The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost

[@jimmieraper5807]

Most thoughtful and reasoned lecture on war I've ever heard. Thank you for your brilliant words

[@stephenconey4841]

I wonder how much this applies to medieval monarchies. In contrast to the large wars fought by nation-states their wars were pretty limited and fought basically out of the king's own pocket. In these cases, you only have to break the morale of a a single man and some of his advisors to end the war. A lost battle can do that. Also, since kings thought of their kingdom as their possession that they planned to pass on to their heir, they tended to be much more likely to cut their losses and back out of a war if they thought the pay-off wasn't worth it. Excellent lecture, by the way

[@forgottenvictories3951]

Cathal Nolan addresses the middle ages in a very enlightening way in his book

[@FlakeTillman]

Cicero wrote that “endless money forms the sinews of war”. Thomas Jefferson wrote “banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies”. Monetary systems obfuscate the true value of a given variable by turning the understanding of the subject into a numeric abstraction. The ‘kings’ which rule over us base their wealth on financial capital, not physical assets.

[@ericsarnoski6278]

The think that the roles politicians play in influencing military decisions and ultimate outcome of these wars seemed to be understated.

[@scottgiles7546]

Biggest wake-up call I've heard in a long time. I fear too many who make the decisions will be untouched by this as they feel they will never be the ones to pay the cost.

[@BaronVonHobgoblin]

As someone who actually signed up and served as an army grunt I assert that you, whomever you are, whatever you do, cannot speak for me. I am more than capable of speaking for myself. Why do you not care what actual soldiers like myself have to say? I have a theory as to why. You are styling yourself as a contentious objector. I’ve noticed this pattern among civilian military historians (both amateur and professional alike), they seem to base all of their thinking on conscript armies and cherry picked battles full of poorly trained conscripts. I can see such threads behind your completely flip comment. Why are you so interested in military matters when you are at heart not so interested in military matters?

[@Dyabolykyll]

“Well Grant, we’ve had the Devil’s own day,” said W. T. Sherman to U.S. Grant after the first days’s fighting at Shiloh. “Yep. Lick’em tomorrow,” was Grant’s reply. General Grant’s short and prescient philosophy of warfare is precisely what Dr. Nolan is speaking of here: “Hit them hard. And keep moving on.”

[@mihaiserafim]

Many of the things said in this presentation resonate with my thoughts. Very well said! Thank you !

[@phillipsmith4814]

Well, just off the top of my head, war takes lots of inputs to attain the desired outcome. Just a few of those things are: lots of supplies (more than you ever think might be necessary since the dogs of war are very hungry), civilian support, excellent intelligence, well trained leaders, excellent weapons and fighters trained in the right tactics and the development of the right war winning strategy. To paraphrase a WWII admiral, when you read history the outcome seems inevitable but in reality there is a hell of a lot of groping around. Every war is different and there are always mistakes made. It’s the side that makes the fewest and smallest mistakes, that wins.

[@nereanim]

"It is good war is so terrible... for we would grow too fond of it" - Lee

[@SpaceCowboy-u7j]

*_“It’s great that war is profitable! We absolutely LOVE IT!”_* *_-The Military-Industrial Complex, probably_*

[@MK-mk2sp]

Excellent Dr. Nolan! I read your book before the Ukraine war, and I was astounded at how prophetical your book was in explaining the future outcome of the invasion.

[@mattds45]

The rub is that battles are part of wars. If we must plan for war, we must plan for battles, and we had better plan to win them.

[@scottgiles7546]

In this context I fear you will be called an amateur who focuses on strategy and tactics rather than logistics, to quote someone or another. Still need it, just like soldiers need guns that shoot, just that it's not something that being brilliant at against the ordinary will bring victory if you're on the wrong side of the logistics train.

[@mattds45]

@@scottgiles7546 Thank you- yes, you may be right on criticism vis-a-viz Operations/ tactics vs. logistics. My point is not even concerning either, however. The audience of this presentation is The Army War college. These are our future high level commanders. Their professional ethos requires them to win wars, and our system of government requires them to win with the tools on hand. One cannot do a good job if one thinks that the effort is doomed from the outset (at least in my humble opinion). France in 1940 comes to mind- while eventually The Allies won the war, France was defeated, and it was a disaster for that nation. I think that Dr. Nolan is also quite aware of the contradictions in this- that is, we must study to win wars, even though realizing that they are, more than likely, a futile and wasteful effort. It would be quite a privilege to take one of his classes.

[@Zogerpogger]

@@mattds45 Well I don't think Nolan was saying that battles don't need to be won, only that victory does not come only from winning battles, but the ability to be still standing following battle after battle.

