Rating: 
Summary: Revisionist History -- At Its Worst
Review: There are few books that can engender a palpable visceral response -- SOUL OF BATTLE does so. Dr. Hanson's revisionist view of history allows him to join such luminosities as David Irving and Edmond Morris.He notes that his chosen leaders (Theban Epaminondas, U.S. Generals Sherman and Patton)led democratic armies -- unlike Napoleon and others who did not and led through the "brutality of their armies" (p. 5). Does this mean that the French Revolution and the levee en masse was not a democratic movement? Further, the author compares Alexander the Great to Hitler (as "kindred spirits". p. 21)and feels that Alexander was the most barbarous leader of antiquity. No mention is made of Alexander's attempts to merge Greek and Persian customs through example and not merely by fiat. Yet, when he describes the democratic army of Epaminondas, he is hard pressed to ignore the fact that the Theban general ignored the laws of his city-state and its military regulations by refusing to step down as commander. If the Theban commander was such a democratic paragon, why was he killed a few years later fighting the very democratic states he had established? Even the Theban backing of Persia in the first invasion cannot be condoned although the author tries to do so. The absence of decent maps is noticeable, as is the willingness to overlook and revise history to fit a dubious theory of "democratic armies". Dr. Hanson's bald statement that "if a general of a great democratic march is not hated, is not sacked or relieved of command ... he has not utilized the full potential of his men, has not accomplished his strategic goals" (p. 118) is without merit. It as if the author feels that democratic military leaders must ignore their democratic constraints in order to achieve their maximum. The author criticizes U.S. Grant as a plodding general who could not have utilized his army as well as Sherman. Yet he ignores the goals and missions of the separate armies. Dr. Hanson unchivalrously criticizes General Omar Bradley as a bureaucratic general who leads by "managerial style" and not leadership. He goes on to say that Bradley's "dislike of Patton" delayed the operational startup of Third Army (p. 340) -- such views are unsubstantiated. In some viewpoints, Bradley kept Patton from being relieved of command. This book is dangerous because it is well written. The casual reader will go away agreeing with the author's points and that is a mistake. I know that I will be very careful when I read future books from this author.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and controversial
Review: I found Dr. Hanson's latest book interesting, informative and controversial. In "The Soul of Battle" he describes the campaigns of three generals and the very successful armies they led, which - he asserts - were ideological armies driven by moral imperatives rather than loyalty to friends in the same unit. This is a revolutionary claim - at least to this reviewer - who has been fed for the last 3 or 4 decades on the theory that morale in any army was a product of the interpersonal loyalties of a few close comrades. I don't know that I completely believe the arguments in the "The Soul of Battle," but the book is so provocative that I am going to have to wait a while and then read it several more times to figure out what I really believe. In the meantime, the book provided me with new insights into the short period of Thebean hegemony in Classical Greece between 370 and 360 BC, the daring success and real goals of Sherman's march to the sea during the American Civil War, and the outstanding accomplishments of the United States Third Army under General Patton in France in the second half of 1944.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Interesting Thesis
Review: Mr. Hanson has created an interesting book, comparing the battles, motivations and organization of three great leaders Epaminandous, Sherman and Patton. He again studies the character of the societies they came from and how this is reflected in the armies and in the way the leaders handled the battles. I found the section on Patton especially interesting, especially his thesis that Eisenhower and BRadley (especially the latter) were at times incompetent. I am sure this is not old news, but the arguments made were quite convincing. Another argument that is interesting and not completely drawn out is that society had possibly changed around battle preventing Patton from executing his war plan to his best ability. The idea Patton expounded of killing as many of the enemy as possible with as few American casualties as possible seems to have been somewhat politically incorrect. The advent of better communications also meant the leader had less freedom of action. It would be interesting to read more on this thesis. Finally, one small flaw that bothers me, Mr. Hanson can get a bit repetitive. For example he dwells on General Patton's lack of supplies so often and uses almost the same sentences all the time. It is like he feels we forgot what he said a few pages before.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Analysis of Three Military Leaders
