Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (Paperback)

by Eliot A. Cohen (Author), John Gooch (Author) "WE SHALL BEGIN OUR EXPLORATION of military misfortune by looking at the five explanations most commonly offered by historians trying to account for defeat and..." (more)
Key Phrases: milchemet yom hakippurim, applicatory method, military misfortune, Pearl Harbor, Eighth Army, Suvla Bay (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Military failures have long been studied piecemeal, but there are few scholarly attempts to quantify and systematize them. Here, two professors of military history reduce the study of command blunders to a science. Several intellectual shortfalls, such as the failures to learn, to anticipate, to adapt, are analyzed. Each is then followed by the study of a pivotal battle or campaign which easily could have turned out differently, but for the "pathways to misfortune" which intervened. The work is painstaking, detailed, and thoughtful, marred only by a ponderous writing style. It is more mature and systematic than Charles M. Fair's From the Jaws of Victory (LJ 7/71). For informed laypersons and specialists.
- Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Los Angeles
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"A brilliant book, crisp and readable, which will be
widely read--and for decades to come." -- The Honorable John F. Lehman, former U.S. Secretary of the Navy

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (May 7, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679732969
• ISBN-13: 978-0679732969
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,076,065 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Applies analytical model to six "military failures", February 14, 2000

By	Reader (San Antonio, Texas) - See all my reviews

Military historians will enjoy this book. I read it as part of the Air War College curriculum. The theme of the book is that often military blunders are the result of or enhanced by institutional/organizational flaws. The first couple of chapters lay out an analytical model that is used in the remainder of the book. The model combines in-depth knowledge of the campaign with a tailored, layered critical approach for each campaign. In the remaining chapters the model is applied to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Yom Kippur War 1973, the US anti-sub effort in 1942, the Brits' Sulva Bay enterprise at Gallipoli 1915, the US retreat from the Yalu River in Korea 1950, and the collapse of the French Army & Air Force in 1940. The six campaigns are very readable and enjoyable. The style is crisp and succint. I learned alot of interesting details about the campaigns. The Gooch & Cohen model is not a tool for prediction of the success of future campaigns - only for historical analysis. Nonetheless, once you get through the first two chapters, you'll be in for an enjoyable read. Try it.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and highly recommended, August 29, 2001

By A Customer

If you enjoy this type "failure" analysis (such as the book "Normal Accidents"), I think you'll find this to be an excellent read. My interest is primarily in business strategy and related issues (not in military history and strategy per se), but the authors present material which I found to be very useful across many different professions. My complements to the authors for good cases, good analysis and good writing. I really had great fun reading this book. It could have used better proof reading, but the errors enountered in no way hindered the presentation in any material way.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The heterogeneity of failure, November 8, 2007

By	Timothy J. Graczewski "tgraczewski" (Burlingame, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (Paperback)

Why do competent, well-led armies facing reasonable odds sometimes suffer spectacular defeat? That is the nettlesome question two young (at the time) professors of strategy at the US Naval War College sought to address with "Military Misfortunes."

The book is a curious and engaging mix of political science, military history and organizational theory with a dash of management consulting-style charts and decision matrices. It succeeds on a variety of levels, but most notably in its cogent critique on why previous attempts to explain military defeat have been woefully inadequate and its levelheaded view on the prospects for preventing major failure in the future. In short, this is an academic treatise on why failures occur in military organizations, not an attempt to devine formulas for preventing future failure; the authors concede that such a goal, while worthy, is essentially impossible.

To begin with, the authors highlight and dismiss the standard explanations for military failure that have most often been suggested by historians. Cohen and Gooch note that these stock explanations are nearly always homogenous in nature; that is, the cause of failure can be explained by one factor alone. Examples of these inadequate homogenous explanations are that failure is caused by the actions (or lack thereof) of an individual commander (what they call the "man-in-the-dock theory"); the inherent mental inflexibility and dullness of the typical professional military officer (the "man-on-the-couch"), the rigid conservativeness of military institutions, and ethnological defects or innate weaknesses of entire peoples and nations.

Cohen and Gooch see three very different and basic types of military failure, which can be committed at a variety of levels of command: failure to learn, failure to anticipate and failure to adapt. The combination of any two leads to what the authors call "aggregate failure" and the combination of all three lead to "catastrophic failure." To highlight each type of failure and combinations thereof, the authors' pursue a case study methodology, examining some of the most well-known military failures of the past century (the fall of France in 1940, Gallipoli in 1915, and the rout of the US VIII Army in 1950), as well as some lesser known examples (US anti-submarine warfare in 1942 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973). Each case study is briskly paced and follows the same general outline of first defining precisely what the failure under consideration was, citing the key events at each level of command that led to disaster, and then creating a matrix of actions and failures that reveal a "pathway to misfortune."

The authors concede that there are no easy remedies to curing military failure, just as there are no easy explanations for why it happens. However, they clearly see organizational dynamics as often playing a leading role on the road to misfortune. "It is the deficiency of particular organizations confronted with particular tasks that the embryo of military misfortune develops."

While there are no panaceas for preventing failures, the authors do review some ways to improve across the three general dimensions of failure: 1) learning - emphasize the importance of intellectual training and outlook combined with relentless empiricism in military education at all levels; 2) anticipation - think just as hard and realistically about the politico-military conditions under which future war could occur as about the tactics and/or weapons the other side may employ; and 3) adaptation - stress and promote the role of initiative at ever level of command.

The authors' general conclusion is gloomy, yet realistic: "misfortune lurks somewhere within the bowels of every military operation. It is 'the ghost in the machine' that can be conjured up by a variety of circumstance." In the end, "Military Misfortunes" provides a compelling framework for better understanding how and why armed forces suffer major failure, but offers little to any hope for preventing those failures from occurring in the future.