military history, accompanied by sound criticism, is indeed the true school of war. jomini

7/30/2019 Military History, Accompanied by Sound Criticism, Is Indeed the True School of War. Jomini

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http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/dnss/history/why_read.htm

Why Read Military History?

"Military History, accompanied by sound criticism, is indeed the true school of war."Jomini

Most soldiers who have read much history probably would agree with General DouglasMacArthur when he asserted, over fifty years ago:

"More than most professions, the military is forced to depend upon intelligent interpretation of

the past for signposts charting the future.... The facts derived from historical analysis he [thesoldier] applies to conditions of the present and the proximate future, thus developing asynthesis of appropriate method, organization, and doctrine.... These principles know nolimitation of time. Consequently the Army extends its analytical interest to the dust-buriedaccounts of wars long past as well as to those still reeking with the scent of battle. It is theobject of the search that dictates the field for its pursuit."

General John R. Galvin while Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, contributed the followingessay on why officers should want to read history.

Good military leaders understand history. Leadership without a sense of history can only beinstinctive, and thereby limited in its scope. The study of history contributes to our knowledge ofthe human experience so that in the end we are better able to render judgment, and what is

leadership but the ability to judge what must be done and how to accomplish it?

The late World War II historian and combat journalist Cornelius Ryan told of watching a group ofgreen American lieutenant replacements in Italy moving up to take over platoons that werealready in heavy action. A fellow war correspondent at his side commented simply, "I hope theyare well read." Ryan found much wisdom in that observation. How else could men so young andnew to war hope to lead others? They had little chance to train; they had no experience of war;they were too young to know much of life firsthand. Those with an early acquired sense ofhistory, with a knowledge of human endeavor, would be relatively well off indeed at thatmoment.

As military leaders we are charged to prepare our soldiers and ourselves for war. We go aboutthis in a variety of ways, not least of which is to bring about some understanding of the nature of

war. With this in mind we can look back over the Army's recent training programs and activitieswith some satisfaction that we have been able to emphasize history as a part of them. Ourmilitary schools are encouraging more and more historical readings and analyses. Units arevisiting battlefields, making terrain walks, taking staff rides, and investigating the decisions andcircumstances of the men who fought there. We are requiring our junior officers, andencouraging our more senior ones, to select from recommended lists, to read, and to reflect.More and more of our people are writing, and more and more of their works are beingpublished.

Hopefully, we are seeing the development of a trend here. Perhaps we can take some pride inthe indicators that history is a more vital part of training than it has been in the recent past. Butthere are still those who would question whether we really need all this effort. After all, themilitary is a busy place, the days are long, the work demanding, and the pace exhausting. Canwe really devote much time and effort to reading history?
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Clausewitz answered that question some time ago. In his effort to understand the nature of war,he praised the use of historical example. He approached the use of history from fourperspectives: as an explanation, as a demonstration of the application of an idea, as a supportfor a statement, and as a detailed presentation from which one might deduce doctrine. Each userequires greater degrees of rigor. The first and simplest demand is for accuracy. If we readwidely enough, we can develop an ability to discern and a base for comparison that will develop

a feel for accuracy. The second and far greater demand is to project ourselves into the momentin time under study, not to force fit it into our own world. Only by understanding the conditions ofthe era and the perspectives of the people under study can we understand the rationale of theirdecisions-and make judgments for our own time. The third and fourth are matters of logic anddiscipline.

In sum, the reading of history is a way to gain experience. The reader swelters with Lawrence inthe burning Arabian sands and learns the brutality and fluidity of guerrilla warfare. He gasps atChandler's description of the genius Napoleon arising at midnight to dictate his orders throughthe night to set the stage for the battle. He hammers at Lee's Army of Northern Virginia withGrant's memoirs; overcomes the terror of the Burmese jungle and turns defeat into victory withSlim; unravels the conceptual threads of battle and maneuver with Delbruck; relates war tonuclear weapons to politics with Brodie; freezes in Korea with Marshall at the river and the

gauntlet; and cries out with MacDonald at the inanities of the Kall trail before Schmidt.

In the end he emerges as a veteran-more inured to the shock of the unexpected, betterprepared to weigh the consequences of critical decisions, and imbued with the human dramabreaking upon leaders and led in their march to destiny. He knows the fine line betweenfoolhardiness and courage, between abstinence and conviction, between disgrace and glory. Hehas had a conversation with the soldiers of all time and has shared their lives and thoughts. Hisjudgment is sharpened, and he is better prepared to lead.

As we read history we enter into a conversation together, where a reference to Douhet, ananalogy that cites Verdun, or an illustration that notes Trafalgar evokes a much greaterunderstanding of what is meant. Professional exchanges are richer, transmission of ideas moreefficient, and misunderstandings fewer. A common historical understanding carries a wealth of

meaning for us as leaders.

We have done much in our Army recently to heighten our professionalism and our readiness todefend our nation. Not least among our accomplishments has been a restatement of theimportance of history in general and military history in particular. No one should become sobusy with the course of events that he does not pause and consider how others have dealt withsimilar circumstances in their own time and place. To immerse oneself in history is to spendtime well. *

* Originally printed in Center for Military History Journal, September 1989.

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http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_military_history.html

Victor Davis Hanson

Why Study War?
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Military history teaches us about honor, sacrifice, and the inevitability of conflict.

Summer 2007

ry explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory.

Youll provoke not a counterargumentlet alone an assentbut a blank stare: Whoor what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered

similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know

who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the

Persian Wars altogether.

Its no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of

military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military

historyunderstood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another

loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship,

technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery,national will, and culture in determining a conflicts outcome and its consequences

had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less

receptive to the subject.

This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires

knowledge of warand now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than

ever.

came to the study of warfare in an odd way, at the age of 24. Without ever taking

a class in military history, I naively began writing about war for a Stanford classics

dissertation that explored the effects of agricultural devastation in ancient Greece,

especially the Spartan ravaging of the Athenian countryside during the

Peloponnesian War. The topic fascinated me. Was the strategy effective? Why

assume that ancient armies with primitive tools could easily burn or cut trees,

vines, and grain on thousands of acres of enemy farms, when on my family farm in

Selma, California, it took me almost an hour to fell a mature fruit tree with a sharp

modern ax? Yet even if the invaders couldnt starve civilian populations, was the

destruction still harmful psychologically? Did it goad proud agrarians to come out

and fight? And what did the practice tell us about the values of the Greeksand of

the generals who persisted in an operation that seemingly brought no tangible

results?

I posed these questions to my prospective thesis advisor, adding all sorts of further

justifications. The topic was central to understanding the Peloponnesian War, I

noted. The research would be interdisciplinarya big plus in the modern university

drawing not just on ancient military histories but also on archaeology, classical

drama, epigraphy, and poetry. I could bring a personal dimension to the research,

too, having grown up around veterans of both world wars who talked constantly

about battle. And from my experience on the farm, I wanted to add practical details

about growing trees and vines in a Mediterranean climate.


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Yet my advisor was skeptical. Agrarian wars, indeed wars of any kind, werent

popular in classics Ph.D. programs, even though farming and fighting were the

ancient Greeks two most common pursuits, the sources of anecdote, allusion, and

metaphor in almost every Greek philosophical, historical, and literary text. Few

classicists seemed to care any more that most notable Greek writers, thinkers, and

statesmenfrom Aeschylus to Pericles to Xenophonhad served in the phalanx or

on a trireme at sea. Dozens of nineteenth-century dissertations and monographs on

ancient warfareon the organization of the Spartan army, the birth of Greek

tactics, the strategic thinking of Greek generals, and much morewent largely

unread. Nor was the discipline of military history, once central to a liberal

education, in vogue on campuses in the seventies. It was as if the university had

forgotten that history itself had begun with Herodotus and Thucydides as the story

of armed conflicts.

hat lay behind this academic lack of interest? The most obvious explanation: thiswas the immediate post-Vietnam era. The public perception in the Carter years was

that America had lost a war that for moral and practical reasons it should never

have foughta catastrophe, for many in the universities, that it must never repeat.

