Victory or defeatarmies in the aftermath of conflict

Edited byPeter Dennis & Jeffrey Grey

the 2010 chief of army history conference

VICTORY OR DEFEAT: ARMIES IN THE AFTERMATH OF CONFLICT

First published 2010

ISBN: 978-0-9808140-7-1

Published by Big Sky Publishing

© Commonwealth of Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Designed and set by Margaret McNally

Cover design: Defence Publishing Service – front cover: AWM A03269 - A German soldier surrendering to two British Officers as he leaves his dugout, Western Front c.1917. Back Cover: AWM P03258.080 - Members of the Australian Force Communications Unit about to board a United Nations truck at Battambang, Cambodia, 1993.

Major Sponsor

Conference Dinner Sponsor

Keynote Sponsor

Networking Drinks Sponsor

Satchel Sponsor

The Army History Unit gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the sponsors

in staging the 2010 Chief of Army History Conference.

iii

contents

Preface ivNotes on Contributors viiIntroduction Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie xA Glorious Defeat? How the French Remembered the Armies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars Alan Forrest 1Losing the Insurgent Twentieth Century: The United States Army and Reform after the Philippine-American War, 1902-1916 David Silbey 21Lessons of Defeat, Lessons for War: The Ottoman Empire Mustafa Aksakal 37How Military Tradition Prevailed and Reform Failed to Prevent the Collapse of the Russian Empire John W. Steinberg 48The British Army after the Victories of 1918 and 1945 G.C. Peden 81The German Army after the Great War: A Case Study in Selective Self-Deception Geoffrey P. Megargee 104Liberating Australian New Guinea and British Borneo: The Directorate of Research and Post-Hostilities Planning, 1943-1945 Graeme Sligo 118Hiroshima over Hanoi: The Atomic Battlefield in SEATO Contingency Planning, 1955-1965 Damien Fenton 130The Vietnam People’s Army: Victory at Home (1975), Success in Cambodia (1989) Carlyle A. Thayer 149The US Army in the Aftermath of Conflict Henry G. Gole 176The South African Military and Post-Conflict Integrations in the Twentieth Century Ian van der Waag 193Index 227

iv

Preface

The Chief of Army’s annual military history conference for 2010 considered the big issues of military history: the short- and long-term ramifications of victory and defeat in war, and the implications these have in a hard and direct manner for armies, and directly and indirectly for their parent societies. If battle is the audit of war, then victory and defeat are the accounts rendered.

In his opening paper Alan Forrest noted the manner in which Waterloo cast a spectre across the nineteenth century in Europe, representative of the impact of both victory and defeat in military, socio-political and cultural terms. His discussion of the French and British authors and painters who incorporated ‘king-making Waterloo’ into their meditations on the violent revolutionary era which that battle brought, finally, to an end, might remind us of another battle, another defeat – and a victory, since a battle usually cannot be one without it also being the other. One of the greatest ruminations on the cultural impact of defeat in war ever penned in modern American literature – William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust – captures perfectly the expectations, frustrations and disappointments that linger in the national psyche for generations after decisive defeat in war.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago …

vP R E F A C E

It has sometimes been suggested that until Vietnam, Americans had never lost a war nor known defeat. As Faulkner and every Southerner knew (and knows) full well, some Americans had done so, and the implications of that defeat have marked American society and American culture right down to the present, with the election of the first Black president in 2008.

The themes that run through the papers at this conference are several, complex and overlapping, to include (but not exclusively): the notion that armies prepare to fight the last war, especially if victorious; that defeat makes nations more cautious or, paradoxically, motivates them to seek to reclaim all that they may previously have lost; that victory reinforces pre-existing patterns of behaviour and habits of mind, especially in senior military ranks; that in the aftermath of victory, armies are prey to the malevolent attentions of an ungrateful and unthinking exchequer.

Douglas MacArthur famously observed that there can be no substitute for victory; Colin Powell noted that we should be careful what we wish for. Victory can be as unsettling as defeat, at least in institutional terms. David Silbey points to the way in which the reform movement that followed the Philippines War effectively de-skilled the US Army in certain essentials even as it standardised the manner in which it was trained and educated along ‘modern’ lines. As a result, it became very good at doing what it did – fight really big, industrial-type wars to a successful conclusion – and did what it was now very good at doing, until the music stopped, the chairs were rearranged, and the context shifted. The US Army that Henry Gole describes so brilliantly, was the result. John Steinberg suggests a variation on this idea, one echoed in his turn by George Peden. In Imperial Russia there were people who understood what needed to be done, but they worked in a system that would not let them do it, for socio-political reasons. In Britain after each world war, but especially after 1918, there were hard choices to be made dictated by the availability, or otherwise, of resources. The often-pilloried generals of the interwar era (mostly) knew exactly what was needed, and were perfectly aware of and alive to the challenges wrought by new technologies and their applications to the battlefields of the world war, but they could not dictate government priorities or the international contexts in which these were decided. In both cases, what the reformers could control, they influenced, sometimes dramatically: they could look forward, but broader dictates of policy and regime preference often prevented them from moving forward.

Defeated militaries are not necessarily granted any greater leeway, but nor do they necessarily behave in the stereotypical ways sometimes assigned to them. Mustafa Aksakal points out that the Ottoman decision for war in 1914 was not born of a revanchist desire to retrieve the territorial losses arising from two centuries of decay and defeat – whatever

vi V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

the rhetoric of Ottoman academicians might suggest – but it was certainly a response to that process of decline, especially the dramatic and traumatic reversals occasioned by defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and yet was a rational and explicable response to the implications of inevitable and catastrophic decline and, ultimately and in the foreseeable future, of extinction as a great power. In short, victory may breed military adventurism, but so, too, may defeat. Geoffrey Megargee’s discussion of the Reichswehr’s thinking and preparations in the 1920s (and not merely in the 1930s after the Nazis came to power), makes this clear. The Reichswehr wanted another major war, and got it. Unfortunately, in analysing the defeat of 1918 the German officer corps learned only the lessons it wanted to learn.

Wars end untidily and, as Graeme Sligo argues, great wars usually end very untidily. Victory won and victory consolidated and successfully exploited are not the same thing, as the veterans of the People’s Army of Vietnam found after 1975. Nor do the means and methods of one war necessarily translate easily into thinking about, or waging, subsequent conflicts. The implications of atomic warfare after 1945 pointed towards a future conduct of operations that was not, in fact, attainable – or probably worth the attaining.

The final papers are joined by another central theme, identified by Henry Gole: the regeneration of an army. The three cases presented are very different in detail; citizens of stable liberal democracies have little real understanding or experience of the challenges posed by victory or defeat in totalitarian, authoritarian or merely militarised states. And yet, the ‘grand bargain’ that Carlyle Thayer lays out in his analysis of Vietnam in the 1980s has echoes in Ian van der Waag’s discussion of South Africa after 1994.

We are, as always, indebted to all those who contributed to the success of the conference, especially the speakers, the organisers from the Army History Unit (most particularly Roger Lee, Andrew Richardson and Nick Anderson), the conference sponsors, Terry McCullagh who compiled the index, and our ever-reliable typesetter, Margaret McNally.

Peter Dennis & Jeffrey Grey

vii

notes on contributors

Mustafa Aksakal is assistant professor of history at American University, Washington, DC. He completed his doctoral studies in Ottoman and Middle Eastern History at Princeton University. His book, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War, appeared in 2008.

Peter Dennis is emeritus professor of history at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Damien Fenton is a senior historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, New Zealand, where he is currently writing an illustrated history of New Zealand and the First World War, as well as being the general editor of the Ministry’s First World War website (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/category/tid/215). His PhD thesis, ‘SEATO and the Defence of SE Asia 1955-65’ is currently in preparation for publication by NUS Press in Singapore.

Alan Forrest has been professor of modern history at York University, England, since 1989, and for the last three years Director of the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. His most recent book is The Legacy of the French Revolutionary Wars (2009), and he is one of the General Editors of a series on War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850, published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie AO, DSC, CSM, enlisted in the Australian Army as an apprentice in 1968. He graduated from the Officer Cadet School, Portsea, in 1972 and was commissioned into the corps of the Royal Australian Engineers. He has held a range of regimental and staff appointments. These include: instructor appointments at the School of Military Engineering and 1st Recruit Training Battalion; regimental appointments in the rank of Captain and Major in the 2nd, 5th, and 2nd/3rd Field Engineer Regiments and the 1st Construction Regiment; Company Commander at the Army Apprentices School; and Senior Instructor at the School of Military Engineering. During 1986 and 1987 he was the Australian Exchange Instructor at the Royal School of Military Engineering in the United Kingdom. In 1989 he raised, and then deployed as the second in command and operations officer, the 2nd Australian Contingent to the United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia. In 1990/91 he was the Standing Chairman of the Quadripartite Working Group—Engineers in the ABCA Armies Agreement. In 1999 and 2000 he was the Senior National Officer for Australia in the ABCA Program. Senior appointments have included: the inaugural commanding officer of the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment, Staff Officer Operations to the Chief of the Defence Force, inaugural commander of the Australian Theatre Joint Intelligence Centre (ASTJIC), and the inaugural Principal Staff Officer—Intelligence, Headquarters Australian Theatre. He was promoted Brigadier in January

viii V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

1999. In this rank he was the Chief of Staff Training Command—Army, he commanded the United Nations Sector West multinational brigade in East Timor, and he was the National Commander of Australia’s contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom. He was appointed Land Commander Australia in January 2004 and in July 2005 he was promoted Lieutenant General and appointed as Vice Chief of the Defence Force. Lieutenant General Gillespie assumed the appointment of Chief of Army on 4 July 2008.

Henry G. Gole served in the US Army’s Special Forces, seeing active service in Korea and Vietnam. He has taught at West Point and the US Army War College, and is the author of The Road to Rainbow: Planning for Global War 1934-40 (2003), Soldiering: Observations from Korea, Vietnam and Safe Places (2005), and most recently, General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War (2008).

Jeffrey Grey is professor of history at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Geoffrey P. Megargee holds the position of Applied Research Scholar in the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, where he is editor-in-chief of the Museum’s seven-volume Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. He received his PhD in military history from Ohio State University and is the author of Inside Hitler’s High Command (2000; winner of the Society for Military History’s 2001 Distinguished Book Award), and War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (2006).

G.C. Peden is emeritus professor of history at the University of Stirling. He is a graduate of Dundee (MA) and Oxford (DPhil) and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His publications include British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932-1939 (1979); The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906-1959 (2000), and Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs (2007).

David Silbey is an associate professor of military history at Alvernia College, in Reading, PA. He has taught at North Carolina State University, Duke University, and Bowdoin College. He is the author of The British Working Class and Enthusiasm for War, 1914-1916 (2005) and A War of Empire and Frontier: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (2007. His current project, The Third China War: America, Britain, and the Boxers will be published in 2011.

Graeme Sligo is a colonel in the Australian Army. He has served twice in Iraq, most recently as Defence Attaché in Baghdad. An interest in post-hostilities planning, and military government of liberated enemy territory, has led to a study of past Australian practice, particularly the Army’s Second World War Directorate of Research, which is currently with Cambridge University Press.

John W. Steinberg is professor of Russian history at Georgia Southern University. His research interests focus on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian military history. Dr Steinberg was an IREX fellow in Moscow and the Fulbright professor of Russian history at Helsinki University. His publications include a co-edited two-volume collection entitled The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero (2005), All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the

ixN O T E S O N C O N T R I B U T O R S

Empire, 1898-1914 (2010), and The Quest to Reform: The Education, Training, and Performance of the Russian General Staff, 1898-1914, which has been recently published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Carlyle A. Thayer is professor of politics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author of two monographs on the Vietnamese military: Vietnam People’s Army: Development and Modernization (2009) and The Vietnam People’s Army Under Doi Moi (1994).

Ian van der Waag is an associate professor and head of the Department of Military History, Faculty of Military Sciences, Stellenbosch University. His interest in modern African history has led him to produce the first survey of the military history of twentieth-century South Africa (appearing 2011) as well as to the editorship for the forthcoming, two-volume, Encyclopaedia of African Colonial Conflict with ABC-CLIO (2013). He has published recently on war literature in the Journal of Contemporary History (2009), the politics of colonial command in Soldiers and Settlers (2009), and Anglo-South African defence relations and dominion nationalism in Contemporary British History (2010).

x

The theme of this year’s conference – ‘Victory or Defeat: Armies in the Aftermath of Conflict’ – examines an issue of central relevance to the army of today and is at the core of how modern armies evolve. It has had a special resonance in the twenty years since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union took some of the certainty and predictability out of defence planning. Put simply, an army exists to support the nation: if the first responsibility of government is the defence of the nation, the army is one of its most important tools for doing so. Governments continue to support military capability as an essential arm of meeting their defence responsibilities, even though armies are not cheap to establish and maintain.

Yet governments have many other responsibilities and, in the face of severe resource pressures, always struggle to satisfy the various competing demands. This is particularly so in a democratic state but as students of the last days of the Soviet Union will attest, all nations and political systems face the challenge of insufficient resources. The consequence is that governments determine priorities for spending based on the perceived national interest at the time, and are often forced to compromise on the degree of support provided to individual responsibilities. In this, the army is no different from other national requirements such as national infrastructure development, education or health. A further problem is that military capabilities are not simple or quick to acquire, are very expensive and frequently come into service and go out again without ever having been used for the purpose for which they were acquired. The challenge faced by governments is to decide whether the national priority supports some new military capability or some other investment – a new hospital or a new freeway for example. That is never an easy decision for government, but it becomes easier if the consequences arising from the decision are clear – there is rarely a problem attracting funding priority for the army when we are at war – especially a major war with national survival at stake. Conversely, extended years of peace in benign strategic environments make attracting funding priority for armies more difficult. We all know this but it is the essential start point for this conference.

Introduction

Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie

xiI N T R O D U C T I O N

Related to this point is that period immediately following conflict, when the nation has sacrificed much to the war effort and now wants to benefit from the peace – we will all remember the post-Cold War demand for a peace dividend. There is the natural desire by people who have survived a major conflict to believe that the past war has resolved national differences and that war is now not in prospect: a belief encouraged in the twentieth century by the establishment of international bodies such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, intended to make war between nations unnecessary. That appealing concept of a world free of war is most in evidence in the 1920s – not a good period for army commanders trying to maintain a credible defence capability. The reason, as we know well, is that following a major conflict, governments face intractable problems such as bankrupt treasuries, national infrastructures in ruins, dislocated populations and vast numbers of demobilised soldiers to be assimilated back into civilian life. Making that priority call was a comparatively easy for governments in the early 1920s. However, despite all the evidence, despite the international enthusiasm for disarmament and slashed defence spending, a capable military was required within twenty years. For contemporary military planners, it is important we understand the reasons governments and nations of that time signed up to this view of the future world. It is a truism that while technologies and methodologies may change, human nature remains constant and largely predictable and we should be able to learn from that period and avoid committing the same mistakes today.

Another factor that exercises my mind as Army Commander is the challenge of preparing an army now that will meet the nation’s requirements at some time in the future. This is not as easy a task as it may sound. Forecasting the future, which is what preparing for the next war amounts to, involves much more than the comparatively simple matter of predicting who the likely next enemy will be. It requires all manner of subjective judgments ranging from predicting technological developments to anticipating the likely policies of governments twenty years in the future. For someone from an engineering background, this lack of precision in terms of defining both the problem and the possible solutions would be a source of intense frustration were it not for the challenge it presents.

It was the Iron Duke, Wellington, who remarked: ‘we are too inclined to found our changes on the experiences of our last war instead of looking forward to what we shall require in the next.’ While the army’s current crop of planners might with some justification deny this is the case at present, Wellington’s observation is an accurate assessment of military planning throughout most of the Australian Army’s existence – for very good and simple reasons. It is from the past that we derive our quantitative data to

xii V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

inform future directions. The past, especially a past war, provides the only measurable performance indicator of what works under combat conditions. Most armies are extremely well prepared to fight the last war as their planners analyse in minute detail what succeeded, what failed and why it failed. They identify what needs to be done to ensure it doesn’t fail next time. In one sense, this conference is a consequence of this need to understand the past and try and employ the past as an aide to improving the future. Even more importantly, armies tend to justify their existence on their achievements; they judge their current capabilities against the last time these capabilities were used for their designed purpose. It is easier to convince the public and governments of the need for a capability, such as armour, for example, if in the last war, armour was a major part of the victory.

However, this looking back has a very limited time frame for audiences outside the army. Another pointer from the post war 1920s period comes from the Australian experience. Both the population and the government of the day had an intimate knowledge of military matters and, having seen the need for the army, readily accepted recommendations from senior military leaders as to the shape, size and composition of an appropriate post-war army for Australia. In the face of the factors I outlined above, this grand organisation never got past the planning stage. The public lost interest as the prospect of war rapidly faded, politicians became concerned with internal matters and even many of the ex-war time military seemed intent on moving on. The past had provided a very limited justification and support for an army appropriate for the past. Perhaps the problem was that in basing the justification in the past, its value diminished as the past receded.

Despite all the analysis and careful examination of every facet of past wars, history shows that nearly every army is surprised by something that happens in the next one. The reasons for this are related to my earlier point about foretelling the future. The same military performance data is available to our future enemies. We put a lot of effort into exchanging ideas with other militaries so broadening our, and their, understanding of each other’s skills and procedures. We adopt new technologies even if we struggle to work out how best to use them – the British approach to armoured warfare in World War II being a good example. Yet, even with all this effort, our future enemies continue to surprise us. Knowing our capabilities and processes enables an aggressive enemy to plan new approaches to deal with them. Appreciating our political, societal and technological advances provides the aggressor with almost limitless options to exploit our obvious weaknesses. The German plans to outflank the Maginot Line were not only based on the obvious limitations of a defensive system with an open flank but more

xiiiI N T R O D U C T I O N

importantly revealed a sound strategic assessment by the German High Command of the likely political reactions of France and Great Britain. Similarly, the German blitzkrieg of 1941 still surprised the Russians, even though they had played a major role in the early formulation of the concept and in the development of the necessary technology, as much because of a sound strategic assessment by the Germans of the Soviet political and military command system.

We have no option with technology but to collaborate internationally. It is moving ahead very quickly and no one army, with the possible exception of the US Army, is big enough that it can isolate itself from international cooperation and information exchange yet still remain fully informed on future technology directions and at the cutting edge of exploitation of these new developments. The Red Army tried that to its own detriment prior to 1941. One factor that seems to appear in most examples of post-conflict outcomes is a much increased level of allied interaction. Perhaps the current high level of international military cooperation is one lesson we have learned well from the post-war experiences of previous centuries.

Which returns us to that factor with which I started – resources. There is a large gulf between knowing what the future army should look like and actually winning the resources, both human and financial, to achieve it. Despite our understanding of the need for modern weapons when facing a modern enemy, the Australian Army still entered World War II with equipment appropriate – even dating from – the earlier war. Perhaps we should not be looking to what happened in the last war to determine what we need to do and how we will need to go about it. Perhaps we should be looking to what happened once the last war had ended: at that period of peace that followed it. While the army of the future may look to past conflicts for its capability lessons and more esoteric matters such as esprit de corps and morale maintenance, it should look to the immediate post-conflict period and the intervening years of peace for lessons on how to maintain credible capability in the face of strategic uncertainty and short time-frame national priorities.

1

‘A Glorious Defeat’: Remembering the Napoleonic Wars in

Nineteenth-Century France

Alan Forrest

Defeat

How, it may reasonably be asked, can defeat be thought of as glorious, especially a defeat that leads to the destruction of a country’s government and institutions? In the bleak aftermath of surrender such a defeat can appear as dispiriting as it is total, and never more than when the cause for which one has fought and lost is ideological, whether it is religious faith for some, or political ideals for others. In war the victors tend to write the political agenda as much as they define the historical record, and all too often the defeat of a system, a regime, is also the defeat of the idea that lies behind it. More is involved than simply the defeat of an army, however painful that is for the officers and soldiers who have fought in it. 1815 was not just about a military loss; it was, in modern terminology, about regime change, the insistence by the Allies that France abandon the institutions for which it had sacrificed so much and accept a restored monarchy that would be acceptable to its conquerors. Regime change can be cruel for the losers; just think what it is like to work for a system, or within a system, all your life, only to be told that what you have struggled for has no value, is wrong or morally corrupt, that what you have achieved is therefore deemed worthless. If you doubt me, think what it would have been like in the DDR when the wall came down. For the politicians and the army officers who had steered Napoleonic France, had shared the imperial dream of a new, modernised polity, and had taken their ideas of efficient administration, accessible justice and human rights across Europe, often to people who had enjoyed no individual rights under feudal or absolutist regimes, it was this defeat, the defeat of their life’s work, that could seem most crushing.1 And, just as in East Berlin in 1989, the defeat was not limited to a few prominent individuals; it affected, and blighted, a whole generation of Frenchmen who had supported the imperial cause.

1 See, for instance, Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949-1989 (Oxford, 1995).

2 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Not all Frenchmen, of course, had shared the Napoleonic dream. For a minority, royalists and émigrés and sworn enemies of the Revolution and Empire, there might even be some cause for rejoicing that their years of exclusion and exile were over. Yet even they had to tread carefully. Their rejoicing had to be decently muted. To do more would risk causing revulsion as it would be seen as rejoicing at the nation’s misery, mocking its millions of dead. But it is important to emphasise that not everyone shared a common sense of grief and loss at Napoleon’s final defeat. There is an element of subjectivity, of plasticity, about the whole idea of defeat that ensured that it held different meanings for the various political constituencies within the nation.2

The Empire was, of course, far less ideological than the East German regime. Napoleon insisted on obedience and loyalty from his collaborators and, indeed, from the nations of the Empire, but that involved a commitment to civil administration and state-building rather than any narrow ideological stance. There was no Napoleonic faith, and little that could be defined as Napoleonic ideology, other than a belief in administrative efficacy, a clear secularism and an almost republican attachment to merit as the basis for promotion. He was little interested in religious ideas, and his Concordat with the Pope was much more a political than a religious document, one that sought to guarantee stability and avert the possibility of religious factionalism. In Egypt, famously, he had declared himself willing to embrace Islam if it would help him to gain the confidence of the people, a claim that led to much mockery in contemporary pamphlets and caricature. A modern state was a secular one, where Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Jews could share equal rights as citizens, or, as Napoleonic language tellingly preferred to express it, administrés. Yet, when Napoleon lost his final battle at Waterloo, there was no doubting that it marked the end of a political era as well of close on a quarter-century of European warfare, an era that had begun with the French Revolution. And even if many had tired of the political upheaval, the factionalism and intolerance that had marked so much of the revolutionary decade, they continued to enjoy certain of its benefits – notably the individualism, secularism and meritocracy that it had bestowed on them, the end of privilege and feudal obligation, the economic controls that had been exercised by trade guilds and privileged corporations. It was the achievement of their generation that was at stake, the world they had worked to create, and for many who had felt liberated by 1789 it spelt an unwelcome reaction, a return to an uncertain world of privilege and court ceremonial, ushering in the return of émigré nobles and a full-blooded Catholic reaction as the Bourbons sought to stamp out

2 Pierre Laborie, ‘La défaite: usages du sens et masques du déni’, in Patrick Cabanel and Pierre Laborie (eds), Penser la défaite (Toulouse, 2002), 10.

3‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

what remained of the revolutionary legacy. For them this represented defeat, the defeat of their aspirations, the defeat of enlightened humanism. In the immediate aftermath of 1815 it can be seen to have eclipsed political and ideological divisions and to have given rise, at least temporarily, to what Jean-Marc Largeaud calls a ‘rhetoric of desolation’.3

There could be some argument, of course, about just when that defeat occurred, or over how many years and campaigns it stretched. What was the cardinal moment that turned the war in the Allies’ favour? Was it at Waterloo, which led to the final surrender and Napoleon’s removal from the European stage? Or at Leipzig two years earlier, after which – with the destruction of the Confederation of the Rhine and the opening of European markets to external trade for the first time since 1807 - there could be little doubt that the previously defeated European powers had established a military hegemony in central Europe from which the Empire could not recover?4 Or with the campagne de France of 1814, when the war was brought back home and the towns and villages of eastern France experienced invasion – the first time that the war had been fought on French soil since the Spanish army spilled into Perpignan back in 1793? Each of these moments was a marker of how far Napoleon’s military power and declined, and each a tangible symbol of defeat. But it was Waterloo that became the defining moment in European memory, and it would continue to exercise a unique hold over the nineteenth-century European imagination. After Waterloo there would be no return, Napoleon’s departure to exile on Saint-Helena a final act in a Shakespearean drama, the destination chosen by his enemies to ensure that he would be forever separated from the French people he had seduced or the world empire he had ruled.

There can have been few who failed to understand the significance of that moment, or who doubted that the war had been lost. The accounts of survivors tell the same familiar story of the collapse of the French right before a Prussian assault, the vital importance of Blücher’s arrival, and the errors made by a succession of French commanders, among them Napoleon himself. Some, a very few, went further, attacking Napoleon’s misjudgements, accusing him of overconfidence, even naivety. Marbot, famously if intemperately, wrote that ‘we were made to manoeuvre like pumpkins’, while Napoleon continued to wait for Marshal Grouchy’s arrival long after communication with his marshal had been lost.5 The consequences were clear. On the international stage the years of glory were over, and decisions about their future now lay with the nations they had so recently invaded,

3 Jean-Marc Largeaud, Napoléon et Waterloo: La défaite glorieuse de 1815 à nos jours (Paris, 2006), 54.4 Digby Smith, 1813: Leipzig. Napoleon and the Battle of the Nations (London, 2001), 300.5 Mémoires du Général Baron de Marbot (3 vols, Paris, 1891), 3: 403.

4 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

dominated and ruled as satellite kingdoms. And politically the Restoration monarchy was in no mood to offer an olive branch. In autumn 1815 there were elections to be won, and an avalanche of vituperative invective was unleashed. In France this was the high point of the black legend of Napoleon, who was presented as a tyrant, an ogre, the devoted disciple of Robespierre now held responsible for making unending war and killing millions of soldiers across Europe to feed his vaulting ambition. In stark contrast, of course, were the serenity and peace which were supposedly on offer from the Bourbons.6

If Frenchmen were tempted to doubt the totality of their defeat, of course, others were always around to remind them. The British were most vocal, and for the most compelling reasons. Of all the powers aligned against France Britain had been the most persistent and determined, France’s traditional adversary in the wars of the eighteenth century in Europe and her natural competitor in European expansion and overseas empire. With the exception of Austria, no country had fought longer or across so many continents; since 1793 Britain and France had remained in a constant state of war, excepting only the months of truce after the Peace of Amiens. France’s ultimate defeat, on land as well as at sea, was a bitter reminder, if reminder was needed, of the extent of Britain’s gains from the conflict, gains reflected in her trade figures, in her tax base, in her imperial ambitions world wide – all of them factors in explaining France’s inability to compete, even when endowed with such a potent military leader as Bonaparte. Following Waterloo, Britain did not pull back from public celebrations, seeing the victory as proof of the quality and tenacity of her troops and the justice of her cause. The fact that Napoleon no longer posed a threat to Europe seemed to justify excess. So the Waterloo medal was awarded to every soldier who had fought in the battle – an unparalleled attribution by a British government after the end of a war; banquets were planned for veterans; and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for a new bridge over the Thames, opened in 1817, to bear the name of Waterloo. Streets and towns took the name of the battle – one example among many is Waterlooville in Hampshire – in a triumphant show of national pride and patriotism. Wellington had gifts and honours showered upon him: a London mansion at Hyde Park Corner, boasting the proud address ‘Number One, London’, and a country estate at Stratford Saye near Basingstoke, usually referred to as a ‘modest’ estate, though modest only by comparison with the gift of Blenheim a hundred years earlier to the Duke of Marlborough following his successes against Louis XIV. The British government was in no mood to hold back in celebrating victory, or in claiming it. Cartoonists like Gillray and Cruikshank helped to drive the message home, and their cartoons were translated,

6 Largeaud, Napoléon et Waterloo, 46-7.

5‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

and published, in French.7 Interestingly, the other allies were more circumspect. The Austrians had recovered well from their early defeats, but, with the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, there was little doubt that Austria was one of the longer-term losers from the conflict. Prussia focussed her celebrations around the Wars of Liberation and Leipzig, which would contribute so much to defining her identity during the coming century. Russia, the other major beneficiary of the peace settlement, distrusted British imperial pretensions and helped Talleyrand to ensure that France remained a major player in the nineteenth-century balance of power.

Honour

The French troops who searched out the frontier and crossed the Ardennes in the wake of Waterloo knew that the battle was lost, and the war, too. But they did not, in the main, follow this through by blaming themselves, or feeling any shame for their failure to press home their advantage. They had, after all, little to be ashamed of: they had fought bravely against a succession of coalitions, and latterly against all the great powers of Europe. If there had been mistakes made at Waterloo, they were strategic errors, failures of communication, a misreading of Prussian manoeuvres – they in no way implied any lack of courage or bravura. Defeats are not all of one kind. It is quite possible to fight well and lose, and to feel no shame in losing, just as there are defeats that destroy the self-esteem and moral fibre of armies. Across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the French would know both kinds. The letters their officers and soldiers wrote in the days following Waterloo express disillusionment, sadness, exhaustion, uncertainty about the future, but not shame. For some peace was an opportunity to be grasped, gratefully, the return to civil society a dream they had doubted would ever happen. For others, it spelt uncertainty, disruption, and the loss of cherished friendships. The army had become their home, a substitute family, and they faced the prospect of returning to their village with doubt and apprehension. They knew that they faced difficult years of anti-climax, years that for many would be blighted by pain, incapacity from their wounds, and unemployment. Yet though their army careers might be over, their self-esteem as soldiers of the Emperor was undiminished. They had travelled Europe and beyond, seen unfamiliar landscapes and admired foreign capital cities, encountered strange peoples and experienced unexpected kindnesses. War had not all been suffering; war has its pleasures, too, and many soldiers returned with memories of glory, stories of adventures they would treasure till the end of their days. There were no official veterans’ associations after 1815 where old soldiers

7 Jean-Paul Bertaud, Alan Forrest et Annie Jourdan, Napoléon, le monde et les Anglais: Guerre des mots et des images (Paris, 2004), 185-92.

6 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

could meet and reminisce; yet we find them again and again in nineteenth-century novels and in local police reports, seeking one another out in bars, at fairs or at weekly markets, telling and retelling tales of their campaigns. Despite the undoubted miseries and hardships, many continued to look back on their service as the most memorable years of their lives.

By way of comparison, consider the tone of French soldiers’ recollections after two other military defeats, in 1871 and 1940. These defeats were different in scale, but different too, in the impact they had on men’s self-esteem. After Sédan the mood of the country was one of scandalised shock, and the reputation of France’s army, until so recently regarded as the strongest force in Europe, lay in ruins. Within days the Prussians were at the gates of Paris, and a culture of defeat left its mark on every facet of public life, to the point where, to quote Karine Varley, ‘it must have seemed as though patriotic transfigurations of the defeat permeated every area of cultural life’.8 In 1940, the French army was to feel that sense of humiliation again, as the journals and carnets written by French soldiers at the time eloquently reveal. Again, the totality of the defeat was unexpected and its scale overwhelming. The French had not recognised the power of German tank units or the importance of air cover; their forces, which they had previously boasted of as the finest in the world, had been simply overwhelmed, many of them forced to surrender without even firing their weapons. That is a quite different kind of defeat, one that saps morale and leaves soldiers bitter and dejected. Some blamed their officers; even more turned their venom on their government, on the political leadership of the Third Republic. ‘So everything is finished’, wrote one second lieutenant, Legay, when he learned at his position along the Maginot Line that the armistice had been signed. ‘Words cannot express what I feel: bitterness, humiliation, anger. Rage most of all, a secret rage against the men who are responsible, and those responsible are in France: all those abject political figures, the entire electorate of France, who have been deceived or dormant or debased during twenty years of democratic capitulation and cowardice.’ In six weeks, 65,000 men had died, and for nothing. Interspersed with bitterness is a desire to forget, to move on to another life. Another young officer whose war was spent in a prisoner-of-war camp expressed his feelings quite unequivocally. ‘This whole war and everything connected to it fills me with disgust. The title of ex-serviceman, of a veteran of 1940, to my eyes means little more than poor idiot.’9 It had been transformed into a badge of contempt.

8 Karine Varley, Under the Shadow of Defeat: The War of 1870-71 in French Memory (Basingstoke, 2008), 30.9 The soldiers’ journals figure among the documentation from the Second World War that was returned to France

from Moscow in 2000, and they are now in the archives of the Service Historique de la Défense at Vincennes. The quotations reproduced here are from an article by Jérôme Gautheret and Thomas Wieder, ‘Carnets de déroute’, in Le Monde, 20 July 2010.

7‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

In 1815, there was no hint of such contempt; the army might have lost, but it had fought valiantly for nearly a quarter of a century, it had suffered cruelly in the national cause, and Waterloo could not extinguish memories of Ulm, Jena or Austerlitz. The scale of the wars counted, too. French armies had taken on the combined might of Europe, ranged against France in seven coalitions; and abroad, too, in Egypt and Syria, India and the Caribbean. Like the Seven Years War before it, these had been world wars; in that respect, too, they were quite different from the Franco-Prussian War, when in six short weeks French military power had been shredded by a single German state. This alone helped the army retain much of its self-respect after 1815, and allowed it to maintain many of its myths and traditions. That is not to deny, however, that it would be quite radically transformed after 1815 into the sort of army France could afford in peacetime. That was inevitable, of course, and would have happened whether France had won or lost the war, since no society could afford the pay and maintenance of the huge force that had been raised by Napoleon. In all, between two and a half and three million men had served in the armies of the Revolution and Empire, and over 800,000 of them had died, whether from wounds or disease, with demographic consequences that can be compared to those of the Great War.10 Such levels of recruitment could not be sustained. By 1813 the army was desperately draining all five classes of conscripts, and even sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were being pressed into service. There was a severe shortage of young men in France when the war ended, a surplus of women and of the old. It was imperative that the army be rapidly put on a peacetime footing, and that meant a massive reduction in the number of troops. The army was not being judged for its military performance, though its officers were distrusted by the monarchy for their opinions and loyalties, and a majority of those who had served the Emperor found themselves pensioned off or condemned to inactivity. It fell to the War Minister and former Napoleonic marshal, Gouvion Saint-Cyr, to bring in a major piece of army legislation in 1818, and budgetary constraints dictated that the size of the army was limited to 240,000 men. As for the nature of recruitment, that was bitterly debated, with the proponents of professionalism and a noble officer corps pitted against those favouring wide participation and promotion on merit. There was wide resistance to any idea of further conscription, however, and it was agreed that in the first instance the army should turn to volunteers, but not short-term volunteers; they would serve for six years in the infantry, and eight in the cavalry and artillery. But beyond these numbers the minister insisted that the state had the right

10 These effects are discussed in greater detail by Jacques Dupâquier, ‘Problèmes démographiques de la France napo-léonienne’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 17 (1970), 339-58.

8 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

to demand service from its citizens, and introduced a ballot or lottery to raise around 40,000 troops each year. The principle of a citizen army, so dear to the revolutionaries and central to the successes of the Empire, was not allowed to die.11

Military defeat, however, still came with a heavy price tag. There were the inexorable consequences in foreign invasion, with Alsace and Lorraine, the Vosges and Champagne criss-crossed by Prussian, Austrian or Russian troops, who now treated France in the way of invading armies, just as the French had treated the populations of the territories they invaded. There are few civilian accounts of the invasion to give a sense from below of the reality of this defeat, but those letters that survive give a sense of the anger and humiliation that some, at least, felt. Some, but not all: war-weariness and high taxes left many hoping only for peace, especially in those areas where each new month brought a renewed outbreak of fighting. In the towns some of the richer inhabitants were prepared to collaborate with the invader if that brought an end to hostilities, always provided they showed a decent respect for property. In contrast, the exactions of the Prussians and the Cossacks on the countryside provoked spontaneous resistance among the peasantry across a wide swathe of the east.12 In Spain the French army had denounced the atrocities of guerrilla fighters who hid behind hedgerows and ambushed them in ravines. In Alsace, the boot was on the other foot. French peasants grabbing guns and firing on invading troops were hailed by their own side as heroes, insurgents, partisans in the cause of the nation, while it was the turn of the Prussians to denounce them as brigands. If caught, they were treated as outlaws and shot without trial. But to Frenchmen they were a reason for rejoicing, a manifestation of the revolutionary people in arms who helped to salvage something of France’s military reputation in the face of defeat. The strength of their resistance contributed to a French patriotic myth in the first half of the nineteenth century just as the resistance of Paris in the Commune helped to create a myth of patriotic identity during the Third Republic.13 It added a little pride to the final months of the war.

Invasion and Occupation

Pierre Dardenne, a school teacher from Chaumont in the Haute-Marne, wrote a regular series of letters that tell the painful story of the campagne de France as he lived through it. Chaumont did not experience any of the fighting, but it was in the very heart of the

11 Thomas Hippler, ‘Conscription in the French Restoration: the 1818 debate on military service’, War in History 13 (July, 2006), 281-98, at 297.

12 Georges Clause, ‘1814: La Champagne entre les armées et les pouvoirs’, in Yves-Marie Bercé (ed.), La fin de l’Europe napoléonienne. 1814: la vacance du pouvoir (Paris, 1990), 264.

13 Varley, Under the Shadow of Defeat, 230.

9‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

zone of eastern France that did.14 His account is vivid and at times angry. ‘The passage of carts, horses and soldiers did not stop throughout the day, nor during the previous night’, he wrote:

Calculate, if you can, the frightening numbers of men and beasts which, during three days and two nights, flocked into our exhausted villages. What prodigious quantities of food and fodder they will consume, loot and pillage! And so our countryside, which has so often been held to ransom, is absolutely ruined, and will be for a long time to come. Everything is in shorter supply than ever. Since the allies appeared all forms of trade have stopped: the peasant or farmer no longer brings goods to market, and as consumption and destruction each day account for at least ten times greater than usual, just think how rapidly supplies of corn, wine, liquor, meat, hay, straw and wood are drying up. The poor are left with nothing; the rich may still have a little in reserve, but the frequent requisitions that are imposed will soon wipe out all his supplies. What a terrible future awaits us!

This catalogue of suffering, he added, ‘takes no account of the typhus and other diseases that are brought in the wake of the foreign armies, which risk spreading uncontrollably, and which only add to the miseries of local people. Each day, people are dying, especially the old and the very young, the groups most at risk.’15

Invasion was followed closely by occupation, with foreign troops stationed on French soil until peace was signed and reparations paid. This left many Frenchmen with a new sensation, that of a concrete physical embodiment of defeat: the besieging of the fort of Vincennes, for instance, or the disconcerting sight of Russian, Austrian or British troops strutting their victory marches across Paris, what was famously depicted at the time as the ‘Cossacks on the Champs-Elysées’. It was, as Jacques Hantraye reminds us, an occupation as lengthy and imposing as any in modern French history – lasting till 1818, as long as the much more famous presence of a German occupying army around Paris following the French collapse in the Franco-Prussian War. And its purpose was clear: to drill home to French civilians the unwelcome message that they and their army had been defeated, that they had debts to acquit, and that they must bear some of the responsibility for the war. It was not enough simply to get rid of their emperor, though they demanded that, too. As the victorious allies proclaimed at Vienna in March 1815, he was to be treated as an outcast. ‘Napoleon Bonaparte has removed himself from civil and social relations, and as an enemy who has disturbed world peace he has opened himself to the vengeance

14 Jacques Hantraye (ed.), Le récit d’un civil dans la Campagne de France de 1814. Les « lettres historiques » de Pierre Dardenne, 1768-1857 (Paris, 2008), ix-x.

15 Ibid., 38.

10 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

of the world.’16 But that vengeance must be seen to fall on the French, too. One effect of the occupation was to bring home to the people of France – who had not experienced military occupation in their lifetime – that others now controlled the destiny of Europe, those who, sooner or later, had elected to defy Napoleon’s now-derided ambitions. French civilians now got used to the sight of their conquerors in the multi-coloured uniforms of the occupier, drawn from all over Europe. It was not only the Cossacks they came out to admire. Their curiosity also extended to Prussians, Swedes, Austrians, Bavarians, British and Spaniards, in a word the troops of a whole continent.17

Napoleon was treated by the restored monarchy as a tyrant and a usurper, and those who had shown political loyalty to him could expect to attract close interest from the police. Many, of course, were suspended from the army or placed on demi-solde, but it took more than loyal service to get even the higher officers into real trouble. Michel Ney, notoriously, was shot as a turncoat, having gone back on his oath to Louis XVIII when his old master returned from Elba. But he could count himself unlucky. Others who had committed the same offence got off with short terms of exile; Soult, himself a marshal, would find himself back in office in 1830, and two years later was the Minister of War who introduced one of the great military reforms of the nineteenth century. It may be that Ney’s military record lost him vital support among his peers; at Waterloo he was held to be responsible for serious tactical blunders in the heat of the battle and emerged with his reputation badly tarnished. As for the men in the ranks, most were welcomed with relief by their fearful families, and the vast majority had no reason to fear police harassment, unless, of course, they involved themselves in Bonapartist plots or got mixed up with secret societies: these were also the years of bomb plots, Carbonari, and the Four Sergeants of La Rochelle.18 Those who did incur the anger of local communities – in some regions of the South in particular – had almost invariably been involved in revolutionary violence and terror; while nationally the only group of men who were routinely barred from re-entering France were those who, as deputies, had voted the death of Louis XVI back in 1793. Regicide was not forgiven: the former deputies, some of whom had made illustrious careers in the military, were condemned to meet in exile groups in Brussels or Geneva, petitioning in vain to be allowed to return. Lazare Carnot, who as Minister of War had turned defeat into victory in the Year II, was of their number. His service to the Revolution and to the last months of the Empire did not count in his favour, though it

16 Jacques Hantraye, Les Cosaques aux Champs-Elysées: L’occupation de la France après la chute de Napoléon (Paris, 2005), 19.

17 Alain Corbin, preface to Hantraye, Les Cosaques aux Champs-Elysées, 5.18 André Zeller, Soldats perdus: Des armées de Napoléon aux garnisons de Louis XVIII (Paris, 1977), 319-41.

11‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

did nothing to prevent his rehabilitation elsewhere. A brilliant artillery officer who in his youth had been a prize-winning mathematician, Carnot was to die in exile, in 1823, as professor of mathematics in the German university of Magdeburg.19

Demobilisation

The men who returned might have doubts about employment and future income, and feared that they, like so many soldiers from earlier wars, would end their days in misery, without either work or family, scarred by wounds and left to vegetate on the margins of village society. The image of the army veteran, broken and unwanted, was too widespread to be overlooked; it is one of the reasons why serving soldiers were so fearful of being wounded, of having limbs amputated, of losing the capacity to work. They had encountered such men in their own villages, their lives sacrificed to earlier wars, and folk culture across Europe was filled with tales of army veterans, wandering from fair to fair, begging for alms and telling tales of faraway lands in return for a few coins or for a companionable drink. And they were only too aware of the popular image of soldiers that was diffused through woodcuts and images d’Epinal.20 The Revolution and Empire, it is true, had attempted to raise the status of ordinary soldiers, and conscription meant that for a time men of all social classes had served time in the military, with all the risks that involved. But we should not be deceived. The issue was poverty, not defeat, and in the economic turmoil of the post-war world neither France nor any other European state had the resources needed to ensure that their soldiers had the prospect of a decent life when they got back to their village. Nor is there much to suggest that they enjoyed a triumphal return, as the arrival of so many men, without resource and with inadequate pensions, unavoidably posed a serious challenge for the local economy. One may even doubt whether the soldier’s return was always welcome, since it meant extra mouths to feed, extra resources to conjure out of nothing. Significantly the subject is rather muted in the painting of the Restoration: there is no equivalent of the raft of etchings and canvases of the 1790s that had portrayed the moral and romantic tensions of his departure. And when, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the conscript’s return is depicted in art, it sometimes offers an uncomfortable contrast, as the bright, healthy youth who had left his village full of hope is transformed into a man prematurely aged, haggard and broken by his years in uniform.21 Nor did the theatre offer much in compensation.

19 Jean et Nicole Dhombres, Lazare Carnot (Paris, 1997), 586-91.20 David Hopkin, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, 1766-1870 (Woodbridge, 2003), esp. 236-9 and

253-5.21 Jean-François Heim, Claire Béraud and Philippe Heim (eds), Les salons de peinture de la Révolution française (Paris,

1989), 242.

12 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

As the American historian Jennifer Heuer has noted, early Restoration drama largely avoids the question, focussing less on the return of the troops than on the more political question of the return of the Bourbons. The issue they often highlight is a different form of liberation: the end of mass conscription, and the relief that is felt by young men and by their families that for the next generation life can finally return to normal. The key theme is not the heroism of war, but the quiet novelty of living in peace.22

The years after 1815 were years of reinsertion and readjustment for the hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen whose war was suddenly over. Popular distrust evaporated with time, and especially after Napoleon’s death in 1821. There were still suspicions, of course, especially on questions of crime and public order. But their public image quickly improved, as they featured increasingly in plays in the Paris theatre and took part in fêtes and public festivals. By 1847 the July Monarchy was sufficiently confident to authorise five hundred veterans, in their imperial uniforms, to march in the funeral procession for Louis Bonaparte in Paris.23 Besides, Napoleonic veterans did not drift into oblivion, as monarchists would perhaps have liked; we find them in every provincial town, seemingly in every village, not just during the Restoration but through the July Monarchy and the Second Republic as well. Many corporals and sergeants found new roles in civic life, as mayors, schoolteachers or secrétaires de la mairie, posts which implied that they enjoyed the confidence of their fellow-citizens, that their experience of life beyond the boundaries of the village still carried a certain prestige. Officers returning to their homes after 1815 could hope to recover the social position they had held when they signed up for service, though their fortunes varied hugely, as Stéphane Calvet has established through a detailed a study of 506 Napoleonic officers from one department, the Charente. Here it was those from old noble families who had the best chance of commanding the prestige and status they craved; while a good marriage was a significant element in their social acceptance. But for others there was only disappointment as they failed to find a professional role that satisfied their social ambition. Calvet shows how many officers clung to the status which the army had given them in what was for them an enforced retirement, flaunting their rank and cherishing medals and military distinctions in the face of an apathetic public.24 Accustomed to command respect from their troops, they thought that their épaulette gave them the right to an honourable passage into civil society. Defeat for such

22 I am grateful to Jennifer Heuer for sharing this insight with me. The relatively unpatriotic tone of the theatre in 1814, and its celebration of a return to normality, is in marked contrast to the martial themes of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic years.

23 Natalie Petiteau, Lendemains d’Empire: Les soldats de Napoléon dans la France du dix-neuvième siècle (Paris, 2003), 258-9.

24 Stéphane Calvet, Destins des braves: Les officiers charentais de Napoléon au XIXe siècle (Avignon, 2010), 343-4.

13‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

men had brought disappointment, of course, but we should not underestimate the role they would continue to play in nineteenth-century French society. Many proved to be survivors in the face of adversity. When Napoleon III ordered that every survivor of the Napoleonic Wars receive the médaille de Sainte-Hélène in recognition of his service, more than 400,000 of them had to be minted. And that was in 1857, over forty years after the end of the war.25

The Legend

The honour of the army, the dignity of French soldiers in defeat, and the glory of the last stand of the Imperial Guard, these would become central planks of the broader Napoleonic legend that remained so powerful in nineteenth-century France, and not least in the France of peasant cottages and small provincial towns, where the republic often enjoyed limited support. It was here that the cult of Napoleon was strongest, and the myth of the saviour most embedded. Many in France and across Europe identified the Empire with the Revolution and its legacy; indeed, it is surely significant that in the desperate circumstances of the Hundred Days Napoleon should have gone to such efforts to discard the pomp and majesty of the later Empire and to reinvent himself as the ‘little corporal’, a man of the people promoted to lead his country against the crowned despots of a continent. In his captivity on Saint-Helena, and even more in the decades following his death, that was the image that would inspire his followers and keep his legend alive. It was a deeply romantic image, typical of the age that produced it; but so was the image of war, increasingly seen through the lens of romantic sensibility as a conflict of wills, with the rules of engagement relegated to a supporting role. ‘In war’, wrote Napoleon, semi-autobiographically, ‘morale and spirit count for three-quarters, the matter of numbers counts only for the remaining quarter’. Military romanticism, as John Lynn reminds us, saw war as an art, and for the nineteenth century Napoleon was its supreme artist.26

The Romantics ensured that in France and beyond the wars of Napoleon would be remembered for the values they spread, the civil liberties they offered and the grandeur of the imperial dream. For writers like Stendhal, Mérimée, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Paul-Louis Courier, Maurice Barrès – and there were many besides – Waterloo was a defeat, but it was also a turning-point, a turning back of European civilisation that would have tragic consequences for all concerned. The battlefield itself is dismissed by Stendhal as a scene

25 Sudhir Hazareesingh, The Legend of Napoleon (London, 2004), 244-7.26 John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 196.

14 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

of chaos and disorder to the point where it is presented almost as a non-battle; but it had a far wider cultural significance. In 1825 he wrote of Marengo as the battle which had opened Italy to liberty and modernity and launched liberal ideas, an evolution that was now doomed. ‘The Italians are right’, he insisted, ‘Marengo advanced the civilisation of their country by a hundred years, just as another battle has retarded it for a century’.27 For this romantic generation Waterloo would always be a morne plaine; it appealed to their imagination and for some seemed greater than any victory. Charles Péguy summed up the feelings of his generation of poets and writers. ‘There are defeats’, he concluded, ‘Waterloo morne plaine, which more than any victory, and more positively than any victory, fix themselves in the memory of men, in the common memory of humanity’.28

Many of the men who had fought with Napoleon remained intensely loyal to that legend, and would look back on their years of service with fondness and nostalgia. For them it had been an adventure that became rosier with the passage of the years, a chance to travel, to see other cultures, to enjoy the camaraderie that army life offered; above all, it took them away from their village and opened new horizons. Old soldiers have something of the romantic about them, too, and once back in civilian life they were often tempted to forget the horror and fatigue and near-starvation they had experienced, and saw their years in the service of the Emperor as the most exciting, the most formative of their lives.29 They continued to speak of Napoleon, in cafés and cercles and those places where old soldiers met and reminisced, with a certain awe and affection. And if their campaign had ended in defeat and disappointment, that in its way added poignancy to the legend, turning their Emperor into yet another of the tragic heroes of war the French treasure so much. His defeat, his exile and isolation, the petty treatment he received from his boorish gaoler, Hudson Lowe (who was, in Napoleon’s felicitous phrase, ‘a Sicilian hangman’, ‘a man who had never commanded or been accustomed to men of honour’30), his physical decline and early death, are for the faithful evidence of the injustice of it all. Yet again a French hero has been undone by his enemies, but, just as much, by his own overvaulting ambition. Defeat in this context does not come as a shabby, miserable anticlimax, but rather as the consequence of his search for glory, the result of a fatal character flaw of Shakespearean proportions. Defeat, in other words, became part of the legend, a necessary ingredient that placed Napoleon in the company of such national

27 Stendhal, Voyages en Italie (Paris, 1973), 83, quoted in Actes du colloque Napoléon, Stendhal et les Romantiques: l’armée, la guerre, la gloire (Paris, 2002), 10-16.

28 Charles Péguy, Oeuvres en prose complètes (Paris, 1988), 1281, quoted idem, 9.29 Alan Forrest, Napoleon’s Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire (London, 2004), 24-6.30 Frank Giles, Napoleon Bonaparte, England’s Prisoner: The Emperor in exile, 1816-21 (London, 2001), 65.

15‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

heroes and heroines as Roland and Duguesclin, Vercingetorix and Joan of Arc.31 In art and poetry these comparisons were often explicit, as in Delacroix’s painting of La mort de Charles le Téméraire devant Nancy, which was completed in 1831 and was seen by many as an allegory of over-ambition that referred directly to Napoleon.32 During the nineteenth century the French would be given plenty of opportunity to reflect on the meaning and implication of defeat, especially, of course, after Sédan. The defeats of 1814 and 1815 could only become more noble and glorious by comparison.33

This representation was underpinned by a sense of cultural superiority that had characterised France in the eighteenth century and was strengthened by the Revolution. This shows in soldiers’ letters and memoirs, when they talk of southern and eastern Europe, North Africa or the Caribbean. The defeat, and with it the arrival of so many foreign troops on French soil in 1814, had served to reinforce this French sense of difference, with the consequence that even civilians expressed it in terms of civilisation and barbarism. An interesting instance of this is to be found in the letters written from Chaumont by Pierre Dardenne during 1814, offering observations on what he saw around him. His views of the Cossacks are especially instructive, of their dress, their morality, their customs. He clearly views them as unwelcome visitors, thieves and bandits rather than soldiers, who would travel in groups because, he believed, they were afraid of being away from home and suspected that they would be the victims of attacks on the public highway. But, interestingly, he does not limit himself to questions of difference, to descriptions of exoticism. He sees the foreign troops as akin to migrants, seasonal workers wandering from village to village, and he compares them to the pedlars from the Auvergne or Savoy who every year would descend on Champagne to sell cheap textiles and pots and pans. They were, in other words, less to be feared as outsiders than as competitors for scarce resources.34 But he also saw their presence as proof of France’s misfortune, and as an embarrassment to national pride. He therefore allowed himself this note of jubilation when he heard about a revolt by a batch of French prisoners who were being conducted towards Langres. ‘When they came to a village about three leagues from here’, he exclaimed, ‘where the road runs alongside a large wood, they beat up the soldiers who were escorting them and ran off into the forest; they were fired on, but the local peasants, armed with sticks and pitchforks, sided with the French and helped them to get away’. But there

31 Christian Amalvi, Les héros de l’histoire de France (Toulouse, 2001), esp. 68-71. 32 Christian Amalvi, ‘Penser la défaite, le recours à une histoire analogique: de la chute de Napoléon Ier à la chute

de la Troisième République’, in Cabanel and Laborie (eds), Penser la défaite, 160.33 Ibid., 161-4. 34 Jacques Hantraye (ed.), Le récit d’un civil, lviii.

16 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

was more. A rumour spread in Chaumont that troops had rushed to the village where the rebellion had taken place, and there was word of them setting fire to the village and having the mayor shot. ‘Resistance is beginning to get organised’, he gloated; ‘they are resisting in Bar-sur-Aube, and now they are resisting around here; if only we could say they are resisting everywhere!’35

Resistance

The French were not natural champions of partisan resistance or guerrilla fighting. They had encountered a great deal of it over the previous twenty years, in the Alps and the Dolomites, for example, in the mountains of Dalmatia or among the villagers of western Russia. Most especially, their columns had been ambushed, stragglers cut, and soldiers killed by civilian snipers in guerrilla fighting in two areas – the Vendée and Spain – and there they had been quick to react against what they saw as an improper way of waging war, methods unworthy of civilised nations. Those caught with guns in their hand and with no uniform on their back were treated with scant respect: guerrillas were routinely denounced as bandits or brigands and were subject to summary execution. Yet along France’s eastern border this banditry became magically transformed into the patriotism of partisans, fighting to defend their communities against the invader. It became something of a badge of honour in the sad last days of the war, when it was clear to all that they had lost. In a perverse way it helped them salvage some shreds of glory. They might have lost the war, but they still had the courage to resist, and if nothing they did could change the outcome of the war, at least it restored honour and added a little lustre to defeat.

And what was the alternative to war and resistance? Many Napoleonic officers, those not so numbed by the scale of their losses in the Moscow campaign or at Leipzig, could still convince themselves that the choice had been between glory and humiliating defeat, exactly as Napoleon’s Bulletins had promised. They had fought and died, they could persuade themselves, for eternal values of freedom and civil equality on the one hand, military honour and chivalry on the other. Above all, as professional soldiers, they had fought to avoid the most final humiliation, the moment of surrender. In their minds and memories their devotion to the Empire, their courage and sacrifice were the defining characteristics of those years, values which even defeat could not eradicate. After Leipzig Napoleon’s glory years were clearly past, and the prospect of any kind of victory was receding. So why did they fight on, other than to prevent humiliation, and

35 Ibid., 50, letter of 2 March 1814.

17‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

to preserve self-esteem as officers of the greatest land army Europe had ever seen? Troops who were exhausted by years of campaigning and aching for peace could nevertheless conjure up the energy and will power for yet another campaign, seeing war as the means by which they could still obtain an honourable peace. They shared with the Emperor a belief that nothing would hurt as much, after so many years of war, as the vengeance of a victorious enemy. In this context even a war that is lost brings glory of a kind, the kind shown by the suicidal courage of the Old Guard in the final hours at Waterloo, the kind that would be the stuff of legend across the nineteenth century. That courage would prove infectious, as nationalists and romantics in the nineteenth century picked up the baton and resigned themselves to glorious defeats. In 1845, for instance, when the now independent state of Mexico threw itself into a war with the United States that it could not possibly hope to win, the Mexican newspaper El Siglo Diez y Nueve issued its readers with a clarion call to arms. There was no promise of victory, but the defeat that seemed inevitable was also perceived as glorious. ‘War as a means of making an honourable peace was and is a rigorous duty of the government and of the nation’, the paper insisted. ‘However lamentable and deplorable the rigours of war may be, Mexico cannot and must not purchase peace at any price other than that of blood. Defeat and death on the banks of the Sabine would be glorious and beautiful; a peace treaty signed in Mexico’s National Palace would be infamous and execrable.’36 Imperial France and post-colonial Mexico might seem to have little in common; but in 1815 and 1845 they shared a curiously similar approach to war.

Posterity

The notion that 1815 was a glorious defeat passed quickly into history and into the consciousness of the European public. If Napoleon’s human frailties were admitted in his lifetime – and in the immediate aftermath of defeat his tactics and blind ambition were widely criticised – in death he became a romantic hero sanctified by martyrdom. He had, of course, prepared the way, for Napoleon’s powers as a propagandist – arguably as great as his insights as a military tactician – did not fade with his exile on Saint-Helena, and he knew how important it was to write the history of his empire and shape the memory of future generations. His friends and acolytes, those loyalists who had accompanied him to the South Atlantic, dutifully obliged through a series of memoirs which, published after his death, helped to forge the Napoleonic legend of the nineteenth century. Bertrand,

36 Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and its War with the United States (New York, 2007), vii.

18 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Gourgaud and Montholon all penned accounts of their experience with Napoleon in his final years that consumed the emotions of the romantics and were reprised by the likes of Victor Hugo, Stendhal and Walter Scott.37 But most influential of all were Napoleon’s own thoughts, in conversation with Emmanuel de Las Cases, whose Mémorial became one of the best-sellers of the 1820s. For Las Cases the Empire was a time of social order and military glory, a high point for the patrie, which Napoleon spoke of as ‘a place where order reigned, and where one person, over and above the people, made sure that it was respected’.38 This was how he wanted his years of power to be remembered, and thanks to Las Cases and others, this was how the nineteenth century remembered him. Bertrand, still an officer under the restored Bourbons, phrased it memorably. The Emperor, he said, ‘remained our Standard, our rallying point. The memory of our glorious past made us forget for a moment the miseries of our country, and we felt that our heart, with all our soul, went out to him, even though army discipline made us obedient to the White Flag’.39 Waterloo was forgotten; for a certain France Napoleon would always be equated with glory and honour. And under the regimes that followed the 1830 revolution it was that collective memory that would be adopted by a state eager to exploit the Napoleonic legend for its own ends. At Louis-Philippe’s coronation ceremony he was surrounded by four Napoleonic marshals; in 1836 the Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated to honour the soldiers of the Grande Armée; and by 1840 Napoleon’s ashes finally rested, as he had willed it, by the banks of the Seine in the heart of his capital. The image of defeat had been largely expunged as the Orleanist regime sought to appropriate Napoleon’s legend for their own political ends.40

His reputation as a strategist and battlefield technician also seemed secure, as public and professional memory focussed on his victories rather than his downfall. It is interesting to look, for instance, at the course programmes at the French military academy at Saint-Cyr during the Third Republic. Despite the intensely republican ethos of the school, and the widespread belief that France’s debacle at Sedan had been caused by the abandonment of mass conscription during the nineteenth century, it is interesting that the French revolutionary armies appeared more as a lesson in civic responsibility and public morality than as a tactical exemplar. Valmy was seen as a clarion call to arms, not as a model of battlefield tactics, and in the course on military history taught on the eve of the First World War the royal army of the eighteenth century, pre-revolutionary tactics and the

37 H.-G. Bertrand, Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène (3 vols, Paris, 1949-59); C. de Montholon and G. Gourgaud, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Napoléon par les généraux qui ont partagé sa captivité (Paris, 1822-25).

38 Didier Le Gall, Napoléon et le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène: analyse d’un discours (Paris, 2003), 132.39 Petiteau, Lendemains d’Empire, 131.40 Hazareesingh, Legend of Napoleon, 155.

19‘A G l O R I O u s D E F E A T’

campaigns of the French Revolution were each dismissed in a single lesson. A fourth lesson was devoted to the transformation of the army in Italy by Bonaparte; then a further ten sessions were devoted to Napoleon’s campaigns.41 The professional perception was clear – that here was a great French general, from whose tactics and approach to war there was still much to be learned. If he was finally overwhelmed by superior numbers, he still had his place with the great generals of history, among whom they counted Alexander the Great from the Ancient world and Frederick the Great from their own.

That is also, largely, how the public sees him, even today; and how the history of the Empire continues to be told, in the galleries of the Invalides, of the Louvre, or in the Great Gallery at Versailles. Of course there is a tendency in any country to celebrate victories rather than bemoan defeats, at least in history painting, so this imbalance may not seem surprising. But if Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, it is interesting to reflect on how that battlefield is presented to the visitor today, and on what it is that the tourists who flock there want and expect to see. Neither Wellington nor Blücher is really the main attraction. The Butte, and to some degree the museum and visitor centre, are dedicated principally to the memory of the French, and of the Great Man whose imperial adventure ended there. He was certainly defeated, but it is difficult to deny that for the museum, for public history and for European memory generally, the victor was still Napoleon.

Nor was his political legacy snuffed out at Waterloo. Bonapartism remained a strong political tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, one that would be revived not only by Napoleon III but also, in very different ways, by General Boulanger in the 1880s and more recently by Philippe Pétain and Charles de Gaulle. The idea of linking strong personal authority to popular support, to a popular leader thrown up by the people, who would rule without constant interference from intermediary bodies or elected politicians, became an accepted, if for many rather threatening, theme in modern French politics.42 If the July Monarchy played on Napoleon’s memory to curry favour with the electorate, in 1848 Louis-Napoleon’s popular appeal was such that he was elected to the presidency by a substantial majority. It would always be more difficult to persuade others to accept Napoleon’s legitimacy, especially in those countries like Britain and Austria that had fought so persistently against him. And yet even their animosity could dissolve with the passage of time, as the threat he had posed to the peace of the continent receded gradually in popular memory. Louis-Napoleon had no difficulty in establishing himself on the international stage.

41 Ecole Spéciale Militaire, Saint-Cyr, Programme des cours des élèves, première année d’études, 1913-14, histoire militaire (Archives de la Guerre, Vincennes, Xo. 16).

42 Robert Gildea, ‘Bonapartism’, in The Past in French History (New Haven, CT, 1994), 62-111.

20 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

May I end by referring to a comparatively minor, yet in many ways revealing, episode that dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. The Duke of Wellington died in 1852, after a long career in the British army and in politics; he had been born, indeed, back in 1769, the same year as Napoleon. The government organised a state funeral for him in London, at which France chose to be represented, as was entirely proper, by her ambassador to the Court of St James, Alexander Walewski. Walewski was very much a child of his time. He had been born in Poland – Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of Warsaw – at the height of the Empire, and in the 1820s had elected to make his career, as an army officer and then as a diplomat, in France. He went on, indeed, to enjoy a highly distinguished career, ending up as France’s Foreign Minister in 1856. But his presence at the Duke’s funeral was not without a certain irony. For Alexander’s mother was Maria Walewska, a Polish princess and renowned beauty of her time, who from 1807 had been Napoleon’s lover (she remained loyal to him after his fall from power, even travelling to Elba to visit him in exile). Alexander’s father was the Emperor; and the man tasked with officiating at Wellington’s funeral was Napoleon’s illegitimate son. More poignant still is the fact that, during his tenure of the embassy, he also had the task, and possibly the quiet satisfaction, of presenting Britain with the credentials of his new government following the proclamation of the Second Empire.43 On that day Napoleon’s defeat back in 1815 must have seemed a pretty distant memory.

43 Christine Sutherland, Marie Walewska: Napoleon’s Great Love (London, 1979), 247.

21

What armies do after a major war is often as critical as what they do during the war. Defeat or victory, militaries look to incorporate the lessons of the conflict into their approaches to war and usually have to do so at a time of declining financial and social support. The peace dividend and a ‘return to normality’ are both perfectly natural reactions of a nation newly at peace, but difficult reactions for a military simultaneously trying to demobilise, recover from defeat, and incorporate the lessons of the recent war. It is thus worth looking at those immediate post-conflict moments because they often show how the army will be prepared for the next war. In particular, let me focus on the United States Army after the Spanish-American/Philippine-American War. Both of these wars were victories, albeit of different types, and they were the first wars of America as a global power. The ‘American Century’ of Henry Luce started with these wars.1 Despite those victories and that nascent global power, the odd paradox of the American Army after 1902 is that it would witness some of the most sweeping reforms in its history. The victorious force would – like a defeated and surrendering army – largely cease to exist over the course of the next decade.

This is strange, at best. Why, indeed, would the winning side remake its own Army so completely? What were the effects of that remaking? In this paper, I aim to answer both of those questions. I will make two related arguments. First, that the postwar remaking of the American Army in the first decade of the twentieth century grew out of the desire to have a ‘modern’ army. Second, and more importantly, that the revamping destroyed an entire body of knowledge developed over the last half of the nineteenth century, one that had made the US Army particularly effective at counterinsurgency

1 Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (New York, 2010); Henry Robinson Luce, The American Century (New York, 1941); Ronald. Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New Brunswick, NJ, 1998).

Losing the Insurgent Twentieth Century: The US Army after the Spanish-American War,

1898–1916

David Silbey

22

operations. In short, to put it differently, the American Army lost the Vietnam War because of the choices it made in the first decade of the twentieth century. In fact, to broaden that out further, the American military lost its share of what I would call the ‘Insurgent Twentieth Century’ because of post-1898 reforms. In essence, my argument is that, in the years between 1898 and 1917, the United States undertook a series of reforms that, while preparing it for the total wars of the first half of the twentieth century, destroyed a critical body of knowledge that left it unprepared for the insurgencies that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century. Critically that knowledge was destroyed without much realisation that it was being destroyed, leaving the US Army with – to quote Donald Rumsfeld – an ‘unknown unknown’ that handicapped it in places like Vietnam.2

First comes a definition central to the paper, that of formal versus informal knowledge. I will argue that the differences between the two types of knowledge created a different way of approaching war, depending on which kind of knowledge was emphasised. Informal knowledge is, in essence, the kind of knowledge we get from experience, both individual and shared. It is unique to everyone in particular ways, but often universal within a community or organisation. It is often so common that no one really investigates that knowledge. To give an example of that universality and particularity, most inhabitants of western nations, Christian or not, would understand the significance of the date December 25th. Formal knowledge is more what we would understand coming out in the classroom. It is standardised and defined, usually not by those who are learning it. It is perceived as foundational, as something to be built upon. In American parlance, schoolchildren learn the ‘Three Rs’: Reading, Writing, and Rithmetic.3 It seems particularly revealing of American culture that a word is misspelled in a phrase about education, though revealing about what is less clear.

