Leo Kessler, R.I.P.

I only found out today that Charles Whiting, a prolific writer of 'trashy' novels and mass-market military history, in spite of being a trained academic, had died in July, while I was in the United States. There's a good memory of him by Steve Newman.

Whiting was very much a product of his time. It's difficult to imagine today the amount of war books one could find in the 1970s, and every other boy I met in 1970s Britain seemed to be acquainted with some of them. You'll find the long list of his titles at Bear Alley, a blog. It's worth noting how many of them were published by Leo Cooper or one of the publishers associated with Anthony Cheetham, reminding us that once you get in with the right people, life is a lot easier.

Muerte del Negro Acacio

The Colombian press is reporting the death in action of a guerrilla commander of the communist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) named Tomás Medina Caracas, more familiarly known as 'El Negro Acacio'. (All FARC guerrilla leaders have these romantic noms de guerre, among them my personal favourite, El Tirofijo.) From the article (which is in Spanish) it appears that the site of his camp, the HQ for Frente 16, was subjected to a bombardment involving aircraft before soldiers moved in. This gives us some clue as to how the Colombian military is actually fighting the war on the ground, the kind of information ignored by reporters more interested in generalities. Also, notice the long list of Colombian security forces involved in the operation. I fear the Colombian forces have adopted the great tradition of inter-service rivalry found among their American counterparts.

War Costs

This article is actually about the police finding it more expensive to buy bullets nowadays. It cites the 1 billion used by the U.S. Army in Iraq. However, I was interested in the costs cited, as they give us some clue as to how to make a profit in a war, thus explaining why for arms manufacturers, war is something desirable, which is a dangerous situation when government appears to be corrupt, and willing to do anything for money.

According to the article, a box of .223 ammunition for AR-15s used to cost $75, but now has almost doubled to $140. Pistol rounds are up 15 percent from $130 to $150. I have no idea how many rounds are in a case, but readers with a better notion than me can do some sums to figure out what this might mean for profitability.

Another article, from a biased source, tells us that a well-known firm of mercenaries has acquired rights to private military bases and is buying aircraft. For the purposes of this blog, I'm more interested in parallels than principles, but it seems to me that the War in Iraq is generating a powerful lobby group that not only makes a lot of money out of putting an army to use, but is also in possession of a military force of its own that will no doubt be looking for employment. In 1776, King George's mercenaries, the Hessians, became a byword for tyranny.

Anniversary Season

Yesterday was my birthday. We're in the midst of anniversaries connected with the Second World War, including the invasion of Poland in 1939, the British declaration of war, and the signing of the treaty in Tokyo Harbour in 1945. However, I notice that today is the anniversary of the battle of Ain Jalut, fought between the Islamic military regime of Mameluke Egypt, and the invading Mongols. The battle is one of those 'high water marks' of history, marking the end of the Mongol 'threat' to the Islamic Middle East, and you can read about the wider campaign here.

However, it got me to thinking about how things look from a different historical perspective. Westerners like me are familiar with the treatment of the battle of Tours in 732 as the high water mark of the Moslems in Europe. Although, in fact, this honour may better be bestowed on the 1683 siege of Vienna. The current War in Iraq is simply part of a continuing struggle over the remains of the Ottoman Empire, dismembered by France and Britain in the Treaty of Sévres.

So if, indeed, we are at the high water mark of Western domination of the Middle East, have we had our "Ain Jalut moment"? Was it, in fact, the 1930s Arab Revolt in Palestine, during which the British mandate began to unravel? Or is our "Ain Jalut" still to come?

A victory for propaganda?

The news is that the controversial Bomber Command panel at the Canadian War Museum is to be changed after a long campaign against it by the Bomber Command Association. I had planned to return to the subject, but my lethargy and events have made my original plans moot.

Here's a quote from Cliff Chadderton, chairman of the National Council of Veterans' Associations, published in the Ottawa Citizen:

To see (the exhibit) cheapened by terrible errors, which cast our most heroic people in a most unflattering light ... it was just patently wrong.

Now, I'm not arguing about heroism. It took heroic people to fly bombers against the Germans. But to say that the exhibit was cheapened by errors is wrongheaded. The news report focused on one particular panel. Let's see how many errors it had:

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested.

Well, I think it remains contested, although perhaps now it is no longer bitter. I can assure people it was a lot more bitter in the middle 1980s, when I first encountered it. The last paragraph of this little summary for students concerning Air Marshall (sic) Harris, illustrates the continuing controversy.

Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations.

This, I think, is where the 'error' creeps in. The Bomber Command lobby prefers to regard all these targets as military ones, and to regard any effects on civilians as the tragic collateral of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, I quote from the official history itself quoting from a memo prepared by Air Marshal Arthur Harris for the Air Ministry: 'It is not possible to dogmatise on the degree of destruction necessary to cause the enemy to capitulate, but there can be little doubt that the necessary conditions would be brought about by the destruction of between 40 percent and 50 percent of the principal German towns.' Well, that sounds like destroying cities and crushing morale to me.

Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war.

The only 'error' I note in this passage is the vague term 'late in the war'. But here's an indisuputable fact. In the week ending 19 August 1944, there 899,091 railroad car loadings in the Reich, and that ending 23 December only 547,309. I don't know what they were before August 1944, but prior to March 1944, German rail transport was not a major target of Allied bombing. (Figures from John Ellis's excellent book Brute Force.)

Mr Chadderton has a track record of vigorously opposing anything that doesn't agree with his own interpretation of the historical record concerning the operations of Bomber Command. The Ottawa Citizen article indicates that a panel of historians did not find the panel 'in error'. When the pressure of private interest groups sets aside the consensus view of historians, it's difficult not to wonder if this is a victory for propaganda, and that truth is not only the first casualty in war, but a constant victim buried together with the dead.

Hollywood notices Iraq

A long article in The Guardian, a British newspaper that editorially positions itself on the liberal left, attempts to illustrate the thesis that Hollywood has been unable to tackle the War in Iraq until the 2006 Congressional elections gave a green light to release some nervously pessimistic films. The key passage appears over halfway through the article:

Since the onset of war in Iraq, many movies have fallen into a similar category. The Eastwood movies, Jarhead, the HBO prelude-to-Vietnam movie Path to War, Mel Gibson's Vietnam battlefield movie We Were Soldiers: these all wanted to be Iraq movies, but they didn't quite dare.

Ya think? I can't agree. I sense the wishful thinking of the politically powerless, a kind of projection on the film-makers of what the article's author, John Patterson, would like to believe.

Current conflicts have a way of leading to a reinterpretation of past ones, and I think that's what's going on in the movies listed. We Were Soldiers in particular is an attempt to retrieve the reputation of the U.S. Army from the mire of Vietnam, where the ugly mess of Apocalypse Now is the more common interpretation in the popular mind. Gibson's character is the model of the virtuous soldier. His politics are so deeply muted as to be almost imperceptible. His focus is on the technical requirements of fighting a battle, including applying a newfangled technology to battles that ultimately rely on the traditional tactical lessons that have been relevant since Marathon. The context of American intervention is irrelevant because the movie is about soldiers in battle, which is an existential subject. Combat is a moment when "why" is irrelevant. Only once the combat ends and the dead must be buried and remembered can we safely ask why; or else we join them in the earth.

War films released in time of war are a valid opportunity to reinterpret the past using the context of the present. This is not the same thing as wanting to be about the present. For your average U.S. army officer sent to Vietnam in 1965, I would guess that Gibson's portrayal accurately captures how they saw themselves approaching their new mission. It is not the portrait of a villain.

Fallen Timbers

Today is the 213th anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, part of a conflict between the United States and a confederacy of American Indians who lived in the Great Lakes region. My home town, Detroit, was still at that time occupied by the British, who exploited the opposition of the sovereign Indian peoples of the region, such as the Wyandot or the Shawnee, to accepting American control of what became known as The Old Northwest, but which in 1774 was part of Québec.