The necessary corrective wasnt to learn how such wars started, went forward, and

were lost. Better to ignore anything that had to do with such odious business in the

first place.

The nuclear pessimism of the cold war, which followed the horror of two world

wars, also dampened academic interest. The postwar obscenity of Mutually Assured

Destruction had lent an apocalyptic veneer to contemporary war: as PresidentKennedy warned, Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to

mankind. Conflict had become something so destructive, in this view, that it no

longer had any relation to the battles of the past. It seemed absurd to worry about a

new tank or a novel doctrine of counterinsurgency when the press of a button,

unleashing nuclear Armageddon, would render all military thinking superfluous.

Further, the sixties had ushered in a utopian view of society antithetical to serious

thinking about war. Government, the military, business, religion, and the family

had conspired, the new Rousseauians believed, to warp the naturally peace-loving

individual. Conformity and coercion smothered our innately pacifist selves. Toassert that wars broke out because bad men, in fear or in pride, sought material

advantage or status, or because good men had done too little to stop them, was now

seen as antithetical to an enlightened understanding of human nature. What

difference does it make, in the words of the much-quoted Mahatma Gandhi, to

the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought

under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

The academic neglect of war is even more acute today. Military history as a

discipline has atrophied, with very few professorships, journal articles, or degree

programs. In 2004, Edward Coffman, a retired military history professor whotaught at the University of Wisconsin, reviewed the faculties of the top 25 history


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departments, as ranked byU.S. News and World Report. He found that of over

1,000 professors, only 21 identified war as a specialty. When war does show up on

university syllabi, its often about the race, class, and gender of combatants and

wartime civilians. So a class on the Civil War will focus on the Underground

Railroad and Reconstruction, not on Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. One on

World War II might emphasize Japanese internment, Rosie the Riveter, and the

horror of Hiroshima, not Guadalcanal and Midway. A survey of the Vietnam War

will devote lots of time to the inequities of the draft, media coverage, and the

antiwar movement at home, and scant the air and artillery barrages at Khe Sanh.

Those who want to study war in the traditional way face intense academic

suspicion, as Margaret Atwoods poem The Loneliness of the Military Historian

suggests:

Confess: its my profession

that alarms you.

This is why few people ask me to dinner,

though Lord knows I dont go out of my

way to be scary.

Historians of war must derive perverse pleasure, their critics suspect, from reading

about carnage and suffering. Why not figure out instead how to outlaw war forever,

as if it were not a tragic, nearly inevitable aspect of human existence? Hence the

recent surge of peace studies (see The Peace Racket).

he universitys aversion to the study of war certainly doesnt reflect public lack of

interest in the subject. Students love old-fashioned war classes on those rare

occasions when theyre offered, usually as courses that professors sneak in when the

choice of what to teach is left up to them. I taught a number of such classes at

California State University, Stanford, and elsewhere. Theyd invariably wind up

overenrolled, with hordes of students lingering after office hours to offer opinions

on the battles of Marathon and Lepanto.

Popular culture, too, displays extraordinary enthusiasm for all things military.

Theres a new Military History Channel, and Hollywood churns out a steady supplyof blockbuster war movies, fromSaving Private Ryan to300. The postKen Burns

explosion of interest in the Civil War continues. Historical reenactment societies

stage historys great battles, from the Roman legions to the Wehrmachts. Barnes

and Noble and Borders bookstores boast well-stocked military history sections,

with scores of new titles every month. A plethora of websites obsess over strategy

and tactics. Hit video games grow ever more realistic in their reconstructions of

battles.

The public may feel drawn to military history because it wants to learn about honor

and sacrifice, or because of interest in technologythe muzzle velocity of a TigerTanks 88mm cannon, for instanceor because of a pathological need to experience
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violence, if only vicariously. The importanceand challengeof the academic study

of war is to elevate that popular enthusiasm into a more capacious and serious

understanding, one that seeks answers to such questions as: Why do wars break

out? How do they end? Why do the winners win and the losers lose? How best to

avoid wars or contain their worst effects?

wartime public illiterate about the conflicts of the past can easily find itself

paralyzed in the acrimony of the present. Without standards of historical

comparison, it will prove ill equipped to make informed judgments. Neither our

politicians nor most of our citizens seem to recall the incompetence and terrible

decisions that, in December 1777, December 1941, and November 1950, led to

massive American casualties and, for a time, public despair. So its no surprise that

today so many seem to think that the violence in Iraq is unprecedented in our

history. Roughly 3,000 combat dead in Iraq in some four years of fighting is, of

course, a terrible thing. And it has provoked national outrage to the point ofconsidering withdrawal and defeat, as we still bicker over up-armored Humvees

and proper troop levels. But a previous generation considered Okinawa a stunning

American victory, and prepared to follow it with an invasion of the Japanese

mainland itselfdespite losing, in a little over two months, four times as many

Americans as we have lost in Iraq, casualties of faulty intelligence, poor

generalship, and suicidal head-on assaults against fortified positions.

Its not that military history offers cookie-cutter comparisons with the past.

Germanys World War I victory over Russia in under three years and her failure to

take France in four apparently misled Hitler into thinking that he could overrun theSoviets in three or four weeksafter all, he had brought down historically tougher

France in just six. Similarly, the conquest of the Taliban in eight weeks in 2001,

followed by the establishment of constitutional government within a year in Kabul,

did not mean that the similarly easy removal of Saddam Hussein in three weeks in

2003 would ensure a working Iraqi democracy within six months. The differences

between the countriescultural, political, geographical, and economicwere too

great.

Instead, knowledge of past wars establishes wide parameters of what to expect from

new ones. Themes, emotions, and rhetoric remain constant over the centuries, andthus generally predictable. Athenss disastrous expedition in 415 BC against Sicily,

the largest democracy in the Greek world, may not prefigure our war in Iraq. But

the story of the Sicilian calamity does instruct us on how consensual societies can

clamor for waryet soon become disheartened and predicate their support on the

perceived pulse of the battlefield.

ilitary history teaches us, contrary to popular belief these days, that wars arent

necessarily the most costly of human calamities. The first Gulf War took few lives in

getting Saddam out of Kuwait; doing nothing in Rwanda allowed savage gangs and

militias to murder hundreds of thousands with impunity. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and

Stalin killed far more off the battlefield than on it. The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic


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brought down more people than World War I did. And more Americansover 3.2

millionlost their lives driving over the last 90 years than died in combat in this

nations 231-year history. Perhaps what bothers us about wars, though, isnt just

their horrific lethality but also that people choose to wage themwhich makes them

seem avoidable, unlike a flu virus or a car wreck, and their tolls unduly grievous.

Yet military history also reminds us that war sometimes has an eerie utility: as

British strategist Basil H. Liddell Hart put it, War is always a matter of doing evil

in the hope that good may come of it. Warsor threats of warsput an end to

chattel slavery, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism.

Military history is as often the story of appeasement as of warmongering. The

destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler

would all have ended early had any of their numerous enemies united when the

odds favored them. Western air power stopped Slobodan Miloevis reign of terror

at little cost to NATO forcesbut only after a near-decade of inaction and dialogue

had made possible the slaughter of tens of thousands. Affluent Western societies

have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. War is

an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things, observed the British philosopher John

Stuart Mill. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which

thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

Indeed, by ignoring history, the modern age is free to interpret war as a failure of

communication, of diplomacy, of talkingas if aggressors dont know exactly what

theyre doing. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, frustrated by the Bush

administrations intransigence in the War on Terror, flew to Syria, hoping to

persuade President Assad to stop funding terror in the Middle East. She assumed

that Assads belligerence resulted from our aloofness and arrogance rather than

from his dictatorships interest in destroying democracy in Lebanon and Iraq,

before such contagious freedom might in fact destroy him. For a therapeutically

inclined generation raised on Oprah and Dr. Philand not on the letters of William

Tecumseh Sherman and William ShirersBerlin Diaryproblems between states,

like those in our personal lives, should be argued about by equally civilized and

peaceful rivals, and so solved without resorting to violence.

