Throwing Books at Victoria 2

When I play a tactical or a grand-tactical game, I check a real life field manual. Color me a weirdo, but I'm THAT interested in warfare.

When it comes to strategy or grand-strategy games ... well, there are no field manuals.

I am playing Victoria 2 right now. Started a game as Argentina and I have this deer in the headlights look. All I can do (game and interface wise) is clear to me. The un-answered questions are: what, why, where, how, when and who?

The following book is being helpful to answer those questions.

It's a primer in military strategy and it is aimed to provide a framework rather than thorough analysis. It is very concise and has a no BS approach.

As for my questions above, chapter 2 has a brief description of national security interests. The author classifies them in universally and variably important. Universally important interests are valid for every country in every situation. The variable important interests are followed depending on the particular situation of the country.

Universally important national security interests

• National Survival
• Homeland Defense
• Domestic Tranquility
• Military Power
• National Credibility
• Freedom of Action

Variably important national security interests

• Peace
• Stability
• Prosperity
• Ideology
• Geostrategic Position
• Morality

The list above may sound obvious for some veteran armchair strategists here. But the above list is helping me a lot to have a framework for my strategic plan. The book also describes a six-step strategic planning process. I'm going to comment on that in a future entry.

Cheers,

"The Tanks of August" - Military History of the Five Day War

I've been waiting for something like this since 2008: a good military history of the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

It's a free pdf, grab it from this webpage. Thanks to WarfareSims.com for the heads up!

Attention LOMAC and DCS Black Shark mission editors. This is going to be a great resource for inspiration.

Although we got Abkhazia and not South Ossetia in LOMAC and DCS Black Shark, the terrain and the units in these two flight simulators can be used to create scenarios very similar to the real thing.

Cheers,

The Long Way Home - Book Mini Review

Please note: all books I have in the queue (thanks authors and publishers!) are worth a full-blown review. Unfortunately, my free time is being rather scarce due to business travel and other work obligations. I will resume full-featured articles and reviews sometime after the summer. 

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

by David Laskin

Hardcover, 416 pages

Harper Collins Publishers

In a time like this, of protracted wars and rushed immigration debate, David Laskin's "The Long Way Home" invites us to look for wisdom in our collective past. Laskin, a well known writer/scholar with the intellectual appetite of a renaissance man, appears not to be that much into any type of politics. But his story-telling manages to ring all sort of bells in the ears of whom are reading beyond his words.

"The Long Way Home" follows the story of 12 immigrants that landed in the US right before World War I and were drafted or volunteered to serve in all branches of the US Armed Forces. Laskin has researched throughly and written each story with exquisite detail and with the literary skill that only gifted writers can deliver. The stories themselves are heartbreaking and sometimes is difficult not to break a tear at the miseries and struggles these men had to endure even before becoming teenagers. The accounts of the immigration process (embarkation, travel and reception in New York) are the best I ever read in any book. I could almost hear the chit-chat of nervous immigrants worried about being turned back to their home countries. Laskin's superb narratives of the Great War took me by surprise. To my knowledge, this is the author's first book dealing with a military subject and he doesn't depart from the tone or depth he started with. Off course there is not an analysis of every battle he refers to, but there is enough context to understand it. The battle narratives had me thinking about these men for days. This book deserves to share the same shelf with other WWI military history books.

There are very short references in this book about the influence of immigration in America's recent wars. I was expecting that to be the case. This is not a book to feed the short sighted debate the country is about to engage on. This is a book about what is to be an American by choice. I am sure that no matter where the current frenzy leads us to, after the waters settle down, this book will be one of the top ones to come back to.

Laskin has brought up in me emotions and thoughts I had forgotten for years. I am from a family of compulsive immigrants and I am an immigrant myself. I heard from my late grandfather (an Italian who immigrated to Argentina just before WWII) many similar stories than the ones I read in this book. Like Laskin's story of the immigrant mother passing to her kids pieces of stale bread rubbed on a garlic clove (so it would have some sort of flavor). I knew these stories were true, but reading them thousand of miles from where I was born it certainly strikes a chord. I had it too easy grandpa, but I promise I will become a good  American ... almost as good as you were an Argentine.

