Yes, Christine’s military history seminar returns once again, with a brief detour into World War II. This shoots Ohio State University’s reading list all to hell, of course.
OSU’s list ordered me to read eight general works before going on to European and American military history. I read three before hopping to the end of the list. When I checked the World War II book out of the library, I imagined a room full of militant academics, all wearing those Prussian helmets with the spikes, shouting “Nein! Nein! You must follow the plan!”
My latest book is Eagle Against the Sun by Ronald H. Spector, which deals with the American war with Japan.
I took this bold step after seeing the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima,” directed by Clint Eastwood and shot from the Japanese point of view. (1) The main character was very engaging. We meet him digging trenches on the island’s volcanic, ashy beach, preparing for the American invasion. “Why do the Americans want this little shit island?” he asks his friend as he digs. “As far as I’m concerned, they can have it.”
I didn’t know squat about Iwo Jima when I saw the movie. I didn’t even know that famous picture of the Marines raising the flag was taken there. Naval histories bored me to death; I always skipped the Pacific theater in World War II books. But the Japanese in the Iwo Jima movie intrigued me. They had a brilliant commander and a harsh but admirable philosophy. What was the war against them like? So I hauled out Ohio State’s reading list and found “Eagle Against the Sun.”
I tell you, after three books describing military strategy and philosophy, “Eagle” read like a dime-store novel. I could actually concentrate on one war in one century in one area of the world. No more time traveling between Thermopolaye, Waterloo and the Franco-Prussian War within one paragraph. No more treatises on the development of spears and tercios and matchlock rifles. (2) Instead, “Eagle” had the American and the Japanese fleets and a ton of dinky islands and that was it. Excellent.
But now that I’ve finished “Eagle,” I find it a difficult book to summarize and review. Clausewitz and Kennedy and MacNeill spoke from the sunny heights of military theory and philosophy. They invited you to join the command centers of battle, where maps and strategies and civilized discussions reigned.
“Eagle Against the Sun” was very different. The reader did spend the first few chapters snug in his armchair, discussing the American state of mind (complacent, isolationist and ill prepared) and the Japanese state of mind (militant and bragging, but also ill prepared). The navies of both countries were enamored by a troublemaker named Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval historian whose book “The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783” (thankfully not on the reading list), influenced naval strategy in WWII.
Mahan imagined big fleets of battleships that would fight one decisive battle and win “command of the sea.” It all sounded very dramatic and fun, so everyone went around dreaming of big guns, big ships and big battles, and practically ignoring torpedos and aircraft. The American navy endlessly replayed Trafalgar (1805) and the Battle of Jutland (1916) up to World War II. (3)
But reading Mahan wasn’t a great idea. As Spector put it, “Japanese naval officers , too, had inhaled deeply the heady, if somewhat musty, fumes of Mahan’s classic brew of imperialism and salt water.” Many historians believe that Japan’s fanatical efforts to bring about Mahan’s “decisive battle” contributed to its defeat.
So in the first few chapters of “Eagle Against the Sun” I was in familiar territory, reading about strategy and snickering at clueless, if influential, historians (remember Clause making fun of Jomini?). Pearl Harbor was described with drama and emotion – you could almost hear the dramatic music swelling in the background.
But then Ronald Spector turned to the actual war and the party was over. Before I knew it, I was thrown into the battles: the Philippines, Midway, Massacre Valley, Guadalcanal, the Gilberts, Kwajalein, the Marianas, all the way to Leyte and Luzon. I started carrying around a world atlas so I could figure out where all the teeny islands were. I didn’t know the outcome of most of the battles, so I followed the war’s twists and turns with wide eyes, elated by the victories, but most of the time just angry and sad.
But all in all, I’m glad I broke ranks and skipped to the end of the reading list. When I go back to reading general strategy (Peter Paret’s giant tome, “Makers of Modern Strategy” is glowering at me from the bookshelf), I won’t forget the suffering that all those abstract discussions ultimately lead to.
FOOTNOTES
1) I liked it much better than “Flags of our Fathers,” which I rented later and found disjointed and occasionally dull.
2) The third book, “Pursuit of Power” started with 1000 AD and devoted pages to the development of iron weapons. It was enough to make a grown woman cry.
3) I will never cease to goggle at that. Trafalgar was um, against Napolean, you know. The ships had sails and were made of WOOD, guys.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Pursuit of Power III: The Cure is Worse than the Disease
When we last chatted with William H. McNeill, author of “Pursuit of Power,” old military patterns were busy withering and dying in the 17th century. You could almost hear him cackling and rubbing his hands, crying “Now I can prove my thesis! Hahahahaha!”
Maurice of Nassau and his buds had developed new methods of army organization, and their ideas spread through the world like a virus. McNeill triumphantly returned to his big medical analogy, reminding us how military changes resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.
So now warmakers had the fancy weapons, the new drills, the bitty regiments. The developments kindled in Holland in the 16th century spread like wildfire. In the 17th century the new methods hit western Europe; in the 18th, they transformed Russia under Peter the Great. Then the methods spread to the New World and India during colonial expansion and infected even the Ottoman Empire.
Hoo boy. But these new methods weren’t all-powerful. Generals still had problems controlling armies of more than 50,000 men. They needed better ways to communicate. They needed some decent topographical maps. Supply was a big problem. (Isn’t it always?) Personnel administration was still all screwy, with meatheads with money and connections beating out professional officers for advancement. (That’s changed?) But most of all, war was still a sport of kings. Civilians were left alone.
But not for long. The French Revolution broke social barriers, and then the Industrial Revolution solved communication and supply problems and brought in more nifty new weapons. War became industrialized, Germany was united, everyone in Europe was squabbling, and the next thing you knew, you had World War I.