Yet its hard to find many wars that result from miscommunication. Far more often

they break out because of malevolent intent and the absence of deterrence.

Margaret Atwood also wrote in her poem: Wars happen because the ones who start

them / think they can win. Hitler did; so did Mussolini and Tojoand their

assumptions were logical, given the relative disarmament of the Western

democracies at the time. Bin Laden attacked on September 11 not because there was

a dearth of American diplomats willing to dialogue with him in the Hindu Kush.

Instead, he recognized that a series of Islamic terrorist assaults against U.S.

interests over two decades had met with no meaningful reprisals, and concluded

that decadent Westerners would never fight, whatever the provocationor that, if

we did, we would withdraw as we had from Mogadishu.


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n the twenty-first century, its easier than ever to succumb to technological

determinism, the idea that science, new weaponry, and globalization have altered

the very rules of war. But military history teaches us that our ability to strike a

single individual from 30,000 feet up with a GPS bomb or a jihadists efforts to

have his propaganda beamed to millions in real time do not necessarily transformthe conditions that determine who wins and who loses wars.

True, instant communications may compress decision making, and generals must

be skilled at news conferences that can now influence the views of millions

worldwide. Yet these are really just new wrinkles on the old face of war. The

improvised explosive device versus the up-armored Humvee is simply an updated

take on the catapult versus the stone wall or the harquebus versus the mailed

knight. The long history of war suggests no static primacy of the defensive or the

offensive, or of one sort of weapon over the other, but just temporary advantages

gained by particular strategies and technologies that go unanswered for a time byless adept adversaries.

So its highly doubtful, the study of war tells us, that a new weapon will emerge

from the Pentagon or anywhere else that will change the very nature of armed

conflictunless some sort of genetic engineering so alters mans brain chemistry

that he begins to act in unprecedented ways. We fought the 1991 Gulf War with

dazzling, computer-enhanced weaponry. But lost in the technological pizzazz was

the basic wisdom that we need to fight wars with political objectives in mind and

that, to conclude them decisively, we must defeat and even humiliate our enemies,

so that they agree to abandon their prewar behavior. For some reason, no Americangeneral or diplomat seemed to understand that crucial point 16 years ago, with the

result that, on the cessation of hostilities, Saddam Husseins supposedly defeated

generals used their gunships to butcher Kurds and Shiites while Americans looked

on. And because we never achieved the wars proper aimensuring that Iraq would

not use its petro-wealth to destroy the peace of the regionwe have had to fight a

second war of no-fly zones, and then a third war to remove Saddam, and now a

fourth war, of counterinsurgency, to protect the fledgling Iraqi democracy.

ilitary history reminds us of important anomalies and paradoxes. When Sparta

invaded Attica in the first spring of the Peloponnesian war, Thucydides recounts, it

expected the Athenians to surrender after a few short seasons of ravaging. They

didntbut a plague that broke out unexpectedly did more damage than thousands

of Spartan ravagers did. Twenty-seven years later, a maritime Athens lost the war at

sea to Sparta, an insular land power that started the conflict with scarcely a navy.

The 2003 removal of Saddam refuted doom-and-gloom critics who predicted

thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, just as the subsequent messy four-

year reconstruction hasnt evolved as anticipated into a quiet, stable democracyto

say the least.

The size of armies doesnt guarantee battlefield success: the victors at Salamis,

Issos, Mexico City, and Lepanto were all outnumbered. Wars most savage


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momentsthe Allied summer offensive of 1918, the Russian siege of Berlin in the

spring of 1945, the Battle of the Bulge, Hiroshimaoften unfold right before

hostilities cease. And democratic leaders during warthink of Winston Churchill,

Harry Truman, and Richard Nixonoften leave office either disgraced or

unpopular.

It would be reassuring to think that the righteousness of a cause, or the bravery of

an army, or the nobility of a sacrifice ensures public support for war. But military

history shows that far more often theperception of winning is what matters.

Citizens turn abruptly on any leaders deemed culpable for losing. Public sentiment

is everything, wrote Abraham Lincoln. With public sentiment nothing can fail.

Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who

enacts laws. Lincoln knew that lesson well. Gettysburg and Vicksburg were

brilliant Union victories that by summer 1863 had restored Lincolns previously

shaky credibility. But a year later, after the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Petersburg,

and Cold Harbor battlesCold Harbor claimed 7,000 Union lives in 20 minutes

the public reviled him. Neither Lincoln nor his policies had changed, but the

Confederate ability to kill large numbers of Union soldiers had.

Ultimately, public opinion follows the ups and downsincluding the perception of

the ups and downsof the battlefield, since victory excites the most ardent pacifist

and defeat silences the most zealous zealot. After the defeat of France, the losses to

Bomber Command, the U-boat rampage, and the fall of Greece, Singapore, and

Dunkirk, Churchill took the blame for a war as seemingly lost as, a little later, it

seemed won by the brilliant prime minister after victories in North Africa, Sicily,

and Normandy. When the successful military action against Saddam Hussein ended

in April 2003, over 70 percent of the American people backed it, with politicians

and pundits alike elbowing each other aside to take credit for their prescient

support. Four years of insurgency later, Americans oppose a now-orphaned war by

the same margin. General George S. Patton may have been uncouth, but he wasnt

wrong when he bellowed, Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.

The American public turned on the Iraq War not because of Cindy Sheehan or

Michael Moore but because it felt that the battlefield news had turned uniformly

bad and that the price in American lives and treasure for ensuring Iraqi reform was

too dear.

Finally, military history has the moral purpose of educating us about past sacrifices

that have secured our present freedom and security. If we know nothing of Shiloh,

Belleau Wood, Tarawa, and Chosun, the crosses in our military cemeteries are just

pleasant white stones on lush green lawns. They no longer serve as reminders that

thousands endured pain and hardship for our right to listen to what we wish on our

iPods and to shop at Wal-Mart in safetyor that they expected future generations,

links in this great chain of obligation, to do the same for those not yet born. The

United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction

by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, should escape thatterrible knowledge.


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hat, then, can we do to restore the study of war to its proper place in the life of

the American mind? The challenge isnt just to reform the graduate schools or the

professoriate, though that would help. On a deeper level, we need to reexamine the

larger forces that have devalued the very idea of military historyof war itself. We

must abandon the naive faith that with enough money, education, or goodintentions we can change the nature of mankind so that conflict, as if by fiat,

becomes a thing of the past. In the end, the study of war reminds us that we will

never be gods. We will always just be men, it tells us. Some men will always prefer

war to peace; and other men, we who have learned from the past, have a moral

obligation to stop them.

Studying War: Where to Start

While ThucydidesPeloponnesian War, a chronicle of the three-decade war

between Athens and Sparta, establishes the genre of military history, the best placeto begin studying war is with the soldiers stories themselves. E. B. Sledges memoir

of Okinawa, With the Old Breed, is nightmarish, but it reminds us that war, while it

often translates to rot, filth, and carnage, can also be in the service of a noble cause.

Elmer Bendiners tragic retelling of the annihilation of B-17s over Germany, The

Fall of Fortresses: A Personal Account of the Most Daring, and Deadly, American

Air Battles of World War II, is an unrecognized classic.

