Humanity Finds Many Reasons to Fight
Why War? Richard Overy. W.W. Norton & Co. 304 pages. $27.99
By Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Army retired
Why War? is the latest of over 30 books written or edited by Richard Overy, one of the world’s finest military historians and probably the best historian of World War II writing in English today.
His new work tackles the ever-elusive question of why humans have engaged in warfare since the dawn of history. It is a simply worded question but one that is extraordinarily complex to answer, as Overy demonstrates in chapter after chapter.
He begins with a question that Albert Einstein posed to Sigmund Freud in 1932. Sponsored by a committee of the League of Nations, the two eminent intellectuals engaged in an open dialogue on a fundamental question: “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”
Of course, their discussion was only 14 years removed from World War I and just seven years before the onset of World War II. Those two wars represent the most violent three decades in recorded history, when millions were slaughtered on the altar of great-power war. Anti-war sentiment ran high in the 1920s and 1930s, for good reason, so the world’s greatest minds tried to tackle the question. Their correspondence on the subject is available in book form, also called Why War?
The world is returning to great-power competition with increased risk of great-power war as the international system of rules that was put in place in 1945 comes under increased stress for a variety of reasons. Overy’s book is timely for those interested in preventing war and maintaining the nearly 80-year stretch of great-power peace the world has enjoyed since World War II ended.
To prevent war, it is first necessary to understand why wars begin. In the first part of Why War?, Overy takes the reader through a thorough review of the literature that tries to explain the biological, psychological, anthropological and ecological reasons for war.
In the second part, the author addresses the more classic political reasons for war, including resource competition, belief systems and ideology, the quest for power and the age-old desire for security in the face of fear from external aggressors. This section provides a detailed overview of the key elements of Thucydides’ famous observation that the causes of war are fear, pride and national interest.
Of course, Overy concludes there is no simple explanation for the cause of war, and therefore, there is no simple way to prevent it. He correctly notes that wars in general are the product of multiple causes in combination, so a particular war is caused by the unique combination of factors at the time. All the theories Overy explores in this short book apply and should be used to develop an appreciation of the situation of warfare in all its forms.
Why War? will be well worth the effort for any military professional, diplomat, historian or member of the public interested in one of the most challenging problems facing humanity.
Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Army retired, served as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retiring in September 2023. Previously, he was the 39th chief of staff of the Army. He graduated from Princeton University, New Jersey. He has two master’s degrees: one in international relations from Columbia University, New York, and one in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College.
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Dealing With Deployments From All Perspectives
Army Spouses: Military Families during the Global War on Terror. Morten Ender. University of Virginia Press. 240 pages. $29.50
By Kayla Williams
Strohwitwe is a German word meaning “straw widow” that refers to women whose husbands are away from home for multiple nights for work, military sociologist Morten Ender explains in the introduction to Army Spouses: Military Families during the Global War on Terror. Launching his volume with a reminder that such separations exist across countries, cultures, eras and careers grounds the work in a broader context.
Nonetheless, Ender points out about the 20-year global war on terrorism, “in no other war have U.S. service members deployed and redeployed so often to a singular broader campaign.” In this academic work, he presents themes and illustrative quotes derived from interviews with 199 strohwitwe conducted at multiple Army bases in the U.S. and Germany in 2003, 2004, 2008 and 2018. By sharing how conversations shifted from the initial invasion of Iraq, when many were embarking on their first family separation due to deployment, to 15 years later, when many had endured multiple deployments, Ender captures the normalization of the deployment cycle for Army families.
The analysis is framed in four theoretical traditions: “stress, binary greedy institutions, military-family-state triad and militarization.” The first three chapters cover the cycle of predeployment, deployment and postdeployment, and reintegration. Together, they address themes of uncertainty, stress, loneliness, new roles and responsibilities, the length and frequency of deployments, how rest and recuperation periods were experienced, joyous reunions and the requirement for many couples to “renegotiate their roles, expectations, and levels of independence.”
Subsequent chapters are organized thematically. Ender discusses how spouses use formal and informal social supports, children and adolescents who “take the brunt of the deployments,” how modern technology has changed communication during deployments and how spouses engage with televised coverage of combat.
Woven throughout is an exploration of the increased diversity of modern Army families, which include those with straw widowers and single parents, and reconstituted, LGBTQ+ and extended families. Additionally, Ender notes the emergence of “emancipated army spouses,” who are largely disconnected from the military community.
A professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, who grew up in an Army family, Ender’s insider status may have helped him build rapport and trust with those he interviewed. He brings experience and years of research together to close with a series of outside-the-box recommendations.
One is to create a buddy system to facilitate informal support between family members, particularly to enable those with more experience to share their hard-won expertise.
Another, more radical, is to prohibit service members from being married or having dependents during their initial enlistments, requiring them to live in the barracks to focus on gaining military and life skills.
Overall, this deeply researched work is not only a valuable contribution to the field of military sociology, but it also is a fascinating read for military policymakers, leaders and families interested in grounding personal experiences in academic theory and a broader context.
While the frequent deployments of the global war on terrorism may be dramatically reduced since the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the lessons contained in Army Spouses will prove valuable for future generations of strohwitwe in the military and beyond.
Kayla Williams is the author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army and Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War.
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Meet the Civil War’s Silent Professionals
The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations. Patrick O’Donnell. Atlantic Monthly Press. 432 pages. $30
By Maj. Thomas McShea
In an incident often omitted from standard Civil War narratives, Confederate Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood was delayed as he marched toward Thoroughfare Gap on Aug. 28, 1862, to support Maj. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia. Jack Sterry, clothed as a Confederate cavalryman and claiming to be a courier from Jackson’s headquarters, was actually a member of the Jessie Scouts—a small U.S. Army scout unit whose operations in the Civil War frequently went beyond mere reconnaissance.
