Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't disagree more with previous reviewer
Review: I believe the previous reviewer had a point, but his facts were, in my opinion, like a house of cards upon which his conclusions rest.First, the Army of the Potomac was a pitiful fighting band early in the war and many of the battles mentioned by the reviewer were LOST by the Union. And further, Stonewall Jackson and the Conferates were aristocratic. NOT democratic in the literal sense. Witness for example Appomattox and how Grant and Lee were dressed, respectively. Second, Sherman can effectively be considered the 'father of blitzkrieg' as he bypassed strongholds in an effort to circle the enemy's flanks and make rapid progress and achieve rapid resolution. This is especially true in his Carolinas Campaign of 64-65. Patton's army was easily more 'democratic' than Bradley's. Read Ladislas Farago's Patton, on which the movie was based. Highly accurate, it points out how Ike (who was admittedly under great pressure from two governments with very different ideas on how to wage war) and Bradley (who, while a soldier's soldier, never really distinguished himself, see below) typically put the reigns on Patton - e.g., to let Monty's failed attempt at Arnhem proceed, etc. In fact, one could argue that Bradley's positioning of the 106th ID at the Schnee Eiffel just prior to the Ardennes Offensive of Dec-Jan 1944 condemned these green recruits to the annihilation they suffered. Did Bradley totally forget where the Wehrmacht attacked in May 1940? How the situation was very similar (British in Belgium and the Netherlands), mostly Allies in the south? In my opinion, while to be respected for his ideals, Bradley was far inferior to Patton as a tactician. So what if Patton couldn't keep his mouth shut? He certainly was proven right about Soviet Russia. Ike learned this the hard way from 52-60 as President. In conclusion, this book does show three generals who could be considered 'mavericks'. Democratic is perhaps the wrong word for their respective armies, but certainly, as baseball teams reflect the personalities of their managers, so too do armies reflect the character of their commanders.
Rating: 
Summary: Unconvinced
Review: I just don't buy the author's premise. Greek history may be Greek to me but I've studied the Army of the Potomac and I've read many of the works cited by Dr. Hansen in his Patton study and I find no credible evidence that Sherman's troops and Patton's 3rd Army were any more "democratic" than, respectively, Grant's and Bradley's. To claim that Sherman's force was cut from a different, albeit blue, cloth because it came from the west and was therefore more democratic than the Army of the Potomac simply does not square with the character of those eastern regiments that hurled themselves against entrenched Southerners at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor, etc. The theory can't be reconciled with the brilliant (but unmentioned by the author) activities of Stonewall Jackson in the same war whose men, I am certain, thought of themselves as "democratic." As for World War II, can anyone seriously believe that Omar Bradley's men were somehow less democratic than George Patton's? The beaches and hedgerows of Normandy were littered with the remains of democratic men. Finally, to conclude that the allied army of the Gulf War was a democratic manifestation of the tradition of the armies of Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton is beyond the pale. Virtually very American solider in that engagement was a volunteer and professional who hardly joined up with the democratic idea of some day smashing Saddam's Republic Guard in a faraway dessert.
