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I'm done with subscriptions, streaming fitness, razors, vitamins. I've got subscriptions for everything in my life. They lock you in and half the time I can't figure out how to unsubscribe.
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That's why I'm so excited about the new Blue Apron.
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The room is dank, close and smoky, stale smells of tobacco, shoe polish, cold coffee. Planners, staffers and officers alike surround the situation map at the center of the room, shifting markers that represent men and equipment trying to solve a battlefield dilemma that has kept them here all night. They mutter and argue, step away for air, but return no clearer. The war is moving fast. Too fast. New weapon systems, surprise maneuvers. It's proving too much for the old playbook. They need a new direction, fresh tactics, an adaptive and innovative strategy. They need what everyone worries. They don't a general who can step up and bring it before it's too late. It is American History Hit. You're listening to and we are grateful you're doing it. I'm Don Wildman. Let's go. Today's episode falls within a short series we've concocted on the most storied generals of American military history, grouping together certain names and reputations, asking the impossible question of our expert guest. Who is the most, well, innovative? What general in the pantheon of the US Military? Minds, through caution to the wind, flouted expectations, finding pivots and shifts that left opposing forces flat footed on the field of battle? Well, we'll look at four generals today. I won't give away who just yet, we'll leave you guessing on that. But I will give away our expert, Professor Cecily Zander, one of the greats herself of the University of Wyoming. Go Pokes. Cecily is a Civil War historian, author of Abraham Lincoln and the American west, currently in progress as we speak. She's also written the army under Anti Militarism in the Civil War from Louisiana State University Press. More importantly, she is a cherished guest on this podcast, returning for several episodes. When when we speak of the Civil War, we speak to Cecily Zander, if we're lucky. Hello, Professor. Welcome back to American History Hit.
- [02:53]
A
Hey, Don, it's great to see you.
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B
You're up in Wyoming now.
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A
I am, yeah. And it's. I know you said you're cold we're pretty cold out here too, but we add the wind as a little bonus.
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B
Ooh, good. Okay, Cecily. Today we're looking for generals who employed innovative means to better their army's chances for victory and in doing so changed the way wars were fought. And we'll take these guys one at a time. The first one might throw you. Are you ready?
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A
Sure.
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B
Okay. General George Crook. What a name. Let me give you some background. Crook was a Union officer, fought in the Civil War in a number of major actions like Antietam and Chickamauga, all around the Shenandoah with Sheridan. But it was post Civil war fighting native forces, the so called Indian wars that he distinguished himself. Not so much for tactics as attitude. Right. Yeah.
- [03:40]
A
I think Crook's an interesting figure in a couple of ways. He is a rare example of a humanitarian soldier, something we don't think about all that often when it comes to, especially the American Indian wars, which, you know, took place both before the Civil War but really reached their apogee after the rebellion. And Crook is an interesting figure in that he wants to help the United States win. He wants to further the cause of western expansion. But he also realizes that sort of Native Americans are people. And I know to our audience, to the folks listening, that's sort of a no duh kind of statement. But in the 19th century, that it wasn't necessarily taken as a given and certainly not by all soldiers. Many of Crook's contemporaries were perfectly content to treat Native peoples as less than. And Crook really wasn't.
- [04:26]
B
He was given a nickname, Chief Gray Wolf, for his degree of fairness and respect for Native Americans. But he is still securing their land. I mean, this is the truth of the matter is, you know, he may be a nice guy, but he's still doing the job of the federal government.
- [04:41]
A
Yeah. And he is sort of using his knowledge of Native culture, Native politics to further that end. One way in which Crook does innovate is by really advocating for and then utilizing a battalion of Native American scouts as an attachment and adjunct to the US Army. Crook actually advocates to make these scouts a permanent part of the United States army, which comes with a whole host of, or raises a whole host of questions, I suppose, about sort of citizenship and whether these Native peoples will be paid the same as ordinary regular soldiers and so on. But what Crook sees is that they understand terrain, something that the white soldiers don't really get. The American west is vast, it's huge. It's hard to know what's going on. And there's also sort of age old animosities that exist between many of these indigenous nations. And, and some native peoples do prove themselves willing to help the U.S. army because it gives them a vehicle to sort of exercise or carry out these, these far more historical, you know, fights against their, their kind of historic enemies.
