Ferdinand Otto Miksche, military theorist

In May 1944, shortly before the invasion of France, Allied intelligence officers were concerned that the plan for the entire operation had been leaked. In a book by a Czechoslovak military writer, they found passages and diagrams that corresponded remarkably closely, even up to details, to the orders for the actual invasion that were being finalized. The suspicion that a military secret being leaked was not confirmed, as the book had been published a year earlier and the relevant ideas were only theoretical considerations by its author: Ferdinand Otto Miksche (1905–1992), then an officer on General de Gaulle's general staff and a former officer in the Spanish Republican army.

Miksche was born in the multinational Silesian town of Opava to the German-Hungarian family of an Austrian gendarmerie officer. His origins thus conditioned his later fluid identity, as he moved naturally between Hungarian, Czech, French, and German environments. He began his studies at the Hungarian Military Academy in Budapest, but was arrested for espionage and exchanged to Czechoslovakia, where he served for several years as a warrant officer in the artillery before leaving to fight in Spain. There he became commander of the 1st Slavic Artillery Battalion and later an instructor. After evacuation to France, he served in Czechoslovak units in France and then in Britain, before transferring to General de Gaulle's Free French forces 1941. 

He gradually worked his way up to an important position within the operations department of their general staff. Such a spectacular career was undoubtedly influenced by his growing reputation as a military writer and theorist. His first book, Blitzkrieg, published in 1941, became a bestseller, as did the second one, published in 1943 and entitled Paratroops: The History, Organization, and Tactical Use of Airborne Formations, an extract from which is shown here. It attracted the interest not only of readers but also, as mentioned above, of the counterintelligence service. It remains unclear to this day whether the architects of the Operation Overlord were inspired by Miksche, and if so, to what extent.

After the war, he briefly served as Czechoslovak military attaché in France, but after the 1948 communist coup he emigrated and worked for the French government. In the 1950s, he also lectured at the Portuguese military academy. After retiring, he alternated between living in Germany and France. Throughout this period, he published numerous books presenting his reflections on strategy, tactics, and military-political issues in the context of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear conflict. His last one, which reflected the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bipolar world, was published in 1991, shortly before his death. Despite some criticisms and his controversial personality, Miksche continues to be considered an important military theorist to this day.

ZM