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ROPP : War in the modern world (előszó)

 

This book is the result of nearly twenty years of teaching naval and military history. It is written for civilians with some knowledge of history and for military men interested in the ways in which their profession has been changed by political, social, and economic developments. The works of the great military writers are quoted in some detail; this book is in some ways an introduction to the major military classics. It stresses the wars of the twentieth century and Anglo-American concepts of sea, land, and air war, because both civilian and military readers may be particularly interested in their own age and their own countries' military traditions. Campaigns and battles are used only to illustrate more general trends. Such studies must be very detailed to be meaningful and cannot be incorporated easily in a general history. I have indicated the most important and readable of such studies in the hope that readers will be led farther into the fascinating and crucial subject of military history. The long footnotes are largely bibliographical. Though these bibliographies cannot be exhaustive, it is hoped that they contain all of the classics and those works which the author and his students have found interesting. The mountains of military literature have not recently been surveyed. The author hopes that his short bibliographical introductions to the many subjects which relate to the vast subject of modern warfare are an original contribution to scholarship. The bibliographies of personal accounts and war novels are matters of individual preference. The author can only hope that selections from his own favorites will lead readers to further exploration.

Geography is the bones of strategy; the terrain and lines of communication have governed the course of many campaigns and battles. Pictures and diagrams of weapons tell more than many paragraphs, but only detailed maps and pictures are really meaningful. Since adequate illustrations and maps would be prohibitively expensive, the author must assume that the reader will have access to standard maps and that he will depend on the maps which must accompany any scholarly study of campaigns or battles.

Any general introduction to so vast a subject is built on the work of many other scholars. Richard A. Preston of the Royal Military College of Canada and Jay Luvaas of Allegheny College read the entire work. The latter corrected proof while the author was traveling on another research project. Harry Stevens of Ohio University and Harold T. Parker of Duke read most of the manuscript and offered many suggestions. Earlier versions and the earlier chapters were read by Alan K. Manchester, Wesley Williams, and Frederick and Mary Bernheim of Duke, Alexander De Conde of the University of Michigan, William T. Jones of Pomona College, by Vice Admiral Ralph Earle, Jr., and Captain Clyde J. Van Arsdall, United States Navy, and by Richard M. Leighton and George F. Howe of the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army. Many other suggestions were made by John R. Alden, John S. Curtiss, Arthur B. Ferguson, Irving B. Holley, Frederic B. M. Hollyday, and Richard L. Watson, Jr., of the Duke University Department of History. The Duke University Research Council provided clerical help and subsidized publication. My wife typed much of the manuscript and displayed an admirable degree of patience throughout the whole long process. Most of Captain Liddell Hart's comments arrived after the book was in press. The second printing incorporates many of his suggestions and some additional bibliography. I am deeply grateful for the interest and advice of one of the world's greatest military critics and historians and for the suggestions of the students on whom this work has been tried. None of these persons is in any way responsible for the errors of commission and omission which surely remain in a work of this nature.

 

Ropp

 


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