Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

His overview of how bad the situation in Europe during WWII listed the countries not conquered by the Nazis (Ireland, etc). It left off the UK. His overview of post-WWII wars in the region from the Balkans to East Asia left off the Vietnam War. Sorry.

Mr. Van Creveld is an angry old man, which is really a shame since he also is one the worlds foremost military historians. Sandly enough, Van Creveld this time let his anger at the civil-military stablishment have the best of him. The last part of the book, the reason why I bought it in the first place is confusing, shallow and somewhat nihilistic. Someone of Van Creveld's stature should have produced something better.

I, too, like many others, are/were major fans of Mr. van Creveld. As a Soldier, history teacher, and avid reader, I found his earlier works to be crisp, insightful, and without equal. This work, initially, did not let me down until the end. While I didn't catch as many errors as previous reviewers, I am shocked at the number that have been pointed out. Additionaly, I was shocked as I started to read the last part of the book w/ respect to Iraq and the US. Mr. van Creveld used what could have easily been a very well written (although fairly factually flawed) book to take a personal and political swipe at the US, the US government, President G. Bush, and the US military.

The last parts of the book dealing w/ this issue should have been written as a NYT op-ed piece. I was thouroughly disappointed by the time I completed reading the book. When the author switched gears and started to take swipes at those areas he obviously does not agree w/ in a way that ruined the book, I lost respect for him.

Mr. van Creveld would have been better served if he had written an op-ed piece, gotten it out of his system, and then completed the book as objectively and analytically as he has done in his other works.

I had read other positive reviews about van Creveld's books and so I ordered this one with great excitement. However, as I started to read it I became more and more alarmed about the superficial and often incorrect statements he made. I'm not expert, but even I knew that many of his statements were flat out wrong and he regularly engaged in wild conjecture without offering any serious arguments to back them up. A few quick examples:

"Before Tsushima, there were thirty years of peace on the high seas...many thought that future battles would be decided by approaching the enemy in wedge formation and ramming him." p14 -- Creveld seems to have forgotten about the War of the Pacific (Chile/Peru) and the Spanish-American war. By the time of Tsushima the ram craze of the 19th century had already died down due to improvements in guns and basic form of the battleship determined.

In discussing land warfare leading up to WWI
"If armies could no longer attack, then obviously there would be nothing to defend against. If there was nothing to defend against, then the day would come when they would be dissolved -- as some people feared and others hoped." p 15 -- The idea that army commanders were seriously afraid that attack had become impossible and therefore armies would be dissolved is absurd. If anything, commanders were widely optimistic about attacking, not in despair on the subject.

When discussing modern weapons and anti-insurgency tactics used by Syria:
"Everything considered...the weapon of choice should be artillery...their greatest advantage is that they can be deployed in such a way that,...the victims can look straight into the muzzles..." p 244 -- The artillery pieces being used by the Syrians were fired from miles away, the victims never even seeing them, let alone looking down the barrels.

In this excellent (and much anticipated) book on modern combat Creveld neatly summarizes the bulk of his previous work. Chapters 1-4 deal with how war was waged the first half of the 20th century; chapters 5 & 6 after the introduction of nuclear weapons. Creveld then wraps up with suggestions on how to win in modern combat (terrorism/insurgencies).

The only `new' thought I noticed in this book was Creveld's suggestions for defeating insurgencies based off the experience of the British with the IRA and the Syrians with the Muslim brotherhood. The bulk of the book is spent explaining why war has changed the way it has, which Creveld has discussed in essentially every other book he's written. This book seemed (to me at least) a follow up (or, rather, a `see I told you so') to his earlier groundbreaking work "The Transformation of War."

My only two gripes: I wish he'd have written more on how war has changed in conjunction with the decline of the nation-state (because his "Rise and Decline of the State" was excellent), and I wish he would have given his thoughts on Israel's recent war with Lebanon. But if he did it likely would have hurt the flow of the book, so I'm glad he didn't. He's like Jacques Barzun--you want his opinion on everything.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand why there haven't been (and probably won't be) any more WWII's and some intelligent examples and ideas of how to defeat terrorists or insurgents. If you want further scholarly reading on this subject his "Transformation of War" and "Rise and Decline of the State" are superb.

I'm not military historian; I'm just a general reader who has enjoyed Van Creveld's works in the past. Sadly this one isn't as good as the others (I particularly enjoyed his book on the State, and his book on the Transformations of War). The chapters on WWI and WWII are informative, but they seemed superficial. But the biggest disappointment is his all-too-brief treatment of contemporary counter-insurgency warfare, and asymmetrical warfare. I expected more than such a skimpy treatment. It is precisely to someone like Van Creveld that one turns to find a lucid and incisive overview of these new and complex forms of warfare, but I suppose he's set the bar pretty high in previous works, because I was let down. That said, the writing is clear and he's well-informed (though possibly he writes hastily, as there were a number of little niggling errors). I didn't find his anti-American biases any different than those found in the works of innumerable centre-left thinkers: viz., they were a minor irritant only.

This is the first book by Martin Van Creveld I've read. The author is professor of history at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In this book he discusses the methods of warfare from WWI to Iraq. The subject is divisible into three parts: the years 1900 to 1945, the nuclear cold war, and the rise of guerrilla based, terrorist insurgencies. The chapters on the two world wars and the buildups to them interested me quite a lot, much more than the later chapters where he spends far less time on specific post-1945 wars, and where his personal judgments on the political justification of the wars after 1945 involving the United States sidetrack him from his theme and get in the way of his scholarship.

There is no mention of Blackwater or similar private security companies in his discussion of Iraq. Perhaps the author's timing in writing the book was premature. The existence of Blackwater and others like them in contemporary, urban, counterinsurgency warfare is certainly relevant to the theme of this book.

In the chapter on insurgencies and on how to deal with them he explains why defeating them is so difficult and he offers what he admits is machiavellian advise on one viable method of how to deal with insurgencies. That advise has five components. He first presents the advise on pages 241 through 245, and then again, repeating it for emphasis at the end of the book (pp. 269-70), he summarizes it thus:

"The first rule is to make your preparations in secret or, if that is not feasible, to use guile and deceit to disguise your plans. The second is to get your timing right; other things being equal, the sooner you act, the fewer people you must kill. The third is to strike as hard as possible within the shortest possible time; better to strike too hard than not hard enough. The fourth is to explain why your actions were absolutely necessary without, however, providing any apology for them. The fifth is to operate in such a way that, in case your blow fails to deliver the results you expect and need, you will still have some cards up your sleeve."

What this book is not is an overview of the wars of the 20th and early 21st centuries. So it should not be faulted for not giving a satisfactory overview of those wars. Its theme is the methods of warfare, how wars have been fought, with what kinds of weapons, what kind of personnel, what kinds of rules, and what kinds of strategies. It is not about the politics or justification of war (despite the author's occasional confusion in the second half of the book) but about, what could be called, the structure of war. I see the book as an introduction, a first look at this theme. It is a place to begin. It is not detailed enough to be anything else.