page_title: Mozg Armii
section_title: The integral military leader: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf as a model
hierarchical_section_title: Mozg Armii / Main theories in Mozg Armii / The integral military leader: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf as a model
caption_attribution_description: English: Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf (Hoetzendorf), Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I. Deutsch: Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf war Generalstabschef der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee und Heerführer im Ersten Weltkrieg
context_page_description: Mozg Armii, in English The Brain of the Army, is a three-volume military theory book published between 1927 and 1929. It is the most important work of Boris Shaposhnikov, a Soviet military commander then in command of the Moscow military region. Mozg Armii gained a wide popularity throughout the Red Army, and Shaposhnikov himself was held in high regard by Joseph Stalin.
context_section_description: Clausewitz also considered a commander in chief to be a military leader without the additional word "supreme"; for us, the chief of the General Staff is considered a strategist and commander in chief who is only part of the leadership in war.
  — B. Shaposhnikov, Mozg Armii, vol. 1, p.113.
  Regarding military command, Shaposhnikov supported the ideas that one of his colleagues, Alexander Andreyevich Svechin, had already formulated in a book entitled Strategy (first published in 1926). The main idea here was that leadership had to be "integral": it could not be wholly entrusted to any single individual, because, in Svechin's words, the commander in chief "does not have all power over the entire state" and "giving full power to a chosen military leader is an obsolete formula which never reflected any kind of reality". For Svechin, the conduct of a war had to be assumed by the entire state.
  For Shaposhnikov, who approved of this and quoted Svechin heavily, the main and ideal model for such an "integral" General Staff was that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, and specifically, the staff of Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf (the Austro-Hungarian Army's Chief of the General Staff from 1914 to 1916).
  According to Shaposhnikov, the cardinal virtue of Conrad was that under him, there was a real teamwork among the General Staff. Shaposhnikov praised Conrad's close relations with his operations chief; he also commended Conrad on his encouraging his subordinates to show initiative, his view of strategy as being subordined to politics (see below), and his willingness to delegate authority.
  Shaposhnikov also attributed a range of personal virtues to Conrad, among which "boldness and strength of character", "energy and initiative", "independence", and his workaholism (virtues Shaposhnikov compared to these of Napoleon Bonaparte). However, in line with the Marxist view of history, Shaposhnikov rejected any kind of Great Man theory in warfare and stressed the importance of collective work. For him, this view was supported by Carl von Clausewitz's (see above quote) and Conrad's own writings. Conrad had been badly defeated in 1916 by Russian General Alexei Brusilov, who, like Shaposhnikov, joined the Red Army after the Revolution.
caption: Count Conrad von Hötzendorf, Shaposhnikov's model of a good Chief of the General Staff.
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