Talk about breaking old limits. As long as all military movement except for trains depended on horses or humans, the limit of muscles were the limits of armies. But the internal combustion engine changed all that, McNeill said, beginning with the taxicabs that carried French soldiers from Paris for the first Battle of the Marne in 1914.
Even a serious dude like McNeill admitted that World War I was bizarre. Germany, Britain and France were willing to fight despite massive deaths and military stalemate. McNeill tried to explain it, but gave up after a rambling page or two.
You could almost feel his relief as he turned to armaments, treating us to pages of tank photos. Tanks were first developed in 1916, and two years later they were all along the front line.
The British high command even came out with this amazing plan, called Plan 1919. I’d never heard of this plan. Apparently it laid out the blitzkrieg tactics the Germans used 20 years later in Poland. But the war ended a year early, and the Brits never used it.
But it’s still intriguing. Military eggheads before then tended to draw plans based on weapons that, um, actually existed. The British planners, on the other hand, tried to shape the future by deliberately altering the development of weapons to fit the needs of the plan. I can just see them sketching out Plan 1919 to their subordinates, airily saying, “Now if we can just put some big guns on treads, old boy …”
Except for this interesting aside, McNeill used the rest of this book to launch a broad, sociopolitical discussion of the two world wars. I plowed through some of it, but it made my head hurt. So I gave “Pursuit of Power” a respectful farewell salute and toddled off to watch “Supernanny.”
So did McNeill prove his thesis? I don’t feel qualified to judge. I mean, when you think about it, it’s a weird little thesis. So the advanced armies are the deadly viruses, and the backward natives are the once-healthy cells, falling by the millions to the scythe of progress. Does that make my new buddy Maurice a genetic mutation? Oooh, my head hurts.
I think McNeill successfully showed how technological advances in weapons break previous limits, allowing armies to run amok until they hit new limits. Seventeenth-century armies became unwieldy at 50,000 because communication broke down. Then came telegraphs and phones and armies grew larger.
Now we have the Internet and satellites, and the sizes of future armies seem almost infinite. Perhaps if we refrain from blowing ourselves up long enough to develop space travel, we’ll see history repeat itself over planets and systems instead of countries and continents.
And perhaps that’s one of the book’s points. In mankind’s pursuit of power, our ambition will always outstrip our capabilities. Yet while our reach exceeds our grasp, we struggle to handle the technology we hold now, today. We’re like greedy toddlers, unable to eat the candy in our hands, yet always crying for more.
Maurice of Nassau and his buds had developed new methods of army organization, and their ideas spread through the world like a virus. McNeill triumphantly returned to his big medical analogy, reminding us how military changes resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.
So now warmakers had the fancy weapons, the new drills, the bitty regiments. The developments kindled in Holland in the 16th century spread like wildfire. In the 17th century the new methods hit western Europe; in the 18th, they transformed Russia under Peter the Great. Then the methods spread to the New World and India during colonial expansion and infected even the Ottoman Empire.
Hoo boy. But these new methods weren’t all-powerful. Generals still had problems controlling armies of more than 50,000 men. They needed better ways to communicate. They needed some decent topographical maps. Supply was a big problem. (Isn’t it always?) Personnel administration was still all screwy, with meatheads with money and connections beating out professional officers for advancement. (That’s changed?) But most of all, war was still a sport of kings. Civilians were left alone.
But not for long. The French Revolution broke social barriers, and then the Industrial Revolution solved communication and supply problems and brought in more nifty new weapons. War became industrialized, Germany was united, everyone in Europe was squabbling, and the next thing you knew, you had World War I.
Talk about breaking old limits. As long as all military movement except for trains depended on horses or humans, the limit of muscles were the limits of armies. But the internal combustion engine changed all that, McNeill said, beginning with the taxicabs that carried French soldiers from Paris for the first Battle of the Marne in 1914.
Even a serious dude like McNeill admitted that World War I was bizarre. Germany, Britain and France were willing to fight despite massive deaths and military stalemate. McNeill tried to explain it, but gave up after a rambling page or two.
You could almost feel his relief as he turned to armaments, treating us to pages of tank photos. Tanks were first developed in 1916, and two years later they were all along the front line.
The British high command even came out with this amazing plan, called Plan 1919. I’d never heard of this plan. Apparently it laid out the blitzkrieg tactics the Germans used 20 years later in Poland. But the war ended a year early, and the Brits never used it.
But it’s still intriguing. Military eggheads before then tended to draw plans based on weapons that, um, actually existed. The British planners, on the other hand, tried to shape the future by deliberately altering the development of weapons to fit the needs of the plan. I can just see them sketching out Plan 1919 to their subordinates, airily saying, “Now if we can just put some big guns on treads, old boy …”
Except for this interesting aside, McNeill used the rest of this book to launch a broad, sociopolitical discussion of the two world wars. I plowed through some of it, but it made my head hurt. So I gave “Pursuit of Power” a respectful farewell salute and toddled off to watch “Supernanny.”
So did McNeill prove his thesis? I don’t feel qualified to judge. I mean, when you think about it, it’s a weird little thesis. So the advanced armies are the deadly viruses, and the backward natives are the once-healthy cells, falling by the millions to the scythe of progress. Does that make my new buddy Maurice a genetic mutation? Oooh, my head hurts.
I think McNeill successfully showed how technological advances in weapons break previous limits, allowing armies to run amok until they hit new limits. Seventeenth-century armies became unwieldy at 50,000 because communication broke down. Then came telegraphs and phones and armies grew larger.
Now we have the Internet and satellites, and the sizes of future armies seem almost infinite. Perhaps if we refrain from blowing ourselves up long enough to develop space travel, we’ll see history repeat itself over planets and systems instead of countries and continents.
