What is Military History?

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

The title of this piece is a very good question in my opinion. The question really came home to me recently when I was reading the Calls for Papers in the bi-annual newsletter of the Society of Military History of which I am a member.

It strikes me more and more often that Military History, like other branches of history is increasingly splintered and Balkanized. Much as traditional history is now more concerned with what the average person did than with the trajectory of nations or kingdoms, modern military history seems to focus more and more on the experience of the average soldier instead of how and why wars were fought and won. Many conservatives like to complain of the left’s takeover of academia and I have generally dismissed the idea that it could happen to military history. I am starting to think that I am wrong and the left is usurping the traditional role of military historians to suit some strange social engineering agenda that they unconsciously share among themselves. Perhaps this trend is happening because fewer military historias have actual experience of war than was previously the case.

When I think of military history I think of the tales of wars, campaigns, and battles. How they were fought and why one side was victorious over the other. Let’s face it, war is about battle and battle or combat is the currency of war. Whichever side builds up the better balance sheet in combat wins. The question to me then becomes, as the title of this post states; What is military history? The Germans break military history down into two different schools what they call Kriegsgeschichte and Militärgeschichte.

1. Kriegsgeschichte is traditional military history having to do with battles and how and why they were won. It was pioneered by the old Prussian General Staff in the time of reform after the Prussian defeat in 1806 and refined to precision by Moltke the Elder in the 1860’s-1880’s. If you want to know what it is like just pick up a copy of the Prussian Official History of the Austro-Prussian or Franco-Prussian Wars to see the epitome of Kriegsgeschichte.

2. Militärgeschichte is a new, post-World War II development in German historiography that has slowly gained ground among the rest of the Western world. It focuses on the individual and their experience, or on the social dynamics of military organizations and not so much on battle itself. One of the things I dislike the most about it is the almost constant moralizing in this type of history. Not all histories of this type are moralizing, but enough are that when I find one that is not it stands out even more. I call it the effeminate military history as it seeks to understand the soldiers motivation to kill or tries to describe the ways in which armies get men to act against their own instincts. Some examples of this type of history are Keegan’s Face of Battle and Mask of Command or Doughty’s American Military History and the Evolution of Western Warfare.

Needless to say, I am generally a Kriegsgeschichte type of historian. I think the purpose of military history should be instructive. It should try to find the lessons of successful armies and make them comprehensible so they can be passed on to succeeding generations. I guess you could say I am Clausewitzean in my outlook although I don’t buy his premises completely nor do I think there is or can be an overarching theory of war. War Theory is properly the subject of a whole series of other posts and I will not go into it here. In short, I believe that good military history examines and analyzes battles and campaigns to determine both what the victor did right and what the loser did wrong. It describes the battles themselves and also the tactics, doctrine, and strategy employed by both combatants in an effort to determine the relative effectiveness of the methods employed. I am talking here of discussing the use open vs. closed order battle formations, differing levels of technology, battlefield and strategic maneuver, surprise, and the motivation and morale of the opposing armies just as a start. There is a place for Militärgeschichte type history in military history but focusing on the individual private soldier detracts from explaining the cause of victory. As cold as it sounds, the individual is but a cog in the machine in military engagements, especially battles involving thousands of soldiers. The only individuals who can make a decisive difference in those kinds of battles are the colonels and generals who make decisions upon which the fate of all the others rests. Individually the soldiers of an army can be the best in the world but if they are used fecklessly or unwisely their competence will not make a difference in winning the battle, only in determining the length of the casualty lists.

Military history is not about right or wrong, good versus bad, or the defeat of evil. It is about what one side did better that made his army more effective and thus let him defeat his enemy. In those factors lie the lessons to be learned from studying the wars of the past. At least, that is my view. I would love to hear from anyone that disagrees or even agrees with me.
COMMENTS ARE OPEN!

Truth in Education and the Vietnam War

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

This post is a direct result of my frustration with the garbage spouted by history teachers in the modern education system. The subject is a photo taken during the Vietnam War and the lies that have grown up around the events leading to the picture. The Photo is named “The Terror of War” and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 in the Spot News Photography category.

“The Terror of War” Pulitzer Prize winner 1973 – Spot News Photography

Along with the 1968 photo “Saigon Execution” (another post their as well), this is one of the most iconic images to come out of the Vietnam War. What started this is when my son came home from school and asked me about the photo. He was told by his history teacher that the Americans bombed the village and that the girl in the photo subsequently died. Naturally, I lost it. First, I was floored that such garbage was being taught, especially since the facts surrounding the picture are so well known. I told him his teacher was wrong and told him the facts. He then asked his teacher about it after class one day whereupon she told him that I was lying and she had seen an interview with the American pilot who dropped the bombs. She is no doubt referring to John Plummer, who asserted in a 1996 Canadian documentary that he ordered the bombing, a story later proved to be false.

Video of the airstrike on Trang Bang taken in 1972, the aircraft are clearly identifiable as Douglas A-1 Skyraiders, and aircraft only flown by the RVNAF in 1972.

The short version of the picture is this. The photo was taken on June 8, 1973 by Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut an Associated Press photographer after the village of Trang Bang was accidentally napalmed by A-1 Skyraiders from the 518th Fighter Squadron of the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF). The girl in the picture is named Phan Thi Kim Phuc an she was nine years old in the photo. The two boys on the left in the picture are her brothers and the children on the right are her cousins.