- [05:53]
B
Yeah, he flies in the face of so much of the bad stories of the 19th century in terms of the military and those native tribes that they were fighting, but also the government's treatment of them in terms of the promises kept or broken. And I think that George Crook falls on the side of the good guys. And I hasten to add, you know, in my work in media and television so forth, I have never, I can't even think of a non humanitarian military person I've met. I mean, it goes with the territory now that getting along with people and understanding their own people, of course, is a huge part of that job. And he's kind of a predecessor of a 20th century version of Dwight Eisenhower type, you know.
- [06:33]
A
Yeah. And sort of, you know, the dominant doctrine of the forever wars being coin, you know, counterinsurgency. A key part of this, a key way that you fight sort of people who are trying to elude capture, elude being subdued, is to win hearts and minds. And that's a key part of that doctrine. And that's what Crooked is really trying to do in the American Southwest and on the Great plains in the 1870s and 1880s.
- [06:59]
B
Chief Red Cloud said of him, he at least had never lied to us. His words gave people hope. The at least is in there because a lot of people did. General George Cook, exceptional for his fairness on and off the battlefield, especially towards Native Americans. Put a pin in the sky. You don't see that much in the history books. Did he treat Confederates the same.
- [07:18]
A
You know, he was so junior during the war that he didn't really get to make those decisions. But I think he certainly fell in with many of his superior officers who were striving to fight a war that would convince Confederates to come back and to make reconciliation sort of an easier process. If you don't go too hard against the Confederacy, maybe, maybe it'll make it easier to reunite the country. I think Crook falls within that school of thought, though. I suspect we're about to talk about a guy who very much falls outside of that school of thought.
- [07:51]
B
Exactly. Yeah. Next on our list, a personal favorite of mine and one fading from memory for the average American, I'd say. And let's turn that around today because the story of William Tecumseh Sherman is an extraordinary tale of determination, decisiveness, and brutality. He was known as the man who developed total war. I mean, if it starts anywhere, as a phrase, it really starts with Sherman. Of course, he did this in the Civil War, particularly in his March to the Sea, which we'll discuss in a moment. Can you explain, Cecily, what total war would have meant to William Sherman?
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A
So, in the Civil War era, in the 19th century, we are sort of in the process of globally, not just in the United States, developing theories of just war and fair war. And the main issue at the heart of those conversations is what role do civilians play in particular in the sort of conduct of wars? And also, how should they be dealt with by armies? Because we're entering an era where wars are no longer confined to the battlefield. I think that's one key aspect of total war. They spill out into society. They involve politics. They involve civilian populations. They involve economics. And Sherman knows all of this. He knows these conversations about, you know, whether or not civilians are justifiable targets, whether or not civilian property is a justifiable military target. And he decides that in the context of the Civil War, in pursuit of the objectives that the Union army is trying to achieve, that is the preservation of the Union and also the end of American slavery, emancipation, civilians and civilian property are justifiable targets because this is a war in which the Confederacy is relying on all elements of its society to sustain and support the war effort. And therefore, those are legitimate, as far as Sherman believes, military targets. And that's really what makes it total war.
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B
I often cite the Civil War and the Union's behavior in the Civil War as the beginning of modern warfare. Is that a fair thing to say in cocktail conversation?
- [09:55]
A
I think so. I mean, if you look at sort of images and photographs, and I know this is unfair to our podcast listeners, but I would encourage them to just go put in Petersburg or the siege of Atlanta and look at the fortifications that these armies are creating. Look at what they are doing to the landscape. I would challenge them to really assess whether or not they're looking at Virginia in 1865 or Belgium in 1917. I mean, the way that these armies tore up the landscape, the way that they destroyed sort of cities and urban infrastructure, the way that they targeted civilians. It is a very sort of modern look. They are really transitioning into this. This modern era.
