The Changing Face of War: Lessons of Combat, from the Marne to Iraq (Hardcover)

~ Martin van Creveld (Author)
Key Phrases: twenty truce, other counterinsurgents, World War, The Changing Face of War, United States (more...)

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Product Description

One of the most influential experts on military history and strategy has now written his magnum opus, an original and provocative account of the past hundred years of global conflict. The Changing Face of War is the book that reveals the path that led to the impasse in Iraq, why powerful standing armies are now helpless against ill-equipped insurgents, and how the security of sovereign nations may be maintained in the future.

While paying close attention to the unpredictable human element, Martin van Creveld takes us on a journey from the last century’s clashes of massive armies to today’s short, high-tech, lopsided skirmishes and frustrating quagmires. Here is the world as it was in 1900, controlled by a handful of “great powers,” mostly European, with the memories of eighteenth-century wars still fresh. Armies were still led by officers riding on horses, messages conveyed by hand, drum, and bugle. As the telegraph, telephone, and radio revolutionized communications, big-gun battleships like the British Dreadnought, the tank, and the airplane altered warfare.

Van Creveld paints a powerful portrait of World War I, in which armies would be counted in the millions, casualties–such as those in the cataclysmic battle of the Marne–would become staggering, and deadly new weapons, such as poison gas, would be introduced. Ultimately, Germany’s plans to outmaneuver her enemies to victory came to naught as the battle lines ossified and the winners proved to be those who could produce the most weapons and provide the most soldiers.

The Changing Face of War then propels us to the even greater global carnage of World War II. Innovations in armored warfare and airpower, along with technological breakthroughs from radar to the atom bomb, transformed war from simple slaughter to a complex event requiring new expertise–all in the service of savagery, from Pearl Harbor to Dachau to Hiroshima. The further development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War shifts nations from fighting wars to deterring them: The number of active troops shrinks and the influence of the military declines as civilian think tanks set policy and volunteer forces “decouple” the idea of defense from the world of everyday people.

War today, van Crevald tells us, is a mix of the ancient and the advanced, as state-of-the-art armies fail to defeat small groups of crudely outfitted guerrilla and terrorists, a pattern that began with Britain’s exit from India and culminating in American misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq, examples of what the author calls a “long, almost unbroken record of failure.”

How to learn from the recent past to reshape the military for this new challenge–how to still save, in a sense, the free world–is the ultimate lesson of this big, bold, and cautionary work. The Changing Face of War is sure to become the standard source on this essential subject.

About the Author

Martin van Creveld, professor of history at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, is one of the best-known experts on military history and strategy. He has written seventeen books, which have been translated into fourteen languages; most notable among them are Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Command in War, and The Transformation of War. Professor van Creveld has consulted to the defense departments of numerous governments, including those of the United States. He was the second civilian expert ever to be invited to address the Israeli General Staff, and has lectured or taught at practically every institute of strategic military study. He has appeared on CNN, BBC, and other international networks and has been featured in many magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek and the International Herald Tribune.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Presidio Press (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891419012
• ISBN-13: 978-0891419013
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #575,871 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An Anti-American Polemic, June 1, 2007

By	R. A Forczyk (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Prior to reading the Changing Face of War, I regarded Martin van Creveld as a gifted military historian, particularly for his Supplying War. However, van Creveld's latest book is riddled with factual errors and biased, unsupported conclusions. Readers should be quick to note the complete absence of charts, tables, maps or appendices to support the author's arguments. Instead of finding incisive historical insight, I found this to be a poorly-researched effort, with weak arguments, badly argued.



The Changing Face of War consists of seven chapters, each covering a major period of military history since 1900. To be fair, the first two chapters covering 1900-1918 are interesting, but these chapters seem more like synthesis of existing historical opinion rather than fresh analysis. Furthermore, the fact that the author dismisses the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War as irrelevant gives an early indication about the author's suspect methodology. It's in the third chapter, on the period 1919-1939, that the book begins to change from history to polemic. The author displays a marked tendency to use derogatory stereotypes, twice referring to Italian soldiers as "cowards" and British officers as "Colonel Blimps." This tendency to use stereotypes and generalizations grows worse as the book progresses, until one can actually sense the author's loathing. By the time that he reaches the chapter on World War II, the author is content to synthesize Keegan et al, adding nothing original of his own.



Throughout this book, I was disturbed by the large number of factual errors, that could have been avoided with even cursory research of standard secondary sources. I counted at least 26 significant errors, but I can only highlight a few here:

1. pp. 48, "trench systems [in WW I] were completed by the laying of millions upon millions of mines..." [anti-personnel mines not developed until the 1930s]

2. pp. 103, "France never built or completed a carrier." [the carrier Bearn was completed in 1935].