Cheers,

WWII Eastern Front Book/Game Combo

I'm anxiously awaiting the next book series by David Glantz about the battle for Smolensk. First volume was supposed to come out in June, yet it has been delayed a couple of times.

On the meantime, I'm playing Matrix/SSG's "Across the Dnepr Second Edition".

I still remember when I reluctantly picked up a boxed copy of "Korsun Pocket" from the local CompUSA. At that time the only other wargame I had was Close Combat 3 and the idea of a computer wargame featuring dice seemed strange to me. I know, I was like Zoolander in this scene ...

This game series never deviated from its original board game roots. Yet the engine has evolved into a unique gaming experience with exquisite and intricate rules. Playing this on cardboard would be almost impossible.

I still have the first edition of "Across the Dnepr", maybe I should re-install it for comparison.

Cheers,

Random Book Snapshot:Death of the Wehrmacht

Some selected text from just the second paragraph of this book by Robert Citino. There is some hyperbole, but the passage certainly conveys the epic proportions of the Eastern Front during WWII.

"Incredible", he muttered to himself, "absolutely overwhelming". Marshal Fedor von Bock stood at his hilltop observation post, just southeast of Lozovaia, shaking his head at the scene. The vista beneath him was on that few generals in history had ever been privileged to see: an entire army surrounded in a tiny pocket just a few miles away. He focused his field glasses here, then there, flitting back and forth. The entire area couldn't have been more than two miles wide from east to east, perhaps ten miles from north to south, and every inch of it was seething with activity. Massed formations of dusty brown infantry, tank columns so dense you could probably walk from one vehicle to the other without touching the ground, guns of every shape and description -all milling about, moving hither and yon without apparent plan or purpose.  Above them thundered hundreds of Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft, Richtofen's boys: Stukas and 109s and Ju-88s, bombing and strafing and herding. With so many men and tanks, guns and horses, packed into such a tight space, they were an impossible to miss target. The airmen were probably licking their chops, the thought, and the same went for his gunners. As he surveyed the scene, he could see artillery firing from all points of the compass into the helpless, writhing mass below him. There were explosions every where; every square inch of the pocket roiled with fire and smoke.

He thought of a term he had learned so many years ago as a cadet in the War Academy: Kesselschlacht, the "cauldron battle". It was the perfect term to describe what was going on below: an entire army being boiled alive. He remembered studying the campaigns of the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, Blucher, and Moltke. They were the gamblers of their day: bold maneuvers, daring attacks from flank and rear, battles of encirclement. And he remembered another word: Vernichtungsschlacht, the "battle of annihilation."

Cheers,

Book Review: “The Clausewitz Delusion”, by Stephen Melton

"If the wits are right in dubbing Proust the world's most quoted and least read novelist, Clausewitz must be his non-fiction counterpart". That's what Richard Simpkin said about the popular understanding of On War, AKA “the” theory of war by Clausewitz. A lot of "the" theory of war is no longer relevant, Melton says, at least not the parts that the US Army has chosen to incorporate into its doctrine. The Clausewitz Delusion is a soul-searching tour de force on how and why the US Army came to its current struggle to achieve decisive victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the author the US Army, in its decades-long infatuation with Clausewitz’s On War, has forgotten what it once knew and now lacks “a sufficient understanding of the nature of warfare at the strategic, operational and tactical levels”.  “What the US Army once knew” is one of the masterfully delivered, extensively documented key concepts in this book and the chosen point of departure for the discussion of future doctrine. Melton calls for a return to the good old and successful American way of war and to stop enshrining the old writings of the famed Prussian. Clausewitz "could learn more from us than we could ever learn from him".