The airstrike was ordered by the commander of the 25th Division from the ARVN and carried out by aircraft of the RVNAF 518th Fighter Squadron. At no point in the loop between requesting, authorizing, or executing the airstrikes were any Americans involved. It was a completely Vietnamese show. Even more back story is that the village of Trang Bang was under attack by North Vietnamese forces and that is why the 25th division was there in the first place. The airstrike hit the wrong target which resulted in injuries and death to civilians. Not to be flip, but these kinds of things happen in war. War is only clean in video games.

Kim Phuc survived the war and defected to Canada in 1992 where she currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with her husband and two sons. She also established the Kim Foundation, a charity dedicate to helping the child victims of war. Ironically enough, the website for her charity repeats the lie that an American adviser was responsible for calling in the airstrike.

References:

Horst Faas and Marianne Fulton The Survivor, http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng1.htm. accessed 8 Feb 2013
List of Pulitzer Prize winning Photos in the Spot News Category, http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Spot-News-Photography. accessed 8 Feb 2013
Timberlake, Ronald N. The Fraud Behind The Girl In The Photo: Hijacking the history of the Vietnam veteran 1999. http://www.ndqsa.com/myth.html accessed 8 Feb 2013
Zhang, Michael. www.petapixel.com Interview with Nick Ut. 19 Sep. 2012 http://www.petapixel.com/2012/09/19/interview-with-nick-ut-the-photojournalist-who-shot-the-iconic-photo-napalm-girl/ accessed 8 Feb 2013

Historical Resources on the Web

Featured

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

Updated 29 April 2013

Below the fold is a list of historical sources on the internet, this includes both primary and secondary source collections. I am constantly updating this list when I run across useful sites. Please point me at sites I miss in the comments section.

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Bias in Academic History?

Posted on March 7, 2012 by MHUS

I got my latest copy of the SMH Journal of Military History a few weeks ago and am working my way through the articles. The Journal always provides grist for at least one post, most of the time it is a thought provoking article that prompts me to post. This time it is different. There is a phrase in one of the articles that caused me to raise my eyebrows. The article is: Candice Shy Hooper, “The War That Made Hollywood: How the Spanish-American War Saved the U.S. Film Industry,” The Journal of Military History76 #1 (January 2012): 69-97. The phrase is:

“The newest form of mass entertainment in the United States was, virtually from the outset, held hostage by a very small, primarily mechanically minded monopoly of urban white males.” Emphasis mine

The sentence is at the end of a paragraph discussing the stagnation of film as an industry after it’s introduction. What got me thinking was what the point of the sentence, especially the last three words was. I cannot figure out the implication of the whole urban white male piece except that the author is somehow implying that any other group of people would have done a much better job of developing the nascent film industry. I good go into an orgy of being offended but I will not, instead I will simply point out that the author does not expand on why this was a bad thing other than to claim lack of imagination.

I cite this as an example of why current academia is losing it’s popular appeal. Knowledge is no longer for the masses, it is restricted to an elite group of people who let their own prejudices guide them as they delude themselves into thinking ow open-minded they are. I guarantee that if she had made the same remark but substituted black males or females, the comment would not have made it past the peer-review process. In many ways, those that claim to be open-minded or objective are just as much, if not more prejudiced tha thse they are writing about.

Mostly, I am just shocked that this comment and its tone made it into the Journal. Apparently the reviewers agree with her implication that urban white males are somehow bad. Never mind the fact that most of the scientific advances of the last 400-500 years have come from that group. They have bought the white man is an oppressor meme hook, line, and sinker. How sad.

Comments please, I would love to get a discussion going on this.

Book Review: The Age of Total War: 1860-1945 by Jeremy Black

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Patrick Shrier

The notion that a book is “thought-provoking” is often thrown out there for works of non-fiction, and of those that are described as such that I have read most very seldom are. This book is different, Dr. Black has written not so much a history as a treatise challenging historians, particularly military historians, to reexamine the history of conflict in the examined period with the idea of total war uppermost in their minds. It seems a counter-intuitive thing to do at first, but he provides plenty of examples of why the wars under consideration were not total or were only partially total at best. This includes World War II, which was total in some aspects but limited in others.

The biggest distinction the Dr. Black makes in discussing totality in warfare is the difference between war aims/victory conditions and the methods used to wage war. He posits that while war aims are sometimes total, such as seeking the destruction of the enemy or the dissolution of their state, the methods of war making have often been far from total. Even the most brutal of wars between nation states are often not total as the combatants do not actually seek the physical destruction of their enemies. He actually points out that it is most often revolutionary or sectarian conflicts where the physical destruction of opponents is a goal and uses the examples of Rwanda in 1994, 1990′s Bosnia, the German suppression of the Herero in the early 1900s, and many of the wars of decolonization in Africa and East Asia as examples, many of which fall outside of the period examined.

This is a global history of the period to an extent, but there is an emphasis on wars that occurred within Europe simply because so much more is known about them. He examines the conditions in these wars and discusses the ways in which they were and were not total. On of his most interesting discussions in the book is a wide-ranging discussion of fighting quality in his chapter on WWII and the way in which that aspect of the war has been under served in the literature.

He closes the book with a discussion of totality in the Cold War period and looking forward and the way in which the entire concept of total war needs to be reexamined and that military history needs to get away from just examining the wars of Europe but also look at the rest of the world. It is a telling observation that in English language history’s the rest of the world is virtually ignored unless a western nation was engaged in the conflict with Israel being the exception.

In closing, Dr. Black has produced a book that should inspire even the most casual of students of military history to reevaluate the way in which they think of total war. This book should be on the shelf of every student of military history but particularly that of those talking heads that go on news shows and fatuously offer their supposed wisdom about warfare for the masses. An excellent and yes, thought provoking book, I highly recommend it.