Review: This book is about three Western military leaders--Epaminondas (from ancient Greece), William Tecumseh Sherman, and George S. Patton. All three demonstrate, according to Hanson, his thesis that the most fearsome army is one made up of "free men who march unabashedly toward the heartland of their enemy in hopes of saving the doomed, when their vast armies are aimed at salvation and liberation, not conquest and enslavement." That is, an army is most effective when the troops believe they are fighting a war that is "a just and very necessary thing to do." Hanson argues convincingly that Sherman, not Grant or Lee, was the best general of the Civil War and deserves credit for ending it decisively, because his famous march was aimed not so much at the destruction of enemy troops as it was the destruction of the Southern will to fight. Had the war ended only with Grant's defeats of Confederate armies, the South may have risen to fight again another day. Because Sherman destroyed the soul of the South, his victories guaranteed there would be no second Civil War. In this respect, Sherman "redefined the American Way of War, but his legacy was not Viet Nam, but rather the great invasions of Europe during World War Two, in which Americans marched right through the homeland of the Axis powers." By contrast to Sherman, Grant and Lee both fought battles in the traditional manner of lining up armies and launching frontal assaults, a strategy that was much more inhumane than Sherman's because it cost so many more lives. "By April 1865, Grant at horrendous cost had at last overwhelmed the best of the Confederate army; Sherman at little human expenditure defeated the very soul of the Confederate citizenry." Had Lee been foresighted enough to follow a strategy like Sherman's, he would have been far more effective: "For all of Lee's supposed genius, the North was fortunate that he, not a man of Sherman's mind and ability, led Southern troops into Pennsylvania in 1863. Otherwise the huge Confederate army of 75,000 would have threatened various towns, created a swath of destruction from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, bypassed Union resistance, and then made a lightning-quick descent on Washington, creating a panic among the citizens and a general loss of confidence among the troops at the front." This book is a very compelling and fascinating interpretation of three great military leaders.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and controversial
Review: I found Dr. Hanson's latest book interesting, informative and controversial. In "The Soul of Battle" he describes the campaigns of three generals and the very successful armies they led, which - he asserts - were ideological armies driven by moral imperatives rather than loyalty to friends in the same unit. This is a revolutionary claim - at least to this reviewer - who has been fed for the last 3 or 4 decades on the theory that morale in any army was a product of the interpersonal loyalties of a few close comrades. I don't know that I completely believe the arguments in the "The Soul of Battle," but the book is so provocative that I am going to have to wait a while and then read it several more times to figure out what I really believe. In the meantime, the book provided me with new insights into the short period of Thebean hegemony in Classical Greece between 370 and 360 BC, the daring success and real goals of Sherman's march to the sea during the American Civil War, and the outstanding accomplishments of the United States Third Army under General Patton in France in the second half of 1944.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: The Soul of Battle : From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny by Victor Davis Hanson is an interesting journey through the history of warfare and the impact that a democratic army may have on the outcome. Focusing on the Theban General Epaminondas conquest of Sparta, General Sherman of the Union Army and his march to the sea and General Patron's race through France and Germany, Hanson posits that citizen armies raised from a democratic populace and led by extraordinary leaders create the most lethal fighting machines the world has seen. This is especially true when soldiers see their basic morality challenged by their enemy. In such circumstances, these democratic armies are not only victorious but also ruthless in the pursuit of their goals. In describing the conquests of the three great liberators, Hanson excels. His descriptions are more than just a narrative of the events, but a clear and extraordinary analysis of what made the three liberators and their armies click. Hanson clearly and justifiedly is a fan of the three. However, if the book is purportedly more than just the story of the three great leaders and their armies, that is where it loses some of its strength. While a democratic army can be a devastating force, history reveals exceptions. For instance, while Patton's armies defeated the Nazi's, the American armies were routed by the Chinese in Korea and the British and French armies were defeated by the German blitzkrieg. Moreover, from Alexander to Genghis Kahn to Napoleon, history is full of examples of dictators leading armies of conquest and overwhelming their opponents. Hanson should have discussed theses other examples and explored why they are not inconsistent with his theory. What Hanson, does discuss, but what could have been focused on more, is that the democratic armies were not professional armies like the ones of Alexander or Napoleon. Both the armies of Sherman and Patton, the soldiers were ordinary citizens who were called up to fight antidemocratic forces and who quickly reentered civilian life after their mission had been accomplished. All in all, the reading of the book was a positive experience even given the limitations of Hanson's theory.