Dying to Learn : : Wartime Lessons from the Western Front / / Michael A. Hunzeker.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Hunzeker, Michael A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.) :; 9 b&w line drawings

In Dying to Learn, Michael Hunzeker develops a novel theory to explain how wartime militaries learn. He focuses on the Western Front, which witnessed three great-power armies struggle to cope with deadlock throughout the First World War, as the British, French, and German armies all pursued the same solutions-assault tactics, combined arms, and elastic defense in depth. By the end of the war, only the German army managed to develop and implement a set of revolutionary offensive, defensive, and combined arms doctrines that in hindsight represented the best way to fight.Hunzeker identifies three organizational variables that determine how fighting militaries generate new ideas, distinguish good ones from bad ones, and implement the best of them across the entire organization. These factors are: the degree to which leadership delegates authority on the battlefield; how effectively the organization retains control over soldier and officer training; and whether or not the military possesses an independent doctrinal assessment mechanism.Through careful study of the British, French, and German experiences in the First World War, Dying to Learn provides a model that shows how a resolute focus on analysis, command, and training can help prepare modern militaries for adapting amidst high-intensity warfare in an age of revolutionary technological change.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction. Wartime Learning -- Chapter 1 Assessment, Command, and Training Theory -- Chapter 2 Learning on the Western Front -- Chapter 3 The German Army on the Western Front -- Chapter 4 The British Army on the Western Front -- Chapter 5 The French Army on the Western Front -- Conclusion Alternative Explanations and Policy Implications -- Notes -- Index