3. pp. 108, claims the French air force avoided combat in 1940 [In fact, France lost 294 fighters in air-air combat in 1940 and shot down over 300 Luftwaffe aircraft].

4. pp. 109, "In 1939, the Poles tried to use horses against German tanks." [this time-worn propaganda has long been discounted].

5. pp. 116, "the Battle of Annual in May 1921" [actually July 21, 1921].

6. pp. 126, "most Polish aircraft were destroyed on the ground." [only 24 of 260 lost were destroyed on ground].

7. pp. 130, "the Luftwaffe destroyed some 8,000 aircraft" on the first day of Operation Barbarossa. [more like 1,200].

8. pp. 130, "Army Group North reached the outskirts of Leningrad by July 10, 1941.." [it was early September 1941].

9. pp. 139, claims only 3 Japanese carriers sunk at Midway [it was 4].

10. pp. 159, "When US troops entered Aachen in October 1944, they found it deserted even by the birds." [U.S. troops found 7,000 civilians in Aachen].

11. pp. 161, says General McNair was killed by bombardment for Operation Goodwood [it was Cobra].



It is in the fifth chapter, on the Cold War, that the author shows his true colors. He writes that, "the Americans were much more aggressive" than the Communists (ignoring Communist aggression in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan). Van Creveld clearly sees America as a menace, claiming that long before President Bush, "the United States has behaved less responsibly than any other country on earth." He derides Americans, "who see their country as uniquely chosen and uniquely moral." At one point he compares American methods with Nazi methods and says at least the Nazis weren't hypocrites. He then goes on to praise North Korean and Iran for standing up to the United States, saying "Pyongyang's apparent decision to go nuclear makes perfect sense" and "whoever rules in Tehran has excellent reason to build such weapons as fast as possible." Readers should realize by this point that the author has embarked upon a polemical tirade, axe in hand to slay the American Ogre, and that the history lesson has stopped.



Of course, the whole purpose of this book was to give the author a scholarly platform to bash the U.S. war in Iraq, which he does with great glee. First, the author makes the general argument that since 1945, regular armies have an unbroken record of defeat by insurgents and terrorists. This begs the question, why spend more than half the work discussing pre-1945 warfare or naval warfare, which have little to do with counter-insurgency. Second, the author argues that the U.S. has learned nothing from the conflicts in Algeria or Vietnam and that it cannot win in Iraq.



It is apparent that the author is very ignorant about the course of the war in Iraq, since he seems to feel that U.S. troops there are the same kind of disgruntled, pot-smoking draftees as 1968. He feels that the US Army in Iraq was already demoralized by 2004 although if this were true, why would amputees be fighting to get back to the war? Van Creveld also fails to look at the insurgents and see their problems, such as the increasing difficulty in getting more suicide volunteers or lack of a political program. It is unfortunate that the author has written this book, because he could have added something to the debate on Iraq with a bit of research and self-restraint, but instead he chose to indulge in America-bashing and irresponsible generalizations.

34 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Major Disappointment, March 12, 2007

By	John Desmond (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews

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I am a longtime fan of Van Creveld's but I have to admit that this book was a big let-down. While he makes a number of very cogent points, as always, I have to suspect that he has developed a political agenda that I have never noticed before. He makes a number of broad assertions, especially about U.S. policy, without providing any of his usual supporting data, that I found troubling. The most blatant was his claim that U.S. defense spending has pushed America to the brink of bankruptcy. With a thriving economy and defense spending at less that 5% of GDP, I don't know where he gets this. This rate compares favorably to 8% during the Reagan build-up or even the 6% of the Carter demolition of defense. There were also a number of minor but bizarre factual errors like claimnig that it was American paratroopers who were massacred at Arnhem (they were British); that the 101st Airmobile dropped into Iraq (It was the 73rd Airborne since the 101st hasn't had paratroopers for a generation); and that Pakistan had achieved "nuclear parity" in 1974 when they didn't explode a bomb until 1999. One wonders how many other mistakes he made in areas where I didn't happen to know the truth. His worst comment was that Western intelligence had "manufactured WMDs (for Saddam) out of thin air." I guess all those dead Kurds should quit faking and the UN inspectors who inventoried 27,000 liters of Anthrax in 1993 (which subsequently disappeared) had been bought off by Halliburton. You might question the necessity of going to war in 2003, but even Cindy Sheehan hasn't been this far off the mark.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Eh, it's ok., June 26, 2007

By	MrFun "Yep It's Me Again" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

I had high hopes for this book, but it let me down, perhaps because I was led to believe the author would opine on strategy which he did not frequently do. His writing style is a little difficult to follow and I blame the editor for this. Van Creveld did not do a lot to string together what worked, what failed, and what might have been done differently. I thought I would blow through it as a page turner, but it ended up taking me over a month because it was kind of boring.