And perhaps that’s one of the book’s points. In mankind’s pursuit of power, our ambition will always outstrip our capabilities. Yet while our reach exceeds our grasp, we struggle to handle the technology we hold now, today. We’re like greedy toddlers, unable to eat the candy in our hands, yet always crying for more.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Pursuit of Power II: Christine Meets a New Guy
Despite my best intentions, I abandoned McNeill’s “Pursuit of Power” after the first chapter and spent two evenings watching TV instead.
But Monday night, which offered a choice between reruns of "Hell's Kitchen," "Project Runway" and "Wife Swap," drove me back to reading. So I gave Chapter Two a try.
McNeill was yakking about the years 1000-1500, when Chinese advancements in industry and armaments anticipated European achievements by several centuries.
So why didn’t a Chinese Columbus discover America? China had the iron and the coal industries and the powerful sailing ships. They had paper money and crossbows and guns and gunpowder and Confucious knew what else.
The book’s answer was that to exploit such advancements, a society had to support lots of merchants and manufacturers. But China didn't want to do this. Their society had different values. Chinese merchants and manufacturers couldn't flourish. Instead of passing their crafts to their sons, merchants and manufacturers put their limited profits into education and land for their boys. The Chinese government controlled everything through Confucianism, and Confucianism didn't like the marketplace.
Europe could have gone the same way in those years, McNeill said. Christianity didn't think much of the marketplace either. If the Popes Innocent III and Boniface VIII had succeeded in uniting western Europe under a papal government (a true Holy Roman Empire), Europe might’ve been like China.
But the popes couldn't pull it off. Apparently God wanted Europeans to buy light artillery on a large scale. So Europe remained a puzzle of states and markets could flourish in the cracks, building increasingly powerful weapons. Gee, what a relief. Cuz the world really needed those cannons and muskets.
Meanwhile, back to Chapter Four. Military history books often remind me of small-town newspapers: the same people keep popping up again and again. If you’re studying the 12th century, you get Ghengis Khan; if you’re in the 1500s, you find Elizabeth of England and Philip of Spain.
Now McNeill was discussing the Thirty Year’s War in the 1600s, and the Swedish king Gustav Adolf promptly floated up like Banquo’s ghost. Oh, hi there, Gustav, how ya doing – still fighting the Battle of Breitenfeld? Go get ‘em, man.
But then a new guy marched onto page 126: Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, captain-general of Holland and Zeeland in the 1500s. How come nobody told me about this dude? I thought Zeeland was a boring town in west Michigan. (1)
Maurice was a drill sergeant – literally. Confronted by the Spaniards and their weird little tercios (2), he dreamed up the idea of systematic drilling to make his soldiers more efficient. He analyzed the complicated motions needed to load and fire a matchlock rifle and came up with the number 42. (3) He taught his soldiers to make each movement in unison, responding to a shouted command.
That’s where the guy on the cover of this book, the soldier in the red poofy pants, came in. Drillmasters used pictures showing each of the 42 motions, all displaying the same funny guy: he fired his musket, took down the musket, uncocked the match, blew on the pan, charged the musket, etc. They’re lovely pictures, made from engravings, although stick figures probably would have done just as well.
But Maurice did more than hand out pictures. He introduced regular marching and smaller tactical units and made his guys dig entrenchments with spades.
“Powess and physical courage all but disappeared under an ironclad routine,” McNeill said. “The old heroic patterns of military behavior withered and died.”
_________________________________
(1) The real Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands. Dutch settlers brought the names to Michigan, so now we have the thrilling locales of Holland and Zeeland, 5 miles apart on the highway to Grand Rapids. Yippee.
(2) The tercios were a formidable force in the 1500s: a crowd of pikemen (guys carrying long wooden poles) protecting a fringe of musketeers posted around a central square of more pikemen. The Spaniards loved their tercios and insisted on sending them out long after their usefulness had ended.
(3) The answer to life, the universe and Everything.
But Monday night, which offered a choice between reruns of "Hell's Kitchen," "Project Runway" and "Wife Swap," drove me back to reading. So I gave Chapter Two a try.
McNeill was yakking about the years 1000-1500, when Chinese advancements in industry and armaments anticipated European achievements by several centuries.
So why didn’t a Chinese Columbus discover America? China had the iron and the coal industries and the powerful sailing ships. They had paper money and crossbows and guns and gunpowder and Confucious knew what else.
The book’s answer was that to exploit such advancements, a society had to support lots of merchants and manufacturers. But China didn't want to do this. Their society had different values. Chinese merchants and manufacturers couldn't flourish. Instead of passing their crafts to their sons, merchants and manufacturers put their limited profits into education and land for their boys. The Chinese government controlled everything through Confucianism, and Confucianism didn't like the marketplace.
Europe could have gone the same way in those years, McNeill said. Christianity didn't think much of the marketplace either. If the Popes Innocent III and Boniface VIII had succeeded in uniting western Europe under a papal government (a true Holy Roman Empire), Europe might’ve been like China.
But the popes couldn't pull it off. Apparently God wanted Europeans to buy light artillery on a large scale. So Europe remained a puzzle of states and markets could flourish in the cracks, building increasingly powerful weapons. Gee, what a relief. Cuz the world really needed those cannons and muskets.
Meanwhile, back to Chapter Four. Military history books often remind me of small-town newspapers: the same people keep popping up again and again. If you’re studying the 12th century, you get Ghengis Khan; if you’re in the 1500s, you find Elizabeth of England and Philip of Spain.
Now McNeill was discussing the Thirty Year’s War in the 1600s, and the Swedish king Gustav Adolf promptly floated up like Banquo’s ghost. Oh, hi there, Gustav, how ya doing – still fighting the Battle of Breitenfeld? Go get ‘em, man.
