Games are amazing.

In addition to being  fun, they teach us how to engage with the world through play.

They’ve also been used to  train some of the greatest military minds.

But, in the 19th century, a Prussian father and son  brought strategic gaming to a whole new level with profound results.

Join me today on Footnoting  History as we learn more about their game.

Welcome to Footnoting History.

I’m  Sam and I will be your host today.

As always, if you want to learn more  about our podcast (including how you can keep us going) please check our  website www.footnotinghistory.com.

Today, I get to talk about games – or about one  game in particular – but it’s an important one: Kriegsspiel.

In many ways this game was  rooted in the military ethos that was hardwired into the Prussian aristocracy.

Our  first protagonist, a minor baron named Georg Leopold von Reisswitz, was the son of a military  captain who had served in Fredrick the Great’s army during the War of Austrian Succession  before settling in the newly conquered Silesia.

While Reisswitz planned to follow in his  father’s footsteps, an injury in his left arm made that impossible so he pursued a career  as a military strangest instead.

As a student, Reisswitz enjoyed playing games but he couldn’t  afford the decorative sets of his youth, so he used painted blocks instead and  by 1785 he had developed his own kind of simple war game.

After that he worked  for a few years in the local government but he lost his civic post in the wake of  the Napoleonic Wars, which left him with time to really focus on the game that he had  devised and now played with his teenage son.

Sometime around 1810, Reisswitz decided he wasn’t  satisfied by the traditional grid-based gameplay that was common to military games like chess.

Instead, he began to mold three-dimensional landscapes out of wet sand to simulate more  accurate troop movement.

Once he had a working model, Reisswitz travelled to Berlin to try to  popularize his new game and by 1811 he was invited to demonstrate his new game to the Prussian  princes at Berlin Castle.

The princes, who had recently lost their beloved mother, Louise,  liked what they saw and invited the inventor back to demonstrate his new game for their father.

Embarrassed to come before the Prussian ruler with a table of sand, Reisswitz spent close to  a year developing a higher quality model.

What he developed was a square table roughly six feet  wide that could be fitted with moveable terrain pieces made of painted plaster representing  roads, villages, swamps, and rivers.

The set came equipped porcelain pieces and a rule book  bearing the title Taktisches Kriegs-Spiel – or, Tactical War-Game.

All of the pieces could be  stored in draws in a convenient cabinet set under the table top.

The improved version, though  much too expensive for mass production, was both realistic and customizable, though it did not have  a mechanic to account for large differences in elevation.

Unlike conventional games, pieces  did not move by the square but rather by the distance which could be measured with the rulers  that were conveniently included with the set.

The royal family enjoyed the game and continued  to play it even as the Napoleonic wars progressed.

And in the winter of 1817, on a visit to Moscow,  Prince Wilhelm showed the game to his cousin Grand Duke Nicholas (who would soon become Tsar  Nicholas I of Russia).

Nicholas would also, later, receive demonstration of the  fully realized game.

But in the meantime, Reisswitz kept playtesting his game and produced  a more elaborated version of it in 1816.

In the meantime, Reisswitz’s son, Georg Heinrich  Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz, had enlisted in the Prussian army to fight the French.

He had  advanced quickly through the military ranks, especially after earning his Iron Cross in 1813.

After Napoleon’s defeat the younger Reisswitz, who was apparently a talented  violinist among other things, joined the Guard Artillery Brigade of Berlin.

And by 1816 the younger Reisswitz had taken over development of his father’s game.

He  added more pragmatic military experience to the game and enhanced its realism.

He also  shortened its name to Kriegsspiel – or, Wargame The younger Reisswitz, who, unlike his father, had  real world battle experience, sought to create a realistic picture of combat.

Instead of using  expensive and elaborate imagined landscapes, he used maps of real battle fields that had  been scaled down so that one inch of the board represented 400 paces.

