

We therefore should ask: if these tools are being used by decision makers around the globe, why are academics and historians so reluctant to consider them?