TEXT

NACBS Undergraduate Prize

Link

Summer Maritime History/Sail Training Programs for Academic Credit

Title: Summer Maritime History/Sail Training Programs for Academic
      Credit
  Date: 2006-04-15
  Description: Maritime History Sea Education Programs (Summer 2006)
      Description: These two summer programs are taught aboard the
      historic traditional Schooner "Lettie G. Howard" (Home Port:
      South Street Seaport, NYC). Dates: 1. "Maritime History of New
      England" (4 credits; Boston University) 16-29 July 2006. Depa
      ...
  Contact: twalker@umassd.edu
  Announcement ID: 150199

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=150199

Summer Internships at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Go to http://www.ctc.usma.edu/internships.asp

NACBS Essay Contest

The North American Conference on British Studies is pleased to announce the
inauguration of an essay contest in British Studies for undergraduates at
U.S. colleges and universities. The essays should be submitted no later
than 1 June 2006. Six prizes of $100 each will be awarded. For further
information refer to NACBS website at nacbs.org.

Undergraduate Research Conference

The 7th Annual Berks County Undergraduate Research Conference is being hosted by Alvernia College on April 29, 2006.

Please encourage your students to participate in this great learning experience.

Visit the website for details and registration.

Coalition Death Rate in Iraq (Updated)

Developments

"Strive to wipe out the enemy when he is on the move. At the same time, pay attention to the tactics of positional attack and capture enemy fortified points and cities.  Concerning attacking cities, resolutely seize all enemy fortified points and cities that are weakly defended."

Mao Tzedong, _On Protracted War_

Insurgents Capture Western Iraq Town

Knight-Ridder Article on Iraq

Stalemate

Article from USA Today

For combat-weary Marines, each stint adds to the strain

Chart of Coalition Deaths per Day in Iraq since April 2003 (Monthly Averages)

This chart shows the fluctuation in the average of daily deaths among coalition soldiers since April 2003.

The high was November 2004, when, on average, 4.7 soldiers died per day to the low in February 2004 when just under 1 soldier died per day, on average.

Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina

Fort Sumter from the Bay

Addition built for Spanish-American War, 1898

Interesting Notes on Combat in Iraq

Russian Evaluation of American Armored Systems

The Canon of Military History

[A comment in response to the question posed by Professor Mark Grimsley of Ohio State University]

I suspect that that's part of the question that Dr. Grimsley is getting at: is there a common body of knowledge that all those who study military history should share, regardless of specialization or interest?

I noted the dichotomy in Dr. Grimsley's question between texts and wars/conflicts. It seems to me that there are really two questions here. Are there certain works that every military historian should read and be familiar with (Clausewitz seems the example of choice), and is there a certain body of knowledge that every military historian should have? (i.e. know about the World Wars).

This is all in service of the larger question of what is a military historian? H-War's diverse subscriber group certainly illustrates the wide range of places that those interested in military history can be located--from academia, to the services, to the private sector. Even within those are more subtle gradations: academic military historians at institutions of higher education or, as our own Book Review Editor Janet Valentine is, at the Army Center for Military History. Given that, is there more or less need for some sort of defined unifying body of texts/knowledge?

My answer to that would be yes, to one aspect, and maybe to another. I do think that military historians should share a common historiographical background of certain works. Such works would serve as a foundation for analysis and discussion. Without such a common background, such historical discussions seem to become much more difficult than they would otherwise. A historian who has not read Clausewitz or Sun Tzu or Keegan is going to have a hard time participating in the larger historical discussion. I'm not sure how one would come up with a definitive list of these, or what merits inclusion, but I note that even deeply flawed works are likely part of it. John Keegan's _Face of Battle_ is (as one medievalist has already pointed out) problematic in many ways. But I still think that it is required reading for anyone who wants to engage military history fully. My other idea is that such a canon should be enormously broad, contain lots of books, and within the limits allowed by 24 hour days, families, eating, and the need for occasional sleep, be as inclusive as possible.

