Claim OwnershipConfused Heap of Facts
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© 2023 Command and General Staff College
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Historians from the CGSC Department of Military History discuss topics in military history, ranging from antiquity to the near-present.
80 Episodes
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Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance talk with Dr. John Hosler about command and control in medieval armies, particularly in Western Europe between c700 and 1450. They begin at the strategic level, characterizing armies and their compositions. They discuss muster, equipment, and pay. They then zoom in to discuss the operational and tactical levels. They conclude by noting that C2 has not much changed in many ways in 1,500 years, despite common belief to the contrary.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel and Dr. Bill Nance are joined by Dr. John Kuehn to reassess Admiral Ernest King, commander of U.S. Navy forces during World War II. They outline his background and broad experience in the interwar years, and how he got to the offices he occupied during the war. They discuss his attitudes towards sea power and war planning. They detail his command of the war, including how he handled difficult subordinates like Chester Nimitz and William Halsey. Finally, Dr. Kuehn offers his reassessment of King as a solid and creative war leader for the Navy.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel and Dr. Bill Nance are joined by Dr. Zach Fry to reassess George Meade. They begin with the popular image of him as having commanded only in name at Gettysburg before being superseded by Grant. They explore his background and antebellum career. They detail his war, particularly the leadup to Gettysburg, and the difficulty 1864 campaign. They conclude by determining that Meade was a good, if unspectacular, commander.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel and Dr. Bill Nance reassess Dwight Eisenhower as a commander in World War 2. They discuss his background, his qualifications, and how he got his job as SHAEF commander. They detail his role as the most prominent Allied commander in Europe during most of the war and its challenges. They conclude with some lessons from Eisenhower’s career.
History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Bill Nance hosts a reassessment of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, future King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden, with Dr. Jonathan Abel and Dr. Mike Bonura of DJIMO. They explain why Bernadotte is often seen negatively. They explore if that is an accurate assessment of his career. They conclude with their own thoughts on the topic.
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance host special guest COL. Ethan Diven, Provost and Command and General Staff College Deputy Commandant. They discuss his favorite story from history, the importance of history in the CGSC curriculum, and how students should approach military history. Finally, he offers advice to students entering the course and graduates returning to the force.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance are joined by special guest MAJ James Villanueva, PhD, US Army Mission Command Training Protocol, to discuss US Army amphibious operations in the Pacific in World War II. They begin by discussing the origin and training of amphibious operations in the interwar Army. They detail the difficulties of undertaking them during the war, particularly early when the Japanese still had significant combat power. They conclude by examining lessons modern practitioners might learn from the operations as they look to future conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel and co-host Dr. Bill Nance launch a new series in which we reassess commanders who have been given a good or bad reputation by historians. We begin with DR. Martin Clemis reassessing William Westmoreland, US commander in Vietnam during the key years of 1964 to 1968, and frequent punching bag for the ultimate defeat there. He explains the typical view of Westmoreland as a bull-headed, unimaginative commander trying to refight World War II in Vietnam. He walks through the reality on the ground that Westmoreland faced and illustrates how more recent historians have argued that Westmoreland was actually correct in his approach, with which he agrees.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” - Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
FM 3-0 Operations 2025 says that “Some combination of maneuver and attrition is typically necessary to achieve victory during armed conflict.” Dr. Jonathan Abel discusses the process of replacements and reconstitution in the European Theater of Operations in World War II with Drs. Bill Nance, co-host, and Dr. Lou DiMarco. They detail how replacements were produced and how the system worked. They explore how reconstitution enabled units to re-man and re-equip after significant loss. Finally, they conclude by examining what modern warfighters can learn from large-scale attritional warfare in the past.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel and Dr. Bill Nance talk Operation Southern Watch with Dr. John Kuehn, US Navy (Retired). They explain why Desert Storm wasn’t actually the end of the story in Iraq. They explore how the no-fly zones were set up over Iraq, and their purpose. Dr. Kuehn walks through how missions in Southern Watch worked. They conclude with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of no-fly zones in subsequent conflicts.
Listener caution: some explicit language.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel sits down with Dr. Bill Nance to discuss how the US Army prepared for World War II. They begin with the period of austerity in the 1920s and the three competing Army missions in the Philippines, on the Mexican border, and training at home. They move through the era of rising tensions in the 1930s as George Marshall worked to build cadres for a future conscript army. They conclude by examining the early years of the war and how that system came to fruition to provide the armies that won the war for the US.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel, joined by Dr. Bill Nance, talk with Dr. Scott Moseman about strategic military intelligence between its birth in the US and the end of World War II. They begin by detailing what intelligence is and how it operates on each level of war. They explain how it came about in the Army and Navy. They explore how it went through a fallow period in the early twentieth century. They examine how it worked in the World Wars, especially the Second Conflict.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance are joined by Drs. Mark Gerges and Sanders Marble, Senior Historian at the US Army Office of Medical History, for a wide-ranging discussion on casualty care in US Army history. They explain how casualty care began in the earliest years of the Army and trace it through the Civil War. They detail how casualty care changed in the twentieth century. They explore the issue in Desert Storm and conclude by speculating on issues with casualty care in future large-scale combat operations.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel, joined by Dr. Bill Nance, completes the trilogy on race relations in the US Army with Dr. Amanda Nagel by looking at the period from 1920 to World War 2. They examine how the interwar years changed the discussion of the issue. They detail how changes going into World War 2 influenced race relations. They explore how the war changed them, both in the military and at home.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance discuss Napoleonic officers with Dr. Mike Bonura of DJIMO. They explain where the officers came from and how they were trained. They detail how Napoleonic command and control and mission command worked. They discuss some of the issues with the system. They conclude with lessons modern officers might take from the period.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of ChesterfieldHost: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance sit down with special guest Dr. Sam Watson from the US Military Academy at West Point. They have a wide-ranging discussion on officers in the early US republic and the state of military history today.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel is joined by Dr. John Hosler to discuss the Roman military theorist Vegetius. They discuss Vegetius’s work and its themes. They trace its transmission and influence through the medieval period. They examine its use in early modern France. They conclude by discussing one of the major misuses of Vegetius and similar works.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMHDMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill NanceArtwork: Daniel O. NealMusic: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Drs. Jonathan Abel and Bill Nance continue their discussions about Vietnam with Dr. Martin Clemis. They dive into Vietnamese politics throughout the twentieth century. They begin with major influences on Vietnam like China, France, Marxism, and Buddhism. They detail how politics evolved throughout the century, particularly in the North. They explain how America’s Vietnam War shaped those politics. They conclude by explaining why the US often mis-read Vietnamese politics during its war.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMH
DMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill Nance
Artwork: Daniel O. Neal
Music: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
A short of announcement that we'll be moving to a once-a-month model for CHF instead of the twice -a-month.
Dr. Jonathan Abel is joined by Dr. Gates Brown to discuss Eisenhower’s New Look policy. They outline the background to Eisenhower’s strategic views via the late 1940s and early 1950s. They explain what Eisenhower’s approach to deterrence was via the New Look and Massive Retaliation. They explore the responses within the Army, particularly the Pentomic Division, to that policy. They then conclude with some lessons learned from the period.
“History is only a confused heap of facts.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMH
DMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill Nance
Artwork: Daniel O. Neal
Music: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
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