2 Rumsfeld made the remark at a press conference on 12 February 2002: see http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636 for a transcript. He was so enamoured of the phrase that he used a modification of it for the title of his memoirs: Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York, 2011).

3 Interestingly, the phrase itself is a piece of informal knowledge used to signal foundational learning ideas. This is evidenced in the titles of books that invoke it for wildly different subjects: Frank Jupo, The Story of the Three R’s (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970); Núria. Roca and Rosa Maria Curto, The Three R’s: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle (Hauppauge, NY, 2007); The Three R’s And Sex Education (Motion Picture, National Educational Television and Radio Center, released by Indiana University Audio-Visual Center, 1971); The Three R’s of Automotive Maintenance; Buyer’s Guide (Washington, 1964); Jack Finegan, The Three R’s of Christianity (Richmond, VA, 1964); The Three R’s of Occupied Germany (Washington, DC, 1948); The Three R’s of the Postal Network Plan: Realignment, Right-Sizing, and Responsiveness: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, Second Session, 24July 2008 (Washington, DC, 2009); Austin S. Donnelly, The Three Rs of Investing: Return, Risk, and Relativity (Homewood, IL, 1985); Carma L. McClure, The Three Rs of Software Automation: Re-Engineering, Repository, Reusability (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1992).

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

23

In essence, the reforms converted the US Army from one model of approaching warfare to another, from one form of knowledge to another. The nineteenth century model had been one based on informal knowledge and experience. The twentieth century model would be one based on formal knowledge and education. To give an example of what I mean by both elements here, I point to the emphasis on written doctrine in the twentieth century army – as most recently seen in the arrival of Field Manual 3-24 in the US Army, the standardisation of a way of doing things, and the formal passing along of such knowledge in a written fashion.4 In addition to this, the significance of education, foundational in the United States Military Academy at West Point, and continuing in the Army War College, is a notable feature of the twentieth century system.5 Both of these factors were mostly absent in the nineteenth century. Though West Point existed, for example, its curriculum taught little to nothing about war itself in the nineteenth century. Instead it was a (very good) engineering school.

Let me pause here for a second to make two points related to this. The first is that neither the army of the ninteenth century nor the army of the twentieth were entirely one model or another. There was, in both centuries, elements of the two models, with a substantial amount of crossover between both. The US Army of the nineteenth century, for example, emphasised formal knowledge and education in certain areas – like engineering. The US Army of the twentieth century emphasised informal knowledge and experience in certain areas – the status given to long-serving Non-Commissioned Officers, for example. It is a cliché that every newly-commissioned second lieutenant in the US Army is told to pay careful attention to the advice of his sergeant.

Second, I would note that we are still heavily dominated by the values of the second model and so we have, I think, problems discussing its values or the values of the first model in an effective and neutral way. The idea of formal knowledge and education are still values overwhelmingly adhered to in the American Army – and a lot of global armies – and so it becomes hard to break out and consider other ways of doing thing. To give but one example, the labeling of one method of warfare as ‘conventional’ and the other ‘unconventional’ is a pretty clear value judgment about which is normal and which is not.

4 http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC2/COIN/repository/FM_3-24.pdf.5 For West Point, see Lance Betros, West Point: Two Centuries and Beyond (Abilen2e, TX, 2004). For the Army War

College, see Judith Stiehm, The U.S. Army War College: Military Education in a Democracy (Philadelphia, 2002).

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

24

The Army of the Late Nineteenth Century

This shift and the reforms that created it were something of an oddity. The United States had just fought two wars when the twentieth century arrived: the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. Both of these wars had been essentially overwhelming American victories. That is not to say that both had not witnessed serious problems in their execution, but such problems are never uncommon in war, and the result of both wars had been American victories in relatively short order.6

The Spanish-American War, for example, had witnessed the United States defeating Spain on both land and sea without expending all that much effort. The bloodiest battles of the war were probably fraternal ones, in which the American Army and Navy fought over policy and credit.7 Both Army and Navy, despite their disagreements, managed quick and overwhelming victories over the Spanish defenders of Cuba and the Philippines, albeit ones marked by some fairly impressive disorganisation at both the operational and logistical levels.

That victory has, to an extent, been lost to the memory, based at least partly on the perception that the United States, as the dominant power of the twentieth century, should naturally have beaten Spain. That does not really apply to 1898, when Spain was still something of an imperial power, with experienced soldiers, and the US was a relative weakling. The achievements in both theatres were impressive, whether it was taking on Spanish forces in Cuba who had the significant advantages of knowing the local ground, or of sending an expeditionary force halfway around the world to the Philippines and handling the Spanish there. Instead what is remembered is the fevered jingoism of the yellow press, Teddy Roosevelt’s single-handed charge up San Juan Hill, and the quite lopsidedly unfair naval battle of Manila Bay in which George Dewey channeled his mentor Admiral David Farragut of ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ fame, by leading his fleet into the bay with reckless disregard for possible mines.

The Philippine-American War is less well-known and even more remembered for the wrong things. It was both a conventional war and an insurgency/counter-insurgency. Both of these the United States won, the former in rapid and overwhelming fashion and the latter in relatively short, economical, and amicable fashion. The latter was more remarkable, given the difficulties the United States experienced in twentieth-century

6 For the Spanish-American War, see G.A. Cosmos, Army for Empire: United States Army in the Spanish-American War (Columbia, MO, 1976); for the Philippine-American War, see David Silbey, A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (New York, 2005).

7 George Tanham, ‘Service Relations Sixty Years Ago’, Military Affairs, 23:3 (Autumn, 1959), 139-48.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

25

counterinsurgency efforts. The guerrilla war came after a short conventional campaign. Emilio Aguinaldo, the Filipino leader, turned to insurgency, hoping to reverse the American conventional victory. It was, at first, a reasonably effective campaign. Aguinaldo built his effort in many areas on local powers who knew their areas, could raise men, and had substantial influence in the civilian community. That gave the insurrecto forces a substantial advantage.8

But the American Army of 1899 was well ready for such an effort. Decades of fighting Native Americans in the west in similarly insurgent efforts had given soldiers and officers extensive experience in counterinsurgency, and they proved it in the next few years. The army proved particularly adept at converting local elites to their side, at isolating the guerrillas from popular support, and in chasing the insurrectos into their hideouts.9

To give but two examples about the preceding: in 1899, the army allowed the export of hemp (rope-making material) from Leyte and Samar and Mindanao to the United States even though the hemp growing areas of the islands were still under control of and taxed by the insurgents and the trade would bring Aguinaldo’s men money. They did so because the trade would also bring substantial riches to the trading elites of the coastal towns of those islands and – the army hoped – convert them to the American side. Once the littoral areas had been brought under control, the farming areas could be retaken. That is, in fact, exactly what happened.10

My second example was of a long-range patrol, carried out by Brigadier General William Kobbe on Mindanao in December 1899. His aide de camp was Captain John J. Pershing, who would rise to higher things. Pershing recorded the patrol, which pushed deep into the interior of Mindanao, chasing the local insurrectos. They had a number of running battles with the insurrectos, forcing the insurgents deeper and deeper into the jungle, and whittling down its numbers through casualties and desertion. When Kobbe’s unit came in, another American force went out to continue the patrol, thus keeping the pressure up on the insurgents.11

The result of these efforts was a rapid American victory. Aguinaldo was captured in 1901 and convinced to put out a call to his fellow insurrectos for the ‘complete termination

8 Useful on the evolution of the insurgency is Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence, KS, 2000).

9 Idem, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989).10 Norman G. Owen, ‘Winding Down the War in Albay, 1900-1903’, Pacific Historical Review 48 (1979), 557-89.11 Donald Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior: The Early Life of John J. Pershing, vol. 1 (College Station, TX, 1977), 257;

Kobbe to Headquarters Department of Mindanao and Jolo, 22 January 1901, in Annual Report of the War Department, 1901, vol. 1, part 4 (Washington, DC, 1901), 273.

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

26

of hostilities’.12 This, along with continued efforts by the Americans, meant that the Philippine-wide insurrection essentially ended in 1902, though an allied but less intense insurgency by the Moros continued for another decade. The Philippine War was never quite remembered that way, though. Instead, it was seen as something of an ugly war, rife with atrocities. By the late twentieth century, it had become Vietnam before Vietnam: a land war in South East Asia that the US would have been better off avoiding.13

Some of that is true – especially the atrocities – but it should not obscure the relatively easy way in which the US handled an insurgency, and essentially ended it within three years. The obvious comparison for length is to today, in which the war in Iraq is just now winding down after seven years of fighting. What is interesting is that that misremembering started during and immediately after the war itself. It is, as I mentioned, an extreme oddity that both victories were nonetheless followed by deep soul-searching on the part of the government and led to substantial reforms. Victory, in some sense, was treated like defeat.

Reform

Why? Let me suggest a number of reasons. First, there were a number of serious problems in both wars, problems moreover that garnered serious media attention. In the Spanish-American War, problems with logistics and corruption in the US and with disease in Cuba led to a number of public scandals. In the Philippines, the horrific behaviour of the American Army in Samar broke at the same time in 1902 that a cholera epidemic was killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, at least partly because of the unhygenic situation in the camps that the Americans forced them into to separate them from the insurgents. This too was a media and political controversy.14

Second in this list of reasons was a set of influential examples that spurred the United States to army reform. One influential example for the US Army was, somewhat oddly, the United States Navy.15 The growth of the Navy in the 1890s, most notably in the building of substantial numbers of new warships and the wholesale adoption of a Mahanian viewpoint, stood as a useful lesson on rebuilding and reform for the army. Given that, the most useful army example was that of the Prussians, whose stunning success in the 1860s and 1870s stood as an exemplar. The triumphs of the Prussians over

12 Emilio Aguinaldo, A Second Look At America (New York, 1957), 129. 13 See Silbey, ‘Suggestions for Further Reading’, in War of Frontier and Empire, 219-224, for a discussion of this.14 Silbey, War of Frontier and Empire, 197-201.15 See George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990 (Stanford, CA, 1994), 20, for

ways in which the Army explicitly invoked Mahanian concepts to justify itself.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

27

Denmark, Austria, and France had made the German Army the model for any serious army of the time. William Sherman had sent an experienced if still young officer, Emory Upton, to Europe and Asia in the 1870s to report back on the practices of their armies, and his writings exalted the Germans.16

Third and finally, I would highlight the cultural influences that pushed army reform. The United States had lately gone through its industrial revolution and the idea of both ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ were revered in American culture. These were the generations of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Into this the American Navy fitted well, with its steam and steel warships. The army did not fit so well, and seemed unbearably old-fashioned. Victories aside, it needed to be modernised. Allied to that was a growing self-awareness of American power and presence. The Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War had announced the United States as a global power, able to stand with the other Great Powers, a sense confirmed by the US role in suppressing the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900. America, Americans felt, was a force to be reckoned with, and as such needed a modern army to be reckoned with. The army would be America’s representative many times to the world and it needed to be a modern representative.

The result of this was a substantial reform movement in the period 1898-1916. The man most normally connected to that reform movement was Elihu Root, a New York lawyer who served as Secretary of War from 1899-1904 and Secretary of State from 1904-1909. He was the architect and organiser of what came to be known as the ‘Root Reforms’. We should not forget, however, another driving force. Theodore Roosevelt, who was Vice President or President for almost the entirety of Root’s tenure. Roosevelt had a substantial record for reforming institutions like the US Civil Service and the New York Police Department, and he brought that zeal with him to higher office.17

The reform movement did not start entirely start with Root and Roosevelt. William Sherman, when he was General of the Army in the 1870s and 1880s, had begun building a system of mid-career schools for army officers, most notably at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. I will leave to the reader the implications of the fact that one of the first of these schools was established on the site of a prison. In the 1890s, there had been a concerted attempt to make the army seem more ‘American’ by pushing out a range of ethnic groups, and eliminating the segregated Native American units.18

16 Stephen E. Ambrose, ‘Emory Upton and the Armies of Asia and Europe’, Military Affairs 28:1 (1964), 27-32. 17 For Roosevelt, see Matthew M. Oyos, ‘Theodore Roosevelt and the Implements of War’, Journal of Military

History 60:4 (1996), 631-55.18 Graham A. Cosmas, ‘Military Reform after the Spanish-American War: The Army Reorganization Fight of 1898-

1899’, Military Affairs 35:1 (1971), 12-18, discusses these earlier reforms in the context of Root’s starting point.

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

28

Root and Roosevelt, however, were the main drivers of reform. When Root entered office in August 1899, his main target were the administrative, technical, and supply bureaus of the Army, effectively fiefdoms unto themselves, headed by long-service officers without mandatory requirements, who for the most part could evade or resist the orders of the usually short-termed Secretaries of the Army.19 The bureau chiefs had formed strong alliances with specific Congressmen, and that also gave them substantial leverage. The result, in Root’s view, was an army that could not be organised or run from the top, but instead resembled feudalism in its decentralised organisation and sometimes chaotic way of doing things. Root wanted the army, instead, to be modern:

A great machine which we call military organization; a machine in which, as by electrical converters, the policy of government is transformed into the strategy of the general, into the tactics of the field and into the action of the man behind the gun.20

What this army was good at was things driven by experience. The army of the late nineteenth century had spent decades fighting a low-level counterinsurgency campaign in the west, and its officers, at every level, had a great deal of experience in their job. The lack of a formalised retirement system and the drastic contraction of the army post-civil war meant that officers spent decades not only fighting the same war, but fighting it in the same rank with the same responsibilities. Arthur MacArthur, to take one example, spent twenty-three years as a Captain after the Civil War. In the 1880s, to take another, there were a number of veterans of the Mexican-American War of 1848 still serving.21 We look at this now with some dismay, but we should not ignore the advantages of such an arrangement. The officers knew their jobs, both formally and informally, they knew each other, and they knew the specifics of their area of responsibility, both geographic and otherwise.

One of the critical factors in this was the counterinsurgency campaign was a low-casualty one. Officers were only rarely killed or incapacitated. Little Big Horn was an enormous outlier, and we might note that the 262 deaths at that battle were not at all unusual for a unit serving in World War I or World War II. For the post-Civil War Army it was a catastrophe. In an ironic twist, Little Big Horn led to the fastest rate of promotion in the post-Civil War army. Custer’s grieving fellow officers in the 7th Cavalry became the beneficiaries of his incompetence.22

19 For a discussion of how one Secretary of War handled this during war, see Herman Hattaway, and Archer Jones, ‘The War Board, the Basis of the United States First General Staff’, Military Affairs 46:1 (1982), 1-5.

20 Quoted in David Axeen, ‘“Heroes of the Engine Room’: American “Civilization” and the War With Spain’, American Quarterly 36:4 (1984), 481-502.

21 Silbey, War of Frontier and Empire, 18-19.22 Ibid.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

29

The effect of this relatively low casualty rate was that officers and soldiers had time to build and take advantage of experience. They were not being moved from post to post all that often, and they were not moving up the ladder because of casualties. They knew their jobs. What they were good at was a specific set of skills. They were good at small unit actions, regimental and below. They were good at counterinsurgency operations. They were good at occupation and nation-building. They were not good at large unit operations, above regimental. There had simply been no need for such things. They were not good at logistics. They were not good at expeditionary warfare. None of those things were in their experience.

Root’s reforms started the process of reversing that. In the interests of efficiency and organisation, Root lost the abilities that had developed out of the experience of decades. In a sense, the importance of formal knowledge supplanted the importance of informal knowledge in Root’s army. The army he created was optimised to be large, easily expandable, and able to handle heavy casualties without breaking down. It would not prove to be effective at counterinsurgency, however.

This is not to argue that Root and Roosevelt were ‘wrong’ to do what they did. The reforms, in fact, set up the army quite nicely for the first half of the twentieth century and the sanguinary World Wars. The army of George Custer would not have survived long on the battlefields of total war. But we can recognise that while still recognising that the side effect was to destroy an expertise that the American Army would have found much more useful in the second half of the twentieth century.

Root’s most treasured ambition was the establishment of a General Staff and the hierarchy of staff officers that would go with it. This imitation of the Prussian model would, Root believed, allow for effective service-wide organisation and planning, break the backs of the bureau chief-warlords, and allow the army to standardise itself. The establishment of a War College Board in November 1901 created a general staff in waiting, and Root finally got his way in February 1903 with the General Staff Act, which formally created the staff. General Samuel Young was the first Army Chief of Staff. The early years of the General Staff were difficult, with a large amount of political infighting. Some of the Chiefs themselves did not support the attempted sidelining of the bureaus, which led to a number of Chiefs serving only months in the job. But two Chiefs, John Franklin Bell and Leonard Wood, served for eight years from 1906-1914 and firmly established the primacy of the JCS, setting the United States up reasonably well for the overwhelming expansion of the wartime army of 1917.23

23 Philip L. Semsch, ‘Elihu Root and the General Staff’, Military Affairs 27:1 (1963), 16-27.

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

30

Allied to the JCS was a staff system that rotated staff officers from assignment to assignment. This ensured a corps of officers with wide (if not deep) experience, broke the control of the long-tenured bureau officers, and took the load of organisation off the backs of the combat commanders. But note the effect: the staff officers no longer gained the kind of deep, specific, experience that had served the army well in the nineteenthth century. They had a much broader set of knowledge, true, but no longer the decades-long experience in a single job. The specific and encyclopedic expertise was lost.

What was to replace it in Root’s system was a major system of military education, so that officers would continually learn new skills and knowledge as they progressed through the ranks. At the beginning of this process would be West Point, with a revamped curriculum. But the education process would not stop there; Root oversaw the establishment of an Army War College, that would continue officer education in the middle of their careers. Finally, branch-specific schools would provide the knowledge needed for various specialties. Note the shift in emphasis from informal knowledge to formal knowledge, standardised and built by education.24

Theodore Roosevelt continued Root’s attempts at reform. Roosevelt was successful in cementing the reforms Root had started, but noticeably less so in implementing his own additions.25 It is worth taking a look at two of Roosevelt’s efforts both to get a sense of the ideas behind them and also the resistance to them.

Roosevelt was obsessed with physical fitness. A small, unthrifty child, who was told at an early age that he had a weak heart likely to kill him, Roosevelt responded by going doggedly in the other direction, and becoming a fitness fanatic: ‘my philosophy … of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor of soul without which the vigor of the body counts for nothing’.26

When McKinley was shot and dying, Roosevelt single-handedly rode through a fall storm in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York to reach the President before he died. As a Rough Rider in Cuba, Roosevelt had been horrified by the corpulent condition of General William Shafter, the American commander.27 ‘Corpulent’ may be too easy a term. TR came to the Presidency determined to do something about it. He

24 Brooks Kleber, ‘History and Military Education: The U.S. Army’, Military Affairs 42:3 (October 1978), 136-41.25 A pattern true in some of his other reform efforts: see Oscar Kraines, ‘The President Versus Congress: The Keep

Commission, 1905-1909: First Comprehensive Presidential Inquiry Into Administration’, The Western Political Quarterly 23:1 (1970), 5-54.

26 Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography (New York, 1913), 51.27 Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1959), 318.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

31

instituted a physical fitness test for both army officers, who had to be able to do a forced march (some of it riding, some of it leading their horses) for thirty miles a day for three days. The officer corps did not greet this new requirement with great joy, even after Roosevelt did the test himself in January 1909, covering the ninety miles in a single day, rather than three, and feeling ‘fit as fiddle’ the next day.28 Shockingly the test did not lead to the ‘vigor of the spirit’ that Roosevelt had hoped, but was treated as an obstacle to be conquered, and was eventually abandoned in 1917, under pressure of organisation for war.29

What I would note about the physical fitness requirement is how orthogonal it was to any broad military requirements. It would surely be useful for an officer to be able to march long distances, particularly officers in the combat branches, but it had little to do with many of the responsibilities of officers in other areas. Yet it was essentially the defining requirement of the officer corps, one that was demanded annually with no regard for the requirements of the officer’s actual position. Roosevelt asserted that

Every army officer … ought to be summarily removed from the service unless is able to undergo far severer tests than those which I imposed. To follow any other course is to put a premium on slothful incapacity, and to do the gravest wrong to the Nation.30

This blanket supremacy of physical fitness failed to recognise the diversity of responsibilities in the army, and the possibility that other competencies might have been more important for some than raw fitness. Shafter may have been fat, but that had little to do with his performance in Cuba.

The second of Roosevelt’s attempted reforms was to the promotion system. When he became President, the promotion system was based strictly on seniority, with army officers rising through the ranks in careful marching order. This had its drawbacks, as senior officers would reach the rank of general at an age when most were close to retirement and were, needless to say, less than energetic in their duties. But it did create an officer corps that, at every level, had an overwhelming reservoir of experience and understanding. It privileged that informal knowledge developed over a lifetime’s service.

28 New York Times, 15 January 1909, 1.29 Army and Navy Journal, 7 December 1907, 351, 355; 14 August 1909, 1415; 24 December 1910, 470, 490; 19

June 1915, 1337.30 Ibid.

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

32

Roosevelt was determined to promote those he felt merited it, rather than go strictly by seniority. To that end, he promoted a number of people well before their turn. Tasker Bliss and William Carter were jumped over 271 and 89 officers with more seniority and in 1906, with some controversy, he promoted John J. Pershing from captain to brigadier general in a single swoop, lifting him over 862 people ahead in seniority.31 Though Roosevelt was able to manage it with individual promotions, he failed to convince Congress to put into place a general merit based promotion system, at least in part because of the controversy provoked by Pershing’s promotion.32 It is an odd irony that the result of that was that the same Pershing, in 1917-18, now the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in France, found many of his division commanders to be sadly past it.33 Again, here we see the promotion of perceived fitness over experience. With physical fitness, a superiority had been a generic one. With fitness for promotion, it was a very specific one, one that required the approval of Teddy Roosevelt to garner. In both cases, in-depth experience became at best part of the discussion, rather than the whole thing.

This is not to argue that Root and Roosevelt were necessarily wrong, though the idea that naval officers had to march fifty miles in three days, while enjoyable, seems remarkably unconnected to their actual jobs. What it is to argue instead, is that the Root and Roosevelt reforms effectively shifted the army in a particular direction, towards a particular set of skills and ideas, and away from skills and ideas that had proven useful in the kind of irregular wars of the late nineteenth century. Standardised knowledge and standardised requirements worked well for an army facing war that changed rapidly in its configuration and ideas. If specific knowledge was an active handicap then a uniform foundational base was the best that could be managed. If the army could expect high casualties, then having that foundational knowledge in its officers, having a broad (if shallow) expertise in a lot of different areas, would be useful.

The Twentieth Century Army

In that regard, it worked. Less so in World War I when the reforms had not fully taken hold and the war ended before the Americans could get quickly involved. In World War II, however, the American Army was, in comparison, rapidly innovative and responsive to the kind of war it was fighting. As one example, the integration of close air support

31 Jim Lacey, Pershing (New York, 2008), 54-5.32 Charles A. Byler, Civil-Military Relations on the Frontier and Beyond, 1865-1917 (Westport, CT, 2006), 57.33 James J. Cooke, Pershing and His Generals: Command and Staff in the AEF (Westport, CT, 1997), 61-74.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

33

into the US Army, essentially on the fly, in Normandy in 1944 required an integration of doctrine, tactics, and technology that would have likely been beyond the abilities of the ninteenth-century Army.34

On the flip side, the army, unlike the army in the Philippine War, was not good at preserving experience and knowledge at the unit level. The replacement system, in which casualties in a unit were individually replaced, worked against the effective continuation of unit knowledge. There was the underlying assumptions that soldiers were standardised and thus replaceable, at the cost of a great deal of unit cohesion built on experience.35 In addition, the American Army of World War II was an enormously youthful army, especially in the officer corps. Promotion was rapid and firings were frequent. By the end of the war, brigadier generals in their forties regularly commanded colonels in their thirties who commanded majors and captains in their twenties. When the war ended, they largely all went home.

That latter illustrates another critical point. Demobilisation led to a lot of people with critical knowledge going home, and the army both then and after most of its wars proved bad at preserving that knowledge and experience. After World War II, what was lost was an enormous amount of knowledge about conventional warfare, as the army that had fought World War II packed up and went home, mostly without recording their experiences and lessons learned. If I may steal an example from a non-army service, when the United States Marines, five years later, went to plan an amphibious landing at Inchon, they found themselves without the in-house knowledge of how to do it, and had to recall from the Marine Reserves all of those staff officers who had planned and organised World War II amphibious campaigns like Iwo Jima and Okinawa.36

This lack of preservation of knowledge hurt the American Army badly in the Vietnam war. This was clearly not the only factor, but it was a significant one. The army that went to war in southeast Asia in the early 1960s, unlike the one that went in 1899, was not one with an institutional and personal knowledge of counterinsurgency efforts. It was a Cold War army, with a body of standardised knowledge and education that focused on fighting the Soviets in Europe. Those doctrines did not translate well to Vietnam. In particular, let me highlight the rotation system, in which soldiers and officers rotated through commands and tours of duty at enormously rapid paces: soldiers spent a year

34 Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe, 1943-45 (London; Portland, OR, 1998), 84-93.

35 Bruce Newsome, Made, Not Born: Why Some Soldiers Are Better Than Others (Westport, CT, 2007), 22-4.36 William W. Stickney, ‘The Marine Reserves in Action’, Military Affairs 17:1 (1953), 16-22.

L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

34

in Vietnam. Officers spent a year as well, but only six months in a combat command. 37 The two assumptions here are obvious: soldiers and officers were standardised and could be plugged in and taken out with damaging the effort, and any experience gained during their tour was essentially useless and left to wither. As John Paul Vann put it, ‘the United States has not been in Vietnam for nine years, but for one year nine times’.38

Conclusion

The situation was not dramatically changed at the start of the campaign in Iraq (2003). The first stages of the Iraq War were very much conventional in form. That initial campaign was succeeded by a burgeoning insurgency that the Coalition Force found itself unable initially to handle. The perception became that Iraq would be another Vietnam, with comparisons of the two spiking upward in 2004 and staying high.39

But then something odd happened. American casualties began to drop substantially and quickly in September 2007 and continued to drop over the next several years, even as coalition forces were putting themselves in more vulnerable locations as part of the surge. What emerged over the next year or so was that, remarkably, the coalition had – with all the messiness and corruption inherent in nation-building – managed to win the counterinsurgency in Iraq. The comparisons to Vietnam largely disappeared in spring 2008 as this became clear. Why that happened is mostly another topic; here I will highlight two factors connected to my argument that have affected the Iraqi and Afghanistan campaigns.

The first is the re-emergence of experience as a critical element. Many of the units fighting in Iraq in 2006-08 were there for their second or even third term. The officers, NCOs, and soldiers had had time to build a body of knowledge about the society in which they were fighting, and the elements of the war they were waging. In addition to this, the Iraq conflict was a substantially lower-casualty affair than earlier wars – the World Wars and Vietnam – had been. Those with the necessary experience were not being knocked out by death or wounding.40

37 Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army (New York, 1978).38 Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, 1986), 206.39 Googling ‘Iraq Vietnam’ for the period 2003-10 shows the usage spiking in the early years and then dropping

precipitously in 2008: http://www.google.com/search?q=iraq+vietnam&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=nivb&sa=X&ei=aCPLTLOYDoet8AbompXjAQ&ved=0CHwQpQI&tbs=tl:1,tlul:2003,tluh:2010.

40 As of October, 2010, American fatalities in Iraq have numbered 4427, a fraction of the approximately 420,000 who died in World War II, and over a longer period: http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

35L O S I N G T H E I N S U R G E N T T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

Ally to this two policies. The ‘stop-loss’ policy, which kept soldiers in the military even after their enlistments had expired, effectively preserved a large and experienced body of soldiers, if sometimes resentful ones.41 In addition, the promotion policy came to resemble one of seniority. The army, most critically, found itself short of mid-level officers, with the result that promotion to certain levels once one reached a certain seniority came to be all but assured. In 2006, ninety per cent of eligible majors were promoted to lieutenant colonel, and almost one hundred per cent of eligible captains were promoted to major.42 This too elevated experience in a way that had not been particularly true in the twentieth century.

Note that this was not a deliberate attempt by the military or the two administrations. Both the Bush and Obama administrations made the conscious decision to avoid nationalising the war, and so the result was that they had to rely on those already in the military. But the effect was largely the same: experience was built and preserved and informal knowledge again became a major portion of the equation.

Second, despite the American Army’s oft-expressed dislike for nation-building and for counterinsurgency efforts, by 2007 it had in fact been much longer since that army had fought a conventional campaign that lasted more than a year and inflicted more than 200 fatalities than it had been for the army of 1899. Counting Vietnam as such a conventional campaign, I note the peculiar irony that the army of 1899 had gone thirty-four years without such a campaign (the end of the Civil War) and the Army of 2007 had gone the same thirty-four years. That maybe cheating a bit, but the symmetry is intriguing. In any case, I would note that counterinsurgency and nation-building is currently, like it not, what the army mostly does, and the realisation of that began to be taken seriously somewhere around 2005-07 by the institution.43

In this sense, then the army of the twenty-first century has, at least momentarily and only partly intentionally, come to resemble the army of the late nineteenth-century in a number of critical ways. It has come to develop a body of informal knowledge, largely based around experience, in the same way that the army of the late nineteenth century. That experience has played out effectively in Iraq in a way similar to how it played out in the Philippines.

41 Lisa Burgess, ‘Army Puts All Units Tapped for Iraq, Afghanistan on Stop-Loss, Stop-Move’, Stars and Stripes, 3 June 2004.

42 Bryan Bender and Renee Dudley, ‘Army Rushes to Promote Its Officers’, Boston Globe, 13 March 2007.43 Note, for example, that the word ‘insurgency’ appears in article titles of Parameters, the journal of the Army War

College, ten times in 2005-2007, compared to once in the period 1997-2003: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/ArticleIndex.cfm.

36

44 Donald Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior; the Early Life of John J. Pershing (New York, 1973), 278.45 Usefully tracking this is the Beloit Mindset Study, http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/.

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

The US turned away from that mindset during the Root and Roosevelt reforms, perhaps correctly given the looming imperatives of the total wars, but without preserving a body of experience that would have been deeply useful in the second half of the twentieth century. As one example of the experiential skill of that American Army in the Philippines, I offered a long range patrol in which John J. Pershing participated in 1900. Let me turn now to another long-range patrol that Pershing, this time, led. In 1916, Pershing led an expedition into Mexico to chase Pancho Villa, the infamous revolutionary who had been making harassing raids across the border into the US. Despite a plane for reconnaissance, a telegraph line, and a logistics train built on the railroad and trucks, Pershing found himself unable to duplicate the success of that earlier patrol. American forces had to withdraw after nine frustrating months, having been, Pershing would say later, ‘out-witted and out-bluffed at every turn’. They were going home, the General continued, like a ‘whipped cur’.44

The larger implication I would point to is that informal knowledge, in the way I have laid out, is vulnerable to reforms of the Root and Roosevelt variety and even to generational shifts that replace one generation with a particular set of informal knowledge by another without it, or with a different set entirely. To use an illustration from my teaching, every year a new crop of first years arrives at school and they have lost or never had the kind of informal knowledge of the world that those older find absolutely defining. This year, they are beginning the process of forgetting 9/11 as a personal experience. They simply weren’t aware enough to remember it as well as those who were adults at the time.45 And that suggests both in the larger sense, but particularly in the military sense, that the preservation of that kind of informal knowledge is a critical issue: how to preserve and transmit that knowledge from one generation to another, although a substantial challenge, is one that will help us avoid being ‘whipped curs’ again.

37

‘The great questions of the time will not be resolved by parliamentary speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood.’1 This dictum adorns the cover of a textbook on diplomatic history used to train Ottoman officials in 1912. The words were Bismarck’s, of course, but they had been put there by the book’s author, Ahmed Selaheddin, an Ottoman professor of law, because they captured the way the world appeared from Constantinople/Istanbul. An Ottoman newspaper put the sentiment this way: ‘our honor and our people’s dignity cannot be preserved by those old books of international law, but only by war.’2

And yet, in the Turkish Republic of the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps only a fool would have admitted to thinking that the decision for war – and holy war – in 1914 had been a good idea. The old empire that had stretched from Constantinople to Baghdad was gone, the caliphate was abolished, and Anatolia – the Turks’ new homeland – had been saved from foreign occupation only by what seemed to be a miracle. That miracle, of course, had by then become personified in Mustafa Kemal (later, Atatürk), and he – in no uncertain terms – had distanced himself from those who had taken the empire to war and declared jihad in 1914. The men of 1914, it seemed clear after the war, had run the empire into the ground.

Internationally the new Turks of the republic faced charges of imposing a reign of terror in Syria, including the public execution of Arab leaders there. They also faced charges of killing and driving out Anatolia’s Christians. These were charges of massacre,

Author’s note: This paper draws on research for my book, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge, 2008).1 Ahmed Selaheddin, Balkan Harb-i Ahiri, 1331/1912: ‘mesail-i azime hazıra, parlamento nutuklarıyla ve ekseri-

yetlerin kararıyla değil, demirle, kanla hal olunacakdir. 30 Eylül 1862.’ See Bismarck’s ‘Nicht durch Reden oder Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden [...], sondern durch Eisen und Blut’, 30 September 1862.

2 Ahenk, 13 October 1912, quoted in Zeki Arıkan, ‘Balkan Savaşı ve Kamuoyu’, in Bildiriler: Dördüncü Askeri Tarih Semineri (Ankara, 1989), 176.

Lessons of Defeat, Lessons for War: The Ottoman Empire

Mustafa Aksakal

38

3 Z. Duckett Ferriman, The Young Turks and the Truth about the Holocaust at Adana in Asia Minor, during April 1909 (n.p., 1913).

4 Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk İnkılabı Tarihi, vol. II/iii, Paylaşmalar (Ankara, 1991; 1951), 5.5 Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged (London, 2007); M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief

History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 2008); Palmira Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-1911 (Albany, NY, 2000); Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London, 2010).

V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

the term ‘genocide’ not yet having come into use, though one contemporary referred to the 1909 massacres of Christians in Adana as a ‘holocaust’.3

In this new world, with the Ottoman Empire gone, who, in their right mind, would admit to having supported war and holy war in 1914?

Amidst the rubble of the aftermath of the First World War, a twisted historical narrative emerged. In this narrative, the Ottoman entry into the war was placed on the shoulders of a single individual, the Ottoman minister of war, Enver Pasha. Enver and the disaster of intervention was put into stark contrast to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and getting out of the war – a national triumph. And so, Enver Pasha was portrayed as a war hawk in thrall to Germany. Enver, the emerging narrative claimed, had pushed the empire more or less single-handedly into a war that no one else wanted.

In this way, entry into the First World War has been ascribed to the hare-brained ideas of a tiny inner circle of the so-called Young Turks. This Young Turk leadership, it is said, had hijacked Ottoman policy – either because Enver and the men around him were corrupted by German gold, or because they were blinded by German promises, or because they were pressured by German diplomats.

The father of Turkish diplomatic history put it this way: the Ottoman leaders of 1914 were ‘simple-minded’ individuals.4 And the jihad declaration of November 1914, moreover, was cast as a ‘Holy War made in Germany’, a product of German machinations, not Ottoman interests.

In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, the Ottomans had been swimming in a sea of military crises.5 Looking back, with the wisdom of hindsight, one might expect them to come up for air and use the intra-European conflict as a moment of much-needed reprieve from over a century of military defeats and territorial losses. The most recent chapters of these defeats included Russia’s annexation of areas in eastern Anatolia in 1878, Britain’s occupation of Cyprus and Egypt in 1878 and 1882, Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, Italy’s grab for Tripoli in Libya in 1911, and the attack by the Balkan League and the two ensuing and horrific wars of 1912 and 1913. The Balkan wars alone had produced a refugee crisis of some 400,000 Muslim refugees from the Balkans.

39L E S S O N S O F D E F E A T, L E S S O N S F O R W A R

With such a record of defeats, it seems, the Ottoman leadership in 1914 should have opted for less war, not more.

However, once we consider the impact of military defeat – and the lessons the Young Turks took away from these defeats – Ottoman policies of 1914 become much clearer. The Ottomans had pegged their international isolation as the cause of their defeats. Hence, when 1914 came, they opted for an alliance with Germany and, if necessary, for war. Whereas the Ottoman leaders of the nineteenth century had launched a broad program of reforms in their search for a place in the European Concert, by the twentieth century a new crop of radical leaders had taken charge of the state, first in June 1908 in the so-called Young Turk Revolution, and then more firmly in a coup d’état in January 1913, in the event known as the March on the Sublime Porte.

Many of these new leaders came from borderlands, from territories now lost, and they believed that the survival of their state rested on the creation of a ‘nation in arms’. The officer corps had cut its teeth in the Libyan war of 1911 against Italy and the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. And they had learned the lessons that not diplomacy but only military power could secure the Ottomans’ future.

This was not just the view held by Enver Pasha and a few senior officers. It was the dominant view among officers and politicians, academics and intellectuals, and among the politically interested and educated public. As one observer noted in 1937: ‘Like all societal events, our entering the war was not the work of a single individual, but the result of a host of interrelated factors.’6

Ottoman publications that appeared before the outbreak of war presented the possibility of yet another war as an acceptable – and frequently even – as an inevitable form of self-defence and liberation. What the archival documents as well as the press demonstrate is the omnipresence of the deep sense of violation that was felt among the political, military, and educated elites: economic restrictions imposed on the state were constant issues of public lament – today we would call such policies economic sanctions.

Gory photographs and long descriptions of murders and expulsions of Muslims in the Balkans and the Caucasus were commonplace, as were the heart-wrenching, emotional accounts of the conditions of colonial life and the mistreatment of Muslim populations from Morocco to India. The press also articulated frequently the view that the question

6 Kâzım Karabekir, Cihan Harbine Nasıl Girdik?, vol. 2, Cihan Harbine Neden Girdik, Nasıl Girdik, Nasıl İdare Ettik (Istanbul, 1937), 32-86. ‘Her içtimaî hadise gibi harbe girişimiz dahi bir tek insan iradesinin eseri değil, bir takım girift amillerin muhassalasıdır.’

40 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

of the empire’s international and territorial security – or rather its insecurity – was one and the same with the empire’s nationalities question.

Ottoman books, newspapers, and journals depicted European diplomacy – and especially diplomacy that espoused humanitarian intervention on the behalf of minorities – as scarcely disguised tools of European imperialism. These publications depicted the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim world as the victims of the international system. The language that was used to describe international relations painted a world in which modern nations were locked into constant battle with each other. Reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism, one publication said:

Only the nation armed with national feelings can participate in the struggle and gain as a result of it the right to remain alive. But let us not spend much time on the word ‘right,’ for there is no one left who does not believe that ‘right’ is nothing other than ‘might’. ‘The most obvious truth is that those who do not crush will be crushed.’ The inevitable place of those who do not heed this proverb is the cemetery and history. Thus in order to live we must not strive for ‘right’ but for power … Right can only be derived from power, civilization only from power, happiness only from power. Power is everything.7

The Japanese had shown in the nineteenth century that ‘negotiating with imperialism’ was possible as a tactic for fending off the Great Powers in the short-term. Japan had even succeeded in negotiating the termination of European economic privileges there in 1898. But the Japanese example had also demonstrated that only a military that was powered by the modern forces of industrialisation, mass education, and social mobilisation could make diplomacy effective.8

In the Chamber of Deputies one elected delegate argued, for example, that

it does not matter however many books we write on international law or however many human rights laws we implement. In order to get states to respect these we must still possess additional means, means of coercion. Every state has adopted this position and for that reason builds up its [military] strength … We are a state, too, and we therefore cannot escape this truth.9

Given the fact that the literacy rate still hovered in the single digits in the first decade of the twentieth century, publications often aimed explicitly at the non-literate segments of society. These publications carried instructions on their covers such as the following:

7 ‘İntikam Duygusu’, Büyük Duygu, Sayı 2, 16 Mart 1329 [29 March 1913], 17.8 Michael R. Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and Culture of Japanese Imperialism (Cam-

bridge, 2004).9 Ferhad Bey in Meclis-i Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 30 Haziran 1330 [13 July 1914].

41

10 Özdemir [Şehbenderzade Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi], Türk Ruhu Nasıl Yapılıyor? Her Vatanperverden, Bu Eserciği Türklere Okumasını ve Anlatmasını Niyaz Ederiz (İkaz-ı Millet Kütüphanesi, no. 1. Darülhilâfe: Hikmet Matbaa-i İslamiyesi, 1329 [March 1913-March 1914]).

11 Ibid., 36.12 Ibid., 6-7.13 ‘Türk Hanımlarının Toplantısı’, Büyük Duygu, no. 2, 16 Mart 1329 [29 March 1913], 31-2.

L E S S O N S O F D E F E A T, L E S S O N S F O R W A R

‘May every patriot read and relate this booklet to the Turks.’10 And the author had further instructions as well: ‘O Turkish youths, sons of the homeland, hope of the nation! Run out to the four corners of Anatolia and be fountains of vigor and guidance. Wake up the common classes from their slumber and rescue the middle classes from intrigue and politics, lead them all down the right path.’11 He returned to the wounds of military defeat:

The Crimea, Rumania, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus all went one by one … Finally Tripolitania [Libya] and three-fourths of the Balkans also were lost. These areas were all rich and valuable places; we gained them at the cost of our blood. But those territories, however rich they may be, were not the heart and soul of our homeland (yurdumuzun yüreği) … O Turk! Anatolia is the heart and soul of our homeland. O Turk! If we continue in our old ways, if we face the enemy again in slumber, unprotected, then this time the enemy’s sword will come to our [homeland’s] heart and soul and kill each one of us.12

Journals and newspapers organised public lectures and meetings in an effort to involve broad segments of the populations. One such meeting was held in an Istanbul suburb in early April 1913, in the aftermath of the First Balkan War. It had been organised by the women’s branch of the Society for National Defence (Müdafaa-i Milliye Cemiyeti), a prominent and popular organisation that promoted the ideals of an empire under siege. At the meeting, the chairwoman delivered an address, subsequently published in the journal Büyük Duygu. She talked about how the vast majority of her fellow countrymen and women were ‘still asleep’ and how they had to be awakened to the dangers facing the empire. This was a very typical and common theme that ran through the contemporary political literature. She urged her female audience to make sacrifices, especially financial ones, in the nation’s interest. She called on her listeners to prove to the world that Turks could ‘face the Europeans head on, be it militarily or economically’.13

Such sentiments also entered school textbooks. Here is a passage from a geography textbook, published in 1913 in the aftermath of the Second Balkan War:

In 1912 the Balkan states formed an alliance against Turkey [Türkiye]. After fierce battles, Turkey lost all of Rumelia [the Ottoman provinces in Europe] except for Istanbul, the Straits, and Edirne Province … Much innocent Muslim and Turkish

42 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

blood was shed during this period. Women and children, indiscriminately, were cut up and butchered. Villages were burnt and razed. Now, in Rumelia, under every rock and beneath the soil lie thousands of dismembered bodies, with eyes gouged out and stomachs slit … It is our children’s and grandchildren’s national duty to right this wrong, and to prepare for taking revenge for the pure and innocent blood that has flowed like waterfalls.14

Another writer saw a great deal of irony in the empire’s dilemma, namely that only Europe stood in the way of the ‘Turk’s Europeanization (Türkün Avrupalılaşmasına)’. From his perspective, the Europeans were playing a game, calling for reforms in the empire and at the same time tying the Ottomans’ hands from implementing such reforms. The Triple Entente, and Britain in particular, he argued, was waging an all-out attack on the Ottoman Empire.15 Writing in January 1913, he described this dynamic sarcastically:

Yes, yes, in order to be friends with Britain we must recognise that the Red Sea is a British sea. And we must also cede [to the British the region stretching from] Egypt to Syria, [and from] Iraq to India, and permit the British sphere of influence in Iran to extend westward, that is, to extend to the port of Alexandretta. And we must be satisfied with an Anatolian princedom based in Konya. [Once we do all that] we can begin to speak of a friendly British policy towards us.16

In the Ottoman press, therefore, we find the powerful conviction that the Great Powers had placed a noose around the Ottoman neck, and that that noose was tightening. Whether the navy could purchase modern battleships for its fleet, or whether the Ministry of Public Works could build railway lines in eastern Anatolia near the Russian border or railway lines connecting Anatolia and Syria, and whether the Ottoman treasury could increase taxes on goods imported to the Ottoman Empire by foreign companies, all depended on Great Power approval. These were matters much discussed in the Ottoman press and they were portrayed as major injustices and injuries to the Ottoman body politic.

The fact that the First Balkan War of 1912 had ended in terrible defeat, and that the enemy was not a Great Power but a coalition of the small Balkan states, and that the loss of territory came within one hundred miles of the capital and the fact that the losses included such prominent places as Salonica, and that perhaps as many as half of ruling

14 Tuncer Baykara, ‘Birinci Dünya Savaşı’na Girişin Psikolojik Sebepleri’, in Bildiriler: Dördüncü Askeri Tarih Semineri (Ankara, 1989), 362-3, citing Faik Sabri Duran, Avrupa (Istanbul, 1913).

15 Cami [Abdurrahman Cami Baykut], Osmanlılığın Âtisi: Düşmanları Ve Dostları (Istanbul, 1331 [5 Kanunisani 1328/18 January 1913]), 6-8, 12, 21-9.

16 Ibid., 30.

43L E S S O N S O F D E F E A T, L E S S O N S F O R W A R

party’s leaders themselves hailed from the Balkans, all accentuated the calamity of the situation.17 This crushing sense of defeat did not let up during the months immediately before the outbreak of war. On the contrary, as some 400,000 Muslim refugees arrived from the former Balkan territories, the experience of the Balkan wars profoundly impacted the empire.

The feeling that the empire’s minority populations, and in particular its Christian populations, were cooperating with the Great Powers towards the establishment of total Great Power control steadily increased in the decades before the First World War, and especially during and after the two Balkan wars. By early 1914, the possibility of population exchanges and ethnic cleansing had become part of Ottoman strategic thinking.

At least for Ottoman leaders like Talat Bey, the interior minister, the presence of large ethnic minorities, especially when backed by a foreign power, threatened the stability and hence the very existence of the state. Talat found it legitimate, even modern and Western, to deal with such minorities in ways that would preclude any future territorial claims. In the aftermath of the Balkan wars, some 150,000 Orthodox Christians18 had been expelled from Izmir and Thrace through what Erik-Jan Zürcher has described as a ‘campaign of threats and intimidation’,19 and already in June 1914, Interior Minister Talat proposed a formal exchange of populations with Greece to make the expulsions official, foreshadowing the Greek-Turkish exchange of populations signed in 1923. In 1914, Talat assured the Russian ambassador, Giers, that it would not come to war between the Ottoman Empire and Greece over the Aegean islands that Greece had captured during the First Balkan War. Why? Talat said (at least according to the Russian ambassador) that since the Anatolian coast across the islands had been ‘cleansed’ of their Orthodox population, the imminent threat Greece posed had now passed.20 The Ottomans had not, however, created this situation by themselves. On 9 February 1914, for example, the day after the Ottoman government signed the Great Powers’ Armenian reform proposal for the six eastern provinces, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Istanbul wrote a glowing summary of the negotiations. His report very much illustrates the fine line between humanitarian

17 Erik-Jan Zürcher, ‘The Young Turks – Children of the Borderlands?’, in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities and Political Changes, eds. Kemal H. Karpat and Robert W. Zens (Madison, WI, 2003), 275-85.

18 Zürcher,Young Turk Legacy, 71.19 Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd edn (New York, 2004), 126.20 Giers used ‘cleansed’: see Die Internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (hereafter, IBZI), Giers to

Sazonov, Series I, vol. 3, no. 386, 26 June 1914, 334, ed. Otto Hoetzsch (Berlin, 1931-43). The Russian original reads ochishchenie.

44 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

interventionism, on the one hand, and imperialist expansionism, on the other. The telegram was published a year later in the so-called Orange Book. One important passage, however, was deleted from that publication, and we can see immediately why: ‘I am so bold as to believe that Russia, if its historical fate leads it to Constantinople, will be able to rely on the 200,000 strong Armenian population of Constantinople in the inevitable struggle with the Greek element.’21

The idea of using the help of Ottoman Armenians in order to establish Russian control over the Straits against the Greeks, therefore, was not far from the minds of at least some Russian statesmen. What is remarkable in Giers’s telegram is not so much the Russian wager on Armenian support, but the fact that the Russian ambassador had already written off the Ottomans entirely.

While the Ottoman press is invaluable for understanding the emotional and intellectual climate of 1914, we do not have to rely only on the press to understand the thinking among the men at the top. The generation at the helm of the Ottoman state welcomed the July crisis not as a reprieve from international politics – and not as an opportunity to go to war – but as an opportunity to end their diplomatic and military isolation. Once the guns of August had gone off, the stock of all the neutral powers, especially those in the Balkans, rose rapidly by the day during the summer of 1914. And so, the Ottomans were able to trade promises of military intervention for a long-term alliance with the Great Power of their choice, Germany.

No, the Ottoman leaders were not expansionists eager to follow the Germans into the trenches; but yes, they were fully capable of responding to an opportunity, however risky, when they saw one. They saw this alliance not as a ticket to the battlefield in a war that in any case they expected to be over within a month or two, but as their key to international security, and a crucial step towards regaining sovereignty – in practice and not just theory. And however anomalous it may seem in the context of the July crisis – and contrary to what it has come to stand for in the historiography – the secret treaty with Germany on 2 August was conceived by Ottoman not German policy-makers and it was conceived as an instrument of peacetime, post-war diplomacy.

When the Ottoman leaders looked backward from 1914 at the recent developments inside the empire and at the empire’s relations with Europe and with the European concert, or when they considered developments worldwide – in Africa, in Asia, and even

21 Gulkevich to Sazonov, 9 February 1914, IBZI, Series I, vol. 1, no. 210. See the editor’s note for the deletion of the passage from the Orange Book.

45L E S S O N S O F D E F E A T, L E S S O N S F O R W A R

in Central America, for the Ottoman press followed US-Mexican relations closely – or when they looked just next door to Qajar Iran, they looked back at a set of experiences which led them to see the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the July crisis, and eventually the Great War, as a Great Opportunity. They saw the Great War as a Great Opportunity for putting the empire on a path of regeneration.

And so, throughout summer 1914, with the treaty signed, the Ottomans hoped to sit on the alliance, and to sit out the war. The documents that predate the war, therefore, prove our standard historical accounts wrong. They show that none other than Enver himself repeatedly told Berlin that the empire could not go to war until Bulgaria joined Germany and the Ottomans. Otherwise, Enver claimed, the empire would be vulnerable to a Bulgarian attack. And so it is amazing to find Enver negotiating secretly with Bulgarian contacts behind the Germans’ back in August 1914, after signing the alliance with Germany. In these secret negotiations with Bulgaria we find Enver cutting a deal. The two sides agreed to stay out of the war for now, all the while complaining to Berlin, in a piece of drama, that the only thing that was keeping the Ottomans out of the war was the hesitation of the squeamish Bulgarians.22

And then there is Said Halim Pasha, the Ottoman grand vezir, who has been depicted in the historiography as something of a stumbling fool who was ‘duped’ by Enver and Talat. But in fact, we find him offering to the Germans a long-term naval base in the Sea of Marmara, an offer that points again to the Ottoman need for international security, as they saw it. Equally amazing, we find six weeks before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a major Istanbul daily newspaper talking openly about the possibility of the two German warships, the famous Goeben and the Breslau, joining the Ottoman navy in the case of a wider war breaking out in Europe. It was these ships, of course, that would eventually fire the Ottomans’ opening shot at Russia and bring the Ottomans into the war.23

However, with German armies bogged down on the Western front and the news of heavy Habsburg losses arriving from Galicia, Berlin’s demands for intervention intensified. By 10 September, the German army began a general retreat to avoid being completely encircled at the Marne. With the British and French in hot pursuit, Germany’s military leaders demanded the immediate stop to any further aid to the Ottoman Empire.24 Germany had already supplied the Ottomans with a military and naval mission, two warships, and over a thousand officers and personnel. Berlin was fed up.

22 F. A. K. Yasemee, ‘Ottoman Empire’, in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War, 1914 (New York, 1995), 242.23 Tanin, 17 May 1914.24 Jagow to Wangenheim, tel. 121, 10 September 1914, Politisches Archive des Auswärtigen Amts, R 22402.

46 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Despite the mounting pressure from Berlin, however, the Ottomans managed to stay out of the war for yet another full seven weeks.

We may ask whether at this point, as the Germans began threatening to withdraw from the alliance, the Ottomans could have walked away from their German allies and joined the Entente, or gone back to a policy of neutrality. There are various pieces of evidence to show why the Ottoman leaders thought the answer was clearly ‘no’.

Ottoman suspicions of the Entente’s ultimate designs on the empire’s territory were not just based on fears and speculations. Perhaps the most stunning example comes from a telegram written by the Russian ambassador in Istanbul, Giers, on 6 August, to his government in St Petersburg. This was a telegram the Ottomans had intercepted. In the telegram the Russian ambassador reported from Istanbul as follows: ‘I believe that Turkey, and maybe also Bulgaria, will go with us. [Turkey] fears German defeat but wishes to get some real gain out of the current war. Although I do not trust [Turkey], I do not think we can push her away, since that would mean pushing her into the arms of our enemies.’ And here is where my jaw dropped. Giers continued: ‘The formation of a Balkan league, which includes Turkey, can be to our advantage only to that point in time when circumstances permit our own firm entrance into the Straits. I therefore dare to express the viewpoint that it would be desirable to continue negotiations with the [Sublime] Porte concerning a possible understanding between us.’25

In other words, Giers was saying, we can keep them friendly now and do as we wish later.

This is not a case of ‘one clerk writing to another’; the message conveyed here is reflected in the general approach of the Entente towards the Ottomans in 1914. Once the war began, the French foreign minister suggested offering the Ottomans a guarantee to protect Ottoman territory in order to ‘calm’ Ottoman nerves. Doing so would not, he continued, prevent the Entente from ‘solving the Straits question in line with our thinking at war’s end’. Others in the French foreign ministry took an even more aggressive line. They argued that it would be ‘more advantageous for us to include Turkey on the side of our enemies and in that way to finish her off [for good]’.26

25 Giers to St Petersburg, 6 August 1914, no. 631, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg i.Br., RM 40 – 457, sheet 254. Also in IBZI, Series I, vol. 2, no. 9, Giers to Sazonov, 5 August 1914.

26 Izvolskii to Sazonov, tel. 65, 11 August 1914, in IBZI, Series II, vol. 6/1, 44, and note 2. Izvolskii reported these French attitudes a day after the two legendary German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau, made their famous escape into the Ottoman Straits. The French talks took place before the ships’ news had reached Paris, however, and hence they had not been prompted by the crisis that ensued over the German ships.

47

27 Cemal to Sofia Embassy, 20 Teşrin-i Evvel 330 [2 November 1914], Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüt Başkanlığı, BDH, Klasör 87, Yeni Dosya 449, Fihrist 1-2 and 1-3.

L E S S O N S O F D E F E A T, L E S S O N S F O R W A R

One of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, Cemal Pasha, who in the historiography is generally thought to have been pro-Entente, wrote the following on 2 November: ‘When I contemplate all that Russia has done for centuries to bring about our destruction, and all that Britain has done during these last few years, then I consider this new crisis that has emerged to be a blessing. I believe that it is the Turks’ [Türklerin] ultimate duty either to live like an honourable nation or to exit the stage of history gloriously.’27

Coming at the end of what they perceived as a long history of violation they had suffered at the hands of Britain, France, and Russia, the Ottomans decided that they could put little faith into any diplomatic agreements with the Entente powers. Ottoman intervention, therefore, and the war’s spread to the Eastern Mediterranean, is best explained by the deep sense of defeat and international isolation which the Ottomans hoped to escape by seizing the opportunity for an alliance with Germany in 1914.

When the Ottomans made the jihad declaration in 1914 the Entente powers were so convinced of Ottoman subservience to the German diktat that they could not conceive that the fatwa was ‘made in Istanbul’ and not in Berlin. And scholars since then have agreed with them – quite wrongly, in my view. But that is another story.

48

How Military Tradition Prevailed and Reform Failed to Prevent the Collapse of the Russian

Empire, 1856–1904

John W. Steinberg

Between the victory over Napoleon and the fall of the Romanov dynasty, the Russian military went from being the supreme master of the European battlefield to the armed force that collapsed amid the chaos of World War I and revolution at home. Emerging in the post-Napoleonic period as the policeman of Europe, however, the supremacy of Russian military power was unchallenged throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Over the course of this period the Russian army successfully defeated the Ottoman Empire in 1828-29. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825-55) and continuing into Alexander II’s reign (1855-81), the army waged successful conflicts in the Caucasus and Persia, and in the 1860s and 1870s, constructing an Empire across Central Asia. Moreover, in the course of fighting colonial wars, the Imperial Army also suppressed internal rebellions, most notably in Poland in 1831 and 1864 while serving as an internal police force when and wherever necessary. These operational experiences were used to teach and train both soldiers and officers in the art of warfare while also infusing an imperial spirit into the mores of the Tsar’s subjects. The Imperial Russian army, therefore, fought and won more battles and wars than it lost over the course of the nineteenth century while providing the Empire with a source to enforce political and social stability.

Yet the late Imperial army is best remembered for the stunning defeats that it suffered at the hands of a Great Power Coalition (the French, British, and Turks) in the Crimean War of 1853-55 and against Japan in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. The shock and devastation of that loss in the Crimea mandated a complete reassessment of the military capabilities of the Russian military establishment. This essay, therefore, studies the sources and causes of the ability of the Russians to win more wars than they lost, yet still ultimately fail to defend the realm against its numerous enemies in the post-Crimean War period. Wrapped tightly inside the social/political sphere of Imperial Russian history, military modernisation had been a goal of most Russian rulers since Peter the Great, founder of the guard’s regiments who, by the end of the nineteenth century, embodied Russian military

49H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

tradition. After the 1725 death of Peter the Great, no Russian ruler came to power without the support of their praetorian Imperial guard’s officers. How the institutional reforms of the 1860s and 1870s transformed Russian military education, long the aristocracy’s preserve, therefore, is a central topic of this paper. Special focus will be devoted to a class of schools created in the 1860s, the military colleges, and to the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff, the institution that trained the Russian high command of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

More disconcerting for the Russian aristocracy in the mid-nineteenth century, however, was how the post-Crimean War reforms resulted in opening the ranks of the Officer Corps to all qualified subjects of the Empire. Changes imposed on Russia by modernity, everything from the industrial revolution to the growing strength of nationalist and democratic sentiment, had started the process of superannuating the Russian aristocracy. As the age of progress transformed both the international and strategic environment, Russia’s upper classes no longer had the raw numbers necessary to provide the military establishment with the men needed for all of the officers’ billets that their new mass conscript army would require. This process, sometimes referred to as the democratisation of the Officer Corps, will also be a topic examined in this article. Preparing officers to command on the industrialised battlefield, one best characterised as an environment that consisted of weapon systems of ever-increasing lethality firing into mass armies that outnumbered anything Napoleon mobilised, became the challenge for Imperial Russia’s rulers as it sought to reform its worn-out military system. The situation was as urgent as the old elites were entrenched in their command positions. As one expert on the Russian military described them, the typical Imperial guard officer was tough, jealous, stubborn, ambitious and proud. Even worse, they were lost in a world where the ‘minutiae of correct military drill and uniform’ were their top priority.1 The officers of the guard were raised to believe that it was their birth right to dominate the Russian high command and, despite changes brought on them by the passage of time, they did all they could to hold on to their prestige and position. The consequences of these beliefs became a major hurdle for anyone who sought to modernise the army through reform in the post-Crimean war period. Traditional military elites resisted, yet tolerated reforming their educational institutions, but transforming the activities that occurred on the parade ground, the site where operational exercises needed to be rehearsed to up-grade military preparedness, was anathema to all military traditions starting with the role of the Tsar in the imperial army.2

1 Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon (New York, 2009), 54-5.2 See John L.H. Keep, ‘The Military Style of the Romanov Rulers’, War & Society 1:2 (September 1983): 61-84.

50 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Nicholas I and his Army

As is well known, Nicholas I came to power amid much dynastic confusion. To the chagrin of a man who always considered himself a soldier first rather than a political leader, his first task as Tsar was to defeat a revolt of a faction of guard’s officers who rebelled in order to force political change on the regime. The events of the Decembrist revolt reinforced Nicholas’s mistrust of all things modern. Moreover, it made Nicholas reconsider not only the personal loyalty of all of his officers, but also to carefully study the capabilities of his military, something he did throughout his reign through the use of special government commissions usually composed of officers he trusted. For example, one of the lessons learned from the 1828-29 Russo-Turkish war was that the army was becoming too large for one commander to control on the battlefield. This problem had first become clear during the Napoleonic epoch but nothing had been done on an institutional level to remedy the problem. Nicholas I may have been a staunch conservative, but he nonetheless recognised a serious problem for the future of the army and concluded that he needed a cadre of staff officers whose sole task would be to command large-scale concentrations of troops on the battlefield. To facilitate the emergence of such a skilled group of officers, the Tsar invited the Swiss Baron and Napoleonic-era General Antoine Henri Jomini to Russia to create what became known as the Imperial Military Academy; whence the birth of a Russian General Staff Academy.3 Yet Nicholas I remained such a staunch advocate of Russia’s military tradition that he ultimately insisted, against the advice of Baron Jomini, that officers who attended the General Staff Academy in the 1830s and 1840s had to participate in three hours of drill on the parade ground on a daily basis.4

This military system had stood its own throughout the struggles of the eighteenth century; indeed it fostered the emergence of Russia as a Great Power and ultimately played a critical, if not decisive, role in the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. The backbone of this military system, the Imperial Guard’s Officers, were the power and prestige behind the throne and, therefore, remained sacred within the military establishment regardless of the findings of any of the commissions that Nicholas I created to study his army. Since

3 Originally founded in 1832 on the command of Nicholas I, who asked Baron A.H. Jomini to organise it, Russia’s first staff academy was named the Imperial Military Academy. Upon the death of Nicholas I and to recognise its more specialised role in the training of officers, the Academy was renamed the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff on 30 August 1855. For a good brief summary of the history of Russia’s General Staff Academy see: N.A. Mashkin, Vysshaai Voennaai Shokola Rossiiskoi Imperii XIX Nachala XX Veka (Moscow, 1997), 27-42. Two very important sources on the history of the academy are: N.P. Glinoetskii, Istoricheskii ocherk Nikolaevskoi Akademii General’nogo shtaba (St Petersburg, 1882); P.A. Geisman, ‘Uchrezhdenie Imperatorskoi Voennoi Akademii’, Voennyi sbornik 11 (1908). On Jomini see John Shy, ‘Jomini’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, 1986), 143-86.

4 See John Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1462-1874 (Oxford, 1985), 346.

51H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

the early eighteenth century, in the period following the 1725 death of Peter the Great, Imperial Guard’s Officers used their aristocratic pedigree and subsequent connections to control access to all high command positions within the army. Nothing symbolised their unequal status more than the existence of Cadet Corps Academies, academic institutions founded during the reign of Empress Anne (1730-40) to reward the Guard’s Officers who were responsible for her political rise by providing their children with a free military education.5 Young aristocrats who attended these schools received both military training and a political education that taught them to support the regime. Graduation from these academies provided young officers with the credentials needed to join guard’s regiments and even the Tsar’s or Tsarina’s inner military circle, the Imperial Suite. With the autocrat’s knowledge and approval, guard’s officers used their connections to maintain their control over the army’s high command which also allowed them to prevent the rise of soldiers of humble origin into the commanding ranks of the army. This military system defined its traditional mores through the pageantry and style that emerged from parade ground inspections and exercises; it confirmed its legitimacy when the Russian army played a principal role in the defeat of Napoleon.

D.A. Miliutin and the Great Reforms

The stunning, indeed shocking defeat in the Crimean War, however, unavoidably revealed the shortcomings of the Tsarist military establishment which, in turn, acted as a catalyst for Russia’s age of Great Reform. Failure in the Crimean War necessitated prompt action to redress Russia’s newly discovered military ineptitude. While the goal and single greatest accomplishment of the reform period was the emancipation of the serfs, the Great Reforms touched most aspects of Russian society. For the Russian military, the central challenge was to transform itself from a serf-based army commanded by aristocrats into an armed force of mass conscripts commanded by officers whose capabilities, as opposed to social connections, propelled them to the top of the command establishment. Arguably, no one better understood the challenges of a rapidly changing world than D.A. Miliutin, Alexander II’s choice as War Minister in 1861. Miliutin emerged as the seminal figure in Alexander II’s effort to modernise Russia’s military establishment through the Great Reform period. His basic challenge was to reform a military system that favoured aristocrats in order to restore the lustre to the imperial army while bolstering political and military support for the regime.

5 See N.N.Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovane Anny Ioannovny: Formirovanie vnutripoliticheskogo kursa i sud’by armii i flota (St Petersburg, 2002), 110-20, for the political origins of the Cadet Corps Academies.

52 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

While Miliutin’s early biography is available elsewhere in great detail, it is important to note that his military career was typical for officers of his generation. What made Miliutin stand out among his peers was his ability to see through the fog of war and of politics and understand the big picture. While his father was not wealthy, his family had sufficient connections to launch him in a military career as a Junker in a Life Guard’s Regiment, and his intellect propelled him to be one of the Imperial Military Academy’s early graduates in 1836 when he was thirty years old. Between 1837 and 1845 he served two tours in the Caucasus, the continuous theatre of operation where soldiers of Nicholas I’s army received combat experience, and after being wounded during the first tour, he spent ten months on recuperative leave in Europe. This early period of his career culminated with his promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel and an appointment in 1845 to the faculty of the War Academy as professor of military geography. While always on the fast track, Miliutin gained notoriety in intellectual circles for his studies of the relationship between resources and military potential, in which he pioneered the application of statistical analysis to military geography. His statistics-based study of an adversary’s resources in relation to theatres of operation not only represents the birth of modern military intelligence gathering in Russia, but it also created an enduring tradition that became a significant component in the education of future Russian and Soviet staff officers. During the Crimean War, he served on the Imperial Suite and, as the conflict’s outcome became clear, found himself to be in a position to offer suggestions for reform.6

When the winds of change blew through the capitol in the fallout of the Crimean debacle, Miliutin, at first finding himself to be outspoken, returned to the Caucasus for a four-year tour where he put his theories into practice as General Bariatinskii’s Chief of Staff.7 Together the two men started the process that would ultimately lead to the pacification of Caucasian rebels who had fought Tsarist troops for the balance of Nicholas I’s reign. When Miliutin returned to St Petersburg in 1860, he joined a cadre of Imperial bureaucrats who were well-prepared to reform every aspect of life in Russia.8

6 For details on Miliutin’s biography see M.N. Osipova, D.A.Miliutin (Moscow, 2005); a solid contemporary piece is A.Bil’derling, ‘Graf Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin’, Voennyi sbornik 2 (February 1912), 3-16, which was written at the time of his death. In English see Forrest A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia (Nashville, 1968).

