[War & Business] Japan's "Elan Vital"

Statue of General Ferdinand Foch located in Paris, France
[Image source=Paris Tourism Office website/https://parisinfo.com]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] General Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander who led the United States, Britain, and France to victory during World War I, is famous as the founder of the offensive doctrine called 'Elan Vital.' Elan Vital, a French term meaning 'vital impetus' or 'life leap,' embodies the idea that the enemy must be defeated through active offense. The doctrine held that the leadership must continue fighting with the will to win until defeat is certain, and that attack is the best form of defense, requiring the timely deployment of large infantry forces to break through the front lines.

However, the Elan Vital doctrine was not actually General Foch’s main tactical theory during World War I. The doctrine was merely a manual he created for the mental training of soldiers while serving as the head of the French Army War College around 1902, about a decade before the outbreak of World War I. In fact, during World War I, General Foch advocated a firepower-centered tactic that rejected the 19th-century infantry assault operations, emphasizing that before infantry advanced, artillery bombardment should first devastate enemy positions, after which infantry would be deployed.

Nevertheless, the Elan Vital doctrine was misinterpreted in Japan around the time of World War I. The Japanese Army regarded it as an advanced doctrine of the French army, considered the strongest in Europe, and issued officers with military swords for close combat while training soldiers in bayonet fighting. It was preached that if the entire army broke through the front lines with united spirit, enemy forces would collapse despite machine guns or artillery. As a result, the Japanese Army, which had focused on firepower after experiencing Western firepower during the early Meiji Restoration, regressed tactically by emphasizing bayonet fighting over firepower.

This was partly due to the Japanese Army’s inability to replace outdated weapon systems amid the rapid development of mass destruction weapons such as fighter planes and tanks around the 1920s. Japan, lacking steel production capacity, technology, and economic power, could not quickly adopt expensive new weapon systems with its limited budget. To avoid this reality, the Japanese Army used the Elan Vital doctrine as a basis to instill in soldiers an unfounded confidence that spirit could overcome technological limitations.

This confidence led to massive Japanese casualties during the Pacific War. While the Japanese Army, emphasizing Elan Vital, suffered 2.3 million deaths, the U.S. military lost 110,000 soldiers, and Britain and Australia combined lost about 15,000. Although the outcome of the war was decided by 1943, two years before the end of the war, millions of soldiers who did not have to die were brutally sacrificed due to the obstinacy of the Japanese military leadership, who insisted on the war will of the Elan Vital doctrine until the very end.