The generals American military command from World War II to today
History has been kind to the American generals of World War II-Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley-and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In part it is the story of a widening gulf between performance and accou...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY
Penguin Press
2012
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| Call Number : | E 745 .R53 2012 |
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| 001 | 49860 | ||
| 003 | MY-KLNDU | ||
| 005 | 20241219005833.0 | ||
| 008 | 130926 2012 nyua bi 000 0 eng d | ||
| 020 | |a 9781594204043 | ||
| 039 | 9 | |a 201405301118 |b ridzuan |c 201402191308 |d azraai |y 201309261606 |z hasniza | |
| 040 | |a UPNM | ||
| 090 | |a E 745 |b .R53 2012 | ||
| 100 | 1 | |a Ricks, Thomas E. | |
| 245 | 1 | 4 | |a The generals |b American military command from World War II to today |c Thomas E. Ricks |
| 260 | |a New York, NY |b Penguin Press |c 2012 | ||
| 300 | |a 558 p., [16] p. of plates |b ill. |c 24 cm. | ||
| 504 | |a Includes bibliographical references and index | ||
| 505 | |a Prologue. Captain William DePuy and the 90th Division in Normandy, summer 1944 -- pt. 1. World War II. General George G. Marshall : the leader ; Dwight Eisenhower : how the Marshall system worked ; George Patton : the specialist ; Mark Clark : the man in the middle ; "Terrible Terry" Allen : conflict between Marshall and his protégés ; Eisenhower manages Montgomery ; Douglas MacArthur : the general as presidential aspirant ; William Simpson : the Marshall system and the new model American general -- pt. 2. The Korean War. William Dean and Douglas MacArthur : two generals self-destruct ; Army generals fail at Chosin ; O. P. Smith succeeds at Choisin ; Ridgway turns the war around ; MacArthur's last stand ; The organization man's Army | ||
| 505 | |a Pt. 3. The Vietnam War. Maxwell Taylor : architect of defeat ; William Westmoreland : the organization man in command ; William DePuy : World War II-style generalship in Vietnam ; The collapse of generalship in the 1960s ; Tet '68 : the end of Westmoreland and the turning point of the war ; My Lai : General Koster's cover-up and General Peers's investigation ; The end of a war, the end of an Army -- pt. 4. Interwar. DuPuy's great rebuilding ; "How to teach judgment" -- pt. 5 nd the hidden costs of rebuilding. Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and the empty triumph of the 1991 war ; The ground war : Schwarzkopf vs. Frederick Franks ; The post-Gulf War military ; Tommy R. Franks : two-time loser ; Ricardo Sanchez : over his head ; George Casey : trying but treading water ; David Petraeus : an outlier moves in, then leaves -- Epilogue. Restoring American military leadership. | ||
| 520 | |a History has been kind to the American generals of World War II-Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley-and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In part it is the story of a widening gulf between performance and accountability. During the Second World War, scores of American generals were relieved of command simply for not being good enough. Today, as one American colonel said bitterly during the Iraq War, "As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." In The Generals we meet great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and those who failed themselves and their soldiers. Marshall and Eisenhower cast long shadows over this story, as does the less familiar Marine General O. P. Smith, whose fighting retreat from the Chinese onslaught into Korea in the winter of 1950 snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of annihilation. But Korea also showed the first signs of an army leadership culture that neither punished mediocrity nor particularly rewarded daring. In the Vietnam War, the problem grew worse until, finally, American military leadership bottomed out. The My Lai massacre, Ricks shows us, is the emblematic event of this dark chapter of our history. In the wake of Vietnam a battle for the soul of the U.S. Army was waged with impressive success. It became a transformed institution, reinvigorated from the bottom up. But if the body was highly toned, its head still suffered from familiar problems, resulting in tactically savvy but strategically obtuse leadership that would win battles but end wars badly from the first Iraq War of 1990 through to the present. Ricks has made a close study of America's military leaders for three decades, and in his hands this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails. | ||
| 592 | |a 00012838 |b 13/2/14 |c RM143.63 |h PVK | ||
| 650 | 0 | |a Generals |z United States |x History |y 20th century | |
| 650 | 0 | |a Command of troops |x History |y 20th century |v Case studies | |
| 651 | 0 | |a United States |x History, Military |y 20th century |v Case studies | |
| 999 | |a vtls000050378 |c 49860 |d 49860 | ||