7 Soon after the defeat of the Russians in the Crimea, Miliutin linked the emancipation of the Russia peasant to any effort at military modernisation, which made him an outspoken advocate of major reforms. As a result he rejoined the operational army in the Caucasus until the dialogue on reform reached a point where his views had become acceptable. See John Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 356.

8 To better understand the complex environment of Russian bureaucratic politics at the time of the great reforms see: W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1867 (Dekalb, IL, 1982) and The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy, and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (Dekalb, IL, 1990).

53H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

Not only had his military career and European travels instilled reform ideas based on solid research, worldly experience, and extensive practice, he also had gained a clear view of the complexities of Imperial politics. Upon his appointment as War Minister on 9 November 1861, he started the process of completely overhauling Russia’s military institutions with a series of far-sighted reforms. First, he created military districts to centralise the authority of the war ministry throughout the Empire; each military district became an administrative unit responsible to the war ministry and charged with the task of educating, training, and providing all necessary supplies for the soldiers under the district’s command. As he overhauled the army’s administrative structure, Miliutin’s second significant reform simultaneously revamped the entire military educational system. Through these reforms he enhanced the quality of military education and also, by opening more schools, he created the opportunity for all Russian men to gain rank and status in the army based on their individual merit. The crowning achievement to his reform efforts, however, occurred when he convinced Alexander II to enact the universal conscription act of 1874. This reform provided the army with the cadre necessary to train recruits through its new administrative structure, and so Russia could have a mass conscript army. The universal conscription act of 1874, therefore, confirmed that Russia was going to join the European powers in the business of creating, maintaining, and fighting with a nation in arms, one that had the potential of mobilising as much men and material, if not more, than all of the Western European powers combined. The challenge for Russia now became utilising these resources in the best possible fashion to maintain the power and the status of the Empire.9

Through this outburst of reforming activity, Miliutin exhibited that he had a unified plan that was designed to oversee military improvement in Russia. Moreover, the attention he devoted to military education revealed that, in Miliutin’s opinion, the fate of the Empire depended on it having a well-educated, professionalised officer corps capable of leading a nation in arms to victory. The old method of educating and training the officer corps did not prepare men for command positions in a modern army and did not provide a sufficient number of officers for an enlarged army composed of mass conscripts. His military/educational reforms, therefore, not only fostered the emergence of a developing professional identity through the education of officers who attended reformed schools, but they also were designed to vastly increase the number of men trained to be officers

9 Miliutin first systematically expressed his reform plans in a January 1862 report to Alexander II which has been reprinted in its entirety in D.A. Skalon (ed.), Stoletie Voennogo ministerstva, 1802-1902, vol. I (St Petersburg, 1902) Prilozhenie: 70-183. He later provided his own explanation of his reforms in ‘Voennye reformy Imperatora Aleksandra II’, Vestnik Evropy No. I (1882), 5-35.

54 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

in the imperial army. Hence Miliutin sought to enhance educational standards while increasing the number of opportunities for Russians to attend military schools. To attain both goals, he started by mandating the reconfiguration of Cadet Corps Academies, long the schools that exclusively educated aristocratic guard officers, into military gymnasiums that would admit all academically qualified students regardless of social origins.10 In addition, he reorganised and regularised Junker schools and attached them to regiments to provide opportunities for young soldiers of potential who were serving in the army but who did not possess the educational background to attend the newly recast military gymnasiums.11

The reforms of Cadet Corps Academies and Junker schools both academically strengthened and opened existing institutions to all qualified men in Russian society. Of all his academic reforms, however, the most important was the creation of a new level of military schools with the establishment of branch training institutions, known as military colleges (voennye uchilishcha). He created these schools to provide continuing education for officers that focused on specialised military training in both its practical and theoretical applications.12 While students received their officer’s commission upon graduating from the Cadet Corps or Junker schools, the goal of these higher military schools was to continue the education of officers by instructing them on the tactical and operational requirements of the specialised branch of the service in which they intended to pursue their careers. If the schools succeeded in their mission, they would provide Russian officers with an important and necessary qualification to reach the higher command positions in the army.

Thus, upon graduating from one of the Empire’s primary military schools (Cadet Corps Academies or Junker schools), students were classified into three broad categories, depending on the quality of their prior academic performance. After two years of service in the field army, officers who graduated at the top of their classes could opt for further military education and automatically gain admission into one of the Empire’s six elite military colleges. Of the six schools Miliutin created in the 1860s, three, the Pavlov, Konstantine, and Alexander, focused on infantry while the other three educated

10 For the history of Cadet Corps Academies both, during, and after the Great Reforms see John W. Steinberg, ‘D.A. Milutin’s Impact on the Education of the Russian Officer Corps’, in John W. Steinberg & Rex Wade (eds), The Making of Russian History: Society, Culture, and the Politics of Modern Russia: Essays in Honor of Allan K. Wildman (Bloomington, IN, 2009).

11 The best English source on these institutions is J.E.O. Screen, The Helsinki Yunker School, 1846-1879: A Case Study of Officer Training in the Russian Army (Helsinki, 1986). For the reform of Junker Schools see P.A. Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860-1870 godov v Rossii (Moscow, 1952), 240-6.

12 Postanovleniia o voenno-uchebnykh zavedeniiakh. Svoda voennykh postanovlenii, izdaniia 1869, Book 15 (St Petersburg, 1871), 99. Hereafter cited as Svod.

55H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

officers for the more specialised service branches with the Mikhailovski for the artillery, the Nikolai for the cavalry, and a separate Nikolai for the engineering corps.13 Upon graduation from the two-year course of these schools, officers then joined their regiments with the educational credentials needed to be promoted to the top of the army’s high command. The emergence of these schools, however, had to be accomplished without offending the sensibilities of the Tsar’s inner military elite, the imperial guardsmen. On 16 September 1863, therefore, the Pavlov Cadet Corps Academy was formally renamed the Pavlov Military College, and it became the first and premier branch training school in the Empire until the 1917 revolution. Located in the imperial capital, St Petersburg, the Pavlov Military School ranked second in prestige to the Corps of Pages in the minds of the nobility.14 When Miliutin reorganised it into a branch training school, he agreed to maintain the class character of this school to obtain the tacit support of the Guard’s officers for this new type of institution. The other two infantry schools, the Konstantine and Alexander, were made available to officers of lesser social origins.15 Miliutin’s goal to eliminate the privileges inherent in social status throughout the military establishment was not beyond compromise, if it meant achieving his vision in the long run.

The creation and standardisation of a curriculum throughout Russia’s professional military educational system provided Miliutin with a vehicle to level social distinction within the Russian officer corps. While slow to develop, the official curriculum for military colleges was expressed in an 1883 document, Instruktsiia po uchebnoi chasti i programmy dlia prepodavaniia uchebnykh predmetov v voennykh uchilishchakh. This order was from the Main Department of Military Academic Institutions (glavnoe upravlenie voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii), the governing body of all military schools in the Empire. As was the case in Cadet Corps Academies, the curriculum in the military colleges had two main components – general educational and specialised military training. Unlike the Cadet Corps, and not surprisingly, the focus shifted from the general to the specialised course of instruction in the military colleges. As a result, beginning in the 1880s (ironically shortly after Miliutin was ousted from power) students in military colleges attended the following courses:16

13 P.A. Zaionchkovski, Samoderzhavie i Russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX-XX stoletii (Moscow, 1973), 313. There would be fifteen military colleges by the summer of 1914.

14 The Corps of Pages was created in the early eighteenth century exclusively for the education and preparation of the children of the high aristocracy for both civilian and military service to the Tsar. See D. M. Levshin, Pazheskii Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva Korpus za sto let, 2 vols (St Petersburg, 1902).

15 A. Grebenshchikov, Pavlony: Pavlovskoe voennoe uchilishche v 1909-1911 gg, unpublished manuscript, Bakhmetieff Archive, Columbia University, 6-11.

16 Instruktsiia po uchebnoi chasti i programmy dlia prepodavaniia uchebnykh predmetov v voennykh uchilishchakh (SPB, 1883), 5-9 (hereafter IUV).

56 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Table 1: Hours Spent Per Week in Each Subject at the Higher Military School

1883 1898Subject Jr Class Sr Class Jr Class Sr Class

A) Specialised Military CoursesTactic 3 4 3 4Military Hist. 0 2 0 2Artillery 2 3 2 3Fortification 2 3 2 3Mil. Topography 3 2 3 1Mil. Admin. 0 2 0 2Mil. Law 1 2 1 2

Total 11 18 11 17

B) General Humanities CoursesDivinity 1 0 1 1Engineering 3 0 3 0Chemistry 3 0 3 0Russian 2 2 2 2 French 1 1 1 1German 1 1 1 1

Total 11 4 11 5

Source: The information for 1883 is located in the Instruksiia (IUV). The information for 1898 refers only to the Pavlov Military School and are located in A.N. Petrov, Istoricheskii ocherk pavlovskago voennago uchilishcha, pavlov kadetskago korpusa i imparetorskago voenno-sirotskago doma 1798-1898 (St Petersburg, 1898), 717.

During the first year, officers who attended military colleges split their time between the general (divinity, engineering, chemistry, Russian French, German languages) and specialised curriculum. In the second year, the emphasis shifted to courses on military topics, such as tactics, military history, artillery, topography, military administration, and military law. Such information demonstrates the perpetual need for education not only in the army but in Russia in general. Officers arrived at military colleges deficient in language and science skills, and therefore their two-year course consisted of one year of intensive general education followed by another year of highly specialised military education.

Without question, the most important course at the branch training schools was tactics. According to the 1883 Instruksiia (IUV) the goal of the tactics course was:

To teach students how to conduct unified operations of the infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Organisation of all detachments into proper battle order. To learn the topographical layout of a district and understand its influence on troop operations.

57H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

To understand how to dispose troops when they are not engaged in operations so they can rest. To safeguard the movement of troops whenever they are in enemy territory. To command in battle. To stay in control of all administrative matters when engaged or not engaged in battle.17

The Instruksiia offered a clear set of practical instructions to which officers and their professors could aspire. Some of the memoirs of the period, however, reveal the inner workings of the tactics course as the study of the works of Suvorov as interpreted through the thinking of General M.I. Dragomirov. The notion of learning applied tactics based on eighteenth-century operational principles remained a part of this course until the post-Japanese war period at least! In addition, in their second year at the school, the military history course worked hand-in-hand with the tactics course as students studied classic military campaigns, such as Hannibal’s invasion of Rome or the numerous campaigns of Napoleon. The influence of M.I. Dragomirov cannot be underestimated in the instruction of tactics at these schools. As P.N. Krasnov noted, besides reading his textbooks, students received much instruction on how to train soldiers according the time-honored Dragomirian principles of vospitanie (indoctrination) and obrazovanie (training).18

Further examination of memoirs reveals that the school day at the Pavlov military school began at 0600 with students spending two hours, first exercising and then eating their morning meals. From 0800 until 1200 officers attended small (35-student) classes where they had to memorise lecture content and pass rigorous tests on this information to graduate. After an hour break for the mid-day meal, officers assembled on the school’s parade ground at 1300 for three hours of applied field training. Regardless of it the memoirs written about the 1880s (Krasnov) or about the period after the Russo-Japanese War (Grebenshchikov) both noted that very little field training occurred. Instead, officers performed gymnastics that were designed to maintain a fit body and mind. After running around the parade ground, officers usually took a break until dinner before going to the library to study until 2000 hours. With the library closing at 2000, students retired to their barracks where they were allowed to study until a 2200 curfew.19 Thus, it is feasible to conclude that Russian officers spent little time in the field learning the rudimentary skills necessary to command units in the field.

17 IUV, 5.18 See P.N. Krasnov, Pavlony: 1-e voennoe pavlovskoe uchilishche pol veka tomu nazad (Paris, 1943), 21; A. Greben-

shchikov, Pavlony: Pavlovskoe voennoe uchilishche v 1909-1911 gg, unpublished manuscript, Bakhmetieff Archive, Columbia University, 383-5. For the best English language analysis of Dragomirov see Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914 (Bloomington, IN, 1992), 39.

19 Grebenshchikov, Pavlony, 22-7; Krasnov, Pavlony, 23-4.

58 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

This education was designed to prepare those officers who were recognised for their leadership ability in the active army to seek and gain admission into the institution that defined the apex of professional military education in Russia – the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff. Graduates of the Nicholas Academy’s three-year course of study were supposed to represent the cream of the officer corps who had the education and training to become military professionals. As a part of his educational reforms, Miliutin transformed the Imperial Military Academy into the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff with the goal of graduating officers who had the specialised education and training needed to understand and function in the challenging world in which they would be expected to command Russia’s armies to victory.20 To achieve this aim, he revised admission procedures, infused more rigour into the curriculum, and agitated for more engaging instruction at the General Staff Academy. Admission to, retention in, and graduation from the Academy depended on students passing an extended battery of exams that began at the regimental level and culminated with students/officers defending a thesis-length research paper on military history, that they spent their third year writing, before a board of staff officers at the Academy. By the beginning of the twentieth century graduation from the General Staff Academy became the best path an officer could take to gain appointment to the General Staff and to the high command positions within the army. In this period, progressive thinkers who were professionally-minded officers became a basic part of Russia’s military equation because they understood the tasks of General Staff officers. Those tasks, training in peacetime and coordinating the movement of men and materials in war time, defined the responsibilities of military leaders and commanders on the lethal, industrial battlefield of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

When Baron Jomini created the original War Academy curriculum, he designed it with the intention of providing the student officers with an academic sanctuary where they could concentrate on becoming the intellectual brains trust of the army. As a result, until the Miliutin reforms, their work occurred in the classroom, where they gathered statistics about the enemy, read military history, and studied a variety of academic subjects.21 Miliutin was instrumental in establishing the gathering of information about the military capabilities of Russia’s friends and foes as a permanent part of General Staff education, which then became a fixed part of the duties of General Staff officers on the command staff of the army. Using his experience on the General Staff, Miliutin from his

20 See N.P. Glinoetskii, Istoricheskii ocherk nikolaevskoi akademii general’nago shtaba (St Petersburg, 1882); Carl Van Dyke, Russian Imperial Military Doctrine and Education, 1832-1914 (Westport, CT, 1990).

21 Van Dyke, Russian Imperial Military Doctrine and Education, 1832-1914, 58-62.

59H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

position as War Minister added more field exercises designed to enhance the effectiveness of peacetime training into the educational routine of General Staff officers from the 1860s onwards. Old traditions, however, die hard; parade ground drills remained the sacred preserve of guard’s officers and the emphasis of academy education remained on the development of the skills needed for administering, as opposed to commanding, troops in the field. Moreover, as the following chart vividly demonstrates, not many officers sought admission into the Academy during the era of the Great Reforms.

Admission Statistics for the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff 1862-1879

# Who took # Admitted # Who Jr Class to the graduated Entrance Jr ClassYEAR Exam

1862 144 77 781863 9 8 321864 18 12 481865 38 22 141866 43 31 101867 61 34 221868 47 27 261869 30 20 –1870 – 27 231871 – 36 241872 – 36 171873 – 30 171874 – 40 231875 – 37 211876 – 48 241877 – 15 241878 – 86 581879 – 100 –

TOTAL 390 687 461

Sources: I have used two sources to compile these statistics: see M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoricheskii ocherk deiatel’ nosti voennago upravleniia v Rossii v uervoe dvadtsatipiatiletie blagopoluchnago tsarstvovaniia gosudaria imperatora Aleksandra Nikolaevicha (1855-1880) (St Petersburg, 1879-1881), Prilozhenie # 54 in Vol. 3, and Prilozhenie # 95 in Vol. 5. The other source that discusses these numbers is A. Golodobov, ‘Nasha Akademiia General’nago Shtaba’, Vonnyi sbornik LXXIX: 5 (May 1871), 74.

60 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

While Miliutin had the wisdom, vision, and authority to transform the Nicholas Academy, even an enlightened and well-respected bureaucrat could not transform an entrenched military establishment overnight. No matter how well the professionally minded understood the role and significance of General Staff service in modern armies, the number of men trained at the Academy in the 1860s and 1870s demonstrates that Russian officers did not view attending it as mandatory for their advancement to the army’s high command or the Tsar’s inner circle. Moreover, although Miliutin, as he did with all military schools, sought to upgrade educational standards at the Nicholas Academy, before the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish war the role of General Staff officers within the Army was perceived as that of regimental clerks rather than battlefield commanders. Nonetheless, through his educational reforms, Miliutin enhanced the level of training and education of the officers who would eventually become members of the army’s high command; his military educational system now needed time for the staunch traditionalists to wither away so reform-minded, progressive-thinking military professionals could take advantage of the opportunities that he created.22

Miliutin’s reforms removed barriers and created opportunities for the motivated and inspired students to reach the army’s commanding heights. Such officers had to exist to fill the billets of a mass conscript army. Moreover, and arguably of equal significance, Miliutin’s agitation for educational reform started a debate about the instructional and pedagogical methods of instructors in professional military schools that existed until the collapse of the Romanov dynasty. He understood that the rote memorisation of classroom lessons did not prepare officers to be commanders on the modern battlefield. The key to passing from one year to the next in all Russian military schools and then to graduate was passing a series of examinations that demonstrated whether officers had memorised all of the field regulations pertaining to discipline, garrison duty, and the use of small arms.23 Perhaps even more damaging but typical of Russian military education until the post-Japanese War period was a complaint registered in these terms: ‘The system of

22 Important secondary sources on the Great Reforms are Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin, and P.A. Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860-1870 godov v rossii (Moscow, 1950). For his own ideas see D.A. Miliutin, Dnevnik D.A. Miliutin, P.A. Zaionchkovskii (ed.), 4 vols (Moscow, 1947-50), and L.G. Zakharova (ed.), Vospominaniia general-fel’dmarshala grafa Dmitriia Alekseevicha Miliutin 1860-62 (Moscow, 1999), 297-304, for the events of early 1862. Miliutin’s memoirs throughout the age of reform have been published in a series of books by the same editor and of the same title with the exception of the progression of years. Two guides to military educational institutions in Russia at the turn of the century are M.S. Lalaev, Istoricheskii ocherk voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii nodvedomstvennykh glavnomu ikh upravleniiu, 1881-1891 (St Petersburg, 1892), and Obzor deiat’nosti voennogo ministerstva v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Alexandra III 1881-1894 (St Petersburg, 1903). In English see Thomas Darlinton, Education in Russia (London, 1909).

23 Grebenshchikov, Pavlony, 241-2.

61H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

instruction in all military schools from the lowest to the Staff Academy was based on memorisation and repetition. In lectures, the professors only read and barely explained the materials needed to pass examinations.’24 Moreover, the teaching faculty stood accused of not staying on task, that is, for example, often military history courses degenerated into heroic regimental history tales, considered essential knowledge upon joining a regiment, but that offered little in the way of strategic, operational, tactical, or any other type of lesson.25 While he could mandate the opening of military schools to qualified subjects of the Empire regardless of social class, transforming the classroom conduct of established educators proved a far more formidable challenge.

Even more difficult, to truly enhance the effectiveness of military education in Russia, the Imperial army had to rethink the goals and methods by which it conducted annual manoeuvres. Instead of using summer exercises as an opportunity to impress the Tsar with a polished parade-ground presence, annual training manoeuvres needed to be transformed into meaningful learning experiences that instructed Staff Officers, indeed every soldier in the army, about the mechanics of not only fighting battles, but also marching, manoeuvring, and, most importantly, providing essential supplies for troops in an operational environment. A series of administrative reforms supported by an enhanced curriculum throughout military educational institutions did not provide future military leaders with the experience needed to become effective commanders. Arguably, the most important part of their education occurred during the summer months when officers throughout the army (including students in military schools) formed their annual summer camps to conduct field manoeuvres and participate in war games. The goal was to provide officers with the type of applied training that would prepare them for the day when they would be promoted and given command of their own regiment.26 These camps could last up to twelve weeks while officers spent the balance of their time impressing each other with their scores on the rifle range. Usually a manoeuvre did not begin until a formal pass and review occurred, hopefully in front of the Tsar, which could make or break an officer’s career. The practice of these exercises, therefore, has come under severe criticism. Too often the goal of the summer camp training period became to make a favourable impression in front of the Tsar or any other member of the royal family or high command, as the best way to achieve rapid promotion in the army. This anachronistic custom haunted the Imperial army until the demise of the Empire. Miliutin, for all of

24 Ibid., 78.25 Ibid., 383.26 IUV, 48-53.

62 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

his vim and vigour, and despite his power as War Minister and vision as a reformer, did little to change the conduct or the practice of field training in the Imperial army during the period of the Great Reforms.27

The Russo-Turkish War 1877-78

As an example of the failure of educational reforms, let us examine the Turkish conflict. The progress made in the capabilities of the Imperial army was plainly revealed when it went to war against the Turks in 1877-78. The two-hundred-year-old conflict between Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Turks was rooted in two issues: geographic hegemony over the strategically vital entrance into the Black Sea (The Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosporus Straits) and religion. Since the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire, all of Europe’s Great Powers used the status of Christian subjects under the Sultan’s control as a reason to meddle in Turkish affairs. In the post-Crimean War period, the question of national self-determination in the Balkans further inflamed relations between Constantinople and St Petersburg. Mainly born out of agitation by the Serbs, Romanians, and Bulgarians against Turkish tax policies, tensions grew throughout the 1870s. This combined with growing Pan-Slavic sentiment in Russia, providing Tsar Alexander II with cause to consider engaging in his own Turkish conflict. The promise of Habsburg neutrality cleared the last deterrent, and Imperial Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877. This latest version of the perpetual Russo-Turkish conflict revealed improvement on an administrative and organisational level as best evidenced by a war plan. Even better, during the mobilisation period, general staff officers exhibited their enhanced skills as professionals through their execution of the plan. Once the Russians invaded the Balkans, beginning in the pre-dawn hours of 15 June, however, the going got rough, which revealed operational shortcomings that provided the army with huge challenges over the coming months and years.28

Although there were two theatres of operations, the Balkan and Caucasian, the Imperial army’s invasion through Romania of Bulgaria proved to be the main battlefield of this war. Without question from any observer, initially, the Miliutin reforms had a positive impact on the course of the war. The deployment of the Imperial army into Romania in June 1877 was well planned by general staff officers and drawn together

27 See V.A. Zolotarev et al., Voennaia istoriia otechestva s drevnikh vremen do nashikh dnei, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1995), 5-28.

28 On the events leading up to the war see Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: the Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy 1860-1914 (New Haven, CT, 1987), 65-85, and David MacKenzie, ‘Russia’s Balkan policies under Alexander II, 1855-1881’, in Hugh Ragsdale and Valerii Nikolaevich Ponomarev (eds), Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1993), 219-46.

63H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

by N.N. Obruchev, sometimes referred to as Russia’s Moltke, who was in charge of war planning on the Main Staff, the administrative unit that oversaw the operational side of the Imperial army.29 Obruchev, together with officers on the main staff, planned a lightning campaign through the Balkans to catch the Turks before they could respond and to present the rest of the world with a fait accompli.30 Based roughly on this plan, the Balkan campaign unfolded in three distinct phases. (1) In June and July, and with the support of the Romanians, the Russians moved four army corps across the Danube from Bessarabia to Wallachia, thereby securing a strong foothold on its southern banks. (2) Then, from July until December, the Russians invaded Bulgaria and, practically from the start, were bogged down in terrain that prevented rapid movement that was further complicated with the presence of Turkish fortresses throughout the Balkan passes. The main battle of this campaign occurred at Plevna where three sieges occurred in July and August. Failing to dislodge the Turks from their various redoubts, the Russians, after suffering frightful losses, decided to bypass, surround, and besiege Plevna for the balance of the campaign. With casualties amounting to estimates of twenty-five per cent of its officer corps and twenty-three per cent of its rank and file, a grim pale cast a long shadow over the Russian Army, and its commander and chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, abandoned any further ideas of lighting warfare in the Balkans. The rest of the campaign was slow and cautious. (3) During the autumn until February and the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, the Russian army marched through the Balkans and finally became a menace to the security of Constantinople.31

In addition to the Balkan campaign, which was the main theatre of operations, the Russians also sent forces into the Caucasus both to prevent an Ottoman threat from that direction and also to control the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Although the Imperial Russian Army ultimately prevailed, the war it waged in the Balkans in the summer, fall, and into the winter of 1877-78 suffered from miscalculations that ranged from faulty intelligence about the enemy to a failure to account for the impact of topography and weather on the movement of the army through the roughed mountainous terrain. More to the point, however, the operational doctrine of the Imperial army failed to culminate

29 See O.R. Airapetov, Zabyraia Kar’era “Russkogo Mol’tke” Nikolai Nikolaevich Obruchev 1830-1904 (St Petersburg, 1998).

30 For a comprehensive description of war plan see David Rich, The Tsar’s Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 127-46. For an assessment of this plan see William C. Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York, 1992), 311-17.

31 The best English language survey of the war can be found in Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets, 51-86. A classic Russian source recently reprinted is A.A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia Russkoi Armii, vol. 2 (St Petersburg, 1993), 202-80. Also see N.I Beliaev, Russko-turetskaia voina 1877-1878 gg (Moscow, 1956), or V.A. Zolotarev, Rossiia i Turtsiia voina 1877-78 gg (Moscow, 1983).

64 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

in overwhelming battlefield success. The Russian army was still fighting Napoleonic-type battles with soldiers lined up in ranks before being ordered to charge openly into Turkish defences. Even the Ottoman Turks had the firepower to wreak havoc and inflict mass casualties on troops that exposed themselves to enfilading rifle fire. Despite the devastating impact such conduct had on the morale and capabilities of the army, important senior commanders failed to draw appropriate conclusions and learn valuable lessons. General M.I. Dragomirov, future commandant of the Nicholas Academy, considered one of the foremost tactical thinkers in the army, served in a command role on the assault of the Turkish fortress at Plevna. He participated in ‘modern’ combat, saw the results of conducting operations according to doctrinal practices, and still insisted that well-trained and indoctrinated troops could overcome the lethal challenges of the industrialised battlefield. Dragomirov went into the post-Turkish war period firmly believing that the cold steel of a bayonet was more effective than any modern breech-loading assault weapon because of the impact the former had on the morale of soldiers on both sides of a frontal charge.32

In the war’s aftermath, everyone from Tsar Alexander II through Miliutin on down the chain of command understood that the recent conflict needed to be studied and assessed to interpret the successes and failures of the army’s performance in the Balkans as well as the recent reforms. Unfortunately, such an assessment ultimately questioned the leadership of the Imperial army which was still heavily dependent on the Romanovs’ personal leadership. In other words, to question the military’s performance was also to question the capabilities of the Tsar’s relatives. After all, the commander-in-chief of the army that invaded the Balkans was Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the Tsar’s brother, and his son, the tsarevich Alexander, nominally commanded the army’s Eastern detachment composed of some 70,000 men who initially assaulted the fortress of Rushchuk. As a result, efforts to study the conduct of the Imperial army in the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish war immediately bogged down into a quagmire heavily influenced by concerns over the image of the Romanov family and its relationship to the military’s successes or failures. And, as is well known, long before the formal historical commission presented its findings, Tsar Alexander II was brutally assassinated on 1 March 1881. His son Alexander III had less tolerance of change, especially in the wake of his father’s murder, and encouraged Miliutin to retire, which he did on 5 May 1881.

32 For Dragomirov’s biography see Spisk’general’nago shtaba (St Petersburg, 1905), 7; M. D. Bonch-Bruevich, ‘Mikhail Ivanovich Dragomirov’, Izvestiia imperatorskoi Nikolaevskoi voennoi akademii 25 (January 1912), 80-100. For his teachings see L. G. Beskrovnyi, Dragomirov, izbrannye trudy (Moscow, 1956), and Menning, Bayonets Before Bullets, 38-9.

65H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

The fate of reform in a counter-reform era

P.A. Vannovski, a quintessential guardsman, succeeded Miliutin as War Minister and, needless to say, found himself in an extremely challenging position.33 Besides being responsible for the empire’s overall security, he was under intense pressure to reverse the clock, that is, reverse Miliutin’s reforms. Even though Vannovski’s loyalties rested with the Imperial Guard’s milieu, he could ill afford to ignore the intent of Miliutin’s reforms. His goal of providing the army not only with intelligent and self-motivated officers regardless of social class, but more important, to provide the army with enough officers to man all necessary billets in the post-reform army could not be lost in a series of counter-reforms without compromising the future of the army and the security of the Empire. Nonetheless, Vannovski, twenty-five days after Miliutin’s resignation, restricted admissions into military colleges through a plan for their reorganisation that he presented to Alexander III on 30 May 1881. Pointing out that over fifty per cent of students in military colleges came from institutions other than military schools, Vannovski wanted to limit admissions into military colleges to those students who were graduates of his newly reformed Cadet Corp Academies.34 While on the surface Vannovski’s goal was to limit admissions to those students who had the proper primary military educational, his real goal was to close off alternate methods used to gain entrance into military colleges, thereby limiting admissions to students of a proper social background. Alexander III accepted Vannovski’s proposal, but he also insisted that all officers be given the opportunity to attend military colleges if not by graduating from a Cadet Corps Academy, then through an entrance examination that the Main Department of Military Academic Institutions (glavnoe upravlenie voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii) would administer annually. Here, Alexander III emerges as a perceptive Tsar who understood that the Russian army of the 1880s needed trained officers in numbers beyond what the aristocracy could provide. The size of the army and the technical challenges of modern war required the education and training of all qualified and capable people regardless of their social background.35

Thus, Alexander III and Vannovski toned down the zealous aspect of Miliutin’s reforms that were designed to open up the officer corps to everyone. Vannovski’s machinations did

33 For Vannovski’s biography see Matvei S. Lalaev, K iubileiu voennago ministra general-ad’iutanta Vannovskago. Materialy dlia biografii s kratkim ocherkom razvitia voenno-uchevnykh zavedenii c 1881 po 1890 god (St Petersburg, 1890), ch. 1, and ‘P.S. Vannovskii (Nekrolog)’, Pedagogicheskii sbornik (April, 1904), 390-7.

34 L.G.Beskrovny, The Russian Army and Fleet in the Nineteenth Century, Gordon E. Smith, trans. (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1996), 121.

35 A.N. Petrov, Istoricheskii ocherk pavlovskago voennago uchilishcha, pavlov kadetskago korpusa i imparetorskago voenno-sirotskago doma 1798-1898 (St Petersburg, 1898), 576-8.

66 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

indeed have an impact on the social composition of the officer corps. For example, note the disappearance of Junkers, in this case officers of non-aristocratic origins, who enrolled at the Pavlov Military College in the years after Miliutin’s resignation as revealed below.

Secondary educational background of new students at the Pavlov Military College 1880-1896

Year Number of new students Number of Junkers

1880 196 331881 250 691882 186 141883 237 311884 186 61885 239 41886 201 11887 230 01888 175 71889 232 21890 209 01891 198 21892 214 11893 212 11894 189 11895 156 11896 223 6

Source: A.N. Petrov, Istoricheskii ocherk pavlovskago voennago uchilishcha, pavlov kadetskago korpusa i imparetorskago voenno-sirotskago doma 1798-1898 (St Petersburg, 1898), 581-2.

Vannovski did close the Pavlov Military College to non-aristocratic officers. He was responding the best way he could to pressures from both reformers and traditionalists alike, while maintaining the strength of the Imperial army. Alexander III, moreover, understood that the army needed to continue to move forward, perhaps at a slower pace than Miliutin had set, in accepting all members of society into the officer corps. Although serious attempts were made to limit the admissions of students of lower social origins into some of the military colleges, as the twentieth century approached, non-aristocratic officers continued to join the ranks of the Imperial officer corps. Miliutin’s reforms of military schools remained largely intact because his successors could not justify dismantling them. 36

36 Obzor deiat’nosti voennogo ministerstva v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Alexandra III 1881-1894 (St Petersburg, 1903), 212-34. See below for statistical evidence of this outcome.

67H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

Riding on the success of the performance of the General Staff in the Russo-Turkish War, along with his own personal accomplishments as a commander in the war, General M.I. Dragomirov assumed command of the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff in 1878. He was succeeded in 1890 by General L.G. Leer who oversaw Academy education until 1898.37 Dragomirov had long been the army’s foremost developer and practitioner of tactical doctrine. Leer retired from the army in 1898 as its seminal strategic/operational theoretician. Together, they created the doctrinal concepts responsible for the military doctrine that the Imperial army carried on to the twentieth century battlefield. While Miliutin’s reform of admission standards, curriculum, and instruction offered at the Academy enhanced the overall quality of its education, the role of general staff officers remained little understood by either society in general, or worse, in the army itself. Success in the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War, however, provided the General Staff with a boost in status and prestige, thus transforming its public and military image. From this time until the demise of the Romanovs, appointment to the General Staff Academy became a highly sought-after assignment since academic success offered its graduates the potential of rapid promotion through the ranks, choice appointments and postings within the army, and an opportunity to develop close contacts with the senior army commanders including members of the Imperial family. Higher military education combined with such visibility resulted in the rise of General Staff Academy graduates to appointments on every field staff and bureaucratic administration throughout the army in the 1880s and 1890s.38

Once Russian General Staff officers successfully demonstrated the usefulness of their education and training on the battlefield, academic standards were quite logically deemed satisfactory and not in need of any immediate revision. Along with demonstrating their skills, General Staff officers had defined new roles for themselves in the operation of the army. Besides performing administrative duties in the War Ministry and in the Department of the Main Staff, or filling the instructor positions in one of Russia’s numerous military academic institutions, the service of General Staff officers was now recognised as being an essential ingredient in the composition of the command staff of all combined army units, regiments, divisions, and brigades.39 As a result, the main focus of the military establishment,

37 For an informative, if laudatory, survey of the General Staff Academy during the period of Dragomirov’s and Leer’s tenures as commanders, see: D.A. Skalon, Stoletie voennago ministerstva, 1802-1902: Istoricheskii ocherk vozniknoveniia i razvitiia v rossii general’nago shtaba v 1825-1902 (St Petersburg, 1910), Book 2, Vol 4, 381-407. This is also the source from which I have formed my impressions about the impact of the Russo-Turkish War on the professionalisation of the General Staff. A good source in English on this war is the report of a US Military Attaché: see F.V. Greene, Report on the Russian Army and its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878 (New York, 1879), esp. 118-28.

38 N. P. Glinoetski, Istoricheskii ocherk Nikolaevskoi akademii General’nago shtaba (St Petersburg, 1882) , 316.

68 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

at least at the outset of Dragomirov’s tenure as Commander of the Nicholas Academy centered on the need to train more officers for this specialised branch of the service.

Enrolment statistics of the General Staff Academy reveal that the number of officers who sought and eventually attended this institution of higher military education increased significantly during the period when Dragomirov and Leer were the Academy’s commandants.

Enrolment composition of the General Staff Academy, 1883-1903

Jr Sr Geodesy Supplemental Total Class Class Section Course 1883 124 88 5 58 2751884 124 88 5 58 2751885 70 73 4 64 2111886 70 73 4 64 2111887 70 44 6 68 1881888 72 56 4 37 1691889 81 62 10 50 2031890*1891 72 75 12 62 2211892 72 80 4 66 2221893 138 68 5 72 2831894 136 113 3 65 3171895* 1896* 1897 144 122 13 44 3231898 137 126 13 85 3611899 139 127 18 105 3891900 156 110 12 70 3481901 145 116 8 67 3361902 144 117 7 79 3471903 127 116 5 86 334* No statistics available for this year.

Sources: see the appropriate volume of Vsepoddanneishii otchet o deistviiakh voennago ministrstva (St Petersburg, 1885-1905). All volumes of this report were published two years after the year that it studied. Information on the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff was always placed in the Main Staff’s section of the report.

39 The composition and duties of General Staff officers were explicitly defined in the following textbook used by senior students at the Academy: F. Maksheev, Russkii general’nyi shtab: sostav i sluzhba ego (St Petersburg, 1894). The publication of this book was a breakthrough of sorts since it represents the first of its type. Evidently, academy students received little instruction that defined their specific duties and responsibilities until 1894 when Maksheev wrote this book to use as a textbook in his military administration course.

69H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

Enrolment numbers jumped in the 1890s because of new regulations first suggested by General Dragomirov that allowed officers to attend the General Staff Academy after two as opposed to four years of field service.40 New admission regulations combined with the increased status of the General Staff that existed in both public and military circles further enhanced not only the motivation among officers to attend the Nicholas Academy, but also contributed to the upsurge in the graduation rate of non-aristocratic officers.41 Throughout the 1880s, and into the 1890s, therefore, questions about the social origins of officers became less of an issue as generals such as Dragomirov and his successor Leer concentrated their efforts on the actual education officers received in the Academy.42

Dating back to when Miliutin was an Academy professor and reasserted during Dragomirov’s and Leer’s tenure as commandants, the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff became the centre of doctrinal development in the Russian army. The thinking that governed this process, however, harked back to the eighteenth century and the teachings of General A.V. Suvorov, the great captain of that age. From Suvorov, Dragomirov developed his ideas on indoctrination (vospitanie) and training (obrazovanie). Despite the humiliation of the Crimean War and the misjudgments, miscalculations and difficulties in obtaining objectives, indeed, the final victory in the recent Turkish War, the Imperial Russian army, thanks largely to Dragomirov and Leer, fought on the twentieth century battlefield with an operational doctrine based on eighteenth-century thinking that has best been summed up in the phrase ‘Bayonets before Bullets’.43 A vibrant debate nonetheless did exist in the halls of the Academy throughout the 1880s and 1890s over doctrinal issues, but as the following chart illustrates, little changed in its education.

40 Skalon, Stoletie voennago ministerstva, 1802-1902, 356.41 The acceptance of non-aristocrats onto the General Staff and the Officer Corps in general resulted in a phenom-

enon that P. A. Zaionchkovskii described as the ‘Democratisation of the Officer Corps’: see P.A Zaionchkovski, Samoderzhavie i russkaia armiia na pubezhe XIX-XX stoletii (Moscow, 1973), 294-338.

42 This should not suggest that graduating from the Nicholas Academy guaranteed a billet on the General Staff. A.I. Denikin fought strenuously to gain such an assignment while claiming that he was a victim of his lower social origins. See A.I. Denikin, The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872-1916, Margaret Patoski, trans.(Minneapolis, 1975), 55-64.

43 Suvorov’s impact and legacy are presented in a fine article by Bruce Menning, ‘Russian Military Innovation in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century’, War & Society 2:1 (May 1984), 23-41, which not only discusses Suvorov, but also the state of Russian military thinking in the latter half of the eighteenth century. On this period in general also see Menning Bayonets before Bullets, 123-52.

70 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Course distribution at the General Staff Academy

Number of Lectures per week in

1883 1890 1896Total JR SR JR SR JR SRMain SubjectsStrategy 0 2 0 2 0 2Military His. 4 2.5 –- –- –- –-Military Art – – 4 2 4 3Tactics 4 0 4 0 4 1Military Administration 1.5 2 1.5 2 1.5 2Military Statisticsa) Russian 0 2 0 2 0 2b) Foreign nations 0 1 0 1 0 1Geodesy and Cartography 2 1 2 1 2 1Drawing and Surveying 4 4 4 4 4 4Secondary SubjectsFortification 1 2 1 2 2 0.5Artillery 1 0 1 0 1 0Physical Geog. 1 2 0 2 0 2Russian Lang. 1 0 1 0 2 0.5Political His. –- –- –- –- 3 3Railroads –- –- –- –- 0 1Telegraphs –- –- –- –- 0 2Field Trips –- –- 1 1 1 1Total 19.5 16.5 18.5 21 24.5 26

Sources: see the appropriate volume of Vsepoddanneishi otchet.

Although a lingering question about the role General Staff education permeated discussions on whether the Academy should provide a general or specialised education, the above chart clearly reveals that its students spent the vast majority of their time studying military topics and themes. The nature of the education changed little throughout the 1880s and 1890s with one critical, potentially vital, exception. Sometime between 1883 and 1890 the Academy stopped teaching its formal course in military history and introduced a new course entitled the history of the military arts ( voennoe iskusstvo). The shift in the instruction of military history represented the culmination of two debates

71H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

that had a direct impact on General Staff education in Russia. The first part of the debate was over infusing more contemporary Russian military history into the instruction of staff officers. Until the 1880s the study of military history at the Academy focused on classical western military history. The impact of such instruction was that students at the academy were more likely to know about the US Civil War (a topic of great interest) or about Alexander the Great, than about their own army’s recent experiences. The second part of the debate logically flowed from the first, that is, professional officers in the 1880s recognised that one way to address Russia’s operational failings was to study her military past and develop new doctrinal thinking based on recent experiences and current capabilities. The creation of a course on military art, which was designed to focus on operational questions in a historic context, sought to recast Russian military doctrine.44

Despite these developments, instruction at the academy until the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War still suffered from excessive pedanticism, a persistent practice that permeated Russian military education throughout this period. The memoir literature helps to expose the nature of this problem. B.M. Gerua, a student at the Academy from 1902-1905, revealed that some lecturers made the study of military history interesting and informative. Generals A.Z. Myshlaevskii and N.P. Mikhnevich taught special topics courses on recent conflicts such as the Franco-Prussian War or on themes such as the relationship between modern technology and the industrialised battlefield. Meanwhile, according to Gerua, the course on classic military history topics by the Academy’s dean of military history, P.A. Geisman, offered students boring, indeed useless, lectures.45 These sentiments were more succinctly stated by another student of the General Staff Academy, A.A. Ignatiev, who like Gurea had served with a Guards regiment before obtaining admission into the Academy in 1899:

Gershka’ [Geisman’s nickname] used to read one and the same written lecture every year. Long before I entered the Academy he had published a series of textbooks, or, as he boasted ‘learned works,’ on the ‘History of the Military Strategy and Tactics from Alexander of Macedon to Napoleon.’ This was an uninspired and lengthy compilation, running to 1,000 pages.

44 The classic soviet source that outlines this debate is L.G. Beskrovnyi, Ocherki voennoi istoriografii rossii (Moscow 1962), 182-271. For an entire study on the questions that emerged from this debate see General B.A. Shteifon, Natsional’naia voennaia doktrina (Tallin, 1937). In English see Jacob W. Kipp, ‘The Beginning: Imperial Russia and Soviet Mobile Warfare to 1920’, in Historical Analysis of the Use of Mobile Forces by Russia and the USSR (College Station, TX, 1985), Center for Strategic Technology Occasional Paper No. 10, 37-45.

45 B.V. Gerua, Vospominaniia o moei zhizni (Paris, 1969), vol. I, 134-40.

72 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Not a few hours were we destined to spend dozing sweetly to the accompaniment of the snuffling monotone of ‘Gershka,’ repeating practically verbatim as he lectured the material out of one of his texbooks.46

Boring and irrelevant lectures, accompanied by cumbersome and insufferable textbooks is a complaint common to all of the pertinent memoir literature of the period.47 Regardless of Miliutin’s reforms, or the knowledge and reputations of Dragomirov and Leer, instruction in the Academy still reflected late eighteenth/early nineteenth century thinking about not only educational practices, but more alarming for the fate of the Empire, similar generational thinking about military affairs. The outcome of the conflict that existed within the Academy about the use of military history was a failure to utilise and link its lessons to the modernisation of the army’s operational doctrine. This also becomes clear in the memoir literature when students such as K.K. Akintievskii, who attended the academy in the post-Japanese War period, noted that he graduated and joined the General Staff with little idea of a Russian unified military doctrine.48

Even worse, while there could be a semblance of academic freedom, Academy professors had to exercise extreme caution when they delivered lectures to their students. For example, as the nineteenth century was drawing to its end, much fervour existed within the Academy about the failure of the historic commission on the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78 to produce an official history of the conflict. To the ire of the students and faculty, no systematic course of lectures was being offered on the recent Russo-Turkish War. In 1898, then Colonel E.I. Martynov attempted to introduce a course of lectures, based on the findings of the official historical commission, to the curriculum of the General Staff Academy. Upon delivering samples of these lectures to a select group of General Staff officers and members of the Imperial family, the entire project ground to a halt. Martynov’s lectures exposed the causes of failed operational flexibility that resulted in the army getting bogged down in the bad weather and the rugged terrain of the Balkans. Such analysis ultimately revealed that the Imperial army’s high command often failed to make correct assessments of itself when engaged in combat. Further, once the army became engaged in combat, it continued to fight with a doctrine that had Russian troops charging into withering enemy fire, thereby incurring massive casualties that caused troops to pause in their advance and resulted in the high command losing its nerve. Martynov’s revelations

46 A.A. Ignat’iev, Piat’desiat let v stroiv (Moscow, 1955) ,vol. I , 133.47 Although this complaint may sound familiar to embattled college professors anywhere, it is important to note that

Gerua registered the same type of opinion about Geisman: see Vospominaniia o moei zhizni, I: 140-1. Denikin simply condemned the calibre of instruction at the Academy in general: see A.I. Denikin, Staraia armiia. (2 vols, Paris, 1929-31), I: 64-8.

48 See K. K. Akintievskii, Vospominaniia: Imperatorskaia nikolaevskaia voennaia akademii, Bakhmeteff archive, Columbia University, Box No. 1, p. 56. A good survey of the history of the debate over military doctrine, especially in the 1905-1914 period is located in: B.A. Steifon, Nationaia voennaia doktrina.

73H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

of the high command’s shortcomings were too closely linked to members of the royal family who commanded the Balkan campaign.49 As a result of royal intervention, therefore, Martynov’s lectures on the Russo-Turkish War were suppressed, despite the publication of a multi-volume history of the war shortly thereafter.50

Despite the relentless struggle to reform the military establishment on every level since the Crimean War, and because of the best effort of traditional elements, the Imperial army approached the twentieth century with anachronistic training practices. There is little evidence of the existence of meaningful military exercises at any level of the educational or overall career experience of Russian officers. Instead, the purpose of field exercises, whether they attended Cadet Corps Academies, Junker Schools, Military Colleges, or even the General Staff Academy, was to teach students to pass an Imperial inspection, to please the Tsar during all formal pass and reviews. After passing muster in front of the Tsar, field exercises were used more to teach officers how to command the respect and maintain the discipline of their troops.51 Little effort was made to teach future officers how to command large units as they marched and manoeuvred on to and across the battlefield. The fundamental flaw of the Imperial army as it prepared for twentieth-century conflicts, therefore, rested in its training establishment which, of course, reflected the doctrinal thinking of the armed forces intellectual brain trust. Men like Dragomirov and Leer understood that field training exercises, especially during the summer months, needed to offer instruction and provide experience for future military leaders on the fine art of command.52 What they did not support was the practice of large-scale manoeuvres which they viewed as a distraction despite the ever-increasing size of armies and battlefields. Instead, Dragomirov especially strongly advocated for small-unit manoeuvres as the best exercise for future officers to learn the intricacies of their profession.53 Up until the retirement of Vannovski, therefore, little change occurred in the realm of the army’s practical training.

49 Denikin, Career, 56; Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhavie, 322.50 The commission did produce a 97-volume study of the war: see Russia, armiia glavnyi shtab, voennoistoricheskaia,

Sbornik materialov po russko-turetskoi voine 1877-1878 gg (97 vols, St Petersburg, 1898-1911). The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 truly became the forgotten war of Russian military history. By the time the study of recent wars became an accepted fact at the Academy, the campaign of 1877-78 was overshadowed by the 1904-05 disaster in the Far East.

51 Grebenshchikov, Pavlony, 138-9; Krasnov, Pavlony, 26-8.52 For Leer’s own ideas in regard to the training of troops and the role of tactics in warfare, see G. A. Leer, Prikiadnia

Taktika (St Petersburg, 1877). 1-15.53 Using a weekly column in the journal Razvedchik, Dragomirov wrote enough articles that it took three volumes to

publish them all in collected form: see M.I. Dragomirov, Sbornik original’nykh i perevodnvkh statei M. Draagomirov. 1858-1880 (2 vols, St Petersburg, 1881); and 14 let 1881-1894: Sbornik original’nykh i perevodnvkh statei (St Petersburg, 1895). There is much discussion about his attitude toward small-scale manoeuvres in L. G. Beskrovnyi’s introduction to Dragomirov, izbrannye trudy (Moscow, 1956), 7. Published posthumously (Dragomirov died in 1905), the following article was written to educate the young Nicholas II: M.I Dragomirov, ‘Konspekt lektsii po taktik’, Voennyi Sbornik 9 (September 1912), 24.

74 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

A.N. Kuropatkin and the Continuation of Military Reform

Little could be done to change this status of practical training exercises until the aristocracy’s grip on the officer corps was overcome. Such change found another proponent in 1898 when Vannovski retired and was replaced by A. N. Kuropatkin. Kuropatkin represented a new breed of staff officer who had benefited from attending Miliutin’s reform schools. He was not of high aristocratic background and his main goals had nothing to do with protecting the status of traditional servitors. Instead, he was determined to better prepare future officers and train more of them for the Russian army’s officer corps. Upon becoming War Minister in 1898 he sought to increase the number of institutions that offered higher and specialised military training by transforming all Junker schools into military colleges that offered the identical curriculum of the six colleges that Miliutin had created in the 1860s.54 The results of this executive decision are reflected in the chart below.

Enrolment and Graduates from Higher Military Schools

Year Enrolled Graduated

1880 1272 6421884 1502 7521885 1525 ––1890 1524 7321891 1600 ––1894 1572 10311895 1116 ––1899 1501 7731900 1584 6731901 1695 8071902 1907 10231903 1854 8571904 1926 9171905 1975 8651906 2056 9641907 2319 10371908 2276 10501909 3077 14631910 5243 21461911 5566 21161912 5837 22221913 5000 21001914 5000 2831

Source: for 1880 see Pedagogicheskii sbornik, Part III (April, May, June, 1882), 6; for 1884-1900 see appropriate year of Vsepoddanneishii otchet o deistviiakh voennago ministerstva; for 1900-14 see L.G. Beskrovnyi, Armiia I flot rossii v nachale XX v: Ocherki voenno-eknomicheskogo potentsiala (Moscow, 1986), 33.

54 Prilozheniia k otchetu General-Ad’iutanta Kuropatkina: Uluchshenie byta ofitserov (Warsaw, 1906), 7.

75H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

In rough numbers post-1898 military colleges graduated, in most cases, at least fifty per cent of their total enrolment. Slowly, but steadily military colleges became available to all qualified officers in the army. At the time of Alexander II’s assassination (1881) there were 1,462,000 soldiers in the Russian army. In the same year, the Main Department of Military Academic Institutions provided the officers corps with 605 new graduates from its military schools. At the time of Alexander III’s sudden demise (1894) the size of the Russian army had increased to 2,352,000 soldiers, and in 1894 1,171 students graduated from military schools. Thus, the military colleges kept pace with the expanding size of the army. Kuropatkin’s opening of the military colleges to all qualified officers assured the army that it would have sufficient numbers of officers to fill its ranks until the collapse of the regime.55

In addition during Kuropatkin’s period as War Minister, men of all social ranks finally found their place in the Imperial army. An examination of the social composition of all military schools offers an example of this trend.

Social Composition of higher Military Schools,1880-1914 in %

Year Nobility H P

Officers and Civil Ser.

Cler Cos Merchants Peasants For

1880 65.29 5.96 12.64 2.03 4.50 9.58 –

1884 71.67 2.56 16.14 1.44 3.34 4.5 .2

1890 59.18 30.83 .62 4.13 5.18 –

1894 63.89 21.14 1.25 9.90 3.82 –

1899 34.26 37.80 2.15 2.08 23.61 .1

1906 35.96 5.16 54.27 .53 1.51 1.78 – –

1907 38.65 – 55.28 .72 1.45 3.11 – .79

1912 15.27 16.04 14.6 3.30 7.01 25.41 18.18 .011

Key: H = Sons of hereditary nobility P = Sons of personal nobility Cler = Sons of the clergy Cos = Sons of cossacks For = Sons of foreigners

Note: Until 1905, the above percentages are based on the enrolment figures of the six original branch training institutions – Pavlov, Konstantine, and Alexander Infantry Schools; Nicholas Cavalry, Nicholas Engineering, and Mikhailovski Artillery Schools. After the Russo-Japanese War, the Department of Military Academic Institution included the Iunker schools in these statistics.

Source: for 1880 see Pedagogicheskii sbornik (Part II: April, May, June, 1882), 13; for the remaining years see the appropriate volume of Vsepoddanneishii otchet o deistviiakh voennago ministerstva.

55 For the size of the army see A.N. Kuropatkin, Prilozheniia k otchetu general-ad’iutanta Kuropatkina (Warsaw, 1906), 1. For the number of graduates from military schools, see D.A. Skalon, Stoletie voennago ministerstva, 1802-1902; Glavnoe upravlenie voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii. Istoricheskii ocherk, V.X, part III, 146.

76 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Despite Vannovski’s goal of limiting admission to military colleges to graduates of cadet corps academies, the percentage of hereditary nobility enrolled dropped from 65.29 per cent in 1880 to 15.27 per cent in 1912. Kuropatkin, of course, was not alone responsible for the decline of hereditary nobles enrolled in cadet corps academies. The forty per cent drop in enrolled nobles was the product of the process Miliutin started. Regardless of less progressive efforts to maintain their presence in Russian military schools throughout the period when Vannovski was War Minister, the percentage of hereditary noblemen enrolled in military colleges had dropped to 34.26 per cent, a decline of thirty per cent from the composition of these schools in 1880. Vannovski’s efforts did not stop the erosion of the hereditary nobility from being the majority cohort in cadet corps academies. This trend would permeate throughout and culminate in the early twentieth century with the hereditary nobility being a distinct minority in all Russian military schools. In place of the hereditary nobility, the officers who attended military colleges came from families of the bureaucracy’s middle levels. Thus, a career path had been opened to the highly motivated regardless of social origins. The Russian military establishment could ill afford to support the caste conscious policy mentality of the traditional service elite because of the army’s expanding size.

By the early twentieth century, therefore, one of the products of the Miliutin reforms was the emergence of a significant cohort of non-noble officers within the officer corps. Miliutin’s efforts to open new paths of mobility through military careers had made an impact on the army and the General Staff by the turn of the century. In 1895, shortly after Nicholas II came to power, the Imperial Officer Corps consisted of 31,350 soldiers. Of this total number of officers, only 15,938 or 50.8 per cent came from an aristocratic background, a substantial change from the pre-Great Reform upper-class dominated Officer Corps of the Imperial army.56 This statistic alone reveals the inroads made by non-aristocratic elements into the officer corps and therefore indicates the level of success obtained as a result of Miliutin’s reforms. The breaking down of social barriers to the army’s high command also permeated the General Staff of this period. Of the 858 officers, or three per cent of the total officer corps who appeared on the General Staff list in 1899, 260 were Generals, of whom 149, or fifty-seven per cent, had begun their careers as guard’s officers.57

But the limits of the Russian high command’s capabilities for the coming challenges may be better suggested by the fact that of the 260 Generals who were on the 1899 list, only eighty, or thirty-one per cent had attended one of the branch training institutions

56 See P.A. Zaionchkovskii, Samoderzhaviie i russkaia armiia na rubezhe XIX-XX stoletii (Moscow, 1973), 202-6.57 See Spisok general’nago shtaba (St Petersburg, 1899).

77H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

that Miliutin created in part to prepare officers for future conflict. It took yet another generation of officers for the numbers of those who attended branch training schools to become a significant group within the army’s commanding heights. By 1914 practically every general on the General Staff had attended branch training schools as well as the Nicholas Academy.58

Despite Kuropatkin’s intellectual appreciation for the army, he possessed neither the depth nor breadth of vision of his more capable predecessor, D.A. Miliutin, nor did he ever have the level of support or confidence of Nicholas II as Miliutin had of Alexander II, or Vannovski of Alexander III. Kuropatin nonetheless did embark on his own reform plan for the Nicholas Academy that sought to transform it into a military university as opposed to a specialised staff college. To his way of thinking, Academy education needed to be upgraded for all the reasons pointed out in the memoirs – most lectures ranged from being boring to useless and students were burdened with endless technical work that was of little use to them once they became commanders in the army. Kuropatkin’s idea for a reformed Nicholas Academy consisted of recreating it as a military university that provided officers the intellectual tools necessary to think through complex problems.59 To accompany such an education and provide future staff officers with the type of training that would prepare them for the modern battlefield, Kuropatkin attempted to transform the practice and conduct of peacetime manoeuvres and war games into exercises that better prepared officers to command in war time. He came to this task possessing a solitary goal: to modernise the entire military establishment through the creation and development of a unified system of training. 60

Throughout his tenure as war minister (1898-1904), however, the grip of tradition and resistance to reform was so strong that Kuropatkin learned that tampering with time-honoured war game customs pricked the rawest nerve of the officers of the Imperial Suite and the Guard regiments. With the support of the redoubtable General Dragomirov, traditionally-minded guard’s officers mobilised every resource at their disposal, including the support of the Tsar, to maintain the army’s anachronistic training customs. Dragomirov, upon leaving the Nicholas Academy, became the Commander of the Kiev Military District from where he remained an influential voice, especially over the army’s training establishment. Moreover, because he had tutored the young Nicholas II throughout his military education, Dragomirov had the ear of the Tsar until he died in 1905.

58 See Spisok general’nago shtaba (St Petersburg, 1914).59 This debate, should the General Staff Academy offer a specialised or universal military education, would persist

until the collapse of Imperial Russia. It is well articulated in E. Kh. Kalnin, General’nyi shtab i ego spetsial’nost’ (St Petersburg, 1909).

60 See John W. Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men: Russia’s General Staff and the Fate of the Empire, 1898-1914 (Baltimore, 2010), 37-44.

78 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

Nonetheless, Kuropatkin understood both the symbolic and practical significance of annual war games and expended vast amounts of political and financial capital to conduct the largest peacetime training exercise in the history of the Russian Empire in Kursk province in August and September 1902.61 This manoeuvre caused the mobilisation of two military districts and parts of two others. Over 90,000 men would participate when, until the manoeuvre at Kursk, the participation of 10,000 men in a manoeuvre was considered huge. Kuropatkin wanted to give his army experience in moving masses of troops on and off a battlefield, he wanted soldiers to march, commanders to command, and most of all, he wanted to study the army’s logistical capabilities. When it was over Dragomirov was howling mad over what he perceived to be a waste of resources. Worse, its training value had been compromised by the presence of the Tsar: his side had to win and everyone knew it. And, most damaging for his, and the Empire’s, immediate future, Kuropatkin revealed that he, the Tsar, could be counted on to make the wrong decision or move at a key moment in a battle.62

Conclusion

At Kursk, Kuropatkin not only learned that the Tsar and his retinue was a major impediment to reform, he also was forced to accept that military tradition represented a strong road block to military modernisation. The acrimonious falling out between Kuropatkin and the Tsar and his supporters over the Kursk manoeuvre forced the War Minister and many other progressive thinkers to reconsider what was and was not possible when considering military reform.63 Although Kuropatkin’s dismal failure as a commander in the Russo-Japanese War forced him into a premature, indeed disgraceful retirement, nothing could stop the process that he continued in reforming Russian military education. To fill what he correctly understood to be a critical need for educated officers in every branch of the army, he opened up military colleges to all qualified Tsarist subjects when he transformed all Junker schools into military colleges. In more than doubling the number of military colleges that offered higher branch training, Kuropatkin once and finally shattered the

61 See Otchet o bol’shom manevre v kurskoi gubernii v vysochaishem’ prisutstvii v 1902 godu: Moskovskaia armiia (Moscow, 1903) and Otchet o bol’shom manevre v kurskom gubernii v vysochaishem prisutstvii v 1902 godu: Iuzhnaia armiia (Kiev, 1903). These are massive official reports. For brief accounts see ‘Moskovskaia armiia na bol’shikh’ manevrakh’ pod Kurskom’, Razvedchik 626 (1902), 925-9, and 627 (1902), 948-53; ‘Deistviia iuzhnoi armii na Kurskikh’ manevrakh’ v vysochaishem’ prisutstvii v 1902 rodu’, Razvedchik 637 (1903), 4-9, and 638 (1903), 30-5.

62 See Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men, 117-47.63 The ultimate solution to the question of how to raise the effectiveness of parade ground drill was to hold small

regimental exercises as far away as possible from the eyes of the Tsar, his relatives, and their staunchest supporters. For good survey of the role of manoeuvres in Russia’s military tradition, see M.A. Gareev, Obshchevoiskovye ucheniia (Moscow, 1990), 8-90. For examples of how training effectiveness was enhanced through small scale manoeuvres, see Steinberg, All the Tsar’s Men, 232-70.

79H o w M i l i t a r y t r a d i t i o n P r e v a i l e d

hold of the aristocracy on the officer corps, at least in raw numbers. He recognised that Russia needed qualified people to fill the ranks of the officer corps and enough military colleges to fill that need despite protests from the traditional service elite, the officers of the Imperial guard’s regiments. His impact on the education offered at military colleges, therefore, represented a culminating moment for the rise of professional military officers in the imperial period of Russian history. Such progress, as is well known, came too late for the Imperial army and the regime.

Between Miliutin’s tireless efforts and the eventual rise of a product of his reforms, A.N. Kuropatkin, the semblance of a unified military educational system capable of training officers for the modern battlefield started to find its place in Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. This system suffered from arcane instructors and instructional techniques. It endured a constant debate over what type of information students needed to learn. It withstood the assault of the traditional elite in the fall-out of the assassination of Alexander II, the retirement of Miliutin, and the efforts of Vannovski to preserve the role and position of Russian aristocrats in the officer corps. Yet, from the end of the Crimean War until the collapse of the Romanov dynasty, military education was constantly being examined and reexamined to find better, more productive methods to use in the education of Russian officers. One of the consequences of this progress, largely the result of an ever increasing need for officers, was the loss of the aristocratic stranglehold over command positions within the army. Because Russia’s General Staff officers received extensive education at both military and civilian schools and academies, they became some of the most modern thinking people in the Empire. By the beginning of the twentieth century, even the Tsar had to reluctantly recognise that General Staff officers, regardless of their personal background, were in the best position to understand the complexities of the world in which they lived – they were the Tsar’s military professionals on whom he depended to safeguard the regime from both internal and external enemies.

Deeply rooted social differences, however, prevented the emergence of a unified group of military elites who had the power and vision to resolve military problems as they confronted the Empire. No reform, no matter how brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed, could overcome what amounted to at least two hundred years of military/political/social customs. The Miliutin reforms started the process of surmounting the power of traditional elite military servitors and created institutions that paved a path for the education of modern professionals. By 1914, the military educational system had been transformed and was producing the number of officers needed to command a mass army. Reformers did their best to bring military modernisation to Russia throughout the last half

80 v i C t o r y o r d e F e a t

of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Traditionalists, however, held power and remained resistant to any perceived threat to their power and authority. The diverse social composition of the Russian Officer Corps, combined with a highly centralised military administration, not to mention the ever-meddling presence of the Tsar, his relatives, and their assorted entourages, especially whenever and wherever the army tried to conduct practical training exercises, prevented the General Staff from emerging as an all-powerful element, such as it had in Germany, that possessed the command authority capable of leading their Empire’s forces to victory on the early twentieth century battlefield.

81

War and Peace: the British Army after the Victories of 1918 and 1945

G. C. Peden

Generals, it is often said, prepare for the last war. Certainly it seems a reasonable supposition that a victorious army is less likely than a defeated army to change its tactical doctrine, organisation and weapons systems. However, research by David French shows that the British army’s tactical doctrine underwent continuous development in the 1920s.1 His findings raise the question of whether the army’s response to victory in 1918 and 1945 conformed to the stereotypical view of generals preparing for the last war.

The paper fits into the structure of my book, Arms, Economics and British Strategy, where I argue that:

(a) There is a long-term trend for the cost of weapons systems to increase more rapidly than national income.

(b) If armed forces are to keep up with science and technology, they must, other things being equal, either become smaller or the proportion of national income spent on defence must rise.

(c) The world wars temporarily increased the size of the Britain’s armed forces, but also weakened the national economy and therefore its ability to maintain these enlarged forces.2

The paper falls into in three parts:

• Thefirstexplainswhyretrenchmentwasnecessaryafter1918and1945,andwhythearmyinparticularwasthetargetforcuts.

I am grateful to David French for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Responsibility for remaining errors is mine alone.1 David French, ‘Doctrine and Organization in the British Army, 1919-1932’, Historical Journal XLIV:2 (2001),

497-515.2 G.C. Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs (Cambridge, 2007). See

also David Kirkpatrick, ‘The Rising Unit Cost of Defence Equipment – The Reasons and Results’, Defence and Peace Economics VI (1995), 263-88.

82 VICTORYORDEFEAT

• Thesecondlooksatthearmy’swillingnesstochangeitstacticaldoctrine,organisationandweaponsintheperiodfrom1919to1934,whenareviewofdefencerequirementsmarkedtheendofpost-warretrenchment.

• Thethirdconsidersmilitarypolicyfromthesamepointsofviewinthefifteenyearsaftervictoryin1945.

Why was retrenchment necessary?

British strategy in the First World War was radically different from what pre-war policy-makers had anticipated. The War Office planned to deploy an expeditionary force of up to six infantry divisions and a cavalry division in support of the French army, but Britain’s major contributions to the war were expected to be her naval supremacy and her ability to finance allies with subsidies and to supply them with munitions, as in previous great wars. In the event, Field Marshal Kitchener was allowed to recruit a mass army of volunteers that could be sustained after battle casualties only by the introduction of conscription. The British army increased from 247,000 regulars in August 1914 to a peak of 3,859,000 in March 1918 (not including the Dominion or Indian armies).3 Moreover, Britain was still expected to subsidise allies and to manufacture munitions for the Dominions and India. The scale of the military effort was beyond what British industry alone could support and from the autumn of 1914 orders were placed by the War Office in the United States. American manufacturers had to be paid in dollars, and the British war effort became dependent on loans raised in New York or, after the entry of the United States into the war in 1917, on credits from the American government. British manufacturers were, of course, paid in sterling, but the sums involved were well beyond what could be raised in taxation, and government borrowing was inflationary.4 The diversion of British industry to production of munitions led to loss of export markets, many of which were never recovered, weakening Britain’s ability to balance her international payments throughout the interwar period. Inflation provoked social discontent: hence the political priority in 1919 for industrial and social reconstruction, and for a reduction in military expenditure.