But then a new guy marched onto page 126: Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, captain-general of Holland and Zeeland in the 1500s. How come nobody told me about this dude? I thought Zeeland was a boring town in west Michigan. (1)
Maurice was a drill sergeant – literally. Confronted by the Spaniards and their weird little tercios (2), he dreamed up the idea of systematic drilling to make his soldiers more efficient. He analyzed the complicated motions needed to load and fire a matchlock rifle and came up with the number 42. (3) He taught his soldiers to make each movement in unison, responding to a shouted command.
That’s where the guy on the cover of this book, the soldier in the red poofy pants, came in. Drillmasters used pictures showing each of the 42 motions, all displaying the same funny guy: he fired his musket, took down the musket, uncocked the match, blew on the pan, charged the musket, etc. They’re lovely pictures, made from engravings, although stick figures probably would have done just as well.
But Maurice did more than hand out pictures. He introduced regular marching and smaller tactical units and made his guys dig entrenchments with spades.
“Powess and physical courage all but disappeared under an ironclad routine,” McNeill said. “The old heroic patterns of military behavior withered and died.”
_________________________________
(1) The real Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands. Dutch settlers brought the names to Michigan, so now we have the thrilling locales of Holland and Zeeland, 5 miles apart on the highway to Grand Rapids. Yippee.
(2) The tercios were a formidable force in the 1500s: a crowd of pikemen (guys carrying long wooden poles) protecting a fringe of musketeers posted around a central square of more pikemen. The Spaniards loved their tercios and insisted on sending them out long after their usefulness had ended.
(3) The answer to life, the universe and Everything.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Pursuit of Power I: Deadly Germs in Poofy Pants
"The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces and Society since A.D. 1000" by William H. McNeill.
I’ll admit, I picked up my library copy of William H. McNeill’s “Pursuit of Power” with some trepidation. The book was yellowed and waterstained and the cover showed some weird guy in a teeny feathered hat and poofy red pants.
As usual, I skipped the preface. I can’t stand prefaces, where an author describes the epiphany that led to the book (“… and so I wondered, why hasn’t a thorough discussion of nickel-iron octahedrites been attempted?”). Then the author spends two pages thanking everyone but their dry cleaner. (“… To my Uncle Mervin, who offered many helpful suggestions when he wasn’t drunk.”)
So I turned to chapter one: “Arms and Society of Antiquity.”
And stopped dead.
I didn’t understand a word of it. What’s all this about the “industrialization of war”? Why is he talking about bronze? Who cares where tin was mined? This is ridiculous, I thought, I could be watching “America’s Got Talent.”
I sighed. Perhaps I should read the preface after all. It was only two pages, not counting the acknowledgements (“Thank you Hugh, for piloting me through the intricacies of Chinese historiography.”)
Thank heavens I read it. This book had a point, and McNeill wasn’t afraid to clearly lay it out in the preface. He’d published a book a few years before called “Plagues and Peoples,” dealing with the interactions between people and microparasites. A creepy topic really. I dislike reading plague books, which leave me twitchy and prone to examining my tongue in the mirror.
In “Plagues and Peoples,” McNeill addressed the abrupt changes that occur in organisms due to a mutation or a change in environment, changes that briefly allow them to escape previous limits. The most important microparasites affecting people were disease germs, so he wrote about those.
In “Pursuit of Power,” McNeill turned his attention to macroparasites. The most important macroparasites affecting people were other people, violent conquerors who snatched all the good food, shelter and pretty girls without contributing anything.
Therefore, macroparasitism among people turns into a study of the armed forces, with special attention to war equipment. Changes in armaments resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.
To take this analogy further (and McNeill stretched it to the limit), well-equipped and organized armies meeting a more backward society act like deadly germs attacking a patient. The advanced guy almost always wins.
And where does this leave us? In real trouble, according to McNeill. As war became more advanced, increasingly dependent on industrial might, muscles and courage became less important. But our “ancient, inherited psychic aptitudes” remain the same. We still want to beat our breastplates and rattle our spears, but now our spears are rockets and nuclear missiles.
Now, isn’t that just jolly. Aren’t you glad I read the preface? Well, it had to be done. I returned to that first paragraph in chapter one, “Arms and Society in Antiquity,” and it made a little better sense now. A little.
“The industrialization of war is almost as old as civilization,” McNeill said. Privileged fighting men used bronze weapons and armor made by specialists. This wasn’t really industrialization, though, because it was so small-scale. It took a ton of painstaking work to make a warrior’s full panopoly and the stuff lasted forever.
But things change. McNeill says. “One can detect in the historic record a series of important changes in weapons systems resulting from sporadic technical discoveries and inventions that sufficed to change preexisting conditions of warfare and army organization.”
In other words, as germs mutated to cause ever more dangerous diseases, new weapons were invented to cause more destructive wars. In both cases, the old limits no longer held, and wholesale craziness broke out for a while until an equilibrium was established.
And what were these changes? The first was our old buddy bronze, not because it made pretty armor, but because it led to improved designs for war chariots. The new designs meant lots of guys could have chariots now, not just the rich ones. Whole armies could roll around the battlefield, shooting arrows. That meant populations with lots of horses could kick some serious butt.
The next change was iron, which meant every guy could get his own armor and wreak a little havoc. Then came what McNeill called “the cavalry revolution.” Guys learned to ride and shoot their bows at the same time. The steppe nomads loved this, and the next thing you knew, you had Genghis Khan in your backyard.
For the last big change in antiquity, we can thank the Iranians, who bred bigger horses, horses big enough to carry a guy in full metal armor. Armored horsemen cared less about arrows and could wave their maces and swords around. With that discovery, the age of antiquity was over and we could get into all that fun medieval stuff.