From a different wartime perspectivethat of the generalsU. S. Grants Personal

Memoirs is justly celebrated as a model of prose. Yet the nearly

contemporaneousMemoirs of General W. T. Sherman is far more analytical in itsdissection of the human follies and pretensions that lead to war. Likewise, George

S. Pattons War As I Knew Itis not only a compilation of the eccentric generals

diary entries but also a candid assessment of human nature itself.

Fiction often captures the experience of war as effectively as memoir, beginning

with Homers Iliad, in which Achilles confronts the paradox that rewards do not

always go to the most deserving in war. The three most famous novels about the

futility of conflict are The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane,All Quiet on

the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, andAugust 1914, by Aleksandr

Solzhenitsyn. No work has better insights on the folly of war, however, thanEuripides Trojan Women.

Although many contemporary critics find it pass to document landmark battles in

history, one can find a storehouse of information in The Fifteen Decisive Battles of

the World, by Edward S. Creasy, andA Military History of the Western World, by

J. F. C. Fuller. Hans DelbrcksHistory of the Art of War and Russell F.

Weigleys The Age of Battles center their sweeping histories on decisive

engagements, using battles like Marathon and Waterloo as tools to illustrate larger

social, political, and cultural values. A sense of high drama permeates William H.

PrescottsHistory of the Conquest of Mexico andHistory of the Conquest of Peru,while tragedy more often characterizes Steven Runcimans spellbinding short


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account The Fall of Constantinople 1453 and Donald Morriss massive The

Washing of the Spears, about the rise and fall of the Zulu Empire. The most

comprehensive and accessible one-volume treatment of historys most destructive

war remains Gerhard L. WeinbergsA World at Arms: A Global History of World

War II.

Relevant histories for our current struggle with Middle East terrorism are Alistair

Hornes superbA Savage War of Peace: Algeria 19541962, Michael OrensSix

Days of War, and Mark BowdensBlack Hawk Down. Anything John Keegan

writes is worth reading; The Face of Battle remains the most impressive general

military history of the last 50 years.

Biography too often winds up ignored in the study of war. Plutarchs lives of

Pericles, Alcibiades, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great established

the traditional view of these great captains as men of action, while weighing their

record of near-superhuman achievement against their megalomania. Elizabeth

Longfords Wellington is a classic study of Englands greatest soldier.Lees

Lieutenants: A Study in Command, by Douglas Southall Freeman, has been

slighted recently but is spellbinding.

If, as Carl von Clausewitz believed, War is the continuation of politics by other

means, then study of civilian wartime leadership is critical. The classic scholarly

account of the proper relationship between the military and its overseers is still

Samuel P. Huntingtons The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of

Civil-Military Relations. For a contemporaryJaccuse of American military

leadership during the Vietnam War, see H. R. McMastersDereliction of Duty:

Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That

Led to Vietnam.

Eliot A. CohensSupreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in

Wartime is purportedly a favorite read of President Bushs. It argues that successful

leaders like Ben-Gurion, Churchill, Clemenceau, and Lincoln kept a tight rein on

their generals and never confused officers esoteric military expertise with either

political sense or strategic resolution.

In The Mask of Command, Keegan examines the military competence of Alexander

the Great, Wellington, Grant, and Hitler, and comes down on the side of the two

who fought under consensual government. In The Soul of Battle, I took that

argument further and suggested that three of the most audacious generals

Epaminondas, Sherman, and Pattonwere also keen political thinkers, with

strategic insight into what made their democratic armies so formidable.

How politicians lose wars is also of interest. See especially Ian Kershaws

biographyHitler, 19361945: Nemesis. Mark Moyars first volume of a proposed

two-volume reexamination of Vietnam, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War,

19541965, is akin to reading Euripides tales of self-inflicted woe and missed


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chances. Horne has written a half-dozen classics, none more engrossing than his

tragic To Lose a Battle: France 1940.

Few historians can weave military narrative into the contemporary political and

cultural landscape. James McPhersonsBattle Cry of Freedom does, and his

volume began the recent renaissance of Civil War history. Barbara Tuchmans The

Guns of Augustdescribes the first month of World War I in riveting but

excruciatingly sad detail. Two volumes by David McCullough, Truman and 1776,

give fascinating inside accounts of the political will necessary to continue wars amid

domestic depression and bad news from the front. So does Martin

Gilberts Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour, 19391941. Donald Kagans On

theOrigins of War and the Preservation of Peace warns against the dangers of

appeasement, especially the lethal combination of tough rhetoric with no military

preparedness, in a survey of wars from ancient Greece to the Cuban missile crisis.

Robert KagansDangerous Nation reminds Americans that their idealism (if not

self-righteousness) is nothing new but rather helps explain more than two centuries

of both wise and ill-considered intervention abroad.

Any survey on military history should conclude with more abstract lessons about

war.Principles of War by Clausewitz remains the cornerstone of the science.

Niccol Machiavellis The Art of War blends realism with classical military detail.

Two indispensable works, War: Ends and Means, by Angelo Codevilla and Paul

Seabury, andMakers of Modern Strategy, edited by Peter Paret, provide

refreshingly honest accounts of the timeless rules and nature of war.

Victor Davis Hanson

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Military History: Is It Still Practicable?by

Jay Luvaas

Originally published in Army War College'sParameters, March 1982

THERE was a day, before the advent of the A-bomb and its more destructive

offspring, before smart bombs and nerve gas, before computer technology and

war games, when professional soldiers regarded reading history as a useful


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pastime. Many who have scaled the peaks of the military profession have

testified to the utility of studying military history.

Most of these, however, seem to be commanding voices out of the past.

MacArthur, steeped in family tradition and familiar with many of the 4000

volumes inherited from his father, was never at a loss for a historical example

to underscore his point of view; Krueger, as a young officer, translated books

and articles from the German military literature; Eisenhower spent countless

hours listening to the erudite Fox Conner on what could be learned frommilitary history; Marshall and his contemporaries at the Army Staff College at

Leavenworth reconstructed Civil War campaigns from the after-action reports;Patton took the time in 1943 to read a book on the Norman conquest of Sicily

nearly nine centuries earlier and to ponder "the many points in common with

our operations";[1] and Eichelberger summoned from memory a passage he

had read ten years before in Grant'sMemoirs (which ought to be requiredreading for all officers) and thereby stiffened his resolve to press home the

attack at Buna. These Army commanders were all remarkably well versed inhistory.

So were many of their civilian superiors. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wasan avid reader of naval history, and Harry Truman frequently acknowledged

the pertinent lessons that he had gleaned from a lifetime of exposure to

history:

Reading history, to me, was far more than a romantic adventure. It was solidinstruction and wise teaching which I somehow felt that I . . . needed . . . It

seemed to me that if I could understand the true facts about the . . .development of the United States Government and could know the details of

the lives of . . . its political leaders, I would be getting for myself a valuable . .. education . . . I know of no surer way to get a solid foundation in political

science and public administration than to study the histories of past

administrations of the world's most successful system of government.[2]

Because the military is a "practical" profession geared much of the time to

problem-solving, soldiers--like engineers and scientists--tend to be pragmatic

about what is meant by the word "practicable." History is "practicable" if it

yields lessons, especially exemplary lessons in tactics and strategy that can be

directly applied to some current situation. History is "useful" in illustratingpoints of doctrine, in instilling in the young officer the proper military values

or an appreciation for our military heritage. The "practical" man often scans

the past for some magical formula that may ensure success in war, like Field

Marshal von Schlieffen's theory of envelopment, or Captain B. H. Liddell

Hart's strategy of indirect approach.


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Such assumptions inevitably determine the way military history is taught.