On 15 August 1919 the Cabinet directed the defence departments to revise their estimates of expenditure on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years, and that no expeditionary force would be

3 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914-20 (London, 1922), 30 and 34.

4 Kathleen Burk, ‘Financing Kitchener’s (and Everyone Else’s) Armies’, in Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy (eds), The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856-1956: Essays in Honour of David French (Farnham, 2010), 257-76.

83WARAnDpEACE

required for that purpose.5 This Ten Year Rule, as it came to be called, was renewed from time to time, and in 1928, at the instigation of the chancellor of the exchequer, Winston Churchill, it was put on a rolling basis, so that a great war was always assumed to be ten years away until such time as, on the advice of the Foreign Office or the Chiefs of Staff (COS), it was rescinded.6 In March 1932 the Cabinet accepted the COS’s recommendation that the Ten Year Rule must be cancelled in view of the situation in the Far East following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, action on this decision was delayed, partly on account of the serious financial position facing the government, and partly to await the outcome of the international disarmament conference which had opened in Geneva in February 1932. It was not until after a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence had reported in February 1934 on Britain’s defence requirements that ministers began to discuss rearmament.

Table 1: Army expenditure 1913/14 and 1919/20

£000s at current prices % of total on armed forces

% of national income

1913/14 28,346 36.7 1.29

1919/20 395,000 65.4 8.21

Sources: Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom (Cmd 4489) (for expenditure), and B.R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 829 (for national income adjusted to financial year).

The emphasis in the Ten Year Rule of 1919 on the expeditionary force is not surprising: most of the increase in defence expenditure during the war had been on the army. The huge output of shells, for example, had been in response to the needs of the Western Front rather than the operations of the Grand Fleet. Even once the guns fell silent the army absorbed a far higher proportion of defence expenditure than it had done before 1914 (table 1). Whereas the army had been responsible for little more than one third of expenditure on the armed forces in the financial year 1913/14, in 1919/20 its share was almost two-thirds. There were no official national income statistics before the 1940s, but a comparison of army expenditure with national income data compiled since then suggests that ministers who believed that the army was absorbing too high a proportion of national resources in 1919 were not far wrong (table 1).

5 War Cabinet ‘A’ minutes, 616A, Cabinet Office papers, series 23, vol. 15 (CAB 23/15), The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA).

6 Committee of Imperial Defence, 236th meeting, 5 July 1928, CAB 2/5, TNA.

84 VICTORYORDEFEAT

Source: Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom (Cmd 4489 and 6232).

Figure 1 shows how chancellors of the exchequer in Lloyd George’s Liberal-Conservative coalition government cut the army estimates sharply between 1919 and the Geddes ‘axe’ of 1921-22. By the mid-1920s the army’s share of the total defence budget was back to where it had been in 1913. In November 1927, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Sir George Milne, warned that a point had been reached where the army estimates could not safely be cut any further.7 However, Churchill insisted on a cut of over eight per cent in 1928. There were further reductions in 1931 under the Labour chancellor, Philip Snowden, and in 1932 under the Conservative chancellor, Neville Chamberlain, as the government’s revenue fell and the cost of unemployment relief rose in the post-1929 depression.

How can one explain this hostility of chancellors of all political parties to the army estimates? The over-riding reason was contemporary financial orthodoxy which required the chancellor to balance his budget. This task was not made easier by the need to pay interest on loans raised during the war. The army, whose wartime expansion had been financed by borrowing, now had to shrink to what could be afforded from current revenue.8

Figure 1: Army expenditure 1919/20-1933/4 (£000s)

7 Covering note to memorandum on ‘The present distribution and strength of the British army in relation to its duties’, 2 November 1927, War Office papers, series 32, file 2823 (WO 32/2823), TNA.

8 G. C. Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906-1959 (Oxford, 2000), 38-40, 140-50, 166-74, 205-16, 264-7, 294.

85WARAnDpEACE

There were also political considerations. Churchill argued in 1924 that economy in defence expenditure was necessary to leave scope for tax reductions and social reform. Failure to do so, he believed, would lead to electoral defeat.9 It was not until after the Nazis came to power in 1933 that he became an advocate of rearmament.

During the Second World War the army once more accounted for the largest proportion of expenditure, thirty-eight per cent, compared with thirty-six per cent by the navy and twenty-six per cent by the RAF.10 As prime minister, Churchill pursued a policy of victory at any cost, but even he had to limit the size of the army to prevent it absorbing manpower, especially skilled manpower, essential for industry. The strength of the army peaked in 1945 at 2,931,000, seventy-five per cent of its maximum strength in 1918. As in the First World War, victory was attained only by an effort that could not be long sustained by the national economy. Indeed Churchill’s strategy, and the army’s part in it, was possible only because the United States was willing to provide, without financial payment, munitions and other supplies essential to victory. Britain’s reserves of gold and dollars were fast running out by late 1940, and from 1941 the British economy became increasingly reliant on goods supplied under the American Lend-Lease Act, which terminated with the end of the war. The United Kingdom’s exports fell by more than half between 1938 and 1945; hence the need to apply to the United States for a post-war loan to finance essential imports while the British economy reconverted to peace-time production. The UK had also incurred huge overseas debts, many of them in connection with predominantly army expenditure in the Middle East and India.11 Once more political priority after the war had to be given to industrial and social reconstruction.

The Labour government of 1945-51 recognised the need for the armed forces to be large enough to fulfil defence and foreign policy commitments. Although labour was in short supply for industry, the government extended conscription with a National Service Act in 1947 (in contrast to the Lloyd George coalition which had allowed conscription to lapse after the First World War).12 The extent of Labour’s effort can be judged by a comparison with Australia’s in the financial year 1948/49, when demobilisation was complete but no post-war rearmament program had begun. British defence expenditure was more than twice the Australian level, in relation to the countries’ populations.

9 Martin Gilbert (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, vol. V companion, part 1 (London, 1979), 303-5.10 David French, The British Way in Warfare 1688-2000 (London, 1990), 227. 11 G. C. Peden, ‘Financing Churchill’s Army’, in Neilson and Kennedy (eds), British Way in Warfare, 293-8.12 L. V. Scott, Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945-1951 (Oxford,

1993).

86 VICTORYORDEFEAT

Table 2: Index of defence expenditure in Commonwealth countries in 1948/9 per capita (UK = 100)

UK 100

Australia 44

Canada 28

Source: Till Geiger, Britain and the Economic Problem of the Cold War (Aldershot, 2004), 81.

The Labour government responded to the outbreak of the Korean War with a rearmament programme that was so ambitious in relation to the UK’s economic resources that it had to be cut back by Churchill when he returned to 10 Downing Street in 1951. American aid under the Mutual Defence Assistance Programme was less generous than Labour ministers had hoped, and rearmament distorted the economy by diverting industry away from exports and consumer goods, and deepening a balance-of-payments crisis.13

Figure 2: Army expenditure in 1920/1 to 1933/4 compared with 1947/8 to 1960/1 as percentage of national income

13 Till Geiger, Britain and the Economic Problem of the Cold War: The Political Economy and the Economic Impact of the British Defence Effort, 1945-1955 (Aldershot, 2004), chs 8-9.

Source: Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom (Cmd 4489 and 6232) and Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 594, 830.

Even so, War Office expenditure represented a far higher percentage of the national income in the post-1945 period than after the First World War. Figure 2 understates the difference because some of the expenditure on the army from 1939 to 1959 was financed

87WARAnDpEACE

through the Ministry of Supply, which was responsible for munitions, both production and research and development. Other central costs were borne by the Ministry of Defence, which was set up in 1946. The higher level of expenditure on the army reflected the impact of the Cold War and the fact that the chancellor’s budget was less tightly circumscribed than in the interwar period. Expenditure on the new welfare state was offset by lower costs of relieving unemployment in the long post-war boom. The national debt, although substantial, no longer dominated the chancellor’s budget. The United States, which had been a debt collector after the First World War, provided financial aid through the Anglo-American Loan Agreement of 1945, Marshall Aid (1948-50), and Defence Aid (1951-57). Nevertheless, there was a series of sterling crises, and indeed the Americans were able to put pressure on the British over Suez in 1956 simply by withholding support for sterling. The Treasury pressed hard from the early 1950s for curbs on defence expenditure and the 1957 Defence White Paper accepted that the UK’s power and influence depended ‘first and foremost’ on the health of its economy. The White Paper announced that the armed forces would be reduced in size, and that conscription would be phased out by the end of 1962 to release resources for exports.14

To conclude this section of the paper: the demands of the army for manpower in the world wars made it a particularly heavy burden on the economy and a prominent target for cuts once hostilities were over. The General Staff had to work within particularly narrow financial limits after the First World War − tighter, in terms of a share of national income, than before 1914 or after 1945. There was a period of rearmament in the early 1950s but from 1957 the army had to fit in with a long-term of strategy of deterrence with defence expenditure set at a level that would not weaken the economy.

Military policy, 1918-34

The army faced two broad policy alternatives in the aftermath of victory in 1918. Finance became increasingly tight, but the cost of an army of a given size had increased compared with 1914 on account of technical change. New weapons (e.g. tanks, gas) or greater provision of older weapons (e.g. artillery, machine guns) could not be ignored or reversed. The additional unit cost pointed to a policy of having a smaller army than before 1914 in order to afford new weapons. On the other hand, the war had destabilised large areas of the world. An army of occupation had to be stationed in the Rhineland. British troops were involved in the Russian Civil War in 1919-20 and in Persia until 1921. Ireland was the scene of counter-insurgency until 1921. In the Middle East there were new

14 Defence: Outline of Future Policy (Cmnd 124), British Parliamentary Papers (BPP) 1956-57, XXIII, 489. See also Peden, The Treasury, 442-8, 500-2.

88 VICTORYORDEFEAT

commitments in Palestine and Iraq, as well as a continuing presence in Egypt. Britain’s position in India was threatened by disorder in its cities and violence on the North-West Frontier, including a war with Afghanistan in 1919, and the possibility that Russia might stir up trouble. In 1927 the War Office had to send out two brigades at short notice to Shanghai to deal with anti-foreign forces there. Within the UK industrial unrest meant troops had to be employed in supporting the civil power, notably in the General Strike of 1926.15 These circumstances pointed to the need for a larger army than before 1914, although not necessarily one supplied with the scale of equipment and munitions reserves that had been required on the Western Front by 1918.

Table 3: Strength of the British Army (excluding India)

Regular Army Territorial Army

1913 247,250 248,340

1922 217,477 136,600

1926 205,758 148,742

1930 188,460 137, 141

1934 195,848 133,735

Sources: Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom (Cmd 4489 and 6232).

Table 3 suggests that the trend of War Office policy was towards a smaller army. Initially there was little choice. Troops raised during the war insisted on rapid demobilisation, and conscription ended in March 1920. By 1922 the strength of the regular army, exclusive of troops serving in India, was already twelve per cent below its 1913 establishment. However, cuts in manpower continued through the 1920s and by 1930 the strength of the regular army was twenty-four per cent below the 1913 establishment. The position was in fact worse than these figures suggest. Whereas in 1914 there had been an army reserve of 146,000 trained men and a special reserve of 55,000, in 1923 there were only 76,000 men in the army reserve and there was no special reserve. The only units immediately available for any expeditionary force were two infantry divisions and one cavalry brigade equipped on a scale intended for operations in the Middle East or India.16 The Territorial

15 For details see Anthony Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower 1919-39 (Basingstoke, 1986); Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire 1918-22 (Manchester, 1984).

16 Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford, 1980), 32.

89WARAnDpEACE

Army (TA) was reconstituted in 1921 and organised into fourteen divisions, but these were under-strength and would require further training before they could take the field. Given that no great war was to be expected in the near future, the TA received a very low priority.17

David French has argued convincingly against the view that the Royal Tank Corps (RTC) was alone in embracing modernity in the 1920s and that the General Staff began to incorporate the experience of the First World War into its tactical doctrine only after the Kirke Committee reported in October 1932.18 No doubt the military establishment deserved some of the strictures from advocates of change, like Major General J. F. C. Fuller and Captain Basil Liddell Hart, but, as Brian Bond points out, uncertainty about the army’s role was a major handicap for policymakers. Before 1914 it had been clear that Germany was the power against whom preparations were being made. Insofar as an enemy was identified in the 1920s, that enemy was Russia. The threat was primarily one of communist subversion, and thus a matter for internal security forces, and the Foreign Office advised that any military threat to India lay in the future. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office believed that Russia was a more likely enemy than Germany or Japan, and in 1926-28 the COS discussed how a war in Afghanistan might be conducted. The Indian army – a quarter of which comprised British troops – would have to be reinforced from the UK. However, for logistical reasons operations in an underdeveloped country like Afghanistan could not be of the intensity of those on the Western Front in 1918, so that the equipment and ammunition reserves for an expeditionary force for India were the same as for one available as a reserve for Middle Eastern emergencies.19

Despite this uncertainty the General Staff aimed from early in the 1920s to create a small, highly-mechanised, professional force rather than a mass army on 1918 model. Tactical doctrine, as set out in successive field service regulations in the 1920s, was based on fighting a first-class enemy.20 In contrast, the army was slow to record systematically lessons learned from varied security operations in the Empire; until 1934, when Major-General Sir C.W. Gwynn’s Imperial Policing was published, the 1906 edition of Sir Charles Callwell’s Small Wars was the standard training manual on the subject.21 It is true, as French

17 Peter Dennis, The Territorial Army 1906-1940 (Woodbridge, 1987), 100-2, 109-10, 122-3, 125.18 French, ‘Doctrine and Organization’. See also his Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against

Germany 1919-1945 (Oxford, 2000), ch. 1.19 Bond, British Military Policy, 7-8, 56, 81-4, 98, 107-11.20 French, Raising Churchill’s Army, 19-33.21 T. R. Moreman, ‘“Small Wars” and “Imperial Policing”: The British Army and the Theory and Practice of Colonial

Warfare in the British Empire, 1919-39’, Journal of Strategic Studies XIX:4 (1996), 105-31.

90 VICTORYORDEFEAT

points out, that the General Staff lacked a system for imposing a standard interpretation of doctrine on field commanders, and that, with about half of the army at any one time stationed overseas, there was a tendency for field service regulations to be modified to local conditions.22 Moreover, under the Cardwell system infantry battalions at home supplied drafts to linked battalions serving overseas. In practice the demands of imperial defence, especially India, meant that units based at home tended to become understrength training battalions. Mechanisation of units at home, including their transport, proceeded at a faster pace than in India, making it difficult to standardise training.23 Field service regulations are not necessarily an accurate guide to the progress of modernisation of the army.

Security operations in the Empire might have been expected to lead to the development of tactical doctrine on close air support, given the RAF’s role in ‘imperial policing’ (which involved air attacks on hostile tribesmen). However, the RAF was seen by ministers as a cheaper alternative to the army, and rivalry between the two services militated against co-operation.24 Bond and Williamson Murray believe that the army was scarcely more interested in close air support than the RAF was,25 but it is difficult to see how soldiers could develop tactical air doctrine unaided. It was only in the crucible of war that effective army-RAF co-operation was achieved.26

Modernisation in the interwar period has usually been taken by military historians to be synonymous with the employment of tanks. In Bond’s opinion, ‘mechanization has rightly been regarded … as the most important criterion for assessing the British army’s adaptability and openness to new ideas during the inter-war period’.27 In this connection, it should be noted that Milne, who was CIGS for an unusually long period of seven years from February 1926, was the author of a paper in 1925 advocating reorganisation of the army to take account of developments in mechanisation. It may be that Milne’s biographer is correct to judge him as lacking in a sense of urgency, but Milne’s paper made clear that he was largely concerned with the future once further experiments had been carried out

22 David French, ‘Big Wars and Small Wars between the Wars, 1919-39’, in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the 20th Century (Abingdon, 2006), 36-53.

23 Bond, British Military Policy, 99-102.24 David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939 (Manchester, 1990), 15-17,

20-6, 35, 48-9, 60-2.25 Brian Bond and Williamson Murray, ‘The British Armed Forces, 1918-39’, in Allan R. Millett and Williamson

Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, vol. II: The Interwar Period (Boston, 1988), 98-130, at 122. 26 Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45 (London, 1998).27 Bond, British Military Policy, 127.

91WARAnDpEACE

and new equipment had been developed.28 Milne created the Experimental Mechanised Force in 1926, which tested ways in which armoured cars, tanks, artillery and infantry could work together. Unfortunately, whereas the artillery was towed by tracked vehicles, the infantry were moved in six-wheeled trucks. The tracked elements were bound to leave the wheeled elements far behind over fields, whereas the wheeled elements were faster on roads and often had to wait for the tracked elements to catch up. Manoeuvres from 1926 to 1928 demonstrated that tanks were most effective when accompanied by infantry who could deal with hostile anti-tank weapons or clear ground unsuitable for tanks, but Milne accepted that infantry and tanks must be organised in separate units. As French observes, this was a fateful decision. Although British army tactical doctrine was based on combined-arms co-operation, the attempt to establish permanent all-arms formations incorporating a balance of tanks, infantry and supporting arms was virtually abandoned by the end of the 1920s.29

The lack of a cross-country vehicle for the infantry in the 1920s was undoubtedly an obstacle to the development of a divisional structure for mobile units to match the army’s combined-arms doctrine. However, if there had been a clear view on how best to apply experience with the Experimental Mechanised Force, a specification for such a vehicle could have been issued. As John Harris has argued, the lack of a clear view was not simply military conservatism. Tank enthusiasts wanted the mechanised force of the future to have the minimum of supporting artillery and no conventional infantry, whereas the men they denounced as conservatives wanted an all-arms mechanised division.30 Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, an artillery man who was CIGS from 1933 to 1936, wanted the newest weapons, including armoured fighting vehicles, to be available to improve the mobility and firepower of the cavalry and infantry. He recorded in his unpublished memoirs that he had concluded that manoeuvres involving the Experimental Mechanised Force had had an adverse effect on the morale of the cavalry and the infantry. He believed that it would be better to mechanise the cavalry and infantry divisions gradually and that it had been a mistake in 1931 to introduce an entirely new formation, the tank brigade, based on the medium tank. Using a phrase that would still be common in the army after 1945, he said he wanted ‘evolution, not revolution’.31

28 Graham Nicol, Uncle George: Field-Marshal Lord Milne of Salonika and Rubislaw (London, 1976), 276. Milne’s paper, ‘Army Reorganisation’, is reproduced as an appendix, 309-19.

29 French, Raising Churchill’s Army, 29. See also J. P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903-1939 (Manchester, 1995).

30 Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks, 211-15, 221-8.31 ‘The Autobiography of a Gunner’, unpublished manuscript, Montgomery-Massingberd MSS 10/11, 53, Liddell

Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London.

92 VICTORYORDEFEAT

In the early 1930s the mobile element in the expeditionary force comprised two quite separate units: a tank brigade and a horsed cavalry division. One has to be careful, however, about assuming that the persistence of horsed cavalry represented a triumph for reaction. A committee chaired by Montgomery-Massingberd had accepted in 1927 that that the cavalry should be partially mechanised once vehicles with adequate cross-country performance had been developed, but until the mid-1930s there were still some tasks than horsed cavalry could do better than armoured cars or tanks.32 Indeed the War Office stated as late as February 1934 that the cavalry would remain mounted ‘until a vehicle is designed capable of replacing the horse, and no such vehicle is in sight’.33 Eight months later Montgomery-Massingberd reached a provisional conclusion that one of the cavalry brigades should be mechanised and combined with the tank brigade to form a ‘mobile division’. He admitted that this change would reduce the horsed cavalry available for non-European theatres, but considered that India and perhaps Australia should be able to provide sufficient mounted troops.34 By the end of 1935 improvements in armoured fighting vehicles made possible a definite decision that both cavalry brigades in the UK and the one in Egypt should be mechanised. However, the organisation of the mobile division was still undecided and even in 1938 the formation adopted was for training and administrative rather than operational purposes.35

The organisation of the infantry division took just as long to settle. By 1918 the infantry element in the division had been reduced from its pre-war establishment of twelve battalions to nine, but firepower had been greatly increased with artillery, mortars and machine guns. The Bird Committee recommended in 1919 that the 1918 model should be the basis for the post-war infantry division. However, the 1914 model was restored, partly because infantry were required for the Cardwell system, and partly because the 1918 model, with its large numbers of specialist units, such as trench mortar batteries, did not fit in with the General Staff’s goal of restoring mobility to the battlefield. The Kirke Committee’s report in 1932 anticipated that the German army would make full use of concessions at Geneva regarding the peace treaty’s restrictions on it having tanks, and that any future Continental campaign would be characterised by mobile, mechanised warfare. The Committee recommended that the infantry division should be simplified and reduced in size, and that there should be an increase in corps tanks and artillery to

32 David French, ‘The Mechanization of the British Cavalry between the World Wars’, War in History X: 3 (2003), 296-320.

33 Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, Report, DRC 14, 28 February 1934, CAB 16/109, TNA.34 Minute by CIGS, 15 October 1934, WO 32/2847, TNA.35 ‘The Mobile Division/Cavalry Mechanization’, October 1935-December 1937, WO 32/2826, TNA.

93WARAnDpEACE

provide support as required.36 It was not, however, until 1938 that the new nine-battalion division came into being. There were earlier changes to take account of experience of the First World War. In particular, from 1928 the fire power of the infantry was increased, with battalions at home and overseas being reorganised to comprise three rifle companies instead of four, and with the machine-gun platoon replaced by a company.

The 1920s saw considerable progress with the development of tanks. The Medium Mark I, which began to be delivered to the RTC in 1923, was twice as fast and had a fifty per cent greater range than the wartime Medium Mark A, and was armed with a 3-pdr as well as machine guns, whereas the Mark A had only had machine guns. The Mark III of 1928 was even faster, and had thicker armour than the Marks I and II, but was also more expensive, and, although well ahead of its time, did not proceed beyond the prototype stage. Instead orders were placed from 1929 for two-man light tanks, which were armed only with a single machine-gun and were about quarter the weight of a Mark III medium, but were considerably cheaper. By the early 1930s the General Staff had decided that experience with the Experimental Mechanised Force showed that different types of tanks were needed to meet the requirements of the tank brigade, the cavalry and the infantry. The Mark I and Mark II mediums in service with the tank brigade were regarded by the RTC as obsolescent, but in 1932, the year the army estimates reached their nadir, the director of mechanisation, Major-General Alan Brough, took the view that the Mark III medium was too expensive to order in quantity. Experimental work continued into the mid-1930s on a successor but the prototypes were unsuccessful. It is hard not to agree with John Harris that, given the limited resources of British industry for tank design, it would have been better to concentrate development on a good all-purpose medium tank.37

If the development of tanks was far from ideal, the position regarding the artillery was much worse. Innovation tended to be stifled by the existence of huge stocks left over from war, and by lack of finance for replacements. The field artillery continued to be equipped with wartime 18-pdr guns and 4.5-inch howitzers until 1937, by which date they had been outranged by equivalent weapons of European armies and were, in the War Office’s view, ‘not fit for war’.38 A specification for the replacement of both guns by the 25-pdr was not issued until 1934, and trials were not completed until October 1938. Fortunately it proved to be possible from 1937 to upgrade the older guns by relining

36 Report of the Committee on the Lessons of the Great War, October 1932, WO 33/1297, TNA.37 Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks, 238-42, 274-82, 305.38 ‘Organisation, Armament and Equipment of the Army’, DPR 145, 16 November 1936, CAB 64/35, TNA.

94 VICTORYORDEFEAT

them, modifying their carriages, and designing new shells.39 Similarly the basic infantry weapon, the Lee Enfield bolt-operated rifle of 1903, was retained, although in 1926 the War Office issued a specification for a self-loading rifle. The best designs for the latter had a rate of fire up to three times the Lee Enfield, but the Treasury was opposed to scrapping large stocks of rifles, and the General Staff feared that adoption of the self-loading weapon would encourage the infantry to use ammunition wastefully, thereby limiting mobility by placing a burden on the army’s logistical system.40

In addition to its field units, the army shared with the RAF responsibility for the air defence of Great Britain. In 1923 the Army Council allocated two Territorial divisions for anti-aircraft duties, but there was little incentive for innovation: so long as Germany appeared to be observing the peace treaty by not having an air force, there was no credible enemy to prepare against; and there were ample stocks of anti-aircraft guns. In 1934, when a German air threat was re-emerging, the UK’s air defences as planned in 1923 were less than half complete.41

By 1934 a prolonged period of financial restraint had resulted in a range of short-comings in all three services. According to the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee Report of February 1934 the most important deficiency regarding the army was the expeditionary force. At that date it would have been possible to send abroad only one division in each of the first two months of a war, a third division in the fourth month, and the remaining two at the end of the sixth month, whereas the security of the Low Countries made it desirable to be able to place the cavalry division, the tank brigade and four infantry divisions in the field within one month.42 It was clear that it would take at least five years to re-equip the expeditionary force. Churchill had intended that the Ten Year Rule would hold back mass production until the situation required it, but should not hamper the development of ideas.43 However, one result of prolonged retrenchment, combined with the general depression in heavy industry, was that the army’s suppliers were by no means as ready for mass production as Churchill had hoped. The General Staff and the War Office can hardly be blamed for this state of affairs.

On balance, the army cannot be fairly accused of resting on its laurels in 1918. It is true that the objective from the early 1920s of creating a smaller, mechanised army had mixed success. As French points out, the army’s highly centralised command and

39 Correspondence between CIGS and Master-General of the Ordnance, February 1937, WO 32/4385, TNA. 40 French, Raising Churchill’s Army, 84-5.41 DRC 14, CAB 16/109, TNA.42 Ibid.43 Committee of Imperial Defence, 236th meeting, 5 July 1928, CAB 2/5, TNA.

95WARAnDpEACE

control system was an obstacle to the development of mobile formations capable of the kind of blitzkrieg operations waged by the German army in 1939-41.44 Failure to arrive at a consensus on how best to organise a mechanised army cannot simply be blamed on men like Montgomery-Massingberd who wished to uphold the traditional roles of the cavalry and infantry; it was also a consequence of a reluctance on the part of tank enthusiasts to accept infantry as an integral part of a balanced mobile force. It is true that the Cardwell system had an enduring influence on the organisation of the army, but it need not have dictated the size or shape of divisions in the expeditionary force. The War Office’s priority for mechanisation can be seen in the way that scarce funds for research and development were channelled into tanks rather than artillery. If the army of 1934 still bore a resemblance to that of 1914, reasons could be found in the absence of an imminent threat from a first-class power, the existence of stocks of field artillery and rifles, and the lack of finance.

Military policy, 1945-61

In a wide-ranging study of tactical doctrine since 1945 Sir John Kiszely states that experience of the Second World War led the army to maintain an emphasis on attrition rather than manoeuvre. He notes that winners of war do not as a rule perceive a necessity for change, and assumes that the highly centralised approach of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery to command and control during the war persisted in peace.45 Certainly Montgomery was in an influential position as CIGS from 1946 to 1948, but his successor, Sir William Slim (1948-52), had had a very different war in Burma. By 1950 lessons of the war had been absorbed into a key manual, The Conduct of War (1950).46 It stated that the ‘master principle’ was not destroying the enemy’s means to fight, but breaking his will to fight. Tactical doctrine was a blend of attrition and manoeuvre: success depended on the violence and speed of an attack, not on the size of the forces engaged. A commander should aim to be one move ahead of his opponent by maintaining a higher tempo of operations. In place of the traditional highly centralised command and control system, commanders were to explain their plan to subordinates in frequent face-to-face meetings, but were to allow them the initiative to take advantage of fleeting opportunities. Stress was placed on all-arms co-operation by troops and on close co-operation between air

44 French, Raising Churchill’s Army, 19-33.45 John Kiszely, ‘The British Army and Approaches to Warfare since 1945’, Journal of Strategic Studies XIX: 4 (1996),

179-206.46 What follows in this paragraph is based on work by David French on the post-war army. I am grateful to Professor

French for an early sight of the results of his research for his book, Army, Empire and Cold War (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

96 VICTORYORDEFEAT

and ground forces. Tactical doctrine was thus subject to thorough reform shortly after the war, as it had been in the 1920s.

Even so, in January 1958 the deputy chief of the imperial general staff, Sir Richard Hull, submitted a paper to the Executive Committee of the Army Council in which he expressed the opinion that the army’s machinery for formulating tactical doctrine had proved to be inadequate since the war. He pointed out that more than twelve years after the first use of atomic bombs there was not yet an agreed approach to the problem of the nuclear battle, with the organisation of even basic formations, from the battalion up to the division, as yet undecided. New ideas on tactical doctrine came from a variety of sources: field commanders, the Staff College and heads of various War Office directorates. These ideas would be discussed at conferences and exercises, and if not too radical, might come to be generally accepted. This leisurely process, known in the army as ‘evolution not revolution’ (the same expression that Montgomery-Massingberd had used), might, Hull thought, have been adequate when scientific and technical development had been slow, but was wholly inadequate in the 1950s.47 Four months after Hull made these comments the General Staff issued a manual entitled The Corps Tactical Battle in Nuclear War which set out fundamental changes in doctrine that were required in response to the nuclear weapons that were becoming available.48 The manual stressed that it was neither desirable nor sensible to be dogmatic, and that the intention was to stimulate further thought and discussion at all levels. Even so, the General Staff seems to have aimed at exercising greater control than hitherto over doctrine, which, as noted above, had traditionally been subject to interpretation by commanders in the field. In the following year it set up a new planning unit, the Directorate of Combat Development, comprising soldiers and scientists, with representatives of the finance department (the latter doubtless to ensure that cost as well as effectiveness would be borne in mind). The directorate was not to have any day-to-day responsibilities and was to be free to concentrate on thinking about the future pattern of war, and the types of tactics, weapons, training and logistics that would be required.49 Neither the army’s tactical doctrine nor its machinery for developing it could be described as static.

The army faced a series of challenges after 1945 that made it unlikely that change could be avoided. Once more a world war had created disruption and unrest, and this time was followed by decolonisation. The army was involved in the Greek Civil War in

47 ‘War Office Committee for the Study and Formulation of Tactical Doctrine’, ECAC/P(58)4, 3 January 1958, WO 163/630, TNA.

48 WO 279/279, TNA. I owe this reference to David French.49 House of Commons Debates (HC Deb), 5th series, 1959-60, vol. 619, col. 427.

97WARAnDpEACE

1946-7; in major counter insurgency operations in Palestine (1946-48), Malaya (1948-60), Kenya (1952-56) and Cyprus (1955-59), and in conventional conflicts in Korea (1950-53) and at Suez (1956). Not all of these operations cast the army in a favourable light. For example, Hew Strachan describes the Palestine emergency as an object lesson in how not to achieve civil-military co-operation.50 The Malayan emergency exposed the failure prior to 1948 to establish a central system to promote tactical doctrine and training for jungle warfare, so that the lessons of the Burma campaign had to be relearned.51

Figure 3: Comparison of the strength of the regular army from 1918 to 1936 and the active army from 1945 to 1963

Sources: Statistical Abstracts (Cmd 2207 and 5903); Annual Abstract of Statistics, various numbers 1946-61.

In addition, substantial forces were stationed in Germany and across the Middle East. The size of the army had to be related to the extent of overseas commitments, especially as the Indian army was no longer available for imperial purposes after 1947. As figure 3 shows, the army was substantially larger while conscription was in force than in the interwar period 1919. The War Office’s original intention was that only regular soldiers would undertake overseas service. Conscripts would provide a UK-based reserve for emergencies, both during their period of national service and subsequently by transferring to the TA or the Supplementary Reserve. However, the cessation of enlistment during the war had left the regular army very depleted − in April 1946 its strength was only 100,000, half of what it had been in 1938. Recruitment was difficult in a period of full employment, so that four years later its strength of 185,000 was far below the 350,000 required for the active army. Consequently conscripts had to be used overseas, including

50 Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford, 1997), 171. 51 Daniel Marston, ‘Lost and Found in the Jungle: The Indian and British Army Jungle Warfare Doctrines for Burma,

1943-5, and the Malayan Emergency, 1958-60’, in Strachan, Big Wars, 84-114.

98 VICTORYORDEFEAT

in the Far East, after they had completed their six-month training period. Given the short period of national service set in 1948 − eighteen months − this reliance on conscripts was, as the secretary of state for war, John Strachey, admitted, costly and inefficient.52 The War Office regarded an all-regular army as a long-term aim, but one that was remote at existing levels of commitments and recruitment.53 Following the outbreak of the Korean War the period of national service was extended to two years, raising the strength of active army in 1951 to 433,200 men.54 With regular recruitment falling, the prospect was one of permanent reliance on conscription.

Post-war defence planning was based on Russia as the potential enemy, and the emphasis was on the strategic bomber as a deterrent. It was assumed that the risk of war would be small down to 1952, but would increase gradually to about 1956 and more steeply thereafter as Russia recovered from the effects of the Second World War. Meanwhile Russia was expected to continue to challenge British interests throughout the world by methods short of war. It was assumed initially that in a global conflict it would not be possible to stop vastly superior Russian land forces overrunning Western Europe. Consequently, the primary tasks for the army were identified by the COS in May 1947 as the defence of the UK (by manning of anti-aircraft defences; aid to the civil power; and countering the threat of invasion) and the Middle East.55 In 1948 Montgomery secured agreement in principle that, for political reasons, British land forces would fight alongside the other nations of the newly formed Western European Union, if the need arose. In 1950 the Joint Planning Staff advised that the defence of Western Europe was essential to the successful air defence of the UK, and the Cabinet’s Defence Committee agreed in March that year to promise reinforcements of two divisions in the event of war, to add to the two based as occupation forces in Germany.56 Three months later, on the eve of the Korean War, the COS defined the principal priorities for the army as the defence of the UK and the NATO front in Western Europe, and the provision of the ‘bare minimum’ forces required for Cold War purposes elsewhere in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.57 Britain contributed two brigades to the United Nations forces in Korea, and the

52 HC Deb, 5th series, 1950, vol. 472, col. 1562.53 ECAC/P(50)64, 20 June 1950, WO 163/112, TNA.54 DO(51)58, 19 May 1951, CAB 131/11, TNA. 55 ‘Future Defence Policy’, DO(47)44, reproduced in John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the

Formation of NATO, 1942-1949 (Kent, OH, 1993), 134-51. 56 Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, Memoirs (London, 1958), 500-2; Paul Cornish, ‘The British Army and the

Strategic Debate, 1945-50’, in Strachan, Big Wars, 54-83; Defence Committee minutes, 23 March 1950, CAB 131/8, TNA.

57 ‘Defence Policy and Global Strategy’, DO(50)45, 7 June 1950, reproduced in Documents on British Policy Overseas, series II, vol. IV (London, 1991), 411-31.

99WARAnDpEACE

Malayan emergency absorbed the equivalent of two divisions, but with the extension of the period of national service it was possible to form three new divisions, raising the strength of the active army to the equivalent of ten regular divisions. In 1951 6⅓ divisions were in Europe (including the UK); 1⅓ were in the Middle East and 2⅓ were in the Far East. In addition, it was announced in September 1950 that the equivalent of twelve TA divisions would be formed. There were, however, severe shortages of equipment even for the regular units.58

The army was thus expected to engage in a limited war, such as Korea, and in counter-insurgency, while planning for a war with Russia in which atomic weapons would be used. The nature of the commitment represented by the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) was strengthened in September 1954 when, in order to allay French suspicions about German rearmament, the British government undertook to maintain four divisions or their equivalent in Europe. At that date it was assumed that a war with Russia would begin with an intense period of nuclear warfare followed by what was called ‘broken-backed warfare’. The active army would provide a shield behind which the reserve forces would mobilise.59 The idea of a conventional war continuing after nuclear weapons had been used was changed first by NATO’s decision in 1954 to integrate tactical atomic weapons into its plans, and then by the Strath Report in February 1955 which stated that the development of the hydrogen bomb made the UK indefensible against air attack. These changes occurred just as the Treasury was pressing for cuts in defence expenditure, and as a new prime minister, Anthony Eden, and his successor, Harold Macmillan, were hoping to end conscription as soon as possible. Major changes in the roles and composition of the army were inevitable.60

In 1955 the army relinquished one of its UK defence roles when Anti-Aircraft Command was wound up. In the same year the minister of defence, Selwyn Lloyd, said that the army should be primarily organised for Cold War or limited war purposes, with a strategic reserve in the UK capable of rapid deployment overseas by air. The reserve army of TA divisions should no longer be prepared for land warfare, apart from two earmarked for NATO. The remainder, while available to fight anywhere, would be prepared for a home defence role, including civil defence, and would not require tanks or artillery.61

58 ‘Size and Shape and Requirements of the Army for 1951/2, 1952/3 and 1953/4’, ECAC/P(50)95, 5 October 1950, WO 163/113; ‘Progress of Rearmament’, DO(51)58, 19 May 1951, CAB 131/11, TNA.

59 Statement on Defence (Cmd 9075), BPP 1953-54, xxii. 471.60 Martin Navias, Nuclear Weapons and British Strategic Planning 1955-1958 (Oxford, 1991), 86-94. 61 ‘The Long Term Defence Programme’, memorandum by the Minister of Defence, 17 August 1955, Ministry of

Defence papers, series 7, file 964 (DEFE 7/964); ‘Reorganisation of the Reserve Army’, DC(55)56, 30 November 1955, CAB 131/16, TNA.

100 VICTORYORDEFEAT

In 1957 the Macmillan government decided that since the two TA divisions intended to reinforce NATO would not be ready for action on the Continent in less than three months, they too should be assigned to home duties.62 Meanwhile, in September 1956 a War Office committee under Sir Richard Hull reported in favour of reinstituting an all-regular army as soon as possible, describing national service as a heavy burden which exhausted the permanent cadre of the army and discouraged long-term enlistment.63 At issue was the question of whether the all-regular army’s strength should be 185,000, which the Hull Committee regarded as the minimum necessary to carry out its commitments, or 165,000, which was the maximum that the Central Statistical Office (CSO) estimated could be recruited. Ministers opted for the latter figure, but in 1958 the CIGS, Sir Gerald Templer, argued cogently that the deterrent would cease to be credible outside the NATO area once Russia and the USA each had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other, and that conventional forces would be vital to check aggression.64 Emergencies in Cyprus and in the Middle East, and higher voluntary recruiting than the CSO had expected, led to a figure of 180,000 being agreed in January 1959.

Even the most conservative of armies would have had to reorganise itself in these rapidly changing circumstances. As early as 1950 it was recognised that the armoured division could no longer operate in the expectation of air superiority, and that its role should be assumed to be counter-attack, requiring greater mobility. To this end the number of tanks in it was reduced from 318 to 225, with a corresponding lightening of the administrative ‘tail’.65 The British infantry division of 18,500 men, unchanged from the Second World War, was said in the mid-1950s to be the largest in the world. In 1954 and 1955 BAOR exercises were carried out to see how far existing formations could be streamlined to fight under conditions of atomic warfare. Montgomery (by then Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe), Sir John Harding (CIGS 1952-55) and Templer concluded that the infantry division should be reorganised into three brigade groups, each with its own artillery and armour and capable of fighting independently. After further experiments the system of brigade groups was extended to the armoured division. The secretary of state for war, Christopher Soames, could justifiably claim that the five-year program starting in 1957/8 for reshaping of the army was the biggest change in peace since the days of Haldane.66 In fact the introduction of the brigade group system was

62 Cmnd. 124. 63 ‘Committee on the Organization of the Army. Report’, September 1956, WO 163/573, TNA.64 ‘The Effects of Nuclear Sufficiency’, COS(58)39, 13 February 1958, DEFE 5/82, TNA.65 ‘Organisation of the Armoured Division’, ECAC/P/(50)109, 9 November 1950, WO 163/113, TNA.66 HC Deb, 5th series, 1955-56, vol. 549, cols 1395-6, and 1957-58, vol. 583, cols 1354, 1360-2 .

101WARAnDpEACE

on a trial basis and in 1961 it was agreed that, in the case of BAOR, divisional control would be reintroduced to provide flexible use of supporting arms and services.67

At first sight the equipment of the army in the early 1950s seemed to be the embodiment of military conservatism: almost all was of Second World War vintage, with the exception of the Centurion tank. In fact the Army Council had taken the view in September 1945 that the regular army at least should be fully provided with the most modern types of equipment and that continuous research and development was essential.68 However, government policy was that the services should make maximum use of stocks left over from the war, with only limited introduction of new equipment. Instead the emphasis was to be on research and development with a view to having the forces ready by 1957, the earliest date when Russia seemed likely to start a war.69 Initially only a small proportion of research and development was for the army, so that rearmament at the time of the Korean War had to be largely on the basis of Second World War types. Research and development for the army was stepped up in 1950-54 and 1957 saw the start of a five-year program intended to replace all the army’s older equipment.70

By 1950 the policy of what was called ‘living off the fat’ had reduced the army’s stocks, while industry could produce very little modern equipment for upwards of a year. The army still had about 5,000 wartime tanks in 1950 but about half were unserviceable and the most numerous type, the Cromwell, was no match for the Russian T34-85 medium tank. Fortunately the Centurion tank, only prototypes of which had been produced by the end of the war, had been developed through three marks by 1947 and over 750 produced before the Korean War. The Centurion outmatched the T34-85 in almost every respect, principally due to a superior fire control system. As the USA did not have a medium tank in production in 1950 the Centurion was widely exported. By 1954 the Centurion’s 20-pdr gun was believed to be no longer capable of dealing with the new Russian JS 3 heavy tank, and the 20-pdr was subsequently replaced with a 105 mm weapon. The JS 3 threat was also met by the introduction in 1955 of the Conqueror tank, which was armed with an American 120-mm gun.71

67 Army Council minutes, AC/M(61)1, 9 January 1961, WO 163/660, TNA.68 ‘Future Equipment Policy of the Army’, ECAC/P(45)92, 19 September 1945, WO 163/98, TNA.69 Statement Relating to Defence (Cmd 6743) BPP 1945-46, xx. 147; Anthony Gorst, ‘Facing Facts? The Labour

Government and Defence Policy 1945-1950’, in Nick Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (London, 1991), 190-209, at 202.

70 HC Deb 5th series, 1956-57, vol. 570, col. 229; 1958-9, cols 232-3.71 ‘The Defence Production Programme’, memorandum by the Minister of Defence, 6 January 1951, Prime Minister’s

Office papers, series 8, file 1357 (PREM 8/1357); ‘State of the Army if War Broke out in July 1951’, ECAC/P(50)59 Revise, 4 July 1950, WO 163/112; ‘War Office Policy Statement No. 1: Tanks’, ECAC/G(54)5, 11 February 1954, WO 163/121, TNA.

102 VICTORYORDEFEAT

In 1950 the Royal Armoured Corps’ Comet medium tank of 1944, with its 17-pdr, and the self-propelled 17-pdr gun, were considered to be capable of taking on the anti-tank role pending the availability of the Conqueror. The infantry, however, was still equipped with the obsolete PIAT weapon, which was ineffective against modern tanks. The 6-pdr anti-tank gun was incapable of penetrating the armour of the T 34-85 at ranges of over 400 yards, and the armour of the JS 3 at any range. Consequently a modified version of the towed 17-pdr anti-tank gun, which had first been introduced into service in 1943, was allocated to infantry battalions; a new 3.5-inch rocket launcher was adopted as the platoon weapon; and anti-tank grenades were issued to all arms.72

It was recognised that the Lee Enfield bolt-operated rifle no longer provided the infantry with adequate firepower to deal with an enemy possessing a vast superiority in manpower. On the other hand, as in the 1920s, there was concern about waste of ammunition, and instead of a fully automatic weapon a self-loading rifle was under consideration from October 1950. The Belgian FN rifle was adopted in order to encourage standardisation in NATO, although trials showed that a British rifle was somewhat better. The issue of the FN rifle was expedited for the BAOR experiments in 1955 on how to reorganise the army for atomic warfare. The expectation was that troops would have to remain dispersed and concealed up to the last minute before opening fire, and would therefore need increased fire power.73

The prospect of nuclear warfare also had implications for the field artillery, which was still equipped with wartime weapons. The 25-pdr lacked the range necessary for close support in attack or defence in depth when troops were widely dispersed, and a replacement was expected by 1961-63. The longer ranged 5.5-inch towed gun and the 155-mm howitzer were expected to remain in use up to 1965.74 Guided missile and nuclear research in the UK was directed principally at the requirements of the RAF, and the tactical atomic weapons deployed in Europe in the late 1950s were American. The War Office settled in 1953 on an anglicised Corporal surface-to-surface system, and the fact that the British missiles did not have warheads until 1960 was no fault of the army’s.75

72 ‘State of the Army if War Broke out in July 1951’, ECAC/P(50)59 Revise’, 4 July 1950, WO 163/112; ‘Anti-tank and Close Support Policy’, ECAC/P(50)83, 5 September 1950, and ‘Size and Shape and Requirements of the Army for 1951/2, 1952/3 and 1953/4’, ECAC/P(50)95, 5 October 1950, WO 163/113, TNA.

73 ‘The Adoption of New Small-Arms Ammunition and Weapons by the British Army’, ECAC/P(51)4, 9 January 1951, ECAC/M(51)2, 23 January 1951, and ECAC/M(51)4, 12 Feb. 1951, WO 163/114; ‘The Adoption of a 0.280-inch Automatic Rifle into the British Army’, ECAC/P(51)44, 11 June 1951, WO 163/115; ‘Purchase of FN Rifles’, J. R. McGregor to D. R. Serpell (Treasury), 16 November 1954, WO 32/15692, TNA.

74 ‘Future British FBA Family’, WO 32/15709, TNA. 75 Kaoru Kikuyama, ‘Britain and the Procurement of Short-Range Nuclear Weapons’, Journal of Strategic Studies

XVI:4 (1993), 539-59.

103WARAnDpEACE

The British army was also slower than the American army to make use of helicopters, but this was in spite of the War Office being extremely interested in them. The development of anything that flew was in the hands of the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Supply, and it was not until 1954 that a joint Experimental Helicopter Unit was set up by the War Office and the Air Ministry.76 Overall, it would be difficult to make a case for the army being unduly conservative in 1945-61 on the basis of its equipment.

Conclusion

This account of tactical doctrine, organisation and weapons systems after 1918 and 1945 lends little support to the stereotypical view that generals prepare for the last war. Changes, or lack of change, have to be seen in the context of post-war retrenchment. Retrenchment was particularly severe in the 1920s and early 1930s because of problems with the national economy and because there was no foreign power presenting a clear and present danger. Economic circumstances were better after 1945, but even in the Cold War defence expenditure had to be sustainable over a long period of deterrence. Although conscription increased the size of the army beyond what had hitherto been possible in peace, it was unpopular and diverted scarce labour from industry. By 1963 the army was once more an all-regular force. Its strength then of 181,000 men was less than three-quarters of what it had been fifty years earlier, but its cost represented 2.1 per cent of the national income, compared with 1.29 in 1913. Even if more regulars could have been recruited, it is doubtful whether a larger army equipped with up-to-date weapons could have been afforded in the 1960s.

As regards tactical doctrine, neither post-war period could be described as one of stagnation. The methods of trench warfare were rejected in the 1920s in favour of greater mobility through mechanisation. Greater mobility was once more the goal in the 1950s, particularly in view of the dispersal of forces required in nuclear warfare. Changes in the structure and size of both armoured and infantry divisions were slower in the interwar period than in the 1950s, reflecting uncertainty down to the early 1930s as to the army’s role. Regarding weapons systems, the existence of wartime stocks discouraged innovation after 1918 and 1945, but it is notable that in both post-war periods the development of tanks was given priority over the traditional arms of the artillery and infantry. Victory may have removed the urgency for reform, but the march of science and technology required at least an evolutionary response, and in the case of nuclear weapons, a revolutionary one.

76 Major General G. S. Thomas to Air Ministry, 28 September 1954, WO 32/15621, TNA.

104

The German Army after the Great War:A Case Study in Selective Self-Deception

Geoffrey P. Megargee

For the Reichswehr, Germany’s military force of the 1920s and early 1930s, the First World War was all-important. The cataclysmic nature of that war and its aftermath – the stalemate in the west; the horrible casualties; the privations, dislocations, and unrest on the home front; the sudden and unexpected surrender; the punitive peace; and the political chaos of the postwar years – shaped the Reichswehr’s structure; its views of strategy, operations, and tactics; its culture and its theory of war; and its politics. At the same time, we can hardly think of the Reichswehr or its time without glancing sidelong at what was to follow. The very label that historians have attached to the period – ‘interwar’ – highlights our unavoidable sense of foreshadowing. And despite the dangers of determinism, in fact we do well to keep the second great conflict in mind, for it was the Reichswehr’s raison d’être, a war for which it prepared tirelessly and even worked to bring about. Some of its preparations were inspired, while other, more important calculations went horribly wrong. As the Germans tried to learn the lessons of the last war, they fooled themselves, and marched unwittingly toward an even greater disaster than they had just experienced.

Any army that takes its role seriously has to try to figure out what kind of war it is likely to face, and how to fight it. The Reichswehr faced the additional challenge of having to plan for two wars: the one that it wanted to fight, in the long term, and the one that it thought it might have to fight, in the short term. The source of this dilemma lay with the Versailles Treaty, which the Allies forced the Germans to sign in June 1919. The treaty was almost as great a shock as the loss of the war itself; among other things, it forced drastic changes on the German military. The treaty obligated Germany to reduce its army to a strength of 100,000 men (only 4,000 of whom could be officers), divided primarily among ten divisions: seven infantry and three cavalry. (By contrast, the German army in 1914 comprised fifty active and forty-eight reserve divisions, totaling about 3.8

Disclaimer: The opinions in this paper are the author’s, and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

105T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

million men.) Conscription was forbidden, and to prevent the formation of a reserve, the treaty dictated that enlisted men had to serve for twelve years, officers for twenty-five. The army could possess no aircraft, tanks, or heavy artillery (above 105mm), and the treaty also restricted its production of small arms. The much-feared Great General Staff was to be abolished, along with its pool of trained staff officers (the General Staff Corps) and its primary educational institution, the War Academy. Germany was to restrict its army’s role to controlling the frontiers and maintaining internal order.1

The army’s leaders were, for obvious reasons, not keen on this outcome, and they did what they could to circumvent the treaty’s provisions. The key figure in this process, initially, was General Hans von Seeckt, who as chief of the General Staff (1919-20) and commander-in-chief of the Army (1920-26) succeeded in moulding the new Reichswehr.2 One of his first moves was to ensure the continued existence of the General Staff, by splitting some offices off in civilian guise and manning them with recently-released officers, while maintaining the core elements in secret, under the new name of Truppenamt (Troops Office). He also made a crucial personnel decision by retaining virtually all the officers in the General Staff Corps, the intellectual cream of the officer ranks, and using them to fill the key positions within the new force. (In this he faced opposition from General Walter Reinhardt, then the army C-in-C, who wanted front-line officers to dominate.3)General Staff officers were a functional elite, whom the army selected and trained to bring out a combination of intelligence and particular character traits (including a remarkably homogeneous and conservative set of political attitudes). Their culture and practices would now shape the Reichswehr as a whole, and almost all of the most senior commanders and staff officers in the Second World War would be General Staff officers.4

Von Seeckt also instituted a rigorous training program, by means of which he meant to turn the Reichswehr into a force of unequalled quality, with the best doctrine available. Moreover, he played a role in moving armaments manufacturing out of the country, and in setting up secret tank and air training centres in the Soviet Union.5 These efforts would

1 http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/versailles159213.htm contains the text of the treaty’s military clauses. 2 Technically, the army was the Reichsheer, but ‘Reichswehr’, which really referred to both the army and navy,

was and remains the more widely-used term. (The same practice applied later to the term ‘Wehrmacht’.) In the post-Versailles Reichswehr, von Seeckt’s titles were actually chief of the Troops Office and, later, chief of the Army Directorate.

3 On this dispute and the significance of von Seeckt’s victory, see James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform (Lawrence, KS, 1992), 33-7.

4 For more on the culture of the General Staff, see Geoffrey P. Megargee, Inside Hitler’s High Command (Lawrence, KS, 2000), 5-11, and the sources cited therein. See also Johannes Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer. Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941/42 (Munich, 2007), which examines the careers of twenty-five WWII army group and army commanders.

5 See Corum, Roots, 97-8.

106 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

stand the army in good stead in the long run, but the immediate problem remained: what could a force the size of the Reichswehr hope to accomplish against an enemy such as France, or even Poland?

The answer, to the chagrin of every officer, was: not much. Von Seeckt’s idea was that a small, mobile force, properly trained and equipped, could run rings around a mass conscript army, and ultimately bring it to a halt. He drew on his experiences on the eastern front in World War I, where smaller but more effective German forces had defeated larger Russian armies. The problem was that the Reichswehr was simply too small, and lacked the equipment, to carry out von Seeckt’s concept. When the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923, for example, the Reichswehr could only sit idly by.6

Other officers, especially Werner von Blomberg and Joachim von Stülpnagel of the Truppenamt, argued that, in the short term, Germany’s only effective defence lay in a so-called people’s war, a popular uprising such as Germany had last used against Napoleon. Such a war would devastate the country, but leave the invaders vulnerable to even a relatively weak counter-offensive. The two men tried to put their ideas into practice after von Seeckt’s departure in 1926, but they ran into insurmountable problems. Here again, the Reichswehr was not strong enough for even this sort of limited operation. Also, there was little indication that the German population was prepared to carry out its assigned role in the plan; the will to engage in such a lopsided and costly campaign was simply not there. A 1930 study concluded that a ‘people’s war’ was unlikely to succeed.7

Wilhelm Groener, the Defence Minister from 1928 to 1932, along with his deputy, Kurt von Schleicher, attempted to put short-term military planning onto a more rational foundation. Like their comrades, they favoured the armed forces’ eventual expansion, but in the meantime they saw no alternative but to accept Germany’s situation as it was. In April 1930, Groener issued a memorandum, ‘Tasks of the Wehrmacht’, in which he insisted that political goals would have to match military means, and that ‘definite prospects of success’ were a prerequisite for any military operation. In such circumstances, a responsible German government might well decide not to mount any resistance to a foreign invasion, and instead depend upon international pressure to bring an end to a

6 Michael Geyer, ‘German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, 1986), 527-97, at 555-6; Heinz-Luger Borgert, ‘Grundzüge der Landkriegführung von Schlieffen bis Guderian’, in Handbuch zur deutschen Militärgeschichte: 1648-1939, ed. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Munich, 1979), 9:427-585, at 557-60; Corum, Roots, 29-33.

7 Corum, Roots, 262-6; Geyer, ‘Strategy’, 557-60; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, ‘Deutsche Militär-Elite in der Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Martin Broszat and Klaus Schwabe (eds), Die deutschen Eliten und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich, 1989), 226-90, at 249.

107T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

conflict. The Reichswehr’s primary mission, he stated, was to maintain internal security (just as the Versailles Treaty stipulated); otherwise, it could only strike under certain, narrowly defined circumstances that offered especially favourable opportunities.8

Such ideas were simply unacceptable to most senior German officers, however, and Groener’s initiative would fail in the end. The Reichswehr never settled the question of how it could fight off an invasion with the tiny forces at its disposal, and, fortunately for the Germans, after the French withdrew from the Ruhr in 1925, the Reichswehr did not have to face that prospect again. In the end, the approach that won out was one of unrestricted rearmament, secret at first, but from 1935 on, under the Nazis, out in the open.

Why did the officer corps favour that approach? Simply put, they expected – and wanted – another war, and they needed a large, capable military machine with which to fight it. These were men who believed that war was virtually the only, and certainly the final, arbiter of international affairs.9 Struggle seemed a natural state, among human races and nations as among animal species; only the strongest and most ruthless would survive. This so-called Social Darwinism held sway in many sectors of German society, not just the military, and was a central tenet of National Socialism.10 The First World War had only strengthened it. From the standpoint of the senior officers, in fact, that war had never really ended. As far as they could see, Germany still faced enemies within and without, and so another round of fighting would be necessary. A Defence Ministry document of April 1923 stated that Germany could win its freedom, national independence, and economic and cultural rejuvenation only through war. Von Schleicher, then chief of the Political Department in the Truppenamt, followed that up in December by detailing the military leadership’s goals: ‘1. Strengthen state authority; 2. rehabilitate the economy; 3. rebuild a military capability; all are prerequisites for a foreign policy that has the goal of creating a Greater Germany.’ In May 1925 another Defence Ministry document stated: ‘That Germany will in the future have to fight a war for its continued existence as a people and state is certain.’11 In March 1926 the Truppenamt was even more specific in defining Germany’s policy goals: the return of the Saar, the Polish corridor, and upper

8 Geyer, ‘Strategy’, 561-3; Müller, ‘Militär-Elite’, 251; Wilhelm Deist, ‘The Rearmament of the Wehrmacht’, in Germany and the Second World War, vol. 1, The Build-up of German Aggression, ed. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (New York, 1990), 373-540, at 386-9.

9 On that belief and its historical roots, see Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht: Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden (Frankfurt a.M, 2002), 141-50. Beware the English edition, which is not well translated.

10 See Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, MA, 1981), ch. 5.11 This and the previous two quotes are from Paul Heider, ‘Der totale Krieg–seine Vorbereitung durch Reichswehr

und Wehrmacht’, in Ludwig Nestler (ed.), Der Weg deutscher Eliten in den Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1990), 35-80, at 43-4.

108 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

Silesia (all lost in the peace settlement); unification with Austria (which the Allies had forbidden); and the elimination of the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland. The struggle to achieve these goals, the document stated, would lead to conflict with France, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps Italy. The eventual goal was to establish Germany as a world power.12

With goals such as those, the officers’ desire for a large military machine is hardly surprising. The next question then becomes: what were their basic assumptions about the war to come, and how did they believe they were going to fight it? The best way to answer that question is to begin with their conclusions about the last war. The loss of the Great War or the World War, as they knew it, was the subject of wide-ranging and heated discussions, as one might expect. But as is so often the case when people try to explain a catastrophe that has befallen them, the officers rarely moved beyond familiar, comfortable, nonthreatening explanations, mostly having to do with a combination of causes: operational mistakes, especially in connection with the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 and the Battle of Verdun in 1916; the lack of a strong centralised military command; and insufficient effort and will on the part of German civilian society.13

That last point was to prove the most pervasive and significant, relating as it did to the myth of the ‘stab in the back’. According to that version of reality, the German army had never lost on the battlefield. Instead, Leftists and Jews on the home front had forced a treasonous peace upon Germany. There are two especially significant facets to this story. The first is that a few senior army officers actually arranged the war’s final acts deliberately in order to foster just such a myth. As the fact of military defeat had loomed ever larger in the late summer and autumn of 1918, the high command had handed over the reins of government to the Left, with the intent of letting the new leaders take responsibility for the loss of the war. This manoeuvre sprang from a mix of one part pure cynicism and one part resentment toward those whom the officers really saw as having poisoned the war effort. The second important aspect of the myth was how effectively it took hold, not just among Rightist civilians at home, but even among a majority of army officers. In a remarkably short period, these men lost sight of the military realities they had faced in the last months of the war, when the Allied armies were clearly overwhelming the exhausted

12 Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Foreign Policy and Preparation for War’, in Germany and the Second World War, 1:541-732, at 557.

13 See Heider, ‘Der totale Krieg’, 40. On the operational mistakes, see Corum, Roots, 2-5; tellingly, the Germans labeled these issues ‘strategic’. See also, e.g., the memo ‘Notwendigkeit einer neuzeitlichen Wehrakademie’, T2 III D Nr. 551/33, June 22, 1933, in Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (BA-MA) RH 2/1009, 101: this document ascribes the loss to the lack of a strong command structure.

109T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

Kaiserheer, and convinced themselves that they would have won, if not for the traitors at home, the ‘November criminals’.14 The battles with German Leftists after the war, in which many officers took part, helped to cement their beliefs.15 Conveniently, the myth also directed criticism away from the performance of Germany’s senior military leaders. The General Staff emerged from the early crisis years having successfully salvaged its reputation and, to a great extent, its position in the state, while the government suffered from permanent open hostility on the part of many Germans.

The myth of the ‘stab in the back’ is also important because of the other lines of thought that it supported. For one thing, it intersected, at several crucial points, with the idea of ‘total war’, which in turn dominated the military’s thinking about the next conflict. ‘Total war’ was not a coherent theory, a national strategy, or a doctrine. It was, instead, a set of common assumptions, but assumptions that were tremendously influential nonetheless. Erich Ludendorff, the famous Great War general who had introduced the phrase ‘stab in the back’ to the German lexicon, also popularised the term ‘total war’ in the mid-1930s, but the ideas that the term encompassed had been around since before 1914 and had already achieved broad acceptance before he gave them a name.16 In broad terms, a ‘total war’ was an existential war, a war that called for all the human and material resources that a state could bring to bear.17 The Great War was, in the view of many officers, a ‘total war’, but one that Germany had not executed properly. They were determined to do better next time, in a number of ways.

In the tactical and operational spheres, the army was most comfortable learning lessons, because here the concept of ‘total war’ actually meshed with long-standing German practices. The model for victory remained the ‘battle of annihilation’, in which German forces would attack the enemy’s lines with local superiority; break through into the rear; disrupt communications, control, and supply; and finally envelop the opposing

14 On the genesis of the myth, see Gottfried Niedhart, ‘Kriegsende und Friedensordnung als Problem der deutschen und internationalen Politik 1917-1927’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich, 1994), 180-4; Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (New York, 1997), 425-6; Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (New York, 1955, 1964), 347; Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer, 112-15.

15 See Hürter, Hitlers Heerführer, 86-8.16 See Roger Chickering, ‘Sore Loser: Ludendorff’s Total War’, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds), In the

Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919-1939 (New York, 2002), 151-78.17 On the theory of total war, see Heider, ‘Der totale Krieg’; Wolfram Wette, ‘Ideology, Propaganda, and Internal

Politics as Preconditions of the War Policy of the Third Reich’, in Germany and the Second World War, 1:9-155, at 105; Wilhelm Deist, ‘The Road to Ideological War: Germany, 1918-1945’, in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (eds), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (Cambridge, 1998), 352-92, at 364, and Deist, ‘Blitzkrieg or Total War? War Preparations in Nazi Germany’, in Chickering & Förster, Shadows, 271-84.

110 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

force and eliminate it. The key was mobility, and here the Germans faced the same problem as everyone else who had fought on the Western Front in the Great War: how to establish and maintain mobility in an environment in which field entrenchments, rapid-fire artillery, and automatic weapons made movement all but impossible and inflicted enormous casualties. The tank and the airplane seemed to offer solutions, but they were still primitive weapons in 1918, and their potential impact was unclear.

The Germans responded to the problem with the kind of focused staff work and creative thinking that made them so formidable on the battlefield. Under von Seeckt’s leadership, the officers of the Truppenamt set out to learn the tactical and operational lessons of the last war. Eventually over 400 General Staff officers and other experts – more than ten per cent of the German officer corps – would eventually serve on fifty-seven committees, which von Seeckt tasked to examine the army’s prewar plans and views, the new situations that arose during the war, the new techniques that the army had developed, and the problems that the army had not been able to solve. They produced a solid set of investigations and recommendations, which they based upon a dispassionate evaluation of the evidence and their own real-world experiences.18

The end result of those efforts was a series of new doctrinal manuals, starting with Army Regulation 487: ‘Leadership and Battle with Combined Arms’ (‘Führung und Gefecht der verbundenen Waffen’). This manual – F.u.G. for short – covered many different kinds of combat situations, such as meeting engagements, attacks, defence, marches, and security. Its significance was twofold. First, it emphasised certain fundamental principles that would define the German army’s style of fighting in the next war: manoeuvre, aggressiveness, flexibility, initiative, decentralisation, judgment, and exploitation. Second, it provided a standard doctrine for everyone in the army, a doctrine that centered on the use of the different arms – infantry, artillery, armour, cavalry, and aircraft – in mutually supporting roles.19

The principles and doctrine in F.u.G. were the keys, the Germans believed, to restoring the battlefield mobility that had disappeared from the Western Front in the last war. They were the natural outgrowth of German wartime experience with infiltration tactics and inter-arm coordination. With the initial ideas down in writing, the Reichswehr then proceeded to train, test, drill, and war-game, with careful evaluations at every step,

18 See Williamson Murray, ‘Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German Experiences’, in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996), 36-7.

19 See Robert M. Citino, The Path to Blitzkrieg: Doctrine and Training in the German Army, 1920-1939 (Boulder, London, 1999), 11-34; and Murray, ‘Armored Warfare’, 37-41. Also Dennis Showalter, ‘Plans, Weapons, Doctrines: The Strategic Cultures of Interwar Europe’, in Chickering & Förster, Shadows, 55-81.

111T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

in order to refine the ideas and solidify the doctrine. This allowed them, for example, to develop ways of using armoured forces, and to understand how an enemy might use armour against them, even though the Versailles Treaty did not allow them to have tanks (although, admittedly, having a secret agreement with the Soviets to conduct tank experiments on their territory did help). Much has been made of the genius of men such as Heinz Guderian (especially by men such as Heinz Guderian) in forcing a stodgy, conservative military leadership to accept the new gospel of mobile warfare. The truth is that, although considerable scepticism about tanks remained right up to the outbreak of the next war and beyond, von Seeckt and his comrades laid the groundwork for the aptly misnamed Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41, and von Seeckt’s successors, men such as Ludwig Beck and Werner von Fritsch, continued to support innovation – but in a way that meshed with existing doctrine. That is why the Germans, in contrast to the British, for example, developed armoured divisions that included mobile infantry, artillery, engineers, and signal troops.20

Amidst all this praise of German doctrinal brilliance, however, one should remember that the First World War offered some operational lessons that escaped the Germans completely. True, they did gradually develop a way to return operational manoeuvre to the battlefield, but there is more to the operational level of war than manoeuvre. Perhaps most important, the Germans failed to develop any deep understanding of the role of logistics, either in terms of their own capabilities or as a consideration in striking at the enemy. They never could escape a mind-set that put the scheme of manoeuvre before all else. They only thought about logistics – or ‘supply’, the term they actually used, and a much more limited idea – after they developed the manoeuvre plan. And so, for example, they failed to learn any lessons from their own offensives of spring 1918, in which they advanced into positions that were logistically untenable, while simultaneously missing the operational and strategic importance of the enemy’s rail hubs, whose loss or interdiction might have forced the British to abandon their position in northern France and perhaps even driven the Allies to the negotiating table.21 One searches in vain, however, in the postwar studies, in F.u.G., or in any of the following doctrinal manuals, for any discussion of logistics on this level. Herein lay the seeds for some of Germany’s greatest failures in the next war, when the capabilities of the logistical system did not always match the speed and scope of German advances.

20 See Murray, ‘Armored Warfare’, 39-42; also Russell A. Hart, Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? (Washington, DC, 2006).