Operating alone deep behind enemy lines, Sterry did his best to play the part of a Rebel guide to deceive Hood and his staff, and divert them toward a new rendezvous point, away from the battlefield where their division was sorely needed.
The Confederates ultimately discovered Sterry’s true identity and hanged him on the spot. But in his final courageous moments, Sterry defiantly declared that he was proud to have fooled Hood and his officers for a half-hour during a critical battle, and that he wanted his comrades to know that “when the rebels got me, I died as a Jessie Scout should!”
Sterry’s audacious story is one of many daring small-unit actions, intelligence-gathering missions and espionage efforts detailed in Patrick O’Donnell’s The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations. This book highlights an area of Civil War history that is often buried or altogether absent in standard narratives of the war due to the secretive and often clandestine nature of these sorts of operations.
With these stories of the Jessie Scouts, Sheridan’s Scouts, the South’s Mosby’s Rangers, the Confederate Secret Service and many other little-known units, O’Donnell connects the actions of some of the Civil War’s most silent professionals to the broader narrative of the war and its eventual outcome.
The Unvanquished follows a generally chronological format and documents the origins and actions of these Civil War units that fought a continuous shadow war for information, deception and espionage as each side sought desperately to gain an advantage.
O’Donnell’s accounts of arduous raids and ambushes far behind enemy lines are well researched and splendidly written. The narrative leaves the reader with a better grasp of how well-led, highly talented, experienced and motivated small units make impacts at all levels of warfare.
O’Donnell also shows the desperate lengths both sides went to in their efforts to clandestinely undermine the highest levels of their adversary’s governments, particularly the Confederate Secret Service.
Readers of The Unvanquished also will gain an appreciation for the continued shadow war along the Texas border with Mexico in the months and years following Confederate Gen. Robert Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and the central, yet almost forgotten, role played by the Jessie Scouts in those important missions.
The broader underlying message behind this book is that the men who fought in these secretive units during the Civil War in many ways inspired the formation of similar American units during the wars of the 20th century. O’Donnell’s 2004 book about the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII’s OSS, revealed how that organization’s founders based many of its methods on the Jessie Scouts, Rangers and other clandestine operators of the Civil War.
As such, The Unvanquished can be summarized as a brief history of special operations of the U.S. and Confederate armies—a term not often associated with that era but proven to be appropriate. Civil War scholars, students and enthusiasts alike will find The Unvanquished to be a valued addition to their libraries.
Maj. Thomas McShea is an Army strategist and an instructor in the History Department of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. Previously, he served as an armor officer in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 4th Infantry Division. He graduated from West Point in 2010 and has a master’s degree in American history from the University of Georgia.
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Famous General’s Leadership on Display
Patton’s Prayer: A True Story of Courage, Faith and Victory in World War II. Alex Kershaw. Dutton. 368 pages. $32
By Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired
Patton’s Prayer: A True Story of Courage, Faith and Victory in World War II is the latest of Alex Kershaw’s many books. Like his others, it is fast-moving and entertaining. However, the book has little to do with the prayer for good weather Gen. George Patton Jr. asked of his chaplain before Third U.S. Army advanced on Bastogne, Belgium. Instead, the focus is on Patton’s role in the relief of Bastogne and the concluding campaigns of World War II.
The key characters are Patton himself, intelligence officer Col. Oscar Koch, Brig. Gen. Albin Irzyk and Col. Creighton Abrams, whose battalion reached Bastogne first. The Ardennes Forest itself and the miserable weather also are important characters in this story. The besieged 101st Airborne Division and the relieving 4th Armored Division are the only units featured.
The Bastogne relief operation was larger than the narrative suggests. In fact, III Corps, led by Maj. Gen. John Millikin, made the attack that relieved Bastogne. That corps included not only the 4th Armored Division but also the 26th and 80th Infantry Divisions.
Patton’s Prayer, in some ways, praises the great soldier beyond his just desserts. Patton, like any good commander, developed contingencies for current operations, but contrary to the myths, neither Koch nor Patton anticipated the German counteroffensive.
Kershaw makes no claim about Patton’s ability to predict the future, but implies that no one but Patton could turn a corps of three divisions some 90 degrees and have it attack in a new and unexpected direction and do so on short notice. That is not the case.
Because Patton had an attack scheduled for Dec. 19, 1944, he had III Corps and the rest of Third Army poised to move or support the attack. The way the U.S. Army organized itself made Patton’s feat possible.
Patton’s Prayer is a well-told story that honors a great soldier and those who served with him. Patton was indeed an inspired, if self-serving, operational commander. As always, Kershaw tells the story brilliantly and renders an accurate portrait of Patton—flaws and all. He weaves the accounts of tankers, infantrymen, airmen and even the enemy into a whole cloth of siege and relief of Bastogne, as well as the last campaigns of World War II.
Kershaw uses secondary sources effectively, including Irzyk’s excellent memoir, He Rode Up Front for Patton.
The last three chapters alone are worth the price of the book, as they tell the story of the end of the war and Patton. Peace came too soon for Patton. Kershaw writes: “The end of the war in Europe unbalanced Patton, set him off kilter.”
The unbalanced general spoke out of turn, suggesting that the Nazis were a political party, just as the Republicans and Democrats. Kershaw notes that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, let his old friend down gently, removing him from Third Army and assigning him to command Fifteenth U.S. Army. It was a downward move, as Patton’s new command was an administrative command.
Patton’s own words about those lost in the war, quoted in Patton’s Prayer, serve well as an epitaph: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”
Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired, commanded a tank battalion in Operation Desert Storm and an armor brigade in Bosnia. A former director of the School of Advanced Military Studies, his most recent book is No Sacrifice too Great: The 1st Infantry Division in World War II.