Themistocles (Battle of Salamis), Flavius Belisarius (Byzantium)

[caesar novus]

Victor Hanson gave another interesting book talk on his choice of 5 historical generals who snatched a visionary victory out of an apparently certain (to their demoralized countrymen) defeat. He explains why he didn't include Scipio the Hannibal buster, but rather chooses a lesser known "the last roman". He explains why these sharp elbowed high achievers always seem doomed to be unappreciated later:

http://www.booktv.org/Watch/14554/The+Savior+Generals+How+Five+Great+Commanders+Saved+Wars+That+Were+Lost+From+Ancient+Greece+to+Iraq.aspx

 

While you may want to skip the more contemporary generals he discusses, I would urge you to hear out his coverage of the US Civil War and Korean war. These wars were headed for disaster and lost support by the fickle public, only to be saved with lasting good consequences by generals mostly poorly thought of afterward (less thanks to Grant, Lincoln, or McArthur).

[Virgil61]

Thanks, I might watch it later. Not a fan of Hanson outside his field of expertise--the classical era. Ridgway is anyone's choice who does serious research on the Korean war. At a nuts & bolts level he brought a division commander's understanding of the use of combined arms & mutual support that Mac lacked. I'm in the middle of Sherman's memoirs coincidentally & find him an interesting choice. I don't think he (Sherman) would agree that Grant wasn't mentioned, he seems to have a real admiration for his qualities. Petreaus is someone I worked near when he was 101st CDR in Iraq; absolutely a good choice though Hanson misses having the insider's knowledge that might have put Odierno as the choice [maybe he mentions it I don't know]. After an obnoxious counter-productive start as the 4th Infantry Division's cdr he was a quick study and learned a lot about counter-insurgency operations, to his credit.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Virgil61

[caesar novus]

I don't think he's saying who was best in a particular war, but who has special transcending qualities in all history of recorded warfare. I was unfamiliar with his Roman choice because that late eastern empire period doesn't grab me for some reason yet. It's nice he didn't rehash the obvious choice from second punic war, since I am reading Goebbels vast diaries and he was pushing that as a prime example to everyone why not to surrender and to continue the hopeless meatgrinder to the end.

 

I barely knew about Ridgeways story because Korea was kind of an embarrassing, error prone conflict. I barely followed Petreaus because I was so disgusted at the left democrat agitprop attempting to deny him senate approval to head USCENTCOM. He was so obviously the ideal, effective, yet humanitarian choice which should have pleased the left, but they needed to stereotype some random target to make a point. They do the same Goebbels-style agitprop today for example on laws for (but sabotaging) green-ness. Of course Patreaus did a transformational job, and as this book says of course he was then reviled and torn down (by the right?).

 

Sherman is spun so nicely in this video that it may be worth sliding the dial to find that section. He is of course reviled in southern memory, yet inflicted and incurred miniscule casualties in his famous march in the SE (I realize he had a rough start further west). He caused property damage that was targeted against warmaking capability and the elite, not against everyman such is remembered. With Grant's slow progress and high attrition, the north was risking to lose an election and the supposedly anti-slave european countries were itching to recognize the slave south to restore cotton trade. The north couldn't afford many more Grant style victories, so Sherman had to think out of the box. Goebbels at one point convinces Hitler and Goring to try something similar, in switching the final bombing of England from military or urban targets to the homes and neighborhoods of the elite ruling class, but I guess it wasn't followed up.

Edited July 22, 2013 by caesar novus

[Virgil61]

The final vote was 95-2 for Petreaus' confirmation. It was never in doubt by anyone who followed it. Move-on.org failed miserably. To those of us in the know Petreaus' appointment a was a direct slap in the face to Cheney-Rumsfeld and their failed policies which left U.S. forces in Iraq woefully undermanned. I'll give GWB credit, he stopped listening to them after Petreaus' success.I'm a former psychological operations guy so using labels like agitprop and Goebbels towards the left (or right) leaves me pretty cold.

 

P's downfall was just a stupid self-inflicted wound vis-a-vis women that many powerful males of any political stripe fall prey to. Pity we lost him.

