9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Superb Study in the Development of Army Transformation, November 19, 2000
This review is from: After the Trenches: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1918-1939 (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series) (Hardcover)
The Army is undergoing a fundamental transformation today. However, this is not the first transformation that the US Army has undergone, and if history is any judge, it won't be the last.
William Odom has captured the essence of the tumultuous transformation of our Army during the period between the two World Wars in his superlative treatise After the Trenches. The transformation of our Army during the inter-war years was as profound as the transformation we are experiencing now. If you are looking for a guide that explains the importance of doctrine, weapons, and organizations to transformation, you must read Odom's After the Trenches.
Imagine the challenges facing the US Army of 1919, one year after the end of the War to End All Wars. The years 1914 to 1918 were years of profound and dramatic change. The methods of warfare that the Army had practiced before the Great War had been completely overturned. The Army went into World War I with a tradition that was largely formed from the frontier Army of he Indian Wars and the brief fighting in the Spanish American War. Armed with revolvers, sabers and wearing campaign hats in 1914, the Army finished 1918 wearing tin helmets and armed with gas masks, machine guns, rapid firing artillery, airplanes, and tanks.
True to our American tradition, after the Great War, the Army was largely disbanded. Only a small corps of professional soldiers was retained during the period from 1919 to 1939. In that time, however, warfare continued to change. In the meantime, Germany studied the lessons of the Great War, improved on the methods and weapons of WWI, and transformed its doctrine and training.
This historical appreciation is what Odom brings so masterfully to print in After the Trenches. The author explains the evolution of Army doctrine throughout this period and traces the intellectual action of an Army trying to find its way in a brave new world. He describes how the thinkers of that time guarded their uniquely American approach to war and rejected many of the European, and particularly the French, concepts that grew out of the horror of the trench warfare.
In the inter-war years, the US Army, guided by men such as General John Pershing, Hugh Drum, George Lynch, Frank Parker, and Lesley McNair tried to balance technology and the human dimension of war, and came up short. Rapid changes in the methods of war during the interwar years changed military doctrine form one "built on infantry-artillery coordination to one based on a highly mobile combined arms team." Army doctrine did not keep pace with these changes. With few men, little material, almost no funding, and no maneuvers during the years 1919-1939, it is not surprising that Army doctrine was so inadequate. Bureaucratic hassling, friction between the branches of the Army, and an inept doctrinal development process combined to create a situation that was so bad that the Army failed to coordinate a combined arms doctrine up to the eve of World War II. With the German victories in Poland, Norway, and France at the outbreak of WWII providing a blueprint for doctrine, the US Army raced to catch up. In the end, our Army paid a price in blood for its inability to transform more rapidly.
The lesson that Odom provides us is that this period of rapid change almost left the Army unprepared for the kind of combat that was to characterize World War II. Odom clearly shows in After the Trenches that the single most important reason US Army doctrine lagged so far behind was the Army's institutional deficiency to employ a tightly-run, well-coordinated doctrine development process. He provides us with a very valuable precautionary story, one that is well written and thoroughly researched
Now, imagine the challenges that our Army faces today, more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As Odom points out in his conclusion: "Establishment of an organization dedicated to monitoring and accommodating change is the most important element in successful modernization. This organization must address weapons, organizations, and doctrine to avoid the same calamity that befell the Army from 1919-1939. With that in mind, anyone involved in the transformation of today's Army will find After the Trenches an account worth studying.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic in the Making, March 6, 2000
This review is from: After the Trenches: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1918-1939 (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series) (Hardcover)
In this book Odom sets himself up as a true groundbreaker. Many historians have looked at the interwar period (1918-1939) from a European perspective, seeking to find the start points for military success or disaster depending upon the nation under study. Odom is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of the American Army during this period without dwelling on the mere artifacts of technology (specifically the tank and the airplane) but rather upon the heart of any military organization, their doctrine. Right now and for some time to come this is the single best source to examine how the United States military, and specifically the Army, experienced and viewed this period of important changes and developments. Odom sets the bar high and places himself on a par with such classics of military doctrine studies as Doughty's Seeds of Disaster and Winton's To Change and Army. In light of the striking parallels between that period and the present day, no professional can safely claim to understand the factors at work in either period until they read this book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Army Doctrine Stright Up, February 15, 2006
This review is from: After the Trenches: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1918-1939 (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series) (Hardcover)
This is a very good book about a very narrow subject that would probably not interest general readers. Yet for professional and amateur military historians, for military professionals, and anyone interested in the affairs of the U.S. Army this is a fascinating book. General Odom (U.S.A. ret) is a good straight ahead writer and excellent scholar. In this book he tackles the important but often overlooked issue of how the army developed tactical and strategic doctrine prior to its mobilization prior to WWII. He demonstrates how the Army Field Service Regulations (FSR) for 1923 incorporated the lessons the Army learned in WWI and accurately measured the state of military technology after the war. The FSR for 1923 pretty well established U.S. Army Doctrine for the next sixteen years. The revised FSR issued in 1939, incredibly was essentially the 1923 FSR with very few concessions to the military technological revolution that had occurred between 1923 and 1939. General Odon chronicles the reason for this stagnation and along the way provides some illuminating insights on how the Army coped with the nearly complete neglect from the rest of the U.S. Government during the period. One area this reviewer found particularly interesting was the important, at times almost dominant role, the Army Schools System played in the efforts to build a modern military doctrine. The Army War College and the Command and General Staff College in particular showed a good deal of intellectual vigor even in austere between the war years. On the other hand, the War Department General Staff appears to have been virtually ineffectual in doctrine development. Perhaps the most amazing phenomenon of the inter-war years stagnation was that somehow the U.S. Army was still able to develop an officer corps that could not only manage the most massive mobilization in American history at the start of WWII, but were able to lead those mobilized forces to victory. In the end it would seem that it was the men not the doctrine that was important.
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