The maps selected were  the ones produced for the Prussian General Staff in the 1820s by the cartographer Johann Georg  Lehmann.

These maps were familiar to military men of the day.

They were extremely accurate  and in addition to taking into account all of the physical features that had been present  in the original game they included differences in elevation which could then be factored into  strategic calculations.

The updated game also took time into account allowing for troops to  move only as far in each turn as a real soldier could march in two minutes, which meant that  infantry could move only about 200 paces (or half an inch).

The pieces (now painted red and blue)  were also scaled to match the size and footprint of standard infantry, cavalry, and artillery  blocks.

The new game rendered total victory almost impossible.

When pieces faced each other,  they would take points worth of damage rather than wiping each other out entirely, which is, again,  a fairly accurate reflection of real combat.

The younger Reisswitz also introduced umpires  and dice to his game.

Effectively now there would be three players (or more often, three  teams of players).

These players were the two opponents and an umpire who was charged with  creating natural scenarios.

The two sides, moreover, would not necessarily be equal  at the start of the game (as, indeed, opponents are not always evenly matched) and  the objectives (which were determined by the umpire) would not necessarily be consistent  from one game to the next nor did they always entail total victory.

In order to play the game,  the players had to transmit their orders to the umpire in writing and the umpire was empowered  to interpret these directions as they saw fit.

Unclear instructions could be misunderstood, and  the player might not even know that things had gone array.

This game mechanic really drove  home the necessity of devising specific and accurate instructions on the real field of battle.

Moreover, while the umpire had a bird’s eye view, he only placed pieces on the gameboard if  both sides were aware of them.

Therefore, it was possible for troops to be lying, unseen,  in wait for an opponent’s misstep (or, indeed, for troops to be out of position without the  commander’s knowledge).

So we can see that the umpire (which was frequently Reisswitz  himself) played a critical role.

The dice were also essential because they added  in an element of chance.

Now, to be fair here, Reisswitz was not the first person to  use dice in a wargame.

They had also been incorporated into a chess-like game  developed by Johann Hellwig in the late 18th century that the elder Reisswitz had  played in his youth.

Dice were not, however, employed in the first iteration of Kriegsspiel.

Unlike his father, the younger Reisswitz had been in combat and he understood (and here I quote  him) “that the results [of artillery fire] can differ considerably, even when circumstances  are the same.” The rolling of dice was a way to replicate this element of uncertainty that a  field commander would experience in real life.

Much like in modern games like Dungeons and  Dragons the players could add to or subtract from their roll depending on factors that would  either advantage or disadvantage their troops.

So if the artillery was firing from an elevated  position, they would have an advantage but if their enemy was concealed or partially  concealed they might have a disadvantage.

Thus, while the use of dice ensured that there  was some unpredictability, they were not totally random.

Players could use probability.

If  you’re playing a game with two 6-sided dice, for instance, you know that you’re much  more likely to role a 7 than say a 2 or a 12.

Players of Kriegsspiel could make similar  calculations, especially since probability had been a mathematical discipline for roughly two  centuries before the advent of Kriegsspiel, but that’s a topic for a whole separate episode.

It suffices for now to recall that Reisswitz would have expected that his players could make  basic calculations based on probability.

The incorporation of dice was not the only  way that Reisswitz used math.

In fact he put a lot of thought into military statistics  and used them to help improve the accuracy of game play.

He wasn’t by any stretch the  first person to try to apply mathematics to warfare or to realize that mathematics  could enhance military strategy.

In fact, the younger Reisswitz relied heavily on  Gerhard von Scharnhort’s 1813 book that quantified the performance of guns on the  battlefield to determine outcomes in his game.

He also used data from historical  battles to help create realistic outcomes.

The system Reisswitz devised was extremely  complicated (it involved the use of five 6-sided dice).

