the most martial-spirited Americans sit at nice mahogany desks in a big marble building on a hill near the Potomac and have no problem throwing around their martial-spirit, as long as they or theirs do not have to do the fighting and dying.

But it occurs to me that there is a lesson to be learned from Germany. Hitler was too overconfident in 1939 when he decided to invade Poland. The Großer Generalstab did not feel the Wehrmacht was sufficiently prepared equipment wise for a potential protracted war. The lessons of the Polenfeldzug certainly helped make Fall Gelb the stunning victory it was, but Hitler then stretched the military even further by invading Crete (Merkur certainly was a Pyrrhic victory) and then getting involved in North Africa (Italy certainly was the “weak sister” of the alliance). Invading Russia, while initially successful, was the final straw and Germany was thus engaged on too many fronts without the resources (guns, tanks, and planes you can build but people are much harder replace). The early victories led to even greater commitments which lead eventually to over commitment. The Japanese had a term for it: senshoubyou (victory disease).

In similar fashion, I think the US is dangerously spread thin across a wide spectrum of commitments, both military and economic, and we are beginning to have a difficult time resourcing those activities. We must be careful that our own hubris does not give us a terminal case of senshoubyou.