- [10:35]
B
So you mean to say, you know, we can burn a town down like they used to do in the medieval times, we're going to. We're just going to take a torch to the place. Approach a scorched earth policy with these places, but make that a tactic in our. In our planning even, that these civilians aren't going to have houses afterwards.
- [10:55]
A
Right. To undermine morale. And especially, I think. I think Sherman and his contemporaries really did try to. To limit civilian damage, but they would go after any infrastructure that they could feasibly make an argument was helping to support the war effort. So manufacturing districts, factories, railroad lines, Anything that they could do to undermine the ability of their opponent to wage war was a legitimate target for them. When Sherman captures Atlanta, he sends multiple letters to the Confederate commander inside the city saying, evacuate your people. You have the chance, you have the opportunity. Otherwise, I'm coming in. The Confederate leader declines. And so Sherman goes into Atlanta. He's seen as this great sort of villain in this process, but he had actually given the civilians a chance to evacuate.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Whether or not they chose to stay is not really Sherman's problem.
- [11:46]
B
Well, nowadays he'd be seen as a humanitarian doing that instead of sending drones in. I mean, but what he begins and with the march to sea, and let's talk about that, is really the modern version of war as we now accept it, which is incredible. So 1864, March of the sea. I mean, this is, you know, famous stuff we're talking about here. He takes his army and really, just really is considered a precedent of 20th century warfare. How was this concocted and why did it happen when it did?
- [12:13]
A
So there are political reasons that Sherman is sent off at this precise moment. So we have to kind of situate 1864. We have to sort of dig back in our minds to the cycle of American politics. Abraham Lincoln is elected president in 1860, and that means he's facing reelection in the fall of 1864. He's facing reelection in a moment where the United States army is not really achieving huge number of battlefield victories. The war effort is bogging down, and the Confederate grand strategy throughout the entire conflict is just to wait for Union morale to erode to the point where maybe Abraham Lincoln won't be reelected or the citizens of the United States are no longer willing to continue fighting the war. And unless the Union wins some significant victories, that's probably not going to happen. And so the weight that's on Sherman's shoulders is winning victories. I mean, signal victories that will demonstrate to the citizens of the United States that the war effort is making positive progress. And Abraham Lincoln's reelection depends on this. And the outcome of the war depends on Lincoln's election. Because if a Democrat and that democrat would have been George McClellan. Oh, my goodness, what a nightmare. Wins reelection or wins election to the presidency, we probably end up with an independent Confederacy. I mean, the entire result of the war hinges on Sherman's campaign. So there's a political reason.
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B
There'd been a lot of precedents in the war to this point, you know, certainly with Grant and all the rest, as far as, you know, take no prisoners is the wrong phrase, but you know what I mean. But suddenly we have this march. Was it a departure, you know, a firm departure from what preceded it?
- [13:48]
A
I think it increases or enhances the scale of what had come before. I think Grant and Sherman sort of together at Vicksburg and then again at Chattanooga, had developed this system in which they felt confident and comfortable cutting themselves free of their supply lines, operating away from their ammunition, their baggage trains to their food, allowing their soldiers to live off the land. The march to the sea is going to do this on a scale I'm not sure if Sherman and Grant thought they could sustain, but they were certainly willing to give it a try on the basis of those earlier efforts.
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B
Right. I mean, that had a lot to do with the practical effect of just feeding their troops. Right. In doing so, you have to say, well, we're sacrificing all these people. How much of it, though, was the subtext of. These are plantations. These are places where slavery has sustained this economy. So we're going to just wipe it out and demonstrate how serious we are.