The conflict deserves to be better known than it is, for it was crucial to the future development of the United States’ Army. Consequently, there isn't much on the Web to direct you to, apart from Wikipedia. However, this little note from the Quartermaster Corps museum, highlights how military historians ignore logistical issues at their peril.

Geographer Marine

The partwork The Elite effectively became the official publishing house of Falklands' War British officers during 1985-6. One of the more obscure (at that time) who emerged at this time was Hugh McManners, a Royal Marine who’d written a book entitled Falklands Commando about his experience in the conflict. (The editorial staff on The Elite valued this book quite highly for conveying the experience of training and the Falklands weather and landscape.) McManners was from a more academic background than I would expect of British Marines, and he very kindly gave the editorial team three or four tickets to a lecture he was giving at the Royal Geographical Society one evening. (He read Geogaphy at Oxford.) In a good example for freelance writers of how everything is material, we sat through a description of the Falklands from a geographer's point of view - topography, flora, effects of human and animal activity on the natural habitat. It was a refreshing alternative to the tactical approach we'd been focusing on during the day.

McManners subsequently eluded obscurity, perhaps more than any other of the officer-writers, and became a defence correspondent for the Sunday Times, and wrote several other books, the latest of which is Forgotten Voices of the Falklands War.

Explaining My Hiatus

I've been away from my blog for quite a while during the summer. There were two causes, both related to my love for baseball. Mainly, I spent two weeks in the Midwest, combining a trip to the Society for American Baseball Research's annual meeting with a visit to my family in Michigan. You can see photographic evidence here (scroll down to the July 31 entry), taken during a game at new Busch Stadium in St Louis. I'm going to tie up a few loose ends over the next few days.

Publishing the Falklands

For a brief time in 1986, I worked on a partwork that at the time was notorious in the UK, The Elite. However, I had been working in the publisher's offices for about two years before that, including the time of its launch in 1985. At this stage, the first wave of books about the Falkands War had already been released. The non-official "official" history, by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, had been out for about two years. Martin Middlebrook's book had been released after The Elite. A number of other volumes had also come out.

The mastermind of The Elite was Ashley Brown, who still runs his own publishing company; together with Adrian Gilbert, who did a lot of the commissioning of the initial issues; and a nervous wreck named Jonathan Reed, who was in direct control of the project, and threw himself into it with tremendous enthusiasm. They assembled between them an excellent set of authors for all the articles, among them Nick Vaux, a Royal Marine colonel who was writing his own account of the campaign.

At the time, we had a picture researcher working for us who had some claim to being the most attractive woman in the whole company. So, having read in the Hastings and Jenkins work that in his younger days Nick Vaux had "enthusiasm for high living and female company", I can report that in the prime of his life he still did - he always brought her a rose and treated her in a charming way that she noticed and appreciated. It was also generally agreed that he had written the best account of all the battalion commanders who wrote for The Elite.

Terrorism Database

The Global Terrorism Database, funded by the American government, is kept by the University of Maryland. I'm adding it to my resources links on the right. Something like this would have been handy when I was in charge of an encyclopedia of terrorism, although maybe not as much as one might expect. Terrorism is a loaded word, and one must always bear in mind that terrorists believe they are combatants fighting a war. How, for example, should one treat the Colombian FARC, which conducts a guerrilla war? Were Native Americans fighting against settlers on the frontier during the American Revolution terrorists avant la lettre? A straightforward list of events isn't necessarily helpful, especially if it excludes things that could be characterized as terrorism. Is dropping bombs that miss a military target and hit civilians terrorism, especially if those civilians are supporters of the military effort of the regime they live under?

Gulf Attack!

If the Iranians had to attack American warships in the Gulf, they seem likely to go about it by swarming attacks using 20 or 30 small motor boats. The article references the damaging of the USS Samuel Roberts in 1987, which is also mentioned in this analysis from 1999, although not much detail is added. The damage to the Samuel Roberts reflected the neglect of such unglamorous work as mine clearance by the US Navy at a time when operations were largely directed toward the submarine threat posed by the Soviet navy. The incident resulted in Operation Praying Mantis, of which there are some photos and a chronology here. Interestingly to me, the USS Samuel Roberts turned up in an operation mounted in 2002 against Ecuadorian shipping travelling in Ecuadorian waters. The objective seems to have been to interdict arms shipments to Colombian guerrillas, and the matter is discussed in this article in Spanish.

World War II Victory Museum

Occasionally one hears about a museum one hadn't heard of before. This one is in Indiana. It appears to have a collection of vehicles, in addition to some general exhibits, and big expansion plans.

Silence is Activity

I've been busy writing an article for a magazine these past couple of weeks, linked to my theme on "Wilson's War", which is why it mysteriously ceased appearing on this site in mid flow. Normal service is now resuming.

San Carlos Water

Another fellow I met had been a serving officer at the time of the Falklands War. I never had to ask him about his experiences, because he volunteered information from time to time when he thought it relevant.

The first thing he used to talk about was the state of the facilities available to the Army after Mrs Thatcher came to power. He was scathing at the neglect and the poor quality of housing and other structures. His basic view was that the Army was treated with absolute contempt.

However, his real eye-opening experience was when the ship he and his men were aboard sailed into San Carlos Water. He was alarmed at the absence of proper air cover. During one of the Argentinian raids a bomb fell close by and he was knocked out, I'm not sure if it was by the concussion or whether the blast knocked him into something. He was, if I recall correctly, manning a GPMG vainly firing at the jet aircraft rushing by. He basically felt he and his men were sitting ducks.

After the war, he got out of the Army as soon as he could.

Here's a sailor's memory of the sinking of HMS Antelope.

Iquique

Today is the 128th anniversary of the naval battle of Iquique, part of the War of the Pacific between Chile and the allied states of Peru and Bolivia. The battle featured the ironclad Huáscar, on the Peruvian side, which engaged in a duel with the Chilean warship Esmeralda. You can watch an animated map of the battle here. Scroll down to the button labeled "Ver animación". The animation clearly shows the tactics adopted by the Huáscar in the battle at one point, when it took advantage of its turret.

War and Marriage

While we often remember the dead of war, it's much less common to organize a celebration of the life that may have come out of war. The Halifax Daily News reports on a War Bride Train leaving for Ottawa where the Canadian War Museum is holding an exhibition to commemorate War Brides. My mother was a war bride, so it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for Herr Hitler, I wouldn't be here. Maybe I should write a book about war brides and their children. How many of the latter, like me, voluntarily came to the land of the mother's and settled down?

The Loss of HMS Sheffield, 1982

I once met a fellow in Portsmouth. We had separately intended to visit the same club meeting, only they had arranged to meet in a member's house that day. We walked together to a lovely house near the dockyard. Unfortunately for him, the club member he wanted to meet wasn't around, so while I stayed he went home. Six years later (or so), he turned up in Slough, being good friends with an acquaintance of mine. The reason he was in Portsmouth in 1976, was that he was in the Royal Navy, while I was staying with my grandparents in Fareham. The reason he was in Slough in late 1982 was that he'd left the Navy about a year earlier, having served on a ship I had visited during Navy Days in 1976 - HMS Sheffield.

Some twenty-five years later (we had met frequently over the period so by now were well acquainted) I asked him about his service in the Royal Navy. He explained to me how, as a member of the mess staff, his role in combat was to control fires and to take casualties to the sick bay. At this point, he began an unprompted reminiscence about the day HMS Sheffield was hit by the Argentinian Exocet missile. It was quite a shock for him and, characteristically for him, he didn't go to work but to the pub instead. At some later point he found a casualty list and went through checking for the names of those he had served with. Had he still been aboard, he might have been among their number. I think he was still bothered, though, that he hadn't been there to help his shipmates at their time of need.

Leftovers

When I first came to Britain, as a student, in 1978, the scars of the Second World War were still in plain view. "Bombsites" were the playgrounds of inner-city youth. Shelters still stood in people's back yards. Then, when I moved here in the mid 1980s, you'd hear every other year or so about traffic problems caused by the discovery of an unexploded bomb. I think the last one in London was in the mid 1990s. Occasionally, a note would crop up in the newspaper about a farmer uncovering some weapon of war on the Continent. However, it's worth remembering that there are other places to find relics of the war.