Thunder Run from Hell: Captain Billotte's "Amokfahrt" at Stonne

Stonne, France, May 16th 1940.
The Wehrmacht panzers have miraculously made it through the Ardennes and France's front door at Sedan is about to be open wide. Crucial to the hard-earned bridgehead at Sedan is the control of the ridiculously small village of Stonne ...

"Operation Phantom Fury: The Assault and Capture of Fallujah, Iraq" by Dick Camp

"Operation Phantom Fury" came out in the US past Friday. I have a few books about the second battle of Fallujah, but this one caught me by surprise. Written by a retired Marine officer, the perspective of the narrative covers the operational, grand tactical and tactical levels of the battle that the US Marines fought so hard. It is really a pleasure to read military history books written by servicemen.The physical book itself is just great ...

"Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting" Trickling into Bookstores

This book is trickling down to the shelves of the biggest bookstores in the Washington DC area. It was about time (it was available at Amazon since the beginning of September)!

I got my copy this morning and browsed it briefly. From what I could read, it looks like a great tactical analysis of the battle, with frequent references to the operational situation. Right at the introduction the author bashes the US Army top brass quite a lot.

I thought the book was going to be a bit more thick. This is a picture of the book on my desk.

Looks like a great read for fans of Steel Beasts ProPE.

More details later.

Cheers,

"The Defense of Jisr Al Doreaa", A New Classic in COIN

Have you guys read "The Defense of Duffer's Drift", the classic book on small unit tactics written by the British soldier and military thinker Major General Sir Earnest D. Swinton? "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" is centered on the defense of a river crossing by a young officer in charge of a platoon of British light infantry during the Boer War. This officer has a series of dreams, each one starting at the planning of the defense, going through the unsuccessful attempts to defend the drift and ending in a series of lessons learned that he applies in the next dream. In the final dream, the young officer finally succeeds. There were at least one other book with the same format of "plan-execute-improve" cycle of dreams: "The Defense of Hill 781", by Robert McDonough (if you are playing Steel Beasts, this one is a must).

"The Defense of Jisr Al Doreaa" is written in the same format, but the defense is now of a combat outpost in modern Iraq. The young officer belongs to the US Army and goes through six dreams in which he and his troops fight insurgents in the small town of Jisr Al Doreaa. The officer faces challenges that will push him to polish his knowledge of tactics he learnt for conventional wars (security, sector defense, correct assesment of fields of fire, etc) and learn new the new tactics required for fighting an insurgency (patrols, counter-ambushes, counter-sniper tactics, how to move through the "human terrain", etc).

Learning tactics from after action reports or other type of combat narrative is always easier and more enjoyable when there is an explanation of why and how the tactical decisions were made. That is exactly what makes "The Defense of Jisr Al Doreaa" such a wonderful book.

The book is short enough to be read in one sitting and is formatted in a way that would fit in a slightly oversized pocket. Perfect for reading during that last leg of the airlift and sized to fit into any pocket of the combat fatigues. Don't get fooled by the lenght or size of this book: it packs a lot of knowledge.

As a bonus, a copy of "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" is included at the end.

Cheers,

Books recently published or to be published soon ...

... that may be of interest for the simulation fans who visit this blog.
This one is already out in the UK. Let's hope that they publish it in the US sooner than later because I read only good things about this book. As you remember, Ed Macy already had authored Apache. If you are into DCS Black Shark, like this book you will (Yoda's advice :) ).

This other book was published by the Naval Institute Press, but will be available in US stores later in September. There is no shortage of books and reports about the Battle of 73 Easting, but Douglas Mc Gregor is a top-notch soldier, writer and thinker. Looking forward to feed my already big Steel Beasts ProPE passion with this book.

Cheers,

Odd finds at an odd place ...

