Armchair Warriors: Private Citizens, Popular Press and the Rise of American Power

Abstract

Walk into any Veterans of Foreign Wars facility about an hour before last call. Three barstools down is an expert on all things political and military; or, as he says, he’s “smarter than any of those damn politicians or the idiots who went to West Point.” With little prompting he will tell you and anyone else within earshot what is wrong with the country and how it can be fixed—“if anyone would listen to me which they won’t.” Joel Davidson has captured this voice expressed in writing from the Spanish American War to the Cold War and Vietnam. But along with the amateur generals and armchair warriors of the title, he has also captured the voice of U.S. citizens desperate to help their country in a time of critical need. For example, in 1943 a letter writer reaching General Hap Arnold called himself “a little American like millions of others whose full desire is to win the war with the lowest cost in lives of our finest young men, nothing else matters” (p. 208). The wide variety of outsiders produced an even larger variety of ideas, plans, plots, and advice, ranging from the practical and sensible to the borderline insane. A frightening example of the latter came from a colonel in 1946 who proposed to the U.S. Army chief of staff that the United States issue a worldwide ultimatum to renounce nuclear weapons. Countries would be given two hours to submit before their major cities would be destroyed by nuclear bombs. Almost as crazy was the idea of using nuclear bombs to dig a new Panama Canal. Most of the suggestions documented in the book are far less sinister. Often they are unintentionally humorous, especially the ones involving animals. During the firebombing of Tokyo one writer suggested dropping millions of rats, each wearing a little parachute, with a firebomb strapped to its back. When the rats burrowed under the wooden houses, the exploding bombs would burn down the buildings. During World War I a letter writer proposed replacing the mythical kegs of brandy carried by St. Bernard dogs with real explosives carried into the German lines. Another suggested clearing landing beaches by releasing millions of hogs to root up land mines. Although most of the letters in the book were unsolicited, the government on at least two occasions invited suggestions and new ways of looking at problems. To combat the German U-boats that were destroying Allied ships, the U.S. Navy asked Scientific American to help gather ideas. Several of the ensuing letters suggested tracking the seagulls that followed the submarines’ garbage trails. At the outbreak of