I'm not sure that there is a common body of _knowledge_ that a military historian should be required to have. Should a historian of ancient Chinese military history be required to know about World War II? Should a historian of World War II be required to know about ancient Chinese military history? My instinctive reaction is no, but perhaps someone would care to make an argument in favor?

Of course, one attempt at this can be found off H-War's home page: Duke University's reading list to prepare grad students for the preliminary exam in military history: http://www.h-net.org/~war/Hot100/

Dr. Blessing Interviews a Candidate

Civil War History at the Military History Institute

Unit History Search

Unit Bibliographies

The Wars in Iraq, part III

Knight-Ridder Article

Daily Life

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/dutyiniraq/page1.html

Lawrence Freedman on Iraq

Freedman on Iraq

Articles

Two interesting articles

Thomas Wildenberg on the Victory at Midway (Naval War College Review) (PDF file)

Captain Ben Simmons on the Battle of Kursk (Armor Magazine) (PDF File)

Books for Spring 2005 Courses

Here are the books I will be using in my Spring 2005 courses.

History 121
Patrick K O'Brien, Oxford Concise Atlas of World History
Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
Oladauh Equiano, The Life of Oladauh Equiano
Erich Marie Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front

History 290
Russell Weigley, The American Way of War
Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace
Donald Burgett, Currahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy
David Zucchino, Thunder Run

History 493
Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern

Civil War Archive

The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System

Research Database

** Database of Missouri Soldiers Enhanced
From ResearchBuzz

The state of Missouri has updated their database of state soldiers to include soldiers from the War of 1812 through World War I, which means that the new database includes over 550,000 Missourians.

It's available at

Missouri Archives

The Wars in Iraq, part II

The second war followed quickly on the heels of the first. The question, of course, is whether what followed was a deliberate plan by Hussein's government or a spontaneous reaction to the utter disaster of the conventional war. The answer is unknown, but the result is not. In essence what happened after the collapse of conventional organized resistance was the beginning, after an interval of relative calm, of a guerilla war, classic in style and tactics. Small groups of lightly-armed insurgents--mixed Iraqi and non-Iraqi soldiers--started to mount hit and run attacks on American and British forces. They wore civilian clothing and, at the beginning, did not operate in large units. They did not hope to hang around and wipe out their targets. Instead, they simply wished to inflict a few casualties and then melt back into the civilian population. Layered on top of this was the use of suicide attacks, usually with cars. They could not hope to defeat coalition forces in open battle, but they could hope to inflict casualties, and to destroy any budding trust between American troops and the Iraqi population.

So proved to be the case. Building slowly but continuously, insurgent forces managed to inflict a steady stream of losses on the United States, mostly in ones or twos, but occasionally, as in the shooting down of a Blackhawk troop helicopter, substantially more. Most particularly effective from the insurgent perspective were roadside bombs--so-called Improvised Explosive Devices. Placed along the routes taken by American forces, they were manufactured out of whatever Iraqi forces had available and triggered by a range of different mechanisms. Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles were largely immune to the effects, but thin-skinned vehicles such as trucks, tankers, and Hummvees, were not. The bombs not only wounded and killed American soldiers, but threatened the logistics chains holding together American forces in Iraq. Though they were unlikely ever to cut the Americans off from each other, the resulting shortages and difficulties put the American forces unexpectedly on the defensive.

Fighting back was easy. Fighting back effectively was not. It was easy to inflict casualties on the insurgents, easy to step up roadside security, and easy to figure out ways to defend American forces against attacks. Unfortunately, the insurgents learned and improved in response. Those who did not were usually killed by American forces, which imposed a stringently Darwinian process on the guerilla campaign. In addition, and worse, other forces in Iraqi society saw the resistance and came to believe both that the occupying troops were vulnerable and that they were incapable of providing security. Ba'athist groups centered around Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and Shi'ite elements in the city of Najaf, loyal to the young Imam, Muqtada al-Sadr, were the largest and best organized, but others appeared as well. In addition, the American use of heavy firepower, especially in urban areas, the lack of quick elections, and continuing inability to provide basics such as clean water and electricity, began to build a sense of resentment and resistance to the occupation. Nationalism proved once again that it remains the strongest allegiance in the modern world, as Shi'ites and Sunnis, whose religious hatred goes back more than a millennium, nonetheless cooperated in resisting American forces.