By the end of chapter one, I was OK with the book. McNeill’s writing was a little involved (I mean, look at the quote about weapons, and that was one of the simpler sentences). But he had a nice, organized mind and could reduce an insanely complicated topic into something I could wrap my head around. I was prepared to read on. Maybe I’d learn something about the weird guy in the red poofy pants.
I’ll admit, I picked up my library copy of William H. McNeill’s “Pursuit of Power” with some trepidation. The book was yellowed and waterstained and the cover showed some weird guy in a teeny feathered hat and poofy red pants.
As usual, I skipped the preface. I can’t stand prefaces, where an author describes the epiphany that led to the book (“… and so I wondered, why hasn’t a thorough discussion of nickel-iron octahedrites been attempted?”). Then the author spends two pages thanking everyone but their dry cleaner. (“… To my Uncle Mervin, who offered many helpful suggestions when he wasn’t drunk.”)
So I turned to chapter one: “Arms and Society of Antiquity.”
And stopped dead.
I didn’t understand a word of it. What’s all this about the “industrialization of war”? Why is he talking about bronze? Who cares where tin was mined? This is ridiculous, I thought, I could be watching “America’s Got Talent.”
I sighed. Perhaps I should read the preface after all. It was only two pages, not counting the acknowledgements (“Thank you Hugh, for piloting me through the intricacies of Chinese historiography.”)
Thank heavens I read it. This book had a point, and McNeill wasn’t afraid to clearly lay it out in the preface. He’d published a book a few years before called “Plagues and Peoples,” dealing with the interactions between people and microparasites. A creepy topic really. I dislike reading plague books, which leave me twitchy and prone to examining my tongue in the mirror.
In “Plagues and Peoples,” McNeill addressed the abrupt changes that occur in organisms due to a mutation or a change in environment, changes that briefly allow them to escape previous limits. The most important microparasites affecting people were disease germs, so he wrote about those.
In “Pursuit of Power,” McNeill turned his attention to macroparasites. The most important macroparasites affecting people were other people, violent conquerors who snatched all the good food, shelter and pretty girls without contributing anything.
Therefore, macroparasitism among people turns into a study of the armed forces, with special attention to war equipment. Changes in armaments resemble the genetic mutations of microorganisms; they break down old limits or explore new geography.
To take this analogy further (and McNeill stretched it to the limit), well-equipped and organized armies meeting a more backward society act like deadly germs attacking a patient. The advanced guy almost always wins.
And where does this leave us? In real trouble, according to McNeill. As war became more advanced, increasingly dependent on industrial might, muscles and courage became less important. But our “ancient, inherited psychic aptitudes” remain the same. We still want to beat our breastplates and rattle our spears, but now our spears are rockets and nuclear missiles.
Now, isn’t that just jolly. Aren’t you glad I read the preface? Well, it had to be done. I returned to that first paragraph in chapter one, “Arms and Society in Antiquity,” and it made a little better sense now. A little.
“The industrialization of war is almost as old as civilization,” McNeill said. Privileged fighting men used bronze weapons and armor made by specialists. This wasn’t really industrialization, though, because it was so small-scale. It took a ton of painstaking work to make a warrior’s full panopoly and the stuff lasted forever.
But things change. McNeill says. “One can detect in the historic record a series of important changes in weapons systems resulting from sporadic technical discoveries and inventions that sufficed to change preexisting conditions of warfare and army organization.”
In other words, as germs mutated to cause ever more dangerous diseases, new weapons were invented to cause more destructive wars. In both cases, the old limits no longer held, and wholesale craziness broke out for a while until an equilibrium was established.
And what were these changes? The first was our old buddy bronze, not because it made pretty armor, but because it led to improved designs for war chariots. The new designs meant lots of guys could have chariots now, not just the rich ones. Whole armies could roll around the battlefield, shooting arrows. That meant populations with lots of horses could kick some serious butt.
The next change was iron, which meant every guy could get his own armor and wreak a little havoc. Then came what McNeill called “the cavalry revolution.” Guys learned to ride and shoot their bows at the same time. The steppe nomads loved this, and the next thing you knew, you had Genghis Khan in your backyard.
For the last big change in antiquity, we can thank the Iranians, who bred bigger horses, horses big enough to carry a guy in full metal armor. Armored horsemen cared less about arrows and could wave their maces and swords around. With that discovery, the age of antiquity was over and we could get into all that fun medieval stuff.
By the end of chapter one, I was OK with the book. McNeill’s writing was a little involved (I mean, look at the quote about weapons, and that was one of the simpler sentences). But he had a nice, organized mind and could reduce an insanely complicated topic into something I could wrap my head around. I was prepared to read on. Maybe I’d learn something about the weird guy in the red poofy pants.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
The Rise and Fall of a Really Long Book
Well, I just closed up Book No. 2, written by military history writer Paul “I wish I was Gibbon” Kennedy. Paul Kennedy wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” and “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery”, among others. (1)
Described as “a work of almost Toynbeean sweep,” the Great Powers book purports to describe economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Well, jolly. Apparently just reading a military history book isn’t tough enough, Let’s throw in some economics for fun. (2)
Kennedy is definitely an economist -- never met a list he didn’t like. When discussing 15th-century China, a lesser historian would refer to “the formidable Ming navy.” Not Kennedy – he’ll list how many combat vessels, how many floating fortresses, how many cruisers, how many private ships, etc., along with a list of the countries the private ships traded with. Bleah. Remember Clause’s “dreary pedantry?”
