New Books In Military History

Ask many military historians about the origins of American operational art and many will place it sometime after the Second World War. Conventional wisdom has long held that the American military only developed a rough understanding of operations – the planning and conduct of large-scale (Corps-size or greater) coordinated offensive and defensive actions – in the twin crucibles of the European Theater of Operations and in the US Navy’s drive across the Central Pacific. These traditionalist accounts have generally put the United States Army in the role of either being reluctant students, schooled in the nuances of modern warfare by the masters of the art, the German Wehrmacht, or as being pulled along unwillingly by the more sophisticated Navy and Marine Corps. If that is what passes for conventional wisdom, then Michael Matheny is having none of it. A senior instructor at the United States Army War College and a retired Army officer, Matheny is the author of Carrying the War to the Enemy: Am