 

I think a lot of Civil War historians would disagree with Hanson if that description is correct. Sherman says he thought the war was effectively over after Vicksburg and Gettysburg but that the Southern leadership had gone beyond rationalism to fanaticism so the harder task of stamping it out to the end became necessary. Sherman's a great general and his memoirs are fascinating but he is by any measure a huge fan of Grant. I will find some time for this later.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Virgil61

[caesar novus]

Maybe Grant brought logistics to the world stage, and Sherman brought counter-logistics to the equation... instead of just army vs army. I dunno; my closest related education is just reading umpteen pilot bio's in an Air Force library as a kid.

 

Nice to know that Petreaus scares were overblown. I happen to live where such fringe movements come to roost after being rejected as too looney even in California. They get laws passed that just amaze unbiased mayors or governor as being of no practical use and very expensive and restrictive. But they don't dare veto them because the movements use exactly what Goebbels recommends... hit simple emotional rather than logical points, and repeat and repeat. Make your falsehoods big and brazen,  which are harder to tackle than small lies which can be disposed of more easily.

Edited July 23, 2013 by caesar novus

[caesar novus]

Sherman says he thought the war was effectively over after Vicksburg and Gettysburg but

.

Hanson's book didn't claim Sherman was better than Grant, just that Sherman fit his maverick category best. BTW, A new book from US Naval War College prof. claims Vicksburg was a waste, and that the despised McClellan towered above Grant and Lee in terms of good strategy: http://c-spanvideo.org/program/Strategyandt

 

He agrees that McClellan was horrible at operational and tactical levels, but if he was simply kicked upstairs rather than fired, his multipronged strategy might have taken transportation hub Chattanooga and ended the war 18 months earlier. Grant and Lee had poor strategic awareness; only Bragg and Lincoln came close to McClellan.

 

The way the author characterizes these generals seems in line with a new brain theory that distinguishes top vs bottom brain thinkers (they reject the left/right brain theory) http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304410204579139423079198270 . I like their "adaptor" category, which doesn't use either top or bottom brain effectively (fun-to-be-with slacker!).

 

Anyway McClellan would appear to be the stimulator type, whose top brain makes ingenious plans, but bottom brain is oblivious to see them thru. I guess Grant and Lee would be more perceiver bottom brain types who are said mainly good at reading the minds of their opponents, although not without some top brain (superb operational but not strategic thinkers).

Edited October 19, 2013 by caesar novus

[Onasander]

Most modern theories of cognition divide the two hemispheres of the brain into four parts, using the Basal Ganglia, Supplementary Motor Area, and Thalamus as processing points for lateralization.

 

The main obvious divide in the brain, in terms of cyto-architecture, is still very much the left and right hemisphere divide. The crainial nerves and parallel archirecture and cross dependency of the two hemispheres judge to a high degree how we process information. This is unlikely to change in any theory in the future, given we know for the most part the anatomy of the brain and can fMRI it.

 

Most theories of how the mind works takes up these divisions. Im talking about the 3 (then nine) muses, then Alexandrian Hermetic thought, Caballah, etc, all preserve in their root this awareness that the various parts of thought parallel one another, and can be networked. Our modern awareness is nothing new, if anything is tiresome. I've studied over 40 different personality typologies.... most of these psych grads lack awareness of parallels in their theory and historical models.

 

Just pay attention to the asymmetry in feedback loops in thinking, it's rule number one, learned from Colonel John Boyd's OODA Loop. If your ambitious, try a hand at learning the crainial and accessory nerves, and the functions of the parts of the brain the hook up to, and vascular blood flow through the Circle of Willis (I recommend drawing TCOW until you memorise it).

 

Its fairly simple from there on out. Most theories of mind mindlessly nitpick nuisance arguments, trying to fix a earlier bad theory or professor. You can model the dialect matrix of Strategy-Operations-Tactics from such theories. I haven't come across a cognitive theory yet up to the task. If it exists, it's classified.

 

My list:

Chanakya

George Washington

Scipio Africanus

Kruschev

Attaturk

 

I'm longterm results oriented. Belisarius and Zhuge Liang and Sun Tzu pulled off some impressive reversals, but what did it actually do in the end, what was the point looking back with hindsight?