WARNING. This entry may contain mild references to my personal life. Reader discretion is advised. :)

I'm addicted to military-themed books. My sweet tooth for them has gotten more "gourmetized" over the years and the type of hardcore books I long for are hard to find in the average bookstore. During this past weekend, I was almost floored when I spotted great military history books in a store located at a tourist hot spot, just a couple of hundred yards from the beach.

The bookstore in question is Atlantic Books (see google street view below, the store with yellow letters on top), located in Rehoboth/Dewey beach (DE, USA).


View Larger Map

I walked into it expecting to find the regular beach reading stuff you find at most beach side bookstores. Then I spotted "Tank Tactics: from Normandy to Lorraine" (What the hell? I had to drive all the way down to Washington DC to get my copy of that book!). There was more: this store had no less than seven books from Stackpole Military History series. Some of them I had already, others I couldn't get without alerting the book-addiction rehab officers waiting for me at the beach (AKA wife & kids :) ). So, I settled for "Goodwood: The British Offensive in Normandy, July 1944" and a copy of the Washington Post as a wrap to get it ready for a surreptitious infiltration into the beach tote.

Quite a beach-side catch.

Cheers,

"Tank Tactics, from Normandy to Lorraine", by Roman Jarymowycz

Just finished reading this book.

"Tank Tactics, from Normandy to Lorraine", by Roman Jarymowycz is a wonderful mix of scholastic treatise on armor doctrine and engaging battlefront stories and anecdotes.

This book is about the evolution of armor doctrine among the US and Canadian forces, from the end of WWI to the trying months after the WWII Normandy landings.

This is a must read for anybody interested in armored warfare. The first chapters are devoted to the post-WWI years, and all the confusion the tank brought into military doctrine. How were tanks to be used grand-tactically, as a breaktrhough ram, as an exploitation weapon or as a pursuit one? The soul-searching of the US Cavalry with their tank vs horse debate follows, with a bit less of detail as in other books by Jarymowycz but nonetheless very informative. The meat and potatoes of the book is the analysis of Operations Goodwood, Cobra, Totalize and Tractable. The author makes great emphasis in the good and bad of the doctrines of British, Canadian, US, German and (altough very briefly) Soviet forces. Every operation is put under the microscope and analyzed from the armored warfare doctrinal point of view. I would dare to say that this is the best operational analysis of the Normandy breakthrough I ever read.

One word of caution: the title "Tank Tactics" is a bit off. The book makes emphasis in the grand-tactical and operational use of armor in WWII. There are a few tactical vignettes here and there. But don't expect to see too much small units tactics here.

On a side note: This book has been available from Lynne-Rienner Publishers for a long time. Now Stackpole Books prints and sells it at a lower price. Kudos Stackpole for getting us this wonderful scholarly treatise at such a knockout price.

This book has given me an itch for some WWII Normandy war-gaming ...




Do you recognize this war game?


HPS's Normandy 44








What about this classic?


Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord




I'm off to play these great war games.

Cheers,

"Apache" by Ed Macy: Modern Attack-Helicopter Missions Recounted by a Real Pilot

"Apache" by Ed Macy, recounts the author's missions as an Attack Pilot of the British Army Air Corps deployed in Afghanistan.

The author has managed to write an action-packed book without compromising a military-level narrative of his missions.

At least for me, "Apache" felt somehow a miss-guiding title for this book. Certainly the attack helicopter is a very important part of the story. Yet the stories of the men flying them into battle are what makes this a superb book. The war against the Taliban is a nasty business. The sacrifices of the British forces in Afghanistan are enormous. The enemy is always elusive and merciless. The soldiers and airmen in "Apache" are portrayed at the level of deepness that only brothers in arms can get.

The climax of the book is the rescue of a Royal Marine, which went MIA in a Taliban stronghold. For this mission, Ed Macy and his flight members received the Military Cross for Bravery.

