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17 Army Hist. 1 (1990-1991)

handle is hein.milandgov/aryhsy0017 and id is 1 raw text is: ARMY HISTORY THE PROFESSIONAL BULL.TIN OF ARMY HISTORY PH-20-914 (No. 17) Washington, D.C. Winter 1990/1991 Military History in the United States Army Richard Swain A US. Army-Japanese Ground SelDefense Force Military }listoy Exc hange was held 17-21 September 1990 at the U.S. Army Commmnd and General Staff College. Fort Leavenworth. The Combat Studies Institute hosted the exchange COL Richard Swain, drec r rfhe lnstitue,presenseda paper. which isex- c rp edhere fbr Army History: It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to address you on the subject of military history in the United States Army. The topic occurred to me when I took part in the last Military History Exchange. I was then hod of the delegation, but new to my post as director of the Combat Studies Institute, and therefore some- wh at reluctant to address that assembly. Now that I am. entering my third year as the senior history teacher at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, I beg your indulgence to accept me as a spakeras well as head of the U.S. side. As I indicated, the idea of this topic occurred to me at the last conference. I was struck on the one hand by the similarity of our dual callings as historians and sol- diers, a combination that has not always rested easy on the holder. The high quality of the papers presented and their adherence to a common style of scholarship wre interestng as well, I wondered how far this Spparent similarity extended. I was curious first of all about the extent to which the structure in which my hosts operated approximated my own, More to the point, Iwas curious about how far our vlewson the role of history in our respective military forces were sin - tar or dissimilar. Consequently. i proposed this topic as a means of stimulating a dialogue to address these queslions. The contemnporay historian in the United States Army is faced with two related but opposite problems. On the one hand he Is confrmnted by those individuals An hony Hartley has called the new Prometheans. (1) These confident souls, undoubting in their ability to reduce any problem to its constiuent parts and, usually with the aid of computer simulation, to pro- duce a finite and comprehensive answer to any ques tion, are contemptuous of the past as irrelvCant to their immedi ate concers. For them miIitary history beg ins whenever they themselves took the oath of office A- confidentin their conceptual models andinthe puwers of technology, particularly high technology. as were their Freudian predecessors of the early twentieth century.orsocial-Darwinist ancestorsofthe late nine- teenth, they have failed to leam Clausewitz's mos fundamental lesson-that war is a social, a human, not a mechanical activity. Blind to the human element in war, ignoring the simple fact that they themselves determine the output of the compute r with their inputs, they have largely contnbured to the loss of one war and~no doubt.witl do so again. Because they reject the utility of any knowledge of the past a priori, they are in fact the least difficult with which to deal. In the main, they are beyond redemption. By farthe more dif ficult challenge forthe historian is the officer who, like most in the westem tradition since Thucydides, looks to history for lessons, for a guide for behavior. (2) To him, the contemporary historian-trained in the university in the inadequacy of history as a predictive tool-is inevitahl disap pointing, what with his insistence onte osderaOn of context, the uniqueness of events and danger of facile analogy, and other qualicatons. Indeed, he stands the danger of driving military officers into the camp of the new Prornethcans by de fault. Why is this? The answer lies in the influence of the new milit ary history, a product largely of the post-World War It generation of military historians. These have turned from traditional military history in their rejection of impediments to the independent human will (antide terminism),the sistencein theutqueness ofev ents the Importance of context, and the dem and for compre hensiveness in the re creation of the past. Because

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