The Enemy Of A Good Plan Is

To Be Practical, Any Plan Must Take Account Of The Enemy's Power To Frustrate It.

But The Main Point Is That Soldiers, After Fighting For Some Time, Are Apt To Be Like Burned-out Cinders. They Have Shot Off Their Ammunition, Their Numbers Have Been Diminished, Their Strength And Their Morale Are Drained, And Possibly Their Courage Has Vanished As Well. As An Organic Whole, Quite Apart From Their Loss In Numbers, They Are Far From Being What They Were Before The Action; And Thus The Amount Of Reserves Spent Is An Accurate Measure On The Loss Of Morale.

If We Consider The Actual Basis Of This Information [i.e., Intelligence], How Unreliable And Transient It Is, We Soon Realize That War Is A Flimsy Structure That Can Easily Collapse And Bury Us In Its Ruins. ... Many Intelligence Reports In War Are Contradictory; Even More Are False, And Most Are Uncertain. This Is True Of All Intelligence But Even More So In The Heat Of Battle, Where Such Reports Tend To Contradict And Cancel Each Other Out. In Short, Most Intelligence Is False, And The Effect Of Fear Is To Multiply Lies And Inaccuracies.

Everything In War Is Very Simple, But The Simplest Thing Is Difficult. The Difficulties Accumulate And End By Producing A Kind Of Friction That Is Inconceivable Unless One Has Experienced War. ... Countless Minor Incidents - The Kind You Can Never Really Foresee - Combine To Lower The General Level Of Performance, So That One Always Falls Short Of The Intended Goal.

I Shall Proceed From The Simple To The Complex. But In War More Than In Any Other Subject We Must Begin By Looking At The Nature Of The Whole; For Here More Than Elsewhere The Part And The Whole Must Always Be Thought Of Together.