Because an important duty of the officer in peacetime is to teach, and becausein the Army teachingusually involves explaining, it is often assumed that

history, to be taught, must be explained. The emphasis therefore is on

organizing and presenting information in a lucid, often lavishly illustratedlecture, in which tidy answers outrank nagging questions in the minds of

everyone involved. The inference on the part of most students, if not the

instructor, is that a person who remembers the lecture will somehow havelearned history. It's a mistaken assumption we all make.

It is also true that no other field of history is under as much pressure asmilitary history to provide "practical" answers to some current problem. If

military history cannot provide such answers, why study it? The specialist in

Renaissance diplomacy is rarely solicited for his views on foreign policy but,

rather, is left alone to concentrate his thoughts on the cold war with the Turksin the 15th century. Nor is the scholar who has spent a lifetime studying the

ramifications of the French Revolution apt to be consulted when news breaksof still another palace coup in some Latin American banana republic. But let a

historian or journalist prowl around in some remote corner in the field ofmilitary history and often he will be expected, even tempted, to function as a

current-affairs military analyst.

Perhaps we think this way because, as a society, we are largely ignorant about

both the facts and the nature of history. In high school, European history no

longer is required, having been replaced by something called "WesternCivilization." We know astonishingly little about the history of other societies,and most of us, unfortunately, care even less. Students voting with their feet in

colleges and universities across the nation have caused enrollments in historycourses to plummet as they turn to "more practical" subjects such as

economics, psychology, biology, engineering, and business administration. In

the Army's schools, history has become a casualty of the Vietnam War,

clearly the emphasis now is upon training. Even at the Military Academy, the

required course in the military art was severely curtailed several years ago and

only recently has been restored to its logical place in the curriculum. For thatmatter, how many officers who have invested off-duty hours to work toward

an advanced degree have taken it in history? In the officer corps of today, thesubject is rarely considered "practicable."

More to the point, is the Army as an institution as historical-minded as it was

in the past? For without even a rudimentary understanding of history and its

processes, there is no way that the past can be made to offer object lessons for

the future. Professor Pieter Geyl, a distinguished Dutch historian, reminds us

that it is useless to talk about "the lessons of history" when the historian "is

after all only a man sitting at his desk."[3] The lessons that we would learn arehis--the fruits ofhis labors, the creation ofhis imagination, perhaps the idea


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that he is to sell to the reader. For, as a German general asserted a hundred

years ago, "it is well known that military history, when superficially studied,will furnish arguments in support of any theory or opinion."[4]

Common Fallacies

Perhaps the most frequent error in the abuse of history is to take historical

examples out of context. Once removed from its historical context, which is

always unique, a battle or a campaign ceases to offer meaningful lessons from

history. According to Napoleon, "old Frederick laughed in his sleeve at theparades of Potsdam when he perceived young officers, French, English, and

Austrian, so infatuated with the manoeuvre of the oblique order, which (initself) was fit for nothing but to gain a few adjutant-majors a reputation."

Napoleon appreciated that the secret of Frederick's successes was not the

oblique order, but Frederick. "Genius acts through inspiration," Napoleonconcluded. "What is good in one case is bad in another."[5]

One of Frederick's own soldiers demonstrated that in another environment

even Frederick's maneuver's might fail. When Baron von Steuben, who had

served in the Prussian Army throughout the Seven Years' War, was trying to

make soldiers out of Washington's shivering, half-starved volunteers at ValleyForge, he knew better than to waste precious time teaching those complex

maneuvers he had mastered under Frederick. Instead he selected only thosethat were essential to meet the unique conditions that prevailed in America,

where volunteers had only a few months instead of years to master theintricacies of Frederick's drill, and where officers had to learn to lead by

example instead of relying upon the severity of the Prussian system. Soldiers,Frederick repeatedly had warned, "can be held in check only through fear" and

should therefore be made to "fear their officers more than all the dangers towhich they are exposed. . . . Good will can never induce the common soldier

to stand up to such dangers; he will only do so through fear."[6] Whatever

may have motivated Washington's amateur soldiers at Valley Forge, most

certainly it was not fear.

If there is a lesson here for us, it is simply that solutions to problems are not to

be viewed as interchangeable parts. Even the Germans in World War II

apparently failed to heed this lesson in drawing conclusions from their own

war experiences. In addition to displaying a tendency to generalize frompersonal or limited experience, they often indiscriminately applied the

experiences of one situation to entirely different circumstances. Thus the

German Supreme Command "applied the experiences acquired on the Western

Front in 1940, unchanged, to the war against Russia" despite the "greater

tenacity" of the Russian soldier, his "insensibility against threatening the

flanks," the scarcity of roads, and the vast space involved "giving . . . theopponent the possibility of avoiding decision." In the words of one German


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general, not only did this misapplication of experience influence the

operational plan against Russia, it also "contributed to the finaldisappointment."[7]

It is also a distortion to compress the past into distinctive patterns, for it is as

true of history as it is of nature that "each man reads his own peculiar lesson

according to his own peculiar mind and mood."[8] History responds

generously to the adage "seek and ye shall find."At the turn of the century the

Chief of the German General Stall, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, was facedwith the need to plan for a war on two fronts. His solution was to point toward

a quick victory on one front in order to avoid ultimate defeat on both, and hisinspiration for the battle of annihilation essential to a quick victory came, at

least in part, from reading the first volume of Hans Delbruck'sGeschichte der

Kriegskunst, which was published in 1900. Delbruck's treatment of the battle

of Cannae in 216 B.C. convinced Schlieffen that Hannibal had won hislopsided victory by deliberately weakening his center and attacking with full

force from both flanks. The much publicized Schlieffen Plan was anadaptation of this idea. Having thus discovered the "key," Schlieffen turned in

his writings to the idea of envelopment to unlock the secrets of Frederick theGreat and Napoleon, both of whom, he claimed, had always attempted to

envelop the enemy. Similarly, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart was to discover

from his research for a biography of Sherman that the key to Sherman's

success lay in a strategy of indirect approach. When he turned to history atlarge for confirmation, of course he "discovered" that nearly all successful

generals, whether they had been aware of it or not, had employed somethingakin to the strategy of indirect approach. The future British field marshal Sir

Archibald Wavell, who always found Liddell Hart's ideas stimulating whether

he agreed with them or not, once slyly suggested to the captain: "With your

knowledge and brains and command of the pen, you could have written just as

convincing a book called the `Strategy of the Direct Approach.'"[9] Wavell

appreciated that it was Liddell Hart and not the muse of history who preachedthis attractive doctrine.

Moreover, nothing is necessarily proven by citing examples from history.There are many works on military theory that provide examples of bad

argument from analogy or authority; such faulty use of historical examples,according to Karl von Clausewitz, "not only leaves the reader dissatisfied but

even irritates his intelligence." The mere citation of historical examples

provides only thesemblance of proof, although the reader who understands

little about the nature of history may set aside his book convinced of theessential truth of some new theory, and the audience exposed to a well-

organized and seemingly cogent lecture sprinkled with examples from historyis equally vulnerable. "There are occasions," Clausewitz noted,


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where nothing will be proven by a dozen examples. . . . If anyone lists a dozen

defeats in which the losing side attacked with divided columns, I can list adozen victories in which that very tactic was employed. Obviously this is no

way to reach a conclusion.

And if the author or lecturer has never mastered the events he describes, "such

superficial, irresponsible handling of history leads to hundreds of wrong ideas

and bogus theorizing."[10]

Perhaps the greatest disservice to history and its lessons comes from itsfrequent association with a given set of military principles of doctrine, and

here the celebrated Swiss theorist Baron de Jomini may have had anunfortunate influence. Drawing upon an exhaustive examination of 30

campaigns of Frederick and Napoleon, Jomini deduced certain fixed maxims

and principles which he claimed were both eternal and universal in theirapplication. If such maxims would not produce great generals they would "at

least make generals sufficiently skillful to hold the second rank among the

great captains" and would thus serve as "the true school for generals."[11]

To future generations of young officers, Jomini said, in effect: "Gentlemen, I

have not found a single instance where my principles, correctly applied, didnot lead to success. They are based upon my unrivaled knowledge of the

campaigns of Napoleon, much of it acquired at first hand, and of the basicworks of Thiers, Napier, Lloyd, Tempelhof, Foy, and the Archduke Charles.

