Military history is a sub-discipline within the larger field
of historical studies that focuses on the documentation and explanation of
armed conflicts. Military historians may study tactics and strategies used in
past wars, or the leadership, technology, and politics surrounding them. They
strive to understand how wars begin, how they are fought and why, as well as
how they end and the consequences they have in the long-term. Since wars have
been waged since the dawn of recorded history, military historians have existed
for just as long. Throughout university history departments, which have been
increasingly dominated by identity studies, military history is often viewed as
an antiquated field. It is frequently neglected by those who believe war is not
important for analysing the larger causes and effects of history. Others may
argue that war is too morbid and unpleasant a subject to read about or that
learning about wars is not relevant to today’s world. There are also relatively
few professors that specialize in the study of war and universities tend to be
reserved about offering courses solely on the topic. Nowadays, identity studies
and social history are the main fields of interest among historians and
classical topics like war have been placed on the backburner. I believe that
this neglect of military history is a misguided attitude, since the lessons of
war are now more relevant than ever. Those who have the most to benefit from
studying military history are soldiers, especially officers, in whose hands rests
the responsibility for many lives besides their own. It is the duty of the
officer more than anyone to learn from the mistakes of the past and strive not
to repeat them in the future. However, they are not the only ones to benefit
from studying military history. Due to the nature of wars today, it is as much
the duty of the ordinary person, as well as the soldier to pay heed to the lessons
of battlefields past. We must not make the error of neglecting them.
One of my favourite quotes is by George Santayana who said
that “Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.” Military
history, of course is no exception. If high-ranking officers are ignorant about
how past wars were fought and won, how can they be expected to command their
troops to wage them effectively? Many of the most grievous disasters in war
have occurred when officers issued commands out of ignorance of past mistakes.
Adolf Hitler for example, would likely have conducted his invasion of the
Soviet Union much differently, if not at all, had he possessed a greater
knowledge of Napoleon’s campaigns in Russia. Many of the errors committed
during the Battle of Stalingrad are eerily similar those made by Napoleon at
Borodino. Both Hitler and Napoleon had ordered their men to march across the
vast territory of Russia, thereby stretching out their supply lines. Even with
the advent of motor vehicles, the Wehrmacht were mostly supplied by the same
means as Napoleon’s armies—by horse-drawn carts. Once Hitler’s forces reached
Stalingrad, they were already unprepared to hold the city in the long-run due
to its poor logistics. Both Napoleon and The Wehrmacht underestimated the
Russian will to resist and ignored several other decisive factors such as
disease, local resistance, and Russian weather. Hitler’s obsession with
Stalingrad and his irrational commitment to its capture was the same fatal flaw
that underlined Napoleon’s attack on Moscow. The Germans should have also taken
greater efforts in resupplying their troops and preparing them for harsh winter
conditions, both things that Napoleon similarly neglected. Hitler’s invasion of
Russia was poorly conceived and it reveals his fundamental lack of
understanding of past military mistakes. Nearly a million Germans were killed
at Stalingrad for following the orders issued by this madman. When the reins of
power are thrust into the hands of someone like Hitler who was largely ignorant
about matters of strategy and command, the horrors of the past are bound to
repeat themselves. Although it is fortunate for most of the western world that he
did not succeed in his goals, Hitler’s failure stands as a grim testament to
the consequences of ignoring the past.
It should be obvious that studying military history is useful
for soldiers, but what about the average person? Even though the majority of
human beings do not command armies or fight in battles, the lessons of war are still
relevant to everyone and should be given a higher regard in the discipline of
history. Even those who find the topic of war distasteful and would rather not
have anything to do with it are not removed from the system that wages them. Wars
often require the public support of a civilian population to be successful.
When the public grants its approval for its nation to wage war beyond its capacity
to win, casualties and hardships will ensue. The First World War began with
enormous public support. European governments of the early twentieth century,
especially Germany, fostered a militaristic zeal among the population and thus one
of the costliest wars in human history began without any meaningful resistance.
People paraded in the streets to celebrate the onset of the bloodiest war ever
fought. It is easy in hindsight for us to condemn those over-enthusiastic
supporters for their naivety. We feel they should have known about
technological improvements in weaponry throughout the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries that made the prospect of war deadlier than ever. Machine-guns,
airplanes, barbed-wire, and high-explosive ordinance turned Europe into a
bloodbath between the years of 1914 to 1918. The immense size of European
standing armies at the dawn of World War One only meant that a quick decisive
war (as the public wished it to be) was impossible. The use of human-wave
tactics against heavily fortified positions was trademark of trench warfare and
was responsible so many dead. These tactics were adapted from those used in
European warfare since the invention of gunpowder. When these out-dated tactics
clashed against modern weaponry, it led such battles as The Somme, Ypres, and
Verdun. It is debatable whether the First World War would have been as catastrophic,
or if it would have occurred at all, had more people resisted their governments’
call to arms from the onset on the basis that such a war was counterproductive
and ill-conceived. But hindsight is always 20/20. If we wish to mitigate the
misery and destruction that wars bring, our duty is to educate ourselves about
wars in the past: why they begin, how they are waged, and how they end. A
public that finds itself ignorant of past conflicts is unprepared to face those
of the future.
