Dec 30 2007
A World War II weekend.
Yesterday morning I spent a few relaxing hours drinking my coffee and reading “Alchemist of War: the life of Basil Liddell Hart” (A perfect Christmas gift I might add), and then loaded my copy of Operational Art of War III and invaded Russia (a Christmas gift to myself, but more on that later).
More mundane errands dragged me away, but it was certainly turning into the sort of Saturday morning I had hoped for after all the holiday rushing around.
Liddell-Hart? He always seemed a little too self-congradulating for my tastes. I felt he kind of stated an obvious solution very vaguely so that he seemed like a genius when anyboyd won, he claimed that they were really using his theory of the indirect approach. A theory that boiled down is “Attack where there are not heavily armed people from the other side” hardly vaults him into the company of Clausiwitz, IMHO. It’s sort of right up there with the old Soviet armoured warfare doctrine that states “The best terrain for armoured warfare is the terrain that does not have anti-tank weapons hidden in it”.
At least you’re reading about the stuff. If you get a chance, pop into your local college and see about doing some night courses in their history program. I have a similar taste for military history and certainly found the experience of doing some formal education on point to be really interesting.
Ah come on now Greg, every military historian I’ve ever read seems more than a little smug. They, after all, have the benefit of analyzing something well after the fact and each brings their own bias to the table.
I never lumped Liddell-Hart, Fuller, Guderian and company into the same catagory as Clauswitz. The former concerned themselves more with the strategic implications of tactics rather than grand strategy itself.
The first book I read by LH was “The Second World War” which was, among it’s contemporaries, an interesting read made more approachable by the author. While no Durschmeid in entertainment, the subject matter was much more human in its presentation.
This book I find interesting as it gives a detailed overview of the mans life, and his writings. More importantly it (so far, I’m only a 1/4 through it) shows the development of his writing over time, and the influences others had on it.
This I find rather interesting.
Night courses? I am sorely tempted, and rather envious of the steps you’ve taken. I’ve long agreed that my own reading suffers from self-direction and lacks the general view that a more formal approach should offer.
It still comes down to time, a commodity I seem to lack despite my efforts.
-sigh-
Oh, speaking as somebody who has substantively completed his degree in history(I have one course left to take, totally unrelated to my degree beyond fufilling the damn depth and breadth requirement, thus I will spend the semester staring off into space studying Astronomy as the most weenie lab science I can get away with), I will gladly confirm that as a rule, all historians, myself included, are smug. It’s in the application process, you have to demonstrate an ability to be talk like you have determined why everything is the way it is.
I dunno, Clausewitz gives me nosebleeds with his damn Prussian writing habits, but I just didn’t see L-H as being as impactive as Fuller or Guderian on the evolution into mobile warfare. Obviously, running loose in your enemy’s rear areas, with nice soft clerks and jerks to shoot at instead of your rather more difficult dug in combat arms types seems a touch obvious. Fuller and Guderian seemed to understand that you needed a method to create that path to the rear, which they gleefully settled on with tanks.
Stated another way, Fuller and Guderian’s methods would have worked regardless of L-H’s “indirect approach” or not, but without the idea of the massed armoured strike to get around those pesky dug in troops and into the rear, L-H’s idea seems incomplete. I haven’t really read him in-depth however, so I’ll gladly be corrected.
As for the formal coursework, you’re not missing much per se, you don’t really learn much more than you already likely know. The big benefit comes from learning how to do really good research and deliver effective arguments.
Speaking of which, I may have asked you this before, but did you get through that textbook on the “Social History of the Machine Gun”?
Crap… No, haven’t read “Social History of the Machine Gun” yet, but for good reason. Thanks for reminding me by the way.
-GRIN-
I had it on my desk and Jilly wanted to color in it, so it got hidden with “pending”stuff on top of the computer. Hidden it remained until I read your comment.
It’s now next in queue behind the LH book.
If Jilly does decide to colour in it, let me know. I’ll hand it into Prof Green and see if she gets a better mark than I did for my review on the same…