The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, written in 1999 by Victor Davis Hanson, is a must read for anyone wanting to evaluate America's chances in the current conflict.
Democracies, I think—if the cause, if the commanding general, if the conditions of time and space take on their proper meaning—for a season can produce the most murderous armies from the most unlikely of men, and do so in the pursuit of something spiritual rather than the mere material.- from Part I of the Prologue
This book is about a special intersection of ideology and warfare. Hanson proposes that democratic "armies of a season", led by philosopher-generals, in pursuit of a just cause, can be phenomenally devastating beyond what any material measures would predict, when taken on an anabasis (march upcountry) into the heart of an oppressive, militaristic society.
To illustrate this thesis, Hanson captivatingly narrates the details of the marches and men lead by three generals: Epaminondas, William Sherman, and George Patton. The first lead the yeomen of Thebes to crush the supposedly unstoppable Spartans in their homeland. The second lead his famous—and often misunderstood—"March to the Sea" that eviscerated the Confederacy and ended their will to fight. The third, despite constant interference from above, lead the brand-new Third Army in a mad dash into the heart of Nazi Europe. All three were vilified by members of their own side, worshipped by the men they commanded, and unexpectedly victorious over and devastating to the slave-owning regimes they went up against.
The first thing that grabs me, reading this book, is how compelling Hanson's narratives are. Some of the minutiae he examines would, in the hands of another author, make for somewhat dry reading. Hanson, though, has the refined gift of not only loving his subject matter to death, but also of being able to convey that love to a fairly broad audience.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Great job Mac - the old freak is compulsive but persuasive, an ad for narrowcasting.