Pre-war celebrations in Britain
The study of warfare also has great value from a
psychological or anthropological perspective, since many themes, feelings, and
rhetoric in wars remain constant over time and therefore reveal unalienable
lessons about human behaviour. Parallels can even be drawn between conflicts
today and those of classical antiquity. The Tet Offensive of 1968 of the
Vietnam War was an incident from which many important lessons can be gleaned.
In early 1968, the American public was assured that the ongoing war in Vietnam
was nearing a close and that they would soon emerge as victor against the
wretched North Vietnamese. Tet would change all that. During the Tet New Year’s
celebrations on 20 January, 1968, when a three day truce was traditionally observed,
North Vietnamese commandos stormed major cities in South Vietnam, including
Hue, Khesanh, and Saigon and slaughtered thousands. Although the Americans quickly retaliated and
recaptured all the cities lost during Tet with minimal casualties suffered, the
damage had been done. The American public’s perception of the war back home had
deteriorated. Even though Tet was a decisive American military victory, it
showed them that the Communists were willing to sacrifice themselves on masse
to get rid of the Americans. It demonstrated the tremendous will of the North
Vietnamese to resist American occupation, whatever the cost. In short, it
revealed to the Americans back home that Vietnam was not going to be the quick
and easy victory they had hoped for, which ultimately influenced the decision
to withdraw from Vietnam over the next five years.
But the Tet Offensive was only a microcosm of a larger trend
in warfare, namely that a prolonged and unnecessary war in enemy territory is
never beneficial, and that a people occupied by a foreign army will tend resist
at all costs. Tet is certainly not the first instance of this. When he Athenian
armies invaded Sicily in 415 BCE, they were in comparable situation to the
Americans at Vietnam. Like the US, Athens possessed one of the fiercest armies
in the western world. According to Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War, The Athenian expedition force to Sicily
consisted of 5100 hoplites, 750 Mantineans, 1300 irregulars, and nearly 200
triremes, greatly outnumbering the Sicilians. The Athenians saw a few early
victories, but once the Sicilians made a concerted effort to resist the invasion
with the help of Sparta, attitudes about the war back in Athens began to sway. Just
like after the Tet Offensive, anti-war sentiments on the home front undermined
the campaign abroad. The Athenians began to question why they were even
fighting in Sicily to begin with. The Athenian general Nicias expressed these
sentiments when he argued to the Ecclesia that a war against the population in
Sicily could not be won, given their enemies were too numerous and arduous to
conquer. This lack of support for the invasion itself led to a lack of support
for the troops they had already committed to the field. As a result, the entire
expedition force was obliterated; everyone was either slaughtered or sold into
slavery.
We should not be too quick to condemn the Americans for
waging an unwinnable and counterproductive war in Vietnam. It is easy to
compare the disastrous invasion of Sicily to the Vietnam War only through the
clarity of hindsight. The truth is, history rarely offers cookie-cutter
examples of past events to live by. That is why studying history is
necessary—so that we may learn from the past and adapt these lessons to the unique
circumstances and nuances of the present. The Vietnam War and the Invasion of
Sicily were completely different events but the parallels between the two are obvious.
They reveal that the outcomes of wars are often determined as much by people at
home as they are by the troops in the field. Oftentimes, the public will
clamour for war, but once war becomes a reality and victory is not as swift as
people had imagined, they withdraw support and then seek to cut their losses.
There have been countless examples throughout history of nations swept up in
the fervour and rhetoric of warmongering without any real understanding of how
the war is to be fought or why. Only by a firm grasp on the consequences of
past wars can we hope to mitigate the bloodshed of future ones. It is only by
the study of military history that one can know the true costs and rewards of
waging war. Therefore, a public that is ignorant about military tactics and
strategy is likely to support a war that is against its own interests or in
which they become its many victims. All the examples I have cited, from the
Invasion of Sicily in 451 BCE, to the First World War, The Battle of
Stalingrad, and Tet are all disasters which reveal the cost of ignoring history.
I can imagine some people may disagree with me on the basis
that wars are a thing of the past and that it would be best not to learn about
ancient battles because they have no relevance to today’s world. The death of
war has been proclaimed many times before. On the eve of World War One, many
people thought that a large scale conflict was impossible due to the complex
system of alliances that existed at the time. For the ninety-nine years between
the Battle of Waterloo and the invasion of Belgium in 1914, there was a shaky
peace throughout Europe. But as we have seen, peace was not to last. With
tensions between Ukraine and Russia still unresolved as of June 2014, we still face
the possibility of war in Europe today. The lessons of Sicily and Vietnam are
more relevant than ever, with American involvement in Iraq ending as recently
as 2011, a conflict that in many ways echoed these two. We still get threats of
annihilation from North Korea every few months. Last year, as Americans urged
their President to intervene militarily in Syria, we can see that for many
people history continues to repeat itself. I do not believe that another large-scale
armed conflict like the World Wars will necessarily occur any time soon, but it
remains a distinct possibility. As long as there are human beings whose
interests oppose each other, war will continue to rear its head from time to
time.
It is foolish to disregard the importance of military history.
Identity studies, social, and political history all have their place in the
field, but war has been one of the dominant forces of change in our
civilization. As such, military history deserves no less consideration than the
study of gender, politics, race, class, or religion.
