Playfully look into the abyss

Abstract

Wargaming has been receiving increasing attention in recent years. In Germany, it can almost be described as a rediscovery, as can be seen from the recently published ‘Wargaming Handbook of the German Armed Forces’ (2024). The playful nature of military operational planning has been viewed extremely critically by the founder of Inner Leadership, Wolf Graf von Baudissin, in view of the cruel reality of war. A normative examination of wargaming as a method can therefore take many different directions. This text deals with the abstraction processes and mechanics of wargaming, making it clear that this is not just a playful necessity. Rather, it reproduces, possibly unintentionally, an extremely realistic phenomenon that is used both in military planning processes and in the immediate experience of the use of force. Wargaming could therefore represent an approach to addressing those processes for which there seems to be no common language as yet and which are often passed over in silence.