There have been others (researching WW II, Vietnam, and even the Civil War) who have discredited some of his theories (especially those dealing with the behavior of men under fire). A more recent critique (although not as direct as some) came from Peter Kindsvatter in "American Soldiers." Doubler's "Closing with the Enemy" is also critical. Both are from the University of Kansas Press' Modern War Studies series.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
A little grist for the mill about the applicability of SLA Marshall's work today.Originally Posted by Steve Blair
Usually, when one extrapolates from the known past to the present or future, this is called arguing from analogy. That is, one draws inferences about how things will be in the future based on relelvant similarities to things in the past. However, a major piece of the portrayal must also show that the present case and the past case do not have too many relelvant dissimilarities.
Regardless of what we may make of the accuracy and veracity of Marshall's research, I submit that a very relevant dissimilarity exists. This relevant dissimilarity is such as to suggest that we ought not argue by analogy from Marshall's work at all. Today we have an all volunteer force. I suspect that what motivates the current all volunteer force is very different from what was at work in America's largely draft-fueled armies of WWI, WWII, Korean and Viet Nam. I suspect that a number of other values-related dissimilarities exist between the American fighting men and women of the 21st Century and those of the mid-20th Century. Each of these may be further reason not to draw analogous conclusions from Marshall's studies.
I am, as always, willing to be convinced otherwise.
Obviously there is a dissimilarity between today's military and that of the draft era. But that wasn't the question at hand. The question centered on the accuracy of SLAM's research. Sources studying the same eras as SLAM have brought his findings into serious question.
The reason for this discussion relates to historical examinations of past combats, not necessarily the current application of his theories.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Hi WM,
This is something that Anthropologists do all the time - reason by analogy. Personally, I think that Carlo Ginzburg's position on this is probably best: (paraphrasing) The interpretation that requires the fewest number of additional hypotheses is the most plausible (aka Ginzburg's Razor; note that this considers plausibility, not "truth"). I like the concept of "relevant dissimilarities" but, I have to ask, who decides relevance?
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Marc,
I post this at the risk of being chastised again for being outside the scope of this thread's original point.
I suspect that relevance is decided by "them". I further suspect that you know how "them" is. "Them" is that otherwise faceless, nameless group of authorities to whom we appeal whenever we don't really want to put our own necks, reputations, etc. on the line. Our parents invoked "them" all the time, and we probably do as well when we try to impart the hard lessons to our children. For example:
Child: "Why can't I drink that entire 2 liter bottle of Coke in one sitting?"
Parent: "You know, they say that Coke cleans rust off a car's chrome. Do you want that stuff swirling around in your stomach?"
"Them" is City Hall, as in "You can't fight City Hall."
"Them" includes the folks who create all those urban legends that we find discounted on the internet at Snopes or discredited on TV by the Myth Busters.
"Them" are all the otherwise unnamed popular sages who maintain the status quo of our collective "wisdom" (AKA lore, myhtology, popular science, etc.)
More seriously, your point about determining relevance applies to the similarities as well as the dissimilarities. I think that most arguments from analogy suffer from a form of circular reasoning--that is the arguers have already presupposed the conclusion to some degree and are therefore looking for similar cases to lend support to their positions. Arguing by analogy adds little new knowledge to our stock pile of truth. Instead, the technique entrenches what has passed for truth in the past.
Sorry for the rehashing of Humean skepticism. (I throw this last in as an attempt to bring my post back into the realm of History. David did write a compendious history of England, didn't he?)
I suspect that you are correct in this <sigh>. It's one of the reasons why I like Ginzburg's work so much, especially his methodological work. He has a great article in History Workshop (Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method, History Workshop 9 (1980):5-36), and his methodology is nicely summarized in Muir and Ruggiero's Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe:
Then again, Ginzburg is not after "truth", which he believes that w cannot know, but, rather, plausibility.Ginzburg wants to employ the primal method of the Paleolithic hunter, that first philologist, who recognized from paw prints that a lion he had never actually seen, heard, touched, or smelled had come this way. The characteristic feature of the hunter's knowledge "was that it permitted the leap from aparently insignificant facts, which could be observed, to a complex reality which - directly at least - could not. And these facts would be ordered by the observer in such a way as to provide a narrative sequence - at its simplest, 'something passed this way.'"
Marc
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
I disregarded Marshall's work after reading COL Hackworth's account in 'About Face'. I had read very little of his work before then, but even then it seemed like dramatized history.
I believe that there was an article in the Journal of Military History in the last few years that actually validated Marshall's conclusions.
While not a validation, I remember LtGen P.K. Van Riper USMC (ret) discussing the personal impact of reading Marshall's Men Against Fire. The book became Van Riper's touchstone. He read it before and after every tour in a combat zone, making notes and developing his own thoughts along the way.
I recently read Doubler's work. And I recommend it, highly. There is also a good work by a Russian author whose name completely escapes me that does a lot to debunk the myth that the Russians won in WWII due to mass manpower. In fact, the battles that the Russians won were often fought from a standpoint of INFERIOR material numbers and INFERIOR manpower to the Germans. In battles the Russians attempted to drown the Germans in materiel and manpower, the Germans generally won.
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