The first command task involved control as well as decentralisation. Chapter explains the military organisation which exerted control and implemented the two further traditional principles involved, establishing a point of main effort (Schwerpunkt) and maintaining the chain of command. Describes the roles of the four levels of command covered by the book, army groups, Armies, corps and divisions, focusing on often-misunderstood changes brought about by the strain of modern battle.

Case study illustrates the difficulties and successes of implementing the Schwerpunkt and chain of command principles as the German army prepared for the Entente offensive. Concluding section links organisational change in 1917 to pre-war thinking on command and stresses the difficulty of striking the right balance between the two elements of the first command task, decentralisation and control. Outcome depended on the complex interplay of principles, formal organisational responsibilities, events and in particular personal factors.

Chapter 9 takes a closer look at one of the book’s overarching themes, the relationship between faith and firepower. In the existing literature and the news media alike, much weight is given to the rhetoric Iranian leaders used during (and since) the Iran-Iraq War and the importance of faith and revolutionary fervor in understanding the Islamic Republic and its prosecution of the conflict. As this chapter demonstrates, the IRGC sources and Iran’s actions reveal a different story. By taking those as the basis of analysis, here the book illustrates that Iranian leaders prosecuted the war by relying on all the tools at their disposal, which included both faith—religious commitment, revolutionary ideology, and popular morale—and firepower—military professionalism, strategy, and weapons. In the second half of the chapter the theme of faith and firepower is utilized in another way, to examine how the Guards conceptualized the war in relation to Islam and the Iranian Revolution, and to demonstrate that they did so in order to expound the significance of the conflict.