Jeanne d'Orléans

Today is the anniversary of Joan of Arc raising of the siege or Orléans, a key military event that has been overshadowed to some extent by subsequent accomplishments. There's an interesting summary of the context and events of the entire siege here.

Falklands Memories - Introduction

I was going to write a short note about the loss of HMS Sheffield on the 25th anniversary, but the more I poked and prodded with the text, the more I realized that it wouldn't do the subject of the Falklands justice. This little war of 1982 was the subject of a page-long review article in The Guardian this weekend. Of the four books reviewed, I have encountered three of the authors in my time in publishing. I've also met a couple of other people with links to the conflict, one as a direct participant, the other someone who had just left the service when the war came.

I wanted to call this post "The Comic Book War", but I thought it would be misunderstood. No war is a comical affair. My point was that the war played a role on the Home Front equivalent to those comic books such as the Commando series. The "Argies" were the bad guys, although perceived more like Second World War Italians than Nazis. We tuned into the TV each night to see retired officers discuss various options over a sand table, with a man named Snow. Naturally, since civilians tend to overlook logistics, and retired offices play their roles in disinformation campaigns, most of the speculations were very wrong-headed.

But what stands out most for me about the Falklands War was that it was the only truly popular war I've ever experienced in my lifetime. People of a certain age who had been through the Second World War, those who at the time of the Falklands were just under 60, couldn't see the point of the conflict. Everybody else in Britain seemed to determined to see this thing through, even welcomed it. Compare that with the Vietnam War, which divided my school and my family; the Gulf War of 1991, which I demonstrated against; the Yugoslav War of 1999, which most people I met thought a waste of money and effort; and the ongoing Iraq War, before which my wife and children took part in the March of a Million through London, and you'll see what I mean.

However, having said that, I must recount my favorite story related to the Falklands. Just after word of the Argentine invasion reached us, the man in whose house I was living came back from work. He had been expressing his unhappiness with the potential loss of many young men's lives for some scraps of turf in the South Atlantic with work colleagues. One of them, a youngish office junior who frequently featured in his stories from work, protested: "I don't see what business they have up there anyway." Puzzled, because he would have expected the circumlocution to be "down there", not up, the much older man probed further into this young lady's notions. It quickly became apparent that this young lady thought the Falklands Islands were somewhere in the vicinity of the Faeroes.

Antony Preston

I discovered that Antony Preston has been provided with a Wikipedia entry. I first saw Antony Preston in the summer of 2002, when he came into the offices of Conway Maritime Press, then part of Chrysalis Books. Eventually, I had the opportunity of editing his last book, The World's Worst Warships, which was published, very late, in 2002. The picture research was done mostly by me, although Antony found a few of the pictures in the old Conway Maritime archive, and we went through all the images before the book went into design. I also introduced a howling error in the book, which I never had the chance to apologize to Antony for making. It was a very stressful time, as the designer seemed more interested in ordering new Vans than ensuring the typography was correct and all the necessary retouching done to the photographs, and I was standing in for the entire editorial department who had gone off on vacation. Antony himself was at this time in hospital, where I visited him a couple of times. He was so bored he was grateful to accept the proofs to distract him from the tedium of a hospital stay. He's the sort of niche author whom I think deserves a Wikipedia entry. But they really ought to spell his Christian name correctly!

Duxford's DH-9

The Imperial War Museum at Duxford has unveiled a restored DeHaviland DH-9 according to the local press. What I found of especial interest was that, according to the article, the museum had to sell an Me-163 Komet in order to finance the purchase and restoration of the DH-9.

Chronicle of War

I received my author's copies yesterday. I think it looks good. I've also picked up a copy of Harry Pearson's account of growing up (and being grown up) with stories of war not just in the background but enveloping one like a mist rolling in from the sea.

More Caption Controversy

The Canadian War Museum's exhibition on the work of the RCAF in Bomber Command has come in for some complaints from veterans. Unfortunately, the article doesn't quote the offending text at any length, so one must be more circumspect in taking sides. However, in this case my sympathies lie with the museum. The grim fact of strategic bombing operations during the war is that they killed many German civilians who for one reason or another found themselves in the vicinity of legitimate war targets. (Although at some point I believe Bomber Command regarding housing as a legitimate war target.) In the same way that chemical and biological weapons have been effectively criminalized by international institutions, I personally feel that the killing of civilians by military action should also be viewed with a jaundiced eye, no matter what military (or naval, in the case of the Lusitania) logic can be seen to justify their deaths. In that sense, I'd argue that the burden of proof rests on the Bomber Command personnel, and not the museum.

Yad Vashem Caption Controversy

In the end, it seems Monsignor Antonio Franco, the Papal ambassador to Israel, will attend a memorial service for the victims of the Nazi murder of Jews at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. You can find the text of the caption quoted in this article.

Having written plenty of captions and short texts about historical subjects ranging from Scottish medieval history to the 9/11 Terror Attacks, I feel confident that I know how difficult it is to reduce a complex subject to a handful or two of words. In this case, my sympathies lie with the Vatican. The caption about Pius XII seems to use the available information to place the former pope in the worst possible light. While I wouldn't call the information in question 34 here as kind to Pius XII, it does place his conduct in the context of the Catholic Church and other Christian religions institutions as a whole. Pius XII could indeed have done more, but I'm sure that's true of plenty of other people. This caption seems either calculated to offend or a ploy in order to achieve greater access to the Vatican archives. Either way, it's not good history.

Call for Photographs

Harper Collins in New Zealand plan to publish a book of First World War photographs intended to be definitive picture history of New Zealand involvement in the war. All the Dominions began establishing a real national identity during the Boer War and the First World War, and they are fortunate that this occurred in the photographic era. They were even luckier that cameras had become as portable as rifles! I'm hoping the publishers get a good response, and that we get some fascinating, previously unknown images.

Rocket Science

For those traveling to Germany for a vacation, and willing to go off the tourists' beaten track, there's an opportunity to learn more about the Second World War V-weapons program on the island of Usedom at the Historical Technical Information Center there. The Center is opening a Memorial Landscape this summer that allows visitors to see the sites used for testing.

Broken Arrow

One of the things that I noted during my hiatus was this gloomy perspective on the future of the Army. It's another piece of evidence in the case against the Bush administration for trying to fight a major overseas war on the cheap. At the end of the day, all the talk about supporting our fighting men and women overseas is useless unless it is backed up by the necessary sacrifices on the home front. If average Americans don't want to make those sacrifices, then there is no choice but to reduce engagements abroad.

Missing in Action

Well, a variety of factors have kept me from blogging for the past month. I'm hoping that regular posts will resume more or less as of now. For the moment, I'd like to note that this book has received a big boost in sales owing to this film. Which is a shame because I think this book covers the topic better. However, if you like Ernle Bradford, I'd recommend this book, which I found entertaining many years ago in the 1970s.

Rescue Ship

I found a new blog, duly added to my roll, and an interesting note about the future of HMCS Sackville, which people have been able to visit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but maybe not for much longer.

Edited 10/iv/07
I messed up the link originally, but it should work now.

What Kind of War

An interesting piece of news analysis reports on the new American strategy in Iraq, taking troops out of the secure bases on the outskirts of towns and redistributing them in 'penny packets' within urban areas. I find it curious they bring up the French experience in Algeria, which while seemingly succesful, proved a public-relations disaster on so many levels.

Unfortunately for the Army, I think the War in Iraq is rapidly turning into a conflict where the operational approach is increasingly irrelevant to victory. The original mission was clear-cut: take out Saddam Hussein. Now it's muddled. Construct a regime that will not be influenced by those hostile to America's interests in the Middle East (Iranian-backed Shias), nor can be tainted by the anti-democratic regimes of Iraq's past (minority Sunni rule), but will not threaten our close allies (hated Israel and the fossilized Saudi monarchy), and will keep the oil flowing (avoid an all-out civil war).

