“The intelligent leadership of troops, and the ability to appreciate and predict the way operations develop call for firm and precise direction of forces. Any suggestion of the exercise of independent command by junior commanders is unacceptable. Not knowing the general situation, junior commanders are likely to take decisions incompatible with it; and this may engender a catastrophe. It may cause a boldly conceived and executed operation, requiring precise co-operation between its component parts, to start coming apart at the seams.”

From Questions of Higher Command (from the book of that name published in 1924), quoted in Richard Simpkin, DEEP BATTLE: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, 1987.