I was very complimented last Friday by the comments from Audre and Nicholas. I do my best but I’m stumbling along in some very big footprints, in drawing lessons for the present from the past. For Americans and American history probably the biggest is Victor Davis Hanson. Yes, there are differences between a classicist and a historian but they overlap a good deal. VDHs work and his podcast help keep my views straight which is no easy task. I’m never going to recommend a video higher than I do this one. Because if you would understand why I write what I write, you’ll recognize me as I do in VDHs life. Yes, he’s far smarter and better educated than me, but we both have a fair amount of knowledge and we are both based still, today, on the land.
What we are is based in reality, not the way things oughta be, the way they are. Lessons from Athenian farmers are just as valid as ones from the dust bowl, or last week in Nebraska. My history parallels (at a much lower level) his, which is probably why we sat many of the same things.
I have two English historians that I really like, one of whom many of you know well, John Charmley. I’m not telling tails out of school if I note that his dad was a professional soldier, a sergeant, and he worked his way through Oxford.
The other is David Starkey, also a working class boy from northern England. He’s currently doing a series for Channel 4 in England, on the Churchills (available on YouTube, episode 1 here). In the series, he develops the thesis that the greatness that Sir Winston displayed as Prime Minister was partly developed in researching his monumental (4 volumes, and well worth the time) biography of his ancestor John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough.
We all (I hope) have read our Southey:
She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found.
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
“’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,
“Who fell in the great victory.“I find them in the garden,
For there’s many here about;
And often, when I go to plow,
The plowshare turns them out;
For many thousand men,” said he,
“Were slain in that great victory.”“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
“Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.”“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
“Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That ’twas a famous victory.
It rwas indeed, for this was the moment when Britain, less than twenty years after the Glorious Revolution had restored the Protestant Succession, on this day, assumed the role of superpower able to keep Europe from being overrun by any tyrant, whether Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Bill, Hitler, or in reality Russia, as well. Sometimes gold sufficed but often it was the Lobsterback, the best soldiery in the world.. This was the War of the Spanish Succession (in the colonies commonly called Queen Anne’s War).
The thing is, the Duke, saddled with overly cautious Dutch allies, finally left them to defend Holland and took the British up the river, freezing two French armies in place. Blenheim is about 30 miles southeast of Munich, so it was quite a march, comparable in boldness to Patton’s campaign across France in 1944, and then won a complete victory, ending (mostly) the French threat to southern Germany.
That comparison with Patton is mine, not Dr. Starkey’s but it struck me that the growing group of historians are prone to see early Georgian English influence in the United States today, and yes, I agree with them, right about the time of Queen Anne’s War is when our character solidified.
And as we grew and became independent, it continued.
I’m convinced that one reason we were reluctant to join in World War One, is that we, more than any other country, knew what modern war looked like. Remember it was only about 55 years since Appomatrox, and there were still a lot of men who had once been at Cold, Harbor, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and on the Overland Campaign who remembered, and from both sides, who even before the war ended had become friends.
During the siege at Petersburg, Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President had come through the lines with a peace proposal. It was far too late for such things, but that is what one does. Meantime there was a truce. During the truce, the armies took a break and climbed out of the trenches, the Federals raised a cheer for the Confederates, the Confederates returned the favor, and then both sides joined in a cheer for the ladies of Richmond, who had come out to see the war. I read that they fluttered their handkerchiefs prettily, went home, as did Stephens, and the war went on.
And a few weeks later, when Lee surrendered, General Joshua Chamberlain of Maine, who received the Medal of Honor at Gettysburg, took the surrender (nobody in either army, had any desire to personally see Lee who had been a legend since the Mexican War) surrender, As the Army of Northern Virginia marched in, Chamberlain gave the order to “Carry Arms” (the marching salute) to the Army of the Potomac, the General leading the Confederates returned the salute. And so it was done.
But it had been very like the 1914 war, with the exception that there were no machine guns (there were a few Gatling Guns, which are not classed as machine guns since you have to turn the crank. But the rifled muskets and increasing artillery changed everything. In the Mexican War, a musket was (barely) capable of aimed fire beyond 100 yards, a good shot with a rifled musket had some chance of hitting a target at 1000 yards, and volley fire would cause casualties. There were even some repeating rifles around, which could maintain rates of fire close to those of 1914.
How bad was it? Well in World War II, the US took about 400,000 casualties, and the British Empire another 400,000, for a total of 800,000 more or less. In the US Civil War, there were 600,000, three-quarters of the English-speaking casualties in World War II out of a population of about 55 million people, about the same as Great Britain today. That’s why we still remember those soldiers on Memorial Day.
I strongly doubt that many of those veterans wanted to see their grandsons in similar spots.
There was no answer in 1865 and it was worse in 1914. That’s why I’m more sympathetic to the British generals than many are. And the Overland Campaign going to Richmond didn’t have to win the war, all it had to do was hold Lee in position while Sherman did a left wheel in southern Georgia and came up Lee’s supply route. Patton’s phrase was “Hold ’em by the nose and kick ’em in the ass”, which is what he did in France.
The answer was the tank, and tactical airpower, by 1940 that was advanced enough to break the French lines (geography governs tactics more than we think.) The Germans broke the French in 1940 on exactly the ground that the Duke of Marlborough broke them at Ramilles.
But the Civil War shaped American war making. It’s where we learned to “send a bullet, not a man”. The Germans called it the way a rich man fights a war, and yes, we substitute treasure for blood. Here’s an example from 2018
I’ve heard that the US Air Force made glass from sand that day, something usually associated with nuclear weapons, and that some of Wagner’s gun barrels bent from the heat. Might have something to do with why Putin didn’t try Ukraine on while Trump was in office too.
It’s so true that there is a joke about it from World War II
If you encounter a unit you can’t identify, fire one round over their heads so it won’t hit anyone.
“If the response is a fusillade of rapid, precise rifle fire, they’re British.
“If the response is a s**tstorm of machine-gun fire, they’re German.
“If they throw down their arms and surrender, they’re Italian.
“And if nothing happens for five minutes and then your position is obliterated by support artillery or an airstrike, they’re American.”
Anyway, that’s one leg of the American way of war. It comes from Grant and the Federal Army in the Civil War.
The other leg comes from Bobby Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That leg is all about mobility and aggressiveness, especially in small units, and superb tactical leadership. This is what leads to things like the culmination of Thunder Road where American tankers are in the parking lot in Baghdad outside the hotel where Baghdad Bob is telling the world that the Americans are stalled, till they call him and ask where to park.
What ties it all together is logistics like the world has never seen. That racist old rebel and founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest was also a fine tactical leader. He said it best. “Get there firstest with the mostest.” Like this.
We’ve come a long way since that day in 1863 when three men in funny hats, stood looking at trains changing railroads. You see, Meade was sending two corps to Tennessee to reinforce Thomas’s army. They tried a mad innovation. They went by train and were there in less than a week instead of a month or more depending on the weather. And those guys in funny hats? They were observers from the Prussian Great General Staff soon to kick off the wars that would lead to Germany’s unification and then to the Great War.
Although American taxpayers would be grateful if Fort Fumble figured out that they ain’t world police, their job is to keep Americans free and safe, not random deserts in southwest Asia.
But we can also see how SCAPE (the successor to Eisenhower as Allied Expeditionary Forces Commmander in actuality is the successor of John 1st Duke of Marlborough as the guarantor of a free Europe When the British realized they couldn’t manage it anymore in 1945, they had a saying “Keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”. They’ve done it well.