21 On this particular example, see David T. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (New York, 2006).

112 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

The strategic sphere was more problematic still. In fact, one can argue that the Germans simply did not understand strategy; their conduct of the Great War, and the lessons they drew from it, certainly point to that conclusion. The ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth, the concept of ‘total war’, and the focus on operational and tactical issues: all those explanations miss the strategic blunders that really lost the Great War for Germany. For example, the Reichswehr’s leaders never questioned the wisdom of invading Belgium in 1914. In their minds, there were sound operational reasons for doing so; the fact that the invasion brought Britain into the war was unimportant to them, as it had been to the leaders of 1914. Likewise, the decision to launch unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 drew no significant attention, even though it led to war with the United States. The Germans’ fundamental problem was that they equated strategy with what one might call ‘grand operations’; that is, when they wrote or spoke about strategy, their focus lay entirely on winning battles and campaigns. They figured that military solutions were the only solutions, and if they won enough battles, the war would take care of itself. They failed to understand how to balance political ends with economic and military means on the strategic level, and thus did not perceive that, no matter how superior their tactics and operational doctrine might be, there were some fights they just could not win, and thus should not start. As Blomberg once put it, ‘The more enemies, the more honour!’22 Here again, this was a weakness that would come back to haunt the Germans in their next fight.

In the realm of policy, the Reichswehr’s position was complicated. In the Great War, the Kaiser had been the nominal supreme commander, but by the end of 1916 Germany had a military dictatorship in all but name, with the General Staff at its centre. The results were less than satisfactory, and so the military’s leaders were not eager to reestablish such a system for a future war. Still, the civil-military relationships in the postwar era were tricky, and not always to the Reichswehr’s liking. Supreme command no longer lay with the Kaiser, but with the President – a political figure – and a Defence Minister occupied a position between that office and the army commander-in-chief; the chief of the Truppenamt was one rung lower still. Thus the army could not count on the same kind of access or influence that it had even before 1914. It was by no means without political power, however; here again, von Seeckt laid the groundwork. Publicly, he maintained a veneer of an ‘apolitical’ army – no officer could be a member of a political party, for example – but he worked the system with a combination of guile and authority that secured a good deal of independence. The officer corps’ antipathy toward the Republic led to a ‘state-within-a-state’ mentality, in which the army would not support a coup

22 Moriz von Faber du Faur, Macht und Ohnmacht: Erinnerungen eines alten Offiziers (Stuttgart, 1953), 159.

113T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

but would not go out of its way to preserve the Weimar Constitution, either, and in the meantime would pursue its own course, independent of government control, when it saw the need to do so, as with the secret agreements with the Soviet Union.23

The Reichswehr’s political machinations aimed, predictably, at preparing the nation for another major war. A core element of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth was the idea that the civilian population had been insufficiently militarised and organised for victory, and so had been vulnerable to the blandishments of the Left; ‘total war’ required total commitment. Germany would need an authoritarian government that could purge society of all sources of weakness – opposition politics, Jewish and Leftist influences, pacifism, racial mixing – and organise society and the economy to support the war effort. A major propaganda campaign would bolster people’s spirits and steel them to make the necessary sacrifices. (Many officers believed that Allied propaganda had been superior to theirs during the Great War, and they wanted the new civilian regime to do better the next time.) The idea would be to create a Volksgemeinschaft or ‘people’s community’, in which racial and political homogeneity would provide the strength needed for war; or, put another way, a Wehrgemeinschaft, or militarised ‘defence community’. The Nazi Party’s attachment to these same themes would make it extremely attractive to many members of the officer corps.

There was another side to the idea of ‘total war’, as well, which had to do with the treatment of enemy civilians. Because civilians constituted the foundation for the war effort in a ‘total war’, the military considered them legitimate targets. Any measure that would break the enemy’s will, deprive him of the means to fight, or add to Germany’s fighting power at his expense was, automatically, not only allowable but necessary. (Some theorists even argued that brutal methods would be more humane in the long run, since ultimately they would shorten the fighting.) The military might still observe the rules of warfare, but as a matter of convenience, not of principle. Even before 1914, German legal and military theorists were denying the legitimacy of international laws of war. They believed that ‘military necessity’ would always trump any limitations on violence.24 Such

23 For a brief but cogent examination of the Reichswehr’s political position, see Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘German Military Effectiveness between 1919 and 1939’, in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Effectiveness, vol. 2, The Interwar Period (Winchester, MA, 1988), 218-53, at 219-21.

24 Heider, ‘Der totale Krieg’; Wette, Wehrmacht, 13; Manfred Messerschmidt, ‘Völkerrecht und “Kriegsnotwendigkeit” in der deutschen militärischen Tradition’, in Manfred Messerschmidt and Wolfram Wette (eds), Was damals Recht war– : NS-Militär- und Strafjustiz im Vernichtungskrieg (Essen, 1996), 191-229; Stig Förster, ‘Der Vernichtungsgedanke in der militärischen Tradition des Deutschen Kaiserreichs. Überlegungen zum Problem historischer Kontinuität’, in Christoph Dipper, Andreas Gestrich and Lutz Raphael (eds), Krieg, Frieden und Demokratie. Festschrift für Martin Vogt zum 65. Geburtstag (Frankfurt a.M., 2001), 253-65; Jürgen Förster, ‘Complicity or Entanglement? Wehrmacht, War, and Holocaust’, in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (eds), The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined (Bloomington, IN, 1998), 266-83, at 274; Hürter, Heerführer, 84.

114 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

was especially the case when the army faced any kind of partisan activity. The Germans had first encountered partisans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. They reacted then with extreme brutality, and that became their preferred method for crushing any hint of resistance. The practice continued in France and Belgium during the Great War: although on a much lesser scale than in the Second World War, in 1914 the Germans executed prisoners of war and civilian hostages, pillaged and burned towns, destroyed cultural treasures, and even used groups of civilians as human shields, all in contravention of international agreements to which Germany was a signatory.25 The results, in an immediate sense, seemed to justify the means, and as in connection with other issues, the Germans failed to perceive the strategic and political disadvantages that accompanied such heinous behaviour.

The Germans developed an especially tough attitude toward the peoples to their east, based largely, again, on their experiences between 1914 and 1918, together with a large dose of racism. Whereas the citizens of Poland and Russia remembered German soldiers as having acted correctly, on the whole, during the Great War, many of those same Germans went away with attitudes that would feed a new level of brutality, just a couple of decades later. Thousands of young German men saw the lands and peoples of the east for the first time during their service. The area had been poor even before the war brought additional dislocation. The Germans, seeing the poverty and the unfamiliar cultures, tended to find confirmation for their prejudices against Jews and Slavs: that they were dirty, lazy, stupid, and not to be trusted. The German military administration tried, in a number of ways, to ‘civilise’ the local inhabitants, but the occupiers’ means were often heavy-handed, and the locals resisted having German culture forced upon them. Many Germans, disgusted with the population’s apparent ingratitude, went away with the notion that, if Germany were ever to control the eastern territories – another long-standing goal – they would have to take a much harsher approach.26

Hostility of this sort toward Slavs and Jews was really part and parcel of another war-related phenomenon. Under the stress of war, more people began to turn to the ideologies of hatred that had previously attracted only a relatively small following. Now a broader

25 See John N. Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, CT, 2001), and Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, New York, 2007).

26 See Steven Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison, WI, 1982), 143-8, 173-81; Julian Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945 (Oxford, New York, 2000), 96-102; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000), esp. chs 6, 7; Hürter, Heerführer, 81.

115T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

spectrum of Germans began to dehumanise their enemies – real and imagined – in ways that they had not done before, and the army was certainly not immune to the trend. For example, antagonism toward the French went back centuries, but during the war it began to encompass more than the circumstances of the present conflict, and instead attacked fundamental points about the French people and their culture. Likewise, longstanding antisemitism within the German government and military received a boost from the war. Not only the seemingly alien Ostjuden – eastern Jews – but also German Jews came under suspicion; in 1916 the army even instituted a so-called Jew Count, to find out what proportion of Jews were serving at the front, in comparison to the proportion of non-Jews. The count defined Jews based on religious practice, not some notion of race, but it fed racist attitudes that increasingly became a justification for attacks on Jews and their exclusion from public and private organisations after the war.27 Moreover, the end of the war saw the emergence of the concept of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’, according to which the Jews were the force behind the Communist movement; many officers came to see this supposed alliance as one of the most serious threats to Germany’s existence. When the Nazis began to exclude Jews from the professions by law in 1933, the military (under von Blomberg’s leadership as Defence Minister) was quick to go along – although there were already precious few to expel. Later, the army would be just as assiduous in helping the Nazi regime achieve its colonialist and genocidal goals in the occupied territories.

Yet another aspect of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth would virtually guarantee that the eastern peoples’ experience of German occupation in the Second World War would be very different than in the First. Remember that many Germans looked back on their loss in the Great War as the result of the Allied blockade and the resulting hunger, which sapped people’s will and bred political unrest, in turn preparing the way for the Left’s supposed betrayal. Food shortages had appeared in Germany as early as the end of 1914. Hunger strikes had followed in 1916 and 1917. The average diet fell from 3,400 to 1,000 calories per day over the course of the war. While Germany avoided outright starvation, the mortality rate rose and the birthrate fell.28 In any future ‘total war’, the army had every intention of doing all it could to avoid such deprivations. And here we must also consider, again, the operational doctrine that the Reichswehr had created, and its ramifications. In the vast spaces of the Soviet Union, with an army that was only partially motorised, the Wehrmacht’s planners knew that the fast armoured spearheads

27 George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York, Oxford, 1990), 175-9. The count actually showed that a higher proportion of Jews than non-Jews was serving at the front. The army suppressed the results until after the war.

28 Herwig, First World War, 283-96.

116 V I C T O r y O r D e f e a T

would quickly outpace the supply apparatus. Priority would have to go to ammunition, fuel, and equipment, while the troops lived off the land as much as possible. These two sets of interests – the home front’s and the army’s – would come together in the spring of 1941, in an agreement between the army and the Reich food authorities, according to which up to thirty million Soviet civilians would have to starve so that German soldiers and civilians could have plenty to eat.29

Along with the possibility of dissent on the home front, the army also worried about attitudes within its own ranks. At the end of the Great War, General Groener, then Deputy Chief of the General Staff, had told the Kaiser to abdicate – perhaps not too difficult a task, since the latter had long been a figurehead anyway. As we know, only a tiny fraction of senior German officers ever took a similar stand against Hitler, despite far greater justification; many hid behind the personal oath of loyalty they had sworn to the man. Moreover, they took steps to ensure that their soldiers would fight to the bitter end. In the Great War, especially toward the end, soldiers had deserted in droves and, in some cases, even mutinied and formed revolutionary councils within their units. After the war, the army’s leaders believed that the military justice system had contributed to the defeat by failing to act strongly enough against deserters, malingerers, conscientious objectors, and defeatists. Such could not be allowed to happen again. The system’s new goal would be to protect the ‘people’s community’, not to seek the truth. A military justice decree of summer 1938 lumped many offences together under the heading Wehrkraftzersetzung – ‘subversion of fighting strength’ – and allowed military judges to punish them with the death penalty. By the end of the Second World War, the army was executing soldiers not just for desertion, but for offences as minor as stealing packets from the field post. Thus, in contrast to the First World War, when the Germans executed just forty-eight of their own men, in the Second they killed well over 20,000, perhaps as many as 30,000. Each execution required the signature of an army-level commander. Tens of thousands more men died in penal battalions and camps, or from the actions of so-called flying courts martial. Such were the demands that the commanders of the Great War generation made upon their young charges.30

29 Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998), 15-17; idem, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg, 1999), 46-50.

30 Norbert Haase, ‘Wehrmachtsangehörige vor dem Kriegsgericht’, in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds), Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität (Munich, 1999), 474-85; Messerschmidt & Wette, Was damals Recht war, 152-7; Manfred Messerschmidt and Fritz Wüllner, Die Wehrmachtjustiz im Dienste des Nationalsozialismus: Zerstörung einer Legende (Baden-Baden, 1987), 25-6.

117T h e G e r m a n a r m y a f T e r T h e G r e a T W a r

The First World War was, without a doubt, the defining event for the Reichswehr. Germany’s military leaders could not help but refer to it, on some level, as they considered the myriad issues that faced them in the two decades that followed. Just as obviously, their perceptions and interpretations were more accurate and useful in some instances than in others. They refined combined-arms tactics and operations, such that they had a significant edge over their opponents for the first two years of the next war. Ultimately, however, those advantages on the battlefield could not balance the Germans’ inability or unwillingness to recognise the strategic reasons for their loss in 1918. Other attitudes that the Great War had encouraged, especially regarding antipartisan warfare and the treatment of civilians, would make the next conflict even ghastlier. We also cannot ignore the fact that the First World War helped create a political climate in Germany in which the Reichswehr was intimately involved, a climate that contributed directly to the rise of Nazism.

Germany’s course was not pre-ordained in 1918, or 1933, or even 1939. Contingencies large and small could have produced alternative futures at many points. Likewise, while recognising the influence of the Great War, we should remain aware of its limits. It shaped or steered more trends than it introduced; little that happened after 1918 was completely new. However, we simply cannot understand the Reichswehr, or what the Reichswehr became, without taking that influence into account.

118

Liberating Australian New Guinea and British Borneo: the Directorate of Research and Civil

Affairs and Post-Hostilities Planning1943–1945

Graeme Sligo

In the spring of 1944, two Australian lieutenant colonels, John Kerr and Bill Stanner, went to London, initially for two months. Both subsequently went on to have eminent careers. Kerr was later a chief justice and then Governor-General, who during a constitutional crisis over parliamentary supply in 1975, terminated the commission of Prime Minister Whitlam and commissioned a caretaker Prime Minister until an election a month later. Bill Stanner was later professor of anthropology at the Australian National University and famously delivered the ABC’s 1968 Boyer lectures, arguing, amongst other things, for acknowledgment of unbroken Aboriginal possession and occupancy of land in Australia.

London and southern England in 1944 were packed with US, British and Canadian troops preparing for the Normandy invasion – the largest amphibious operation in history. London was blacked out – and from June was to endure the V-1 rocket onslaught. For the two colonels it must have been a stirring and emotional time to be in London, then still for most Australians ‘the imperial capital’ of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and Kerr was on his first visit. But they were there for the reasons which concern this conference – ‘what to do after victory – armies in the aftermath of conflict’.

Kerr (very young at 29) and Stanner were both representatives of an Army staff directorate – the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs – working closely with General Blamey, the Australian wartime commander-in-chief.1 Blamey was given special legal powers broader than previous heads of the Army for the duration of the Pacific war. He had the right of direct access to the Prime Minister, John Curtin, who was also Minister

1 ‘Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs’ was the formal title from April 1945. During 1943-45 it was called the Directorate of Research.

119L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

for Defence. Blamey was in London to advise Curtin at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference (chaired by Churchill), and Kerr and Stanner were there to advise Blamey. The colonels were senior advisers in the group; no Foreign Affairs (then called External Affairs) staff were in the delegation; the Prime Minister had one staff adviser; the Secretary, Department of Defence, also had one adviser; and then there was Blamey, Kerr and Stanner.2

Amongst other matters Kerr and Stanner were there to counsel Blamey on military government planning in the Pacific – what was to happen to territories in the Pacific as Australian combat troops fought and defeated the Japanese. At the end of major combat operations, the military realised there would be a vacuum – or a grey zone between war and peace – and the army would have to fill it until workable civil administration was established. Here I use the wartime terms: ‘military government’ being how we ran enemy territory, and ‘civil affairs’ being the term for military administration of liberated friendly territory.

In London a succession of meetings was held with the War Office and the Colonial Office, and Kerr and Stanner studied UK post-hostilities planning. The British were keen to recover their colonial and other possessions in the Far East, including northern Borneo (which fell into the operational area of General Douglas MacArthur), some Pacific islands, and Hong Kong. Reports from the two Australians indicated British suspicion of American motives for post-war control of British territories in the Pacific theatre.3

The Australian Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs – sometimes called DORCA – grew out of a small research section established in 1942 by Major Alfred Conlon, then aged 33, at the army’s national headquarters, Victoria Barracks, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. An engaging, brilliant and charming man, Conlon has one of the longer student files in our universities, having entered Sydney University as an evening student in Arts in 1926 and graduating in Medicine in 1951. He was part-time because the family had no money, his widowed mother keeping things going in the tough inner-Sydney suburb of Newtown in the 1920s and 1930s. (‘Newtown Irish’ was then the phrase.) At University, Alf came under the influence of the Professor of Philosophy, John Anderson, and graduated in Arts in 1932.4 Anderson remained Professor until 1958, and his circle overlapped with the free-thinking ‘Sydney Push’.

2 David Horner, High Command: Australia and Allied Strategy 1939-1945 (Canberra and North Sydney, 1982), 322.

3 Kerr/Stanner Report of 12 June 1944, Section A (Civil Affairs, Foreign Policy and Colonial Policy), 5, para. 13, NAA (Melbourne): MP729/8, Item 49/431/72.

4 Neil McIntyre and Hugh Gilchrist, quoted in John Thompson (ed.), Alfred Conlon: A Memorial by some of His Friends (Sydney, 1963), 1-2; John Kerr, Matters for Judgment: An Autobiography (South Melbourne, 1978), 36.

120 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Conlon worked and studied as a law clerk, then as a medical student, but was constantly involved with Sydney University student affairs through the 1920s and 1930s up to 1942, eventually ending-up as the student member of the University’s governing body, The Senate. With the outbreak of war and conscription, this led to roles as the University Manpower Officer and work with the major general heading army personnel – the Adjutant-General – on a committee which founded the Army Education Corps.5

In the Army Research Section Conlon needed clever young men and women and later that year arranged to have Private John Kerr – then serving at an army supply depot in the rural town of Parkes in New South Wales – posted to the Research Section in Victoria Barracks. John Kerr had grown up in tough circumstances in Balmain-Rozelle, then a working-class area, and won an Exhibition (or minor scholarship) to go to Sydney University. With the encouragement (and financial help) of Mr Justice Evatt of the High Court, he studied Law.6 He was in his early years as a barrister when conscripted in 1942. Kerr was promoted rapidly in Conlon’s unit, to the ranks of sergeant then lieutenant in 1942, skipped the rank of captain and was promoted directly to major in October 1943.7

The Directorate eventually contained a galaxy of brilliant men and women recruited by Conlon into the army as officers or NCOs. They included Major Harry Gibbs (later Chief Justice of the High Court), two later judges of the NSW Court of Appeal (Majors Hutley and Reynolds); four distinguished academic anthropologists in uniform (Camilla Wedgwood, Ian Hogbin, Bill Stanner and Mick Read); the Mitchell Librarian (Major Ida Leeson); a number of future professors, including Captain James MacAuley (English) and Lieutenant John Legge (History); the future publisher and writer Lieutenant Peter Ryan; and two future senior public servants, Sir Keith Murray (Administrator of Papua New Guinea) and Sir James Plimsoll (the future head of foreign affairs and a distinguished ambassador). There were many others, including for an attachment, Major Tange, later Sir Arthur Tange, a future head of both Foreign Affairs and Defence.8 By mid-1944, the Directorate was not just ‘academics-in-uniform’, for a significant number had seen operational service in the Middle East or New Guinea.

5 Major General Victor Stantke, quoted in Thompson (ed.), Alfred Conlon, 8-9; ‘War History of the Australian Army Education Service’, 3-4, A[ustralian]W[ar]Memorial] 54, Item 492/4/34.

6 Kerr, Matters for Judgment, 26-8, 38-40. 7 Both Conlon and Kerr were promoted to the rank of colonel in September 1945.8 On the anthropologists, see Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence: The politics of Australian anthropology (Canberra,

2007), 185-9. On Tange, see Peter Edwards, Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins (Sydney, 2006), 39-40.

121L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

On the evidence, the Directorate was a policy advice staff for General Blamey. It was not an intelligence unit; Blamey had many intelligence units and staffs, but under other officers, and not under Conlon.

Of Conlon and Blamey, John Hetherington, Blamey’s first biographer, wrote: ‘Theirs was an improbable association in which each man struck sparks from the other’s mind. Although utterly different in many ways they yet had an intellectual affinity. Conlon’s admiration of Blamey never wavered.’9 Often a General with great responsibilities will have an adviser or a confidant who is divorced from the chain-of-command. For George Vasey in New Guinea, it was his senior medical officer, Kingsley Norris. Blamey had a number of senior staff officers, and confidants such as Brigadier Eugene Gorman. But one of his closest, if unlikeliest of advisers, was the free-thinking student, with good political connections, Major Alf Conlon. Thirty years later one of Conlon’s staff, the academic and poet James MacAuley, wrote:

Conlon at his height was a prestidigitator with remarkable skills. He could make people of the highest seniority see themselves and their role in a new light, give stimulus to their thinking about their own position or profession or academic subject; and he could also operate politically with daring, adroitness and aplomb.10

Conlon was interested in power, not so much for itself, but for what one could do with

it for good and disinterested ends.11 He had a theory, in conversing with men of power, that three elements had to be borne in mind: the vernacular; the ‘base note’; and the problem. In an interview or discussion between a principal and an adviser, the vernacular had to be understood. While the language might be English, there were usually several vernaculars or sub-languages being used, and the adviser had to see through and understand the principal’s vernacular or meaning. Next, Conlon believed, there was a base note in such a discussion, a bottom line or theme that had to be discerned. Finally, the adviser was there in the first place, across the desk from the principal – in the office – because the principal had a problem. The important thing for the adviser was not to narrow it for the principal; he needed to broaden the issues and give the principal a wider range of possibilities.

Conlon provided two main strands of advice which made him important to Blamey. Conlon was a shrewd observer of human nature; he once observed about committees that ‘the resolute use of the chain is essential to the proper working of water closets’. He

9 John Hetherington, Blamey: Controversial Soldier: A biography of Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey, GBE, KCB, CMG, DSO, ED (Canberra, 1973), 322.

10 James McAuley, ‘Commentary’, Quadrant XX:102 (January 1976), 25-6. 11 Peter Ryan, Brief Lives (Sydney, 2004), 33, 56, 61.

122 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

gave the General political and bureaucratic advice that helped Blamey in the wartime brawls within the Commonwealth bureaucracy. Some of the flavour of this can be gleaned from a confidential memorandum for Blamey, in which Conlon described the Secretary, Department of the Army, as ‘an official not incommoded by scruple’.

Blamey had won the army’s top job after thirty-six years of Regular and Reserve service, and he did not intend lose it – or see his powers diminished. Despite many threats, he kept his unique powers as commander-in-chief for more than three-and-a-half years, until well after the Japanese surrender in 1945. Critical of course was Blamey’s right of direct access to Prime Minister Curtin, and Blamey’s ability – but Conlon and the Directorate covered his back and were very important.

Secondly, Conlon gave Blamey advice on what army policy (or transitional policy) might apply in areas which the combat troops liberated from the Japanese. This was initially in Papua and New Guinea, but later in Borneo. In the arena of Papua and New Guinea, no other government department was making any policy, so it was probably fair that the Army – who physically controlled the ground – moved in and filled the policy vacuum. In particular, Conlon acted as a bridge between Blamey and the Minister for External Territories, Eddie Ward, one of the most feared debaters and bomb-throwers of his day in the House of Representatives.12 Relations between Ward and Prime Minister Curtin were never easy, and Conlon, at times, probably also acted as a conduit between Curtin and Ward.

In the 1940s, western armies by and large did not suggest in a particular situation that there was ‘not a military solution’. The military was critical and all-pervasive in the solutions to the problem of occupation of conquered territory – specifically Germany and Japan. The military was often the dominant controlling authority on the ground, even if occupation policy was being directed by the relevant Minister from afar. In the UK, for example, post-war policy on Germany was directed by Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office but implemented by the Military Governor and Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Brian Robertson, who commanded both British military forces as well as the UK part of the civil-military Control Commission for Germany. There was no post-war rush for General Robertson and the military to go, and Robertson retained his powers until 1949, when West Germany was created.13

12 Ross McMullin, ‘Edward John (Eddie) Ward’, in John Ritchie and Di Langmore (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 16 (Melbourne, 2002), 487.

13 Ian Turner (ed.), Reconstruction in Post-War Germany: British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones, 1945-55 (Oxford, 1989), 360-1.

123L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

Here we have to cast our minds back to the environment of the 1940s. With conscription, wages were cheap. The wartime norm was a large army, with large amounts of uniformed service support. In the view of military commanders such as the Australian General Blamey, if a thing or person was in his battle or operational area, he – or his delegate – was going to command it. Blamey and his fellow generals were not in the business of having large numbers of civilians, other agencies or contractors wandering around the battlefield.

Civilians in operational areas were evacuated. Remaining fit civilians in operational areas were enlisted into the Australian Army – and hence were clearly subject to military law and discipline, including the circumstances of how and when they engaged the enemy or opened fire. Indigenous civilians – for example many male Papua New Guineans – were put under contract as labourers and stretcher bearers for the Army. The territories of Papua and New Guinea were under military administration and the civil government had been suspended. The senior operational commander in New Guinea – the lieutenant general – also commanded the militarised civil administration – the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (or ANGAU), which was under a major general.14

Conlon’s Directorate generally operated at the policy level, rather than the administrative level. Its record of achievement included many successes. I would now like to describe one area where the Directorate was less-than-successful; and four areas where I believe the Directorate was successful or innovative in preparing for allied victory.

In the area of civil affairs planning for the Australian invasion in June 1945 of North Borneo, Labuan and Brunei, and occupation of parts of Sarawak, I suggest the Directorate was less-than-successful. The allegations, including those from the official historians Long and Hasluck, have been that Conlon deliberately excluded British civil affairs officers from the operation; that Conlon sought Australian control of British Borneo; and that he controlled affairs remotely from Melbourne.15

As to the first charge, Conlon did exclude a number of British civil affairs officers, but many of these were elderly or unfit, and should not have been involved in the early stages of an amphibious invasion anyway. The Australians had sought the dispatch of British civil affairs officers, but in April 1945 General MacArthur changed the sequence and the timetable for the operations. The British main body, travelling by sea, was late

14 See Alan Powell, The Third Force: ANGAU’s New Guinea War, 1942-46 (Melbourne, 2003).15 Gavin Long, The Final Campaigns (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 1 [Army]), Vol. VII (Canberra, 1963),

402-3, 497-9; Paul Hasluck, The Government and the People 1942-1945 (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 4 [Civil], Vol. II) (Canberra, 1970), 608, 608n.

124 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

getting to Australia. It was a good thing that Blamey and Conlon did act quickly, and formed an Australian unit called the British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit (or BBCAU). Strong and experienced Australian leaders were appointed (lieutenant colonels), usually ANGAU officers with outstanding records.16 A significant number of British officers were included in the advance elements of BBCAU, and the senior British officer (an elderly brigadier titled chief civil affairs officer) was ordered forward by Blamey to Borneo in July to command the civil affairs element once the combat troops captured all the operational objectives.

The Australians had every right to control north Borneo civil affairs while an Australian general, George Wootten, was the Australian combat commander in Borneo. Wootten commanded 9th Division and some 28,000 Australian servicemen were involved. By 1944 it was clear British military doctrine that the senior combat officer commanded the civil affairs detachments or units accompanying his operational formation, and this doctrine was implemented in the European military campaign. This was so there was no hiatus or gap in control of civilians, or opportunity for an insurgency to develop, and so that the military supply function could work both to support military and humanitarian requirements. Australian military administration of northern Borneo ran from June 1945 to January 1946, when British military forces took over.17

However, there was some evidence that Conlon had a plan for a period, probably with the support of the Department of External Affairs, for some form of Australian control for a longer period. It would appear, however, that planning or concept did not extend beyond July 1945.

Conlon did control events remotely from Melbourne in the early stages. But by July 1945, Morshead as the corps commander and General Wootten in northern Borneo had asserted their control. The senior British civil affairs officers – a colonel and a brigadier – then succeeded in having a series of disputes with General Wootten and, rightly or

16 For example the Australian officers with BBCAU included Colonel Ken McMullen, who had been awarded the US Medal of Freedom for his work with 6th US Army in New Guinea in 1943-44; and Lieutenant Colonel Keith McCarthy MBE, who had extracted 200 Australian civilians by boat from Japanese-occupied New Britain and whose ANGAU detachment was awarded a US Presidential Unit Citation for its work during the US capture of the Admiralty Islands in 1944. Two other BBCAU officers were Lieutenant Colonel John Black of ANGAU, a leader of the Hagen-Sepik expedition of 1938-39, and Lieutenant Colonel Henry Tasker, who was commended by the British for his post-hostilities work in the Sandakan area.

17 It was open to the returning power (UK) to make a statement of policy for the territories and to appoint (under the military force commander) a chief civil affairs officer, who was to be subject to the general directions of the military commander. The British War Office clearly recognised the primacy of the Australian military commander in all matters during ‘the operational phase’ (June to October 1945).

125L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

wrongly, a British colonel was returned to Australia, and then to the UK. Part of the problem may have been that many of the British civil affairs officers had been promised Colonial Office jobs in Borneo, and wanted to implement civil, rather than military, administration at a faster pace than the Australian military authorities would permit. Much was achieved in Borneo by 9th Division and BBCAU, and there was enormous gratitude for the relief and rehabilitation work done. The 9th Division’s colour patch, ‘T’ for Tobruk, was emblazoned on the state flag of North Borneo (later Sabah) for many years after the war.

The circumstances in Borneo were more complex than many historians have allowed. There were difficulties on the ground. However, a UK liaison officer in Melbourne – a British colonel – worked closely with Conlon on Borneo planning from December 1944. Conlon and the Directorate were not blameless, but nor were the UK civil affairs officers and the other participants.

And now to four areas where the Directorate was an innovator in terms of Australian preparations for victory in the Pacific. Kerr and Stanner were correct in London in 1944 in identifying that Australia needed an integrated machinery, like the British Service Chiefs of Staff sub-committees and secretariats, to conduct whole-of-government post-hostilities planning. At the top, the British system relied upon the close collaboration of the Prime Minister with the Chiefs of Staff. Cascading below, under the War Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff, were a range of committees and sub-committees connecting civil and military departments at the working level – the military, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office and the military government specialists. Sixty-six years on we might refer to this as national security architecture. The lieutenant colonels reported back to Australia in June 1944:

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Australian services and departments have both carried a principle of vertical administrative organization to a degree which not only makes possible but even accentuates normal departmental exclusiveness. The only level at which some departments, dealing with phases of the same problem, actually meet, tends to be at the level of heads of departments … In the UK the domestic principle of multilateral interdepartmental contacts, at all levels, has applied a striking corrective to the distortions which can arise from excessive verticalism in organization and from departmental exclusiveness. The lesson for Australia seems very apparent.18

18 Kerr/Stanner Report of 12 June 1944, Section A (Civil Affairs, Foreign Policy and Colonial Policy), 8-9, para. 25, NAA (Melbourne): MP729/8, Item 49/431/72.

126 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

In the British wartime system, with the close collaboration of the Prime Minister with the Service Chiefs of Staff, and the military and civil staffs in the War Cabinet Offices, there was, in Kerr’s words:

a controlling organization of great authority, capable of enforcing (downwards) any adjustments required within the Army, and seeking (upwards) any modifications of official policy justifiably desired by the Army.19

Blamey and the army did attempt to create more integrated mechanisms in Australia. Indeed, had Blamey’s February 1945 proposals succeeded, some form of joint service staff under a senior military officer would have emerged in the 1940s rather than in the 1970s.20

A second area where the Directorate was successful was the creation a small quasi-diplomatic service for the army. Given coalition warfare, Blamey had established representation at lieutenant general level in Washington and London in 1942. With Australia’s status as a junior ally, Conlon realised that liaison visits like Kerr’s had to be undertaken to the major capitals, and that great benefit could be gained from working with other junior coalition partners such as Canada. An Australian interchange of information with Canada on civil affairs, Conlon reasoned, would expose British thinking, and the Canadians, in their reactions to the UK, would generally take into consideration their assessment of American views.

Conlon’s staff, under Ida Leeson, summarised the cable traffic from overseas for Blamey. From mid-1944 to the end of the war, Conlon had his own civil affairs representative in London. For the latter part of the war this was Lieutenant Colonel Keith Isles, an economist and later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Tasmania. From 1945, Conlon’s representative in Washington was Major James Plimsoll, later head of the Department of External Affairs and Australian ambassador to the USA, Japan, and the USSR, and High Commissioner in London. Kerr also arranged for Australian officers to be attached to the military government authority preparing to supplement the combat forces in Germany, the Allied Control Commission, in 1944 and 1945. From these wartime initiatives developed the system of Army attachés and staffs in place overseas by the 1950s and later.

The third area of importance was the Directorate’s implementation of serious academic research into politico-military problems in a multi-disciplinary way. Conlon recruited lawyers,

19 Ibid., 2, para. 6.20 David Horner, Defence Supremo: Sir Frederick Shedden and the Making of Australian Defence Policy (Sydney, 2000),

220.

127L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

historians, economists, anthropologists, medical and agricultural scientists, veterinarians, and practical men with expertise in New Guinea administration. On regional affairs he once remarked that ‘the most important feature of Australia’s position in the Pacific is the profound ignorance of Australians, taken by and large, in their Pacific environment’.

I will not pretend that all Conlon’s research was sound or co-ordinated – it was not. But he realised that research was needed to inform policy decisions. To take one example, the work by the Directorate’s lawyers, who included two Harvard-educated lieutenant colonels, Julius Stone and Tom Fry, and Major Harry Gibbs, resulted in advice and legislation which provisionally amalgamated the two separate territories – New Guinea and Papua – and in a vital consolidation of their laws as the basis for post-war civil administration. The work of anthropologists was (and is) vital in order for the military to understand the tribal and cultural complexities of the regions where armies fight – in contemporary jargon ‘the human terrain’. Conlon’s sponsorship was the first example of the Australian Army’s use of anthropologists, although he mainly utilised their services in developing policy advice on how to rehabilitate New Guinea from the wartime devastation (rather than support for combat) and how to develop a government education system separate from the mission schools.

Blamey’s February 1944 paper to the Prime Minister advising on post-war New Guinea policy – drafted by Conlon and the Directorate – was lauded by the historian and anthropologist Charles Rowley (not a Directorate man) – as ‘the charter for Australian post-war policy in Papua New Guinea’, and he suggested that Conlon ‘was the one who pioneered self-determination in the Pacific area’.21 The Blamey memorandum represented a radical change of view of how the territories might be managed during the war in the reconstruction phase and post-war under changed government policies, with greatly increased funding.

Finally, Conlon was convinced that the nation had to improve vastly the training and education of young Australians who were to work in the New Guinea administration. He set up an Army training school at RMC Duntroon in late 1944 – where the medical centre is now – called the School of Civil Affairs.22 He staffed it, using military staff, with the best anthropologists, tropical disease advisers, geographers, agriculturalists,

21 Bob Reece, ‘Alf Conlon, the Fall of Singapore and British Borneo’ (paper presented at the Australian War Memo-rial, ca. 1992), 11, 17.

22 In the 1970s and 1980s this site was occupied by Professor Brian Beddie’s Department of Government (University of NSW), which taught politics courses to the Duntroon cadets.

23 There were other Australian anthropologists who disagreed with the School of Civil Affairs concept: see Geof-frey Gray, ‘“I was not consulted”: A.P. Elkin, Papua New Guinea and the Politics of Anthropology, 1942-1950’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 40:2 (1994), 202-3.

128 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

lawyers, historians and experienced New Guinea patrol officers he could find.23 It had a long-term aim – to train young probationary patrol officers for their first posting to the territory, and as a basis for a subsequent long course after initial field service – as post-war administrators. It had another object which should concern us now – over its fifteen-week course – it provided the young servicemen with an outstanding cultural awareness course for an operational area. Conlon also organised in 1945 for sixteen Australian officers to attend the US military government school at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, so that there would be a cadre of Australians who could work with US military government officers in the Pacific and in the occupation of Japan.

As well as Pidgin, the course brilliantly taught religion, customary law, geography, economics, tribal patterns in great depth, as well as practical skills.24 It was an outstanding syllabus, covering an intake of between forty and sixty servicemen, mainly Army. It was also a very good cultural awareness course for personnel deploying to an operational area, pitched at non-commissioned officers, as well as junior officers. The School continued after the war at Mosman, Sydney, for thirty years, training administrative staff for New Guinea. It was known as the Australian School of Pacific Administration or ASOPA. Although there was a bureaucratic reaction in the 1940s against Conlon’s ideas, many Directorate staff served-on at ASOPA and created a climate for reform of New Guinea policy.25

Wars end untidily. The Army Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs operated in a wartime environment under a Commander-in-Chief with additional powers. Conlon was a talented individual who has attracted diverse views from historians. Importantly for the Army, however, a staff within its headquarters was examining the policy advice problem of ‘what happens’ once the combat troops re-captured territory from the enemy, and analysing and recommending transitional policy for the liberated areas. Conlon began working on these issues at a similar time to External Affairs, but well before the Departments of Defence or External Territories.

Conlon’s staff was a highly talented one, and many of the officers and soldiers, both men and women, were influential in their civil professions in post-war Australia. The Victoria Barracks camp commandant – an infantry major – referred to the Directorate as a ‘nest of long-hairs’. Certainly the prevailing views in the Directorate were 1940s London

24 The students interviewed had clear recollections of the curriculum and lecturers. One student, some sixty-three years later, could recite slabs of Ian Hogbin’s lecture on religion in New Guinea.

25 Author’s assessment. The degree of the Directorate’s and School’s influence of post-war New Guinea policy has been debated: see Brian Jinks, ‘Alfred Conlon, The Directorate of Research and New Guinea’, Journal of Australian Studies 12 (1983), 21-33; I.C. Campbell, ‘The ASOPA Controversy: A Pivot of Australian Policy for Papua and New Guinea, 1945-49’, Journal of Pacific History 35: 1 (June 2000), 83-99.

129L I B E R A T I N G A U S T R A L I A N N E W G U I N E A

School of Economics-style progressivism. Blamey had a reputation as a conservative, yet he used this group, listened to Conlon’s advice, acted upon it when appropriate; and thought broadly and strategically about why we were fighting and Australia’s national interests in the Pacific, including the transitional administration of Papua and New Guinea and Australia’s interests in the expected ground invasion of Japan, and its subsequent military occupation. From my researches, General Blamey has emerged at the strategic level as a more interesting and talented figure than many of his critics have allowed.

The focus in this paper has been on the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs rather than on ANGAU, the other post-hostilities organisation. The Directorate, in my view, was a far better organisation than many historians have depicted. Importantly, it was a pioneer of certain initiatives that remain with us still – the importance of attaché and army representation overseas; wartime studies of how to integrate across government and prepare for the immediate post-hostilities phase; the intersection of academic studies and the military – anthropology, law, medicine, agriculture, economics and history – and how armies can use these disciplines to prepare territories for stabilisation and peace; and finally the importance of detailed cultural awareness and language training for soldiers deploying into operational areas. This was no mean achievement.

130

Hiroshima over Hanoi: Incorporating the Atomic Battlefield into SEATO Contingency Planning

1955–1965

Damien Fenton

Just after 8:00 am, local time, on Monday, 6 August 1945, three American B-29 Super fortresses of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron made their final approach towards the Japanese city of Hiroshima, on the main island of Honshū.1 On board one of those aircraft, the Enola Gay, was a primitive atomic bomb, a Uranium-235 fission-based gravity bomb design code-named ‘Little Boy’, with an estimated blast yield of between 13-18 kilotons.2 The sky over the target was clear and despite having been detected by a Japanese radar station earlier that morning no fighters had been sent up to oppose the American bombers – by this stage of the war shortages of aviation fuel were so bad that in an effort to conserve it Japanese fighter squadrons had been ordered to restrict themselves to making sorties against only large formations of American aircraft penetrating their airspace. The crew of the Enola Gay commenced their bomb run at 8:09 am at a height of some 31,000 feet and released ‘Little Boy’ over the city six minutes later.3 After approximately forty-three seconds of free-fall descent the bomb reached its pre-programmed detonation point and exploded at an estimated height of 1,900 feet.4

Due to the inefficient fission reaction of the U-235 used it was estimated that the explosion that followed reached a blast yield of only some thirteen-fifteen kilotons out of the eighteen kiloton maximum ‘Little Boy’ was theoretically capable of achieving. Nonetheless the devastation unleashed by that nuclear explosion on the city and people of Hiroshima was on a scale unheard of in the history of warfare. One bomb, weighing just over four tons, dropped by a single aircraft, completely obliterated 1.6 km of the

1 Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (eds), The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 5, The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945 (Washington, DC, 1953), 715-16.

2 See Office of History & Heritage Resources, US Department of Energy, The Manhattan Project: an Interactive History, The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/hiroshima.htm.

3 Craven and Cate (eds)The Pacific, 716.4 See The Manhattan Project: an Interactive History.

131H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

city centre, consigned an additional 12km of streets and buildings to destruction by blast wave and fire and killed or injured approximately 140-150,000 people.5 Thousands more would die or fall sick over the coming months and years as a result of their exposure to the extremely high levels of radiation released by the blast, a hitherto unknown phenomenon we are familiar with today as the effects of ‘radiation sickness’. Three days later another atomic bomb, code-named ‘Fat Man’, was dropped by the Americans on the city of Nagasaki. The effects were as grimly effective and terrible to behold as those seen at Hiroshima: a city more or less destroyed as a functioning entity and its population counting their dead in the tens of thousands.6

The ramifications of these unprecedented attacks were not long in coming. On 15 August Emperor Hirohito made his famous broadcast to the Japanese nation, publicly announcing the decision of the Japanese government to surrender to the Allies. In that speech he acknowledged the American use of the atomic bomb – ‘a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which was, indeed, incalculable’7 – as a key factor in the government’s decision. World War II, the bloodiest conflict in recorded human history, had been brought to a most spectacular and terrible end by ushering in the birth of a new age of warfare – the nuclear – or to use the popular parlance of the time – the atomic age.

But while the public debate that followed in the late 1940s and 1950s largely confined itself to the geo-strategic or moral implications surrounding the use of the ‘A-Bomb’ solely as a strategic weapon system, military planners on both sides of the Cold War immersed themselves in the deadly serious work of integrating nuclear weapons into lower-level operational planning and battlefield scenarios. It was their job to think the ‘unthinkable’ and in so doing they sought to encourage their fellow soldiers, sailors and airmen to treat nuclear weapons, as far as they could, as just another weapon system. One with its own unique uses, limitations and challenges to be sure but nonetheless one that, if the scenario called for it, should be used without a moment’s hesitation.

The rapid progress in American nuclear weapons development in the first decade after Hiroshima helped to foster this way of thinking and indeed went hand in hand with its evolution. As early as 1953 the US Army deployed the M65 280mm Atomic Cannon, a nuclear-capable towed artillery piece derived from a German World War II railroad gun design that could fire a 15 kiloton nuclear shell up to a distance of thirty km.8 As

5 Craven and Cate (eds), The Pacific, 720-2.6 Ibid., 723-5.7 Cited in Robert James Maddox, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later (Columbia, MO,

1995), 151.

132 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

well as conventional artillery the Americans also invested heavily in developing nuclear- capable rocket artillery, introducing the Honest John surface-to-surface missile (SSM) system, with a range of 48 km, into service in 1953, the first of many such systems.9 By 1961 progress was such that the US Army had begun deploying the Davy Crockett nuclear-capable recoilless rifle system to its forces stationed in West Germany. Available down to battalion-level commanders in either 106mm or 120mm versions and operated by a three-man crew, the Davy Crockett recoilless rifles could both fire a sub-kiloton nuclear projectile up to a range of two and four km respectively.10 Due to its low blast yield, thought to be less than twenty tons of TNT, it seems the Americans were counting on its ‘dirty bomb’ effect rather than its nuclear blast yield proper to impede and delay attacking Warsaw Pact formations.

The tactics and operational art of not just surviving, but fighting and winning on the atomic battlefield became the fashionable topic across American military think tanks, academies and staff and command colleges during this period.11 The US Army even briefly replaced its conventional triangular divisional/regimental/battalion structure with a completely new ‘Pentomic’ structure based on five ‘battlegroups’. The idea was that the Pentomic structure would be better suited to the atomic battlefield due to the supposedly more robust and independent nature of the battlegroups.12 The Australian Army followed this example by adopting its own version, the Pentropic organisation, just as the Americans thought better of the whole experiment and dropped it in 1961.13 And of course then there was the infamous series of exercises carried out under the auspices of the US Army’s Atomic Maneuver Battalion, based at the Nevada nuclear testing grounds between 1951 and 1955. Thousands of US military personnel passed through the hands of this unit at Desert Rock Camp and were deliberately exposed to nuclear explosions,

8 Although notable for a number of technological breakthroughs in tactical nuclear weapons development, as an actual operational weapon the M-65 Atomic Cannon was quickly recognised as being more of a liability than an asset, and for much the same reasons that had seen conventional railway guns rendered obsolete by the end of World War II – excessive size, weight and lack of mobility given the relatively limited range it could offer in return. This made it too vulnerable to any number of enemy countermeasures. It was replaced later in the decade by the development of new atomic artillery warheads that could be used with the artillery’s standard M110 and M109 self-propelled howitzers: A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The US Army Between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, DC, 1986), 82-4.

9 For more on the development of these missile systems and their capabilities see Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin and Milton M. Hoeing, Nuclear Wepons Databook, Vol. I, US Nuclear Forces and Capabilities (Cambridge, MA, 1984).

10 Ibid., 95-6.11 Bacevich, The Pentomic Era, 64-5.12 Ibid., 104-08.13 For more on the Pentropic debacle see J. C. Blaxland, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 50, Organising

an Army: The Australian Experience 1957-1965 (Canberra, 1989).

133H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

ostensibly to ‘demystify’ and familiarise them with the idea of atomic warfare, while also testing the extent to which soldiers could physically endure the conditions of the atomic battlefield.14

Given all this it is not surprising that nuclear weapons were integrated into nearly every level of NATO contingency planning and operational and tactical doctrine by the end of the 1950s. But what of the other major Western anti-communist military alliances during this period of the Cold War? How much impact did the immediate post-war enthusiasm for the atomic battlefield have on the Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) or the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO)? While in no way wishing to denigrate the story of the Baghdad Pact in this regard, this paper will limit itself to SEATO’s effort to emulate the precedent set by NATO and harness the martial power of the atom for its benefit.

The South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty, better known to history as the Manila Treaty, was signed in the city of the same name in The Philippines on 8 September 1954 by the host nation and seven others: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Pakistan, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. These states thus became the founding (and as it turned out, only) members of SEATO, the military alliance created by the Treaty for the sole purpose of seeking to deter, or if need be, defeat communist military aggression in the South East Asia region. This task was made more complicated by SEATO’s self-appointed role as protector of the so-called Protocol States – South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – which under the terms of the Geneva accords were prevented from joining any military alliances but whose independence and sovereignty SEATO swore to protect from any communist threat in any event.

Its creation was primarily driven by the Eisenhower administration in response to the defeat suffered by the French in their Indo-China War and, just as importantly, the American’s dissatisfaction and distrust of the supposed regional peace settlement that followed, courtesy of the 1954 Geneva Accords. President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, felt that the terms of the Accords would not be honoured by the communist side as the settlement put them in a strong position in the region,

14 Of these tests the most notable was Desert Rock VI in 1955 which involved a composite armoured force, ‘Task Force Razor’, being positioned a mere 3,000 metres from a thirty kiloton nuclear explosion. The Army proudly informed reporters assembled to witness the exercise that despite the initial disorienting impact of the blast Task Force Razor was able to engage its vehicle-mounted weapons within thirty seconds of detonation, re-establish communications within three minutes and, after eight minutes, was able to mount a co-ordinated advance to within 900 metres of ground zero. But this outcome was completely orchestrated and misleading and was achieved only by a dubious level of intensive preparation in the days leading up to the test - preparations that would have been impossible to achieve under any field conditions with, for example, each vehicle being carefully and individually positioned in relation to the detonation point and other unrealistic measures: Bacevich, The Pentomic Era, 111-15.

134 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

but compelled France to effectively withdraw most of its forces, and in its wake left a power vacuum of newly independent but very weak and vulnerable states to fend for themselves.15 True, the United Kingdom was still a military power of some substance in the region but, left to its own devices, it was fixated solely on stabilising the situation on the Malayan Peninsula with a view to ceding local independence in an orderly fashion; its long-term post-colonial role in south east Asia was open to question.

Given this scenario the Americans thought the temptation for the communists to seek to fill that vacuum would prove too much and that it would only be a matter of time before they began to move again, either covertly or overtly, against their regional neighbours. SEATO was an attempt to signal as loudly and publicly as possible that any such thoughts of easy pickings should be reconsidered by the powers that be in Hanoi and Beijing. But for the message to be taken seriously the military dimensions of the SEATO alliance had to made credible, both from the standpoint of bolstering the faith of regional allies in its worth as well as ramming home its deterrent effect to the communist world.

The first significant steps taken by SEATO to establish this credibility saw a total of three SEATO staff planning meetings held between May 1955 and July 1956 to thrash out the strategic concepts under which the new military alliance would operate.16 The assembled military and civilian experts from the eight member nations dealt with a range of issues in the course of these meetings, such as establishing the physical boundaries of what in effect the SEATO area of operations would be, to agreeing on the need and tentative roles of a permanent SEATO ‘military secretariat’ to go alongside the civilian one.17 But by far the biggest problem confronting the planners at these meetings was to find common agreement on how best to offset the overwhelming conventional military strength that the communist powers of China and North Vietnam could bring to bear on South East Asia in the event of a regional-scale war.

15 Leszek Buszynski, SEATO: Failure of an Alliance Strategy (Singapore, 1983), 5-16.16 The first SEATO military staff planning meeting was held at Manila in the Philippines, in May 1955, the second

at Hawaii in November of that year and the third in Singapore, June 1956: First SEATO Staff Planners’ Meeting Report, 5 May 1955, National Archives of Australia (NAA): A1209/23, 1957/5850; 2nd SEATO Military Staff Planners’ Meeting Report, November 1955, NAA: A1209/23, 1957/5853; Report of the leader of the Australian Delegation to the Third Staff Planners’ Meeting, 5 July 1956, NAA: A1209/23, 57/4260.

17 Ibid. In addition to establishing the strategic concepts for future SEATO contingency planning the recommendations from these meeting for the creation of a permanent SEATO military planning body were adopted by the Military Advisers Group (which was comprised of senior military representatives of member states, usually at service chief level or higher and met twice a year) and the SEATO Council. This led to the establishment of a small ‘Military Liaison Group’ attached to the SEATO Secretariat’s headquarters in Bangkok in 1956 which was expanded into the ‘Military Planning Office’ (MPO) in January 1957. For the rest of SEATO’s existence as a military alliance the MPO was responsible for all SEATO contingency planning work, although authorisation to begin each plan had to come from the Military Advisers Group.

135H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

It is easy to forget just how complete China’s conventional military superiority vis-à-vis its south east Asian neighbours was during this period. A brief account of some key features of that strength should be enough to reacquaint us with the true scale of the threat faced by the non-communist sates of the region and those in SEATO who sought to protect them from it. The post-Korean War-era PLA could boast a peacetime strength of 2.5 million personnel and upon mobilisation could expand to a strength of 3.2 million in six months and up to six million in two years.18 Factoring in various criteria surrounding the conflict scenarios envisaged by SEATO only a portion of this vast pool of military manpower would be directed towards a limited conventional war in the south, but even with these caveats SEATO planners still reckoned that they should expect to be confronted with the full resources of five Chinese military regions. This amounted to about 600,000 PLA troops from which, according to SEATO planners, the region could anticipate an initial invasion force of up to sixteen divisions under a large-scale conventional limited war scenario.19

Of course it was not just the sheer numbers that were problematic, although those were bad enough, it was also the fact that the PLA had already proven it was a serious opponent, having recently fought UN forces (including the US Eighth Army) to a standstill on the Korean Peninsula.20 Even worse, the PLA leadership, at least while it was led by the Korean War veteran Marshal Peng, had apparently learnt much from that searing experience and had quietly and privately dumped the doctrine of ‘People’s War’, whatever the public utterances to the contrary. Instead Peng had committed the PLA to a crash course of modernisation in both equipment and doctrine based on the contemporary Soviet model.21 The provision of mass firepower, via licensed production of modern Soviet field, howitzer and rocket artillery designs, was being accompanied by the first systemic attempt at mass motorisation/mechanisation, via production of Soviet

18 John Gittings, The Role of the Chinese Army (London, 1967), 74-98. 19 ‘Nuclear Weapons – Rusk Talks’, memorandum, A. J. Eastman, First Asst Secretary, Defence Liaison Branch, to

Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister of External Affairs, 4 May 1962, NAA: A1838/346, TS688/33.20 The American General Matthew B Ridgeway, former commander of UN forces in Korea, wrote: ‘Considering the

conditions under which it operated in Koreav during the period described, the PLA must be rated highly. With good leadership, time for training, and first-class equipment, Chinese ground forces, with their huge reservoir of manpower, must be reckoned a formidable foe.’ Cited in Samuel B. Griffith, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (London, 1968), 171.

21 It was under Peng’s leadership for example that a formal system of ranks was introduced into the PLA in 1955 with fourteen separate grades for officers alone – Peng himself becoming the first to be bestowed with the rank of a PLA Marshal. He also implemented an orderly regulated and sustainable national conscription system and set up hundreds of military academies and technical schools to provide the educated officers and specialist soldiers the new PLA would require for the future: Ellis Joffe, Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps (Cambridge, MA, 1965), 21-2, 30, 34-6.

136 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

modern soft vehicle, APC and T-54 tank designs.22 Similar ‘generational’ leaps were being attempted with the air force (via transfers of MiG-17 fighter production and the outright purchase of hundreds of Il-28 jet bombers) and the navy (which concentrated on building up its submarine and missile-armed FAC fleets courtesy of Soviet Whiskey Class submarines and the SS-N-2 ‘Styx’ anti-ship missile).23

With the luxury of hindsight – a boon not enjoyed by SEATO planners at the time – we now know that Peng and his immediate supporters would be ousted from power in 1959 in what amounted to a purge by Mao that ostensibly restored People’s War to its pre-Korean War position of doctrinal primacy (helping to cement the Sino-Soviet split in the process).24 Nonetheless the elements of professionalism and new thinking Peng’s reforms brought to the PLA would continue to echo through the junior and middle-ranked officers of this period until the onset of the Cultural Revolution put paid to such dangerous thoughts once and for all. And a T-54 tank is still a T-54 tank regardless of the level of doctrinal purity possessed by its commander. The legacy of the 1950s-era Soviet weapons and equipment bestowed upon the PLA thanks to Peng’s drive for force modernisation would, for better or worse, be relied upon to keep the PLA going well into the 1980s. While this legacy may have become an object of ridicule by then, it should be remembered that in 1959 these were largely the same weapons and equipment with which the majority of Warsaw Pact forces were furnished in Europe.

The North Vietnamese were equally problematic. By 1961 they had re-organised the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to produce a mobilised strength of 275,000 men.25 The core of the PAVN’s offensive power resided in its seven field divisions supported by several independent regimental-sized groups.26 Under General Vo Nguyen Giap the question of Soviet-style professionalisation versus a revolutionary guerilla ethos had been settled in no uncertain terms in favour of the former.27 After the 1954 Geneva Accords the PAVN was re-established as a professional conventional fighting force. Training was intense with an emphasis on a steady build-up of forces in favour of quality over a rapid expansion in favour of quantity, and its resultant capabilities were of a correspondingly high standard.28 Weapons and equipment followed the Soviet model wherever possible.

22 SEAP 7 draft ‘Handbook on the Communist Chinese Military Forces’, AWM 122 68/2011.23 Ibid.24 William W. Whitson, The Chinese High Command (London, 1973), 99-100.25 ‘Nuclear Weapons – Rusk Talks’, memorandum, A. J. Eastman, First Asst Secretary, Defence Liaison Branch, to

Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister of External Affairs, 4 May 1962, NAA: A1838/346, TS688/33.26 Douglas Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (Novato, CA, 1986), 102.27 Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army (New York, 1962), xxxix.28 As the 1960s got underway and the North sought to prosecute its guerilla war in the South with increasing intensity

this guiding philosophy soon fell victim to expediency: a rapid expansion in PAVN strength was ordered and by 1965 it possessed a total of 400,000 personnel and could mobilise thirteen field divisions: Pike, PAVN, 102.

137H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

Furthermore SEATO planners had to assume that in a regional conventional conflict the PAVN, unlike the PLA, would mobilise and commit its entire strength – 275,000 troops – in the course of the struggle that followed.

In other words well-armed and equipped communist armies with a combined strength of almost a million troops stood more or less in readiness for operations in the region. No one could afford to take the potential threat these forces posed to the security of their regional neighbours lightly. As things stood those neighbouring states had no hope of defending themselves on their own against these communist juggernauts, hence the creation of SEATO to make sure they would never have to. But if hundreds of thousands of communist soldiers ever did receive the orders to march south how was SEATO going to stop them? To the SEATO staff planners meeting in 1955 the answer was obvious – atomic weapons. As early as that very first meeting in Manila representatives from all eight member states agreed that the use of atomic weapons by SEATO should be included in the basic planning assumptions being compiled there to guide future work.29

What better way to offset the overwhelming numerical, if not qualitative, superiority of the communist military threat to the region? It certainly sat well with the prevailing strategic ideas favoured by the White House at the time, best encapsulated by the ‘New Look’ doctrine in favour of strategic nuclear deterrence over unchecked expansion of US peacetime conventional military capabilities. The Eisenhower administration was already alarmed over the accumulation of overseas standing ‘garrison’ commitments by US forces, particularly the US Army, since the end of World War II and it did not wish to find itself dragged in to making any more.30 In that respect, NATO represented an alliance template the US wanted to avoid rather than replicate when it came to SEATO. For the Americans the maintenance of the strategic principle of flexibility of response with regard to their own conventional military power would remain paramount in their approach towards the contingency planning that would underpin SEATO’s military credibility as an alliance.31

The problems began however as soon as the idea of using atomic weapons moved beyond the in-principle agreement at the strategic planning level and into the realm of actual operational contingency planning. Broadly speaking these problems could be

29 First SEATO Staff Planners’ Meeting Report, 5 May 1955, NAA: A1209/23, 1957/5850.30 See Douglas Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management; A Study in Defense Politics (Lexington, KY,

1977).31 This thinking is clearly demonstrated in the deliberations of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff that ensued after they

were asked by Dulles to carry out the first serious post-war US military strategic study of the region in December 1954. See Kenneth W. Condit, History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vol. VI, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy 1955-56 (Washington, DC, 1992).

138 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

separated into two groups – those concerned with practical issues at the operational level and those concerned with political issues of command and control at the highest level of national authority.

While in theory atomic weapons seemed to offer SEATO a force-multiplier effect similar to that found in NATO, on closer inspection the potential impact of these weapons on the SEATO area of operations was in fact much more limited. The most obvious factor contributing to this limitation was the difference in terrain between that found on the likely battlefields of Europe and Southeast Asia. Thick tropical rainforest was common to much of Southeast Asia and particularly to the inland regions of the upper Mekong where Burma, Laos and Thailand lay vulnerable to infiltration and outright attack by ‘first strike’ Chinese or North Vietnamese forces. In 1956 SEATO carried out a study to try and gauge the effectiveness of using nuclear weapons against a range of potential targets in the region. The findings of the study with regard to using atomic weapons against communist field forces operating in a jungle or rainforest environment were not encouraging. The study concluded that a 20-kiloton bomb detonated at ground level in a otherwise undisturbed rainforest setting would only create a zone of complete destruction some 300 yards (275m) in diameter.32 Indeed, the ability of the thick vegetation to soak up blast, heat flash and radioactive fall out was so effective that the study claimed that after moving beyond a 500 yard (457m) diameter very few immediate casualties would be caused at all. Variations of these calculations using modeling based on nuclear airbursts and less dense categories of forests were also included but even the most effective result obtained could only offer the prospect of a 2600 yard (2.36 km) diameter immediate casualty zone.33 The effects of this tree cover were only exacerbated if those areas encompassing the valleys, ridges and mountains of the highlands were added to the mix.34 The capacity of these natural features to deflect and channel blast waves was significant and the effect had been widely acknowledged since it was first reported in the post-operational assessments of the Nagasaki bombing.35

Consideration as to how SEATO’s communist opponents would most likely conduct their operations in the expectation of SEATO intervention also had to be factored in.

32 ‘A Study on the effects of nuclear air attacks upon selected logistic targets in south China and North Vietnam’, revised draft paper, Australian Joint intelligence Committee, 9 February 1956, NAA: A1838/269, TS688/18 Part 1.

33 Ibid.34 Ibid.35 See Office of History & Heritage Resources, US Department of Energy, The Manhattan Project: an Interactive

History, The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945 http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/nagasaki.htm.

139H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

Despite the best efforts of Peng Te Huai the PLA was still an overwhelmingly infantry- dominated army as was the PAVN. In any conventional military invasion by the communist powers of their Southeast Asian neighbours SEATO expected them to make a virtue of this reality and begin their offensives with surprise attacks by light infantry formations punching through the more remote and jungle-covered areas of the region.36 These attacks would aim to cut road links and overrun smaller towns and villages before converging upon provincial capitals and other prime objectives. SEATO planners assumed that these light infantry formations would leave their heavy towed artillery behind but would still carry large-calibre recoilless rifles and heavy mortars, and, in some cases, mountain guns or pack artillery with them.37 It was also assumed that both the PLA and PAVN would invest a lot of energy and resources in establishing pre-prepared clandestine supply dumps throughout North Vietnam, Laos and even parts of Cambodia, to ensure that these light infantry formations could not only mount their initial surprise attacks but also so they could remain mobile and avoid becoming road-bound thereafter.38

The upshot of this appraisal was that, at least in the first wave of any regional-scale communist conventional military invasion, the targeting of communist field formations with atomic bombs would be a waste of resources. It would be better instead to reserve their use for a strategic bombing campaign aimed at establishing conventional SEATO air superiority over the region as quickly as possible and destroying and disrupting the communist lines of communication and supply. By so doing the communist ability to sustain their offensive beyond the initial wave of attacks would quickly dissipate, their advance would be halted and SEATO could concentrate on preparing to deliver its own counter-offensive to liberate communist occupied territory and launch a seaborne invasion of North Vietnam, reminiscent of the Inchon landings in the Korean War. SEATO Plan 4 followed this concept of operations and called for this strategic bombing campaign to begin immediately upon confirmation that a large-scale communist invasion was underway. As part of this campaign some thirty targets were nominated as priority targets for nuclear attack, of which no less than eighteen were jet-capable airfields located in

36 ‘Outline Concept of Enemy Operations’, Section VII, Attachment 1, Annex ‘A’, Agenda ‘A’, Summary Report of the Sixth SEATO Intelligence Committee, Bangkok, [?] December 1960, NAA; A1838/269, TS688/19, Part 9.

37 No light infantry division actually existed on the official PLA order of battle during this period so, on the basis of their assumption, the SEATO planners made one up by stripping the standard 14,000-strong PLA infantry division of a 1,000 men and its normal complement of towed howitzers, anti-aircraft (AA) guns and field artillery, and ‘replacing’ them with heavy mortars, extra AA heavy machine guns and some batteries of Soviet World War II-era 76-mm mountain guns: SEAP 7 draft ‘Handbook on the Communist Chinese Military Forces’, AWM 122 68/2011, Australian War Memorial.

38 Memorandum, Australian Joint Intelligence Committee, 24 January 1956, A1838/269, TS688/18 Part 1.

140 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

North Vietnam and southern China.39 SEATO intelligence estimates calculated that by 1965 China possessed ninety-three airfields capable of supporting jet fighter and light bomber operations of which those in Southern China (i.e. in range of the SEATO area of operations) could accommodate approximately 330 jet fighters and 128 jet bombers at any one time.40

Apart from the airfields the other targets nominated for nuclear attack included ‘the supply complexes of Canton, Kunming, Chungking and Hanoi/Haiphong, ports and submarine bases in South China and enemy troop concentrations and movements’.41 The aim of these nuclear strikes and the conventional air campaign following in their wake was to ‘destroy the enemy capacity and will to fight’.42 With this in mind the possibility that follow-up nuclear strikes against some of these targets might be required in the later phases of SEATO Plan 4 was kept open, although the overall emphasis switched to conventional bombing missions for those stages.43 This dovetailed nicely with the relatively small numbers of strategic bombers that the American Strategic Air Command was prepared to commit to such a venture.44 Pre-occupied with preparing for World War III, primarily against the Soviet Union, SAC was loathe to see any of its assets potentially diverted from that task and assigned to a self-described ‘limited war’ scenario in South East Asia.

The burden of SEATO’s atomic deterrent had to fall on the shoulders of the US Strategic Air Command because there were little realistic alternative delivery options available during this period. The first intercontinental ballistic missiles were only just beginning to be introduced into service at the end of the 1950s as were submarine-launched ballistic missile systems.45 Both had problems associated with accuracy at this stage of their development, and, more importantly, they were few in number and those that did become available were immediately tasked for duty as strategic counterparts against similarly emerging threats being developed by the Soviets. As for the tactical ground-

39 “Nuclear Weapons – Rusk Talks”, memorandum, A. J. Eastman, First Asst Secretary, Defence Liaison Branch, to Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister of External Affairs, 4 May 1962, NAA: A1838/346, TS688/33.

40 US Department of Defence, Military Assistance Reappraisal FY1967-71, Volume I, Chicom Military Forces, June 1965, Chapter 2.

41 ‘Nuclear Weapons – Rusk Talks’, memorandum, A. J. Eastman, First Asst Secretary, Defence Liaison Branch, to Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister of External Affairs, 4 May 1962, NAA: A1838/346, TS688/33.

42 Ibid.43 Ibid.44 The force commitment figures supplied to the rest of SEATO by the Americans in relation to Plan 4 show that

under the original ‘nuclear option’ the Americans felt that no more than thirty of their strategic bombers were required to meet the phase one objectives of the air campaign, backed up by another 40 land-based ‘medium’ bombers, in addition to 200 tactical fighters and fighter bombers.: ibid.

45 See Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin and Milton M. Hoeing, Nuclear Wepons Databook, Vol. I, US Nuclear Forces and Capabilities (Cambridge, MA, 1984).

141H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

based atomic weapons systems developed by the US Army, such as the Davy Crockett recoilless rifle, Honest John surface-to-surface missile or the M65 Atomic Cannon and its successors, these were of little use to SEATO planners because of their short range and the geo-political constraints they would have faced if used. Not only was the terrain in South East Asia generally much less suitable for the deployment of these weapon systems than in West-Central Europe but the political stability and local infrastructure required to securely accommodate their deployment was also missing, the most obvious point being that there were no standing peacetime SEATO commitments of US ground forces to the region. And even if the US had trusted a regional SEATO member such as Thailand as being capable of safeguarding in situ atomic arms dumps (which was extremely unlikely, to say the least) the other problem was that the key frontline regional states neighbouring China and North Vietnam – Burma, Laos and South Vietnam – were not members of SEATO.