Mosier vs the British, Round One

Yesterday, I wrote a little about John Mosier's controversial The Myth of the Great War. I decided to make a full reconnaissance into the book, and read the chapter on the Battle of the Marne straight through, rather than rely on the sampling of shorter sections I'd done previously.

On the basis of this chapter, I'd have to say the fury with which Britons have greeted Mosier's work is an overreaction. For English-language readers, the role played by the French in the war has always been understated. No matter how much the British suffered, the French had it worse. The lead review on the Amazon page linked above is particularly egregious in wanting to focus, yet again, on Neuve Chappelle and Vimy Ridge, where the British fought, in spite of the considerable coverage this attack has received compared with the French attack in the Vosges.

That said, the end of the Battle of the Marne chapter really seems to verge on German propaganda. The Germans, short of ammunition, with extended supply lines, and not enough troops to secure them, retreat, but Mosier appears to want us to regard this as "an advance to the rear". The chapter itself discusses battles around Verdun where stout French resistance halts the Germans, and it is subsequent to this that German officers decide to withdraw to a more easily defended position. While the Marne campaign may not have been the "miracle of Marne" of Allied belief, I see no reason to excuse the Germans from having experienced a major setback.

However, the cry of rage emanating from the British Corps of Historians seems unwarranted. That Mosier minimizes the role of the BEF, while promoting a lesser-known Franco-German combat far from Paris, is a matter I would have thought worthy of further discussion, not wholesale censure. Round One to Mosier, I think, on points.

"The Myth of the Great War" - the Lusitania

This was the title of a 2001 book by John Mosier, not a military historian but a professor of English with an interest in military history. I remember when it came out as being somewhat controversial among British reviewers. (It goes completely against the 'party line' among British historians concerning the BEF.) It did garner a Pulitzer Prize nomination, not that that's necessarily a recommendation, given the manipulation of American publishing prizes.

You'll find a very negative discussion of it by some Brits here. Unfortunately, these comments are long on indignation and short on specific criticism, which I always find is an almost certain indication that the book makes a valued contribution to our understanding of the subject! However, the lead review at the Amazon link quoted above makes some pointed criticisms that should lead one to approach Mosier's book with caution.

Anyway, I'm not in a position to offer a criticism at the moment, never having read it. I'm here to offer a quote that in the circumstances of my "Wilson's War" obsession I found worth including here:

The extent of the aid given before America's formal declaration of war has traditionally been passed over in silence. Neither Allied apologists nor American defenders of President Wilson have been anxious to draw attention to the massive level of American support...Bryan, Wilson's first secretary of state, genuinely wanted America to remain neutral, but he was undercut at every turn, and resigned in protest over the handling of the Lusitania sinking...when a senator pointed out - correctly - that the Lusitania was carrying armaments to Great Britain, he was saved from impeachment only by the testimony of the Harbor Master of the Port of New York. [pp 304-305]

Binh Gia

I'm editing a book about the Vietnam War at the moment, and while checking some facts over the Internet I came across this account about the Battle of Binh Gia in December 1964. There's also some interesting contemporary anaylsis toward the end of this description of airmobile operational doctrinal developments.

Between the Lines

I find the concept of parapolitics "a system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished" useful for understanding something like this. Study this article carefully, and here is what you see:

a) The source of the rumour is British.
b) The British prime minister has expressed a view that coincides with the view of the potential resignees.
c) A Pentagon source appears to have been selectively quoted; his or her views could easily be contrary to the rumour.

One could easily conclude that this is a British signal to the Bush administration to lay off Iran, that the British cannot be counted on to support an attack. It could even be a call by the British to anyone in the American military with misgivings about an attack on Iran to look to them for help.

Articles like this always make me suspicious of neatly packaged historical descriptions. Real life is a lot more messy.

Loose Change 1917 or Loose Change 1941?

Silence is golden, unless you're a blogger. I've been diverted by a variety of other matters the past week, mostly preparing for the sale of my house and getting some major dental work.

The BBC showed a documentary about conspiracy theories concerning the events of 9/11, 2001, last night. The main target was the now famous Loose Change video. Unfortunately, I fell asleep part-way through, but I saw enough to realize the BBC film made cogent points in support of the gang of terrorists “conspiracy” as opposed to the U.S. government “conspiracy”. There’s one caveat to this, however, which is that the programme suggested strongly the likelihood of a cover-up of the pre-strike intelligence analysis.

It isn’t the first time that a surprise attack on America has been the subject of a conspiracy theory. Howard Baker’s famous Watergate interrogation “What did the president know and when did he know it?” would have been very appropriate for Michigan senator Homer Ferguson.

In fact, the whole question of the validity of conspiracy theories is of far greater import to the general reader, as opposed to the “professional historian”. The latter has no choice but to discount such theories, since there is rarely any evidence in the form of letters or minutes or notes to sustain the idea that, for example, President Roosevelt knew the Japanese were coming, or that Robert Lansing worked for American entry into the war against the Kaiser. There wouldn’t be, would there, ripostes the person more familiar with chit-chat in the corridors of power. I’ll return to this matter in the light of the work of a totally discredited “popular historian”, the notorious David Irving, as I start a new strand on this blog.

Three generations

'The current cost of occupation in Iraq is $12 billion dollars per month, and we may need to remain in the region for the next 25-50 years.'

This comment comes from this article, and probably as a bald statement of fact would seem shocking to many Americans. 50 years? A war we intend to bequeathe to our great-grandchildren?

What's 2007-1945? 62 years.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 9

On the surface, the anti-war movement in the United States in 1914 represented a key part of the coalition that had helped to elect Woodrow Wilson as president two years earlier. However, looking at this group of people in more detail, reveals a more inchoate mass for which the outbreak of the Great War represented a challenge instead of an opportunity.

There were three strands in the movement:

(a) Morally-minded businessmen and lawyers. These people regarded capitalism and liberalism (in the old-fashioned sense of anti-clerical and anti-monarchical) as social systems that would undermine the national boundaries and dynastic rivalries that provoked wars. In a sense, they were the Mirrors of Marxism, regarding the business class as having no nationality, and the progenitors of today's globalization as the End of History. They also supplied the leadership of the anti-war movement in 1914.

(b) Radical social reformers. For them, war was representative of immoral businessmen and social systems. A program of general social reform and some kind of transnational or supranational political authority would remove the need for war as a means of settling social disputes. However, their focus was on reform, not revolution. They found common cause with (a) on many occasions, because they welcomed any steps taken to eradicate war, even little ones.

(c) Revolutionary Socialists. For them, war was inherently a part of a social system that was corrupt and doomed. A simple refusal to fight, a revolutionary act on the part of the masses, would not only halt war, but quite possibly bring the whole corrupt edifice of capitalism crashing down. They had some common ground with (b).

In the event, between the outbreak of war and the resignation of William Jennings Bryan in June 1915, Group (a) were largely conspicuous by their absence in offering any kind of leadership to the anti-war movement, perhaps content with Wilson's management of American diplomacy, which did seem to offer a pragmatic implementation of their views. Group (b) made a few grand gestures, such as the women's Peace Parade down New York's Fifth Avenue on 29 August 1914, and a meeting at Henry Street Settlement House in September that was to have major long-term significance. However, they at first yielded leadership to group (a), in the mistaken anticipation that they would use the war to promote ideas for a kind of World Government that had been current for some years prior to August 1914. Group (c), meanwhile, focused on pressing labor issues that were also going to have important repercussions on the anti-war movement.

By pulling in different directions, the anti-war movement allowed initiative to pass to those who supported some level of involvement in the war, whether in laying the groundwork for eventual American entry, or simply by seizing sound business opportunities that steadily increased the American stake in an Allied victory. After Bryan's resignation as Secretary of State, however, matters began to take a different turn.

Downsize That

Listening to the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearings on the FY2008 budget, the DDG 1000 came up again, as Senator Susan Collins (R, Me) tossed a few batting practice pitches to General Pace over the long-term savings that the smaller crew size will permit. The Department of Defense will save money on housing families, pensions, and post-service benefits that will make the price tag seem much smaller. The commodification of military and naval service would come as no surprise to Marxists.

