page_title: Military wargaming
section_title: German military wargaming (1824–1914)
hierarchical_section_title: Military wargaming / History / German military wargaming (1824–1914)
caption_attribution_description: English: Prussian officers playing Kriegsspiel. Illustration from The Graphic.
context_page_description: A wargame, generally, is a type of strategy game which realistically simulates warfare. A military wargame, specifically, is a wargame that is used by some military organizations to train officers in tactical and strategic decision-making, to test new tactics and strategies, or to predict trends in future conflicts.
context_section_description: Reisswitz showed his wargame to the Prussian king and his General Staff in 1824. They were greatly impressed. General Karl von Mueffling wrote: "It’s not a game at all! It's training for war. I shall recommend it enthusiastically to the whole army." The king decreed that every regiment should play Kriegsspiel, and by the end of the decade every regiment had purchased materials for it. By the 1850s it had become very popular in the army. Kriegsspiel was therefore the first wargame to be treated as a serious tool of training and research by a military organization.
  Aside from official military venues, Kriegsspiel was also played in a number of private clubs around the country, which were mainly patronized by officers but also had civilian members, so Kriegsspiel was certainly being played in a recreational context. The first such club was the Berlin Wargame Association. In 1828, General von Moltke the Elder joined the Magdeburg Club and became its manager.
  Over the years, other officers updated Reisswitz's game to reflect changes in technology and doctrine. A particularly noteworthy variant was free Kriegsspiel, developed in 1876 by General Julius von Verdy du Vernois. Vernois was frustrated by the cumbersome rules of traditional rigid Kriegsspiel. They took a lot of time to learn and prevented experienced officers from applying their own expertise. The computations also slowed down the game; sometimes, a session would take longer to play than the actual battle it represented. Vernois advocated dispensing with the rules altogether and allowing the umpire to determine the outcomes of player decisions as he saw fit. Dice, rulers, computations, etc. were optional. This rules-free variant, of course, depended more heavily on the competence and impartiality of the umpire. The relative merits and drawbacks of rules-heavy and freeform wargaming are still debated to this day.
caption: Prussian officers playing Kriegsspiel (illustr. August 1872).
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