Kennedy lists the world’s most “broad and fertile river zones,” to no real purpose (his point was that Europe didn’t have any), just to show off. He lists North America’s biggest exports, Europe’s busiest ports and types of missile-throwing instruments. (What the hell is a trebuchet? Who cares?) (3)
Then he goes on to the Hapsburgs and turns slightly less boring, happily listing the reasons the empire failed. (sounded a little smug, too; after all, the empire survived in some form for 400 years. The U.S. should be so lucky.)
I liked some of the economic backdrop, how sheep grazing willy-nilly all over 16th-century Spain hurt that country’s ability to fight in the Netherlands. (4) He made a nice point that Wellington’s army in 1815 wasn’t much different than Lord Marlborough’s a century before. Nelson’s fleet wasn’t much more advanced technologically than Louis XIV’s. It was the military organization that changed.
But Kennedy would constantly undermine his own writing. He wanted to be both Good Cop and Bad Cop whenever he analyzed a country. Which is fine, you want to know both the positives and negatives.
However, it’s pretty discouraging to sit through tiny-type pages filled with long lists, praising the Power to the skies (such wonderful diplomacy, arms production, railroads, military development!), only to read that actually, the country has no money and a crazy leader and won’t amount to anything.
This isn’t Good Cop/Bad Cop, it’s Good Cop/Bad Sargeant, where a cop lists 43 reasons why you aren’t really in trouble and then Sarge strides in and barks, “Lock ‘im up!”
After a while, you conclude that nobody’s any good, everyone’s riddled with tragic weaknesses, and we should all go back to pounding rocks with sticks. Kennedy turned much more confident and readable with World War II, but after that I kind of gave up and watched “Hot Properties” on ABC.
________________________
FOOTNOTES
1) Gibbon wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I know, it was a cheap history joke. Sue me.
2) And no, I don’t know who Toynbee was. The line’s funnier if you don’t know. I see great possibilities for intellectual references. “How was that parenting article on the dangers of stickers?” a playgroup mother might ask me. “Ah,” I’ll say in awed tones, “It was a work of almost Toynbeean sweep.”
And yes, I really did read an article last week warning parents about stickers. We are a nation at risk, surely.
3) It’s some sort of medieval catapult. You can buy a desktop model at trebuchet.com for 30 bucks. Yawn. God, footnotes are boring.
4) Don’t ask me how. Read it yourself. I’m not going back in there.
Described as “a work of almost Toynbeean sweep,” the Great Powers book purports to describe economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Well, jolly. Apparently just reading a military history book isn’t tough enough, Let’s throw in some economics for fun. (2)
Kennedy is definitely an economist -- never met a list he didn’t like. When discussing 15th-century China, a lesser historian would refer to “the formidable Ming navy.” Not Kennedy – he’ll list how many combat vessels, how many floating fortresses, how many cruisers, how many private ships, etc., along with a list of the countries the private ships traded with. Bleah. Remember Clause’s “dreary pedantry?”
Kennedy lists the world’s most “broad and fertile river zones,” to no real purpose (his point was that Europe didn’t have any), just to show off. He lists North America’s biggest exports, Europe’s busiest ports and types of missile-throwing instruments. (What the hell is a trebuchet? Who cares?) (3)
Then he goes on to the Hapsburgs and turns slightly less boring, happily listing the reasons the empire failed. (sounded a little smug, too; after all, the empire survived in some form for 400 years. The U.S. should be so lucky.)
I liked some of the economic backdrop, how sheep grazing willy-nilly all over 16th-century Spain hurt that country’s ability to fight in the Netherlands. (4) He made a nice point that Wellington’s army in 1815 wasn’t much different than Lord Marlborough’s a century before. Nelson’s fleet wasn’t much more advanced technologically than Louis XIV’s. It was the military organization that changed.
But Kennedy would constantly undermine his own writing. He wanted to be both Good Cop and Bad Cop whenever he analyzed a country. Which is fine, you want to know both the positives and negatives.
However, it’s pretty discouraging to sit through tiny-type pages filled with long lists, praising the Power to the skies (such wonderful diplomacy, arms production, railroads, military development!), only to read that actually, the country has no money and a crazy leader and won’t amount to anything.
This isn’t Good Cop/Bad Cop, it’s Good Cop/Bad Sargeant, where a cop lists 43 reasons why you aren’t really in trouble and then Sarge strides in and barks, “Lock ‘im up!”
After a while, you conclude that nobody’s any good, everyone’s riddled with tragic weaknesses, and we should all go back to pounding rocks with sticks. Kennedy turned much more confident and readable with World War II, but after that I kind of gave up and watched “Hot Properties” on ABC.
________________________
FOOTNOTES
1) Gibbon wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I know, it was a cheap history joke. Sue me.
2) And no, I don’t know who Toynbee was. The line’s funnier if you don’t know. I see great possibilities for intellectual references. “How was that parenting article on the dangers of stickers?” a playgroup mother might ask me. “Ah,” I’ll say in awed tones, “It was a work of almost Toynbeean sweep.”
And yes, I really did read an article last week warning parents about stickers. We are a nation at risk, surely.
3) It’s some sort of medieval catapult. You can buy a desktop model at trebuchet.com for 30 bucks. Yawn. God, footnotes are boring.
4) Don’t ask me how. Read it yourself. I’m not going back in there.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
On War: The Thrill of Victory
Barney Brodie, author of the reading guide to Clausewitz’s “On War,” said it best: “With Book Eight we are back in the realm of pure gold.”
“Book Seven was not exactly wandering in the wilderness,” he continued, “but ... Clausewitz himself seemed to be eager to hurry through it.”
I agree, except I thought all three middle chapters were wandering in the wilderness, and I nearly didn’t make it.
Clause pounds home a familiar maxim: “Destruction of the enemy is what always matters most.” If he repeats this, it’s because war leaders get distracted so much. They want to strut around, or scare the enemy or capture some sexy fortress – none of which destroys the enemy.