Guns and Buttered Guns

Here is an excellent article about some of the more expensive weapons for which money is requested in the Bush Administration's FY2007 budget. The issue of cheaper weapons versus expensive ones rears its head at specific stages in the American procurement process. I liked the story of how the DDG 1000 started life as a proposal for a "low-cost destroyer", and then gradually had more and more tasks added to its capabilities. It begs so many questions. Was it a "trojan-horse" project, intentionally priced low and intended to be eventually a big ticket item? Or was it the brainchild of those naval officers who prefer a "mosquito fleet" (a term originating in the Jefferson Administration, as mentioned here), only to see their project taken over by "blue-water" navy enthusiasts?

Looking forward to possible threats is one of the jobs civilians demand of their military and naval advisors. It's a fraught business, and doesn't always lead to good public policy. I am reminded of the British planners who after 1918 decided that the most likely opponent for the Royal Air Force was going to be France! They didn't have to omit the fact that the probability of that was likely to be small.

Casey at the bar

I spent three hours today listening to part of the confirmation hearings on the appointment of General George Casey before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. I was a little surprised on how the questions focused so much on the planned reinforcement of the American troops in Iraq as a policy, as opposed to the situation in Iraq in relation to the wider role of the U.S. Army.

The only senators to address this issue in detail while I listened were Hilary Clinton (which surprised me) and Jim Inhofe. They did not quite have the same angle on this problem, but their comments stood out in thinking about Casey's future wider responsibilities, as opposed to his past narrower ones. Evan Bayh brought up the question of how willing Casey would be to challenge his civilian bosses if he thought they were wrong. Casey's answer did not suggest that he would see such a matter as a cause of resignation, but rather that he would return again and again to seek to adjust policy to suit his point of view.

I came away with two key thoughts about how the U.S. military sees Iraq over the coming year. Casey emphasized time and again that the capability of the Iraqis to take the lead in bringing order to the troubled parts of the country was crucial to the success of the American mission. This is Vietnamization all over again, although I suspect the prospects for success are better in Iraq than they were in Vietnam. The other key thought is that the Iraqi army is very much a mixed bag. An exchange with Bill Nelson brought out a figure of about 24,000 Iraqi troops being actually reliable, fully equipped and deployed in a significant war zone, in Baghdad. This is out of an army of 325,000.

What's Up in Iran

I don't particular like to speculate about strategy, but the steady drumbeat of news stories about the Bush Administration's intentions toward Iran has gripped the world of war analysis, so I thought I'd draw a couple of threads together. A U.S. Air Force study suggests that civil war is inevitable in Iraq, and the Air Force has a role to play in reconnoitring or even interdicting possible supplies from Iran to their Shia friends in Iraq.

However, we've been aware for some time of the movement of US aircraft carriers in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. It could be that the administration's intention is to have plenty of forces on hand in case their efforts along the Iran-Iraq border lead to an incident requiring substantial retaliation. Of course, now one is in Gulf of Tonkin Incident territory.

For the Love of It

Some bloggers associated with the American Civil War, such as J. David Petruzzi and Brooks Simpson, have recently posted about some division between professional and amateur historians.

I have actually spent most of my working life not with academically respectable publishers, but those who produce "coffee table" books. When I worked at another place, I found myself beside a PhD candidate who had the worst possible opinion of any writer who signed a contract for a "coffee table" book (although he was happy to do them himself, under a different name). Far from wanting to appease this snob, he only made me more determined to bring the good qualities of book editing I learned with the mass market publisher into his snooty world. It's not easy producing a book for the Masses.

I'd go so far as to say that if one wants to spend time debating amateur versus professional, it's not just the historian's craft that needs to be categorized, but also the writer's. It's easily possible for a professional historian to be an amateur writer, the sort of person better off writing for the plaudits of their peers and not for real readers.

Hat tip to Civil War Memory.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 8

The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 gave birth to a synthesis conceived in policy choices made by key players in the Woodrow Wilson Administration during the preceding nine months. This synthesis determined that the United States would eventually enter the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia - unless Germany could somehow develop the sort of diplomatic package that would entice the Allied powers to a negotiating table.

In the wake of the sinking, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan issued the first Lusitania note on May 13, 1915. This focused on the immoral character of an attack without warning on a passenger liner. A second note, issued on June 11, reiterated, more strongly, the administration's view that the sinking had an immoral quality and in so posing a threat to American lives represented a provocation Wilson would not ignore. This anti-German tone adopted by this note provoked the resignation of Bryan, who believed that the American government's national interest was better served by a more even-handed response. American citizens sailing on Allied vessels into a designated war zone were taking on a certain amount of risk that the American government could not offer protection against. For Bryan, the problem was not the manner of making war, as emphasized by Wilson's notes, but the war itself.

To replace Bryan, Wilson appointed the State Department counselor, Robert Lansing. Lansing, in his memoirs published in 1935, clearly stated that he believed the American interest had more in common with Britain than with "German absolutism". Much of his activity prior to his promotion had been to protest violations of neutral rights by both sides, but to stretch out the negotiation of these points with Britain as long as possible in order to gain time for the rest of America to come round to his view.

A third note, issued on July 21, described the sinking of a liner without warning as a "deliberately unfriendly" act. Although the sinking of the liner Arabic in which three Americans died followed on August 19, Wilson withdrew from making further public protest, although his private comments led the Germans to abandon the sinking of liners without warning.

However, reviewing earlier parts of this series, in particular part 5, we see here how the American Way of War works. The initial response focuses on a general statement of American interests. However, the course of subsequent responses will be determined by lower-level functionaries in the Administration who, by being less visible to the general public, can pursue their private agendas more energetically than they might be able to in higher positions. The president retains a degree of control over the overall direction, but the policy's implementation owes more to the men (and nowadays women) he has appointed. When the crisis erupts, what has gone before will influence what comes after. The losers in the debate over American policy drop out of the picture, and the new synthesis subsequently adapts itself to future situations, but without overturning the broad policy position that has been established.

In this specific case, Wilson tried to balance neutrality with American interests, as was demanded by his political situation, while Lansing pursued a more biased strategy. "German absolutism" is perhaps best seen as a code reflecting his negative characterization of a system of economic organization in which the state played a larger role than Americans were necessarily comfortable with, at least superficially. British liberal capitalism had much more in common with America's business structures. To adopt a pseudo-marxist phrasing of the situation, Lansing acted as the agent of American capital, which preferred to see the victory of its British relative than its German rival.

Bryan would move into the anti-war movement, and it is to this oft-forgotten collection of strange bedfellows that I will next turn.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 7

Leon C. Thrasher probably never would have acquired historical fame had he not booked passage aboard the steamer Falaba in early 1915. The ship was torpedoed on 28 March, and he died, the first American victim of German unrestricted submarine warfare.

The event stimulated a great debate between State Department counsellor Robert Lansing and the Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Lansing followed the view that Germany had violated traditional methods of warfare resulting in the avoidable death of an innocent neutral, while Bryan argued that Thrasher had been negligent in choosing a British vessel sailing to a designated war zone where it was at risk of being attacked and sunk. Wilson took his time in deciding between these two views of the incident, in part because Colonel Edward House, his personal envoy, was in Europe seeking to attract the warring nations to the idea of a mediated peace.

While President Woodrow Wilson pondered his response, the Germans made two further attacks that challenged neutral rights in the war zone. An American freighter, the Cushing, was attacked by a German aircraft on April 29, while on 1 May the tanker Gulflight was torpedoed by the U-30. At the following cabinet meeting, on 4 May, Bryan found the mood of the cabinet was for a protest. Wilson stated: "It may be that there is no way to meet a situation like this except by war. It is important that we should show how sincere is our belief that there are other ways to settle questions like this." The tension in the Democratic party and the Progressive movement could not be made any more clear. To threaten war was the traditional response, but the Democrats had hoped to avoid "bad" European traditions in the creation of new, "good" American ones. However, there was no guarantee that the rest of the world would go along.

The sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915 was the turning point for American diplomacy in the war, although it was not apparent in the days immediately afterwards. That the Lusitania was carrying ammunition, a legitimate target as contraband of war, is not disputed. However, sinking a passenger liner without warning, which is what U-20 did, was at the time an action that was open to question as to its legitimacy. Therefore the Wilson administration's response was bound to be stern.

[NB - This strand has become longer and longer as I study more about it, and it might be argued I have lost my way somewhat. However, I think the extensive background will help when I come to the anti-war movement.]

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 6

The crisis for the Woodrow Wilson administration came in February 1915, when the Germans declared a war zone around the British Isles in order to prosecute an unrestricted submarine blockade. The Germans warned that the British use of neutral flags to disguise their merchant ships placed all shipping in the vicinity in peril. The British had imposed a blockade on Germany at the war's outbreak, and the war zone was an attempt by the Germans to affect British imports similarly.

The problem for the Germans lay in the limitations of the submarine, their only feasible choice of a weapon to impose a blockade. Their fleet, while large, was outnumbered by the British and unlikely to win a battle between the two. The recent defeat on 24 January 1915 of a small German squadron by a slightly superior British one at the battle of Dogger Bank seemed to demonstrate the proof of this situation. The submarine, however, could evade superior British surface forces using its ability to travel submerged. This advantage came at a cost. Submarines were small, slower than many small surface ships such as cruisers and destroyers, and unarmoured. Nor did they carry much heavy weaponry, at best a single gun. Their weapon was the torpedo.

Under the rules of naval warfare, ships en route to a blockaded country could be stopped by warships and searched. If carrying "contraband", they could be seized or sunk. However, merchant ships were allowed to be armed, although the British did not have enough guns to arm all that many. So there was some risk for a submarine trying to stop a merchant ship. The captain had to decide the likelihood of it carrying a large enough gun manned by an efficient crew that could sink his vessel. Furthermore, in November 1914, the British had begun employing Q-ships, merchant vessels turned into warships specifically intended to decoy German submarines. As of February 1915, the Q-ships hadn't actually sunk a submarine, but the threat was there.

In these circumstances, the German declaration made some practical sense. The British had already made their own adjustments to the London Declaration of 1909, an adjustment the Wilson administration had accepted. Why should they not also agree to a German adjustment of the rules governing stopping merchant ships? The American merchant fleet did not play a substantial role in American commerce, as only 10 percent of American trade was carried in American vessels. This would not stop Woodrow Wilson from allowing the German declaration to determine the broad direction of American foreign policy in response to the war.

Battle of Windsor

I grew up in Detroit, and it is often forgotten by non-Canadians that this is a border city. Yesterday, I discovered (or possibly rediscovered) that there had been a Battle of Windsor, just south of Detroit in Canada, in 1838. It was part of the Patriot War, a conflict that attempted to blow at the embers of Canadian republicanism after the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. The most complete account of the Battle of Windsor that I have found on the Web is in this biographical article on the Canadien Francis Baby.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 5

The administration of President Woodrow Wilson immediately faced important questions about American interests in the months following the outbreak of the major European war in August 1914. The United States was already a significant economic power in global terms, although it owed more money to foreign creditors than it was owed, and largely was a big economic power because of its sizable domestic market - foreign trade, while significant, played a much lesser role in the Gross National Product than in Britain, for example. However, the American economy was in recession, and the business opportunities offered by the war tempted American manufacturers and exporters. One of the most seriously affected regions of the country was the South, a key element in the coalition that elected Wilson in 1912, and of the Democratic party at this time generally. Unable to export their cotton to Europe, farmers faced ruin.

For William Jennings Bryan, the secretary of state, the sinews of modern war were provided by finance. Cut off the supply of money to belligerents, and the war might stop. But while the U.S. government was willing to cut off the public finance of loans or credits to European states, the free enterprise ideology that was one of the Gospels of Americanism at this time (and remains so) would not allow the government to halt initiatives by private financial institutions. Although Bryan exhorted American banks to refuse to lend to the warring nations, some saw a useful opportunity and took it. By October 1914, the policy of exhortation had been set aside by Wilson and the Counselor at the State Department, the Anglophile Robert Lansing, one of America's leading experts in international law.

A month after the outbreak of war, and a month before the abandonment of the exhortation policy, the Wilson administration chose not to impose an arms embargo, allowing American manufacturers to sell weapons to anyone who could afford to buy them and ship them across the Atlantic. Given that the British had imposed a fairly tight blockade on Germany, this meant that only the French and British were able to take advantage of the American decision.

The British blockade of Germany created yet another problem for Bryan and the administration, in that they followed, but not quite to the letter, an agreement concerning shipping in time of war. The British amended the definition of contraband that could be seized to suit themselves, expanding it slightly. Wilson, under Lansing's influence, agreed to go along with the British interpretation, in spite of the existence of an internationally recognized agreement that the British had helped negotiate, although one that had not been ratified by the British government. One major reason for this was the relatively small size of the American merchant fleet. American shipping was unlikely to be affected significantly by the British interpretation.

Finally, at the outbreak of war, the British began arming their merchant ships. Under international agreements, warships were not allowed to remain in a neutral port for more than 24 hours. But the British insisted that these armed vessels were not warships, because they were only armed for self-defence, and would be hopelessly outclassed by any but the weakest naval vessel. In practical terms, the Germans did not have the naval force on the high seas to make the matter significant. A few cruisers were based in the Pacific, and another in German East Africa. At this stage, British ships ruled the waves, especially the Atlantic between Europe and America. Lansing again pointed out the practical effect of the British policy, and set aside German insistence on the principle.

In each case here, the American Way of War, at least in the diplomatic dimension, is shown. American public policy is traditionally built out of practical responses to immediate problems, tending to favour the dominant interest group on the issue, rather than implementing an idealistic philosophy. Bryan represented a genuine American enthusiasm, at this time another of the Gospels of Americanism, for pacifist ideals. However, a search for practical responses to problems set aside the ideals. The Wilson administration could have imposed an arms and loans ban on the belligerents, insisted on the sanctity of international agreements, and required that the rules of war be implemented to the letter. They did not, and each step taken antagonized one side in the European conflict. When the next major crisis came, the Germans were hardly surprised by the American response, but the consequences fatally undermined the strong anti-war movement in the United States.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 4

Woodrow Wilson appointed as his secretary of state a three-time presidential loser, William Jennings Bryan (Illinois College, '81), defeated in the campaigns of 1896, 1900 and 1908. Bryan, in spite of this record, was a major power in the Democratic party, and his endorsement of Wilson in the 1912 election would have done much to help Wilson gain support of Bryan's constituency - populist, moralist, anti-imperialist, suspicious of the Eastern Establishment. However, another member of the State department under Wilson was its Counsellor, Robert Lansing (Amherst College '86), who was appointed in April 1914, following the resignation of his predecessor. Lansing was an acknowledged expert in international law, while Bryan offered passionate leadership in support of pacifist causes such as the use of arbitration to resolve international disputes instead of war.

Complicating this picture was Wilson's close associate, Colonel Edward House (Cornell, did not graduate). House held no official position, but was an important member of Wilson's administration nonetheless. He was an intimate of the president, especially after the death of Wilson's first wife on 6 August 1914, just days after the outbreak of the First World War. Wilson valued House's opinion as an unbiased perspective, unlike that of his rival Bryan. House had been to Europe in the spring, to sound out the possibility of some kind of agreement over naval strength between Germany and Britain. House had played a part in securing Lansing's appointment to the State Department, and represented the more conservative wing of the Democrats, while Bryan was known as the standard-bearer of the radical faction.

The interplay between these four men played an important role in developing the American response to the war in Europe. As the July Crisis of 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, developed, Wilson was coping with the grief consequent on the death of his beloved Ellen, who suffered from Bright's disease. Bryan was more concerned with cutting the kind of public figure he had done all his life, and also was aware of Wilson's view that the presidency ought to be the focus of international initiatives, such as Wilson's offer on 4 August to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Accepting Wilson's attitude freed Bryan to pursue his own agenda from a pulpit at the pinnacle of American politics.

