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Historia Mentem Armet: Lessons of the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Louis Morton
Louis Morton
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

It is a distressing paradox of our time, when we are concerned as never before with military problems on whose solution may depend our national existence and even the survival of civilization, that we should turn our backs on history and deny that the lessons of the past have any validity for the present.

There are many reasons for this. The problems we face are enormously complex and highly technical; the weapons on which we must rely and which threaten our existence are so revolutionary in character as to make past experience seem highly irrelevant. And there are few to tell us that this is not so, for military history has never really been seriously studied in this country. The historian has stood on the sidelines while his academic colleagues, the political scientists, the economists, the physicists, and others, have become increasingly active, officially and unofficially, in the study of national security problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , January 1960 , pp. 155 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1960

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References

1 Adm. Nomura, Kichisaburo, “Stepping Stones to War,” US. Naval Institute Proceedings, LXXVII, No. 9 (September 1951), p. 929.Google Scholar

2 Operations Against Japan Subsequent to Formosa, 30 June 1944, JCS 924, Report by Joint Staff Planners, in The Entry of the Soviet Union into the War Against Japan, press release, Department of Defense, September 1955, p. 29.Google Scholar

3 Russian Participation in the War Against Japan, JSC 1176/16, 18 Jan 1945, A., Encl, in The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, Washington, D.C., GPO, 1955, pp. 389ff.Google Scholar; JCS Memorandum for the President, 23 Jan 1945, in ibid., pp. 396–97.

4 MacArthur's views on this subject caused considerable controversy. The author's statements are based on Memo, Brig. Gen. G. A. Lincoln for Gen. Marshall and Maj. Gen. Hull, 25 Feb 1945; Informal Memo, G. A. L. [Lincoln] for Chief of Staff, 8 Mar 1945; Memo, Col. Paul L. Freeman, Jr., for Gen. Marshall, 13 Feb 1945, sub: Summary of an Hour and a Half Conversation with General MacArthur; Msg, Gen. MacArthur to Marshall, Gen., 20 Apr 1945, all in Entry of the Soviet Union …, op.cit., pp. 50–52, 55–57Google Scholar; and Cline, Ray S., Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, Washington, D.C., GPO, 1951, pp. 307–8.Google Scholar Forrestal's statement is in Millis, Walter, ed., The Forrestal Diaries, entry for 28 Feb 1945, p. 31Google Scholar; and the denial by General Courtney Whitney is contained in a letter to the Editor, Washington Post, 2 Apr 1955. MacArthur's postwar denial, made in response to a statement by Lehman, Senator, can be found in New York Times, 24 Mar 1955.Google Scholar

5 Kennan, George F., American Diplomacy, 1900–1950, New York, 1951, p. 61.Google Scholar

6 Stimson, Henry J. and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in Peace and War, New York, 1948, p. 632.Google Scholar

7 Lecture at National War College, 30 Jan 1947. Quoted with permission of the author.

8 Memo, Marshall for Secy of War, sub: Basic Objective in the Pacific War, 9 June 1945, ABC 337 (11 Jan 1945), Sec IA.

9 Draft Memo by Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, no date, no sub, in ibid.