Rating:
Summary: The Moral Imperative
Review: The Soul of Battle is a brilliant work crafted by a master of both ancient and contemporary sources in Military History. Shunning the relativistic analyses expounded by many recent military historians, Victor Davis Hanson offers instead three historical armies of liberation, each of whose commanders and soldiers fought for real moral imperatives. By comparing Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton to other giants of military strategy--Alexander of Macedon, Napoleon, and Hitler--Hanson accurately exposes the real difference between the former generals, who believed that armies could be vehicles of liberation, and the latter rulers who used armies as tools to subjugate, not free. Readers conversant with classical works will especially appreciate Hanson's exclusive use of primary source literature in his treatment of Epaminondas. The reforms of this Theban general, famous for his innovations of novel phalanx tactics--later borrowed by Philip and Alexander of Macedon--are supported by an abundance of ancient source materials. Anyone familiar with Hans Delbrück's Warfare In Antiquity will be delighted by Hanson's readable prose and illustrative accounts of how the Theban general altered the way Greek columns operated on the classical battlefield. We also learn that just after Napoleon made himself emperor through his effective, but costly, direct approach, Sherman, who eluded politics, utilized the indirect approach, saving the lives of his men by "cutting a swath" through southern slave-holding territories. Under Sherman's command most unionist soldiers aspired both to reunite the nation, and to give slaves a real share in the American constitutional ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Many of the French soldiers of the levee en mass also fought for democratic principles. However, the French had a very different leader. Napoleon, as Michelet has written, was "pitiless to the common people," and it was the men of France, not their Corsican leader, who were the "true heroes of the Revolution." Napoleon's "children" were sadly mistaken in the notion that their "Petît General" had a real faith in the same ideals that drove them forward. Napoleon understood well that the effectiveness of moral principles to create an esprit de corps among his soldiers did not depend on his own humanitarian ideals. Indeed it was a young George S. Patton Jr., who recognized the value of ideology in creating the victorious French armies. In his "The Secret of Victory," a study on Marbot and other writers of the Napoleonic Wars, Patton wrote that the French soldiers had often been moved by intense emotional inspiration. It was the very faith in abstract principles such as, La Patrie, Liberté, Le Peuple Souveraine, and La Gloire that had been among the prime motives of their greatest feats of arms. Patton, as Hanson rightly points out, hoped to engender such passionate morale in his own armies. But Patton, unlike Napoleon, believed in the values with which he inspired his men: armies could and did exist to save lives. And when lives were at stake, quick action was always better than hesitation, courage always better than fear. In addition, Hanson's comparison of Alexander to Hitler could not be more precise. Both leaders intentionally allowed atrocities throughout the duration of their campaigns in order to subjugate the "uncivilized" peoples to their East. Alexander's pan-Hellenistic cause was little different than Hitler's pan-Germanism; his policy was the same. Rape, plunder, murder and the razing of cities was the order of the day. As Arrian recounts, festivals of Bacchian glee followed each Macedonian victory where soldiers were encouraged to drink away their guilt and revel at the expense of the eastern peoples they had brutalized and robbed. It is dead wrong to assume that dressing up like a Persian at such debauched costume parties was the same as "attempting to merge Greek and Persian customs through example." If Alexander had not burned Old Thebes, Tyre, Gaza, and Persepolis-- repositories of nearly all the knowledge and high culture of the Eastern world--such a "blending of cultures" might have been possible. Alexander's actions prove his intent. Battle is always bloody, nearly always catches up the innocent in its violence, and is often little more than a tool utilized to solve disputes over foreign policy among nations. At their worst wars promote the selfish and inhumane policies of autocratic leaders such as Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler. But Epaminondas, Sherman and Patton serve as paradigms to remind us that the act of battle can also have a soul or deeper purpose more profound than the more common and insidious reasons for which it is most often employed. As surely as wars can be waged as a means to enslave, they can, have been, and must be fought to free any who are oppressed victims of inhumane policies. And it was exactly because Soul's three generals fought for such moral imperatives, infusing the spirit of their armies with their own principled ideals, while additionally evading the temptation to become caught up in the games of high politics, that each was hated by his own leaders. These three great men of history nevertheless overcame jealousy, as well as internal politics, in order to further the cause of freedom. The point is exactly that democratic armies DO NOT always produce men of such moral calibre--they are few and far between. Hanson's perceptive arguments, then, finally disabuse us of the common misconception that men everywhere, and at all times, fight only to save their own skins and those of the men in their individual units--an uncompounded answer to a complicated question now passé, and discredited. Instead, ideology counts, and those with the higher moral imperatives can, through perseverance, win in the end. This work belongs in every serious military historian's library. Geoffrey Parker's comment that, "Hanson is fast emerging as our foremost living military historian," stands repeating. Like Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, Soul of Battle truly is a "history for all time", and like Hanson's Western Way of War this work will rank among the great classics of military history.