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: This was a very interesting read. The general theme is marches of liberation by "...militia..."armies which is to say, non-Regular, war-raised armies, through enemy territory, specifically, the territory of warrior societies with core beliefs in their alleged racial and military superiority. Suffice it to say that Hanson's three generals disprove those theories pretty conclusively. Hanson starts with Thebes v. Sparta in the 4th century B.C.E. and the campaign of Epaminondas. This was a revelation to me. I had known next to nothing about Greece between the end of the Peloponessian War and the rise of Macedon and had never heard of Epaminondas before reading another book of Hanson's a few months ago. Learning that Sparta, undefeated and ,literally, uninvaded for centuries, had been humiliated and had seen its enslaved dependencies freed over the course of a winter's campaign by the Theban Epaminondas made for interesting and fast-paced reading. Hanson presents a lot of contrarian perspectives, for example his characterization of Alexander the Great as, essentially, a homicidal maniac. Similarly, and more broadly, Hanson inquires why Athens, a ruthless imperial power, is more valued today than Thebes, which, after all broke the power of Sparta and which did not seek hegemony even at the peak of its power. This seems, however, to overlook a broad range of Athenian cultural achievment, not to mention Marathon and Salamis. Further, within 5 years of Epaminondas' campaign, he died in battle, following which Thebes was submerged in the Macedonian conquest. Bad timing there on Thebes'part. Turning to the analysis of Sherman's March to the Sea(and beyond),Hanson seems a little harsh in his treatment of the Army of the Potomac, which after all had to fight the best Confederate commander and the Army of Northern Virginia in territory highly favorable to the defending force, with limited room for manuever. He also ignores the point that Grant eventually did outflank Lee when he crossed the James and attacked Petersburg, while Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia awaited frontal attack 50 miles away in their lines in front of Richmond. That is the very type of deep strike that Hanson praises Patton for wanting to make. As is well known, however, this deep strike failed because the Union generals on the scene at Petersburg, with overwhelming strength on hand and a day and a half to attack, bungled matters so badly that Lee was finally able to shift troops to that front and hold the position. Had this stroke been succesful, as it deserved to be both in conception and execution up to the point of actual attack, the War would have ended before Sherman took Atlanta. So, Grant and the Army of the Potomac were not the bumblers that Hanson paints. Having said that, Hanson does an excellent job giving Sherman the credit he deserves, which has been largely denied him due to the dominance of the pro-Southern view of the Civil War. Turning to Patton, Hanson is again excellent but this section is hard to read because of the staggering consequences which followed the repeated refusals of Patton's superiors, Generals Bradley and Eisenhower, to allow him to go forward and cut behind retreating or bypassed German forces. These consequences, Hanson argues, included the failure to win the European War in 1944, many thousands of Allied combat deaths, probably several million death camp victims,and Soviet domination of eastern Europe for 50 years with the resultant Cold War. Hanson is unsparing and convincing in pointing out what he sees as the high command errors that led to these consequences and the consequences themselves.
This book was written after the First Gulf War and before the Second. An interesting and unintended aspect of the book, given current events, is Hanson's analysis of what each of the 3 commanders in question would have done at the end of the First Gulf War and the obvious comparison to our current strategy, operations and tactics in Iraq. For a point of reference, I write this review on 11/14/03, while our forces are apparently intensifying operations in the "Sunni Triangle", following several weeks of intensifying attacks against U.S. and allied forces. I'll leave matters there. I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: What about Pericles? Why Sherman? How bout Ike?
Review: This is a great book. A wonderful account of three great liberators who smashed tyranny into the ground. But it seems flawed in that the author went out of his way to choose controversial generals when normal ones would have proved the same point. The Theban general could have been substituted by Pericles. Sherman could have been subsittuted by Grant and Patton subsittuted by Ike. But nonetheless this book explains how essential values of freedom and individualism have helped commanders defeat tyranny since the classical times. We could learn a lesson from this in our present war on terror. THe authors other books are a great reads as well.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Study of Three Great Commanders
Review: As a professional soldier, writer and military historian, I applaud Victor Davis Hanson for writing this superb book the Soul of Battle. In an era where all war is labeled evil, Hanson shows us that war is not evil, although it is horrible. Evil is evil, and sometimes you must fight to earn freedom and stop evil from winning. As horrific as modern war is, surrender and tyranny are worse. Epaminondas freed his people. Sherman did win the Civil War. Patton did free a nation. These stories are brought to life by Hanson in the Soul of Battle. Anyone interested in military command and military history should read Hanson's work. I have recommended this book to all my officers.