The implication was clear, that even if they could be re-united with their American owners such tactical atomic ground based units, wherever they went, would be faced with the same problem of jungle terrain and lack of worthwhile targets that confronted SEATO planners examining the feasibility of assigning ‘opportunity’ targets in the field to SAC. The small range limitations of these weapon systems meant that they certainly had no hope of hitting anything in Southern China or North Vietnam. Couple these issues with the fact that like SAC the US Army never felt it had tactical nuclear assets ‘to spare’ and guarded their prospective use very jealously, with a strong focus on its NATO mission, and it is no surprise that there was never any serious suggestion made with regard to using them in SEATO operations. SEATO’s atomic battlefield would remain a strictly strategic battlefield.

While no one could really argue with the logic behind this argument it raised some immediate concrete problems for the alliance. The first of which was that given the reduced atomic dividend that regional member states could expect in the first phase of a Plan 4 situation, Pakistan and Thailand, in particular, had to invest in a large scale conventional build up of their ground forces to try and withstand the first wave of communist assaults. This was not going to happen without a substantial, sustained – and expensive – program of American military aid. That wasn’t all. In addition to these regional forces there was going to have to be a significant commitment of conventional forces to the defensive action of the first phase by non-regional SEATO members. The estimate for Plan 4 called for the equivalent of four outside SEATO divisions to deploy to the region within thirty to seventy-five days.46 The US was adamant that its Marine divisions would not be made

46 Minute, ‘SEATO Plan 4/1961’, Australian Defence Committee, 16 February 1961, NAA: A1209/134, 61/315 Part 1.

142 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

available for this first phase of SEATO operations – they had to be held in reserve for the amphibious counter-offensive operations that would come later.47 In the arguments over the exact breakdown of conventional force commitments that followed it was made clear to the United Kingdom, France, Australia and New Zealand that, collectively, they would be expected to contribute the equivalent of at least two of the four non-regional SEATO infantry divisions required for rapid deployment in Phase One under a Plan 4 scenario. However, due to the increasing troop commitments France was having to make to its war in Algeria during much of this period, the reality was that most of this force burden fell on the three non-regional British Commonwealth members of SEATO (Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – the other Commonwealth member being Pakistan).

The other SEATO members, besides bemoaning the level of conventional forces they were being asked to commit despite being in an alliance possessing atomic weapons, also had another reason to feel a little short-changed with the US over SEATO nuclear strategy – and that was the lack of a formal mechanism within SEATO to collectively authorise the use of nuclear weapons in SEATO operations. This takes us into the political issue of command and control, for from the very start SEATO planners had assumed that ultimate authorisation for the use of nuclear weapons would have to be a political decision, taken at the highest level, rather than a military one. Statements to this effect often preceded reports and updates by SEATO military advisers to their respective governments on Plans 2, 4 and 6 – all scenarios potentially involving the use of nuclear weapons. But as work on plans 4 and 6 progressed to a point where individual officers were being nominated as candidates for the various field commands to be activated upon a plan’s implementation, some SEATO members began to question the apparent impossibility of reconciling such statements with the operational requirements of Plan 4. They noted Plan 4 called for a SEATO air campaign involving nuclear and conventional air strikes to begin from the outset of Phase One, yet there was no agreed protocol even to begin discussions between SEATO member governments regarding the authorisation of the use of nuclear weapons by alliance forces.

From the US standpoint the ambiguity served its purposes perfectly and the last thing it wanted was to have some permanent bureaucratic multi-national body having any sort of say in US nuclear strategy. Washington’s SEATO allies would simply have to accept it on trust that, come the fateful hour, there would be political consultation at the highest level before the bombers were let loose. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations

47 Ibid.

143H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

made sure to stress this point in discussions with their SEATO allies on this issue. But other than that both administrations refused to countenance any suggestion that more formal arrangements were required. The US, in the shape of the Strategic Air Command, would supply and deliver the atomic component of Plan 4 or any other SEATO plan and beyond that there was little else the other SEATO allies really needed to know in relation to the execution of that aspect of operations. All SEATO members had been involved in the planning processes behind Plan 4 and they knew the numbers involved, including the overwhelming conventional superiority of the PLA which could only be offset by the use of atomic bombs as early as possible.

Nonetheless the election to the White House of John Kennedy saw this question openly raised within SEATO forums largely at the behest of the Australian and New Zealand governments who were worried by the ‘all or nothing’ implications of Plan 4 and the fact that it called for the immediate introduction of atomic weapons rather than a graduated response. It seems the Australians and New Zealanders were encouraged by the new strategic doctrine of Flexible Response to which the Kennedy administration had committed itself and hoped this new thinking would flow through to the American approach to their utilisation of atomic weapons in SEATO contingency planning. For despite the American assurances about political consultation it was hard to take these seriously given the crucial role in stopping the communist invasion that atomic strikes and their early use had to play under the existing Plan 4 scenario. Certainly the idea that, say, New Zealand, could exercise a political veto over the use of nuclear weapons against the will of the US in such a round of consultations under these circumstances seemed far-fetched.

Garnering support from the French and to a lesser extent the British, they pressed for and succeeded in obtaining a review of Plan 4 that excluded the use of atomic weapons from the outset.48 The results were disappointing from the Antipodean point of view: to achieve the same Phase One results in a similar timeframe using conventional SEATO forces only – that is, to halt a full-scale conventional communist invasion of the so-called Protocol States, Thailand and Burma – SEATO ground forces needed to be increased by three divisions (all to be supplied from non-regional members) but more importantly the SEATO air campaign would require the deployment of 685 heavy and medium land-based bombers, 300 tactical fighter/fighter-bomber aircraft and another 200 carrier-based bombers and fighters.49 Plan 4 was predicated on the ability of SEATO forces and surviving

48 Australian Military Advisers report, Fifteenth SEATO Military Advisers’ Conference, [?] October 1961, NAA: A1209/134, 61/1239.

49 Report, Australian Joint Planning Committee, 12 July 1963, NAA: A5799/17, 39/1963.

144 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Laotian and South Vietnamese forces being able to absorb and ultimately block the first wave of communist invaders along a line that roughly followed the Mekong River before cutting east across Southern Laos and Vietnam to Da Nang.50 Thereafter SEATO would pause, soften up the enemy with intensive air and naval interdiction and then launch a counteroffensive spearheaded by an amphibious invasion of North Vietnam.51 This was based on SEATO achieving total air superiority from the outset of the campaign and its ability to annihilate the communist line of communications and prevent successive waves of communist reinforcements reaching the front in any significant numbers or level of cohesiveness. The SEATO strategic air campaign was essential to the success of Plan 4, and given the constraints SEATO had to operate under with regard to the lack of large modern available ground forces, and an inability to pre-deploy to block the main invasion routes there was simply no alternative to it.

Before the arguments over where the three extra divisions worth of non-regional troops would come from could even begin, the Australians and New Zealanders already knew that the argument in favour of a non-atomic or even graduated response version of Plan 4 was dead. The only SEATO member theoretically capable of providing the 685 heavy and medium land-based bombers required was the United States, and of course the reality was that this represented such a high proportion of SAC’s operational strength that to do so would have seriously undermined the strategic defensive posture of the United States vis a vis the Soviet Union during this period. That was not going to happen. Regardless of the real implications of Flexible Response for nuclear strategy and tactics in NATO contingency planning, for SEATO it made no difference at all. If Plan 4 went into effect atomic bombs would be used immediately and in wide-ranging strategic strikes in Southern China and North Vietnam far from the frontline battlefield itself. It would literally be a case of repeating the Hiroshima attack over Hanoi.

The British had shared the original concerns that the contingency plans reduced any political consultation over the use of atomic weapons to a fait accompli but they followed this later argument over Plan 4 with less concern than their Commonwealth counterparts because they had already embarked upon an alternative course with regard

50 In this respect Plan 4 followed the same broad concept of operations as the previous SEATO limited war scenario, ‘Plan 2’, except that it expanded it to include Burma, East Pakistan and The Philippines as part of the area of opera-tions. Report on SEATO MPO Plan 2/59, Australian Defence Committee, 10 September 1959, NAA:A2031/8, 90/1959; Australian Military Advisers report, Fifteenth Military Advisers Conference, [?] October 1961, NAA: A1209/134, 61/1239.

51 The Americans committed themselves to providing two US Marine divisions for this counter-offensive phase of operations and for this reason insisted that the Marines had to be held in reserve during the defensive phase of Plan 4: ibid.

145H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

to the American policy: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Taking the logic of the American argument that as the only SEATO member able to contribute atomic assets to SEATO contingency plans it was only right that the US retained complete national control over the operational detail of that aspect of those plans, the British decided that the way to ensure that they had some say in the final decision to use nuclear weapons in South East Asia was to step up and make part of their own nuclear arsenal available for SEATO operations. This was no easy task, and one not helped by the fact that the Americans did not offer any encouragement or assistance to the British to achieve this goal.

In fact, much to the frustration of the British, the Americans refused to take them seriously, pointing out that despite the fact that the British went on to spend millions of pounds upgrading runway and storage facilities at RAF Tengah in Singapore, RAF Butterworth in Malaysia and RAF Gan in the Maldives they still had less than 150 V-bombers, which made up their entire nuclear strategic strike force.52 This American scepticism was largely due to the initial contingency plan the British presented to the Americans, Operation Mastodon, which called for twenty-four of these precious V-bombers to be dispatched to Singapore should a large-scale war threaten the region.53 The Americans simply did not believe that the British would, and nor did they really want them to, send out up to twenty per cent of their entire strategic nuclear strike force to Southeast Asia in the face of a regional crisis and thus leave themselves dangerously exposed in Europe in the event of hostile Soviet action there. It was not until the British actually deployed an aircraft carrier, equipped with nuclear bomb carrying Scimitar jets, on station at Singapore naval base from 1960 onwards that the Americans at last began to pay attention.54 Even then it took another two years before the British finally achieved their goal and their carrier battle group was allocated a couple of Plan 4 nuclear targets related to the anticipated Chinese axis of advance through Burma.55

It is questionable whether this final result really did give the British much more influence over the Americans and the final decision to go nuclear under SEATO Plan 4 or 6 than could be exercised by the non-nuclear capable SEATO members. It certainly achieved the goal of forcing the Americans to allow the British access to the details and play a role in the ongoing planning for the opening nuclear bombing campaign, but that did not mean the British held any great leverage in so far as altering its inflexible,

52 Matthew Jones, ‘Up the Garden Path? Britain’s Nuclear history in the Far East, 1954-1962’, The International History Review 25:2 (June 2003), 307-8.

53 Ibid., 320-1, 329.54 Ibid., 325.55 Ibid., 326.

146 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

effectively immediate, trigger point was concerned. For despite the enormous cost of this British effort in terms of the military and diplomatic resources expended it seems clear that the Americans only allowed the British to assume responsibility for what could best be described as secondary priority atomic targets in the Burma area of operations. So even under the wildest scenario imaginable, where a British government unilaterally tried to delay the initiation of atomic attacks by withholding their contribution to the SEATO nuclear strike force, such a threat would have no impact on Plan 4’s requirement for the need to hit priority nuclear targets during the first days of the SEATO air campaign to halt a communist invasion. The fact was that the immediate resort to atomic attacks contained within Plan 4 would remain the key conceptual feature of the contingency plan for as long as there was a need for it. The unique mix of the overwhelming communist conventional threat and geo-physical constraints found in the SEATO region ensured that this would be the case.

One last aspect of SEATO’s preparations which should be briefly considered is the complete lack of them in regard to the need for defensive measures taken against nuclear strikes by communist forces. SEATO never asked its member states to specifically train their respective armed forces to fight in a tactical nuclear environment nor did it carry out joint exercises to rehearse operations under such conditions. On the face of it this was not an unreasonable stance given that neither communist China or North Vietnam possessed such capabilities during this period. As for the possibility of Soviet-supplied atomic bombs or intervention by Soviet nuclear forces, even at the height of Sino-Soviet co-operation in the mid-1950s SEATO planners exhibited an extremely high level of confidence in the assumption that the Soviet Union would never supply nuclear bombs to the Chinese or use them on their behalf in the event of a regional war in South East Asia. Why there was such confidence about this is not entirely clear – as the Australian External Affairs First Assistant Secretary A.J. Eastman wrote rather drolly in a briefing to his minister in 1962:

The hypothetical basis of Plan 4 is that not all of China’s resources would be engaged and that virtually all of the resources of the Soviet Union would remain unengaged. A major objective of SEATO powers would be to try to limit the conflict and prevent the engagement of those unengaged resources. To use nuclear weapons and leave these forces unengaged may or may not be possible; but one wonders whether dropping nuclear bombs on perhaps as many as thirty targets in North Vietnam and stretching across Southern China from Kunming to Canton is the way to do it.56

56 ‘Nuclear Weapons – Rusk Talks’, memorandum, A. J. Eastman, First Asst Secretary, Defence Liaison Branch, to Sir Garfield Barwick, Australian Minister of External Affairs, 4 May 1962, NAA: A1838/346, TS688/33.

147H I R O S H I M A O V E R H A N O I

Again though there is no explicit linkage made between the Soviet nuclear arsenal and the possibility of it being added to the potential hornet’s nest that SEATO’s own use of nuclear weapons against North Vietnam and Southern China might stir up by way of a Soviet response.

As for China’s own efforts in this area SEATO was kept informed about China’s nuclear weapons testing program and did not deem it an immediate threat, but merely one to monitor. China did eventually succeed in exploding its first atomic bomb on 16 October 1964 at the Lop Nur test site in the deserts of the Xinjiang Uigher Autonomous Region, in north-western China, but even then the SEATO Military Advisers Group still felt no need for any dramatic overhaul of Plan 4 or 6.57 The intelligence regarding PLA military effectiveness being gathered by the various SEATO members led them to believe that the Chinese were still some way off from perfecting the modern tactical delivery systems and other technical and operational standards needed to use them against Western forces in the field. So long as SEATO could achieve air superiority over the battlefield there was no need for immediate panic over the Chinese scientific breakthrough, given the lack of modern strategic bombers or modern missile artillery in the PLA’s arsenal.58 By then the Sino-Soviet split and its dire ramifications for the PLA’s force modernisation programs had also become better understood in Western intelligence circles. But from that point on SEATO’s planner’s had to know that the ‘golden age’ of SEATO commanding the atomic battlefield all to itself was over – it was now just a question of ‘when’ not ‘if ’. They knew that eventually the basic assumptions underlying SEATO’s contingency planning would have to be completely revised come the day when the PLA finally perfected its own capacity to wage war on the atomic battlefield.

By October 1964, however, the focus in the SEATO region was already firmly swinging sharply towards counterinsurgency operations and the increasingly disturbing reports coming from South Vietnam, one of the so-called Protocol States that SEATO had taken upon itself to protect from communist aggression regardless of the fact that South Vietnam, as per the Geneva Accords, could not be a member of the alliance. The United States, already heavily involved with South Vietnam, was becoming increasingly

57 For more on the history of the Chinese atomic bomb program see John Wilson Lewis & Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA, 1988).

58 At this time, the Chinese could only call upon a handful of Hong 6 heavy bombers, a local version of the Soviet Tu-16 Badger painstakingly reverse-engineered at great cost and a glacial pace, to provide a nuclear air delivery capability. The accompanying Chinese dongfeng (East Wind) missile program was more successful but confined itself to experimental designs until the operational deployment of the 1,450 km range DF-2 in 1966, and then only in very small numbers. These were concentrated in northeast China and reportedly targeted against major cities and large US bases in Japan and South Korea: Lewis & Litai, China Builds the Bomb, 201, 207, 210-13.

148 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

frustrated with its inability to mobilise a co-ordinated response within SEATO towards that troubled country thanks most notably to the intransigence and obstructionism of France and, increasingly, Pakistan. This would only worsen in 1965 and when President Lyndon Johnson did finally introduce US combat forces into South Vietnam he did so unilaterally, not under the auspices of SEATO and its Plan 7, created for just such a counterinsurgency scenario. However, within two years of Johnson’s decision, a ‘coalition of the willing’, including SEATO members, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and The Philippines, had sent troops to fight along side the Americans in operations that, in general terms, bore a not dissimilar resemblance to Plan 7, at least in their early stages.59 And if the atomic dividend offered in Plan 4 had turned out to be less than many might have hoped for in the first flush of the atomic age, nuclear weapons had absolutely nothing to offer US and Allied commanders dealing with the classic problems of counterinsurgency they were now confronted with in the countryside and cities of Vietnam.

59 Less than two months after the landing of the 9th US Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Da Nang on 8 March 1965 the Australian government announced on 29 April that it was committing an infantry battalion for service in South Vietnam and the New Zealand government followed suit a month later by committing an artillery battery. Both countries had made small contributions of trainers and other non-combatant support units prior to these announcements, however the latter marked the first clear-cut deployment of operational combat units: Ian McGibbon, New Zealand’s Vietnam War: A History of Combat, Commitment and Controversy (Auckland, 2010), 74-6. Thailand committed itself to sending a 3,300-strong volunteer regiment in January 1967 (later replaced by a complete Royal Thai Army division in 1968) and The Philippines raised a 2000-strong ‘Civic Action Group’, staffed it is true mainly with engineer and medical units but one that also contained its own ‘security’ battalion complete with a 105mm artillery battery – a combat force by any measure: Stanley Robert Larson & James Lawton Collins, Vietnam Studies, Allied Participation in Vietnam (Washington, DC, 1975), 27-32, 40-2, 63-4.

149

The Vietnam People’s Army: Victory at Home (1975), Success in Cambodia (1989)

Carlyle A. Thayer

Introduction

On 22 December 1944, the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) established a guerrilla unit known as the Vietnam Propaganda and Liberation Army. This force comprised thirty-four men under the command of Vo Nguyen Giap. The Vietnam Propaganda and Liberation Army quickly grew in size and by March 1945 it totaled 1,000 soldiers organised into thirteen companies. It was renamed the Vietnam Liberation Army.

In August 1945 the VCP-led Viet Minh seized power and the military underwent another phase of rapid expansion. Its numbers reached 100,000 main force regulars in late 1946 when hostilities broke out with France. In February 1951, communist-led military forces were given their present designation, the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA, Quan Doi Nhan Dan). As a result of internal mobilisation and assistance from Communist China the VPA not only grew in size but in structure. By 1954 the VPA totaled 400,000. The VPA regular or main forces (Chu Luc) were organised into seven divisions (Dai Doan), a number of independent regiments (Trung Doan) and Battalion Combat Teams with a total strength of 80,000.

During its sixty-five years of existence the VPA fought and prevailed in four major conflicts: the anti-French Resistance War (1946-54), the anti-American War (1959-75), the Border War with China (February-March 1979) and the Cambodian Conflict (1977-89). This paper will focus on two case studies: the impact of victory on the VPA following the anti-American War in 1975 and the impact of victory in Cambodia in 1989.

Victory at Home (1975)

During the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese communists adopted the propaganda fiction that southern political and military forces were independent entities. Communist military forces in the south, for example, were called the People’s Liberation Armed

150 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Forces. Increasingly during the Vietnam War VPA main forces came to dominate the southern battlefield. They were supported by southern regular, regional and local forces. The VCP Politburo in Hanoi set military strategy and the Central Office South Vietnam (COSVN; more accurately the Central Committee Directorate for Southern Vietnam or Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam) consisting of high-level party officials and military officers, executed this strategy. In the aftermath of military victory in 1975 there was no need to formally integrate southern communist military forces into the VPA because they had been operating under a unified command since 1961.

The Vietnam War ended with unexpected suddenness. In the short space of fifty-five days a communist military offensive centred on the highlands town of Ban Me Thuot was expanded into a nationwide offensive, the Ho Chi Minh Campaign, that resulted in the unconditional surrender of all civil and military forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). The swiftness of victory was unexpected even to the architects of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. The attack on Ban Me Thuot, for example, was originally planned as the opening shot in a series of offensives designed to continue into 1976. According to Van Tien Dung:

The strategic resolution of the Political Bureau was put into effect through the 1975–76 two-year strategic plan: in 1975 we would strike unexpectedly with large, widespread offensives, and create conditions to carry out a general offensive and uprising in 1976. In 1976 we would launch the general offensive and uprising to liberate the South completely.1

According to VCP theorists, the ‘national democratic’ stage of revolution came to an end on 30th April 1975 when the Republic of Vietnam unconditionally surrendered its forces. The official party newspaper, Nhan Dan, 5 September 1975, wrote that ‘the Vietnamese revolution has entered a new stage. This change consists mainly of our country’s shift from war to peace … and from simultaneously fulfilling two strategic tasks to execution by the entire country of a common strategic task: socialist revolution and construction.’

The sections below examine the impact of victory on the VPA under three headings: military rule, maintenance of public order and security, and economic construction.

1 Van Tien Dung, Our Great Spring Victory (New York, 1977), 25.

151T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Military rule

The Ho Chi Minh Campaign led to the disintegration of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Soldiers broke rank and deserted. Some took to looting and armed violence. The sudden evacuation of American personnel, the immediate cut in US assistance, and the collapse of central authority, added to the chaos. In the confusion of this period tens of thousands of civilians were internally displaced.

The first priority of VCP in establishing control over South Vietnam was to ensure the maintenance of public order and security. The VPA was given responsibility for this task. General administrative functions as well as security was placed in the hands of Military Management Committees (MMCs) that were set up in the cities and provinces of South Vietnam.

The MMCs, although mixed civil-military units, were under firm party control. For example, the Saigon-Gia Dinh MMC, established on 3 May 1975, was headed by Colonel General Tran Van Tra, a member of the party’s Central Committee. The Saigon-Gia Dinh MMC quickly instituted the communist household registration system at hamlet and neighbourhood levels. The new security system consisted of cells of ten-twelve households which were to register all members and to report absences as well as the arrival of visitors.

The MMCs were also set up at province level and below throughout South Vietnam. As security conditions improved, they were replaced by civilian-dominated People’s Revolutionary Committees (PRC). For example, the Saigon-Gia Dinh MMC handed over power to the Ho Chi Minh City (as Saigon was renamed) PRC on 21 January 1976. The transition from martial law to civilian rule was completed by April 1976 when North and South were formally reunified under the name Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The People’s Liberation Armed Forces discarded southern nomenclature and symbols and were formally merged into the VPA without public ceremony.

Maintenance of public order and security

The sudden collapse of the RVN was an unprecedented event for it left a majority of its military forces under arms. In the interval between the occupation of urban and provincial centres by communist-led military units and the imposition of martial law, thousands of armed ARVN troops went into hiding. Some ARVN soldiers conducted diehard resistance to communist rule. They operated in scattered and uncoordinated

152 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

groups in isolated pockets mainly in provinces adjacent to the Cambodian border. Anti-communist resistance activity was also carried out by ethnic minority groups in the central highlands associated with the FULRO movement,2 by Hoa Hao militia located in An Giang province, and, to a lesser extent, by armed Catholic dissidents. In 1976, it was estimated that the combined strength of these anti-communist groups ranged between 12,000 and 50,000.3

It is therefore not surprising that among the first communiqués issued by the communist authorities were those dealing with the registration of enemy personnel and the surrender of arms at specifically designated centres. It quickly became apparent that the MMCs lacked adequate manpower to cope with such an enormous task and deadlines had to be repeatedly extended. By late August 1975 only one-third of ARVN personnel had registered. By December the figure had risen to one million including RVN civil officials; perhaps 575,000 went unregistered.

The VPA was tasked with setting up re-education camps for former enemy personnel, including RVN officials, and ARVN officers and enlisted men, where they were subject to political indoctrination. The vast majority of ARVN personnel were released after a short period of confinement. The re-education camps were quickly turned over the Ministry of the Interior which replicated the northern system of detention centres in the south. Members of the ARVN officer corps were subjected to prolonged periods of confinement, often in harsh conditions. According to one close observer, ‘men who had been regarded as prisoners of war became transformed into political criminals, needing to be punished’.4

In the immediate aftermath of victory, in addition to maintaining domestic order and security, the VPA was assigned various tasks that can be grouped under the expression ‘stabilising the lives of the people’. VPA personnel and party security units were ordered to take charge of public utilities and vital industries. They were aided by covert agents who had been placed in the RVN administration during the course of the war. No major acts of sabotage were reported and water and electricity continued to be provided for Saigon residents. Security details were organised to protect each installation against sabotage. As conditions stabilised, the military became involved in transporting refugees back to their native villages. These included persons displaced by the offensives in central Vietnam in March-April as well as longer-term refugees who had fled fighting in the countryside.

2 Front Unifié de Lutte des Races Opprimées or United Front for the Struggle of the Oppressed Races. 3 Douglas Pike, ‘Vietnam During 1976: Economics in Command’, Asian Survey. 17 (1977): 1, 34-42.4 Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (London, 1995), 90.

153T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Economic construction

After the formal reunification of Vietnam, the VCP decided not to demobilise its large standing army but to engage it directly in repairing war damage and undertake economic construction more generally. The military therefore became involved in four main areas: agriculture, industry, communications and transport, and capital construction.

Among the specific jobs assigned to the military were: building new economic zones where displaced persons were resettled; taking part in capital construction projects; such as building roads, railways (for example, the 365 km Vinh-Hue section of the Thong Nhat north-south line), pipelines, industrial plants, airports, ports, and civil installations; taking part in afforestation and forest exploitation projects; and engaging in land cultivation and livestock breeding. The VPA Navy helped to expand the nation’s fishing fleet, repair freighters and assumed responsibility for oil and gas exploration in addition to the transportation of merchandise between north and south.

In order to accommodate the growing demand for manpower in civilian reconstruction, military conscription was broadened to include service with ‘labour shock brigades’. The VPA was also assigned the additional responsibility of socialising southern youths into the values of a socialist society and work patterns of a relatively modern organisation.

These developments provoked dissent within the military on the part of middle and high ranking officers who objected to the diversion of the VPA from military tasks. They argued that continued and increased VPA involvement in reconstruction would degrade combat readiness, erode discipline and delay the process of regularisation and modernisation. According to one Hanoi-based observer, ‘some officers point[ed] to the already demonstrated threat to the southern border and argu[ed] that it was dangerous to reduce the military’s combat readiness and effectiveness’.5 In May 1976, Vo Nguyen Giap intervened and argued that the tasks of national defence and economic construction were interdependent.6 In October of that year the party’s Political Bureau re-endorsed the military’s involvement in economic work by stressing that it was ‘a fundamental and urgent demand of the revolution’.7 That month a General Directorate for Economic Development was created within the Ministry of National Defence to oversee the efforts of army units in economic reconstruction tasks.

5 Christopher Ray, Vietnam: Reconstruction and the Chinese Invasion – An Eyewitness Account (Forrest Lodge, 1979), 24.

6 Vo Nguyen Giap, ‘Xay Dung Nen Quoc Phong Toan Dan Vung Manh, Bao Ve To Quoc Viet Nam Xa Hoi Chu Nghia’, Hoc Tap, May 1977, 13-45.

7 Ray, Vietnam, 24.

154 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

The matter of the military’s involvement in economic reconstruction was further considered at the VCP’s Fourth National Party Congress in late 1976. The congress adopted a resolution that set out the VPA’s tasks in the new stage. According to this document:

our armed forces have two tasks: always to stand ready to fight and to defend the fatherland and to actively participate in economic construction. In this spirit, we must enforce the regime of military service and the army’s duty to build the economy. We must strive to develop the national defence industry.8

The role of the VPA was further elaborated in a speech given by Senior General Van Tien Dung:

The army must play an important role in redistributing the work force throughout the country and building and consolidating strategic areas which are important for both the economy and national defence. The entire army must clearly display the sense of the need to perform labour, to economically build the army, to bring the sense of socialist collective ownership into play in building the country; to increase its knowledge of economic laws, and of production science and technique, and to implement systems and regulations insuring economic efficiency and managerial discipline. We are resolved to strive to successfully carry out the economic construction task entrusted to our army by the party and state.

In addition to the aforementioned tasks, the party entrusts the army with the duty to act as one of the great schools to train hundreds of thousands of our youths as new socialist human beings who are resolved to defend the fatherland and are at the same time, skilled labourers enthusiastically engaged in building the fatherland and socialism.9

The decision of the 4th Party Congress to intensify the involvement of the VPA in civilian-type economic tasks was a compromise between two tendencies. On the one hand, the VCP leadership could not afford to pursue policies that maintained a large unproductive standing army. On the other hand, neither could Vietnamese leaders sanction a massive demobilisation of VPA soldiers into the civilian economy. Instead, a middle course was chosen. A Hanoi-based journalist has written:

The case for participation by the armed forces in the economic recovery program was strong. A generation of war had left the army with a near monopoly of resources for certain types of construction and it was by far the largest single source of trained cadres. Disciplined, politicized and often possessing important technical skills, the troops were best equipped to meet reconstruction needs on an emergency basis.10

8 Vietnam News Agency, 24 December 1976.9 Hanoi Radio Domestic Service, 16 December 1976.10 Ray, Vietnam, 24.

155T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

In the months following the 4th Party Congress, 20,000 army officers and other ranks were slated for specialised training as district-level economic managers.11 Conscription was extended to take in an estimated twenty-five per cent of all men aged between 18 and 25. Army units, bolstered by this intake, were assigned a variety of specialised tasks including the upgrading of a strategic road network along the Ho Chi Minh Trail; running state farms; construction of large-scale irrigation works; land reclamation and other major projects.

Examples of the army’s employment in civilian economic tasks include the 8th Division, located in the Plain of Reeds, which was reported to have reclaimed and ploughed more than 12,000 hectares of land. Similarly, the Hau Giang Regiment in the 9th Military Region was said to have spent ‘a year of painstaking efforts digging canals, reclaiming land from swampy mangroves and putting up field boundaries’ for a new state farm in the coastal region of Ha Tien. In the Central Highlands, the 775th Regiment was assigned to a major irrigation project on the Dac Uy River in Gia Lai-Kon Tum province. In the same area, the Dong Bang Division was credited with reclaiming 1,000 ha. of land and growing rice and vegetables. In the Viet Bac highlands, to the extreme north, the Bac Son Engineering Regiment was tasked with building a hydroelectric power station. Elsewhere air force units successfully converted an American UH-1 helicopter for crop spraying.

At the same time, other military units continued to train and maintain their combat proficiency. Nevertheless, they too were required ‘to devote a fixed amount of time to stepping up production and making full use of waste and fallow land in various localities, barracks and air fields to produce grain and food’.

Arguments over the army’s proper role in peace, prior to the Fourth Party Congress, were conducted at a time when external threats to Vietnam’s security were low. As early as May 1975 Khmer Rouge forces seized Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Thailand. In September of that year, Khmer Rouge forces crossed into Vietnam and attacked villages near Ha Tien.12 Vietnam and Kampuchea (as Cambodia was then known) reached a border agreement and armed incidents fell off. However, as a result of Pol Pot’s rise to power in Cambodia, the security situation along Vietnam’s south-western border began to deteriorate after April 1977 and steadily escalated the following year. Vietnam conducted major reprisal raids in 1977 and 1978.

11 Vietnam News Agency, 10 October 1977.12 Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh, 92.

156 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Success in Cambodia (1989)

The Vietnam-Cambodia conflict resulted in a deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations. In 1978, for example, the number of border incidents between the two countries rose from 752 in the previous year to 1,108. When Vietnam finally invaded Cambodia in December 1978, China retaliated. On 17 February 1979 a People’s Liberation Army force of more than 400,000 crossed Vietnam’s northern border and mounted a limited-duration punitive attack. They withdrew the following month. According to Chinese sources, Vietnam suffered between 35,000-50,000 casualties in addition to massive destruction carried out on the economic infrastructure of the northern border provinces by departing PLA troops.13 On 5 March 1979 the Vietnamese National Assembly decreed a state of general mobilisation. Vietnamese forces remained in Cambodia for a decade. When the VPA withdrew in September 1989 they left behind a Cambodian state that is still in power today. Vietnam could justifiably claim success in Cambodia. A veteran of the Cambodian conflict, who now holds the rank of lieutenant general, told the author that Vietnam’s success was ‘a miracle’.14

Vietnam’s occupation of Kampuchea and China’s attack on Vietnamese resulted in the rapid expansion of the VPA. Main force strength jumped from 615,000 in 1978 to 1,023,000 in 1979; included in this increase were 400,000 soldiers and 8,000 airmen. This expansion was met by increased conscription and by the diversion of economic construction units to combat duty.

This section is divided into seven parts. It begins with a brief overview setting out the domestic and strategic environment in which Vietnam made the decision to terminate its occupation of Cambodia, withdraw its military forces from that country, and undertake a massive demobilisation of its main forces. Next the section provides details of the demobilisation program and the problems faced by returning veterans. It then looks at disciplinary and rear service problems faced by the military during the period of down-sizing. The section then turns its focus to the employment of discharged soldiers in army-run enterprises and in the national defence industry sector.

Withdrawal from Cambodia

In 1985 Vietnam faced a domestic socio-economic crisis of major proportions due to the failure of its neo-Stalinist economic system. Vietnam also came under pressure from the Soviet Union, led by reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, to carry out economic

13 Edward C. Dowd, Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War (London, 2007), 45.14 Interview, Ho Chi Minh City, 5 August 2010.

157T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

reforms and liquidate the ‘bleeding wound’ of Cambodia. The costs of the Cambodian conflict for Vietnam were high. In response to Vietnam’s use of force against the Khmer Rouge state, most regional states, including China, Japan and the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) declared an embargo on aid, trade and investment with Vietnam. Vietnam was also subject to a long-standing embargo by the United States first imposed on North Vietnam in 1964 and then extended over the entire country following unification in 1975.

In 1984, Vietnam adopted a five-year strategic plan to end the conflict in Cambodia.15 The first phase called for the destruction of resistance camps along the Thai-Cambodian border. This was accomplished during the 1984-85 dry season. The remaining phases included sealing off the border, destruction of resistance guerrilla forces, population security and building up a pro-Vietnamese Cambodian civilian administration and military force. These military initiatives were also accompanied by diplomatic efforts designed to bring the conflict to an end through negotiations.

In late 1986, responding to both domestic and external pressures, the VCP’s Sixth National Congress adopted a comprehensive economic reform program known as doi moi. This program was designed to transform its Soviet-style socialist economy into a ‘multi-sector commodity economy under state direction’. In other words, Vietnam would abolish central planning, experiment with market forces and invite foreign investment from capitalist countries.

In order to accomplish these bold objectives Vietnam first had to liquidate its involvement in Cambodia by successfully carrying out its strategic plan. Pressure from Moscow only reinforced Vietnam’s determination to speed up this process and leave behind a politico-military structure in Cambodia capable of standing on its own. As regional tensions decreased, particularly along the China border, Vietnam found itself able to justify military withdrawals from Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam also closely studied the experiences of the Soviet Union, which had pledged to cut its military manpower by 500,000, and China, which was then in the process of demobilising one million men from its army. These developments then set the stage for Vietnam to withdraw all its military forces from Cambodia and initiate a massive reduction of its standing army.

15 Carlyle A. Thayer, The Vietnam People’s Army Under Doi Moi (Singapore, 1994), 10.

158 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Demobilisation

In 1987, the VPA was at peak strength. Its main force of 1.26 million regulars was the fifth largest standing army in the world. Only the Soviet Union, China, the United States and India had larger military forces. To this number must be added an additional 2.5 million reserves, paramilitary forces and border guards totalling another 1.24 million. In sum Vietnam’s defence force totalled five million.16 Included in this number were an estimated 180,000 troops deployed in Cambodia and a further 40,000 assigned to Laos.

In the second quarter of 1987, following the landmark Sixth National Party Congress, the VCP Politburo met in secret and adopted Resolution No. 2, ‘On Strengthening National Defence in the New Revolutionary Stage’. This resolution approved a plan to ‘strategically readjust’ Vietnamese military forces. Priority was placed on the withdrawal of Vietnamese combat units from Cambodia beginning in June 1988 and concluding in September 1989. Vietnamese military forces were also withdrawn from Laos at the same time.

Resolution No. 2 also authorised a massive force reduction program and approved a new defence doctrine known as ‘people’s war and all people’s national defence’. The new doctrine redefined the roles of the main force, reserves, and other paramilitary units and laid out plans for the construction of ‘defence zones’, the army’s role in the economy and the modernisation of the national defence industry.

Immediately after the adoption of Resolution No. 2, Vietnam carried out a massive demobilisation of its regular army. Three basic approaches were adopted.17 First, selected officers and other ranks were retired early on modest pensions. During the period from mid-1987 to late 1990, according to Defence Minister General Le Duc Anh, 600,000 soldiers, including 100,000 officers, were demobilised, reducing the VPA to 660,000 main force regulars.18 Included in this number were 50,000 Cambodian veterans who were withdrawn in 1988-89.19 According to the VPA Chief of Staff, General Dao Dinh Luyen, Vietnam’s armed forced were reduced but not restructured.20 Reductions were mainly made to infantry, engineering, administration, logistic units and self-defence forces. The artillery corps, communications, air force, and navy were not affected.21 Demobilised regulars were assigned to reserve units and were on call to be mobilised in case of national emergency.

16 The Vietnamese military is organised on three levels: main force and reserves, local regular forces assigned to districts and provinces, and militia and self-defence assigned to villages and urban wards.

17 Joseph De Rienzo, ‘The Challenge of Peace in Vietnam’, Canberra Times, 1 May 1989, 9.18 Agence France-Presse, 23 December 1990.19 Kyodo News Service, 1 November 1990.20 Robert Karniol, ‘Interview with Senior General Dao Dinh Luyen’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 10 April 1993, 32.21 Gwen Robinson, ‘Big military cuts in Vietnam’, Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, July 1990, 7–9.

159T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Vietnam’s large militia and self-defence forces, estimated at twelve per cent of the population, were also slated to be reduced to about eight per cent of the population.22 However, according to one report, ‘a number of localities have “gone overboard” in reducing the size of the forces, with the militia and self-defence forces accounting for only one to two per cent of the population’.23 In Military Region 9, for example, it was reported in late 1990 that only ‘1.09 per cent of the population are members of the military region’s coastal militia and self-defence forces’.24 Drastic cuts in the size of militia and self-defence forces were also confirmed by an article in the army journal that stated ‘[t]he size of the militia and self-defence forces has been reduced to the point where the forces do not have the strength necessary to carry out their tasks’.25 A western defence correspondent reported that by the end of 1990 Vietnam’s self-defence forces had dropped to an estimated three per cent of the population.26

The second approach to demobilisation involved sending soldiers abroad to Europe and the Middle East as civilian guest workers. Between 1987 and 1989, Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defence dispatched more than 25,000 demobilised soldiers and defence industry workers to the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria under labour cooperation programs.27 In 1989, of the 150,000 Vietnamese working abroad, mostly in socialist countries, forty per cent were ex-soldiers.28 The third approach to demobilisation involved restructuring military forces into economic units or engineering and labour teams and engaging them in a variety of production and construction tasks.

Vietnamese officials provided contradictory information on the final targets of the VPA force reductions. In April 1989, for example, Major General Tran Cong Man indicated that the ideal size of the standing army should be set at one per cent of the total population.29 At the same time, Lt General Le Kha Phieu indicated that the VPA would be reduced to 500,000 by 1994.30 Several months later General Man indicated that the ultimate goal was to reduce the standing force to 500,000 by 1992.31 In December 1990

22 Idem, ‘Ta-ta Cambodia, good morning to a quieter Vietnam’, Canberra Times, 30 September 1989. 23 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 20 December 1990, 2.24 Ibid.25 Bui Hong Thai, ‘Khanh Hoa Coordinates Economy, National Defense’, Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, January

1991, 43–9, in US Foreign Broadcast Information Service, East Asia Daily Report FBIS-EAS-91-012, 8 May 1991, 38-42, at 40.

26 Gwen Robinson, ‘Big military cuts in Vietnam’, Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, July 1990, 7–9.27 Vietnam News Agency, 7 July 1989.28 Humphrey Hawksley, ‘Jobs Problem Faces Hanoi’s Legion of ‘Vietnam Veterans’, The Times, 17 April 1989.29 Ibid.; Kyodo News Service, 12 April 1989.30 BBC World Service, Newsreel Program, 17 April 1989.31 Tai Ming Cheung and Murray Hiebert, ‘Coming home’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 28 September 1989, 24.

160 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

it was disclosed that due to high unemployment in the civilian sector, demobilisation of regular forces had been halted.32 This marked the end of the ‘strategic readjustment’ of the VPA decreed by Politburo Resolution No. 2 issued four years earlier.

Over the next eight years Vietnam allowed the size of its main forces to drop from 660,000 in 1991 to 484,000 in 1998.33 A total of 176,000 persons were discharged or 22,000 per year. This reduction in manpower was accomplished by a program of attrition rather than formal demobilisation. In 1993, Senior General Dao Dinh Luyen reported that further cuts in the size of the VPA would continue if the political and economic climate permitted.34 The cuts have all been taken from the army; the navy and air force have not been affected.

Problems of returning veterans

Vietnam’s demobilised veterans entered a society in transition from socialism to a market economy. State enterprises which once relied of government subsidies were now forced to turn a profit in order to survive. Under state regulations, soldiers were theoretically entitled to return to their former employers, but under the ‘new economic mechanism’ many enterprises were in no shape to accept them.35 Demobilised soldiers who failed to find employment joined a labour market with unemployment rates in urban areas as high as twenty to thirty per cent, and high under-employment in the rural areas.36 According to Lt. General Nguyen Thoi Bung, the vast majority of soldiers had received only basic education before they were conscripted.37 Government policy gave them priority in job training and education. However, they were so poorly educated that a major effort was necessary to provide skills that would make them marketable.

The problem of demobilised army men in the south was particularly severe. Most soldiers who fought in Cambodia had been conscripted from this region. They were demobilised en masse over a relatively short period of time. Government services at all levels were strained to the breaking point to cope with such numbers. According to figures for Ho Chi Minh City for the period 1976–89, only 7.2 per cent of all

32 Agence France-Presse, 18 December 1990.33 International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1991/92 (London, 1992), 183, and The Military

Balance 1999/00 (London, 1999), 208.34 Robert Karniol, ‘PAVN Strives to Modernize in a Climate of Austerity’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 3 April 1993, 18.35 Dang Vu Hiep,’Some Issues Relating to the Policy Aimed at Achieving the Task of Building the Army and

Consolidating National Defence in the New Situation’, Tap Chi Quan Doi Nhan Dan, July 1989, carried by Hanoi Domestic Service, 9 July 1989, in US Foreign Broadcast Information Service, East Asia Daily Report FBIS-EAS-89-135, 17 July 1989, 70–4, at 71.

36 Louise Williams, ‘Nation out of cash and out of wars’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 1989. 37 Saigon Giai Phong, 5 August 1989, 1-2.

161T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

demobilised soldiers were able to find full-time employment, 24.7 per cent found part-time work, while the remaining 68.1 per cent worked only intermittently. Of those employed, only 11.5 per cent were hired by government departments or state owned enterprises.38

Returning veterans also faced corruption and discrimination at the hands of local officials. The army newspaper reported, for example, that demobilised soldiers were the last to be hired because prospective employers feared they would be difficult to supervise. Despite official policy, some employers did not give priority in hiring to soldiers who had been officially recognised for exceptional exploits on the battlefield. The same article reported that many well-connected youths, who succeeded in evading the draft, used their influence to wangle vocational training, work abroad or jobs in the state sector at the expense of returning veterans.39 In mid-1991, for example, twenty high-ranking officials in Hai Phong were charged with helping their sons evade the draft.

As early as May 1986, in response to mounting socio-economic difficulties, southern military veterans grouped together and formed a Club of Former Resistance Fighters.40 The Club was initially a mutual aid association dedicated to improving the lives of veterans but after the Sixth Party Congress it began to play a more overtly political role. In 1988, after the death of Premier Pham Hung, a southerner, the Club circulated a petition opposing the party’s official nominee. The Club began publishing its own newspaper that was highly critical of government and party policies. The paper was suppressed.

The activities of the Club took on added political significance in 1989-90, as socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe simultaneously with Vietnam’s military withdrawal from Cambodia and massive demobilisation program. Vietnam’s veteran community, estimated at four million, was a sizeable constituency.41 In early 1990, the leader of the Club of Former Resistance Fighters, Nguyen Ho, demanded that the VCP grant the Club the status of a legal mass organisation. Later in the year, veterans sent hundreds of letters to the party headquarters in Hanoi calling for the re-election of reformist leader, Nguyen Van Linh. Fearing that the southern movement would attract nationwide support from veterans elsewhere, the party intervened. According to Bui Tin, ‘Just before their congress last June [1991], the party leaders retired hundreds of generals

38 Xinhua, 8 September 1989.39 Williams, ‘Nation out of cash and out of wars’.40 Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnam, Asia-Australia Briefing Papers (Sydney, 1992), 45-6.41 Murray Hiebert, ‘Confined to barracks’, Far Eastern Economic Review, l3 June 1991, 28.

162 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

and colonels whom they suspected as a threat to their power’.42 Key club leaders were detained while others were co-opted into a new party-approved body, the Vietnam War Veterans’ Association. This association was then affiliated to the Vietnam Fatherland Front, the control body for mass organisations led by the party.

Desertion and disciplinary problems

In the post-Cambodia period, Vietnam’s general socio-economic malaise, coupled with the difficulties engendered by demobilisation, led to the outbreak of disciplinary problems such as draft-dodging and desertion. In late 1989, Defence Minister Le Duc Anh noted that ‘there have been indications of youths balking at joining the army and afraid of becoming an officer’ (Hanoi Domestic Service, 4 December 1989). In 1991, it was reported that half of those of military age failed to report for the compulsory medical exam.43

The following year an investigation into the causes of desertion by new recruits in the Ta Xanh Division in central Vietnam revealed that they were poorly educated, had low political knowledge, and feared what they considered would be a life of hardship and privation. The manner in which conscription was carried out did little to relieve the anxieties of new recruits. In some areas force was used. After arrival at their unit, according to the investigation report, the new recruits were ‘herded into confined areas surrounded by barbed wire fences and guarded by military and civil police’.44

The report on Ta Xanh Division also noted that wealthy families in one district used their influence to gain exemptions for their children. Influential families used their positions to ensure that their children were not given hardship assignments when fulfilling their military obligations. In some cases where the recruits did not receive favoured assignments they simply deserted.45 At the end of 1990 the desertion rate was as high as thirty per cent in some units.46

In late 1990 the National Assembly adopted amendments to the 1981 Law on Military Service. The length of service for ordinary conscripts was lowered from three to two years and the number of deferment categories was increased.47 Nevertheless

42 Bui Tin, ‘Vietnam: A Revolution Betrayed, Hope Squandered, a Peace Lost’, International Herald Tribune, 21 October 1991.

43 Murray Hiebert, ‘Defeated by Victory’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 June 1991, 24.44 Voice of Vietnam, 28 May 1992.45 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 14 November 1990, 3.46 Agence France-Presse, 18 December 1990.47 Nhan Dan, 5 January 1991, 3-4; Tuoi Tre, 11 January 1992, 7.

163T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

problems of desertion continued to be severe in 1991. A review of the situation in Military Region 2 stated bluntly that ‘the desertion rate has not declined’.48 Even in the Hanoi Capital Military Region unauthorised absences continued to be a problem, especially by conscripts who had criminal records and who incited others to desert. A study of twenty-eight deserters from the Capital Military Region noted that twenty-five per cent said they had deserted because of the harsh discipline meted out by superiors. Soldiers also deserted in order to provide an income for their poor families.49

A report on the Tay Nguyen Corps noted that the average desertion rate for the previous five years stood at fourteen per cent.50 A study of the causes of desertion in Military Region 9 provided the following figures: forty-five per cent due to harsh treatment by superiors, twenty-five per cent due to difficult living conditions and restrictions on behaviour, twenty-five per cent due to homesickness and five per cent due to family pressures.51

In 1992, Military Region 1 issued instructions to subordinate echelons to make strenuous efforts to determine the causes of desertion and to formulate effective policies to retain conscripts in military service. As a result of new policies, during the second half of the year desertion rates in Military Region 1 were reduced by 15–18 per cent compared to the first six months of the year.52 The following year, several units in Military Region 9 reported that they were able to reduce desertion rates to below four per cent during the first six months of 1993 as compared with the same period the previous year.53 The problem of desertion was reduced but not eliminated entirely. The same factors that contributed to the rise of desertion as a major problem also contributed to the rise of other disciplinary problems. In answer to the question why troops still violated discipline, Major General Le Toan noted that army discipline was affected by negative trends taking place in general society.54 The most common problems were theft and the illegal sale of weapons and ammunition.55 The VPA responded to these actions by stepping up political indoctrination and, where necessary, applying punitive measures. Draft-eligible young men who engaged in ‘three oppositions’ – opposition to the registration, opposition to medical check up, and opposition to induction orders

48 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 28 February 1991, 2.49 Ibid., 26 February 1991, 2.50 Voice of Vietnam, 12 September 1991.51 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 19 September 1991, 2.52 Voice of Vietnam, 18 November 1992.53 Ibid., 5 August 1993.54 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 19 March 1992, 2.55 Ibid., 11 February 1991, 2.

164 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

were punished in three stages: public criticism in their residential areas, coercive labour, and finally, prosecution.56 Major General Nguyen Van Phiet reported in early 1992 that these measures were having a remedial effect and that the number of disciplinary violations was generally on the decline.57

Rear service

In 1987, when the Politburo decided to conduct a ‘strategic readjustment’ of military forces by carrying out a large-scale program of troop reduction, it was agreed to fund this program by setting aside a fixed portion of the national budget. Two years later it was revealed that the Ministry of Finance could only come up with two-thirds of the amount of money that had been allocated.58 This resulted in a generalised shortage of all manner of goods and a marked deterioration in the standard of living for military personnel and their families. The Rear Service General Department had neither the cash nor goods and supplies to meet the essential demands of military units. This situation was exacerbated by Vietnam’s inefficient system of subsidies and poor management techniques which also impacted negatively on the families of disabled soldiers and war dead and retirees. According to Senior Lt. General Dang Vu Hiep, a major review of rear service policy noted that efforts at reform had failed because the basic regulations were thirty years out of date and they had not been modified to suit the new situation.59 This was particularly true of the system of salaries, wages, incentives, special allowances and long service benefits. The review quoted by Hiep also noted the general failure of the system to deliver set amounts of supplies in sufficient quantity and quality, at a set price, on the date agreed upon. Conditions along Vietnam’s borders with China and Cambodia and in the Central Highlands were very grim as a graphic account by Lt. General Nguyen Trong Xuyen revealed. In these remote areas daily rations, medicine, clothing and equipment were all in extremely short supply. Mess halls, sleeping quarters and recreational facilities were also lacking.60

56 Tuoi Tre, 11 January 1992, 7.57 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 17 March 1992, 2.58 Text of statement by General Le Duc Anh, member of the Political Bureau of the CPV Central Committee,

Minister of National Defence, and National Assembly deputy from Hanoi, at 25 December 1989 plenary meeting of the sixth session of SRV Eighth National Assembly at the Ba Dinh conference hall in Hanoi, read by announcer, Hanoi home service, 1400 gmt, 26 December 1989, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts FE/0651, 1 January 1990, B/3–B/5.

59 Dang Vu Hiep,’Some Issues’, 70.60 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 7 January 1991, 2.

165T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Defence Minister Le Duc Anh noted other rear service problems in an address to the National Assembly in late 1989. During 1988, Anh noted, because of the shortage of funds, it was not possible to build needed storage facilities or pay the costs of maintaining and repairing weapons and other technical equipment. In his words, ‘rare and valuable items’ were left in a state of disrepair. Minister Anh warned that if funds were not forthcoming in 1990 literally ‘billions of dollars’ worth of valuable equipment could not be repaired or regularly serviced and would have to be discarded. Some of the equipment was so scarce that it could not be replaced even if funds were available. A shortage of funds would also lead to increased privation for troops and their families. In the current situation, with a shrinking budget, about all that could be done was to continue reducing troop numbers.61

The plight of Vietnam’s military was also raised by General Doan Khue in a speech to the Seventh Party Congress in mid-1991. Khue proposed that existing welfare policies which covered the army and its rear echelons be revised in order to ensure that the minimum standards were available so soldiers could satisfactorily fulfil their duties and so that youths were would be attracted to a career in the army.62 General Khue also highlighted the negative effects that budget cuts were having on proper maintenance. In his view it was necessary immediately to collect a large quantity of weapons, ammunition and equipment in need of maintenance and repair and store for future use.63 Doan’s views were seconded by Lt. General Le Kha Phieu who estimated that seventy percent of weapons and ammunition in storage was deteriorating rapidly or already damaged considerably.64

Vietnam’s deteriorating conditions contributed to the rise of theft of state property and other unsanctioned activities. Individual soldiers stole weapons and supplies for resale. Military vehicles were used illegally to transport civilian goods, using the protection afforded their official licence plates. In one notable case airplane frames were undervalued and sold. Police raids in mid-1989 uncovered military units in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that raised funds by showing pornographic videos.65 In sum, military life became less and less attractive when compared with civilian life.66 Young officers sought transfers or early discharge.

61 Text of statement by General Le Duc Anh.62 Voice of Vietnam, 25 June 1991.63 Ibid.64 Jacques Bekaert, ‘VN Army Moving with the Times’, Bangkok Post, 11 January 1992, 4.65 Murray Hiebert, ‘The Joy of Marx’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 31 August 1989, 23.66 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 14 August 1991, 2.

166 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

The VPA found it difficult to recruit candidates for its officer training schools.67 For example, the Army Infantry Academy in Son Tay saw its enrolment drop from 3,500 to 1,000.68 The elite military-run Institute for Science and Technology had difficulty filling its entry quota of one hundred.69 The quality of the new students was lower than before and twenty to thirty per cent were dismissed because they lacked the desire to study.70 Indeed, concern over the future was a ‘burning social issue’ for VPA officers who were slated for discharge or who had been passed over for promotion at a time of force reduction.71

In February 1990, the Ministry for National Defence took the decision to renovate the logistics system by commercialising it. The new system gave greater flexibility to the units involved, helped to alleviate the situation of chronic shortages, and resulted in somewhat better material conditions. Over three years later, however, medical facilities for army veterans were still under-financed.72 According to Major General Dang Huyen Phuong, in the past military units were provided supplies in kind according to set norms. These units had little or no control over delivery schedules, quantity received or even quality. Once the policy of commercialisation was adopted, however, units could take the initiative to purchase grain, foodstuffs and fuel in the open market under contract to suppliers.73 Lt. General Le Hoa argued that the new decentralised commercial system had marked benefits which led to immediate improvements. Army units now purchased their supplies in accord with their actual needs. This resulted in better quality supplies and a reduction in waste and losses. Transport and storage costs declined and corruption was reduced as well as fewer layers of administration were involved.74

While Vietnam’s new rear service policy has helped to improve the material conditions of active duty units, Vietnam’s cash-strapped economy placed severe constraints on its maintenance program. According to one defence specialist, ‘[r]egional analysts believe the PAVN is currently treading water, focused on simply keeping its equipment operational. Some suggest that stocks of previously supplied spare parts are mostly sufficient to last into 1995, but certain items can only be obtained through cannibalization.’75

67 Nguyen Te Nhi, untitled article in Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, January 1991, 66–70, in US Joint Publications Research Service, JPRS-SEA-91-012, 8 May 1991, 35–7, at 35.

68 Gwen Robinson, ‘Big military cuts in Vietnam’, Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, July, 1990, 7–9.69 Murray Hiebert, ‘Defeated by Victory’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 June 1991, 24.70 (Nguyen Te Nhi, untitled article [see n. 67], 35.71 Voice of Vietnam, 21 September 1990.72 William Branigin, ‘Hanoi’s Asylums: War Never Ends, Ill Veterans Relive Traumas in Impoverished Surroundings’,

Washington Post, 23 October 1993.73 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 21 September 1992, 2.74 Ibid., 23 March 1992, 2.75 Karniol, ‘PAVN Strives to Modernize’.

167T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Economic construction

Vietnamese military units have been engaged in ‘building socialism’ and ‘economic construction’ tasks since unification. In the decade up to 1986 Army units of corps (binh doan) size were assigned to new economic zones, state farms and forests, hydroelectric and water conservancy projects, building roads, and oil and gas exploration. The scope and nature of the military’s involvement in production activities underwent a fundamental change after the adoption economic reforms and the promulgation of Politburo Resolution No. 2.76 In addition to the military’s traditional involvement in economic production activities, now military forces were converted wholesale into economic construction units or engineering and labour brigades. This was largely a paper exercise in which military construction units were given a legal status under new legislation. By 1989, there were sixteen specialised economic construction divisions in the VPA’s table of organisation. One unit, of roughly 12,000 men, was given responsibility for completing the massive Hoa Binh hydro-electric project northwest of Hanoi. Brigades and smaller units planted rubber, coffee and tea. Some demobilised units retained their officers and became in effect reserve units engaged in economic work.

The army’s involvement in economic activities aroused debate as to its efficacy. One school of thought argued that the army had achieved ‘satisfactory results’ because it had attained a degree of self-sufficiency and was able to make financial contributions to the state thereby contributing to national defence.77 Another school argued that the army was inefficient as an economic producer and was a drain on the state budget. Even profitable army enterprises still continued to receive state subsidies. This latter argument was countered by those, such as Thieu Quang Bien, who argued that a strict profit-and-loss formula ignored the unique situation faced by many units. How could a ‘profit-and-loss’ calculation be applied to defence industry enterprises or to the production tasks of units stationed in remote yet strategic areas, he argued?78 A commentator using the pen name Quang Dau argued that recent reforms, which resulted in the reorganisation of military construction units and enterprises, forced these organisations to adopt business accounting practices while at the same time arguing for a continuation of their state subsidies for the next couple of years. This was so these enterprises could move towards self-reliance and learn how to attract capital.

76 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 12 May 1991, 1.77 Hanoi Home Service, 13 August 1989.78 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 12 August 1991, 3.

168 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

According to Quang Dau, Resolution No. 33 of the party’s Central Committee Military Commission made it quite explicit that military units would have to participate in economic-building tasks in order to raise their standards of living and contribute to national development. These units were expected to become partially self-sufficient and make contributions to the state budget. Units assigned to remote areas were expected to engage in various tasks such as water conservancy, communications, agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Those volunteering or enlisting to serve with economic construction units could complete their military service and labour duty at the same time.

During the two-year period ending in August 1989 so many military enterprises became involved in economic production activities that the table of organisation of the Economic General Department had to be changed four times. Nearly all the enterprises and factories under the VPA’s Technical General Department engaged in producing goods for the market. This accounted for between forty and fifty per cent of total production output.79 Senior General Le Trong Tan estimated that the army raised twenty per cent of its revenue from internal sources.80

It would be instructive at this point to consider a brief case study of the army’s involvement in economic construction tasks in one military region – Military Region 9. There the VPA developed two forms of economic work. The first consisted of units specifically tasked with full-time economic production. In 1989 there were seventeen such organisations, including enterprises, state farms and state forestry groups.81 These units operated under the same government regulations for state enterprises. They were required to take responsibility for proper accounting procedures, accumulating investment capital, making payments to Military Region’s 9 defence budget, and ensuring that basic living standards were met. The second type of economic work involved regular units engaging in small-scale agricultural production in areas around their camps, as well as limited cooperation with units engaged in full-time work.

Army units in the first category or full-time production, produced lumber, bricks, tiles and nails for domestic use and coconut fibre rugs for export. They also re-worked sheet metal, provided transportation services and engaged in various other projects. Of total earnings received, nearly one-third was transferred to the military region. These funds were used to purchase tyre tubes, fuel, iron and steel, and service vehicles.

79 Hanoi Home Service, 13 August 1989.80 Hiebert, ‘Defeated by Victory’, 24.81 Nhan Dan, 10 April 1989, 3.

169T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

Military Region 9 also set aside funds for social welfare and for the construction of new headquarters and barracks. Military units that engaged in agricultural activities produced grain, meat, fish sauce, vegetables, fruit, sugar cane, and coconuts, gathered firewood, and raised fish, farm animals and poultry.

Major General Cao Van Dom, Chief of the Military Region 9’s Rear Services Department, stated that such economic activity was necessary in order to compensate for food shortages.82 In 1988, according to General Dom, Military Region 9 itself received only one-fifth to one-quarter of the prescribed food ration for its troops, while troops on duty in Cambodia received only forty to forty-five per cent of set rations. This shortfall was made up for by economic activity by military units.

Military Region 9 spent twenty per cent of its profits to provide meals for troops, thirty per cent to expand production, and thirty-two per cent for capital construction and repair of barracks, vehicles and artillery sheds and warehouses, upgrading hospitals and dispensaries, 6.5 per cent for maintenance, supplies and replacement parts, seven per cent as a liquid asset fund, and 4.5 per cent for welfare support, bonuses and labour protection.83

The debate over the efficacy of the army’s involvement in the economy was aired at a national army-wide conference on production and economic work. The conference resolved ‘it is unnecessary now to argue whether the army should engage in economic work or not but primarily on how to produce effective results’.84 (The conference also concluded that in accordance with Politburo Resolution No. 2 the army had sanction to use its manpower, equipment and machinery and official duty time to engage in production and economic work.)

There were basically three different ways that a military unit could become involved in economic activities: as a national defence production enterprise that produced military goods as its first priority and then produced civilian products for the domestic market; as a specialised economic unit, such as a corporation or general corporation; and as a regular army production installation whose output was designed to improve the living conditions of the troops.85

82 Ibid.83 Ibid.84 Hanoi Home Service, 13 August 1989.85 Untitled article in Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, February 1991, 38–42, in US Foreign Broadcast Information

Service, East Asia Daily Report FBIS EAS-91-018, 1 August 1991, 30–33.

170 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

In March 1989 the Council of Ministers issued Directive No. 46, a major new policy regarding the military’s role in economic construction. This directive required that all VPA production and economic building units and defence enterprises conduct their affairs under the independent economic accounting system.86 At the same time, the VPA’s General Economic and Technical Department (Tong Cuc Kinh Te va Ky Thuat) was renamed National Defence Industry and Technology General Department (Tong Cuc Cong Nghiep Quoc Phong va Kinh Te).

As a result of the March 1989 decision, nine major VPA economic building units were converted into corporations and general corporations and subject to the same state laws as civilian enterprises.87 In other words, they were given legal status and were now able to open bank accounts, including foreign currency accounts, to form legal associations, or enter into joint ventures with Vietnamese or foreign partners. At the end of 1989 additional army units were engaged in economic activities and transformed into corporations, general corporations or other types of legal enterprises.88

One survey of the army’s activities in economic production over the period 1986–90 described them as ‘still modest but already encouraging’.89 This survey noted, however, the diversity of activities undertaken by army units: planting vegetables, cajuput (a plant which produces aromatic oil), tea and rubber for production purposes; opening virgin land; establishing forestry zones; land reclamation; apatite, coal and tin mining; cattle breeding; ship repair; sea food production; and myriad construction activities such as sea dikes, fresh water canals, new economic zones, roads and highways, housing, and major state infrastructure development projects.

In 1993 it was reported that 70,000 soldiers or twelve per cent of the entire standing army were employed full-time in various commercial enterprises.90 In other words, there has been over an eleven per cent increase in the number of soldiers employed in commercial activities since the adoption of the 1989 reforms. Local militia units were reported to have set up at least 160 enterprises, while the VPA main force had

86 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 12 August 1991, 3.87 Hanoi Home Service, 13 August 1989.88 ‘Truong Son Building General Corporation: Program to Renew Technical Equipment in the Years of 1990–1995’,

Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, October 1990, 67–9, in US Foreign Broadcast Information Service, East Asia Daily Report FBIS-EAS-90-034, 26 December 1990, 36–38, at 36.

89 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 12 August 1991, 3.90 Murray Hiebert, ‘Corps Business’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 December 1993, 40–1; William Branigin,

‘Hanoi’s Enterprising Army, Budget Cuts Put Soldiers in Business: From Fish to Hotels’, International Herald Tribune, 17 October 1993.

171T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

nearly sixty organisations, converted into legal entities, engaged in economic activities involving more than two hundred primary level enterprises.91 In 1993 the total number of army-run commercial enterprises numbered over three hundred, ranging from construction firms to garment factories, hotels and nightclubs, and joint ventures with foreign companies.92

The most notable of these new enterprises was the Truong Son General Construction Corporation.93 Its main concern was capital construction, particularly power plants, and road and railway repair. The corporation also branched out into such areas as exporting coal and marble, coffee growing, transportation of goods such as tin and coal, and general support services.94 The corporation employed 7,000 persons, four-fifths of whom were military personnel, in nineteen enterprises. These included nine corporations, six enterprises, one state farm, one state forest unit, one bridge and road construction unit and a vocational middle school.95

Finally, as noted by one report, army enterprises which began to produce consumer goods in the mid- to late-1980s on a small scale drastically stepped up production in 1991 and 1992.96 Among the consumer items produced by military-operated factories were a variety of electrical and mechanical goods, such as electric fans, lathes, jute polishers, hydraulic presses, bicycle and motorcycle parts, oil cookers, detonators, electricity meters, and fluorescent lamp bulbs. While other army enterprises assembled television sets, radio-cassette recorders and computers, or produced ready-made garments, paper, cement, buses and heavy trucks. According to Brig. General Tran Trong Toan, deputy director of the Defence Ministry’s Economic Affairs Department, the army’s commercial activities netted US $25 million in 1990.97 This figure has steadily risen: US $79 million in 1991, US $111 million in 1992, US $170 million in 1993, US $220 million in 1994, to US $360 million in 199598

91 Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 12 May 1991, 1.92 Branigin, ‘Hanoi’s Enterprising Army’.93 Tran Duc Nghia, ‘Truong Son Building General Corporation’.94 Voice of Vietnam, 2 February 1992.95 Murray Hiebert, ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 June 1991, 26; ‘About Organizing Party

Leadership in an Army Unit Specialized in Economic Construction’, Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, March 1991, 34–36, in US Joint Publication Research Service JPRS-SEA-91-017, 29 July 1991, 30–32, at 30-1.

96 Vietnam News Agency, 21 February 1992.97 Branigin, ‘Hanoi’s Enterprising Army’.98 Carlyle Thayer, ‘Marching Orders’, Vietnam Business Journal 6:4 (July/August, 1998), 56–7.

172 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

National defence industry

Vietnam’s national defence industry represents another example of the use of demobilised soldiers in economic production. This is a grey area involving military-operated enterprises producing specialised products for the armed forces as well as other goods for the civilian market. The VPA gave preference in its hiring policies not only to the family members of active duty personnel but to skilled veterans and their families. Thus national defence industries served as another outlet to absorb discharged service personnel.