- [14:39]
A
Yeah. And to break confederate morale. Because the funny thing is, as much as union morale was flagging in the summer of 1864, Confederate morale was, you know, as high as it had ever been. And the confederates still truly believed they had a chance to win the war. They hadn't been made to sort of feel the war in any significant way. And finally, the United States has worked down through Kentucky, through Tennessee. They have access to the deep south, the plantation south, the cotton south. And Sherman is going to make them sort of feel the result of that failure to prevent the United States from getting this deep in confederate territory.
- [15:14]
B
Yeah. I want to cite one document. September 1863, Sherman writes a letter to Halleck of the Union army. Every member of this nation is bound by natural and constitutional law, he writes, to maintain and defend the government against all its opposers, who. Whomsoever, if they fail to do it, they are derelict and can be punished or deprived of all advantages arising from the labors of those who do. How did this letter apply to the actions of the march of the Sea.
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A
So the idea is we, you know, the. The main sort of bolster that is supporting the Confederate war effort is 4 million enslaved people. And their work allows the Confederacy to mobilize a significantly larger percentage of its white male military age population. It allows them to continue to grow food, to manufacture war material. We need to undermine slavery. This is Lincoln's idea behind the Emancipation Proclamation. And whether or not Sherman or Grant or any of these other officers believed in black civil rights or black freedom, black equality, they did believe that black people were the core constituent element of supporting the Confederate war effort. And therefore slavery had to be denied to the Confederacy. But the only way you reach those enslaved people is penetrating deep into Confederate territory. And so that's what Sherman knew he needed to do.
- [16:31]
B
With 62,000 troops marching 60 miles or 60 mile wide path from Atlanta to Savannah, make Georgia howl. That was what was the motivation. He says, again, we cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the south, but we can make war so terrible that, and make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it. Wow. I mean, this is a whole different kind of way of fighting a war. And really, we can trace that kind of thing that we see in the Blitzkrieg, all the rest of it in the 20th century, back in some ways to William Tecumseh Sherman.
- [17:09]
A
Yeah, I think it gets back to something you said right at the top of the episode. It's to be both. It's to try something that hasn't been tried before. And, you know, and I think what Sherman had and what some of these other gentlemen we're going to talk about also had was the ability to take responsibility for failure. So Sherman knows if it's. If it fails, it's on his head. But he also has the confidence to kind of carry it off, and that's really important.
- [17:32]
B
One last note on Sherman before we take a break is that it is the march of the sea that shows up in Gone with the Wind. It is that brutality which is a tool in the Lost cause movement in the 20th century that says, poor us. We. You know, you did something that no army had ever done before. You took away our lives. But that was actually, you know, the intention. That was a specific thing that they were doing at that time. When we come back from this break, we'll move into the 20th century. Innovators. Two men who could not be more opposite.
- [18:08]
A
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B
And we're back with Professor Cecily Zander here to name America's most innovative general picked from a very small pool. Next up, General George Patton. Patton was one like Dwight Eisenhower, like the famous admirals of the Navy, he was fascinated by technology and how it altered battlefield tactics. He was quite a character. Of course, we've all seen the movie that George Scott plays, but it was real. This Patton guy, Tanks and the military tactics that changed with tanks meant a lot to Patton, didn't he?
- [19:21]
A
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. He was someone who sort of comes of age at this exact moment of transition. We sort of alluded to if the Civil War is the first modern war, World War I is where we really actually start to see a lot of those ideas applied. And we're Moving from the 19th century, an era of sort of single loading shotguns and cavalry warfare, to repeating rifles, to machine guns and to armored tanks. Right. Gasoline powered vehicles. And so Patton is someone who has to take the knowledge, and he had immense deep knowledge of military history and military tactics. He appreciated the history of the American military and, you know, military history more broadly. He understood how the cavalry worked. He understood its importance. He understood how swords and sabers functioned. He designed a saber that was still in use by the United States army sort of well into the Second World War. He knew that you could take those tactics and that deep knowledge and apply it to new technology. And so he really thinks hard. He is the man kind of hand selected by John Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force, to create from nothing, you know, from whole cloth the first tank battalion in the United States military history.