For the flight simulator enthusiast (yes, you flying DCS Black Shark), this is a must-read. Even when the helicopter is not the one you are flying in the virtual skies, you will find plenty of valuable information here. How to make a rocket-run, how to ingress to a hot area, employment of weapons, fuel economy, deconflict of indirect fires, you name it. The book also has a map section and pictures of the target areas that make following the missions even more engaging. The most detailed chapters of "Apache" are the ones where missions are recounted. These parts of the book are a detailed, button-press to button-press, narrative. It is almost like being in the cockpit with Macy.

Ed Macy has written the ultimate debriefing, the one describing his life-changing combat experience in Afghanistan.

Cheers,

"The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War"

Every human in earth knows wars as catastrophic events. Why we humans engage in them anyways?

This fantastic book by Dr. David Livingstone Smith offers a somber hypothesis from the perspective of evolution, anthropology and psychology: evolution may have shaped our human brains in that way.

According to the author we have a strong and intrinsic disgust for killing each other, yet through evolution the brains of our ancestors have acquired the trait of being able to deceit others and even ourselves. Surprisingly, this self-deceit process appears to be even unconscious. Add to that our ability to imagine threats and the list of ingredients for the recipe of the "Most Dangerous Animal" is almost complete.

To explore the possible roots of our same-species violent behavior and to find an explanation to it, this book will take you back and forth in time and space, from a cave millions of years ago to present day Iraq. Well documented, accessible to the lay reader, this is book written in an engaging style.

A small warning: this book is not a light reading neither it has a happy ending. The vignettes of wars and other violent acts are very graphic and quickly brings the point to you that we tend to sanitize, romanticize and glorify war. The book wraps it up with a final chapter explaining why, alas, there is apparently no end in sight for the terrible custom of war.

Cheers,

Modern Military Thinkers: John Boyd

John Boyd had both the mind of the bold, daring soldier who never surrenders and that of a brilliant scholar whose thirst for truth uncovers new patterns in places where nobody thought there was anything else to question.

He is known mostly for his "observation, orientation, decision, action" loop (OODA loop). This is unfortunate because his contributions are as wide-ranging as the ones from titans like Clausewitz. It is also unfortunate because OODA is not a loop but rather a cycle. But anyway, most people's knowledge of Clausewitz doesn't go farther than "war is the continuation of politics by other means".

As I'm doing with every military thinker I post about, I will leave the task of exploring Boyd's theories to my readers. A little warning, you are in for a wild ride.

One of the spin-offs from Boyd's thinking is the so-called maneuver warfare, which was adopted by the US Marine Corps as a doctrinal framework. There is also a movement leaded by Chet Richards, that applies Boyd's thinking to business.


Boyd never wrote a book. His preferred way of exposing ideas were his legendary briefings, which lasted half a day. The text of these briefings can be found in the web. Frank Osinga recently published a book which is the ultimate analysis of Boyd's theories: "Science, Strategy and War". This book is a bit pricey from Amazon and I would rather recommend the print-on-demand service from Routledge.






One of the things that impressed me in Osinga's book is his analysis of the context in which Boyd formulated his ideas. According to Osinga, Boyd's experiences as a fighter pilot, his self education and the scientific ambiance contemporary to his studies are important to understand his theories. I also recommend the biographical book by Robert Coram "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War".





Cheers,

Wargaming for Leaders

Wargaming for Leaders: Strategic Decision Making from the Battlefield to the Boardroom

This book fell completely under my radar. It was published by November 2008 and its authored by Booz-Allen-Hamilton wargaming honcho Mark Herman.

From the product's description:

If you had the opportunity to probe the future, make strategic choices, and view their consequences before making expensive and irretrievable decisions, wouldn't you take advantage of it?

Of course you would. And in a world of asymmetrical conflict, security threats, intense global competition, and economic uncertainty, there is an even higher premium on road-testing plans and strategies--whether they're spearheaded by government organizations, transnational corporations, or emerging megacommunities.

