"American Military History is Wrong" Topic

"American military personnel study history as an essential component of their professional education. Military history provides the analogies by which they communicate, and the lens through which they view current military problems. Phrases such as "another Pearl Harbor" or "another Maginot Line" or "another Vietnam" convey common perceptions of the past and influence military professionals' common thinking about the present and future.

But what if the military history they study is wrong? What if the military history they study fosters a strategic culture that is inconsistent with their strategic reality?

Central to the study of American military history in the last three decades of the twentieth century was The American Way of War, a history of American military strategy and policy written by Professor Russell F. Weigley. He argued that the American way of war is based on a strategy of annihilation: the aim of the US armed forces in war is to destroy the enemy's capacity to continue the war, so that the enemy's will collapses or becomes irrelevant. This is the war fought by Grant and Sherman in the American Civil War, when they fought campaigns of attrition fueled by the industrial capacity and larger population of the North to destroy the capacity of the South to continue the war. World War II was fought by students of the American Civil War. Among them were Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Spaatz in Europe; MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance in the Pacific. Our study of military history has influenced us to believe that the role of the American military is to defeat the enemy's armed forces and destroy the enemy's economy, at which time its mission is accomplished and it becomes a supporting player in the strategic arena. In World War I, this was actually the case. After the armistice in November 1918, the US Army participated in the Allied Powers' occupation of Germany until the peace treaty was signed at Versailles in July 1919, and then most of the US soldiers came home to celebrate the victory (although even in this case the First Division remained part of the Allied Army of Occupation until July 1923)…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Hogwash. As a person with a B.A. in Military Science which includes military history, the reading list for military history by military personnel, mostly officers, is very extensive. They cover a wide range of author interpretation types. They are also much more extensive than academic courses of military history. I use the pronoun they since each military school and command college uses their own syllabus designed for the schools goals.

History is always "wrong" as each new generation of historians reinterrupt historical events by the standerds of their own times and seek to differentiate themselves from historians who came before them. My father was a historian and explained that histroy is never settled. That is one of the things that makes reading history exciting for me. You cannot accept anyones interpretation of history as set in stone.

The state of journalistic writing has become a freak show of information. Look at so much of the "click bait" headlines:

Everything you need to know about ___________
Everything you know about ___________ is wrong.
The hidden secrets of ____________
The 10 things you need to know about ____________
What they don't want you to know about ___________
Why __________ is not what you think it is

There's more.

Wolfhag

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I agree with Rudy, and my last position before retirement was as a Military Historian commanding a Military History Detachment. There is a LOT of effort to ensure that the military is not led by ignorant louts (like most Hollywood shows).