- [20:34]
B
But the English obviously invented it, right? I mean, they were the first to bring those things to the, to the battlefield. That's so much the story of these American leaders. They're taking an idea and then scaling up to a major, you know, use in a whole different level. We've done that in every realm of the military, never mind industry. He demonstrates that tanks can assist infantry and penetrate the defenses. Again, that was being demonstrated just because they needed to get through Those barbed wire barriers with something. And that was started, but then they start to say, wait a minute. It's actually a more useful thing if we start to. To reinvent the tank. I spec. I suppose he has a tank school in France, doesn't he?
- [21:13]
A
He does, yeah. And he. He doesn't have very many tanks, which is annoying to him. But he has lots of soldiers who are interested in sort of joining his battalion. And I think he realizes that with low numbers, right, they were waiting for more tanks to arrive to be produced. They had to be a kind of shock element on the battlefield. And this is how Napoleon had used his cavalry in the Napoleonic Wars. This is what had changed global warfare. When Napoleon actually said, I'm going to charge the horses to the front, Patton says, there's no reason we can't do that with tanks. And in doing so, we can alleviate some of, as you said, the struggles our infantry are facing. They can kind of get behind us, and once we get through, they can overawe the enemy.
- [21:52]
B
Right. The question I've always had, because there's a long time between World War I and 2, in that period of time, how was Patton aware that the machinery would get so much better and faster and more maneuverable?
- [22:05]
A
I think he was just. He continued to pursue sort of higher military education. He goes to the War College. He continues to work with people like George Marshall and Dwight David Eisenhower. These three, this kind of trio, come up together through the First World War, and they really sort of understand each other and they share this kind of deep belief that all these technologies that we began to see in the First World War, the airplane as well as the tank, they're going to be really important. And they have a belief in American innovation, that the United States especially can contribute to the development of these weapons of warfare.
- [22:42]
B
It's the combination, the collaboration between infantry and armor that is really particular to him. He works in something called operational audacity, which I just love. I think this is the name of my next boat. It's a perfect name because it marks how big he thinks. You know, these operational sweeps which will show up in the Battle of the Bulge, you know, that is the true mark in my mind of these kinds of generals, these military leaders who can think so big and yet understand how it really was going to work on the ground with the individual soldiers.
- [23:19]
A
Isn't it so often that that sort of commanders are prevented from being great because they don't possess that ability? They can either do the small or the largest, but they can't do Both because they get overwhelmed by the what ifs. I don't think Patton ever thought about what if the German army does this.
- [23:36]
B
Yeah.
- [23:36]
A
You know, Patton was. Patton was concerned with the American army is doing this, and that's all that mattered to him.
- [23:41]
B
He trains. It's like an Olympic coach. You know, he really is. He's very on the ground with these guys. He had a very tight relationship with his troops. He basically rescues the African campaign, the North African campaign at the beginning of World War II for us. And that's by virtue of his connection with these troops who had been poorly led prior to that. Morale is a battlefield weapon to this guy.
- [24:04]
A
Yeah. And I think nowadays he gets a little bit of criticism for his harsh treatment of soldiers, his high expectations. I think by modern standards, he was a little rough with the men. But at the time, I didn't hear men saying that they disliked Patton's leadership style. Right. I think it's what. Especially when we think about United States history, and this is something really important for listeners to always remember, is that these are volunteer armies.
- [24:27]
B
Yeah.
- [24:28]
A
These are men who come from civil pursuits, civil professions, and they go into the army for a period of time. They don't necessarily know in their bones what it means to be soldiers, but Americans, I think, have this incredible ability to recognize genuine and verbose leadership. And Patton is one of these guys who really gets men to rally behind him.
