In the early 1980s, the Combat Studies Institute received a request for a study of all the cases in the past where armies fought outnumbered and won. The point was to distill the necessary ingredients that culminated in these armies' victories. The flaw in this procedure, however, was that it failed to consider the preponderant number of cases where armies fought outnumbered and lost. A similar exercise was conducted eighty years earlier by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the revered chief of the German General Staff. Convinced that Germany, surrounded by powerful enemies, would have to fight outnumbered and win, Schlieffen believed the key to victory could be discovered in an account of the Battle of Cannae, written by the German military historian Hans Delbruck. Therefore, Schlieffen ordered the historical section of the General Staff to produce a set of "Cannae Studies" that would demonstrate that the principle of double envelopment practiced by Hannibal at Cannae was the master key to victory in battle. During the interwar years, the Command and General Staff School Press published two editions of a translation of Schlieffen's classic study. The current edition is meant to afford a new generation of army officers the experience of this famous work of military theory. In so doing, it is probably not remiss to caution readers that Hannibal's victory at Cannae still did not produce a strategic success, even though it was a tactical masterpiece. Hannibal lost the war with Rome. Likewise, Schlieffen's operational concept collapsed in World War I in the face of logistic and time-space realities he had chosen to discount because he believed they were inconvenient to his needs. The lesson to be learned from Schlieffen's experience is that history misapplied is worse than no history at all.

"Authorized translation"--T.p. Reprint. Originally published: Fort Leavenworth, Kan. : Command and General Staff School Press, 1931.

Introduction -- List of maps / The Battle at Cannae / Frederick the Great and Napoleon / The campaign of 1866. The Prussian and Austrian concentration -- The campaign of 1866 in Germany -- The campaign in Bohemia of 1866 until the evening of June 30th -- Koniggratz / The campaign of 1870-71. From the concentration of the armies to the retreat of the French across to Moselle -- The advance of the Germans to and across the Moselle, the Battles of Colombey-Nouilly, and Mars la Tour -- The Battle of Gravelotte-St. Privat -- The Battles of Beaumont and Sedan.