卡塔尔·J·诺兰 (Cathal J. Nolan) 对“战斗的魅力：战争成败史”的评论

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卡塔尔·J·诺兰 (Cathal J. Nolan) 对“战斗的魅力：战争成败史”的评论

注意： 这篇评论是我丈夫吉姆写的。

多年来，我一直是历史的狂热读者。我估计我已经读了几百本可以专门归类为“军事史”的书。出于对约翰·基根和修昔底德的尊重，卡塔尔·J·诺兰 (Cathal J. Nolan) 的《战斗的魅力》可能是同类作品中最有洞察力和最好的作品之一。

诺兰的主要论点是，许多军事规划者和历史学家都被一位杰出的战术家（想想拿破仑）精心策划的一场决定性的大战的吸引力所吸引，将其作为国家政策的工具和解决争议的工具。

即打一场大仗，就能打赢战争。

他争辩说，这种看法几乎总是有缺陷的，并给以其为基础制定政策的国家带来了灾难性的后果。

寻求决战不仅通常是错误的策略，而且：

“。. . 除了少数例外，

过去几个世纪的主要权力战争最终是由精疲力竭决定的，

而不是现代伟大船长中最伟大的作战艺术。”

诺兰哀叹军事理论家和将军们一次又一次地被“战斗崇拜”所诱惑。

为了展示，他深入研究了从三十年战争（1618-1648 年）到第二次世界大战的所有重大战争（主要是欧洲战争）的细节。

他表明，在大型战役中一边倒的胜利很少能平息国内或国际争端，

但这一事实从未导致放弃该理论。

博罗季诺战役，1812 年 9 月 7 日，路易-弗朗索瓦·勒琼 (Louis-François Lejeune)，1822 年

如此多的因素，通常是偶然的，

会影响最终的胜利方程式：

经济资源、食物和水供应、军队的相对健康状况、获得高级武器的不同途径，以及“道德和物质消耗的强大现实”。

此外，经常被历史学家称为“伟大”的军事行动不一定是最重要的。

例如，美国内战的学生关注安提坦和葛底斯堡的战役，这些战役因伤亡人数及其政治意义而引人注目。

但他们不是决定性的。

相反，维克斯堡战役通过将密西西比河沿岸的邦联一分为二并向北方交通开放，对战争的结果产生了更大的影响。

然而，细微差别 无论是对于历史还是宣传活动，它都不像大规模血腥冲突的故事那么引人注目。

正因为如此，或者尽管如此，各国似乎很少从过去吸取教训。

诺兰试图解决这个问题。

1880 年代中期彩色平版印刷师 Kurz 和 Allison 展示的维克斯堡之战

诺兰并没有武断到断言他的论点始终适用。

重要的是，他引用了毛奇在奥普战争（1866 年）中取得成功的例子作为例外。

尽管如此，他还是证明了即使像马尔伯勒、普鲁士的腓特烈二世和拿破仑这样的著名将军，最终也未能通过激战来结束重大争端。

事实上，即使莫尔特克在 1870 年的普法战争中表面上取得了有利的结果，但法国人虽然战败，首都被占领，但仍继续骚扰巴黎以外的普鲁士人，并最终将他们驱逐出法国。

寻求决战失败的典型例子发生在第一次世界大战开始时，当时德国人试图在俄国人能够动员之前执行施利芬计划，以一次扩大的打击消灭法国军队。

[施利芬计划是德国先前制定的 1914 年入侵法国和比利时的战争计划的名称。]

德军最初的进攻只是消耗了它的势头，并退化为军事史上最令人沮丧的疲惫。

1906 年的施利芬伯爵

诺兰不仅能够进行冷静的分析，而且能够写出感人的散文。

他观察到战争的策划者通常是实际上不必打仗的年长者。

他在这里描述了

对战争和敌人的仇恨是如何在各种情况下产生的，

通常是在入侵的最初冲击退化为不光彩的消耗之后：

“这是因为害怕在凡尔登被枪杀或被刺刀刺伤，或者被苏联游击队员俘虏并肢解，或者被游荡的党卫军死亡突击队谋杀。

从 18 岁或 20 岁开始，远离家乡，每晚在狭缝沟里哭泣感到羞愧，因无法控制肠道而感到尴尬。

在另一场被诅咒的 Isonzo 战斗中躺在弹幕下，或者用刺刀和卸下的毛瑟枪向沉睡的法国师冲过索姆河。

从看到好友在瓜达尔卡纳尔岛踩到地雷，或者在阿拉曼或冲绳消失在粉红色的薄雾中。

或者眼睁睁地看着同伴被挂在伊普尔的电线上或硫磺岛的火山灰上死于狙击手的子弹，或者在沉阳为俄罗斯机枪充电，或者在战俘营里染上斑疹伤寒，或者在本州矿山。

它来自hedge-fright對籬笆的恐惧，因为你认为枪手或狙击手躲在每个干草堆后面或隔壁的地窖里，所以你路过时扔了一枚手榴弹，听到家人的尖叫声。

它来自于与 10,000 名其他囚犯争夺‘请给我一点土豆’，抬头看着一个冷酷无情的营地警卫将残羹剩饭扔给一群饥饿的人。”

他对第二次世界大战末期婆罗洲和新几内亚日本驻军状况的描述简洁而有力：

“陆地、海上、空中的死亡。

永远是死亡，而且是更多的死亡。

事实上，一点也不光彩。

更虚无主义：瘦弱的、狂热的、徒劳的、宿命论者。”

评价： 这是一本很好的书，可以作为对未来征服者的警示，以及对过去和未来拿破仑的赞歌。这本精装书包括插图、地图和大量脚注。

注： 《战斗的魅力》是 2017 年吉尔德莱尔曼军事史奖的获得者。这个重要的图书奖“旨在表彰英语世界最好的军事史书籍，以其学术成就、对文学的贡献以及对普通读者和学术读者的吸引力而著称。”

评分： 5/5 星

牛津大学出版社出版，2017

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Review of “The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost” by Cathal J. Nolan
Note: This review is by my husband Jim.