Rating: 
Summary: Despite the errors and interesting theory
Review: Although there were some editorial mistakes this book had greatredeeming value. There was a good amount of evidence to supportHanson's views and although they were one-sided, they proved fascinating. He provides decisive evidence of the lack of appreciation for some of our most influential leaders of all time. A good read for those wanting to learn more about three leaders from different times who are alike in many ways.
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Summary: Noble Theory--Terrible Execution
Review: I, like author Victor Davis Hanson, would love to believe that Democracies produce better leaders, more principaled and dedicated soldiers, and noble victories over tyrannies. And they may, but Hanson does not prove why this happens, and barely explores how it happens. This disappointment pales in comparison to the shoddy and amateruish editing that allows unexcusable mistakes throughout the book. The book has three parts: Theban general Epaminondas, Civil war general Sherman, and WWII general Patton. I was diappointed with the lack of foot-soldier documentation supporting Hanson's thesis. Primary sources are completely (and understandably) absent for Epaminondas (who apparently is little known to begin with); much better for Sherman; but then practically absent again for Patton. This absence means that Hanson's arguments are nothing more than an homage to three personalities (like so many other histories and biographies) and often becomes a maudlin, unsupported, cult-of-personality wandering. And if you don't think editors matter, let this book be a lesson. Here is just a sampling. A map showing the two phases of Epaminondas's Spartan campaign have the BC dates backwards. A map for Patton showing battle lines in the months after D-Day are mislabled and confusing. Over several pages Normandy is described as being in southern France. The mistakes in Patton's chapter were more obvious to me because I'm a student of WWII, so I can only guess there are mistakes for Epaminondas and Sheman, too. Why two stars? Because the noble theories that hooked me into reading the book, went unproven, and left me feeling hollow. It's not revisionist history, it's just badly argued and written history.
Rating:
Summary: "The most beautiful men in the world"
Review: Victor Davis Hanson's previous books have revealed him to be an iconoclast. Soul of Battle attacks many received notions about ancient Greece and American history. One common idea that flits about in the highest offices of the land and in the groves of academe takes a real hit in this book. That idea is that sweet reasonableness is an adequate substitute for military force. The Athenian intellectuals could not bring down the Spartans; the high-minded abolitionists didn't end slavery; and windy talk about the 'four freedoms' didn't rid the world of the Nazis. I am not sufficiently familiar with the history of ancient Greece to comment on Hanson's treatment of Epaminondas. I have however been inspired by reading Soul of Battle to read Xenophon's Hellenica to get a contemporary view of the invasion of Laconia. On the other hand, I am very familiar with the other two periods treated in the book: the March to the Sea and the American drive across France into Germany. I have read almost all of the same sources as Hanson and in the main have come to the same conclusions. However much Southerns may lie to themselves and others, the Civil War was really about slavery and Sherman is hated to this day in the South because he brought that iniquitous society to an abrupt end. A former slave who was interviewed during the Civil War Centenial described watching Sherman's troops marching past her plantation: "They were the most beautiful men in the world," she said. That could stand as a fitting epigraph for this book.