It would be simplified in later wargames,  but the principle that use of statistics and dice rolls could improve the accuracy of game play  was transformative and has since become standard (though games now typically have conventional dice  with corresponding tables to give outcomes whilst the original Kriegsspiel dice had specific  outcomes inscribed on them in tiny writing; this was possibly a way to help distance the  game from any association with gambling).

In 1824, Prince Wilhelm, who was by then  the commander of the Second Guard Division and the Third Army Corps, rediscovered  the game he had played in childhood.

At his request the younger Reisswitz  demonstrated the new and improved version of Kriegsspiel at Berlin Castle  in 1824.

The demonstration took weeks to complete and during this time the palace cats  were banished lest they overturn a piece.

The prince was so impressed that he invited  Reisswitz to demonstrate his game to the highest levels of the military command as a  training tool.

Following the demonstration, the chief Prussian General (Karl Freiherr von  Müffling) was so enthusiastic about the game that he had it distributed throughout the military and  gameplay became compulsory for certain officers.

Thereafter, the game maker had to organize  a workshop to mass produce the game.

The game was re-packaged into a box that  was 10 inches long and 6 inches wide, which rendered it both more portable and  more affordable than the old version.

In recognition of his game-making achievement,  the king elevated Reisswitz to the Order of Saint John, making him the first member of the  artillery branch to receive this honor.

And soon there were Kriegsspiel clubs formed within the  Prussian military – one of the early adopters was none other than the legendary Prussian tactician  Helmuth von Moltke (who we’ll come back to soon).

But while some were some enthusiastic  adopters, others worried about possible misuse of the game and still others simply  found it too fussy and annoying to play.

The inventor, it turns out, was not the  best advocate for his game.

Reisswitz rubbed people the wrong way often making  hostile remarks.

Moreover, encouraged, perhaps, by the warm royal reception he  had received Reisswitz did not refrain from criticizing men above his station.

At one  point he even chose to recreate the Battle of Lützen with one of the commanders effectively  being re-forced to replay a past defeat.

As you can imagine there were some high-ranking  officers who resented the fact that they had to defer to their subordinate’s judgement when  he served as the umpire in these mandated games.

So when Reisswitz was promoted to the rank of  captain in 1826, he found himself effectively banished to a distant outpost at Torgau.

This  new assignment, it seems, crushed his spirits.

And on September 1, 1827 the younger Reisswitz  killed himself.

His father died a year later.

In the wake of this tragedy, Kriegsspiel  was distanced from its inventor and from the dishonor of suicide.

A new edition was  released by the Berliner Kriegsspiel-Verein (or the Berlin Wargame Association) in 1828  and it had no mention of the name Reisswitz.

The BKV’s PR campaign worked and people kept  playing Kriegsspiel as a training tool.

By 1873, when a magazine ran a feature on Kriegsspiel it  claimed that it was a traditional game “amongst the officer corps of the artillery” and suggested  that its rules did not appear in print until 1846.

This claim was simply untrue and it was corrected  by an anonymous letter to the editor which many historians have suggested may have been  written by Kaiser Wilhelm I who had, after all, played Kriegsspiel throughout his childhood having  been introduced to it by both of the Reisswitzes.

The truth is that even after the tragic demise  of its inventor, Kriegsspiel remained a central part of the training for the German artillery  officers.

Its use of chance was recognized as an indispensable tool to help military leadership  learn how to deal with the unexpected.

Moreover, although it went through numerous rule  changes and had to be updated as new weapons and technologies were introduced,  it remained a standard part of the German military education for half a century.

It  was not, however, kept as a trade secret and editions also appeared in Dutch and in  Russian and later in additional European languages (though it didn’t actually gain much of  a following outside of Germany until the 1870s).

Even at the time, many believed that  Kriegsspiel was responsible for honing the skills of the Prussian military leadership  and have concluded that it may have allowed for their remarkable victories when fighting Denmark  in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1871.