The long period of Soviet and Eastern European military assistance to Vietnam resulted in a situation where the Vietnamese army had more modern equipment, especially construction equipment, than the civilian sector.99 Vietnam’s low level of economic development also meant that its industrial capacity, including national defence industry, was rather primitive. Vietnam could only manufacture small arms, including machine guns and rocket launchers, ammunition such as 82mm mortar shells, and a few spare parts but little else. The major priorities of the national defence industry were to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of certain medical supplies, manufacture equipment and weapons for the army’s use, provide the technical support necessary to maintain military equipment and meet the logistics and other needs of the Vietnam People’s Army.100

In late 1989, General Le Duc Anh announced that the existing structure of military technology research institutes would be reorganised to focus on production technology of use to both the military and civilian sectors of the economy. Vietnam’s national defence industry quickly took to production activities related to the civilian economy. As one writer noted in 1991, defence factories produced an ever larger amount of civilian goods. Consumer goods production in military enterprises comprised about half of the production activities in 1986; this figure rose to eighty per cent in 1990.101

What about production for the army’s needs? According to party leader Nguyen Van Linh, in a speech to an all-army political-military conference, the system of national defence industries would be developed ‘gradually’ and Vietnam would continue to purchase abroad needed defence equipment and weapons to meet future needs.102 In

99 Dang Vu Hiep, ‘Some Important Experiences in Building the People’s Army During the Past Several Years’, Tap Chi Quoc Phong Toan Dan, December 1990, 48–54, in US Foreign Broadcast Information Service, East Asia Daily Report FBIS-EAS-91-068, 9 April 1991, 53–6, at 54.

100 Voice of Vietnam, 11 March 1991, Nhan Dan, 4 November 1991, 3.101 Nhan Dan, 4 November 1991, 3.102 Voice of Vietnam, 27 December 1991.

173T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

the meantime, in order to curtail wastage, breakdowns and losses, stress was placed on stock piling, storing and maintaining military equipment and on standardisation of weapons.

The subject of Vietnam’s national defence industry was a controversial one as the VCP began preparations for its Seventh National Congress. One radio broadcast stated bluntly that the party draft Strategy for Socio-Economic Stabilisation and Development Up to the Year 2000 ‘has failed to come up with a precise solution, particularly an investment solution, for the national defence industry’.103 At the congress the military increased its representation on the Central Committee for the first time since 1960. This quickly translated into a larger defence budget in which priority was given to developing a national defence industry and a modest program of force modernisation.

Conclusion

What has been the impact on victory in the Vietnam War and success in Cambodia on the VPA? Can these two events be compared? During the Vietnam War the VPA grew in size and developed into a modern ground force with specialised corps for armour, artillery, engineering, sappers and special forces, air defence etc. The VPA became dependent on the Soviet Union for ‘big ticket’ military equipment, spare parts, and military assistance.

The Vietnam War arguably was not a conventional interstate war but an intrastate conflict in which the communist side sought to reunify Vietnam. During the war years Vietnam’s national treasure (and foreign assistance) was poured into the military. At war’s end the VPA had resources – manpower, equipment and technology – that few state enterprises could match. The VPA, therefore, was assigned major roles not only in maintaining domestic security, but also in post-war reconstruction and economic development. These missions reinforced the dual role of the Vietnamese military – national defence and socialist construction – and the continued involvement of the military in political and economic affairs.

The damage caused by the war, coupled with the poor state of Vietnam’s economy, prohibited the full-scale demobilisation of the army. The VCP directed the VPA to play a major role in economic development. This laid the seeds for the VPA’s later involvement in commercial enterprises. The army’s assignment to economic construction precipitated a debate with the VPA about the role military professionalism. Did peacetime economic roles detract from the mission of national defence?

103 Ibid., 11 March 1991.

174 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

This debate became moot when the Khmer Rouge regime stepped up its armed attacks on Vietnam as soon as the anti-American War came to an end. Vietnam had to mobilise for war on its southwest and northern borders. VPA units that had been diverted to economic tasks had to be redirected back to their prime function.

The end of the conflict in Cambodia resulted in different outcomes than the end of the Vietnam War. Vietnam intervened in Cambodia to halt aggression but overstretched itself by occupying the country. Vietnam was isolated by the international community and fell into deeper dependency on the Soviet Union. The costs of prolonged conflict, a deteriorating domestic economy, and external pressures, led to one inescapable conclusion: the VPA had to be withdrawn from Cambodia and rapidly demobilised so Vietnam could pursue a domestic policy of economic renovation and an open door policy in its external relations.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the VCP attempted to develop a socialist economy in newly united Vietnam. This failed. In 1989 when the VPA withdrew from Cambodia, Vietnam was in the initial stages of economic reform. The vast majority of soldiers who fought in Cambodia were conscripted in the south. When they were demobilised they entered an economy driven by market forces. They found it difficult to readjust. Jobs with their former employers were no longer guaranteed and for many veterans their lot was ‘not a very happy one’.

It was during this period that a group of southern veterans became active and organised themselves to improve their social welfare. This endeavour quickly turned to political activism which took on a regional tinge. Security authorities quickly repressed the Club of Former Resistance Fighters, but permitted the veterans to organise an official association and join the list of party-approved mass organisations.

Within a year of the VPA’s withdrawal from Cambodia the Soviet empire collapsed and exposed Vietnam’s dependency. Vietnam could no longer afford to maintain the billions of dollars of military equipment it had been given by the Soviet Union over the last quarter century. The VPA fell into a parlous state when the ‘grand bargain’ of 1987 (demobilisation in exchange for a set defence budget) came unstuck. The VPA moved to make up budget shortfalls by commercialising the operations of its enterprises and national defence industries.

Today the VPA faces the same issues but in a different form. The VPA must still carry out two main missions – national defence and national construction. VPA units have responsibility for economic-defence zones in remote areas, for example. The VCP has

175T H E V I E T N A M P E O P L E ’ S A R M Y

ordered the VPA to divest itself of its commercial enterprises. Nonetheless, the VPA will continue to operate national defence industries and other enterprises that contribute to national security. But in the new strategic situation greater stress now is being given to military professionalism and force modernisation to meet newly emerging security challenges in the East Sea (South China Sea).

176

The US Army in the Aftermath of Conflict

Henry G. Gole

One could take a direct path to assessing post-Vietnam War reforms: dash off a list of lessons learned in the last war; ascribe their application to the short and successful 1991 Gulf War; take a bow; adjourn to the bar. In fact, Gordon Craig, distinguished scholar and my teacher at Stanford University, once advised me only half-jokingly that four causes and three results are about as much as any audience can handle.

But ‘the aftermath of conflict’ is open-ended. Some changes can be attributed to an army’s most recent war, some were brewing earlier and only became visible after the last war, and some are reactions to other events.

Habit, tradition, and continuity are also relevant. American military policy was shaped by events and attitudes long ago, among them: societal fear of a standing army; preference for civilian control of the military; the frontier mission of the nineteenth-century army; and a geopolitical position characterised by broad oceans and weak neighbours. Military policy was to maintain a small Regular Army to be augmented with citizen-soldiers in times of peril. Americans mobilised for war and demobilised quickly – with consequences.1

Nor can we ignore the social revolution that coincided with the prosecution of the war in Vietnam, a wrinkle that affected the army during and after hostilities. Anti-establishment demonstrations undermined military authority, and failure in Vietnam gave credence to those challenging authority, thus providing yet another version of the chicken-egg puzzle.

Moreover, war can accelerate or delay change. Vietnam gave the US Army something new, the tactical mobility enabled by the helicopter. In sharp contrast, the Second World War gave the US Air Force the bomber generals who ran the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in a Cold War including Vietnam. They seemed to be frozen in tactics and techniques that made POWs of the airmen who went ‘downtown’, pilot-speak for the

1 See Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York, 1967), for the period from colonial militias in 1607 to the army of the 1960s.

177T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

missions flown over Hanoi. Fighter-bombers going north were also limited by politically imposed rules of engagement.2

Thoughtful soldiers recognised that a decade of focus on light infantry operations postponed the development of systems optimised for fighting the Red Army in Europe. There was a sense that the United States had taken its eye off the centrepiece of East-West confrontation, and the Soviet Union hadn’t. We had to play catch-up.3

So, there are a lot of moving parts to be put in context. Seen this way, the war in Vietnam indicated a generalised need to ‘do something’ to fix the army, but we shall see that the 1973 Yom Kippur War gave the US Army clear direction.

In my biography of General William E. DePuy, I give him the lion’s share of credit for fixing our broken US Army after the war in Vietnam. The organisers of this conference asked me to draw on research done for that book to present a paper on our conference theme. They also invited my personal perspectives. Therefore, these are the assertions of a scholar who was also a participant in the events described. They are intended to provide context for post-Vietnam reform.

• First,thewaytheUShasmobilisedforwarguaranteedpoorlytrainedsoldiersandamateur leaders.

• Second,myimpressionsasasoldierservinginthe1950sand1960swerehighlycritical of my army.

• Third,myuncomplimentary impressionswerevalidatedby theUSArmyWarCollege 1970 Professionalism Study describing the unhealthy climate in the Officer Corps before Vietnam.

• Fourth,socialturbulenceathomeandmilitarymisadventuresabroaddamagedmorale in the US Army and respect for that army.

Mobilisation, Training and Leadership

As the United States arrived at the brink of Great Power status, its army in 1897 was 28,000 strong. War with Spain increased that number sevenfold to 210,000 a year later.

2 See Jack Broughton, Thud Ridge (Philadelphia, 1969) and Going Downtown: The War against Hanoi and Washington (New York, 1988), two memoirs scathingly critical of Air Force top leadership in the Vietnam War.

3 Henry G. Gole, General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War (Lexington, KY, 2008).

178 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

From1901to1914armystrengthrangedfrom50,000to100,000.In1918,itwas2,395,000,sometwenty-fivetimesimmediatepre-warstrength.

Between the First and Second World Wars, army strength was usually about 140,000. In1945,itwas8,266,000.In1950,593,000;in1951-1953,amillion-and-a-half.Then,again, demobilisation.4

Unlike the manning for earlier wars, political authority called up few reservists for Vietnam, relying on conscription plus repeated tours by Regulars to man the force. In the course of the war, American public opinion meandered from ignorance to indifference, to toleration, and finally to sharply diverging opinions about a long war, far away, whose purpose was not clear.

After the 1968 Tet offensive, President Lyndon Johnson directed a Vietnam policy review. Public officials and ex-officio ‘Wise Men’ summoned by the president met in Washington and advised the president to reverse policy, to get out. From Washington, the Viet Cong penetration of the American Embassy in Saigon looked like defeat. To American military leadership in Saigon, the Tet uprising looked like victory: it resulted in the destruction of enemy infrastructure in South Vietnam so carefully nurtured for a generation. Therefore, they concluded, the war could be won. But the president decided to get out, and he announced on national TV that he would not run for re-election in 1968. From 1968 onward, the objective was not to win but to get out.5

The enemy was encouraged to press on, allies wondered about the reliability of the United States, and war protestors at home demanded a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war. One easily imagines the effect on soldier morale, particularly the morale of conscripts sent to Vietnam to take their chances as their conscription-deferred peers chanted, ‘Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?’

There was a bonus for the draft-deferred young males who preferred encouraging bra-burning women and burning draft cards to chasing elusive and dangerous Asian men in black pajamas through wait-a-minute vines and bamboo. I leave the bonus to your fertile imaginations.

4 See Weigley, History of the United States Army,Appendix,566-9,forarmystrengthfigures,1789-1966.SeealsoMarvin A. Kreidberg and Merton G. Henry, History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army, 1775-1945, DepartmentoftheArmyPamphletNo.20-212(Washington,DC,1955).

5 SeeWalter IsaacsonandEvanThomas,The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy (New York, 1986), for 1968 policy review and recommendations regarding Vietnam.

179T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

The demobilisation pattern persisted. The army was reduced from 1,600,000 in 1969 to 800,000 in 1973, while the fighting continued in Vietnam and the Cold War was still on.6

The United States has demonstrated an enormous capacity to raise, equip, deploy, and employ large numbers of troops, and an inclination to massive and rapid demobilisation when the perceived crisis passes. That is a crude précis of my army’s mobilisation history. There is a price for such behaviour. Rapid and massive fluctuations in army strength ensured that soldiers would be poorly trained and badly led by amateurs at the cutting edge. Such was the case up to and including the American war in Vietnam.7

Personal perspective

This excursion responds to an invitation. It is intended to identify defects observed at the grass roots level in the decade before Vietnam, long before I could have imagined presenting them to this distinguished audience.

IvolunteeredforthearmyinSeptember1952,tobetheAudieMurphyoftheKoreanWar and to destroy the Communists hordes before my mother had to crew a machine gun on the Hudson River. Like 19-year-olds from time immemorial, I wanted to test myself in the great the adventure of war. I did so in a rifle squad of the 27th Infantry (Wolfhound) Regiment in that phase of the war replete with bunkers, trenches, rats, artillery exchanges, barbed wire, flares, and night patrols. It was All Quiet on the Western Front revisited.

My happy memories are what old soldiers would expect: the men. For the rest, I have little positive to report. (Correction! While in reserve we enlisted soldiers of Charlie Company played a basketball game with Australian soldiers from the Commonwealth Division.)

Initialmilitarytrainingin1952consistedofbeingherdedaboutasNCOscheckedboxes indicating our exposure to so many hours of rifle training, first aid, gas chamber, hand grenade, bayonet, rocket launcher, etc. I recall no attempt by the system to ascertain what I had learned or failed to learn. The box was checked. Pvt. Gole had gotten the required n-hours of training. Those who could not hit a barn with a rifle shot at 100 yards had their scores fixed by what we then called ‘the M-1 pencil.’ That is, a passing score was

6 William E. DePuy, Changing an Army: An Oral History of General W.E. DePuy, USA Retired, by Romie L. Brownlee and William J. Mullin III (Carlisle Barracks, PA, 1979), 174 (hereafter, DePuy, OH).

7 DePuy, OH. DePuy returns often to the poor training and leadership, 7-17, 27-38, and mentions Omar Bradley’s considerationofbreakingupthe90thDivisionin1944,25.

180 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

recorded by an NCO, thereby obviating the need for the trainee – and more relevantly, the trainer – to return to the rifle range for make-up training, probably on a Saturday.

My ‘leaders’ in basic training were World War II veterans whose concept of training was to belittle and abuse rookies as they had been belittled and abused a decade earlier. Returnees from Korea, who were sent to training centres while awaiting termination of their time in the green machine, were unprepared to train recruits. They just wanted to go home. I persuaded myself that my leaders in Korea would know what they were doing. Some did.

By1953, after three years of fighting, I thought it reasonable to expect thatwehad figured it out and developed tactics, techniques, and procedures suited to local circumstances. Such was not the case. Here are two examples offered as shorthand for general mindlessness. A then-current Army Field Manual called ‘Combat Patrolling and the Individual Soldier’ provided numerous combat-proven tips and described in detail how to move, dress, camouflage, tie down, and silence equipment noises characteristic of infantry on the move. Leadership simply ignored those tips. We wore helmets, heavy ‘flack jackets’, carried enough kit to challenge a mule, and made a lot of noise. Worse: because our radios were unreliable, we strung commo wire out and back – miles of it – committing the cardinal error of following previously lain commo wire as thick as my upper arm. We came back to friendly front lines the way we went out. You know the punch line. The enemy rigged and detonated an explosive device. Several of us were slightly wounded, but one, a new man like me, had his leg blown off after just a couple of weeks on line. We were the usual raw material, a mixed bag of young men, but we were neither well trained nor well led.

Ileftthearmyin1954,satisfiedthatIhaddonemybitandsomegrowingup,butunimpressed by the institution. I resumed my studies and was a high school teacher in NewYorkfrom1958to1961,whenIrespondedtoPresidentJohnF.Kennedy’sinauguraladdress of January 1961, by returning to the army. Others volunteered for the Peace Corps or engaged in the civil rights movement in the American south. We were charmed off our feet by our young president who made Service a virtue.

When the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961, Second Lieutenant Gole volunteered for Germany and soon thought he had made a terrible mistake in returning to the army. Officersweredoingin1961thetasksNCOshaddonein1953.Therewasalotofshowin the ‘zero defects’ army: white rocks, short hair, shiny boots, the appearance of efficiency, centralised control, fear of risk. I didn’t like what I saw in the conventional US Army and escaped all that by going to Special Forces in Germany and then for a couple of tours with Special Forces in Vietnam. I loved it.

181T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

The Green Beret was a badge of honor as I went to and from Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. The same symbol evoked stares of anger and contempt as I made the same trips in 1970 and 1971. That difference is a pretty fair illustration of shifting American attitudes in the course of the war in Vietnam.8

The AWC 1970 Professionalism Study

I believed my idiosyncratic impressions of the pre-Vietnam army had it about right, but I felt intellectually vindicated when they were corroborated by the Study on Military Professionalism conducted by the US Army War College and published in 1970.9 While Vietnam was the catalyst for demoralisation in the army and general loss of public confidence in the military, internal irritants and defects had been brewing for some time.10 On 18 April 1970, General William C. Westmoreland, Chief of Staff, Army, directed the Commandant of the US Army War College to study ‘the state of discipline, integrity, morality, ethics, and professionalism in the Army’.11 The findings revealed a ‘strong, clear, and pervasive perception’ that ‘the actual and operative values of the Officer Corps’ differed significantly from the ideal summarised in three words: Duty, Honor, Country’, and ‘the Army is not taking action to ensure that the high ideals are practised as well as preached’. ‘Disharmony’ existed between the accepted ideal and the prevailing institutional pressures.

‘The pressures seem to come from a combination of self-oriented, success-motivated actions, and a lack of professional skills on the part of middle and senior grade officers.’ A picture emerges of

an ambitious, transitory commander – marginally skilled in the complexities of his duties – engulfed in producing statistical results, fearful of personal failure, too busy to talk with or listen to his subordinates, and determined to submit acceptably optimistic reports which reflect faultless completion of tasks at the expense of the sweat and frustration of his subordinates.12

8 Henry G. Gole, Soldiering: Observations from Korea, Vietnam, and Safe Places(Dulles,VA,2005).9 Study on Military Professionalism (Carlisle Barracks, PA, 30 June 1970). Gole’s interview with General Paul Gorman,

8 October 2004, confirmed impressions of poor training and leadership in the Korean War US Army.10 See Gole interview with General William G. T. (Bill) Tuttle, 23 November 2004, regarding morale in the Army

during and after Vietnam. See also William M. Donnelly, ‘Bilko’s Army: A Crisis in Command’ (paper presented attheSocietyforMilitaryHistorymeeting,April2008),whichfocusedonthe1945-1962USArmy.

11 Study on Military Professionalism,53.12 Ibid., iii.

182 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

The study clarified for me the reason for what I had seen and called the depersonalised show army of white rocks from which I escaped to Special Forces, an army more prepared for parade than for fighting. It found deplorable ticket-punching and one-way loyalty up. It highlighted failure of the Officer Corps to strive for the accepted ideal and the army’s failure to take action, not on the problem war in Vietnam per se. It is important to note that the respondents in the study were winners in the system, officers selected for staff schools and war colleges, men successful in their careers to that point. It is decidedly not a case of sour grapes.

Put yourself at the top of the heap and ask what you would have done with this damning report. Sweeping it under the rug was an option. In fact, one senior general locked the report in his safe and limited readership in his command to general officers saying, ‘I felt that if it ever got out into the public, it would really do the Army a lot of harm, and no doubt it’s true’.13

To his credit, General Westmoreland directed that briefing teams of middle grade officers and senior NCOs go out to the field to present the findings and recommendations, warts and all. I was a member of such a team.14

Violence at home and military competence

As professional soldiers went from Vietnam to Germany and Korea and back again to Vietnam, the United States experienced a cascade of unhappy events at home and abroad. Among them were the tumultuous social movements of the 1960s, both aside from and including violence stemming from anti-war protests. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and tanks in the streets of Chicago in 1968 seemed like something from a bad film. American self-image suffered as the NROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps) building at Stanford University was burned; student protests erupted from Berkley, California, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Columbia University, New York City; National Guardsmen shot and killed four students at Kent State University. The country was charged with energy. The Age of Aquarius brought ‘Hair’ to Broadway and Berlin, and the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements to the streets. ‘Movement’ is just the right word to capture the feel of the 1960s: nothing held still.

13 Jonathan Seaman interview with Patterson, 18 March 1971, OH, MHI, cited in Gole, DePuy, 172.14 Author was a major assigned to SAMVA (Special Assistant for the Modern Volunteer Army), a Department of the

Army ad hoc staff section headed by Lieutenant General George Forsythe whose task was to shepherd the army from a conscripted to an all-volunteer force.

183T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

General Westmoreland was the guest of President Johnson in the White House as they consulted in early 1968 regarding Westmoreland’s successor in Vietnam. Pundits said that Westy was kicked upstairs to become Army Chief of Staff. He wrote, ‘I flew with the President in his helicopter over downtown Washington, where fires set in widespread rioting and looting were still burning. It looked considerably more distressing than Saigon during the Tet offensive.’15

Richard M. Nixon campaigned as the ‘law and order’ candidate for president in 1968, calling conscription an infringement on the liberty of young Americans, promising an end to conscription, a promise fulfilled in 1973. Except for a short interlude after the Second World War, the Army had relied upon the draft since 1940. Two daunting challenges faced the army as conscription ended: to establish a volunteer force in the wake of an unpopular and divisive war, and to repair a failing institution. I’ll skip over the recruiting issue except to say that we filled the ranks at the cost of a sense of civic responsibility to defend the nation.16

Misadventures abroad matched turmoil at home. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, a series of humiliations made the US military look like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight: the Pueblo and Mayaguez incidents at sea, the ignominious evacuation of Saigon in1975,thelaterDesertOnefailedrescueattemptinIran,andthekillingofhundredsof US Marines in Beirut by a suicide truck bomber. Regulars wallowed in self-pity and showed an inclination to blame others for their problems, as in these quotations:

‘The abolition of conscription reflected the growing disillusionment with the Vietnam War.’

‘The Army … was reduced to a purely volunteer strength …’

‘… a generation of officers for whom preparing for Vietnam had been the professional preoccupation … lacked an appreciation of conventional operations in open country.’

‘After withdrawal from Vietnam, the Army was confronted with the challenge of elaborating a land force doctrine …’

‘… the Army left Vietnam with a light infantry culture…’

15 Gole,DePuy, 211, cites William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY, 1976), 362.16 See Beth Bailey, America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Cambridge, MA, 2009), for description and

analysis of the recruiting challenge and response.

184 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

‘The key elements of the Army’s narrative about Vietnam were that we had won “our war” … that we had been unfairly let down by the country – especially by the media and politicians …’

‘The Army was paranoid in the period after Vietnam. We felt rejected and isolated from the community.’

These remarks accurately describe the mood of the post-Vietnam US Army. However, they come from Malcolm McGregor’s paper, presented at this conference last year, in which he describes reactions in the Australian Army.17

General DePuy

I’ll resist the biographer’s inclination to tell more than anyone needs to know about his subject by providing DePuy’s most pertinent experiences and a thumbnail sketch of his personality before outlining what he did to fix the US Army.

Commissioned six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he saw poor training and amateur leadership before the bloodbath in Normandy in June and July 1944 that caused Omar Bradley to consider disbanding the 90th Infantry Division, in which DePuy served. DePuy observed, ‘After all the grand plans are drawn and the generals have had their say, it devolves upon some half-trained, half-baked captain to “do it.” It’s a small miracle that anything works.’18 Nor did he forget how the 90th was transformed from being one of the worst to rank among the best divisions.19

Division and regimental commanders were cashiered until good ones were found, men who led from the front and talked to their soldiers. At battalion, the skilled young tigerswhosurvivedmoveduptobattalioncommand.DePuywasoneofthem.In1945,he was a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant colonel and division G-3. He had successfully commanded an infantry battalion in close combat, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts, and integrated into the Regular Army. He was good at war.20 He also said, ‘The brutality and stupidity of those days have affected all the rest of my professional life’.21

17 Malcolm McGregor, ‘An Army at Dusk: The Vietnam-Era Army Comes Home’, 180-203, in Peter Dennis & Jeffrey Grey (eds), Raise, Train and Sustain: Delivering Land Combat Power (Loftus, NSW, 2010).

18 DePuy, OH, 38.19 See Gole, DePuy,302,notes13,14,&15forlaterpraiseofthe90thbyBradley,Eisenhower,andPatton.20 Gole, DePuy,38,notes13,14,15.21 DePuy OH, 38.

185T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

DePuy’s assignments between1945 and taking commandofTRADOC in1973were as follows: military attaché in Hungary; detail to CIA to conduct irregular warfare during the Korean War; command of a battalion in Germany for the second time; service in the office of the Chief of Staff as the Army fought for resources and a strategy shift from Massive Retaliation to Flexible Response; study at the Imperial Defence College in London and lasting affection for things British; command of a mechanised infantry battle group in Germany; duties in Washington in counterinsurgency and force planning; duty as Westmoreland’s J-3 in Saigon; command of the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam; Joint Staff and Army Staff jobs with two and three stars.

From 1962 until 1969 he was almost totally engaged in the Vietnam War, and thereafter, as a three- and four-star general, he prepared his army for the next war.

As commander of the 1st Infantry Division from March 1966 to February 1967, his methods soon put him on the cover of Newsweek magazine and earned him two reputations: one as a fighting general and tactical genius, the other as a ruthless commander who relieved officers and made excessive use of firepower, particularly unobserved artillery fires.

His troops respected their general for being where the killing is done and his readiness to kick ass and take names. One of them called the five-foot-seven, one-hundred-and-forty pound DePuy a ‘Banty rooster’. General Gorman called him a tactical genius. Lieutenant General Berry, one of his brigade commanders in Vietnam, said he was a supremely confident division commander and later ‘borderline arrogant’. Major (later Lieutenant General) Frederic J. Brown III came close to reporting DePuy to the Department of the Army Inspector General for abuse of staff officers at his division headquarters.22 In brief, he was a contentious figure.

But all who knew him agreed that he was smart, articulate in speech and writing, intense, focused – and feared. His supreme confidence might be best understood by seeing him as an autonomous man. He didn’t seem to need that pat on the back most of us need from time to time.23

He wanted command of Fort Benning and the Infantry School when he left Vietnam and expected that assignment. ‘Nothing would please me more professionally’, he wrote to his wife in November 1966.24 But at Christmas time in 1966, there was a confrontation

22 E-mail, Brown to Gole, 16 October 2007. Brown was later DePuy’s Executive Officer and friend. See also Gole, DePuy, 316, n. 32.

23 Gole interview with William E. DePuy Jr, 21 October 2004.24 DePuy Family Papers, Letter, 9 November 1966, DePuy to Marj, his wife. Letter, 18 December 1966, DePuy to

Marj, says Johnson will spend Christmas with the 1st Infantry Division. Letter, 27 December 1966, DePuy to Marj, says the Benning assignment will not happen: all cited in Gole, DePuy, 192 and n. 30.

186 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

with General Harold K. Johnson, then Army Chief of Staff, regarding DePuy’s relief of subordinates and his use of artillery. DePuy would not get the job he wanted: training young infantrymen at Fort Benning.25

In fact, the Chief of Staff had no job for DePuy in his army. (Let us stipulate that it is hard to hide a major general, even a small one in a big army.) Due to Westmoreland’s intercession that ‘saved Bill DePuy’s career’, he was assigned to the JCS where he served as General Earle G. Wheeler’s Vietnam expert, meaning that General Johnson was not in his chain of command.26 As Chairman Wheeler’s Vietnam expert, DePuy was in the middle of the post-Tet 1968 Vietnam policy review, briefing the JCS position to such luminaries as Dean Acheson and President Johnson.27

As Army Chief of Staff (3 July 1968-1 July 1972), Westmoreland brought DePuy back to the Army Staff (2 January 1969) and promoted him lieutenant general (10 March 1969).28

Attempting to capture the essence of anyone in a few paragraphs may be an exercise in futility, particularly a very complex man at the top of his game. But there it is. This is the man who became TRADOC’s first commander on 1 July 1973, not long after Major General Donn Starry had told in-coming Army Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams, ‘Your Army is on its ass’.

TRADOC Commander

On 7 June 1973, DePuy told an audience of infantry trainers that preparing for war is about producing infantry squads and platoons to do the army’s mission: to fight.29 He truly enjoyed jumping into a foxhole, teaching, and talking to soldiers, usually beginning by asking: Who is on your left? Who is on your right? Where do you have grazing fire? Where is the dead space? Where is your final protective line?30 His first priority at TRADOC was to upgrade training and tie it to combat developments. He believed that his professional army could be trained to be five times as good as the enemy.31

25 Forconflictingversionsoftheconfrontation,seeGole,DePuy, 189-97.26 Gole’s interview with Paul Miles, 18 September 2004, in ibid., 197 and n. 38.27 Ibid., 209-10; Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, 697, 700.28 See Gole, Depuy, 199-212, for DePuy’s role with JCS and his later return to the Army Staff.29 Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy: First Commander, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1 July

1973, Richard M. Swain (comp.) (Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1994), 60.30 Gole, DePuy, 98-9, 124-8, 167, 173, 176-80.31 Swain (comp.), Selected Papers of General William E. DePuy, 63.

187T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

Doctrine, to DePuy, meant ‘how the Army intended to fight’. His 1976 version of FM100-5,Operations,wasatonce‘afightingdoctrineandaprocurementstrategy’,because it linked training and hardware to doctrine.32 He wanted to demystify doctrine. Scholarly discourse on the principles of war, Sun Tzu, and the relative merits of Clausewitz andJominiweredeliberatelyleftoutofFM100-5andderivativemanuals.Hetoldasmall group of officers who wrote the early drafts not to be too lofty or philosophical. He compared what he wanted in the ‘how to fight’ manuals to the instructions that come with a Toro lawnmower, complete with diagrams and photographs.33

His previous job on the Army Staff had given him experience with combat developments, the tedious process of nurturing systems from concept through all phases and trials to the introduction of the system into a force prepared to receive it. That assignment routinely required killing or delaying someone’s pet project whose costs, in his opinion, exceeded benefits. He protected priority programs later called The Big Five: the Abrams tank, Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, Patriot air defence system, and the Apache and Blackhawk helicopters. DePuy called the process of requirements, test, evaluation, analysis, and dealing with the whole Washington gaggle of agencies ‘a running gunfight through bureaucracy’ that was repeated endlessly. There were always thirty to forty major systems under development and hundreds of smaller systems. He pointed out that many complex outer space problems might be addressed mathematically. But infantry and armour soldiers operate in a ‘dirty environment’ of smoke, terrain, night, and enemy, a combination of variables difficult to replicate with the precision possible in a laboratory.34

The ringmaster of that three-ring circus – training, doctrine, and combat developments – from 1973 to 1977, achieved an impressive degree of synchronisation. He was responsible for twenty major installations, including sixteen branch schools, four technical schools, and all of the Reserve Officer Training Course (ROTC) conducted for the most part in civilian colleges and universities. The parts had to be fitted together in a system of systems requiring management of that large, complex organisation. Failure to manage had caused the demise of the Continental Army Command (CONARC), TRADOC’s predecessor organisation. DePuy did not suffer fools gladly. The size, importance and complexity of his tasks, and his hard-driving personal style, would put him in the centre of many controversies and make him a great man to some and a heavy-handed autocrat to others.

32 Paul H. Herbert, Deciding What Has to Be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5: Operations, Leavenworth Papers No. 16 (Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1988), 1.

33 Gole, DePuy,322n.24,forinterviewswithofficersengagedinearlydraftingFM100-5.34 Ibid.,245.

188 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 caused him to reorder his priorities. The tempo and lethality of that war – largely attributed to anti-tank guided missiles and improved precision weapons – quickly littered the battlefield with destroyed tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and personnel carriers. Applied to the potential fight between the Red Army and the US-led NATO forces, that rate of destruction could consume friendly forces in Europe in weeks, or even in days. That lethality made doctrinal issues urgent, so DePuy focused onFM100-5,Operations,theUSArmy’scapstonedoctrinefromwhich‘howtofight’manuals would flow. He used the Yom Kippur War as leverage to change his army.

His personal involvement in the writing of doctrine and his constant pressure on subordinatesproducedthe1976versionofFM100-5.Theinkwashardlydrybeforeit was revised and revised again. That is not a bad thing. American historian Richard Swain writes of the doctrinal debate, ‘Those years [1976-86] were some of the richest for professionaldialogueintheUSArmy’shistory’.Heseesthe1976versionofFM100-5as DePuy’s thesis, the antithesis of his critics, and the synthesis in the 1986 version.35

Israeli scholar Saul Bronfeld compares Moshe Doyan and DePuy, saying an army’s rehabilitation, getting it out of a moral and professional funk, can begin even with an imperfect doctrine. The point is to get the Army unstuck and thinking.36

DePuy was a magnet for talent. A more expansive paper would describe a number of talented associates and protégés who made significant contributions to their nation.37 But three belong in the first rank: Paul Gorman, Donn Starry, and Maxwell Thurmond, all of whom got four stars, two of whom later commanded TRADOC.

DePuy gave Gorman credit for the revolution in training. Gorman, who deserves high praise for the creativity and innovation he applied to training, is not falsely modest in emphasising that without DePuy as enabler, the good ideas might have waited a generation in someone’s in-box. His intensity, focus and impatience made things happen. DePuy’s son believes that Gorman was the only near-contemporary who had the intellectual horsepower to keep up with his father. Together, they gave the NCO the tools needed to train soldiers and restored the status of the NCO Corps.

35 Ibid.,293,citesRichardM.Swain,‘AirLandBattle’,inGeorgeF.HoffmanandDonnA.Starry(eds),Camp Colt to Desert Storm: The History of U.S. Armored Forces (Lexington, KY, 1999), 377.

36 Gole, DePuy, 322 notes 19, 20. Bronfeld allowed author to read his draft manuscript ‘Fighting Outnumbered: The Impact of the Yom Kippur War on the U.S. Army,’ later published in Journal of Military History 71: 2 (April 2007),465-98.

37 For a partial list, see Gole, DePuy,295-6.

189T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

When DePuy and Fred Weyand were division commanders in Vietnam in 1966, they agreed that NCOs needed a progressive career development system, including something like the officers’ schools that nurtured professional development from lieutenant to colonel. They agreed to do just that if ever in a position to do so. As Army Chief of Staff and TRADOC Commander, they made the Non-Commissioned Officer Educational System a reality.

In 1976, DePuy said that the Army NCO was on the right track after a long period during which officers did what NCOs once did. He thought that the NCO Corps was beginning to assume ‘the role that it should play in a good army – early in the Vietnam War. We then consumed that NCO Corps in Vietnam. It was either wounded, killed, or exhausted.’ Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, with the army on the defensive, officers dealt directly with young soldiers in various councils, leaving the NCO ‘out in left field’. That was being corrected. Just as architects and engineers on a construction project give blueprints to foremen who supervise work, DePuy and Gorman gave NCOs a Soldiers’ Manual and Skill Qualification Tests (SQT). ‘You don’t get anywhere until you have a clear, simple concept that can be explained and understood.’ With those tools, the NCO was on the right track.38

The intent was to improve performance. The method was to begin with diagnostic testing. Then, rather than boring the soldier by teaching him what he knows, as was so often the case with time-oriented training, teach him what he doesn’t know. Time-oriented training gave way to performance-oriented training. Tasks were identified and spelled out in painstaking detail for soldiers of all ranks and specialties so that soldier and supervisor knew the skills to be demonstrated by the private, corporal, and sergeant. In a tank crew, for example, the driver had to demonstrate specifically identified skills. So did the loader, gunner, and tank commander. The identification of tasks to be mastered went right down to the last clerk, switchboard operator and cook, a prodigious effort by Gorman’s people. The NCO got his blueprint for training.

DePuy believed that the revolution in training was a force multiplier and sought ways to do more with less. To illustrate, DePuy said that in Europe two per cent of our soldiers are in tanks, but somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of our combat capability in Europe comes from tanks. Thus, if you improve the two per cent of your soldiers, you are improving approximately thirty per cent of your combat capability. This kind of reasoning characterised DePuy’s TRADOC.39

38 Ibid., 247, notes 8 and 9, cites DePuy interview, 8 October 1976, with Ernest F. Fisher, ‘Role of the NCO,’ a 22-page typescript, DePuy Family Papers.

39 Gole, DePuy,250.

190 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

Critics charged DePuy with short-changing officer education by emphasising training. He responded by saying that lieutenants and captains should be trained for their specific jobs: ‘shoot, kill, lay mines, pick up mines, build a bridge, hands on’, not to be generic officers. He was ‘horrified’ to learn that lieutenants going to combat engineer units did not drive bulldozers or road graders in their training. He also believed that too much time was spent in classrooms at Fort Benning instead of in the field.40

He was very impressed with the Israeli hands-on approach to officer training, as was General Starry. The best tank commander in an Israeli tank company was the company commander. DePuy, Starry, and other US observers noted with satisfaction that the Israelis did a lot of live firing, much more than the US Army, an observation leading to the establishment in 1980 of the US National Training Center at Fort Irving, where battalions manoeuvre freely and fire all of the weapons of a combat brigade.

DePuy had admired German methods since encountering them in 1944, and he believed the US Army had much to learn from German mechanised infantry in the 1970s. TRADOC worked closely with the Germans, Israelis, and the US Air Force during DePuy’s tenure and after.

An intellectually curious man, he said that the issue was not training versus education, but rather where and when formal education should take place in an officer’s career. That place was not Fort Benning or Fort Knox. What he called ‘that whole man stuff’ should be done at the staff school level, in graduate school, or on the officer’s own time. Moreover, no one should attend staff college without first passing a test that included military history. The army would recommend readings and correspondence courses, but, if the officer had the right stuff, he would educate himself.41

Donn Starry is the one who told Abrams his Army was on its ass, to which Abrams responded by telling Starry to get to Fort Knox and start fixing armour. In Starry, DePuy had an energetic subordinate who was smart, skilled, independent, acerbic and prepared to tell his boss when he disagreed. DePuy recognised that Starry’s effectiveness trumped his inclination to stubborn independence. Abrams sent Starry and the project manager of the new US tank to Israel to ascertain what happened in the Yom Kippur War and what that meant to the American combined arms team.

40 DePuy Family Papers, ‘Final Interview,’ a 43-page DePuy interview with TRADOC Historian Brooks Kleber, 23 May 1977, before DePuy retired 1 July 1977, summarised in Gole, DePuy,240-54and320,n.5.

41 Donald B. Vought and John C. Binkley, ‘Fort Apache or Executive Suite? The US Army Enters the 1980’s’, Parameters VII: 2, 21-34, is an example of the education/training debate in 1978. See also ‘Final Interview’ for DePuy’s thoughts on education and a summary what he thought he accomplished at TRADOC.

191T h e U S A r m y i n T h e A f T e r m A T h o f C o n f l i C T

DePuy seemed pleased to remark that Starry and Gorman usually disagreed with one another, suggesting that the army and the nation benefited from their sharp clashes. Following command of the armor school, Starry commanded a corps in Germany when DePuy recommended Starry to be his successor at TRADOC.

DePuy called Max Thurman his ‘guardian of program management’ and gives him credit for the internal management tool of TRADOC known as the ‘contract system’. It worked this way. Thurman, a brigadier and DePuy’s resource manager, would be told to find the money for DePuy’s priority projects from within TRADOC. For example, huddling with his key people and hearing of a good training scheme of Paul Gorman’s, DePuy would turn to Thurman and say, ‘OK. Make it happen for Paul. Find the money.’ Thurman would descend on an installation and match resources to essential tasks, for example, cutting out funding that ‘was keeping Benning in the manner to which it had become accustomed, which was to look spiffy’. The contract was literally signed by the commander at Benning and DePuy with the understanding that more tasks meant more resources, fewer tasks meant cuts in resources. In keeping with his principle of centralised planning and decentralised control, DePuy would say: call me if a hurricane or tornado rips off the roof of your headquarters. Otherwise get on with the tasks with the agreed to resources, and don’t do anything stupid. Thurman, a notorious workaholic, called himself DePuy’s ‘bag man’. He would command TRADOC from 1987 to 1989.42

In his exit interview with his command historian in 1977, DePuy could have taken a bow for accomplishments in training, doctrine, combat developments, and management of the three-ring circus that was his command. But he doesn’t. He is modest in saying that he wasn’t smart enough to see the end of the road when he started out in 1973. Each of the building blocks seemed important in their own right as they were being addressed. ‘But as time has gone on, they all seem to have begun to fit together, I think it’s safe to say, in getting the Army ready to fight the next war.’43

He believed that turning any army around takes ten or fifteen years as new ideas and weapons systems are introduced and take root. It was fourteen years after he left TRADOC that President George H.W. Bush exulted at the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991, ‘By God, we’ve licked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.’44

42 Thurman OH, MHI, cited in Gole, DePuy, 242-4.43 ‘Final Interview’, Gole’s DePuy, 241.44 Harry G. Summers Jr, On Strategy II: A Critical Analysis of the Gulf War(NewYork,1995),7,citedinGole,DePuy,

294.

192 V i C T o r y o r D e f e A T

But I’m stopping in 1977 with DePuy’s retirement from active duty and the army moving in the right direction. Other important issues in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam deserve and are getting attention: recruiting for the all-volunteer army; the implications of the vast increase in the number of jobs women do in the army; the period of the ‘hollow Army’ and force development; indeed, the use of the army as an instrument of social change. And most recently, again, counterinsurgency.

DePuy would be among the first to say that an army is never permanently fixed. But I conclude by giving the lion’s share of credit to DePuy for setting the US Army on the right path in the aftermath of Vietnam.

193

The South African Military and Post-conflict Integration in the Twentieth Century

Ian van der Waag

South Africa has come through a difficult, yet interesting, period of adjustment following the end of the Cold War, the growth of democracy in the developing world, and the re-creation of a new society in South Africa after 1994. This has necessarily impacted on her armed forces and the roles defined in terms of the application of military power, which are now governed by a supreme constitution. Some commentators, particularly in the years immediately following 1994, asserted that military power no longer has importance in a postmodern environment while others, recognising future challenges, argued that South Africa, beset with far-reaching socio-economic crises, could no longer afford the burden of military forces. Yet, most would now agree that these perspectives were short-sighted and that, while the risk of major conflict had ebbed, the events of 9/11 and its consequences demonstrated that the continental and international landscapes are less certain, less stable and less predictable, than many had hoped for. South African interests are intertwined inextricably in regional and global affairs and if she is to protect these interests and ensure her security, she must maintain credible military force capable of meeting an array of contingencies. It was with this in mind that the strategic arms deal, since the subject of much debate, was done.1

Today the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) numbers some 74,596 fulltime members, the majority of who are distributed through four services: Army (38,920), Air Force (10,808), Navy (6,850) and Military Health Service (7,721).2 At this point, South Africa confronts not only the culmination of a long and tortuous, post-1994, transformation process, but also further calls to deploy forces in support of OOTW and especially multinational peace operations. South African peace operations started in 1996 with the posting of two officers to the UK Multinational Division in

1 J. Sylvester and A. Seegers, ‘South Africa’s Strategic Arms Package: A Critical Analysis’, Scientia Militaria 36:1 (2008), 52-77.

2 Department of Defence, Annual Report FY 2008-2009: Safeguarding South Africa for a Better Life for All (Pretoria, 2009), 144.

194 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Bosnia and this was followed by the rather difficult intervention in Lesotho in 1998. But they escalated rapidly after 1999, with deployments as part of various SADC, AU and UN operations, including those in Lesotho, Burundi, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Comoros, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Uganda, and the Sudan.3 Moreover, South Africa, as part of her broader goal to restore and establish peace and stability on the continent of Africa, contributes to the African Standby Force (the AU’s rapid reaction force) and the associated SADC brigade, structures that were created in 2006.4 South Africa, perhaps surprisingly, now occupies the tenth position on the ranking of UN peacekeeping contributions. In terms of role definition the SANDF may be deployed in order to ‘[1] preserve life, health or property in emergency or humanitarian relief operations; [2] ensure the provision of essential services; [3] support any department of state, including support for purposes of socio-economic upliftment; and [4] effect national border control’.5 This emphasis on humanitarian and developmental missions represents a major shift in approach away from warfighting and the harder military roles of the 1970s and 1980s and early-1990s.

Background: Integrations and Transformations

The armed forces of South Africa were established on 1 July 1912. However, when the centenary comes round within the next two years, the event is unlikely to be marked. This stands in stark contrast to the centenary that the Australian Defence Force commemorated in 2001, which was marked with a conference and the appearance since of a series of books. The centenary in South Africa, however, will slip past quietly, as indeed did the centenary of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 2010, for 1994 was a watershed year and the pre-history remains very much contested.6

But South Africa, in terms of the theme for this conference, finds herself in a unique position for she experienced no less than three post-conflict integrations during the last century, each associated with a process of military transformation (figure 1). The first of

3 Charles Ross, ‘Peace support operations’, South African Soldier 16:9 (2009), 10-15. 4 Africa Union, Roadmap for the Operationalization of the African Standby Force (Addis Ababa, 2005); and T. Neeth-

ling, ‘Shaping the African Standby Force; Developments, Challenges and Prospects’, Military Review 85 (2005). 5 Section 18 of the Defence Act (42 of 2002). 6 As Hilton Hamann has noted, ‘part of the spoils is that the victors get to rewrite history to suit themselves’: H.

Hamann, Days of the Generals: The untold story of South Africa’s apartheid-era military generals (Cape Town, 2001), xi. On the battle for the history see also Todd Cleveland, ‘“We still want the truth”: The ANC’s Angolan detention camps and postapartheid memory’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25:1 (2005), and Jacob Dlamini’s challenge in terms of what he calls the ‘comforting fiction of our past’ in his Native Nostalgia (Johannesburg, 2009).

195T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

these occurred in 1912, when the colonial forces of the four British colonies came together to form the Union Defence Forces (UDF) of the new Union of South Africa. The second process followed the 1948 election and the accession to power of the National Party (NP) and the creation of a South African Defence Force (SADF). The third, which followed the first, broad-based, democratic elections in 1994, led to the formation of the SANDF. This was to be a radical break with the past, the armed forces would be subject to the civil power, the state would only be able to apply power in terms of a new, negotiated constitution (grundnorm), and the defence force, now recognised to be an integral part of South African society, would transform from an institution based on racial privilege into one of equal individuals, distinguished only by merit. These processes were, and still are, very complex and sensitive.

Figure 1: Three processes within one century.

Yet a discussion of South African military transformation does not have the luxury of engaging with a wide body of historical literature. And, we might well ask why such fundamental processes have engaged such limited attention. In part, the trajectory of South African military historiography – dominated by an extended political debate – has discouraged critical approaches to these processes. The first integration, which followed the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), was held up to be an example of how the majority of Afrikaans- and English-speaking South Africans, setting aside their historical differences,

196 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

were drawn into a new Union Defence Force in the spirit of ‘Union’. The Afrikaner nationalist interpretation, in contrast, focussed on the political history of the glorious march of white (Afrikaner) nationalism toward the creation of ‘South African’ structures and eventually the advent of the republic. Transformation of the military, and similar processes that played out elsewhere, were axiomatic. It was sufficient for nationalist scholars to note simply that 1948 allowed a triumphant nationalist party to shape the UDF into a supposedly more ‘South African’ force, following an Anglophone sojourn in the jungles and deserts of the two world wars.7

In the 1990s, however, the findings of a new generation of young scholars began to challenge the nationalist approach. Uncovering patterns of prejudice and cultural contretemps between English South Africans and Afrikaners, historians such as Roger Boulter, Noëlle Cowling and Mark Coghlan initiated a revision that challenged the Afrikaner nationalist interpretation.8 Moreover, with the experience of a third transformation after 1994, the foundations were laid for a more probing, historicised examination of the idea and practice of post-conflict integration and military transformation. Social scientists – including Rocky Williams, Abel Esterhuyse and Lindy Heinecken – followed.9

Although neither Heinecken nor Esterhuyse extended their research trajectory, to see how the transformations in the UDF and SADF might have influenced transformation after 1994, their work has important implications. If they are correct, the opening of the military after 1994 represented neither the explosive triumph of long-thwarted, grassroots, black ambition, nor the naked triumph of the ideas of the Constitution. Rather, their work suggests that the post-apartheid transformation was less of a radical break than a fundamental redefinition in terms of race.

7 I. van der Waag, ‘Contested histories: official history and the South African military in the 20th century’, in J. Grey (ed.), The Last Word? Essays on Official History in the United States and British Commonwealth (Westport, CT, and London, 2003), 27-52.

8 R. Boulter, ‘F.C. Erasmus and the Politics of South African Defence 1848-1959’ (PhD thesis, Rhodes University, 1997); R.S. Boulter, ‘Afrikaner nationalism in action: F.C. Erasmus and South Africa’s defence forces 1948–1959’, Nations and Nationalism 6:3 (2000), 437-59; N. Cowling, ‘A History of Military Nomenclature in South Africa’, Militaria 23:3 (1993), 1-13; M. Coghlan, Pro Patria: Another 50 Natal Carbineer Years 1945-1995 (Pietermaritzburg, 2000).

9 R. Williams, ‘The Role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the re-professionalisation of the South African armed forces’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa 21:2 (1999), 40-72; A. Esterhuyse, ‘Management and Command in the SANDF: Changing Priorities’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa 26 (2004), 40-60; A. Esterhuyse, ‘Getting the Job Done: Transformation in the South African Military’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa, forthcoming; L. Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military? The Complexity of Managing Diversity in the South African Armed Forces’, Scientia Militaria 37:1 (2009), 25-49; L. Heinecken and N. van der Waag-Cowling, ‘The Politics of Race and Gender in the South African Armed Forces: Issues, Challenges, Lessons’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 47:4 (2009), 517-38.

197T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

Transformation implies something more. There are, according to David Chuter, four primary domains of transformation. The first of these, cultural transformation, embraces change in the organisation’s culture, leadership, management and administrative ethos as well as the traditions and value systems upon which the organisation is predicated. Human transformation embraces change in the composition of the organisation in terms of race, class, gender and regional composition as well as change in human resources practices. Political transformation endeavours to guarantee that the conduct and character of the organisation conforms to the political values of the democracy within which the organisation is situated. As such, it includes the acknowledgement of the principle of civil supremacy, the creation of mechanisms of civil oversight and control, guarantees in terms of accountability and transparency, and other such principles. Organisational transformation is more technocratic and embraces ‘rightsizing’ and measures to ensure that management practices and diverse organisational processes are streamlined, made more cost-effective, and service delivery more efficient.10 To these may be added a fifth domain, namely that of technological transformation, which embraces technical research and development, and weapons systems design and acquisition, but also doctrinal change and innovation seated in a deep and critical study of military history and military theory.

Assessing change and continuity in military transformation before and after 1994 is therefore a vast undertaking. While the South African military had to grapple with transformation of different hue for much of the twentieth century (as many militaries, in fact, did) its complex ramifications were brought into sharper relief during these three periods. The military, in many ways a barometer and a window into society, encapsulates both the political transformative impact and the continuities which link the histories of 1912, 1948 and 1994, of the making of the Union, the dawn of Apartheid, and the creation of a second ‘New South Africa’ within the space of some eighty years. The South African experience is certainly a rich, perhaps unique, case study.11

First Amalgam: Smuts and the UDF

Little more than one hundred years ago, South Africa was still a geographic expression for an assortment of British colonies, former Boer republics and a number of recently-conquered African kingdoms and chiefdoms. The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) ushered in a

10 D. Chuter, Defence Transformation: A Short Guide to the Issues, Institute for Security Studies Monograph 49 (Pretoria, 2000), 1-2.

11 Here the transition of the French army, from the Old Regime through the Revolution and Napoleon and on to the Restoration, a span of less than four decades, is an obvious comparative study. See Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army 1750-1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester and New York, 2002). See also Alan Forrest, ‘“A Glorious Defeat”’, ch. 1 in this collection.

198 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

new era, one of undoubted British supremacy. South Africa’s military forces, colonial and varied, existed after 1902 on an uncertain landscape. Relatively isolated at the southern end of the African continent, they seemed far from the discord of Europe and Asia, and South Africans presumed that potential enemies would be distant from their bases of supply, that the Royal Navy would counter any seaborne threat, and the British Army command, in Cape Town until 1921, would assist local forces in repelling a land-based enemy that would, in any case, have to cross a vast desert in the west, malarial jungle in the east. Yet the presence of these two British establishments presented problems that were political and military, necessary for the adequate defence of South Africa, but simultaneously a visible sign of South Africa’s constitutional and military dependence. This was made more complex by South Africa’s fault-lines, which were immediately susceptible to the grinding of geopolitical fault-lines in Europe.12

The Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910 and the Afrikaner party, led by Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, swept to power that September. The forging of a new South African society was built on a consensus that the sectarian interests of the English and Afrikaans communities had to be finely balanced, and the ‘happiness’ of their subject peoples carefully managed.13 Military necessity had encouraged political union. The threat of African risings, and the Bhambatha revolt in Natal in 1906, had first led to defence talks between the staffs of the four British colonies.14 Bhambatha, although suppressed easily, revealed all the flaws of South African defence policy and the institutional weaknesses of the colonial militias. Greater inter-colonial military cooperation had followed and, after a sequence of military conferences, a platform for the creation of a regional military force, which became the Union Defence Forces (UDF) in July 1912, was established.15

The Union Defence Forces, which drew in structures from the four former colonies,16 encompassed the traditional cornerstones of South African military policy, namely, citizen soldiers, a small permanent force, a small local division of the Royal Naval Volunteer

12 Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred (London 2007), ch. 3. 13 John Lambert, ‘South African British? Or Dominion South Africans? The Evolution of an Identity in the 1910s and

1920s’, South African Historical Journal 43 (November 2000), 197 passim; John Lambert, ‘An Identity Threatened; White English-speaking South Africans, Britishness and Domestic South Africanism, 1934-1939’, Kleio 37 (2005), 59 passim.

14 These were the colonies of the Cape of Good Hope and of Natal as well as the two former Boer republics that had been incorporated into the British Empire in 1900 as the Transvaal Colony and the Orange River Colony.

15 These conferences were convened, in Pretoria, Durban, and Johannesburg, and were followed by the Imperial conferences of 1909 and 1911: Debatten van de Volksraad, 21 February 1911, cols 1263-6. See also, War Office Documents, A1380 South African Defence.

16 These were the Cape Colonial Forces, the Transvaal Volunteers and the Natal Militia, and the commandos (which had been resurrected in the Transvaal and Orange River colonies in 1907 and 1908) as well some former members of the South African Constabulary, a paramilitary police force for the Transvaal and Orange River colonies.

199T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

Reserve, which was stationed at the major ports only, and very thinly-spread coastal fortifications. However, several factors affected the Union Defence Forces and undermined its standing as a reliable, well-equipped, and deployable defence force.

First of all, the creation of the UDF had been no easy matter and Smuts, the defence minister, introduced the South Africa defence bill in February 1912 in opposition to many of his own party. An avalanche of criticism and high levels of discontent in the country districts, particularly in the Transvaal, followed.17 There remained, as the shadow minister noted, ‘a great deal of suspicion of its provisions amongst the old fashioned Boer population’ and mostly regarding the principle of compulsory training.18 Petitions were considered, the Military Code and Rules of Procedure as provisionally adopted from the British Army Act were consulted, and in the face of severe opposition the bill was adopted in April 1912.19 As a party, only the Unionists were satisfied, for the bill stressed the importance of defence as an imperial matter.20 The UDF, however inadequate, represented a fundamental change in South African military policy for the defence act recognised dependence on the Royal Navy for protection from invasion and there were now coastal defences backed by military forces on the interior. But few thought the UDF would undertake military tasks beyond ‘South Africa’, and so the UDF remained essentially a colonial constabulary and coast-defence organisation with few sharing Smuts’ vision for a more balanced, modern force, capable of engaging a modern enemy.

Smuts had also to move cautiously to avoid any ‘appearance of compulsion or militarism on the European model’.21 An almost constant antimilitary sentiment, of a peculiarly anti-British nature, enjoyed widespread currency. M.T. Steyn, the former president of the Orange Free State, remained concerned that the new force, and the school cadet system especially, would create a spirit of militarism and that the lines between the imperial forces and the Union forces would be blurred. If Afrikaners remained distrustful of the British and of British institutions and would baulk at the military institutions the British were thought to be creating in South Africa in 1912, they were not alone. John X. Merriman,

17 M.T. Steyn to C.F. Beyers, 16 February 1912, Beyers Collection, col. 1, ff. 45-7, National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria (NASAP). See also the two petitions, Memorial of the Women of Nooitgedacht, undated (ff.104-7), and Memorial of the Women of Randjesfontein, undated (ff.108-10).

18 Hugh Wyndham to Lady Leconfield, 21 and 27 February 1912, Petworth House Archives (PHA), West Sussex Record Office (WSRO).

19 Union of South Africa, Parliament, Select Committee Report: S.C.7-1912. On South Africa Defence Bill, Report, J.C. Smuts, 16 April 1912.

20 Richard Feetham to his mother, 19 April 1912, Feetham Papers, Box 3, file 1, f. 134, Rhodes House Library, Oxford University (RHO).

21 Herbert Stanley to Lord Gladstone, 7 August 1910, Sir Herbert James Stanley papers, MSS Afr s.1250, RHO. I thank Kent Fedorowich for this reference.

200 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Cape politician and elder statesman, was concerned that South Africa ‘not be led into militarism and to any unwise pledges of sharing in the quarrels in [the] inciting [of ] which we have not been consulted’.22 However, his vision for a small force, having good organisation and excellent supply, but with ‘not too much discipline’, was countered by the Unionists, who demanded a force not only sufficient for internal defence, but able also, in concert possibly with British forces, to repel the attack of a European enemy possibly elsewhere in British Africa.

The UDF, like the Union of South Africa, was a compromise between the determination of English-speakers to maintain the ‘British connection’ and the desire of Afrikaner nationalists for a restoration of Boer political and military traditions. It was self-evident, despite the appeals of Olive Schreiner and other anti-military lobbyists,23 that the new South African state was to be well-armed; this politicians across party lines accepted to be both natural and inevitable. But it was less evident how exactly members of four disparate forces, representing at least three military traditions, and speaking and protecting two languages, were to combine into the new defence structures.

Unsurprisingly, several matters dogged the UDF, not least military culture. Complex dynamics, embracing personal prejudice as much as the demands of modern warfare, and the requirement of imperial standardisation, shaped defence policy and force design. As might be expected, the integration of the Cape Colonial Forces, the Natal Militia and the Transvaal Volunteers with the resurrected commandos of the former Boer republics, forces that had been at war with each other only ten years before, was no easy task. The English and Dutch (Afrikaans) languages had to be recognised and protected. Billets had to be found for field and staff officers from the different forces, who competed for the same posts. Unsurprisingly, the new structures were a place of intense personal and factional lobbying and the UDF, which aimed to weld together men who spoke two competing languages and came from armed forces based on opposing military traditions, remained essentially an unhappy marriage.

As a consequence, the second challenge was the apparent need, even at the cost of military effectiveness, to ‘balance’ language, provincial and sectarian interests. This was

22 J.X. Merriman to M.T. Steyn, 16 January 1911, in A.H. Marais (ed.), Politieke Briewe, II: 1911-1912 (Bloemfontein, 1973), 5.

23 Olive Schreiner, the writer of The Story of An African Farm, well-captures the geographic consideration and antimilitarism: ‘I seem to have lived in a bath of human blood ever since I can remember! The only thing we need such a defense (sic) force for, is to kill other South Africans. Our position, the nature of our country, the distance from its real base of supplies of any attacking country – even Germany – makes us perfectly safe if we are united’: Olive Schreiner to Patrick Duncan, 27 June 1912, BC294 Duncan Collection, D1.33.2, University of Cape Town Libraries, Archives and Manuscripts (UCT).

201T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

recognised immediately. While the language ratio was 60:40, equity was sought on an equal, 50:50 basis. This is evident from the start and a remarkable balance, always in language and often in geography, was achieved. The parliamentary select committee for defence, to which the bill was referred in March 1912, comprised nine members (four Afrikaners and five English-speakers) with a political division of four Unionists, four members of the ‘Dutch’ party, and one Labourite, and representative of force of origin and province.24 And even the specialists this select committee interviewed represented the British-colonial and Boer military systems in almost perfect equity.25

This balancing act was taken further. The identification of candidates for training courses, in addition to the drawing up of promotion lists, was the result of careful assessment and detailed bureaucratic selection. Moreover, when the various arms came into being in 1913, the whole was placed under a divided command to protect sectarian interests. The two most important positions were filled by Lukin, the former commander of the Cape Colonial Forces, and the staunchly republican, former-general C.F. Beyers. Lukin’s position as inspector-general of the Permanent Force was arguably the more important for he had to create an atmosphere in the Permanent Force that was congenial to both English and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, which through personal fairness, impartiality and professionalism, he achieved to a remarkable degree.26

Beyers, who assumed command of the new Citizen Forces, with the resuscitated Boer rank of commandant-general, was cut from different cloth, which introduces a fourth matter, that of the military factions created before 1912 in the struggle for military power and the rush on the available posts in the new structures. Lt. Colonel Hugh Wyndham commander of the Southern Mounted Rifles, pushed out of the Citizen Force in 1912, had noted somewhat prophetically two years earlier that Beyers was ‘a very violent Boer’, capable of making ‘very racial speeches’ and that if he were made ‘Minister of Defence, or Commandant General, [this] would lead to the dismemberment of any defence force that we may possess at present or in the future.’29 The establishment of organisational fiefdoms

24 Debatten van de Volksraad, 7 March 1912, col. 736; and Union of South Africa, Parliament, Select Committee Report: S.C.7-1912. On South Africa Defence Bill, ii.

25 Union of South Africa, Parliament, Select Committee Report, S.C.7-1912. On South Africa Defence Bill, Minutes of meeting, 16 April 1912.

26 E.W. Nortier, ‘Major General Sir H.T. Lukin, 1861-1925: the making of a South African hero’ (MMil thesis, Stellenbosch University, December 2005).

27 J. Kemp to C.F. Beyers, 5 April 1909, and M.T. Steyn to C.F. Beyers, 16 February 1912, NASAP: General C.F. Beyers Collection, vol. 1; and C.F. Beyers to M. du Toit, 23 December 1912, Col. M. du Toit Collection, NASAP. See also Kemp, Die Pad van die Veroweraar, 109.

28 Charles Leonard to David Graaff, 17 February 1903, NASAP: Charles Leonard Papers.29 Hugh Wyndham to Lady Leconfield, 2 November 1910, PHA, WSRO.

202 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

stunted development and the UDF failed, at critical times, to employ officers with the appropriate military training and education.

A prosopographical study of the South African high command during the first half of the twentieth century, shows that the split between the language groups was exceptionally fine (figure 2). The drive for language equity was seemingly the preferred way for finding a consensus in a difficult environment characterised by competing military traditions and language preferences.30

Figure 2: Career point and language; the general and senior officers in the Union Defence Force, 1912-1950. n = 61

(English-speaking = 31; Afrikaans = 30).

30 J.C. Smuts to C.F. Beyers, 9 May 1914, and ‘Maurits’ to C.F. Beyers, 8 June 1914, General C.F. Beyers Collection, vol. 1, NASAP.

203T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

A Defence Council, essentially a safety mechanism for the protection of language and geographic interests, was created to advise the minister on matters affecting the place of the governor-general as well as the amalgamation of the forces. Predictably its membership made provision for both language and provincial representation. There were two English and two Afrikaans councillors and they represented the four provinces. They were appointed by the Governor General, and Smuts, as Minister of Defence, was ex officio president of the council. The Secretary for Defence, the capable Roland Bourne, was its secretary and specialists could be summoned for their advice. The Council was to function for five years from the commencement of the Defence Act, a period that was renewable.31

Periodic conflict, sometimes violent, marked the rather difficult relations between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans in the Department of Defence, despite these steps to establish equilibrium between English and Afrikaans-speakers and between the two southern provinces (the former Cape and Natal colonies) and the two northern provinces (the former Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State). But many Afrikaners could not endure ‘the melting pot’ of the new force, and petitioned old patrons for personal support or, in 1914, followed them into rebellion.32 Smuts riled the traditional Boer elite. Smuts was not one of them and the Union’s forces, which he designed, threatened their traditional structures. The 1912 Defence Act eroded the personal attachment between the elites and their largely rural support bases and placed the UDF firmly under centralised, civil authority. Discipline was more rigid, set chains of command threatened patterns of lineage and patronage, and the general staff structure implied a need for military education and training, probably in British institutions. These proto-nationalists, appealing to an easy, anti-British tradition in South Africa, ridiculed Smuts and the Union Defence Forces, advising Afrikaner men not to sign the attestation forms and instilling concerns that they would be bound entirely as soldiers of the British Government!33

Smuts and the Defence Council lacked the independence necessary to place professionalism above politics. Smuts was pressured to include in the new structures many of the former Boer generals and commandants, some of whom had performed well in the field against the British. And then, in the Citizen Forces, under Beyers’ factionalism

31 DC, Box 109, files 2270 and 2271 Defence Council Agenda of 1st and 2nd meetings, Documentation Centre (Military Archives), Pretoria (MAP).

32 Beyers to Sir John French, 21 July, 1913 (‘the melting pot’), NASAP, General C.F. Beyers Collection, vol. 1. There are also numerous references to instances of nepotism and ‘connection’ support in J. Kemp to Beyers, 5 April 1909; M.T. Steyn to Beyers, 30 September 1913; Smuts to Beyers, 27 February 1914; ‘Maurits’ to Beyers, 8 June 1914 (all in NASAP, Beyers Collection, vol. 1); as well as the correspondence between Colonel du Toit and former president M.T. Steyn, 1912, Col. M. du Toit Collection, W.77.1, NASAP.

33 Ian van der Waag, ‘Boer Generalship and the Politics of Command’, War in History 11:4 (2004), 393-421.

204 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

and nepotism (in this sense, perhaps ‘nephewism’) had reached new heights as kin, connected by familiar and agrarian interests, rushed on the available posts. Beyers, and several other high-ranking officers, drained the citizen regiments of their more ‘British’ officers and, in their stead, appointed from family, faction and clique,34 the sort of thing, as Charles Leonard, a prominent Rand attorney, had complained, that worked towards ‘permanent alienation instead of reconciliation’35 and affected the unity of the Union Defence Force materially. The establishment of organisational fiefdoms, often associated with the sidelining of well-qualified, professional officers, checked military development and innovation. Careers had not opened fully to talent for merit was determined by ‘connection’. With the second amalgam a strong race dimension would be added.

Second Amalgam: Erasmus and the SADF

The second amalgam followed the Second World War. Although this was on a scale far smaller than the first, it was in many ways more heated. South African participation in the Second World War was again bitterly contested. The country had divided again and the groups opposing the war effort were many, some resorted to violence. One of these, the Ossewa-Brandwag (OB), established initially to keep alive the ideals of the Great Trek and stimulate Afrikaner culture, drew thousands of Afrikaners, including former soldiers who had left the armed forces to seek an extra-political means to ensure Afrikaner unity and oppose the war effort.36 In pursuit of military objectives, the OB had had contact with German agents in southern Africa as well as the Reich’s Chancellery.37 There were clashes between the OB and soldiers on leave from the front, in some centres there were riots. It was not long before there was a break between the OB and the NP, whose leadership, although sharing the republican ideals, remained wedded to parliamentary democracy.