With “War Plans,” Clause says, we will put all the influential factors in war in a nice tidy, order. (Insert maniac Prussian cackle here.)
But Clause knows we’re scared, so he says: “When we contemplate all this, we are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pendantry, and grub around the underworld of ponderous concepts.” (Exactly, Clause, where the hell was this fear in Book Six?)
In the end, he says, theory isn’t a bunch of formulas for solving problems, “nor can it mark a narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side.”
And so we begin the last sprint to the finish line. Clause talks about the gap between “absolute war” where people go to war for sound, logical reasons and conduct the war in a focused, efficient manner; and “real war” where everything goes weird and incoherent and nobody knows what’s going on.
He tries to explain why this happens, generally because people love to take the easy way out when they can. He crabs sniffily about the wimpy wars before Napoleon, where nobody went and laid waste to the enemy’s land.
War back then was instead conducted by separate, clearly defined forces and nobody was hurt too much, least of all the people in the countries engaged. It was easy to figure out what the enemy had, so a general knew exactly how many guys to send to tussle over a useless supply depot.
But once Europe became a happy land of plunder and carnage, generals could identify the enemy’s center of gravity (the army, or the capitol, or both) and destroy it.
And don’t divide your main force, for god’s sake. Clause just won’t let that go. When a “trained” general staff scatter their forces like chess pieces, when the leaders use “self-styled” expertise to get all devious for no reason, when armies separate to show “consummate skill” by reuniting two weeks later at utmost risk, well, Clause says, that’s just “idiocy.”
Clause wraps things up with one of his favorite examples, Napoleon’s doomed advance into Russia in 1812. Napoleon entered Russia with half a million men and returned to France with about 50,000. Most people think he just advanced too quickly and too far, that he took Moscow and found himself over his head. Clause doesn’t think so. He thinks Napoleon basically did things well (although he definitely could have started sooner and saved more men). Napolean thought taking Moscow would topple Russia, but he miscalculated. Czar Alexander and his people were tougher than that. So it was the PLAN that was wrong, not the execution.
And on that happy note, I closed “On War,” the first book on my terrifying military history reading list, adopted simply to get me through an awful TV season. I finished it (more or less), but it still scares me. The benefits remain to be seen.
So what’s up for book two? Nothing less than the “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy, which I borrowed from Andy. I really have no choice, you know. Anything’s better than Kelly Ripa in “Hope & Faith.”
“Book Seven was not exactly wandering in the wilderness,” he continued, “but ... Clausewitz himself seemed to be eager to hurry through it.”
I agree, except I thought all three middle chapters were wandering in the wilderness, and I nearly didn’t make it.
Clause pounds home a familiar maxim: “Destruction of the enemy is what always matters most.” If he repeats this, it’s because war leaders get distracted so much. They want to strut around, or scare the enemy or capture some sexy fortress – none of which destroys the enemy.
With “War Plans,” Clause says, we will put all the influential factors in war in a nice tidy, order. (Insert maniac Prussian cackle here.)
But Clause knows we’re scared, so he says: “When we contemplate all this, we are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pendantry, and grub around the underworld of ponderous concepts.” (Exactly, Clause, where the hell was this fear in Book Six?)
In the end, he says, theory isn’t a bunch of formulas for solving problems, “nor can it mark a narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side.”
And so we begin the last sprint to the finish line. Clause talks about the gap between “absolute war” where people go to war for sound, logical reasons and conduct the war in a focused, efficient manner; and “real war” where everything goes weird and incoherent and nobody knows what’s going on.
He tries to explain why this happens, generally because people love to take the easy way out when they can. He crabs sniffily about the wimpy wars before Napoleon, where nobody went and laid waste to the enemy’s land.
War back then was instead conducted by separate, clearly defined forces and nobody was hurt too much, least of all the people in the countries engaged. It was easy to figure out what the enemy had, so a general knew exactly how many guys to send to tussle over a useless supply depot.
But once Europe became a happy land of plunder and carnage, generals could identify the enemy’s center of gravity (the army, or the capitol, or both) and destroy it.
And don’t divide your main force, for god’s sake. Clause just won’t let that go. When a “trained” general staff scatter their forces like chess pieces, when the leaders use “self-styled” expertise to get all devious for no reason, when armies separate to show “consummate skill” by reuniting two weeks later at utmost risk, well, Clause says, that’s just “idiocy.”
Clause wraps things up with one of his favorite examples, Napoleon’s doomed advance into Russia in 1812. Napoleon entered Russia with half a million men and returned to France with about 50,000. Most people think he just advanced too quickly and too far, that he took Moscow and found himself over his head. Clause doesn’t think so. He thinks Napoleon basically did things well (although he definitely could have started sooner and saved more men). Napolean thought taking Moscow would topple Russia, but he miscalculated. Czar Alexander and his people were tougher than that. So it was the PLAN that was wrong, not the execution.
And on that happy note, I closed “On War,” the first book on my terrifying military history reading list, adopted simply to get me through an awful TV season. I finished it (more or less), but it still scares me. The benefits remain to be seen.
So what’s up for book two? Nothing less than the “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy, which I borrowed from Andy. I really have no choice, you know. Anything’s better than Kelly Ripa in “Hope & Faith.”
Sunday, October 4, 2015
On War: Rationing the Horse Fodder
I just wasn’t prepared.
The author of the “On War” reading guide, Bernard Brodie, was a cheery companion for the first three sections. But even Barney couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for Book Four. He called various chapters “rather less consequential” or “not particularly memorable.” I can think of some stronger language, like “fairly gruesome,” “droolingly dull” and “coma-inducing.”
I did like one chapter on the use of the battle, where Clause gets all indignant about silly folks who don’t like to fight. They get nervous when it’s time to roll the dice. “The human spirit recoils from the decision brought about by a single blow,” he says.