[@spindlephysalia7564]

He does literally say that battles aren't unimportant, just overvalued and accelerating attriction. Check about nine minutes in, he says it more or less verbatim.

[@phillipsmith4814]

O my goodness. We have 2 people talking too much before the speaker shows up. A gentleman who introduces another gentleman to to introduce the guest. And he goes on about it taking 3 years to get him there. For a minute I was thinking it would take three years of introduction to get to the speaker. Remember the 3 B’s of speaking; Be brief, Be funny and Be seated.

[@markstuber4731]

A fifty miute plus long example of survivor's bias. "THe winner outlatsed . . . .. ." of course.

[@markstuber4731]

33:07 "Losers usualy overestimate the role of main battle force and their operational dexterity. " Yes. The losers of war tend to make miscalculations. That's why they lost or may even by they entered a war they could not win. This is the flip side of survivor's bias and correlation not being causeation.

[@Zogerpogger]

Very interesting lecture! I'm only 17 minutes in so far, however I feel as if what Cathal J. Nolan is saying (so far) is a good way to compare the Wehrmacht and the Red Army during the Soviet-German War. The Germans were heavily focused on destroying the Red Army itself, utilizing Bewegungskrieg tactics to create kessels in which Red Army formations would be trapped and anihilated. Despite massive victories during the summer of 1941 however, the Germans ended up losing the war, and losing very badly. While the Red Army of 1941-42 was still honing it's craft, to put it lightly, their overall doctrine of deep battle did not prioritise operational, but strategic success. Penetrating into the enemy's rear areas to distrupt not just logistics but industry and the war effort itself. I think the Red Army was focusing on the attritional nature of warfare, while the Wehrmacht was attempting to attain a decisive battle. Afterall, the only way Germany could justify declaring war on the Soviet Union was if they thought they could acheive such a victory. I'm curious to hear if others agree or disagree.

[@davidduma7615]

It would have been better if he had just handed out copies of the article he is trying to read to us,

[@markstuber4731]

Dr. Nolan doesn't seem to understand Clausewitz. For example, he took "culminating point: totally out of context. Clausewitz wasn't even talking about big battle at that point. He was talking about a campaign wide tendency of armies to extend their supply-lines. I also think this he is setting up a false dichotemy in his characterization of manueuver/big battle vs attrition warfare.

[@michaelmanning5379]

"Okay, not the Quakers" Ironically, Nixon was a Quaker.

[@nehrigen]

He ignores that where a campaign might be doomed from the start soldiers (and generals) within the campaign can still accomplish what shouldn't be able to be done. He over-states his theory.

[@SpaceCowboy-u7j]

traitors within will also lose a war.

[@markstuber4731]

56:40 So the Carthagenians would have had a better chance of winniing if they lost Canae? Again, he's setting up a false dichotemy and ignore the war is a complex sytem (not to be confused with a complicated system). That is to say, there are multiple contravaling factors. Yes it's silly to tihnk you are going to win big wars by winning battles alone but, to bash studying how to lto win big battles? What does he want company and fieldgrade officers to learrn?

[@marxel4444]

The First Punic war was not by battles or campains. But by romes willingness to build fleet after fleet after fleet. By gathering army after army after army until they finaly did win. Even the Japanese new that they cant win a fast war against america. They can hit them hard,crush as much as they can,spread to gather what they need in a long war and then kill as many americans as they can until america throws the towel. Even if the japanese would have destroyed every american ship in midway and took it. In 2-3 years a fleet bigger then what japan had would have slowly comming from the slipways just like the russian t-34s came out of the factories in the urals to grind them down.

[@williamriggs1062]

I have mixed feelings about this lecture. Yes, the cheap, fast war theory of victory has been oversold and is potentially dangerous for a whole number of reasons, not the least of which is that both sides get to choose the rules by which a war may be limited in scope and purpose. It does emphasize the importance of resilience and reserve capacity, something most nations have abandoned in their strategic doctrines. We do not know how long the conflicts of the present day will last any more than future conflicts. This implies a more well rounded approach to military preparedness than just winning the first battle. Even so, I find the lackadaisical attitude towards combat readiness that characterizes the post-Cold War US military to be just as problematic. In a world beset by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we need to do our utmost, to increase our odds of survival by winning the first battle and every subsequent battle as best we can. And if the worst happens, we need to be organized as a military and as a society to survive as best we can. For the logic of attritive total war conducted by the whole of nation could well lead to national annihilation, and then what ?

[@cpawp]

One the most interesting lectures I have heard - thank you. But - it was short - because Dr. Nolan differs so far in his arguments I would like to hear a discussion, maybe a panel of historians/ military historians, slowly and carefully waging this topic. Might be another talk for the future ...