It was no coincidence, perhaps, that the military  genius behind all of these astounding victories, von Moltke, was not just a Kriegsspiel enthusiast  but also the leader Kriegsspiel club in Magdeburg.

After these victories, Kriegsspiel became  something of a fad world-wide but there were many who felt that there were too many rules to make  it really applicable in real world situations.

One way to compensate for this flaw was to  allow the umpire to have more discretion in directing game play.

Others (particularly  in Britain) adapted the concept of wargames to create more popular entertainment rather than  using them exclusively as training exercises for professional military men.

For example, H.G.

Wells  created a commercial wargame (horrifically titled

Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years  of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys’ Games  and Books).

Well done, Wells, well done.

Wells, as many of you may know, was a staunch pacifist  and his game was intended to invoke such horror in its players that it would prevent all future  wars.

But that it didn’t really work as planned.

In the end one of the most famous Little Wars  enthusiasts was none other than Winson Chuchill, who was not exactly opposed to warfare.

But I’m getting ahead of myself now.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Germans  were still using Kriegsspiel to train officers, to keep their skills sharp, and even to inform  promotion decisions.

But they were no longer the only nation doing this work.

Kriegsspiel  and other war simulations had become so popular that by the time he retired in 1888  von Moltke cautioned the German government that other nations were nearly as well trained  as the German staff.

He suggested that Germany should avoid future military entanglements  because they would not have such easy victories as they had had in the 1860s and 1870s.

It  turns out he was right, because their next major entanglement would be World War I and we  all know how that turned out for the Germans.

There are historians who have insinuated  that Kriegsspiel might even have played a role in the overly aggressive stance taken by  Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914.

Like his grandfather, Wilhelm II enjoyed playing Kriegsspiel but  unlike von Moltke who ensured that teams were balanced (at least in terms of military  expertise) the ruler tended to attract the most experienced men to his team and he always  won.

There has been some speculation that these easy victories may have encouraged the  Kaiser’s fantasy that he was a military genius, which may in turn may have made him less  cautious about entering into the First World War than he might have been otherwise.

This hypothesis, however, cannot be confirmed.

Kriegspiel was also influential in planning  the early phases of World War I.

It helped the army (now under the leadership of another  von Moltke – the nephew of the previous one) to organize their ammunitions and fueling  operations.

It was also responsible for the much-famed Schlieffen plan (and for the  deviations from it).

There were, however, some flaws to Kriegsspiel and they really  showed here because while the game could help military leaders gage how much fuel and  ammunition they needed, it could not assess social or political repercussions which, in this  case, included the British entry into the war.

Over time Kriegsspiel had to be adapted  to account for new technologies, but new editions continued to be played even  after World War I.

Though temporarily hobbled by the treaty of Versailles, the Germans  were able to use Kriegsspiel to help plan the Blitzkrieg strategy that worked so  effectively in 1939.

Nazi wargames also correctly predicted that the Battle of  Britain would end in a draw.

Kriegsspiel was also played with some success by one  of Stalin’s Generals (Georgy Zhukov) and is said to have played a role in causing that  dictator to ramp up recruitment in Russia, which ultimately may have forestalled a Nazi victory.

So Kriegsspiel’s being used by both sides here.

Militaries and security agencies around the  world still use wargames for training purposes.

Kriegsspiel was not the first or the last  game of its kind, but its emphasis on realism, its incorporation of the role of chance,  and its insistence on removing the grid from game play were all game changers.

I’ve  never played Kriegsspiel but now I kind of want to (or maybe I don’t if it’s really as  finicky as its detractors say).

In any case, I am glad that it inspired a plethora  of civilian wargames that we still play, ranging from Stratego, to Risk, to  Settlers of Catan and, of course, to D&D.

That’s it from me today, but I hope  that if you’ve enjoyed this episode, you’ll listen to more stories in  the Footnoting History Archives or learn more about our podcast  at www.footnotinghistory.com.

Until next time remember, the best  stories are always in the footnotes.