- [24:47]
B
Sure. And they all had such awareness of the other leaders like Monty and all the rumors about him. Patton's core principle, a good plan violently executed now, I mean, right up front, is better than a perfect plan next week. This mindset is what shapes modern war planning. You know, agility, initiative, relentless pressure. You've just got to be on it all the time. And, you know, one wonders what a Patton would have done with drones and stuff. He would have loved this stuff.
- [25:18]
A
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's a similar. You know, we don't necessarily talk about Ulysses S. Grant as innovative. I imagine he is going to be on the potential sort of greatest list. But this was a similar thing. It's that bulldog grip that Lincoln ascribes to Grant, but Patton also has. Just don't let go, Keep going, keep pushing.
- [25:35]
B
The verdict's pretty strong on Patton. I'm. Gonna. As we go here, I'm gonna be voting here. He's redefined mobility, sort of the tempo of everything. You know, he just ups the game on the battlefield, and specifically, of course, the tank is his baby, you know, in terms of a supporting tool for Decisive, fast strike action. That's George Patton. Forget about the, you know, the pearl handled pistol. All these sort of mythological symbols of this guy. He's really central to it all. We'll take a short break for a quick word from the sponsors. When we come back, we'll choose the most innovative general there was. Member week is here. For pros at Lowe's get up to 40% off hundreds of items from tools and paint to kitchen and bath and more. Just in time to stock up for this year's jobs. Plus earn five times the points on an eligible purchase shop. Member deals in store and online from January 8th through the 14th. Still not a member. Join for free today. Lowe's we help you sell Save point boosters subject to exclusions and more terms apply loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Visit lowe's.com terms for details. Subject to change. Last but certainly not least, and boy, this is a small pool. But nevertheless, I'm so glad to hear this name again. General Norman Schwarzkopf. Gulf War Storm and Norman Storm and Norman. Man, was he a refreshing fellow in the days of wondering where we were at in the world. Still post Vietnam. Along comes Norman Schwarzkopf to sort of reboot the nation.
- [27:17]
A
Yeah. And to really sort of again, I think, pull us into the true kind of modern proto 21st century warfare. He just had absolutely no fear of anything.
- [27:31]
B
Yeah, okay. Weird little trivia thing that I learned on a Lindbergh episode. We just did Storm. And Norman's father was the captain, the commander of the New Jersey State Police, who was interviewing Lindbergh the morning of the kidnapping. That's the crazy thing. All right, so he is the mastermind behind Operation Desert Storm, where he combined an aggressive air assault with a ground offensive, completely overwhelming Saddam Hussein's forces. Still in question for me is how overwhelmable were they. I mean, it was like we'd heard so much about them and then they suddenly disappeared. It was the weirdest thing to go through. The retired General Michael Buzz Mosley, former chief of Staff of the US Air Force, said Schwarzkopf benefited greatly from the post Vietnam rebuilding of the military and capitalized on military improvements when they were needed the most. This is so interesting. You know, he comes out of nowhere for, for me anyway, back then, you know, I was just a stupid little 20 year old or something. But he, he realized, you know, we suddenly see this iconic man and, and my main takeaway was how incredibly communicative he was. He was so savvy in front of.
- [28:42]
A
The cameras, wasn't he, yeah, and he, you know, in terms of innovation, we were talking about William Tecumseh Sherman a few minutes ago. He banned newspaper reporters from his army because he didn't want to deal with the press. I mean, he would get so upset with the things they say and the lies they concocted. Whereas Norman Schwarzkopf said, they can be our best friend. Let's give them some insight into what we're doing. Let's let them know what's going on. Our army is going to have more support. There's going to be more morale back home for our troops. And I think this is so true. In the first Gulf War, they throw a massive military victory parade in Washington at the conclusion of the Gulf War because there was such positive goodwill for this army that was coming home after achieving this, I mean, truly, absolutely smashing victory against Saddam Hussein. And that's a lot of Schwarzkopf's engineering. He's making sure the press understands what a good thing this is. He controlled the media very well.
