Hans von Seeckt Quotes
Mass becomes immobile; it cannot manoeuvre and therefore cannot win victories, it can only crush by sheer weight.
von Seeckt, Hans. Thoughts of a Soldier. Translated by Gilbert Waterhouse, Ernest Benn, 1930.
Versions of this proverb appear in many countries. Although the proverb originated in reference to military affairs, it is applicable to politics, leadership, management, and in the modern world is beginning to be applied to individuals and their careers and futures.
During the presidential debates George W. Bush stated that he would be very hesitant to use the military for nation building around the world. Less than a year later, the Bush administration, faced with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, launched a massive attack on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. After fighting and winning the war, the military soon realized that they would in fact be involved in nation building. However, with the assistance of the United Nations much of the humanitarian burden was lifted from the U.S. military.
Conant, a great scientist in his own right, had the confidence of the political, academic, and industrial establishment and was appointed to the Committee that was to set policy for the Manhattan Project representing President Roosevelt. Germany had been the world leader in Physics before the war. American leaders and scientists were certain that we were in a scientific race with the Germans. Even after Germany had been defeated, President Truman was told that we had beaten the Germans in the race for the bomb. Actually, although almost no one in the US government realized it then, the Germans had NO PROGRAM of nuclear weapons development at all. Hitler did not trust the Theoretical Physics and Theory of Relativity because Einstein and other Jewish scientists had been instrumental in its development. He derogatorily referred to it as “Jewish Science”. Germany bet its scientific efforts on the V2 Rockets and the Jet Airplane, both of which they were successful with but too late to have any material effect on the war. Ironically, even after most of the great German physicists were run out of Germany, there were still two of the greatest who may well have been capable of nuclear weapons development. But neither Werner Heisenberg or Otto Hahn were inclined to engage in that kind of research, and neither of them were even asked whether or not they thought it was possible. The anti-Semitic Nazis just assumed that it could not be. Truman and his associates did not find out for another year or more that there was no race. There was one OSS spy, Moe Berg, who had actually talked to Heisenberg in the midst of the war, and concluded that he not only was not working on an atomic bomb, but was not up on the latest pre-war critical research needed to develop a bomb. Hahn knew and had created the first chain reaction for which he later won the Nobel prize but he was a chemist and didn’t really understand the Physics and mathematics involved in making a weapon and was a confirmed pacifist. Ironically, his colleague, Lise Meitner who had done the physics and mathematics on that experiment was Jewish and had to flee Germany. In Denmark she gave the results to Niels Bohr, who shared them with Leo Slizard and Einstein when Bohr came to the United State and that initiated the famous letter that was sent to FDR which triggered the Manhattan Project. The German first nuclear reaction was used by the Americans because the politicians listened to the scientists, while in Germany, the politicians gave no credence to their scientists and their experiments in nuclear fission.
Johannes "Hans" Friedrich Leopold von Seeckt was a German military officer who served as Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen and was a central figure in planning the victories Mackensen achieved for Germany in the east during the First World War.