I have been an avid reader of history for many years. I estimate that I have read several hundred books that can be classified specifically as “military history.” With all due respect to John Keegan and Thucydides, Cathal J. Nolan’s The Allure of Battle may be the most perceptive and one of the best written of the bunch.



Nolan’s main thesis is that many military planners and historians have been seduced by the appeal of a big, decisive battle choreographed by a brilliant tactician (think Napoleon), as an instrument of state policy and as a tool to resolve controversies. That is, win a major battle and you can win the war. He argues that such a perception has nearly always been flawed, and has led to disastrous consequences for states basing their policies on it. Seeking a decisive battle has not only usually been the wrong strategy, but:

“. . . with few exceptions, the major power wars of the past several centuries were in the end decided by grinding exhaustion more than by the operational art of even the greatest of the modern great captains.”

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Nolan bemoans the fact that time and again, military theorists as well as generals have been seduced by the “cult of battle.” To demonstrate, he delves into details of all the significant – mostly European – wars from the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) to World War II. He shows that lopsided victories in large battles seldom put national or international disputes to rest, but this fact has never led to an abandonment of the theory.


The Battle of Borodino, fought on September 7, 1812, by Louis-François Lejeune, 1822

So many factors, often aleatory, figure into the final equation of victory: economic resources, food and water supplies, relative health of armies, differential access to superior weaponry, and “the powerful reality of moral and material attrition.” Moreover, military engagements often designated as “great” by historians are not necessarily the most important. For example, students of the United States Civil War focus on the battles at Antietam and Gettysburg, which stand out for the number of casualties sustained as well as their political import. But they were not decisive. Rather, the Battle of Vicksburg had much greater effect on the outcome of the war by cutting the Confederacy in two along the Mississippi River and opening the river to Northern traffic. Nuance, however, is not as compelling for either histories or propaganda campaigns as are stories of vast, bloody conflicts. Because of, or in spite of this, countries rarely seem to learn from the past. Nolan seeks to remediate that problem.


Battle of Vicksburg shown by Kurz and Allison, chromolithographers in the mid-1880s

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Nolan is not so dogmatic as to assert that his thesis always applies. Importantly, he cites the example of Moltke’s success in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) as an exception. Nevertheless, he demonstrates that even such famous generals as Marlborough, Frederick II of Prussia, and Napoleon ultimately were unsuccessful in their efforts to end major disputes with climactic battles. In fact, even Moltke’s ostensible favorable outcome in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was quite misleading in that the French, though they were defeated in battle and their capital was occupied, continued to harass the Prussians outside Paris and eventually expelled them from France.

The archetypical example of the unsuccessful quest for a decisive battle occurred at the onset of World War I when the Germans attempted to eliminate the French army in one extended blow by executing the Schlieffen Plan before the Russians were able to mobilize. [The Schlieffen Plan was the name given to previously formulated German war plans for the invasion of France and Belgium in 1914.] The initial thrust of the German army simply expended its momentum and degenerated into the most frustrating grinding exhaustion in military history.


Count von Schlieffen in 1906

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Nolan is capable not only of hard-headed analysis, but also of moving prose. He observes that the planners of war are usually older men who do not actually have to fight it. Here he describes how hatred of the war and the enemy arises in various situations, usually after the initial thrust of invasion degenerated into the slog of inglorious attrition:

“It came from fear of being shot or bayoneted at Verdun, or captured and mutilated by a Soviet partisan, or murdered by a roving SS death commando. From being 18 or 20, far from home, ashamed over crying in your slit trench every night, embarrassed by loss of bowel control. From lying under a barrage during another accursed Isonzo battle or charging a sleeping French division over the Somme with bayonet and unloaded Mauser. From seeing a buddy step on a landmine on Guadalcanal or disappear into a pink mist at El Alamein or Okinawa. Or watching a mate die from a sniper’s bullet while hung up on a the wire at Ypres or on the ash at Iwo Jima, or charging the Russian machine guns at Mukden, or sick with typhus in a prison camp, or doing forced labor down a Honshu mine. It came from hedge-fright because you thought tirailleurs or snipers were hiding behind every haystack or down the next cellar, so you tossed in a grenade as you passed by and heard a family scream. It came from scrambling with 10,000 other prisoners for ‘a bit of potato, please,’ looking up as a callous camp guard tossed scraps into a surge of starving men.”

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His depiction of the condition of the Japanese garrisons on Borneo and New Guinea at the end of World War II is succinct but powerful:

“Death on land, at sea, in the air. Always death, and more death. Not glorious at all, in fact. More nihilistic: thin, fanatic, futile, fatalist.”

Evaluation: This is an excellent book that should serve as a warning to would-be conquerors and put a damper on paeans to past and future Napoleons. The hardcover book includes illustrations, maps, and extensive footnotes.

Note: Allure of Battle is the winner of the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History. This major book prize “recognizes the best book on military history in the English-speaking world distinguished by its scholarship, its contribution to the literature, and its appeal to both a general and an academic audience.”

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Rating: 5/5 stars

Published by Oxford University Press, 2017

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Beth F on 05/06/2019 at 8:08 am
Wow! My dad would have loved this book.

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BermudaOnion on 05/06/2019 at 1:15 pm
I can tell this is an excellent book but I don’t think it’s for me.

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