Category: General Warfare
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Gettysburg After Action Report – September 10, 2017
On my 39th visit to Gettysburg, my wife and I had the privilege of taking Aishwarya who is a software engineer and an aspiring poet (she goes by Ash for short). This was an emergency trip, as she is slated to move back to India in a month after living in the States for 5 years…
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Military historians don’t evoke other battles like they used to
In doing some research on the Battle of Marathon, I was reading the late A. R. Burn’s Persia and the Greeks (1962). He gets into the nitty-gritty of topography, religion, logistics, strategy, and tactics. Over the course of 13 pages describing the lead up to the battle and its aftermath, Burn evoked numerous battles from other…
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A Case against Battlefield Preservation
I have trekked battlefields dating back to the Greco-Persian Wars and made more than three dozen trips to Gettysburg, so I am avid supporter of battlefield preservation. Until recently, I thought the only enemies of preservation were apathy or necessity. Quite simply, people do not know about the ground upon which they want to build an…
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If you visited Horseshoe Bend battlefield today
Sun Tzu tells us that if we put our troops “in the most desperate straits, they will have no fear,” and having “nowhere else to turn, they will stand firm” (9.37). Some interpretations indicate this means putting one’s back to a river, an unorthodox and typically disastrous move for armies throughout history. However, for the…
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Time to give Hans Delbrück’s work an honorable burial?
In previous articles, we covered how historians have heaped praise upon Hans Delbrück and why that praise was warranted. However, it would be misleading to leave out the fact that many of Delbrück’s principles have not maintained any prominence in military history whatsoever. For example, he believed that historians should only focus on history where…
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Were these wars worth fighting over sovereignty?
With a potential war over Ukraine’s sovereignty looming, it is important to understand the kind of war such a dispute could bring. Some of the largest wars started over what later seemed like a trivial matter. Before Thucydides recounted the dispute between Athens and Sparta leading up to the Peloponnesian War, he stated that he considered “the…
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Culloden Battlefield and Hallowed Ground
We Americans treat many of our battlefields as sacred and weep for the ones that are lost to development. Groups such as the Civil War Trust do a superb job organizing people and money to buy up ground, fight development, transfer land to the National Park Service, and do whatever is necessary to preserve battlefields…
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Hans Delbrück’s Timeless Principles: Troop Estimates, Topography
In a previous article, I covered how military historians have stumbled over themselves to heap praise upon Hans Delbrück. Now I will demonstrate why that praise is warranted. In a future article, I will demonstrate why it is not. The overarching question for these articles is why military historians should care about Hans Delbrück. Quite simply, Delbrück has…
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Is Hans Delbrück worthy of this praise?
Why should military historians care about Hans Delbrück? Like it or not, the legacy of Delbrück as a military historian is still strong even 85 years after his death. Before we get into that, consider some of the praise heaped upon him by other military historians, dubbing him as “the first modern military historian” –…
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If you visited the Chalmette battlefield today…
Winston Churchill described the Battle of New Orleans (1815) as the “most irresponsible British onslaught” and “one of the most unintelligent maneuvers in the history of British warfare.” ((Winston S. Churchill, The Age of Revolution, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples 3 (Toronto: Bantan Books, 1957), 296, 297.)) The battle was a classic, horrific march…
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If you Visited Agincourt Today…
Clifford J. Rogers believes the Battle of Agincourt (1415) is “probably the most richly documented of all medieval battles,” but nothing beats visiting the actual battlefield. Here is what you can expect if you visited Agincourt today. The people of Agincourt do not hide the fact that tourists streaming through their town are there for…
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Martin Dempsey knows how to define war
Joint Chiefs Chair Martin Dempsey has read Clausewitz, even quoted him in speeches. He knows that when a state uses force to impose its will on an enemy, then that state is at war. Throughout the Senate Hearing on Syria earlier this week, Secretary of State John Kerry continually emphasized that he was not…