Rating:
Summary: Hanson's historical justification for the Iraq war?
Review: The "Soul of Battle" by Victor Davis Hanson tries to show the similarities of three historical military campaigns, widely separated in time, in which well-led democratic armies vanquished tyrannical regimes. In each case, the main motive was the spread of freedom, rather than self-aggrandizement. The Theban army, under the inspired leadership of Epaminondas, had decimated the Spartan army at Leuctra in 371 BC. Taking advantage of Sparta's weakened army, Epaminondas led his victorious soldiers and their allies into Sparta the year after Leuctra. Slavery was everywhere in ancient Greece, but even other Greeks found the Spartan institution of slavery unusual. An entire class of slaves -- called Helots -- provided subsistence for Sparta's militaristic society. In this little-known and nearly bloodless campaign, the soldiers of Epaminondas ravaged Spartan lands, then, uniquely, permanently freed all the Helots of the province of Messenia by founding a new city-state. The second campaign is William T. Sherman's infamous march to the sea in the American Civil War. During his largely unopposed march Sherman's Federal army wrecked Georgia's infrastructure, stole or ruined immense stores of food, and inflicted great damage to private property. Sherman's calculated rampage convincingly proved to Southerners that their cause (defense of slavery) was doomed. Therefore, it shortened the war and probably saved lives. Sherman's subsequent march into the Carolinas was a further demonstration of national power and Southern impotence. This is the finest section of Hanson's book and should be required reading for those Southerners who, even today, cling to the absurd view that the Civil War was not about slavery. Even so, Hanson describes Sherman's soldiers as having "fought in few bloodbaths ... nothing quite like Gettysburg." Any student of the Civil War knows that members of Sherman's 15th Corps fought at Shiloh and Vicksburg, his 14th Corps fought at Stones River and Chickamauga, and his 20th Corps (created from the luckless 11th and 12th Corps) fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg -- bloodbaths all. The Atlanta campaign in 1864 was hardly a cakewalk. Why would an otherwise careful historian make such a strange claim? The final campaign is the lunge of George Patton's Third Army across Europe in 1944-45. Patton was the most quirky, yet probably the most able of the American army commanders in Northwestern Europe. But the other American armies were equally inspired to destroy Hitler's monstrous regime. Hanson singles out the Third Army as an especially potent weapon. This is perhaps unfair since other American and allied armies also launched deadly blows against the Nazis. The Third Army was only activated after other soldiers bled and died to fight their way through the hedgerows of Normandy. Opportunities were indeed lost in the summer of 1944, but I think Hanson is too harsh a critic of Eisenhower and Bradley. After reading this book, it's easy to see how Hanson's thinking made him a strong advocate of the 2003 Iraq War. In fact, justifying an Iraq war may have been Hanson's primary goal. President G. W. Bush's campaign to drive Saddam from power met many of the conditions of Hanson's ideal war. (1) A democratic nation, (2) using its very powerful and well-motivated military, (3) freed the people of Iraq from a murderous regime. (4) The USA did it without any selfish motive, in spite of what critics have said about a money job by Big Oil or Halliburton. (5) Casualties were remarkably light for the magnitude of the victory. (6) And finally, like Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton, the Bush administration has come under attack in the wake of its successful campaign, not for deposing Saddam -- which even anti-war critics (like myself) see as an undeniably positive result -- but for its so far unsubstantiated claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to the US. It's interesting that Hanson notes in his book that such a democratic army is not so good at policing, a point which is especially prophetic now that we are seeing almost daily killings of US soldiers in Iraq. One wonders whether it would not be better for all involved if we had handed things off to UN peacekeepers in Iraq and saved our armed forces for what they are really good at -- hurting or wrecking immoral regimes (e.g., Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq). Whatever your views on the recent conflict, this is worthwhile read for history buffs. If you were pro-war, Hanson's book will vindicate your views, but he may also make you realize the best reason for the Iraq war was not fear of WMD, as advertised, but righteous anger and disgust at a loathsome regime. If you were anti-war, you may realize that Hanson is, after all, a democrat (small d) and not some kind of war-loving extremist nut. Hanson believes in the superiority of armies made up of free citizens and motivated by a just cause and a skillful leader. He minimizes the cases where such armies get drubbed, and overstates his case a few times, but overall he makes some good and interesting points.
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