Thanks to my labors you need not invest years of your own time inscrutinizing these voluminous histories. Did not Napoleon himself confess: `I

have studied history a great deal, and often, for want of a guide, have beenforced to lose considerable time in useless reading'? You have only to study

my principles and apply them faithfully, for `there exists a fundamentalprinciple of all the operations of war' which you neglect at your peril."[12]

Jomini had many prominent disciples, and their books were nearly all writtenon the assumption that battles and campaigns, ancient as well as modern, have

succeeded or failed to the degree that they adhered to the principles of war as

explained by Jomini and could be confirmed by the "constant teachings of

history." But where Jomini read history, many of his followers read primarily

Jomini and thus were one step removed from history and its processes.

The emergence of doctrine (as late as the American Civil War there were onlydrill manuals) and the introduction of historical sections on most European

general staffs after the Prussian victories in 1866 and 1870 meant thatincreasingly, in the eyes of professional soldiers at least, military history was

linked to doctrine and more specifically, to the principles of war as these

principles were rediscovered and refined. Since World War I it has become


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fashionable to use history to illustrate the official principles of war as they are

variously defined.

There are three dangers inherent in this approach. In the first place, pressed

into service in this way history can only illustrate something already

perceived as being true; it cannot prove its validity or lead to new discoveries.

This is probably the terrain on which most soldiers first encounter the subject,

and they would do well to heed the warning of Clausewitz that if "some

historical event is being presented in order to demonstrate a general truth, caremust be taken that every aspect bearing on the truth at issue is fully and

circumstantially developed--carefully assembled . . . before the reader's eyes."In other words, the theorist ought to be a pretty good historian. Clausewitz

goes so far as to suggest that, even though historical examples have the

advantage of "being more realistic and of bringing the idea they are

illustrating to life," if the purpose of history is really to explain doctrine, "animaginary case would do as well."[13] Moreover, to use history primarily to

illustrate accepted principles is really to put the cart before the horse. If onestarts with what is perceived as truth and searches history for confirmation or

illustrations, there can be no "lessons learned." How can there be?

A second weakness in linking history to doctrine is the natural tendency to let

doctrine sit in judgment of historical events. Sir William Napier, who had a

healthy respect for Jomini's theories, used his maxims as a basis for rendering

historical judgment on the generalship of French and British leaders in his

classicHistory of the War in the Peninsula. Similarly, Major General SirPatrick MacDougall "discovered" that these maxims could also serve ascriteria for judging the generalship of Hannibal, and Matthew F.

Steele'sAmerican Campaigns, which was published in 1909 and endured as atext at the Military Academy and other Army schools even beyond World War

II, used the maxims of Jomini, von der Goltz, and other late 19th-century

theorists to form the basis for historical commentary on the generalship of

individual American commanders.

Most serious of all is the ease and frequency with which faith in doctrine hasactually distorted history. This was happening frequently by the end of the19th century as each army in Europe developed and became committed to its

own doctrine. It is the primary reason why the tactical and strategical lessonsof the Civil War, which in many respects was the first modern war, went

unheeded.[14] Even the elaborate German General Staff histories on the wars

of Frederick the Great and the wars of liberation against Napoleon never

failed to drive home the soundness of current German doctrine,[15] and the

German official histories of the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War

similarly serve to demonstrate above all else the continuing validity of

German doctrine. The Boers had applied that doctrine and therefore usuallywon, at least in the earlier battles before the weight of numbers alone could


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determine the outcome. British doctrine was faulty, if indeed the British yet

had a doctrine, and therefore the British suffered repeated defeats. TheGermans had trained the Japanese Army and the Japanese had won in 1904-

05, "proving" again the superiority of German doctrine. Had a trained

historian instead of an officer serving a tour with the Military History sectionanalyzed the same campaigns, surely he would have asked some searching

questions about the differences in the discipline, morale, and leadership of the

two armies. Did the Japanese cavalry win, for example, because of superiordoctrine based on shock tactics or because it was better disciplined and led?

To the officer corps of the day, the results demonstrated the weakness of the

Russian Army's mounted infantry concepts in the face of shock tactics,

whereas 10 years later, in a war that, at the outset, was strikingly similar in the

conditions prevailing on the battlefield, shock tactics did not prevail anywhere

for long.

Thus military history distilled by Jomini and his disciples ultimately found

itself shaped by a commitment to doctrine, and the instinct of mostprofessional soldiers before World War I was to explain away exceptions to

the official rules rather than to use history as a means of testing and refiningthem.

Facts in History

Although it is not always evident in a lecture or a textbook, we can never be

completely certain--and therefore in agreement--about what actually happenedin history. Frederick and Napoleon knew this well. Skeptical both of the

historian's motives and of the reliability of his facts, they evinced a healthyskepticism about the ability of the human mind ever to recreate an event as it

actually had happened.

"The true truths are very difficult to ascertain," Napoleon complained. "There

are so many truths!"[16]

Historical fact . . . is often a mere word; it cannot be ascertained when events

actually occur, in the heat of contrary passions; and if, later on, there is a

consensus, this is only because there is no one left contradict. . . . What is . . .

historical truth? . . . An agreed upon fiction. . . . There are facts that remain in

eternal litigation.[17]

A Union staff officer whose corps bore the brunt of Pickett's charge atGettysburg put it a different way:

A full account of the battle as it was will never, can never, be made. Who

could sketch the charges, the constant fighting of the bloody panorama! It isnot possible. The official reports may give results as to losses, with statements


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of attacks and repulses; they may also note the means by which results were

attained . . . but the connection between means and results, the mode, thebattle proper, these reports touch lightly. Two prominent reasons . . . account

for the general inadequacy of these official reports . . . the literary infirmity of

the reporters, and their not seeing themselves and their commands as otherswould have seen them. And factions, and parties, and politics . . . are already

putting in their unreasonable demands. . . . Of this battle greater than

Waterloo, a history, just, comprehensive, complete, will never be written. By-and-by, out of the chaos of trash and falsehood that newspapers hold, out of

the disjointed mass of reports, out of the traditions and tales that come down

from the field, some eye that never saw the battle will select, and some pen

will write what will be named the history. With that the world will be, and if

we are alive we must be, content.[18]

This writer intuitively understood that as soon as the historian begins toimpose order on something as chaotic as a battle, he distorts. If his narrative is

to mean anything at all to the reader he must simplify and organize the"disjointed mass of reports." He must, for lack of space, omit incidents that

did not contribute to the final result. He must resolve controversies, notmerely report them, and he must recognize that not every general is candid,

every report complete, every description accurate. Orders are not always

executed; not every order is even relevant to the situation. At Gettysburg, the

watches in the two armies were set 20 minutes apart, and after the battle Leehad some of his subordinates rewrite their after-action reports to avoid

unnecessary dissension. Well may it be said that "on the actual day of battlenaked truths may be picked up for the asking; by the following morning they

have already begun to get into their uniforms."[19]

During World War I, German General Max Hoffman confided to his diary:

"For the first time in my life I have seen `History' at close quarters, and I

know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to

posterity."[20]Plutarch Liedis the descriptive title of an impassioned

indictment of the French military leadership on the other side of no-man's

land:

Men who yesterday seemed destined to oblivion have, today, acquired

immortality. Has some new virtue been instilled in them, has some magiciantouched them with his wand?. . . Civilian historians have studied historical

events from a point of view which is exclusively military. Far from trusting to

their judgment, they have not considered it respectful to exercise their critical

faculties on the facts as guaranteed by a body of specialists. An idolatrous

admiration for everything which concerns the army has conferred upon them

the favour of having eyes which do not see and memories which are oblivious

of their own experiences. . . . An incredible conspiracy exists in France at thisvery moment. No one dares to write the truth.[21]


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Even with the best of intentions and an impartial mind, it is difficult to

reconstruct what actually happened in history. This truth was given eloquentexpression by a French pilot on a reconnaissance flight to Arras in May 1940

as he reflected on the chaos engulfing a dying society 30,000 feet below.