Rating:
Summary: A mind-opening book
Review: This is the kind of book that throws off ideas like sparks from a sparkler. On its surface, it is a sober, if not solemn, examination of how three great generals (Epaminondas, a Theban; Sherman, a Union general; and Patton, in Europe in World War II) commanding forces made up of free men from democratic societies were able to achieve great results against adversaries who were supposedly very powerful, but who were representatives of slave societies and whose power turned out to be less than expected. Hanson argues that the moral power of an army that comes to realize that it is fighting on the side of good against true evil is beyond what could be expected from the sheer numbers. Also, that the forces of evil -- the parasite warriors of Sparta, the oligarchs of the Confederacy who fed the ordinary people into the furnace of battle while protecting themselves and their goods, the madmen of Nazi Germany -- often turn out to be less formidable than one would expect, perhaps because they realize on some level their own moral inferiority or that there is something special about the forces confronting them. Hanson is writing as a military historian (he is a classics professor in a local college in California), but he is not really very interested in the nitty-gritty of exactly how phalanxes worked or what Patton had to do to flummox the Germans. Also, he is a little too reliant on dubious sources such as Goldhagen's polemical indictment of all of the German populace. Yet, he is bright, articulate, and on to something that seems to have gotten past the military technologists: there is something larger than sheer skill and numbers that can sometimes make a difference in how humans on both sides of a battle or a war respond to what they're doing and an army that understands that it is fighting for higher human values against a dehumanizing enemy, like the Spartans, the Confederate slaveholders or the Nazis can do wonders. Also, another point often overlooked in our late 20th century world view, is that leaders who can focus and direct this moral energy are both rare and terribly important. This is a book that should be part of every high school history curriculum and that should be read by every thinking adult. The moral dimension of war (and, by extension, of all that we do in the world) is often either overlooked or handed over to zealots or pious frauds. Hanson is a clear-eyed and down to earth thinker and writer. There are some things he just doesn't get, such as why Alexander really was Great and some basics of proofreading, but this is a fine book that should turn into a historical (dare I say philosophical?) classic. If you want to learn from history and/or are a student of human behavior (are these different?) this book is one that you must read.
Rating:
Summary: Never take counsel of your fears but attack!
Review: Well-written narrative and interesting thesis about three three "maverick" warriors who broke the constituent molds of their time: the Greek general Epaminondas and the American generals William Sherman and George Patton. Unfortuneately, the author often does sound like a bleeding heart liberal, especially when he talks about "the inherent evils" of Spartan, Confederate Southern, and Nazi German cultures and contrasts them with our heroes' societies. He does make some sound points about the character of democratic warriors, however (i.e., they prefer rapid attack and quick resolution). So aside from the sometimes tiresome liberal brow-beating, this work was awesome as it clearly compares and contrasts leadership styles. If you appreciate Patton, for example, or don't completely understand his place in history, this book will fully contextualize him and you may even walk away, as I have, in holding Generals Bradley and Eisenhower in almost total contempt. This book is a great leadership guide and is a must read for all soldiers in the U.S. military.
Rating:
Summary: Worth perseverance
Review: Initially, I found this book difficult to get through. Certainly the author is qualified, with sterling credentials and thorough research employed. His thesis, put forth redundantly in 'jack-hammer' style, was difficult to swallow for this hardened and cynical reader. Somewhere along the line however, say mid-way through the book, it became difficult to deny him. By the time one gets through Patton, even the most cynical would be moved off the dime somewhat, if not entirely. Clearly, the three Generals the author chose to make his case have much in common. Of equal clarity is the fact that these three generals have been underrated and overlooked by the typical historian. In the end this book has much to say, in a manner that has not been stated before. I would recommend it to any serious student of military history. Of a cautionary note: It would be unfair to conclude anything until one has read the entire book. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of readers will find the authors' arguments compelling and provocative.
Rating:
Summary: History's great generals
Review: I just finished the section about EPAMINONDAS. And I have scanned the pages concerning SHERMAN and PATTON. All I can say is, I'm totally speechless as I closed this book. For over 10 years now, I am an avid reader of Military History and particularly of great generals. I never thought about Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton in such light. I was aware of their campaigns (thanks to B.H.Liddell-Hart's STRATEGY), but I never thought about them in such a way. These generals showed great nobility in their hearts. Many generals are skillful in their fields, but only a few possessed "great captain" qualities. I wish we had leaders nowadays who are like them (E,S,P). The world would be a better place.
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