So governments and commanders sought out other means of avoiding a decisive battle, finding other ways to meet their goal or abandoning it altogether. All this, Clause says, turned a battle into a kind of evil, something that a properly managed war could avoid.
“Recent history has scattered such nonsense to the winds,” Clause snaps. Warriors must not fall into the same stupid thinking again.
“We are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed,” he goes on. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”
Ah, good old bloodthirsty Clause.
He makes another important point: that now victory is effective without pursuit. Troops on both sides are exhausted and disorganized after a battle. But this isn’t the time for the victor to pause. Any time lost after the battle is in the loser’s favor. He’ll get a nice rest and maybe some gruel or something. Then the victor has to go beat him all over again.
Clause constantly repeats this point throughout the book, but it’s worth hounding us about. Apparently he didn’t go far enough anyway, since I remember some Civil War generals who’d beat the enemy, then sit around and let him go.
So okay, not bad. But then I hit Book Five (“Military Forces”). Barney called the early chapters “somewhat dated.” I call them “thoroughly useless.”
Modern armies are huge, Clause writes breathlessly. Why Napolean had 200,000 men! And then he tells us in detail how to go into winter quarters.
But I’d rather read about marches, billets and horse fodder all day then deal with Book Six (“Defense”) again. Defense is the stronger form of waging war, Clause tells us, an idea that World War I generals took a little too much to heart.
Clause tells us how to defend fortresses, set up fortified positions and establish entrenched camps. We defend ourselves in the mountains, by the rivers, in the swamps, in the forests and along a cordon. Even Barney admits tiredly that in the last chapter, “Clausewitz is not at his inspired best.”
I myself skimmed much of Book Six, eager to get on to the more interesting problem of attack. Oh God, what a mistake that was. What I got is how to ATTACK a force on the river, attack an entrenched camp, attack a mountainous area, attack the enemy in swamps, forests and cordons. Barney was bored too: “This book is but the obverse of the preceding book,” he grumbled.
I liked the part about the “culminating point of victory,” which says the attacker can overshoot the point at which, if he stopped and assumed the defensive, he might still succeed. The trick is, of course, knowing when to quit.
I nearly quit myself halfway through Book Six, and again early in Book Seven. I was very discouraged, given to snapping at slow ATM machines and griping about long traffic lights. Perhaps this was a stupid idea. I’m a 21st-century housewife with a toddler to raise, not a Napoleanic general with cavalry forces to manage. Maybe I should acknowledge my culminating point and go watch “So You Think You Can Dance?”
But I slogged on, and was rewarded by Book Eight: “War Plans.”
The author of the “On War” reading guide, Bernard Brodie, was a cheery companion for the first three sections. But even Barney couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for Book Four. He called various chapters “rather less consequential” or “not particularly memorable.” I can think of some stronger language, like “fairly gruesome,” “droolingly dull” and “coma-inducing.”
I did like one chapter on the use of the battle, where Clause gets all indignant about silly folks who don’t like to fight. They get nervous when it’s time to roll the dice. “The human spirit recoils from the decision brought about by a single blow,” he says.
So governments and commanders sought out other means of avoiding a decisive battle, finding other ways to meet their goal or abandoning it altogether. All this, Clause says, turned a battle into a kind of evil, something that a properly managed war could avoid.
“Recent history has scattered such nonsense to the winds,” Clause snaps. Warriors must not fall into the same stupid thinking again.
“We are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed,” he goes on. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”
Ah, good old bloodthirsty Clause.
He makes another important point: that now victory is effective without pursuit. Troops on both sides are exhausted and disorganized after a battle. But this isn’t the time for the victor to pause. Any time lost after the battle is in the loser’s favor. He’ll get a nice rest and maybe some gruel or something. Then the victor has to go beat him all over again.
Clause constantly repeats this point throughout the book, but it’s worth hounding us about. Apparently he didn’t go far enough anyway, since I remember some Civil War generals who’d beat the enemy, then sit around and let him go.
So okay, not bad. But then I hit Book Five (“Military Forces”). Barney called the early chapters “somewhat dated.” I call them “thoroughly useless.”
Modern armies are huge, Clause writes breathlessly. Why Napolean had 200,000 men! And then he tells us in detail how to go into winter quarters.
But I’d rather read about marches, billets and horse fodder all day then deal with Book Six (“Defense”) again. Defense is the stronger form of waging war, Clause tells us, an idea that World War I generals took a little too much to heart.
Clause tells us how to defend fortresses, set up fortified positions and establish entrenched camps. We defend ourselves in the mountains, by the rivers, in the swamps, in the forests and along a cordon. Even Barney admits tiredly that in the last chapter, “Clausewitz is not at his inspired best.”
I myself skimmed much of Book Six, eager to get on to the more interesting problem of attack. Oh God, what a mistake that was. What I got is how to ATTACK a force on the river, attack an entrenched camp, attack a mountainous area, attack the enemy in swamps, forests and cordons. Barney was bored too: “This book is but the obverse of the preceding book,” he grumbled.
I liked the part about the “culminating point of victory,” which says the attacker can overshoot the point at which, if he stopped and assumed the defensive, he might still succeed. The trick is, of course, knowing when to quit.
I nearly quit myself halfway through Book Six, and again early in Book Seven. I was very discouraged, given to snapping at slow ATM machines and griping about long traffic lights. Perhaps this was a stupid idea. I’m a 21st-century housewife with a toddler to raise, not a Napoleanic general with cavalry forces to manage. Maybe I should acknowledge my culminating point and go watch “So You Think You Can Dance?”
But I slogged on, and was rewarded by Book Eight: “War Plans.”
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