Ah, the blueprint that historians will draft of all this! The angles they will plot

to lend shape to this mess! They will take the word of a cabinet minister, the

decision of a general, the discussion of a committee, and out of that parade of

ghosts they will build historic conversations in which they will discernfarsighted views and weighty responsibilities. They will invent agreements,

resistances, attitudinous pleas, cowardices. . . . Historians will forget reality.They will invent thinking men, joined by mysterious fibers to an intelligible

universe, possessed of sound far-sighted views and pondering grave decisions

according to the purest laws of Cartesian logic.[22]

Even where there can be agreement on facts, there will be disagreements

among historians. "To expect from history those final conclusions which may

perhaps be obtained in other disciplines is . . . to misunderstand its nature."Something akin to the scientific method helps to establish facts, but the

function of the historian is also to explain, to interpret, and to discriminate,and here "the personal element can no longer be ruled out. . . . Truth, though

for God it may be One, assumes many shapes to men."[23]

This explains the oft-quoted statement of Henry Adams, the famous American

historian: "I have written too much history to believe in it. So if anyone wantsto differ from me, I am prepared to agree with him."[24] No one who does not

understand something about history could possibly know what Adams meantby this apparently cynical statement. Certainly he did not intend to imply that

history, because it lacked unerring objectivity and precision, is of nopracticable use to us. Quite the contrary. To recognize the frail structure of

history is the first essential step toward understanding, which is far more

important in putting history to work than blind faith in the validity of isolated

facts. History tends to inspire more questions than answers, and the questions

one asks of it determine the extent to which the subject may be consideredpracticable.

Making History Instructive

What, then, can the professional soldier expect to learn from history? If it canoffer no abstract lessons to be applied indiscriminately or universally, if it

cannot substantiate some cherished principles or official doctrine, if thesubject itself is liable to endless bickering and interpretation, what is the point

of looking at history at all?


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Here Napoleon, whose writings and campaigns formed the basis of study for

every principal military theorist for a hundred years after his death,[25]provides a useful answer in his first major campaign. When he assumed

command of the French army in Italy in 1796, he took with him a history of a

campaign conducted in the same theater by Marshal Maillebois half a centurybefore, and more than one authority has noted the similarity in the two

campaigns. "In both cases the object was to separate the allies and beat them

in detail; in both cases the same passes through the maritime Alps wereutilized, and in both cases the first objectives were the same."[26] In 1806,

when he sent his cavalry commander, Murat, to reconnoiter the Bohemian

frontier, he recommenced that Murat take with him a history of the campaign

that the French had waged there in 1741, and three years later Napoleon

approved the location of pontoon bridges at Linz because Marshal Saxe had

successfully constructed two bridges there in 1740. In 1813 he sent one of his

marshals "an account of the battle fought by Gustavus Adolphus in positionssimilar to those which you occupy."[27]

Obviously history served Napoleon not so much because it provided a model

to be slavishly followed, but because if offered ways to capitalize on whatothers before him had experienced. History, Liddell Hart reminds us,

is universal experience--infinitely longer, wider, and more varied than ally

individual's experience. How often do we hear people claim knowledge of the

world and of life because they are sixty or seventy years old? . . There is no

excuse for any literate person if he is less than three thousand years old inmind.[28]

By this standard Patton was at least 900 years old after studying the Norman

conquest of Sicily.

Napoleon also proposed, in 1807, the establishment of a special school of

history at the College of France that would have practical application forofficers. Trained historians would teach the military student how to make

sound historical judgments, for Napoleon understood that "the correct way to

read history is a real science in itself." He regarded the wars of the French

Revolution as "fertile in useful lessons," yet apparently there had been no

systematic effort to retrieve them. This too "would be an important function of

the professors in the special school of history." For similar reasons Napoleonordered his War Minister in 1811 to have the Depot of War prepare

comprehensive records of the sieges and attacks of the fortified towns

captured by the French armies in Germany, not for publication but for ready

reference. And he did not discourage the printing of a similar volume on the

sieges in Spain.[29]


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Napoleon thus conceived of history as serving a purpose similar to that of the

publications of the Old Historical Division and its ultimate successor, theCenter of Military History. He would have applauded the appearance of

theGuide to the Study and Uses of Military History,[30] for some way had to

be found to steer the military student through the "veritable labyrinth" ofcampaign studies, technical treatises, and memoirs. Like Frederick, who

viewed history as "a magazine of military ideas,"[31] Napoleon would have

been delighted with the official histories of the campaigns of World War II,Korea, and Vietnam, and with the extensive monographs on specialized

subjects such as mobilization, logistics, and medical services.

On St. Helena Napoleon spoke of the need to publish manuscripts in the

Imperial Library as a way of establishing a solid foundation for historical

studies. Probably one of the first proposals of its kind, it anticipated by half a

century the decision of the US War Department to publish in 128 meatyvolumes The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, a unique

compilation of the after-action reports and official correspondence of Unionand Confederate leaders. Napoleon also gave the first impetus to official

military history when he created a historical section of the General Staff andnamed Baron Jomini to head it.[32]

His most enduring suggestion, however, was the deathbed advice he offered to

his son: "Let him read and meditate upon the wars of the great captains: it is

the only way to learn the art of war."[33]

Because Napoleon occasionally mentioned certain "principles of the art of

war," he is often thought to have meant that the study of the Great Captains isvaluable because it leads to the discovery of enduring principles or illustrates

their successful application in the hands of genius. While acknowledging thatthese Great Captains had "succeeded only by conforming to the principles"

and thus had made war "a true science," Napoleon offered more compelling

reasons for studying the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus

Adolphus, Turenne, and Frederick:

Tactics, the evolutions, the science of the engineer and the artillerist can be

learned in treatises much like geometry, but the knowledge of the higher

spheres of war is only acquired through the study of the wars and battles of

the Great Captains and by experience. It has no precise, fixed rules.Everything depends on the character that nature has given to the general, on

his qualities, on his faults, on the nature of the troops, on the range of

weapons, on the season and on a thousand circumstances which are never the

same.

The Great Captains must therefore serve as "our great models." Only byimitating them, by understanding the bases for their decisions, and by


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studying the reasons for their success could modern officers "hope to

approach them."[34]

Napoleon agreed with Frederick, who considered history "the school of

princes"--princes, that is, who are destined to command armies--and who

wrote his own candid memoirs in order that his successors might know "the

true situation of affairs . . . the reasons that impelled me to act; what were my

means, what the snares of our enemies" so that they might benefit from his

own mistakes "in order to shun them." And both would have endorsed LiddellHart's observation that "history is a catalogue of mistakes. It is our duty to

profit by them."[35]

Whereas Jomini concentrated upon maxims, Frederick and Napoleon focused

their attention on men. They stressed the need for a commander to view a

military situation from the vantage point of his opponent, and for the militarystudent to become privy to the thinking process of successful commanders.

