⋙ PDF Sherman Soldier Realist American B H Liddell Hart 9780306805073 Books

Sherman Soldier Realist American B H Liddell Hart 9780306805073 Books

Download As PDF : Sherman Soldier Realist American B H Liddell Hart 9780306805073 Books

Sherman Soldier Realist American B H Liddell Hart 9780306805073 Books

I've read this book twice, the first a long time ago. No one understands the details of the campaigns better than Liddell Hart. Why can't every writer write like this? Because they aren't great military analysts like Liddell Hart. The book brilliantly studies Sherman's campaigns, and I haven't found a better book on Sherman than this. My complaint with the book is that Liddell Hart sneeringly dismisses any other generalship in the war, including Grant's, and to me them's fighting words. He calls Grant a conventional general, he doesn't like the Overland Campaign, and there is much to dislike about the Overland campaign, but it can be viewed as the anvil against which Sherman struck his might blow in conquering Atlanta, then marching through Georgia and the Carolinas. Grant fixed the main force, so that Sherman could commit his great turning movement of half a thousand miles without an army nipping at his heels (and Hood chose to self-destruct). Besides, Grant had already cut loose from his base of supplies in the Vicksburg Campaign. Etc. The denigration of Grant was so severe it made me reconsider Liddell Hart as a military analyst. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Read the book. Just realize it doesn't tell all the story, and tells some of it wrong. Liddell Hart was looking for great generals to shout up; other books of his I like better, such as his Scipio, which I've also read twice.


Tags : Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American [B. H. Liddell Hart] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div> When Liddell Hart's <I>Sherman </I>was first published in 1929, it received encomiums such as these: A masterly performance . . . one of the most thorougly dignified,B. H. Liddell Hart,Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American,Da Capo Press,0306805073,USA,United States - General,Generals - United States - Biography,Generals;United States;Biography.,Sherman, William T,United States - Biography,United States - History - Civil War,,United States - History - Civil War, 1861-1865 - Campaigns,United States;History;Civil War, 1861-1865;Campaigns.,(William Tecumseh),,1820-1891,American Civil War,American history: c 1800 to c 1900,Army,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY General,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Historical,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Military,Biography,Biography Autobiography,Biography: general,Civil war,General,Generals,HISTORY Military United States,HISTORY United States 19th Century,HISTORY United States Civil War Period (1850-1877),History,History United States General,History: American,Land forces & warfare,Sherman, William T.,United States,United States.,BiographyAutobiography

Sherman Soldier Realist American B H Liddell Hart 9780306805073 Books Reviews

This is simply terrific, should never go out of print, should be required reading for any military professional and can be perfectly complimented by that other great work on the greatest and also lest recognized Roman ministry genius. Perhaps the greater genus is even Captain Hart's ability to study, clarify, identify and make valuable for future readers those mere biographers who skim the surface. This is wonderfully penetrating!
B.H. Liddell Hart lives up to his reputation as a groundbreaking military strategist and tactician with an evaluation of the key American Civil War leader in light of the author's experience in World War I. Liddell Hart used William Tecumseh Sherman's use of the "indirect method" in defeating an enemy instead of frontal attacks and attrition that almost lost the Civil War for the Union and made the Western Front futile for both sides in World War I. Liddell Hart shows that historians and strategists erred in studying the august Confederate generals, such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall' Jackson, instead of the innovative Sherman, who went through the backdoor and attacked the enemy's morale, industrial support and supply. The term "realist" is particularly important in appreciating Sherman, because he was not swept up in the false romance of war and over-confidence shown by both sides He was the first to stress the Civil War would take more to resolve and be costlier than anyone imagined.
I know BH Liddell Hart from his classic Strategy in which he outlined the indirect approach. Rommel, the great general, based some of his WWII strategy and tactics on Liddell Hart. I guess this is a bit circular since Strategy is based in part on Rommel's Infantrie Greift An. But Patton read his Liddell Hart too.

In this book, Liddell Hart turns his considerable talent as a military analyst to one of the great captains, WT Sherman. Specifically, he looks at Sherman as a strategist during the Civil War. He does cover Sherman's life before the war and his career after, but the war is his main focus. Liddell Hart explicates just what it was that Sherman did to the South and to his opposing generals. He left them flummoxed and showed the population of his enemies that the best way to end their suffering was to stop rebelling.

The maps were adequate but would have profited from larger pages. I will admit that I followed along in the text with a copy of the West Point Atlas of American Wars, with its large maps. But the maps in the paperback edition of Liddell Hart will do.

I learned a lot from this study of WT Sherman's campaigns. I would strongly refer people to this book.
This book was dense and at times I wasn't sure I was going to make it all the way through, but having done so I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. Hart's portrait of William T Sherman is so vivid and inspiring and informative that I almost feel like I have lost something not having known this of him my whole life. There is obviously the hated legend of Sherman as the man who ravaged and burned the South (which strangely enough was not most strongly felt by the actual Southerners who experienced his "wrath"). This myth belies his strategic genius, his mastery of terrain and his deep understanding of statesmanship and politics. For instance, the severity of his campaign through Atlanta and then up through Charleston was driven not just by an aim to end the South's will to fight, but to prevent it from devolving into a guerrilla resistance after the inevitable Northern victory. (Jesse James and his band of bank robbers are examples of what this could have been.)

There is a stunningly profound quote from Hart in the book that I'll paraphrase here but I've put it on my wall to think more about Sherman's success was rooted in his grasp that the way to success is strategically along the line of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance. Buy this book, struggle through it and you'll be a better person for it. (And if you like Sherman, or the Civil War, James McPherson's This Mighty Scourge is the next book to read.)
I've read this book twice, the first a long time ago. No one understands the details of the campaigns better than Liddell Hart. Why can't every writer write like this? Because they aren't great military analysts like Liddell Hart. The book brilliantly studies Sherman's campaigns, and I haven't found a better book on Sherman than this. My complaint with the book is that Liddell Hart sneeringly dismisses any other generalship in the war, including Grant's, and to me them's fighting words. He calls Grant a conventional general, he doesn't like the Overland Campaign, and there is much to dislike about the Overland campaign, but it can be viewed as the anvil against which Sherman struck his might blow in conquering Atlanta, then marching through Georgia and the Carolinas. Grant fixed the main force, so that Sherman could commit his great turning movement of half a thousand miles without an army nipping at his heels (and Hood chose to self-destruct). Besides, Grant had already cut loose from his base of supplies in the Vicksburg Campaign. Etc. The denigration of Grant was so severe it made me reconsider Liddell Hart as a military analyst. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Read the book. Just realize it doesn't tell all the story, and tells some of it wrong. Liddell Hart was looking for great generals to shout up; other books of his I like better, such as his Scipio, which I've also read twice.