34 J. Kemp to C.F. Beyers, 5 April 1909, and M.T. Steyn to C.F. Beyers, 16 February 1912, General C.F. Beyers Collection, vol. 1, NASAP; and C.F. Beyers to M. du Toit, 23 Dec 1912, Col. M. du Toit Collection, NASAP. See also Kemp, Die Pad van die Veroweraar, 109. For the case of the Southern Mounted Rifles, see Ian van der Waag, ‘Rural struggles and the politics of a colonial command: The Southern Mounted Rifles of the Transvaal Volunteers, 1905-1912’, in Stephen Miller (ed.), Soldiers and Settlers in Africa, 1850-1918 (Leiden, 2009), 251-85.

35 Charles Leonard to David Graaff, 17 February 1903, Charles Leonard Papers, NASAP.36 Herinneringe van Mnr. F.G.T. Radloff, band nrs. 220-1, Ossewa-Brandwag-Argief, Ferdinand Postma Library,

NorthWest University, Potchefstroom (NWU).37 There has been some good recent work on the state of South Africa’s internal security. See Kent Fedorowich,

‘German Espionage and British Counter-Intelligence in South Africa and Mozambique, 1939-1944’, Historical Journal 48 (2005), 209-30; Patrick Furlong, ‘Allies at War? Britain and the “Southern African Front” in the Second World War’, South African Historical Journal 54 (2005), 16-29; E.D.R. Harrison, ‘On Secret Service for the Duce: Umberto Campini in Portuguese East Africa, 1941-43’, English Historical Review 122 (2007), 1318-49.

205T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

Another movement monitored by the Special Branch at this time was the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), a cultural organisation more difficult to monitor for it was secretive and associated closely with the National Party, the parliamentary opposition. Smuts had described the Broederbond in 1944 as ‘a dangerous, cunning, political, Fascist organisation of which no civil servant, if he is to retain his loyalty to the State and Administration, can be allowed to be a member’.38 Members of the OB and of the AB were pushed out of the armed forces; members of the former increasingly found a political home in the National Party. The Smuts government did not recognise the signs that the nationalist opposition was consolidating and gaining ground. The National Party, after an initial flirtation, distanced itself increasingly from fascism and began to act as a normal and responsible opposition, capable of forming an alternative government. They, however, retained a republican policy and strong stance in terms of the Indian and communist questions. In 1948 they swept to power, with a slender majority in the House of Assembly only.39

Great changes followed 1948. Having been opposed to South African participation in the Second World War, the nationalist government immediately took steps to ‘right dress’ the UDF. Frans Erasmus, the new defence minister, was a controversial figure and there is a growing literature on him. However, the only full, in-depth biographies are theses produced by Louisa Jooste and Roger Boulter.40 While the approaches and interpretations differ vastly – the one study is a necessary antidote for the other – both Jooste and Boulter agree that Erasmus had no military experience and little military knowledge and that this did not deter him from launching a thorough transformation of the UDF and across all five transformational domains.

Defence policy was now founded on the recognition of South Africa’s sovereign independence, her isolated geographical location and her unique defence needs, which freed her from ‘entanglement in British defence schemes’. The UDF now had two tasks only. The first of these was to prevent internal unrest and, where this arose, to protect people and property. The second was to guard against external attack, which would be met on the northern borders (the bush zone from the Cunene to Punda Maria) or along

38 Smuts quoted in ‘The Broederbond States its Own Case’, United Party Archives, Cape Head Office, Subject Files, The Broederbond, University of South Africa Libraries (Unisa).

39 Jan J. van Rooyen, Die Nasionale Party; Sy Opkoms end Oorwinning – Kaapland se Aaandeel (Cape Town, 1956), 149 ff.

40 L. Jooste, ‘F.C. Erasmus as Minister van Verdediging, 1948-1959’ (MA thesis, Unisa, 1995); Roger Boulter, ‘F.C. Erasmus and the Politics of South African Defence 1848-1959’ (PhD thesis, Rhodes University, 1997). Neither thesis has been published, but both scholars have produced article-length publications: L. Jooste, ‘Die politieke koerswending van 1948 besorg ‘n nuwe identiteit aan die Univerdedigingsmag’, Militaria 26:2 (1996), 113-28; R.S. Boulter, ‘Afrikaner nationalism in action: F.C. Erasmus and South Africa’s defence forces 1948–1959’, Nations and Nationalism 6:3 (2000), 437-59.

206 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

the 4552km coastline. For this South Africa required a defence force larger and better equipped than she had before 1939.41

Erasmus also commenced an immediate program of ‘indigenisation’. The Union’s defence forces had to be ‘entirely recreated’ so that they received a distinctly South African character, and the development of an own South African military tradition.42 At a cultural and political level this meant a reversion to not only the labels but also the attitudes of the old Boer republics. While acknowledging that the modern way of war demanded mechanisation, he revitalised the commandos, which he thought to be South Africa’s best reserve combat forces regarding internal defence. He revived the old spirit of the commando and restored their position, for he believed that the commando system best suited the traditions and history of Afrikanerdom. Moreover, Erasmus forced the old Citizen Force regiments and units to dispose of all the vestiges of their colonial origins, of their emblematic connections with Britain and the royal family, and of their affiliation with British regiments. This was said to make the defence force more ‘South African’, but for many South Africans, and many veterans of the world wars, this was nothing other than naked ‘Afrikanerisation’. As Hertzog had noted in 1935, the Broederbond were sworn ‘not to entertain any co-operation with the English-speaking population’.43 Moreover, the AB program aimed at an independent South Africa based on, inter alia, the ‘Afrikanerisation’ of public life and the education of the youth in ‘a Christian National sense’.44

Rudolph Hiemstra, an air force officer who refused to serve his country during the war, was Erasmus’ right-hand man. Hiemstra was no paragon. He flunked out at Wits, where he could not handle the tempo of study, was afraid to question his lecturers for fear of showing his ignorance, and baulked at the English language. He joined the UDF in 1931 and, having completed his first courses and training as a pilot, was grounded in 1932 for reckless flying. A family intervention and the soft-ear of the Minister of Defence ensured a further opportunity. He was in Britain for part of 1936, where he had to ‘hold his tongue’ in the officers’ mess on the matter of the Spanish Civil War. His reading at this time was limited to stories of Afrikaner heroism and the works of Afrikaner

41 This distance of 4552km was the combination of the South African coastline (2798km) with that of South West Africa-Namibia (1754km): F.C. Erasmus, ‘Die Agtergrond van Ons Verdedigingsbeleid’, 1/1/2355, Dr D.F. Malan Collection, Special Collections, J.S. Gericke Library, Stellenbosch University (SU). See also, J.J. van Rooyen, Die Nasionale Party, 231.

42 F.C. Erasmus, ‘Die Agtergrond van Ons Verdedigingsbeleid’, 1/1/2355, Dr D.F. Malan Collection, SU. 43 Hertzog quoted in ‘Broederbond Secrecy’, United Party Archives, Cape Head Office, Subject Files, The Broeder-

bond, Unisa. 44 A.N. Pelzer, Die Afrikaner-Broederbond; Eerste 50 Jaar (Cape Town, 1979), 9-12. See also Broederbond commu-

niqués quoted in ‘The Broederbond States its Own Case’, United Party Archives, Cape Head Office, Subject Files, The Broederbond, Unisa.

207T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

nationalist historians. His reading on warfare was seemingly limited to the atrocities of ‘the English’ and the courage of the Afrikaner people.45 Hiemstra seemingly had OB connections, but hid these and remained in the defence force.46 He took exception to English-speakers in the armed forces and their ‘minagtende houding’ (disdainful attitude) to Afrikaans. English had remained the language for training until Pirow became Minister of Defence in 1933. Pirow promulgated a policy of bilingualism, whereby in rotation months would either be English or Afrikaans for the purposes of all correspondence and verbal communication. Colonel Ross, ‘a time-serving tailor’s dummy, who called himself Charles Gordon-Ross to members of the British community, and Karl Roos to members of the Afrikaner community’,47 was an English-speaking officer who, to Hiemstra’s mind, ‘tried’. But Hiemstra claimed not to be anti-English; although, ‘heavens knows, they did us enough injustice’.48

Without doubt Hiemstra was a truly political general. He was bumped up the promotion list rapidly, from a major in 1948 to chief of the defence force in 1965. But he was not promoted in view of impressive ability (a modicum of military respectability had to be shored up by a string of courses in Europe) but rather his ideological fervour and bureaucratic viciousness shown during the post-1948 shake-up.

In terms of the organisational and human domains the effect was enormous. As a United Party publicist noted, after the election in 1948, ‘all pretensions were discarded and the Ossewabrandwag, Nationalist Party and Broederbond re-united quite openly. The doors of the jails were opened and the “true Afrikaners” were hailed as heroes.’49 Erasmus ‘initiated a process of ridding the defence force of officers who he believed were associated with the government of the Anglophile Jan Smuts and replacing them with party supporters’.50 Sir Pierre van Ryneveld, the Chief of the General Staff, was forced into a period of leave and then retirement. Evered Poole, his deputy and presumed successor, who had commanded the 6th Armour Division in Italy with such success, was sent to Berlin as attaché. Piet de Waal, Louis Botha’s grandson, was likewise permitted to take

45 R.C. Hiemstra, Die Wilde Haf (Kaapstad, 2001), 133-4, 147, 169, 183-4. 46 Hiemstra introduced members of the armed forces, including Capatin Gustav Radloff (born 1917), to Dr Hans

van Rensburg, the Administrator of the Free State Province, who became commandant-general of the OB in 1941. See Herinneringe van Mnr. F.G.T. Radloff, band nrs. 220-21, Ossewa-Brandwag-Argief, Ferdinand Postma Library, NorthWest University, Potchefstroom (NWU).

47 Peter Clutterbuck to J.E. Stephenson, 29 September 1939, The National Archives, Kew, London (TNA): DO 35/1008/7 WG 429/13.

48 R.C. Hiemstra, Die Wilde Haf, 187, 197-8. 49 ‘Who Governs South Africa? Peoples Government of the Broederbond: Lifting the Black Curtain’, United Party

Publication, United Party Archives, Cape Head Office, Subject Files, The Broederbond, Unisa. 50 R.S. Boulter, ‘Afrikaner nationalism in action’, 437.

208 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

up a post of little significance to rot at a distance. An entire generation of lower-ranking officers, who, for political reasons, had escaped the formative experiences of the Second World War, were rocketed into higher rank and greater responsibility. Party minnows replaced the military experts. Political discrimination and billet-filling led to weakness and inefficiency. As the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations noted in 1952, the efficiency of the South African forces had deteriorated to such an extent that London would be ‘faced with the questions whether we can continue to hope for any effective help from South Africa in the Middle East in time of war and whether we can afford to supply equipment to South Africa if the probability is that the South African forces will not be in a state to use it effectively’.51 Rapid deterioration and lassitude in the military was the price of political meddling. Moreover, with a stroke, the Nationalists reduced the pool of available manpower dramatically by limiting access to the military to ‘whites’ only (see figure 3). The creation of service gymnasia and a military academy, for much of their history insular and pedestrian, provided the all-important independence in training from Britain.52

Erasmus offered the position of Chief of the General Staff to Len Beyers, a retired general officer and a nephew of C.F. Beyers, one of the key figures of the 1914 Afrikaner Rebellion. Beyers, who had started his career in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, accepted the position on two conditions, first, that it would be only of short duration, and second, that, while he would give his unequivocal support to the government, there would be no deviation from ‘military principles’, in other words, no political interference.53 This did not happen and Beyers’ tenure was even shorter than he might have hoped for.

The technological transformation was not the greatest success and often involved political manoeuvring of Byzantine convolution.54 Entry into the Korean War proved less divisive, but it did provide an opportunity for a nationalist government, less than keen to be involved in a distant war of their own, to seek alternative alliance and acquire jet aircraft and other technology from the Americans.55

51 Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 21 May 1952, PREM 11/274, TNA. 52 F.C. Erasmus, ‘Die Agtergrond van Ons Verdedigingsbeleid’, 1/1/2355, Dr D.F. Malan Collection, SU. 53 Lt Gen Len Beyers to F.C. Erasmus, 8 October 1949, 1/1/2514, Dr D.F. Malan Collection, SU. 54 N. van der Waag-Cowling, ‘South Africa and the Korean War, the Politics of Involvement’, Proceedings of the Center

for the Study of the Korean War 5:1 (June 2005), 47ff. 55 Eric Louw to D.F. Malan, 16 July 1950, 1/1/2568, Dr D.F. Malan Collection, SU.

209T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

Figure 3: The affirmation of race as merit; a 1949 attestation form (courtesy of the SANDF Documentation Centre (Military Archives) Pretoria,

and Captain Gustav Bentz).

210 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Nonetheless, the Erasmus years were an undoubted nadir. However, the changing politico-strategic environment of the 1950s and 1960s and the attempts by an embattled South Africa to find security in a rapidly-changing and increasingly-hostile world, forced reappraisal. Against this background, the military threat appraisal indicated a number of potential contingencies. The landscape, internationally, regionally and locally, was changing. The search for alliance (MEDO, ADO, Simon’s Town) failed and then there were the ever-present questions of defence funding and access to technology.56 Apartheid South Africa was becoming increasingly isolated and herein was situated the new republic’s vulnerability. Erasmus’ successor, J.J. Fouché, launched sustained efforts to ‘rehabilitate’ the Defence Force and re-integrate the South African English into its structures. Various measures, taken to beef up the defence force, were designed and, by degree, implemented. These measures, often successful, included the development of counterstrategies, increased professionalism in the military, appointments based upon military merit rather than political affiliation, the search for alliances and contracts, and the re-equipping of the SADF in terms of hardware and weapons systems and the mobilisation of consent within white South Africans society.57

Great changes followed. Black consciousness and Pan-Africanism grew alongside and in southern Africa at least partly in response to the consolidation of Afrikaner political and military power. As South Africa moved down the path to ‘garrison statehood’ and ‘total strategy’, the liberation movements in southern Africa, invigorated, funded and supplied with arms by one or other party of the bipolar Cold-War world, formed armed movements with the aim of overthrowing white rule on the subcontinent. The result was an interconnected series of wars fought in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), in the then Portuguese territories of Mozambique and Angola, and in the northern part of the territory of South West Africa (now Namibia), combined with an armed struggle against South Africa itself. For South Africa this ended with the negotiated settlement, implemented in 1994, and a further integration.

Third Amalgam: The SANDF

The third amalgam, the most difficult of the three, took place in terms of the 1993 Interim Constitution58 and saw the integration of no less than eight forces to form the SANDF on 27 April 1994. The largest of these were the SADF and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK),

56 Appendix A to Minutes of Meeting of Defence Staff Council held on 20 November 1957, attached to circular KG/GM/5/2 from the Military Secretary, 18 June 1958, archives of the Secretary for Defence, MAP.

57 For a probing and insightful treatment of the 1960s, see Rodney Warwick, ‘White South Africa and defence 1960-68: militarisation, threat perceptions and counter strategies’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2008).

58 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act of 1993 (Interim Constitution).

211T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

the armed force of the African National Congress. The others were the Transkei Defence Force (TDF), the Bophuthatswana Defence Force (BDF), the Venda Defence Force (VDF), and the Ciskei Defence Force (CDF) – collectively the TBVC defence forces. These were the armed forces of the independent states (the ‘independent homelands’) of the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and the Ciskei. The Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the paramilitary wing of the Pan African Congress, integrated in 1997. A late addition, too, was the KwaZulu Self-Protection Force (KZSPF), the paramilitary wing of Inkhatha, that opposed MK in Zululand and on the Rand.

Figure 4: South Africa and the ‘homeland’ states.

212 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Negotiations

The negotiations began in 1990, when, in May that year, a team of forty-six SADF officers met with MK representatives in Lusaka. Collectively, they recognised their different backgrounds and traditions and called for an armed force for South Africa that was balanced, modern and technologically advanced. However, it seemed to the MK people present, that the SADF expected MK to integrate into the SADF, in others words through a process of absorption. In many respects, this may have been a natural outcome for the SADF was well-established, organisationally and technologically superior, possibly the most powerful force on the continent. As Shiryaev, a Soviet officer placed to train MK in Angola, recalled, the SADF was ‘a huge well-adjusted machine, able through its strategy, tactics and technical capabilities to counter practically the whole African continent’.59 Absorption was, of course, something MK did not want and insisted on the creation of a new force into which all others would have to merge.

However, it was soon apparent that MK faced numerous problems and that the pace of change set by the government had caught the ANC by surprise. All of a sudden, the non-statutory forces (the collective noun coined for MK and APLA) had to confront the problems of ending the struggle and of preparing for integration into a new, national, defence force. There was much disorganisation as MK headquarters relocated to South Africa. Cadres were dispersed widely; some were in-country, others were still in exile, many were awaiting finalisation of their personal indemnities. There was also a ‘lingering notion’, while the ANC was at the negotiating table, ‘that MK was being sidelined’, that MK had become ‘an albatross’ and could now be ‘conveniently dispensed with’.60 The sense of abandonment was greatest among the cadres still abroad, who were particularly unhappy at the manner in which the leadership structures had relocated from Lusaka to Johannesburg, leaving those in the frontline states to seemingly fend for themselves. As James Ngculu, deputy chief of MK intelligence (1993), notes,

Comrades complained that no plan or clear arrangements had been made for the cadres left in the rear and the other material needs of MK. The external and regional structures of MK were in disarray, and comrades had been left without clear guidance and information.61

59 Vyacheslav Shiryaev (‘Comrade Ivan’) quoted in Vladimir Shubin, The Hot “Cold War”: The USSR in Southern Africa (Scottsville, 2008), 249.

60 James Ngculu, The Honour to Serve: Recollections of an Umkhonto Soldier (Cape Town, 2009), 224, 230. 61 Ibid., 228.

213T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

These cadres had to be encouraged and exhorted and they had to be cared for materially and otherwise. A conference held at Thohoyandou in August 1991 and the payment of a cash gratuity to MK combatants by the ANC went some way to assuage fears and bolster endorsement of the negotiation process.

Moreover, a nucleus of well-trained, well-placed cadres was required and the training program had to be expanded dramatically, particularly in the regular, technical lines. Cadres received such training in Ghana, India, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and, in South Africa, from the TDF. A personnel list had to be created, and for this cadres had to register. Many were afraid to do so. But it was necessary, as precise personnel details had to be available when all forces had to declare in advance of integration.62 New roles, if possible, had to be found for disabled comrades. And, while the negotiating process continued, MK had to remain a force in being. Kasrils, the MK intelligence chief, who stressed the importance of ‘keeping our forces intact and our powder dry’, called at this time for the creation of ‘self-defence units’ (SDUs), which would also augment MK numbers in the future integration process.63

However, two matters regarding the negotiation and integration processes particularly vexed the ANC and MK at this point. Firstly, the ANC rejected outright the idea of an international peacekeeping force. They felt such a force ought to be indigenous; the problem was how it would be formed. Secondly, there was already some unhappiness regarding the possible use of educational qualifications as a basis for integration. ‘Comrades’, Ngculu tells us,

argued that the lack of formal education qualifications among many MK cadres was not of their own making. Everyone felt that Africans in particular had been denied education by the apartheid system. In exile, many MK members could have opted to go to school but chose to enter the ranks of MK. For these reasons, they should not be abandoned now that there were new opportunities. As one comrade argued, there is education and there is education.64

These two issues would arise in sequence and threaten both the political climate and the harmony within the integrating forces.

62 Ibid., 203, 217-21, 231. 63 L. Mashike, ‘“Blacks can Win Everything, but the Army”: The “Transformation” of the South African Military

between 1994 and 2004’, Journal of Southern African Studies 33:3 (2007), 608. 64 Ngculu, The Honour to Serve, 229.

214 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

The National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF): the first integration test

The higher-level, political negotiations were taking place in Kempton Park, at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), where it was soon obvious that the ANC had a superior negotiating team.65 A Transitional Executive Council (TEC), to ensure a democratic transition, and a Joint Monitoring Council, of the security forces, were created; the JMC included representatives from the SADF, the TBVC forces and the non-statutory forces. Ongoing violence, especially as a result of conflict between the KZSPF and the SDUs of the MK, seemed to threaten the peaceful climate needed for a free and fair election. To this end the National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF) was also created.

The NPKF was the first integration test. Not only was the appointment of the commander contentious, but many and disparate forces were to be brought into the structure. The two candidates, Brigadier George Kruys of the SADF and Brigadier Derek Mgwebi of the TDF, were both found to be unacceptable and so a compromise was reached. As a result, Brigadier Gabriel Ramushwana, a rather colourful figure, was appointed. Ramushwana was not only the president of Venda, but also the commander of the VDF; he had come to power in a coup in 1990. The NPKF, with an establishment of some 4,500, was to comprise SADF and MK members in equal numbers, together forming some two-thirds of the force.66 The remainder would comprise members of the South African Police, and the armed forces and police forces of the TBVC states, and the police forces of five of the six dependent ‘national states’.67 The KwaZulu Police Force, the Bophuthatswana Defence Force and the Bophuthatswana Police Force, however, remained outside of this structure.68 In all there were thirteen different constituent forces that jockeyed for position.

The NPKF was doomed from the start. Not only was it not fully-inclusive, but it had continuously to adjust to the ever-changing political game. The delays involved in Ramushwana’s appointment meant that much valuable time was also lost. The structures and procedures, in the interest of inclusivity and political balance, were cumbersome and the ‘representivity charts’ (ensuring representation of all forces at practically all levels and

65 Jan Heunis, The Inner Circle: Reflections on the last days of white rule (Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2007), 155. 66 At the commencement of training at De Brug the numbers stood as follows: 927 SADF; 863 TDF; 440 Transkei

Police Force; 256 CDF; 188 VDF; 197 SAP; 830 MK; and 29 policemen from the ‘homelands’.67 The six dependent ‘national states’ were KwaZulu, Gazankulu, Lebowa, Qwaqwa, KwaNdebele, KaNgwane.68 L. Barnard and S. Swanepoel, ‘Die Nasionale Vredesmag in Miliêre Perspektief ’, Scientia Militaria 28:1 (1998),

64-7.

215T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

in prescribed numbers) produced an insuperable shortage of competent commanders and efficient staff officers in most areas. Problems at De Brug (near Bloemfontein), the main training base for the NPKF, did not bode well. Ill-discipline and poor unity was compounded by politicking, as some members of the NPKF placed their political aspirations first. MK, Barnard and Swanepoel argue, operated as a force within a force. MK in turn blamed the government for not supporting the NPKF.69 Quite simply the NPKF was patched together too hastily and, when it deployed for the first time, came under fire. Some fifteen people were killed. Seemingly a member of the force panicked, wild shots were fired, and one of the casualties was the award-winning photographer, Ken Oosterbroek. The SADF had to be called in to restore order.70 Any notion that the NPKF might be developed into the new, national defence force died.

The politics of integration and transformation

Hostilities ended officially with the promulgation of the Interim Constitution, the South African National Defence Force was established and South Africa again went through the process of integrating armies with diverse cultural, political and training backgrounds. General George Meiring (former SADF) became Chief of the South African National Defence Force, while Lt-General Siphiwe Nyanda (former MK) became his deputy. Born in 1951, Nyanda joined MK and enjoyed rapid advancement. Trained in Eastern Europe (1975-76) he returned to South Africa and, with the nom de guerre ‘Gebhuza’, was subsequently commander of MK in Swaziland (1977) and the Transvaal (1984), where, according to Ronnie Kasrils, Nyanda ‘acquired a reputation for nerve and audacity and was responsible for many daring operations’.71 His brother had died in a hail of bullets in 1983, in Swaziland, and he and Mac Maharaj, remaining undercover inside South Africa after the start of negotiations and the unbanning of the ANC, commanded Operation Vula. Arrested, detained, released and integrated into the SANDF, he succeeded Meiring in 1998 and so became the first black person to be chief of the South African armed forces.

69 Ngculu, The Honour to Serve, 232-3.70 Barnard and Swanepoel, ‘Die Nasionale Vredesmag in Miliêre Perspektief ’, 85, 87. See also Stephen Ellis, ‘The

Historical Significance of South Africa’s Third Force’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (1998), 261-90. 71 Ronnie Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous; From undercover struggle to freedom (Jeppestown, 1998), 218. On Nyanda’s

underground activities see also Shubin, The Hot “Cold War”; and Paul Trewhela, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the exile history of the ANC and SWAPO (Auckland Park, 2009).

216 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

The SANDF was, at its establishment, to consist of all of the members of the SADF, of the defence forces of ‘any area forming part of the national territory’, and any armed force as defined in section 1 of the Transitional Executive Council Act, 1993 (Act 151 of 1993), in other words for the non-statutory forces. There were, however, two provisos. The first was that the names of all the members had to be included in a certified personnel register and, second, that the political organisation associated with the armed force had to take part, under the Constitution, in the first elections. As a result, with the promulgation of the Interim Constitution, the SADF, the TBVC defence forces and MK were integrated into the new structure.72 While MK met the requirements of the provisos, APLA did not. Section 224(2) was subsequently amended to allow the inclusion of APLA and on 4 February 1997, when the 1996 Constitution was promulgated, members of APLA, by operation of law, also became members of the SANDF.73

The new defence minister, Joe Modise, and his deputy, Ronnie Kasrils, were both members of the ANC and former MK operatives. They set about shaping the SANDF, creating policy and ensuring implementation. They realised that state power was cited in the civil service they had inherited. This was an outcome of the negotiation process. The new government, contrary to the dictates of Marxist thought, had taken over the bureaucracy rather than destroying it. Here a few mind shifts were required too. There was to be a measured transfer of power and, as Kasrils notes, the olive branch appeared regularly along with new policy and the stick.74

The fulltime forces presented the largest challenge for the tension between change and stability had to be carefully managed. The ANC backbench, suspicious of former-SADF officers, who were ‘still seen to be in military command’, had demanded a radical shake-up. But, as Kasrils explains, the ministry took their ‘cue from Mandela who often remarked to the ANC leadership that we should not behave as if we were dealing with an enemy whom we had defeated on the battlefield’.75 Mandela remained true to the spirit of the negotiated settlement and, in fact, already before the elections, had approached George Meiring to serve as chief of the new defence force, which, of course, had the added benefit of calming any fears that existed within the former SADF.76

72 Section 224(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act of 1993 (Interim Constitution).73 Item 3 of Part D of the 6th Schedule to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996 (1996 Constitu-

tion). 74 Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous, 380-1. 75 Ibid., 385. 76 Hamann, Days of the Generals, 227.

217T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

Some 117,000 people integrated into the SANDF: SADF (82,705), MK (14,791), TBVC (11,039), APLA (6,421), KZSPF (approx. 2,000). There were immediate fears from the former-non-statutory force members that, as they were outnumbered, they would be ‘absorbed by the old rather than integrated into the new’.77 However, things changed quickly. Nine former-MK officers were made generals in 1994 and, by March 1997, their numbers had increased to fifteen. They included Themba Masuku (Surgeon General), who became the first black service chief, Gilbert Romano (Deputy Chief of Army) and Jackie Sedibe, Modise’s wife, who became the first female general.

Moreover, through wide-ranging, rigorous affirmative action (AA) and equal opportunities (EO) programs, the SANDF became more representative of the population and, by 1997, within three years, seventy per cent of the SANDF was black; up from 37.5 per cent in the old SADF.78 In the 1912 amalgam there had been great concern to balance three interests: language, province and former force. The 1994 integration placed a heavy emphasis on race and, to a lesser extent, gender. The Defence Review set specific race targets (table 2). These quotas have been met with regard to uniform personnel. However, in this dramatic shift, whites are now under-represented, although at the operational level they still account for more than fifty per cent of officer and non-commissioned officer positions. ‘White’ numbers are decreasing continuously.79

Table 2: Racial profile of the South African population and SANDF compared (percentages)

Race SANDF 1994

post-integration

Defence Review targets SANDF 2009

Africans (blacks) 39,2 64,5 70,0Coloureds 12,6 13,0 13,0Asians 1,3 1,3 1,0Whites 46,8 24,4 16,0

[Adapted from L. Heinecken and N. van der Waag-Cowling, ‘The Politics of Race and Gender in the South African Armed Forces: Issues, Challenges, Lessons’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 47:4 (2009), 520.]

77 Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous, 387. 78 Mashike, ‘The “Transformation” of the South African Military between 1994 and 2004’, 606. 79 Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military?’, 29.

218 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Overnight the defence force also became multilingual. Eleven of South Africa’s seventeen recognised languages enjoy official status; these languages and their currency in South Africa and the SANDF are shown in table 3. There are strong regional slants. The language policy is now one of situational multilingualism, with English as the ‘thread’ language, although only 10.3 per cent cite English as their first language (this figure is in all probability very inflated).80 The language issue has always been problematic in the South African military. Many blacks not only associate Afrikaans with apartheid, but language remains an important source of power and second or third level speakers find themselves at a considerable disadvantage, ‘especially where linguistic shortcomings are construed as a sign of intellectual inferiority’.81 Language remains in many ways a barrier, especially in conversational exclusion and education and training.

Table 3: Language profile of the South African population and the SANDF/DoD compared, 2007

Language IsiZulu IsiXhosa Afrikaans Sepedi English Setswana Sesotho Xitsonga SiSwati Tshivenda IsiNdebele

Population (RSA)

23,8 17,6 13,3 9,4 8,2 8,2 7,9 4,4 2,7 2,3 1,6

DOD 8,3 9,0 23,6 7,5 10,3 8,3 5,7 1,6 2,1 3,0 0,5

Note: This in terms of the eleven official languages; there a further six recognised languages.[Adapted from L. Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military? The Complexity of Managing Diversity in the South African Armed Forces’, Scientia Militaria 37:1 (2009), 30.]

There was and has been little opposition to the program of indigenisation from former-SADF personnel. A guarantee for jobs and pensions had been part of the negotiated settlement and this weighed heavily; ‘the essential factor uppermost in the mind of the individual officer’, Kasrils tells us, ‘was to retire gracefully, comfortably and hopefully with a medal and a handshake from Mandela’. An early retirement mechanism was introduced, but, as Kasrils noted again, ‘not everyone [was] willing or ready to retire and the bottom line for many [was] quite naturally a struggle to preserve job and career. And there can be nothing more bitter than such a struggle.’82

80 Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military?’, 29-31. See also Department of Defence (DOD), Personnel Statistics (Pretoria, 2007).

81 Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military?’, 31. 82 Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous, 389.

219T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

It is clear that all was not well at Defence Headquarters. While Meiring seemingly got on well with Modise, he and Kasrils did not get along at all. Meiring thought the new ministry not up to the job: ‘We showed [Modise] around, trying to tell him what a modern army/defence force looks like. I don’t think they really understood the workings of the Defence Force.’83 That may have been true. The training MK received focussed heavily on guerrilla warfare and small tactics. A modern, large defence force revolves around planning and budgeting cycles. Kasrils in turn did not like Meiring, did not trust him. ‘The deputy minister’, Meiring admits, ‘really worked on my tits.’84 Meiring was shuffled out of office, somewhat controversially, in 1998.

Discord and disappointment on the ground

Kasrils is perhaps correct regarding the ‘bitter struggles’ within the old-SADF. But then return from exile and integration into the new SANDF was also difficult for many returnees who faced new struggles and massive disappointments. Many assumed that they would be received back into their communities as heroes, that there would be victory parades, fêtes and ample rewards, the spoils of success. But, somehow, the negotiated settlement and the piecemeal return of cadres had cheated them of this.

[Ngculu tells us] ... we did not return as we expected. We did not return home with the AK47 on our shoulders, toyi-toying and singing ‘Sizongena ngejambo’ (we should enter the country toyi-toying). Instead we entered individually or in small groups to an uncertain future. We left our homes in exile to set up a new life in South Africa. We had to be integrated into this new life. We depended entirely on the ANC for accommodation, food, and clothing when we were in exile. Our children were sent to schools provided for, or paid by, the movement.85

New levels of dependency, verging on a syndrome according to Ngculu, also manifested themselves. In exile the ANC had provided everything, with the assistance of foreign donors, of course. Many returnees expected this to continue. The level of dependency was such that Ngculu even reckons many ‘did not know how to handle money’.86 Moreover, most returnees struggled to secure work and, having lost the opportunity to study or acquire skills, there was little chance for employment in the formal sector. Some businesses, fearing the politicisation of the rest of the labour force, would not employ returnees. The

83 Hamann, Days of the Generals, 228ff. 84 As quoted in Hamann, Days of the Generals, 230. 85 Ngculu, The Honour to Serve, 204. 86 Ibid., 207.

220 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

expectations were high, if unrealistic. Many, having no other avenue, sought integration into the SANDF.

But there were also ‘issues’ with regard to social (re)integration. Most cadres were young when they went into exile. They returned as adults, many middle-aged with families. Some had married foreigners, who, while something of a curiosity at first, soon encountered differences associated with language and culture. Some returned as casualties and their families, who had heard nothing from them for perhaps twenty years, had to care for them. Some suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Many struggled to cope with life back in South Africa. Some were so disillusioned and angry they were thought to pose a threat to the ANC leadership: a former MK combatant allegedly stated that ‘he would accept as little as R50 to kill an ANC cabinet minister’.87 Many sought consolation in alcohol; ‘ … comrades who were healthy and dedicated soldiers in exile [changed] into drunkards and social misfits’. ‘A number’, Ngculu informs us,

came back as alcoholics who spent all their time in shebeens in the townships. People would buy them drinks in order to listen to the stories of exile and MK. In their drunkenness they would sing songs of pain and survival. They would narrate the most heart-rending stories.88

But there were many successes too. Thousands of returned exiles sought voluntary demobilisation and entered politics and business and were very successful.

There were many protests, particularly by former non-statutory force personnel, regarding perceived racism, the continued use of Afrikaans, administrative, personnel and pay disputes. Sometimes soldiers marched on the Union Buildings, others on parliament, to present their cases to the president.89 Sometimes the cases were heard in court. Many South Africans did not feel at ease. Max du Preez, well-known journalist, noted in February 2008:

I have for a very long time had the impression that our National Defence Force is in deep trouble. After last week I’m sure of it. My morning paper last Friday carried a picture of a soldier with a Jacob Zuma T-shirt on the front page. He was the spokesperson of the soldiers’ trade union and he was threatening to disrupt the opening ceremony at parliament. The soldiers’ protest action was in support of a

87 Mashike, ‘The “Transformation” of the South African Military between 1994 and 2004’, 617. 88 Ngculu, The Honour to Serve, 206. 89 Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous, 390.

221T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

demand for better salaries and the SANDF’s promotions policies. But the police had refused the soldiers permission to march in Cape Town on the day of the opening of parliament. The union leader then threatened revolt – that they would invade Cape Town in their thousands and take on the police ... In any other democracy this soldier would have been in detention barracks by the time the newspaper hit the streets and would be facing a court martial by now. Nothing happened to him90

The case of Khululekile Chris Phike, which took the legal route, shows that matters were not that straightforward and there was cause for some anxiety and much disappointment. Phike trained as a member of APLA in 1983. He infiltrated the Bophuthatswana Defence Force in the following year. During 1994 the BDF was integrated into the SANDF and Phike became a member of the new national force and with the rank of captain. APLA, however, outside the constitutional process at the time, instructed Phike to resign from the SANDF, which he did with effect from 30 June 1995. Phike took up civilian employment, although he remained involved in APLA activities. On 2 July 1998, Phike attended at Wallmannsthal, an induction centre for APLA members, operated by the SANDF and he entered into an interim service agreement with the SANDF with the provisional rank of a private. However, when he appeared before the SA Air Force Senior Staffing Board, the SANDF realised that he had been a member of the SANDF and had resigned. As a result, the SANDF terminated Phike’s contract on 28 February 1999, because, in their view, Phike had already been integrated and could not be integrated a second time. The matter went to the Labour Court. Judge Landman, in a landmark ruling, decided to allow the petition. Phike was reinstated retrospectively in the SANDF, with effect from 28 February 1999, the date on which his interim service contract was terminated. But he was reinstated with the rank of private; he was hoping for colonel, something APLA asserted.91

This raises the question of education and training. Vast disparities exist and particularly so between the integrating forces, something that bothered MK during the negotiation process. Training in South Africa for MK, and probably APLA more so, was limited and

90 Max du Preez, ‘SADF vs SANDF – which way to go?’, Daily News, 14 February 2008, 20.91 Phike v South African National Defence Force (Defence Special Tribunal DST-J1/00)[2001] ZALC 152 (28 September

2001). Judge Landman: ‘The legal position, as I have outline it, takes care, at least in the circumstances of this case, of the position of what one may call a double enlistment – a soldier wearing two helmets. The applicant, assuming he had an election to belong to the SANDF as a member of the BDF or APLA, could not have made the election at the relevant time. APLA members were not to be part of the new national defence force. It is true that the applicant could have remained a covert member of APLA in the SANDF and have emerged on 4 February 1997 to claim rank and privileges as an APLA member. He did not do this. He had resigned, remained a member of APLA and in 1998 he sought to rely on his APLA membership and take his place as a SANDF member. In my view, for the reasons outline above, he was entitled to do this.’

222 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

ad hoc and available only for small numbers. Tambo raised this with the Russians in 1963 and limited opportunities opened at the Military College in Odessa and Perevalnoye in the Crimea and later at the ‘Northern Training Centre’ outside Moscow. The emphasis was on guerrilla warfare until training for regular service started during the late-1980s at various centres from Minsk to Frunze.92 Former-SADF officers picked up on this and questioned the standard and validity of the courses as well as the benchmarking undertaken by BMATT. Little was done to encourage members of the SANDF to value the diversity in education and training.

Furthermore, while the educational profile of the Department of Defence is complete for only two-thirds of all personnel, that captured reveals that only 4.7 per cent of staff have accessed higher education successfully and that the bulk of this is education is enjoyed by white staff (sixty-one per cent are white, twelve per cent coloured, two per cent Indian and twenty-five per cent black African). Poor education, as Heinecken argues, often contributes to feelings of incompetence and of exclusion. Continuous training in the SANDF after 1994 brought this into dramatic relief, as course results, race and politics formed a heady mix. According to General George Meiring:

What was very difficult was the fact that whenever some people on the ground didn’t make the grade, almost every time they would throw in the race card. We had to go to great lengths to try to prove to the politicians, the minister, the deputy minister and the defence committee in Parliament that that was not true ... We gave [the black guys] two or three chances to pass a course – something we never did with the whites – because we felt, perhaps as a result of his background, he was disadvantaged.’93

Much of the dissatisfaction in the new SANDF has come predictably from two sources. The first of these is sited in the strong feeling among former non-statutory force personnel that MK and APLA were absorbed into the SADF. This feeling is well-grounded. The SADF systems and procedures, structures and conventions were all taken over into the SANDF. The education and training of SADF and TBVC personnel was verified at integration; that of the MK and APLA was assessed and evaluated. Moreover, the former-SADF personnel retained their force numbers, the SADF uniforms and rank insignia were used in the SANDF at first, SADF discipline was enforced as was the old SADF military justice system, code of conduct, and conventions for service writing. Some

92 Vladimir Shubin, The Hot “Cold War”, 241, 243, 244, 251-2. 93 Quoted in Hamann, Days of the Generals, 228-9.

223T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

MK and APLA cadres joined the military and then, finding trouble fitting into the new system, accepted voluntary severance packages. As a former MK combatant told Wits sociologist, Lepho Mashike:

I joined the SANDF but I ‘demobbed’, that is I resigned. I got R9,000. The reason for ‘demobbing’ was that being with whites was like surrendering to the enemy and accepting defeat ... The army still resembled the apartheid army because our commanders were still white. Also it takes a bit of doing to accept whites as comrades, they were the enemy yesterday, today they are our friends – it does not make sense.94

Since 1997, the corporate identity has been changed in various ways. The uniforms have changed from the ‘browns’ of the old SADF to new dispersion. The rank insignia have changed, several times in fact, in 1996, 2002, and 2008, and now incorporate some American nomenclature with Soviet visibility. The insignia instituted in 2002 reflected the new national symbols. This and a new pantheon of medals and badges point to a new, integrated identity and aspirations of cohesion and ‘togetherness’. However, although there was a break with the past, the services retain separate uniforms and, from 2002, wear distinctive rank insignia.95

Table 4: Composition of the general staff of the SANDF in terms of former force: 1997 and 2007 compared (as percentages)

Former force

1997

Rank profile

Brig-Gen to Gen

Former force

2007

Rank profile

Brig-Gen to GenMK 15 14 13 37APLA 5 1 6 9TBVC 11 4 7 7SADF 58 81 32 47SANDF 11 0 42 0% 100 100 100 100

Note: The figures given for the ‘SANDF’ reflect those who joined the SANDF after 1994 and who had no former, ‘historic’ affiliation. [Adapted from L. Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military? The Complexity of Managing Diversity in the South African Armed Forces’, Scientia Militaria 37:1 (2009), 35.]

94 Quoted by Mashike, ‘The “Transformation” of the South African Military between 1994 and 2004’, 617. 95 As van Wijk has argued, ‘the SANDF has [perhaps] missed a critical opportunity to enhancing a unified corporate

identity’: C. van Wijk, ‘The New SANDF Rank Insignia; A missed opportunity for creating a common identity’, African Security Review 12:3 (2003), 105-08.

224 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Moreover, political patronage and the heavy race-gender emphasis in the human transformation since 1994, has resulted in a new leadership dominated by former non-stat members. The position regarding the senior leadership (brigadier-general to general) at the end of the integration process, in April 1997, is given in table 4. In 1994, former-MK and former-APLA members accounted respectively for fourteen per cent and one per cent of general and flag rank, the former-SADF for eighty-one per cent By October 2007, although forming only twenty per cent of the total force strength of the SANDF at integration, former MK and APLA officers filled forty-six per cent of senior command positions. This trend has seemingly continued over the three years since and is increasingly connected to the battle for the history of the armed struggle and of the border war. Esterhuyse and Heinecken are seemingly correct; the 1994 transformation has offered large rewards to long-term political loyalty, which represents a strong continuity with the recent past. This is something that young soldiers, black and white, who have no previous force and no struggle connections to exploit, note with disdain.

The second source of dissatisfaction, albeit less far-reaching, is seated among the former members of the SADF, some of whom fear a transition from merit back to race, of a new, legalised reverse racism. Without a doubt, the AA and EO programs, and the killing of white officers by black subordinates raised tensions to new levels, while at the same time there were very strong signals that there would be new ceilings and dead-ends. The treasure trove of experience was emptied out as senior staffers accepted (or requested) seemingly attractive packages. They have been joined by a large number of young, highly-qualified, sharp-end personnel who have found alternative careers in the security sector or the armed forces of other countries, including Australia. The posts vacated are, moreover, most often kept vacant in the hope of achieving EO quotas and finding a result on the ‘representivity charts’. The first has led to the rapid and fundamental loss of experience and capacity, while the second, over a longer term, has undermined service delivery, force impact and force design fundamentally.96 Particularly worrying, and at a time when the SANDF is called upon increasingly to take part in peace operations, is the loss of COIN skills and tactics that have been discarded during the transition.97

Diversity management has become important in armed forces around the world. The reasons are many. There is, firstly, a new emphasis on human rights. Armed forces are prevented by legislation and discouraged by NGOs and lobby groups from discriminating

96 See, for example, Brigadier General George Kruys (rtd), ‘Some Major Factors Influencing Military Efficiency in the South African National Defence Force’, Strategic Review for Southern Africa 26 (2004), 1-14.

97 A.M. Gossmann, ‘Lost in transition: the South African military and counterinsurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 19:4 (2008), 541-72.

225T H E S O U T H A F R I C A N M I L I T A R Y

in terms of race, gender, and minority status. In South Africa, such discrimination is prohibited in terms of the Constitution, except for the redress of historical imbalances. Armed forces are, moreover, pressed to increase representativeness so as to preserve their legitimacy. Then armed forces encounter, as part of the move to all-volunteer forces, growing problems with regard to the recruitment and retention of personnel, which has forced recruitment from non-traditional sources of labour. Furthermore, there is an argument that greater diversity, in terms of gender and race, improves interaction with local communities and therefore enhances the general efficiency of humanitarian missions. But there is also a fifth reason why some armed forces, not all, have had to adopt policies of greater diversity. This connects to political imperatives and the integration of military structures, once in opposition and often of different ethnic and ideological background.98 Such attempts to create new militaries after political change are not uncommon. For one country, not defeated in war, to go through three such processes within a span of some eight decades, presents a unique, modern case study.

Conclusion: (Dis)Continuities

For some countries state-making happens almost naturally, even inevitably, as part of a natural course of events. State-making in South Africa was not easy. It was certainly not automatic, but rather engineered at critical times by ‘big men’. Milner brought on a war that enabled Selborne, Botha and Smuts to forge the Union; of which the Union Defence Force was a consequence. The constitutional tie to Britain, and South Africa’s contested entry into the two world wars, was the focus of men like Hertzog, Smuts and Malan; under the latter a more South African defence force, albeit in a very narrow sense, was created by Erasmus and Hiemstra. De Klerk and Mandela, after a further internal struggle, but one involving the majority of South Africans, forged the second new South Africa within one hundred years of the first, of which the South African National Defence Force was a product.

Writing from the defence ministry in 1998, Ronnie Kasrils concluded that ‘our approach was in marked contrast to that of the National Party after it came to power in 1948 [which] left a legacy of bitterness ... still encountered to this day’.99 This may have been true in 1998, at the height of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. However, the trends, more discernible when viewed over a longer distance, indicate several continuities and changes.

98 L. Heinecken, ‘A Diverse Society, A Representative Military?’, 25-8. 99 Kasrils, Armed & Dangerous, 392.

226 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

In many countries diversity management has involved the integration of minorities in the armed forces. This was also the case in South Africa in 1912 and after 1948. However, the third amalgam, associated with the first broad-based, democratic elections in 1994, entailed the accommodation of a majority. This meant, for the first time, the integration of black, coloured and Asian South Africans into a workplace that had been dominated by white South Africans since 1912. But, the third integration, like those of 1912 and 1948, has seen the infusion of political ideology and the influence of past loyalties, the shuffling out of personnel thought to be neither adversarial or even reactionary, said to be in the interest of ‘rightsizing and downsizing’, their often-rapid replacement by the politically loyal, and the resulting compromise in efficiency. In all three cases this was done, in differing measure, to achieve a main objective, namely the transformation of the military within the human and political domains. The growing domination of the SANDF by former MK and former APLA cadres, the changed tenor since the Mbeki administration, and rapid ‘Africanisation’ of institutions, is strongly suggestive of the transformation of the Erasmus-Hiemstra era.

What South Africa requires of the SANDF, in the short term, is a thorough, unrestrained, impartial and unaffected transformation across all domains, conducted with the vigour and determination shown during the human transformation of the SANDF, and founded on the values enshrined in the Constitution. This will ensure that true, radical break that is so crucial if the South African military is to perform efficiently and professionally on the international stage.100

100 A. Esterhuyse, ‘Getting the Job Done’, forthcoming. I am grateful to my colleague, Abel Esterhuyse, for sharing his thoughts on this with me.

227

AAbrams, General Creighton, 186, 190African National Congress (ANC), 212, 213,

219Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), 205, 206Aguinaldo, Emilio, 25Ahmed Selaheddin, 37air defence development, 94Akintievskii, K.K., 72Alexander II of Russia, 48, 51, 62, 64, 75, 77,

79Alexander III of Russia, 64, 65, 75, 77Anderson, John, 119Anglo-American Loan Agreement (1945), 87Anh, General Le Duc, 158, 162, 164f, 165, 172Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), 151,

152artillery development, 93–94, 102Association of South East Asian Nations

(ASEAN), 157Atomic Maneuver Battalion, US Army, 132Australian School of Pacific Administration, 128Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), 211,

216, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226strength of, 217

BBaghdad Pact, 133Balkan wars, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43Balzac, Honore, 13Bariatinskii, General, 52–53Barrès, Maurice, 13Beck, Ludwig, 111Bell, John Franklin, 29Berry, Lieutenant General, 185Bevin, Ernest, 122Beyers, C.F., 201, 203, 204, 208Beyers, Len, 208Bhambatha revolt, Natal (1906), 198Bien, Thieu Quang, 167Bird Committee, British, 92Black, Lieutenant Colonel John, 124fBlamey, General Sir Thomas, 118, 119, 121,

122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128Bliss, Tasker, 32Blücher, Gebhard Leberecht von, 3, 19

Index

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 2, 2–4, 7, 9–10, 12, 12–20, 48–51, 57, 71, 106, 197f

Bophuthatswana Defence Force (BDF), 211Borneo

civil affairs in, 123–125post-war planning in, 123–128

Botha, Louis, 198, 225Boulanger, General, 19Boulter, Roger, 196, 205Bourne, Roland, 203Bradley, Omar, 184Britain

and nuclear weapons, 144–145British Army

operational commitments following WWI, 87–88

strength post-WWI, 82–83, 88–89strength post-WWII, 97

British Army on the Rhine, 99British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit, 124Brough, Major General Alan, 93Brown III, Lieutenant General Frederic J., 185Bung, Lieutenant General Nguyen Thoi, 160Bush, George H., 191

CCallwell, Sir Charles, 89Calvet, Stéphane, 12Cardwell reforms of the British Army, 90, 92, 95Carnot, Lazare, 10–11Carter, William, 32Cemal Pasha, 47Chamberlain, Neville, 84China

conventional strength of, 134–135, 140, 158military targets in, 141, 144, 146, 147and nuclear weapons, 147support to Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), 149and Vietnam, 156–157see also People’s Liberation Army (PLA)

Churchill, Winston, 83, 84, 85, 86, 94, 119Ciskei Defence Force (CDF), 211civil affairs, 119, 126, 127

in Borneo, 123–125see also Directorate of Research and Civil

Affairs

228 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Club of Former Resistance Fighters, 161, 174Coghlan, Mark, 196Conlon, Major Alfred, 119–128Convention for a Democratic South Africa

(CODESA), 214counter-insurgency warfare

American experiences, 24–26, 28in Iraq, 34

Courier, Paul-Louis, 13Cowling, Noëlle, 196Curtin, John, 118, 119, 122Custer, General George, 28, 29

DDardenne, Pierre, 8, 15Dayan, Moshe, 188de Gaulle, Charles, 19defeat, 38

impact on political system in France after Waterloo, 1–4

impact on soldiers, 5–8trials of military leaders, 10–11

Defence Aid, American (1951-57), 87Defence Requirements Sub-Committee Report

(1934), 94defence spending. see expenditureDelacroix, Eugene, 15demobilisation

France after defeat at Waterloo, 7, 11–13loss of knowledge, 33retrenchment, 82–83, 88–89, 103

DePuy, General William E., 177, 184–192Dewey, George, 24Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs,

118–123, 125–129establishment of, 118–119members of, 120

Dom, Major General Cao Van, 168Dragomirov, General M.I., 57, 64, 67, 68, 69,

72, 73, 77Dulles, John Foster, 133Dung, Senior General Van Tien, 154

EEastman, A.J., 146Eden, Anthony, 99Edison, Thomas, 27Eisenhower, Dwight D., 133

administration of, 133, 137, 142Enver Pasha, 38, 39, 45

Erasmus, Frans, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 225Esterhuyse, Abel, 196Evatt, Justice, 120expenditure

British Army, 83–87British defence, 86decrease following war, 82–87France after defeat at Waterloo, 7

Experimental Mechanised Force, British, 91, 93

FFarragut, Admiral David, 24Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 45flexibility of response, strategic principle of, 137,

143, 144Ford, Henry, 27Fouché, J.J., 210France

after defeat at Waterloo, 8–9defence expenditure after Waterloo, 7demobilisation after Waterloo, 7, 11–13impact on political system in France after

Waterloo, 1–4regime change, 1

Fry, Lieutenant Colonel Tom, 127Fuller, Major General J.F.C., 89FULRO movement, 152

GGeisman, P.A., 71general staff system

American experiences, 29German experiences, 105, 109, 110, 112Russian experiences, 49, 50, 58, 59, 60, 64,

67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 77South African experiences, 203, 223United States Army, 29

Geneva Accords (1954), 133, 136, 147Gerua, B.M., 71Giap, General Vo Nguyen, 136, 149, 153Gibbs, Major Harry, 120, 127Gorbachev, Mikhail, 156Gordon-Ross, Charles, 207Gorman, Brigadier Eugene, 121Gorman, General Paul, 185, 188, 191Gouchy, Marshal Emmanuel de, 3Gourgaud, Gaspard, 18Groener, Wilhelm, 106, 107, 116Guderian, Heinz, 111Gwynn, Major General Sir C.W., 89

229I N D E x

HHantraye, Jacques, 9Harding, Sir John, 100Heinecken, Lindy, 196helicopters, 103Hetherington, John, 121Heuer, Jennifer, 12Hiemstra, Rudolph, 206, 207, 225Hiep, Senior Lieutenant General Dang Vu, 164Hiroshima, bombing of, 130–131Ho, Nguyen, 161Ho Chi Minh campaign, 150, 151Hoa, Lieutenant General Le, 166Hogbin, Ian, 120Hugo, Victor, 13, 18Hull, Sir Richard, 96, 100Hung, Pham, 161Hutley, Major, 120

IIgnatiev, A.A., 71infantry weapon development, 94, 102Isles, Lieutenant Colonel Keith, 126Ivanovna, Anna (Empress Anne), 51

JJohnson, General Harold K., 186Johnson, Lyndon, 148, 178, 183Jomini, General Antoine, 50, 58Jooste, Louisa, 205

KKasrils, Ronnie, 216, 219Kennedy, John F., 143, 180

administration of, 142, 143Kennedy, Robert, 182Kerr, Lieutenant Colonel John, 118, 120, 125,

126Khue, General Doan, 165King, Martin Luther, 182Kirke Committee (1932), 89, 90, 92Kitchener, Field Marshal, 82knowledge

formal, 23–23, 29, 30informal, 22–23, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36loss of on demobilisation, 33preservation of, 33–34

Kobbe, Brigadier General William, 25Kruys, Brigadier George, 214Kuropatkin, A.N., 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79

KwaZulu Self-Protection Force (KZSPF), 211, 214, 217

LLargeaud, Jean-Marc, 3Las Cases, Emmanual de, 18Leer, General L.G., 67, 68, 69, 72, 73Leeson, Major Ida, 120, 126Legay, Second Lieutenant, 6legends, maintenance of after defeat, 13–16,

17–20Legge, Lieutenant John, 120Lend-Lease Act, American, 85Leonard, Charles, 204Liddell Hart, Captain Basil, 89Linh, Nguyen Van, 161, 172Lloyd, Selwyn, 99Lloyd George, David

government of, 84, 85Louis XIV of France, 4Louis XVI of France, 10Louis XVIII of France, 10Lowe, Hudson, 14Lukin, Major General Sir H.T., 201Luyen, General Dao Dinh, 158, 160Lynn, John, 12

MMacArthur, Arthur, 28MacArthur, General Douglas, 119, 123MacAuley, Captain James, 120MacAuley, James, 121Macmillan, Harold, 99

government of, 100Malan, D.F., 225Man, Major General Tran Cong, 158Mandela, Nelson, 216, 218, 225Manila Treaty (1954), 133Mao Zedong, 136Marbot, Jean Baptiste, 3March on the Sublime Porte, 39Marlborough, Duke of, 4Marshall Aid (1948-50), 87Martynov, Colonel E.I., 72, 73Mashike, Lepho, 223Mastodon, Operation, 145Masuku, Themba, 217McCarthy, Lieutenant Colonel Keith, 124fMcKinley, President, 30McMullen, Colonel Ken, 124f

230 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

medals, after victory, 4Meiring, General George, 215, 216, 219, 222Mérimée, Prosper, 13Merriman, John X., 199Mgwebi, Brigadier Derek, 214Mikhnevich, General N.P., 71military education, 52–53

American experiences, 23, 27, 30, 189, 190Russian experiences, 49–80South African experiences, 213, 221–222

Miliutin, D.A, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 69, 72, 77, 79

Milne, Sir George, 84, 90, 91Modise, Joe, 216, 219Montgomery, Field Marshal Viscount, 95, 98,

100Montgomery-Massingberd, Sir Archibald, 91,

92, 95, 96Morshead, Lieutenant General Sir Leslie, 124Murray, Sir Keith, 120Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 37Mutual Defence Assistance Programme, Ameri-

can, 86Myshlaevskii, General A.Z., 71

NNagasaki, bombing of, 131Napoleon. see Bonaparte, NapoleonNapoleon III, 19National Peacekeeping Force, South Africa

(NPKF), 214–215‘New Look’ doctrine, USA, 137Ney, Michel, 10Ngculu, James, 212Nicholaevich, Grand Duke, 63Nicholas Academy of the General Staff, 49, 50f,

58, 59, 60, 64, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 77Nicholas I of Russia, 48, 50, 52Nicholas II of Russia, 76, 77Nikolaevich, Grand Duke Nikolai, 64Nixon, Richard M., 183Norris, Kingsley, 121nuclear weapons, 140–141

and China, 147effectiveness in jungle, 138planning for use of, 131, 133and Soviet Union, 146tactical use of, 131–132testing of, 132–133

Nyanda, Lieutenant General Siphiwe, 215

OObruchev, N.N., 63Oosterbroek, Ken, 215organisational transformations, types of, 197Ossewa-Brandwag (OB), 204, 205, 207Ottoman Empire

alliance with Germany, 39, 44, 45declares jihad in Nov 1914, 38entry into the Great War, 37–47

PPavlov Military Academy, 55Péguy, Charles, 14Peng, Marshal Dehuai, 135, 136, 139Pentomic army structure, 132Pentropic army structure, 132People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), 137

modernisation of, 136–137strength of, 136–137

People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 137, 139, 143, 147

invasion of Vietnam, 156modernisation of, 135–136and people’s war doctrine, 135–136strength of, 135

Pershing, Captain John J., 25, 32, 36personnel rotation/replacement system, Ameri-

can experiences, 33Pétain, Philippe, 19Peter the Great of Russia, 51Phieu, Lieutenant General Le Kha, 158, 165Phike, Khululekile Chris, 221Philippine-American war, 24–26, 27Phuong, Major General Dang Huyen, 166physical fitness, American requirements, 30–31Pirow, Oswald, 207Plimsoll, Sir James, 120, 126Poole, Evered, 207posting system

American experiences, 30post-war modernisation, 90–103post-war planning

in Borneo, 123–128Preez, Max du, 220promotion system, 35

American experiences, 31–32

RRadloff, Captain Gustav, 207fRamushwana, Brigadier Gabriel, 214

231I N D E x

Read, Mick, 120reform after victory

American experiences, 26–27Reichswehr

desire for another war, 107fundamentals of fighting, 109–110ideology of hatred, 114–115lessons overlooked from WWI, 111military justice system, 116political power of, 112–113rearming, 105, 107total war concept, 109, 113, 115–116training program, 105treatment of civilians in war, 113–114will of the people, 108–109WWI influence on development of, 104,

108, 117see also Truppenamt

Reinhardt, General Walter, 105Rensburg, Dr Hans van, 207fresearch and development, military, 101retrenchment. see demobilisationReynolds, Major, 120Robertson, General Sir Brian, 122Robespierre, Maximilien, 4Roland (hero of early France), 15Romano, Gilbert, 217Roos, Karl, 207Roosevelt, President Theodore, 24, 27, 28, 29,

30, 31, 32, 36Root, Elihu, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 36Root Reforms, 27Ross, Colonel, 207Rowley, Charles, 127Russian General Staff Academy. see Russian

Imperial Military AcademyRussian Imperial Military Academy, 50, 52, 58Russian military

obstacles to reform, 49reform vs traditionalists, 49–51, 59, 61, 64,

77–80reforms to eliminate social divides, 54–55,

61, 65–66, 69social divides, 51, 75–76, 79–80

Ryan, Lieutenant Peter, 120Ryneveld, Sir Pierre van, 207

SSaid Halim Pasha, 45Saint-Cyr, Gouvion, 7School of Civil Affairs (Australian), 127

Schreiner, Olive, 200Scott, Walter, 18Sedibe, Jackie, 217Shafter, General William, 30, 31Sherman, William, 27Slim, Sir William, 95Smuts, Jan, 198, 199, 203, 205, 207, 225Soames, Christopher, 100Soult, Jean-de-Dieu, 10South African Defence Force (SADF), 196, 223,

224Afrikanerisation of, 206–210negotiations leading to formation of SANDF,

212–213origins, 195strength of, 217

South African National Defence Force (SANDF)affirmative action program, 217composition of general staff, 223establishment of, 210–211, 215–216integration challenges, 219–225language profile within, 218origins, 194, 195racial profile within, 217role of, 194strength of, 193

South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (1954), 133

South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), 133, 135, 147, 148

authority to use nuclear weapons, 142, 145and British nuclear weapons, 144–145establishment of, 133–134force level contributions, 142lack of training to fight a tactical nuclear war,

146nuclear operational planning, 139–141and nuclear weapons, 137–141operational planning, 143–144, 144Plan 4, 139–140, 141–142, 143, 144,

145–146Protocol States, 133purpose of, 134threats against, 137, 140

Soviet Unionassistance to Vietnam, 157and nuclear weapons, 146

Spanish-American war, 24, 26, 27Stanner, Lieutenant Colonel Bill, 118, 119, 120,

125

232 V I C T O R Y O R D E F E A T

Starry, General Donn, 186, 188, 190, 191Stendhal (pen name for Marie-Henri Beyle),

13, 18Steyy, M.T., 199Stone, Lieutenant Colonel Julius, 127Strategic Air Command, US, 140, 141, 143Suvorov, General A.V., 69

TTalat Bey, 43, 45Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 5Tan, Senior General Le Trong, 169Tange, Sir Arthur, 120tank development, 93, 101–102Tasker, Lieutenant Colonel Henry, 124fTBVC, 211, 214, 216, 222, 223

strength of, 217Templer, Sir Gerald, 100Ten Year Rule, 82–83, 94Thurman, Max, 191Thurmond, General, 188Toan, Brigadier General Tran Trong, 171Toan, Major General Le, 163Tra, Colonel General Tran Van, 151Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC),

186–192Transkei Defence Force (TDF), 211Triple Entente, 42, 46, 47Truppenamt, 105, 106, 112

concept testing, 110–111goals of, 107–108revision of doctrine, 110see also Reichswehr

UUmkhonto we Sizwe (MK), 210, 212, 213, 214,

215, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 226strength of, 217

Union Defence Forces (South Africa), 195, 202, 206

culture of, 200–201language equity within, 200–201, 207origins, 195–196, 198–200post-WWII, 205–206

United Statesand SEATO, 137, 140–145

United States Armycounter-insurgency warfare, 24–26, 28general staff system, 29military education, 27, 30

personnel rotation/replacement system, 33physical fitness, 30–31posting system, 30promotion system, 31–32reform after victory, 26–27strength of, 177–179training reforms post-Vietnam, 186–192

United States Army War College1970 Professional Study, 181–182

Upton, Emory, 27

VVann, John Paul, 34Vannovski, P.A., 65, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79Vasey, Major General George, 121Venda Defence Force (VDF), 211, 214Versailles Treaty (1919), 104–105victory celebrations, 4Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), 149, 150,

151, 153, 161, 174, 177–179Vietnam People’s Army Navy, 153Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), 149

Cambodian conflict, 156–157demobilisation, 158–160desertion and disciplinary problems,

162–164economic reconstruction role, 153–155,

167–171establishes re-education camps, 152military rule role, 151national defence industry role, 172–173problems of returning veterans, 160–162rear service, 164–166running public utilities and vital industries,

152Vietnam War, 149–150

Vietnam Propaganda and Liberation Army, 149Vietnam War, 149–150, 176–179Villa, Pancho, 36von Blomberg, Werner, 106, 115von Fritsch, Werner, 111von Schleicher, Kurt, 106, 107von Seeckt, General Hans, 105, 106, 110, 111,

112von Stülpnagel, Joachim, 106

WWaal, Piet de, 207Walewski, Alexander, 20Walewska, Maria, 20

233I N D E x

Ward, Eddie, 122Wedgwood, Camilla, 120Wellington, Duke of, 4, 19, 20Westmoreland, General William C., 181, 182,

183, 186Weyand, Major General Fred, 188Wheeler, General Earle G., 186Whitlam, Gough, 118Williams, Rocky, 196Wood, Leonard, 29Wotten, Major General George, 124Wyndham, Lieutenant Colonel Hugh, 201

XXuyen, Lieutenant General Nguyen Trong, 164

YYoung, General Samuel, 29Young Turk Revolution, 39Young Turks, 38–39

ZZürcher, Erik-Jan, 43

PUBLICATIONS FROM THE CHIEF OF ARMY MILITARY HISTORY CONFERENCE

Edited by Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey

From Past to Future: The Australian Experience of Land/Air Operations

Canberra: School of History, UNSW/ADFA, 1995.

Pp. x + 217. ISBN 0 7317 0337 5.

Serving Vital Interests: Australiaís Strategic Planning in Peace and War

Canberra: School of History, UNSW/ADFA, 1996.

Pp. x + 153. ISBN 0 7317 0357 x.

The Second Fifty Years: The Australian Army 1947-1997

Canberra: School of History, UNSW/ADFA, 1997.

Pp. ix + 133. ISBN 0 7317 0363 4.

1918: Defining VictoryCanberra: Army History Unit, 1999.Pp. xi + 213. ISBN 073 1705 106.

The Boer War: Army, Nation and EmpireCanberra: Army History Unit, 2000.Pp. xi + 235. ISBN 0 642 70482 1.

The Korean War: A 50 Year RetrospectiveCanberra: Army History Unit, 2000.

Pp. xviii + 194. ISBN 0 642 2705 054.

A Century of Service: 100 Years of the Australian Army

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2001.Pp. xv + 174. ISBN 0 642 70822 3.

The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1962-1972

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2002.Pp. xviii + 304. ISBN 0 642 502 676.

The Foundations of Victory: The Pacific War 1943-1944

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2004.Pp. xvii + 211. ISBN 0 646 43590 6.

Battles Near and Far: A Century of Operational Deployment

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2004.Pp. xvii + 289. ISBN 0 9757669 0 2.

Entangling Alliances: Coalition Warfare in the Twentieth Century

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2005.Pp. ix + 276. ISBN 1 876439 71 8.

An Art in Itself: The Theory and Conduct of Small Wars and Insurgencies

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2006.Pp. viii + 221. ISBN 1 876439 04 1.

1917: Tactics, Training and TechnologyCanberra: Army History Unit, 2007.

Pp. viii + 202. ISBN 13 978 0 9803 7967 9.

The Military and the MediaCanberra: Army History Unit, 2008.

Pp. viii + 184. ISBN 978-0-9805674-6-5.

Raise, Train and Sustain: Delivering Land Combat Power

Canberra: Army History Unit, 2009.Pp. xi + 264. ISBN 978-0-9805674-8-9