This war is following a classic Maoist trajectory: small-scale attacks by small-scale forces at the start, building to larger and larger efforts by larger and larger forces.[1] At the beginning of the war, American and coalition forces controlled the vast majority of Iraqi territory. Insurgent attacks were few in number and small in ambition. Now, roughly a year after the start, American and coalition forces do not control substantial portions of Iraq--Najaf and Fallujah being particular examples--and the forces arrayed against them are much larger and more organized. American casualties, despite the handover to the interim Iraqi government, have increased in the past few months, major portions of the Iraqi population are deeply suspicious of the American presence, and Iraqi security forces cannot be relied on to fight, or even, if the arrest of a senior member in those security forces is an indication, to not help the insurgents. Mao would be proud: deny first control of Iraq to the coalition, convince the native population to support or at least not actively fight the insurgency, and inflict casualties. Expand second the fighting, establishing redoubts of territory as relatively safe havens for the forces of resistance. Next is to step back up to conventional warfare, opposing coalition forces in full-scale battles. The last is unlikely to happen: American superiority in firepower is simply too great.

But we're not going to be there forever, and in the meantime, a third war has broken out.

[1] Mao Zedong, [u]On Guerilla War[/u] (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

The Wars in Iraq, part I.

The conflict in Iraq has been, in reality, three overlapping wars. They have been fought with different weapons, by different people and sides, and with different strategies and tactics. But because they have all occurred in a place called Iraq and seemingly all have involved the same rough sides, we have missed the necessary methods to analyze and fight them.

The first war was the easy one. Starting in March 2003, it was a conventional war of the type the United States has trained for and fought continuously for the last century. The American military is--at the moment--unrivaled in the planning and execution of such a war. Such was March and April. A simple but ingeniously conceived war plan was greeted with near overwhelming success. First came the disinformation campaign. The Iraqis were convinced that any American assault would start with an extensive bombing campaign. Only after the "shock" and "awe" part of the campaign had ended would the ground warfare start. In reality, there was no shock and awe campaign. Instead, the propaganda was aimed at convincing Iraqi units and commanders to keep their heads down.

While they were waiting for the bombs, large armored columns--Army, Marines, and British--accelerated across the start lines in Kuwait and up the highways of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. After a short delay, airborne units dropped into the Kurdish north of Iraq (in the place of the 4th Infantry Division, unable to use Turkey as a base for attack into the north because of the diplomatic mishandling of the Turkish). The tactical and strategic surprise essentially enabled coalition forces to reach Baghdad before the Iraqis could react effectively. There were difficulties in defending the extended supply lines against irregular assaults from Iraqi light infantry--the fedayeen--but for the most part the attacks went about as well as expected. Upon reaching Baghdad, the Army and Marine Generals had expected to use the armored columns as blocking elements while light infantry cleared the capital, block by block. But, inspired perhaps by Israeli success at using tanks in urban areas in the West Bank and Gaza, elements of the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized), were sent on a "Thunder Run" on April 5th, driving their M1A1 Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles directly down Highway 8 to the Baghdad Airport, directly through the center of the Iraqi defenses. The Iraqis were unable to stop them, or even inflict any serious casualties, though the defenders themselves suffered heavily.

The success led the Americans to repeat the "Thunder Run" on April 7th, but this time they headed into downtown Baghdad, captured one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, and remained where they were, in a sense hollowing out Baghdad from the inside. The Iraqi military collapse that followed was rapid and complete. Iraqi forces melted away, with many simply throwing down their weapons and going home. Others, it became clear later, retreated to fight another day, in another way. It was the end of the conventional operations, and the end of the war for which America planned.

It was not the end of the war, however.