- [29:36]
B
Well, he's trading on the same thing that Colin Powell educated us about, you know, do your mission, because, you know, you can do your mission and be able to get. There's a phrase for it I'm forgetting, but that's the idea.
- [29:48]
A
Yeah.
- [29:49]
B
The other aspect of him background on Schwarzkopf is there was a reorganization of the military about this time between the Pentagon and all the different branches. Explain how he plays a part in that.
- [30:01]
A
So he gets sort of. So while Colin Powell gets to kind of occupy the traditional role of the Joint Chief of Joint Chiefs of Staff, he's kind of heading that up. Schwartzkopf gets put in charge of what's called CENTCOM or Central Command. He. He kind of gets to put his. His mark on, you know, from the absolute pinnacle top down, what is the army itself kind of doing. And so while Colin Powell is looking at the military establishment, maybe sort of grand strategy, what Schwarzkopf gets to do is sort of drill down into the army. What do we have available to us to sort of carry out the kind of next future operation that this army needs to do. And so he's thinking about logistics, he's thinking about sort of military production. He kind of has this. This overview of the Army's capacity, which is why when the kind of proposal to sort of go into Saudi Arabia and then sort of pursue Saddam comes into being, Schwarzkopf is the absolute right choice for the job.
- [30:58]
B
Yeah.
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A
After this reorganization in this kind of post Cold War world, what is this army going to do? What's it going to be? He's the guy who can tell you exactly what this army can do.
- [31:07]
B
Well, yeah, exactly. And what is he telling us is that it's a brand new age out here. You know, the way that drones work, cameras on, aerial camera, you know, you see so much of the ground. And that is the thing that we can be seeing on CNN at home, as opposed to, you know, if you grew up in the Vietnam time, the scary jungle and the whole, you know, miasma that we were stuck in, this is the antithesis of this. We know what we're doing. Here's what we're doing. Watch it happen up there. It is very successful. It's a little.
- [31:38]
A
We can do it all without the casualties that we are accustomed, that this entire generation is accustomed to seeing. Because the technology we have to sort of wipe out the enemy before they can do immense damage to us is so great that, that we're not going to be suffering casualties anything like the scale we saw even, you know, 20 years prior in Vietnam.
- [31:57]
B
Exactly. Precision guided munitions, real time satellite intelligence, stealth aircraft. Along comes the stealth integrated command and control networks. He fused all these tools into a coherent battlefield system before most armies even understood what that meant. I mean, that's Norman Schwarzkopf there. And yet I still, I maintain he did it consciously in a, in a mannered form that made us go, wow, somebody's really in charge of this thing.
- [32:25]
A
I mean, and it, it's sort of a curse for the United States and for the generation leaders who are sort of young coming up under the Schwarzkopf era. Right. What is George Bush Jr. What is Dick Cheney, who at the time is the Secretary of Defense, going to learn from Schwarzkopf's great success in the Middle East? Middle Eastern warfare is easy. It's easy when you have a genius like Norman Schwarzkopf sort of this, this joint operation that, that, you know, takes less than a week to achieve our objectives. That's going to kind of, I think, mislead perhaps future, you know, politicians, future military leaders into thinking that, that this is easy.
- [33:02]
B
Right?
- [33:02]
A
It's not easy. Schwarzkopf was just remarkable at what he was doing.
- [33:05]
B
And let's talk about that. The tactics that he employed on the battlefield. He was known for a left hook maneuver. What does that mean?
- [33:13]
A
So you're trying to kind of, I mean, it's the same as boxing, right? Let's think about sort of where's your enemy's kind of weak spot. You want to sort of punch them where you can get at them. So get around their side, weaken at least one side, and then you can kind of penetrate your force. And so there's different ways to do it. What Schwarzkopf like to do was sort of obliterate with air warfare. So what we see in Operation Desert Storm is he's going to send in the airplanes first and he's going to be relentless. There's going to be sort of days of this like low grade attack by assault by plane, and then he's going to send in the tanks and the troops behind it. But by that time he's already punched that hole, he's punched that weak point in the enemy line and he's going to be able to basically stream through, get around their side.