Military Capitalists

According to American officials, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has gone into business for itself. Nor would the Iranians be the largest military force to start a new front in the field of commerce. Definitely a case of life imitating art.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 3

To resume my Woodrow Wilson series, it's important to note that the position of the United States itself had changed during his lifetime. When he was born in 1856, the United States was a regional power, having defeated its closest rival Mexico in war only eight years before. America in 1856 was much more like the the Protestant, largely British, society of the newly independent colonies than the superpower of 2007, teeming with liberated huddle masses drawn from all over the world and following many different religions. Given its size and population, it had a tiny army and navy, and was regarded as a minor threat by most European powers, and really only had overseas interests in East Asia and the Caribbean basin.

The Civil War changed this. The demands of the Federal war effort led to a massive expansion in the industrial base, funded by government debt, led by a grasping managerial class that seized control of Congress in the late 1860s. The legal and fiscal policies that protected their interests continued for another forty years, maintaining their wealth and power, while the kind of immigration that had provoked the bigoted anti-immigrant Know-Nothing movement in the antebellum years continued. Although America continued to have a tiny army and navy, it's growing wealth was an obvious harbinger of the future. During this time, Wilson resided in the defeated South, failing at a law career, until in 1883 he began studying for a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. From this point on he would reside in the industrialized northeast.

Spain's troubles in Cuba, in one of America's traditional areas of interest, resulted in one of the most popular foreign wars in American history. Wilson's response to the aftermath of this war has an important bearing not only on his future policies in relation to World War I, but also to his potential electability. In the end he lent his support for the annexation of the Philippines and a more prominent role for America in foreign affairs. These issues were more dear to the Northern victors among whom he dwelled, than the Southern defeated, among whom he ahd been born and raised. More importantly, as the linked article shows, he believed the authority of the president had been substantially increased by the war, and even goes so far as to say, "As long as we have only domestic subjects we have no real leaders."

Wilson had turned his back on the principles of the Founding Fathers, who were suspicious of concentrating power in the hands of an individual, in the course of writing his book Congressional Government in which he wrote: "It is, therefore, manifestly a radical defect in our federal system that it parcels out power and confuses responsibility as it does." In this context, how mindful was he likely to be of sage advice from George Washington's Farewell Address? "Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

The Trial of Saddam Hussein

The execution of Saddam Hussein is firmly with a long tradition in the history of the aftermath of wars. Although parallels with the Nuremburg Trials might come to mind, the fact is that Saddam Hussein was found guilty and executed by a domestic court, trying him for domestic crimes. To some degree, this represents a kind of "victor's justice". The postwar trials of Pierre Laval and Marshal Petain in France in 1945 may offer a better comparison. (Although the notorious Riom trial might be a more appealing parallel to Saddam sympathizers.) Had Critias survived the Athenian revolution of 403 BC, he might too have been subjected to a trial by his conquerors.

The absence of a widespread urge to subject Saddam Hussein to an international tribunal is of more interest here. No doubt political reasons were involved, but the inability of the "Hang the Kaiser" movement in 1918-19 to achieve its goal is instructive. The fact is that Saddam Hussein was often acting in his capacity as the sovereign authority of the Iraqi state. At the time of the exile of Napoleon to St Helena, similar questions were raised and answered, as this quote, drawn from Chapter Two here, illustrates.

In this letter the Lord Chancellor outlines the legal status of the imprisonment of Napoleon for the private information of the Prime Minister. He frankly admits that the imprisonment of Napoleon is not a legal matter. To the contrary, he saw it as an act which in terms of the "Law of Nations" would be "excessively difficult to justify", primarily a violation of French sovereignty, made necessary in order to secure the safety of the world.

However, had Saddam not been president of Iraq, (say he had been prime minister) it's quite possible we'd be facing a very different situation.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 2

For the second part of this ongoing series, I'd like to look at the second half of the title, "the American Way of War". Without doubt, all foreign wars in the history of the United States between 1783 and 1917 generated serious opposition among Americans. You don't have to look hard:

War of 1812: The Hartford Convention threatens the secession of the New England states.

Mexican-American War: This fellow made a name for himself as an opponent of the war, but he represented the views of a couple more key party associates. See documents 1 and 10 here.

Spanish-American War: Support for this relatively popular war demanded Congressional legislation that formally renounced any intention to annex Cuba. The war might have proved less popular without it. The legacy of the war, the annexation of the Philippines, was a different matter.

Even after 1918, the only near-universally supported foreign wars are the Second World War and the Korean War. (Although I wonder if the latter had lasted one more year whether serious opposition to it might have arisen. There's a sort of four-year rule related to American involvement in war.)

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 1

I've been involved in a debate over Woodrow Wilson and America's enthusiasm for war in 1914-18, that has absorbed a lot of my blogging energy. I'd like to rehash the debate here, if only to clarify my own thoughts a little. What I would call the Conventional Interpretation goes something like as follows:

During 1914-16, the vast majority of Americans wanted to stay out of the war, as did Wilson. He genuinely thought he could do so, and was very lukewarm toward the Preparedness Movement. Wilson's patient efforts at trying to solve things by diplomacy rather than war continued even after the Lusitania sinking, efficient Allied propaganda within the USA, actual German "atrocities" like Edith Cavell shooting, German sabotage in America, and the Zimmermann Telegram had certainly convinced the vast majority of Americans that war was now the only option. Once Wilson had decided war was inevitable after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans in February 1917, he was able to carry with him an (almost) united nation.

My debate is with the underlined portion. I'm not convinced the evidence that the vast majority of Americans thought war was the only option. My reading of the evidence is that most Americans remained unwilling participants in the war, but that they went along with government policy because that's what they do. The idea that there was a strong anti-war movement that possibly reflected a plurality passively opposed to the war just doesn't fit with our National Myth of America's progress to Superpower Status, which replaced our original, more isolationist, National Myth. I'll publish what I've found over the next few days, together with any new stuff I uncover as well.

The New Galley Warfare?

I've always been interested in galley warfare, more than any other kind of naval warfare. During the confirmation hearings of Robert Gates to be the new Secretary of Defense, my ears pricked up when I heard him refer to the Littoral Combat Vessel. Now, if you take a map of a sea area, and superimpose a grid on it of some defined area - one mile squares for example - you can quickly see where littorals arise. I once did it for southern England and Wales, and basically there are three large areas, in the mouth of the Thames the Solent and in the Bristol Channel. Smaller areas can be found around Poole, and the south coasts of Devon and Cornwall. However, in the Mediterranean, especially around Greece and Asia Minor, there are lots. Thus, galley warfare could be thought of as another name for littoral warfare.

The first ship of this type, the USS Freedom (LCS 1) was launched on 23 September 2006 at its builder in Wisconsin. It displaces 3,000 tonnes, on a length of 377 feet, which is bigger than a J-class destroyer of the Royal Navy during the Second World War. These seem to be more of a sea control ship in narrow waters than actually reflecting the nature of combat in a littoral area.

A galley in the Mediterranean was predominantly a means of delivering fighting men. While some fleets, notably the Athenians and Carthaginians, relied on maneuver to ram and sink enemy vessls, boarding and capturing tactics were far more common throughout history. (Click on the link for "The Agony of War Under Oars" for a good description of Athenian galley tactics in the context of the crew's experience.) Furthermore, what is often overlooked is that galleys are effectively amphibious warfare ships. Their large crews can easily take up arms and fight ashore, in a relatively short space of time. Guilmartin's book Gunpowder and Galleys highlights this, and I view the Periclean strategy in the Peloponnesian wars as one to be analysed in terms of amphibious warfare, not sea control.

To move toward a galley model, the Littoral Combat Vessel needs support from something more like a floating armored personnel carrier or even an armoured cross-Channel roll-on, roll-off ferry. This would imply a heavy dual-purpose gun armament (firing both armor-piercing and high-explosive) or rocket artillery and the ability to carry a large number of men, such as a platoon or even a company of marines. Given the likely scenarios of naval combat facing the US Navy in the foreseeable future, this seems an interesting avenue for further prototypes to explore.

