MacGregor Knox

The dynamics of military revolution 1300—2050: Thinking about revolutions in warfare

The term “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) became decidedly fashionable in the course of the 1990s. It lies at the heart of debates within the Pentagon over future strategy and has gained increasing prominence in Washingtons byzantine budgetary and procurement struggles. Yet few works throw light on the concepts past, help situate it or the phenomena it claims to describe within a sophisticated historical framework, or offer much guidance in understanding the potential magnitude and direction of future changes in warfare. This book is an effort to answer those needs. CONCEPTUAL ROOTS Current notions of revolutions in military affairs derive from two principal sources: early modern historians and Soviet military theorists. The closely related concept of “military revolution” emerged in 1955 in an inaugural lecture by the British historian Michael Roberts. Roberts argued that in the early seventeenth century, under the leadership of the warrior-king Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden had embarked on a military revolution that had swept away traditional approaches to military organization and tactics throughout the West. That claim provoked several decades of furious debate over the extent and nature of the changes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century warfare. In the end, most specialists came to agree that Roberts had been correct in suggesting that European warfare in this period had undergone fundamental systemic changes. But until the 1990s, military historians focused on other periods of Western history had largely ignored the concepts developed in the debate that Roberts had opened.

The Fascist Regime, its Foreign Policy and its Wars: An ‘Anti-Anti-Fascist’ Orthodoxy?

The de-legitimisation of the Italian political system that culminated in the upheavals of the late 1980s has permitted a very public re-examination of the meaning and significance of both the Fascist regime and the Resistance to it. Although debates between historians had already begun over these issues, they have been thrust into the media spotlight now that the political consensus surrounding their interpretation has collapsed. The following two articles examine both the content and conduct of these debates, and consider the extent to which they have contributed to a reassessment of the history of these periods. Naturally the opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the authors themselves: Contemporary European History would welcome further comments and contributions concerning this rethinking of the contemporary Italian experience.

The dynamics of military revolution 1300—2050: Conclusion: The future behind us

The early Greek imagination envisaged the past and the present as in front of us – we can see them. The future, invisible, is behind us. … Paradoxical though it may sound to the modern ear, this image of our journey through time may be truer to reality than the medieval and modern feeling that we face the future as we make our way forward into it. The essays in this volume have focused on the transformations in the art of war that have marked the rise of the West. The purpose of this final chapter is entirely different. It is to draw general conclusions about the nature of military revolutions and of revolutions in military affairs, and to explore what that past might suggest about the potential for such revolutions in the future. In view of the claims of the enthusiasts that the United States is riding the crest of an American revolution in military affairs, these are intriguing questions indeed. The pace of technological and social change and the continuing antagonisms between states make it highly probable that war, military revolutions, and revolutions in military affairs will play a central role in the century that has just begun.

Das faschistische Italien und die Endlösung 1942/43

Vorspann Es unterliegt keinem Zweifel, dass italienische Diplomaten und Offiziere im besetzten Griechenland, Kroatien und Südfrankreich tausende Juden vor der Deportation in die deutschen Vernichtungslager bewahrt haben. Heftig umstritten aber sind die Motive, die sie dabei leiteten. MacGregor Knox, einer der besten Kenner der Materie, schafft hier Klarheit und zeigt, dass sich der Mythos von den „anständigen Italienern“ nicht länger aufrechterhalten lässt.

1 OCTOBER 1942: ADOLF HITLER, WEHRMACHT OFFICER POLICY, AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The origins of the process that transmuted Prussia–Germanys most hallowed social institution and professional group, the officer corps, into a functional elite of ‘National Socialist Fuhrer-personalities’ remain obscure. Recent studies have argued that the ‘structural pressures of modern war’ – the immense losses of summer 1942 – compelled the abolition of time-honoured educational and social qualifications for officer candidacy and the basing of promotions almost solely on battlefield prowess, and that ‘National Socialist elite manipulation’ was at best a secondary factor. Yet archival evidence makes clear that the pressures of war took second place in the armys official mind to the need to preserve order and tradition, and that it was above all Adolf Hitler who dictated the timing, shape, and extent of changes that the bureaucrats were largely incapable of imagining. ‘Fuhrer-selection through battle’ was simultaneously the most far-reaching and lasting element in the social revolution that Hitler sought, and a decisive step in steeling the German armed forces for their fight to the bitter end. In this as in other areas, it was National Socialisms very modernity that endowed it with demonic force.

Thinking war - history lite?

On the first page of On War Carl von Clausewitz quipped that ‘the maximum use of force is in no way incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect’. Beatrice Heuser might object to Clausewitz’s first thought – but certainly not to his second. The Evolution of Strategy is in many ways an admirable work. Its erudition encompasses writings in the five major Western European languages and the lingua franca of antiquity, Latin. Its clear and effective organization is simultaneously chronological and topical. A conceptual introduction covers the origins of the notion of ‘strategy’ and its varied dimensions and definitions up to the present, from its first appearance – as distinct from tactics – in a Greek text of the sixth century CE. Topical chapter groupings then describe recorded thought about the higher conduct of war from the ancient world to the French Revolution; the subsequent era of total war to 1945; naval, air, and nuclear strategy; insurgency and counterinsurgency; the return to fashion of limited war after 1945; and some of the contours of strategic thinking in the post-Cold War era. Either by inclination or more probably as a result of the structure of her material, Hauser privileges binary oppositions. A series of fruitful dichotomies run through the work: putatively eternal axioms or ‘principles of war’ as opposed to historical peculiarity and technological change; military and political; moral and material; defense and offense; battle and the ‘indirect approach’; regular and irregular; combat and deterrence; force and justice; humanitarian aspiration and sanguinary reality; and theory and practice. The result is a rich analytical tapestry, skillfully organized and often trenchantly written. Heuser’s overall theme, despite concessions to the indeterminacy of the future (99, 504), is an optimistic moral lesson, a tale of progress and of the putative triumph of Western ethical norms up to 1789 and since 1945. The West’s ‘just war’ tradition allegedly represented a

Strategic Views from the Second Tier: The Nuclear Weapons Policies of France, Britain, and China.@@@Strategic Assessment 1995: U.S. Security Challenges in Transition.@@@Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy.@@@The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War.

This volume reviews the nuclear weapons policies of France, Britain, and China and analyzes their roles as independent deterrents in international politics. The end of a bipolar international system and deep reductions in the American and Russian nuclear arsenals have increased the relative importance of the nuclear forces of these three countries.