- [33:57]
B
There's gotta be, you know, a mental alliance between Schwarzkopf and Patton in as far as the use of armor. It was like a major flanking attack. Right. I mean, it all happens so fast. But the key to his situation is that he's, you know, there are other nations involved too. This is a multinational coalition.
- [34:15]
A
Yeah.
- [34:16]
B
He's commanding not just the army, but the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, special Ops, and then 30 plus allied nations. It's an immense job to get up and do every day. One can only imagine that he can run an office like nobody's business. You know, everybody knew what they were going to do that day in that office, never mind out on the battlefield. It was all very seamless. I mean, to this day it is moving to consider.
- [34:40]
A
Yeah. And I think he benefited from sort of his childhood. His father was someone who was quite itinerant. He was sort of an army officer. And when he wasn't investigating kidnappings of famous pilot's children, he was sort of working. I mean, Schwarzkopf had lived in Tehran, he had lived in Switzerland, he had lived in Germany, he had gone to school in Geneva. He was also an incredibly smart guy. His IQ was supposed to have been something in the range of like 170. I mean, he just understood how to get people to work together. He had this sort of multinational education and this sort of deep commitment to learning and to knowledge. And I think that made him again the right person for the job.
- [35:19]
B
I think we can say about Norman Schwarzkopf he really defines late 20th century warfare. And even today his impact is felt and terribly missed by the way, the high tech coalition based armies or military intelligence driven operationally elegant. Yeah. If Patton embodied the birth of armored warfare, Schwarzkopf showcased the sort of modern, integrated, globalized warfare.
- [35:46]
A
Right? Yeah. Combined assault with no fear. Absolutely.
- [35:50]
B
Okay, Cecily, we've waited too long. The most innovative American general from any age. You got a choice.
- [35:56]
A
You know, I'm a Civil War historian, so I think I'm always gonna. I'm always gonna go for Sherman. But for me, I think. Here's the thing. When I teach military history, my military history class, students are always stunned to learn about the Gulf War. I don't think it's taught all that often yet. I think it's still so recent that it doesn't really get into the history books of the history classes. But when I teach them about Schwarzkopf, they do just find him an absolutely stunning figure and one that they haven't really heard of all that much. Really interesting. He's in this sort of nadir of our understanding of American military history. So, you know, I think just gut reaction. I'm going to. I'm going to have to go with Schwarzkopf.
- [36:35]
B
That's very nice. I agree with you on that, because I think we're dealing with the Schwarzkopf effect for the next 200 years, you know, until the aliens finally teach us how to. How to fight a war. Because apparently, apparently that's going to happen pretty soon. But until somebody comes along to have to do that, it's Schwarzkopf. And the effect of Schwarzkopf, because he really is echoing all the guys we've talked about all the way from old time. You know, it really is that kind of holistic necessity for a brilliant mind to take in all the factors. You see that in Schwarzkopf. But I quickly add, he's got cameras in his face. Sherman didn't have cameras in his face, and Schwarzkopf was able to use that as a technique. Of course, Schwarzkopf wasn't fighting the American Civil War either, so there's a lot to consider here. Cecily Xander is a Civil War historian we are very fond of. Author of Abraham Lincoln and the American west, which is currently in progress as we speak. When are we going to see that book, Cecily?
- [37:34]
A
Well, I. I'm hoping to finish up a draft by the end of the summer, so maybe 20, 27 is when it'll. It'll hit shelves.
- [37:40]
B
Good subject. She has also written another that you should look for. The Army Under Fire, Anti Militarism in the Civil War, from Louisiana State University Press. Cecily, thank you so much.
- [37:50]
A
Thank you, Don.
- [37:52]
B
Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursday, Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me. Don Wildman so grateful for your support.
- [38:28]
A
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