[@FortuneZer0]

10:10 von Clausewitz CLEARLY states that war is merely the CONTINUATION of POLICY by other means. He doesnt say "War is the end all and be all." I reject that silly notion. 11:31 You dont translate combat into lasting political achievement. War is to set the current dominance of all of your the political, economical and cultural efforts onto the enemy and underpin them. Well until you throw away the efforts and the next guy comes and does it. 11:55 Yes. Thats always been the case. The US started slacking when they made the strategic mistake of starting to meddle in the middle east without any sound strategy. And then they decided to go to war. Without having done the policy part. Desert Shield and Desert Storm might have been brilliant purely military operations... But without any sound strategic effort the US only managed to destabilize the whole region when it decided to non aligned Iraq, a buyer of western goods as well as armaments and seller of oil, that wanted to be the regional power of stability, was bled heavily in the war with Iran and was economicaly attacked by Kuwait. The headless intervention caused the collapse of Iraq. Strengthend shia influence in the region, some say that strengthens terrorism but Im not versed in that field. Messed with the price of oil. And went on to drag the armed forces into continuous combat for decades. You might have had a finely honed and polished sword but the wielder might as well be a moron trying to hammer a nail into a concrete wall with the sharp edge and complaining why it doesnt work. 12:50 Hello Salami 13:04 "We fight to force our great decision on the enemy." Yes, do go on hammering the nail. Stop with the damn decrees if you dont go through the efforts of political, economical and cultural domination. 15:19 I disagree. The military decisive action is what can cut the attrition down. But only when the effirts of political, economical and cultural domination have been done. And even then the military might not even be necessary in cases when the target has been shown to be extremely suseptible to the efforts. 15:41 You sir have no idea about neither boxing nor sumo. 16:04 Cant make Schwarzwäldertorte out of pigshit. If the policy makers fail to do their job it doesnt matter what the executive does. 16:21-17:00 Im just going to let you sit in those words. 17:17 I agree. Victory depends on policy. 17:42 The management parasites just got a semi just imagining syphoning off all that money of the defence budgets into useless bureaucracy where they can do bureaucracy and not policy and be actualy contributing actors. 18:15 It can absolutely be, if ALL the stuff that comes before that is dont. You cant plop soldiers in a random field, poke em with a stick and tell them to do stuff. 18:34 Did he really just say "embrace attrition"? 18:56 What the hell was that damn smirk? 19:09 BECAUSE THERE IS NONE 20:10 Hang on I think I understand his twisted mind. I believe he thinks the military is responsible for the failures of the policy makers. We have decreed but you didnt obey. 20:38 Yes. But WHY! You keep failing go get the reason. 22:22 The military is not the provider to sustain attrition. Nowhere and never, was, is or will this ever be the case. 24:55 He says it but does not recognize the meaning of the very words he speaks. 25:07 No! No! No! goddamn he gives me a headache. "Many of you will die, and Im willing to make that sacrifice."

[@markstuber4731]

I agree, he doesn't seem to understand Clausewitz. For example, he took "culminating point: totally out of context. Clausewitz wasn't even talking about big battle at that point. He was talking about a campaign wide tendency of armies to extend their supply-lines. I also think this he is setting up a false dichotemy in his characterization of manueuver/big battle vs attrition warfare.

[@WagesOfDestruction]

i can think of many wars that are short

[@davidhenry101]

Very compelling!

[@nikkobriteramos314]

#nikkobriteramos

[@mcfail3450]

I agree except for the cause of the attrition. He seems to think it is inevitable when I would say the issue is that in most wars the winning side could have war far earlier and in short fashion if they had simply fully committed to the war and waged total war from the start. It took until 1943 for the allies to bomb the first german city with strategic bombing. We got bogged down in iraq and afghanistan because we wouldnt tolerate civilian collateral losses when the enemy hid among them. Basically the issue is it takes 2 or 3 years of losing or slaughter to get the winning side to finally admit the ends DO justify the means and commit to the means that will work. Its also a double edged sword because by 2 or 3 years the losing side has become so used to war and losses that they are willing to put up with it until total defeat. An even triple edge is the winning side public will likely be against the war at that point so now you want to fully commit AFTER losing the public support. History shows that if you can strike large and fast with an overwhelming victory you can scare an enemy into ending a war shortly into it. This to me means that the most important thing then is to be prepared and fully commit. The "knock out" blow is a real thing its just rare for a nation to actually commit to it enough. Desert storm is a good example.