Wargaming for Leaders provides a methodology to get at the issues that one leader, no matter how visionary, cannot grasp on his or her own. How? By bringing together the real experts on the topic at hand to wage “cognitive warfare.” Through tapping the collective wisdom surrounding an issue, experts can experience the future in a risk-free environment and find answers to questions that had not been on their radar--often with unexpected and startling results.

With examples from the fields of military, corporate, and public policy, three wargaming developers from Booz Allen Hamilton deliver compelling insights on this problem-solving method, including fascinating details on how

• A large equipment manufacturer determined whether making a merger was strategically right for its business growth, as well as which technology investments it needed to drop
• A four-star U.S. general tested his war plan for Iraq and uncovered specific fixes that might have prevented a prolonged conflict
• An increasingly clogged air-traffic system faced a security-versus-convenience issue determined whether military airspace could be used during peak demand periods

Wargaming allows organizations of every type and every size to organize information, plot out scenarios, and tap into the collective expertise of participants. The results allow everyone to identify and tackle obstacles, solve problems, and find new ways to innovate and further performance goals.

Get ready for the battle of your organizational life--and prepare to reap the spoils of victory.

Sounds like a terrific book. Going to get it during the lunch break.

Cheers,

Contemporary Military Thinkers: Martin van Creveld

Dr. van Creveld's contributions to the study of human conflict cover a wide range of military and political matters.

His most-recognized books, "The Transformation of War" and "Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton", are included in the US Army Officer's required reading list.

Showing an amazing erudition in military history, van Creveld puts forward not only new and exciting ideas on how to analyze the historical facts, but also his view on how previous analysis need revision. Not even the mighty Clausewitz escapes from scrutiny.

One of his books I think is under-rated in popularity and importance. In "The Rise and Decline of the State", van Creveld proposes that the sovereign state as we know it in modern societies has outlived his usefulness. "The Rise and Decline of the State" is one of those books that shakes your axioms to the core.

His latest book "The Culture of War", is in my night stand waiting to join the other books from this author in an special section of my bookshelf reserved for the books I consult the most.

Cheers,

"Belorussia 1944" by David Glantz, My First eBook Experience

I enjoy reading good military history books and war gaming what's in them. Also enjoy the reverse: war gaming some historical battle and then getting to read books about it.

HPS Simulations is one of my favorite companies for war games/simulations. Their Panzer Campaigns series features battles spanning all WWII. In their "Minsk 44" title, Panzer Campaigns puts you in the thick of one of the most dramatic battles of WWII, the battle for Belorussia in 1944.

David Glantz, one of the most prolific and respected authors on Soviet military history, has written a wonderful book about the very same battle: "Belorussia 1944: The Soviet General Staff Study". David Glatnz's books are not for the casual reader. They are studies in the military art, with profusive details on troop movements, command and control, logistics and the peculiarities of each country's way of waging wars. Both dense and lacking the narrative beauty of other authors like Atkinson, Glantz's books though contain the stuff the hardcore enthusiast of military history cherishes.

David Glantz's "Belorussia 1944" and HPS's "Minsk 44" form a great and enjoyable combination.

Instead of going the usual Amazon.com route, this time I decided to buy "Belorussia 1944" as an e-book from eBooks.com. Purchasing the e-book was a breeze and after the required installation of reading software from Adobe (Adobe Digital Editions), I was reading the e-book a few minutes after paying online. I don't particularly like any of Adobe's software in general because it asks you for updates every single time, but that's a personal peeve. Also, it's a bit disconcerting that both the printed and electronic versions of the book cost the same.

The "Belorussia 1944" book itself didn't disappoint. Very good read and perfect to understand what's being war gamed in "Minsk 44". The only thing that I am disappointed about is how the maps show in the electronic version. Many of Glantz's books contain maps that are hand-drawn and relatively small. These do not compress very well with the image-processing algorithms used to make e-books. The customer support people of eBooks.com were very gracious in trying to get me better resolution of the images, but unfortunately these small figures are helpless.

Cheers,