Allan R. Millett

The Korean War: A 50‐year critical historiography

Scholarly research and publication in many countries has made the Korean War not only remembered, but also better understood. Material from Russia and China have been especially helpful in adding nuance and detail to now‐dated writing about the wars causes. Much more work needs to be done on Korean politics and the 1952–53 period, but in all the scholarship simply confirms the shared responsibility of all the belligerents ‐ including the Koreans ‐ in starting and continuing the war.

Captain James H. Hausman and the Formation of the Korean Army, 1945-1950

The creation of new armies for new nations or the reform of old armies for modernizing states is often tied to the tale of one or two European or American officers, reformers of herculean proportions whose charisma and professionalism shape an institution for years. Sometimes military reform becomes an engine of change for an entire society, intended or otherwise. Given the global reach of British and French military practices and the compulsive energy and hypermilitarization of Imperial Germany, it is not surprising that the great reformers are Europeans: William Carr Beresford in Portugal, Charles George Gordon in China, Ivor Herbert in Canada, H.H. Kitchner in Egypt, Orde Wingate in Jewish Palestine, John Bagot Glubb in Jordan, Joseph-Simon Gallieni in Indochina, Hubert Louis Lyautey in Morocco, Colmar von der Goltz and Liman von Sanders in Turkey, Emil Korner in Chile, Hans Kundt in Bolivia, and Max Bauer and Hans von Seeckt in China. Although not so well known in the pantheon of military imperialists, officers from the United States also played key roles in the creation of modern armies in the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Asia. Absent as statues and almost invisible in literature, these officers include Charles P. Stone in Egypt, William McE. Dye in the Kingdom of Choson (Korea), Herbert J. Slocum in Cuba, Charles Young in Liberia, Smedley D. Butler in Haiti, Henry T. Allen and Edward G. Lansdale in the Philippines, and Joseph W. Stilwell in China. With aspirations that sometimes exceeded the values of their own armies, these officer-missionaries for military professionalism sometimes left unavoidable political power in the hands of the army and a memory (often unfair) of cultural imperialism and unwanted interference in civil political development. Such was the fate of James H. Hausman, the most influential officer in shaping the army of the Republic of Korea.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Korean War: Cautionary Tale and Hopeful Precedent

Like most real history, the Korean War left ambiguous, selective, and complex lessons for the policymakers of the Eisenhower administration. The president himself, to borrow Dean Acheson’s phrase, had been “present at the creation” of the war in 1950. He had then distanced himself from it as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and as a presidential candidate. He inherited the conflict—a war to be ended—as president. Yet the war never became a defining experience for Dwight D. Eisenhower, nor did it play an inordinate role in his foreign and defense policies. His geo-strategic views had developed well before 1950, most obviously during World War II. The Korean conflict, a post-colonial civil war that became an internationalized regional conflict, was not even unique enough in its own time to dominate the national security conceptualization that became “the New Look” or “the Great Equation.” It might have encouraged a “Great Evasion,” an unwillingness to deal with instability in the Middle East and Asia, but instead the Eisenhower administration coped, more or less successfully, with comparable turmoil in the Philippines, Thailand, Iran, and Lebanon. It is true that the next land war in Asia—to be avoided at all costs according to the Korean “never again” strategic gurus—awaited a change of presidents, but President Eisenhower committed an Army-Marine Corps expeditionary force to Lebanon in 1958. So much for avoiding the use of American ground forces in local wars.

Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945-1948 (review)

★ 285 Army’s log. The stirring, lengthy, Anglophobic screed offered by Clarence Huebner about the Sicily campaign is doctrinally wrong and also would have been eliminated by any military expert. The diaries of Bradley aide Chet Hansen, and the emotional, prejudiced views of Patton chief of staff Hobart Gay, have to be used extremely carefully but are widely quoted as fact. As a former staff college instructor, I found Hirshon’s judgment on military operations frequently wrong, probably due to his lack of original research into the context of Patton’s operations and the war itself. Even his occasional attempts to praise Patton sometime misfire. His statement that Patton’s Army suffered the lowest trench foot and cold weather casualties due to his leadership is patently false, easily disproved by checking the Army Medical Department’s official history. Hirshon’s exposure of and repetitive emphasis on Patton’s dark side is a good corrective to the hero worship paid to Patton, but the author’s own lack of balance does not confirm his admission that Patton was a great soldier, which he undoubtedly was, and leaves a balanced assessment of his subject hanging. While often interesting, Hirshon offers little new and falls far short of Martin Blumenson’s edited Patton Papers and Carlo D’Este’s more complete and balanced, Genius for War. As for Hirshon’s great claim that he has proven that everyone else is wrong, and that Patton was not dyslexic, one has to wonder, based on other instances, if his depth of research is as definitive as he believes.

A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War

In the course of the 20th century, no war looms as profoundly transformative or as destructive as World War II. Its global scope and human toil reveal the true face of modern, industrialised warfare. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive, single-volume account of how and why this global conflict evolved as it did. This book is a history of the Second World War that tells the full story of battle on land, on sea, and in the air. The authors analyse the operations and tactics that defined the conduct of the war in both the European and Pacific theatres. Moving between the war room and the battlefield, we see how strategies were crafted and revised, and how the multitudes of combat troops struggled to discharge their orders. The authors present incisive portraits of the military leaders, on both sibs of the struggle, demonstrating the ambiguities they faced, the opportunities they took, and those they missed. Throughout, we see the relationship between the actual operations of the war and their political and moral implications. This book is the result of decades of research by two of Americas premier military historians. It avoids a celebratory view of the war but preserves a profound respect for the problems the allies faced and overcame as well as a realistic assessment of the axis accomplishments and failures. This history of World War II - from the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the surrender of Japan in 1945, should be of interest to students, scholars, and general readers alike.

Military Innovation in the Interwar Period.

Introduction Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett 1. Armored warfare: the British, French, and German experiences Williamson Murray 2. Assault from the sea: the development of amphibious warfare between the Wars, the American, British, and Japanese experiences Allan R. Millett 3. Strategic bombing: the British, American and German experiences Williamson Murray 4. Close air support: the German, British and American experiences, 1918-41 Richard R. Muller 5. Adopting the aircraft carrier: the British, American and Japanese case studies Geoffrey Till 6. Innovation ignored: the submarine problem, Germany, Britain and the United States, 1919-39 Holger H. Herwig 7. From radio to radar: interwar military adaptation to technological change in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States Alan Beyerchen 8. Innovation: past and future Williamson Murray 9. Patterns of military innovation in the interwar period Allan R. Millett 10. Military innovation in peacetime Barry Watts and Williamson Murray.