[@charlesevans9977]

But this is a tired defense of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, which assumes that politicians can and should stay out of military affairs once the decision for war is made. A deeper understanding of history and theory would show this view to be flawed. There should be a constant interface between politicians and generals. Maneuver-centric warfare worked great in Desert Storm…against a cooperative and woefully inferior force. Maneuver warfare, without political constraints, got us in trouble in Korea. The way out was an attritional approach adopted by Ridgway, which took into account political constraints (such as casualty aversion) to keep US public support and the coalition together. Similarly - Ukraine is facing a number of political decisions (how young they want to put the floor of the draft age, for instance). Costly maneuver-centric assaults against prepared Russian positions are going to lead to defeat. But fighting from defensible terrain, in order to cause as much destruction of Russian forces may work. Attrition has a logic…

[@tkmmkt6569]

I don’t really agree with this assessment. Especially when he’s calling examples of wars or battles that go against his thesis as “lucky”. Like he did for France 1940. Plenty of wars have been decided by one or a few large battles. He also conflated all of the Napoleonic wars as one war. Napoleon won the war with Ulm and Austerlitz. He lost the latter wars yes.

[@Doc_Tar]

This man needs to address the next congress (and the one after that and so on until The United States stop fighting wars it's not committed to by the people).

[@ElanMorin]

as a student of ww2 for a good portion of my life, and while I appreciate this man's knowledge of the subject, I disagree with a lot of his wholesale conclusions on warfare, operations, attrition, etc.

[@davidsabillon5182]

fascinating. 🤔

[@jmiller475]

God I hope the us military listens to the end of this lecture

[@BaronVonHobgoblin]

Malarkey! This lecturer is engaging in a civilian vs civilian university debate that has zero relevance to any military professional. The thesis of this lecture is not a "military thesis", it is a "civilian policy-wonk thesis" and a terrible one at that! As a former infantryman I am resolutely disillusioned with, and highly skeptical of, any remarks made by battle-obsessed anti-soldier civilian historians: all the more so when the history professional in question either fails completely, or, as in the case of this lecture 12:00, outright refuses to identify a military patten, teach a practical military lesson, or produce a relevant military conjecture. So much civilian intellectual posturing gets loaded into the space between the definitions of "battle" and "war" and this lecture has that posturing in droves (simple minded folk such as myself just call it "hand waving"). All the blather 16:05 about "generalized" notions of "military history" and no attempt at specificity or references also seems in poor taste. Why does this lecturer think that I as a common soldier would be beholden to the philosophical straw man in his own mind's eye? As in the gaslit image of John Keegan this lecturer 18:00 pontificates about a bureaucracy of which he knows absolutely nothing! The heaping of vitriol on military planners and generals is not a constructive, informative, or educational thing to do. So why do it? How about you explain what those planners and general should have done instead? All the more so since this lecture pontificates that every battle is exceptional and that there is no "iron law" to understanding them! I get the sense this lecturer is unable to distinguish or understand military rank and how it works as a practical matter. All the talk of "glory" without calling out specific examples of what he is supposedly criticizing provides no basis for me as a common soldier to understand what he is advising me to do. Is our lecturer implying that Audie Murphy didn't deserve his Medal of Honor? Does anyone else in the audience know what exact point he is trying to make here? I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't understand what he is getting at. How exactly does our lecturer want the military institution to change to reflect his viewpoint? The simple fact is he doesn't know enough about the military institution itself to offer any insight or suggestion for those very changes he pontificates! I could go on, but I won't.

[@MoonBerryShrimp]

Worth it for the joke at the very end lol

[@farqitol]

This man is really hard to listen to. His style is more preacher than history lecturer. Sorry, I could only make it to 19:00.

[@markstuber4731]

I noticed that too. His lecture is as ill thought out as most sermons as well. (see my coment above if you want an elaberation.)

[@nco_gets_it]

The war in SWA did NOT start in 1979. Not even close. The Islamic areas of SWA have been at war with the West since at least 680AD or perhaps even earlier. One could say with some confidence that the West has been at war with the areas we now call SWA since Alexander. By this argument, the West has been at war with SWA for around 2300 years. The same with the East as represented by China and Russia--the European West has been in conflict with the East since sometime around the Germanic migrations into Europe in the 100s BC and after. 2100 years of war. One must ask the pressing question not covered here. "Why is the West at war with the East?" Also, "why has it lasted so long?". There are several potential answers, but the heart of the matter is the gulf in founding principles and view of what mankind is and should be. The military campaigns are merely curiosities in this Millenia long philosophical struggle, to be honest.

[@squirrelcovers6340]

Allure? Only to a fool...

[@michaelschacherbauer7533]

Appreciate the reminder of how masks were required well into 2022. Right before the 2024 election. Another reason to vote Trump.