Vietnam Study Group

The recent publication of the Iraq Study Group report has drawn parallels with the famous conclave of "wise men" to advise President Lyndon Johnson on his Vietnam policy around the time of the 1968 Tet offensive.

Johnson had been making use of a circle of non-administration foreign policy advisors for some time. A "Vietnam Panel" met on 8 July 1965 and offered an assessment of future policy. The most famous such meeting was held under state department auspices in November 1967 (document 377). However, at a subsequent meeting in March 1968 (document 142), it appears as if Johnson has lost confidence in the "wise men" approach. It's not clear if the comment referring to it being "a mistake to get a new super-Presidential board" should be attributed to him or to Dean Acheson (or maybe both). Twelve days later, Johnson made his dramatic announcement that he would not seek re-election.

1917-18

This is news is a little old, but a museum about America's experience in the First World War has opened in Kansas City. I'm hoping to attend a conference in St Louis next summer, so maybe I can convince the family to make the relatively short drive up to Kansas City to take a look. I've always been a little disappointed that the Great War is a relatively low profile conflict in the United States. More than the Second World War, the First World War created America the Superpower, although the fact that American politicians retreated into unilateralism almost immediately after the war's end kind of hid that. As we approach the centenary of this conflict, I hope Americans will notice the important role the war played in the destiny of our country.

Tube Alloy Targets

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that British possession of strategic nuclear weapons is crucial for long-term national strategic interests. The problem is that the British nuclear deterrent has never been truly independent. Originally both British and American atomic weapons were subject to one another's veto, under the terms of the 1943 Quebec Agreement on Tube Alloys. (Tube alloys was the term used to conceal the true nature of the Manhattan Project.) However, a combination of American legislation and straitened British economic circumstance put paid to any independent tube alloy ambitions for the British armed forces. The matter wasn't really of any significance until after the U.S. Air Force had based its strategic bombers in Britain again in July 1948, and both America and Britain were fighting together once again, in the Korean peninsula, after the North Korean invasion in June 1950. The National Security Archive at George Washington University has published a series of documents about the relationship between American nuclear weapons and British governments.

Britain's first atomic deterrent, a bomb delivered by an aircraft, entered service in November 1953. By this stage, NATO had come into existence, and in the circumstances targets for British weapons were likely to be determined by the alliance's command, a situation that was formalized in 1962 by the Athens Guidelines, paragraph 5. Thus, the concept of an independent British nuclear deterrent has always been more of a de jure than a de facto one.

Bomber uncovered

A Halifax bomber, crewed by Canadians and Britons and shot down in August 1944, has been uncovered in Poland. The Polish project leader comments that only two Handley-Page Halifax bombers on display in the world. One of them is in Trenton, Ontario, coincidentally the first place in North America I stopped at during my last trip there in 2005. I didn't visit the Royal Canadian Air Force Museum there, owing to arriving late in the day and having to leave early en route to Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Halifax is a prized possesion, and you can find details about it (and about the museum if you follow round the links) here.

Persian Gulf Games

The Iranian armed forces held war games recently designed to show exactly what they could do in case of an American attack. Naturally, their potential is painted in the best light possible, but they have experience of how to attack Gulf shipping. It shouldn't be forgotten that the Gulf was the setting for a three-cornered conflict involving Iraq, Iran, and the United States in the past. One element of this was the so-called Tanker War, which was in part what led to American naval intervention. The Air Combat Information Group has a chronological chart showing known attacks on shipping during the whole of the Iran-Iraq war here.

The Horror, The Horror!

Congo (Zaire, if you're my age) is in the news again for the wrong reasons. The recent election there has simply resulted in objections from the loser. The contrast with the relatively civil response of Americans to 2000 is something that should give pause to those who freely blame the rich nations and imperialism for all the ills that afflict Africa. If you want some background about an earlier revolt, one that led to European intervention, the U.S. Army offers an essay here.

India 1857-8

In terms of the English-language press, the rebellion in India in 1857-8, which brought together Sepoys and key figures in the traditional native ruling class, has not been a popular subject. It doesn't have much appeal to Americans, who think of different kinds of Indians, and the British tended to ignore it, possibly out of some kind of collective guilt. William Darymple's recent book has been doing well in Britain, possibly because it has accessed the Indian archives, and given a more rounded picture than British readers are used to. However, it was not always so, as this interesting essay explains.

Leyte Gulf

Evan Thomas's book on the battle of Leyte Gulf is doing well. And there's all sorts of stuff on the web about the battle. Here's a lost-in-action report. Or you can visit the excellent Combined Fleet site to read an in-depth attempt to establish who got sunk first.

Norway Debate

Leo Amery: Does the Prime Minister concede that our intervention in Norway has been pretty much a disaster so far?
Rt Hon. Neville Chamberlain: It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Norway?

Well, not really. I've actually played around with Tony Blair’s recent comments on the al-Jazeera network in an interview, inviting comparisons with the famous wartime Norway Debate that led to the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his replacement by Winston Churchill. Sadly, the relevant Hansard is not available on-line, at least not that I've been able to find. Something for a scholar-squirrel to dig up and post?

I can't think of any remark that has been so close to public relations disaster by a serving government official short of Gerald Ford's famous comment in his debate during the 1976 presidential election that suggested Poland was not under Soviet control. I don't follow Blair's pronouncements that closely, but I've always had the impression that he likes to reach out to his audience and make them identify himself as one of them. I imagine he thought al-Jazeera's viewers would be unsympathetic to his Iraq policy, and might consider it a disaster. But he let his guard down, and now appears stupid.

You can also read a recent parliamentary debate on British involvement in Iraq here. It is a far cry from a Norway debate, but Blair might have been looking a little Chamberlain-like had he not already agreed to stand down during the next year.

Sniper books

A Scottish newspaper reports that Iraqi resistance fighters are apparently using American sniper techniques in their war against the new Iraqi government and its American allies. While it is easy to single out the book mentioned by the newspaper, there are plenty of choices available for a potential sniper to browse among en route to getting a sniper's textbook. When I worked for one publisher, I remember well the horror of the editor who worked on this example. She was upset by the callous tone, and who could blame her?

Teeth and tails

It seems the Iraqi army is seriously lacking in the military "tail". The latest audit (06-032) from the Special Inspector General in Iraq, General Stuart W. Bowen to Congress reportedly finds the Iraqi army lacking in medical personnel and soldiers capable of keeping trucks on the road. These are the kind of "technical" troops that often seem to be lacking in the armies of what one used to refer to as the Third World, possibly because they can make more money in the private sector, or even emigrate. They also don't look so impressive on parade through the streets of the capital.

The mechanics, in particular, are vital to armies heavily reliant on road transport for supply. Imagine a heap of ammunition arriving at Basra. Road may be the best way to get it up country to the Sunni triangle. One can spot a tempting business opportunity for a company offering mercenary services, but how many of any imported car mechanics are going to get shot at or kidnapped by the Iraqi resistance

War Memory

A lack of posts has been due to work and a vacation in Belgium. The first night I went to the Menin Gate and watched the Last Post ceremony. Unlike many, I didn't find it particularly moving, but I was struck almost dumb by the Menin Gate itself, with its long list of the missing. The Last Post tradition began the year following the the inauguration of the memorial. I found myself struck once again by how the impact that the First World War had on Britain and the Dominions resembles the sense of loss Americans acquired after the Civil War. I found myself wondering if the original solemnity of Decoration Day served as an inspiration for the obsequies for the First World War dead.

Meaningful dates

While I spotted a couple of comments about yesterday being the anniversary of the battle of Tours, it also being the anniversay of the battle of Kerbala went unremarked in my very Western environment. For those who don't understand statistical coincidence, all this might seem very providential. However, my empirical observations have led me to conclude battles cluster at certain points in the seasons, even acdross the very different climates of Western Europe and the Middle East. And not necessarily where one might think.

Boom

North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon. The "nuclear club" at one time included South Africa. You can find out more about their experience as a nuclear power here.