This was the advice Prince Eugene, Marlborough's sidekick and the greatest

commander who ever served the Hapsburgs, gave to young Frederick when,as the heir to the Prussian throne, Frederick accompanied the Prussian

contingent serving with the Imperial Army along the Rhine in 1734. After hehad become the foremost general of his day, Frederick urged his own officers,

when studying the campaigns of Prince Eugene, not to be content merely to

memorize the details of his exploits but "to examine thoroughly his overall

views and particularly to learn how to think in the same way."[36]

This is still the best way to make military history practicable. "The purpose of

history," Patton wrote shortly before his death,

is to learn how human beings react when exposed to the danger of wounds or

death, and how high ranking individuals react when submitted to the onerousresponsibility of conducting war or the preparations for war. The acquisition

of knowledge concerning the dates or places on which certain eventstranspired is immaterial . . . .[37]

The future Field Marshal Earl Wavell gave similar advice to a class at the

British Staff College shortly before World War II:

The real way to get value out of the study of military history is to take

particular situations, and as far as possible get inside the skin of the man who

made a decision and then see in what way you could have improved upon it."For heaven's sake," Wavell warned, don't treat the so-called principles of war

as holy writ, like the Ten Commandments, to be learned by heart, and ashaving by their repetition some magic, like the incantations of savage priests.

They are merely a set of common sense maxims, like `cut your coat according


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to your cloth.' à rolling stone gathers no moss,' `honesty is the best policy,'

and so forth.

Merely to memorize the maxim "cut your coat according to your cloth" does

not instruct one how to be a tailor, and Wavell reminded his listeners that no

two theorists espoused exactly the same set of principles, which, he

contended, "are all simply common sense and . . . instinctive to the properly

trained soldier."

To learn that Napoleon in 1796 and 20,000 men beat combined forces of30,000 by something called èconomy of force' or òperating on interior lines'

is a mere waste of time. If you can understand how a young, unknown maninspired a half-starved, ragged, rather Bolshie crowd; how he filled their

bellies, how he out-marched, out-witted, out-bluffed, and defeated men who

had studied war all their lives and waged it according to the text books of thetime, you will have learnt something worth knowing.

But the soldier will not learn it from military texts.[38]

Sometimes military history is treated, in books and lectures alike, as though it

exists primarily for the future field commander. Frederick might have

assumed something of the sort in his own writings, but he wrote more aboutsuch practical subjects as feeding and drilling an army, the gathering and

evaluation of intelligence, and how to treat friendly and hostile populations

than he did about strategy. Likewise, Napoleon was concerned about militaryeducation at every level, and his advice to his son on studying the decisions of

the Great Captains should not obscure the fact that he believed strongly in

military history in his officers' schools and also as a practical subject for

research.

History can be made practicable at any level. The future field marshal ErwinRommel did not have future corps commanders necessarily in mind when he

wroteInfantry Attacks in 1937. His lessons, deduced from the experiences ofhis battalion in World War I, could indeed have been of value to any company

or field grade officer. For example, describing the events he witnessed in

September 1914, Rommel concluded:

War makes extremely heavy demands on the soldiers strength and nerves. For

this reason make heavy demands on your men in peacetime exercises.

It is difficult to maintain contact in fog. . . . Advances through fog by meansof a compass must be practiced, since smoke will frequently be employed. In

a meeting engagement in the fog, the side capable of developing a maximumfire power on contact will get the upper hand; therefore, keep the machine

guns ready for action at all times during the advance.


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All units of the group must provide for their own security. This is especially

true in close terrain and when faced with a highly mobile enemy.Too much spade work is better than too little. Sweat saves blood.

Command posts must be dispersed . . . . Do not choose a conspicuous hill for

their location.In forest lighting, the personal example of the commander is effective only on

those troops in his immediate vicinity.

The rain favored the attack.[39]

Rommel drew his own conclusions from his experiences, but a discriminating

reader could probably have extracted them for himself.

These observations were not lost on Patton, who probably shared similar

experiences and had been involved in training troops. During the Saar

campaign in early 1945, Patton confided to his diary:

Woke up at 0300 and it was raining like hell. I actually got nervous and got up

and read Rommel's book,Infantry Attacks. It was most helpful, as he

described all the rains he had in September 1914 and also the fact that, in

spite of the heavy rains, the Germans got along.[40]

And so, shortly, did the Third Army.

Another book of this genre isInfantry in Battle, which was prepared at the

Infantry School in 1934 under the direction of then Colonel George C.Marshall and revised four years later. Written on the assumption that "combat

situations cannot be solved by rule," contributors to this book fell back upon

numerous examples from World War I to introduce the reader to "the realities

of war and the extremely difficult and highly disconcerting conditions under

which tactical problems must be solved in the face of the enemy."[41]

Military history has also been used to test the ability of military students. In

1891 a British colonel published a tactical study of the battle of Spicheren,

fought 20 years earlier. In the introduction he explained:

To gain from a relation of events the same abiding impressions as were

stamped on the minds of those who played a part in them--and it is suchimpressions that create instinct--it is necessary to examine the situations

developed during the operations so closely as to have a clear picture of the

whole scene in our minds eye; to assume, in imagination, the responsibilities

of the leaders who were called upon to meet those situations; to come to a

definite decision and to test the soundness of that decision by the actual event.

[42]

Learning from History


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What Frederick, Napoleon, Rommel, Patton, Wavell, and many others

referred to here have shared in common can be summed in one word: reading.An English general in the 18th century urged young officers to devote every

spare minute to reading military history, "the most instructive of all

reading."[43]

"Books!" an anonymous old soldier during the Napoleonic wars pretended to

snort. "And what are they but the dreams of pedants? They may make a Mack,

but have they ever made a Xenophon, a Caesar, a Saxe, a Frederick, or aBonapart? Who would not laugh to hear the cobbler of Athens lecturing

Hannibal on the art of war?"

"True," is his own rejoinder, "but as you are not Hannibal, listen to the

cobbler."[44]

Since the great majority of today's officers are college graduates, with a

healthy percentage of them having studied for advanced degrees, they have

probably long since passed the stage at which they can actually benefit from a

conventional lecture on history, with the emphasis on factual content and the

expectation of a clear conclusion. The leading question therefore becomes:

How do we teach them to learn from history? J. F. C. Fuller, coauthor of theconcept that later became known as blitzkrieg, had this problem in mind when

he addressed a class at the British Staff College a few years after World War I."Until you learn how to teach yourselves," he told the students, "you will

never be taunt by others."[45]

Fuller did not specify how this was to be accomplished, but he probably

would insist that to teach the officer how to teach himself should be avowed

objective of every course in military history. Certainly he would agree that no

course in military history can really do much good if the officer is exposedevery half dozen years throughout his career to no more than a structured

course of only a few months' duration, especially if in the process he hasgained little understanding of history as a discipline or a scant appreciation for

how it can be used and abused. Assuredly such a voracious reader as Fuller--

who at age 83 confessed to having recently sold off all of the books in his

library that he could not read within the next 10 years--would argue that there

would be no point to any history course whatever if the student is not

stimulated to spend some time afterwards poking around the field a bit on hisown. "Books," Fuller once wrote, "have always been my truest

companions."[46]

Any student of history must learn to identify with the men and events he reads

about, seeking above all to understand their problems and to accept the past on

its own terms. The student must also learn to ask questions, not of theinstructor necessarily, but of his material and especially of himself. Historians


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usually worry more about asking the right questions than finding definitive

answers, for they know from experience that no document or book can answera question that is never asked. Had Patton read Rommel's book when the sun

was shining, for example, and all was going well, chances are he would never

have paid any attention to the casual observation that rain seemed to favor theattack. Cannae was an important battle to Schlieffen because the double

envelopment achieved by Hannibal suggested a method by which a battle of

annihilation might be fought in a war against France and Russia. But toColonel Ardant du Picq, the foremost French military theorist of the 1860s,

Hannibal was a great general for a quite different reason--"his admirable

comprehension of the morale of combat, of the morale of the soldier."[47] The

two men were searching for solutions

military history, accompanied by sound criticism, is indeed the true school of war. jomini

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