MILITARY HISTORY: IS IT STILL PRACTICABLE?

Abstract

Because the military is a practical profession geared much of the time to problem-solving, soldiers -- like engineers and scientists -- tend to be pragmatic about what is meant by the word practicable. History is practicable if it yields lessons, especially exemplary lessons in tactics and strategy that can be directly applied to some current situation. History is useful in illustrating points of doctrine, in instilling in the young officer the proper military values or an appreciation for our military heritage. The practical man often scans the past for some magical formula that may ensure success in war, like Field Marshall von Schlieffen's theory of envelopment, or Captain B. H. Liddell Hart's strategy of indirect approach. Such assumptions inevitably determine the way military history is taught. Because an important duty of the officer in peacetime is to teach, and because in the Army teaching usually involves explaining, it is often assumed that history, to be taught, must be explained. The emphasis therefore is on organizing and presenting information in a lucid, often lavishly illustrated lecture, in which tidy answers outrank nagging questions in the minds of everyone involved. The inference on the part of most students, if not the instructor, is that a person who remembers the lecture will somehow have learned history. It s a mistaken assumption we all make. More to the point, is the Army as an institution as historical-minded as it was in the past? For without even a rudimentary understanding of history and its processes, there is no way that the past can be made to offer object lessons for the future.