School of War - Ep 162: Michael Leggiere on Military History on Campus

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Michael Leggiere, Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida and editor of War Studies Journal 1, joins the show to discuss the sad state of military history in higher education. ▪️ Times      •      01:17 Introduction      •      02:48 Military history in academia      •      03:53 PME      •     05:22 What is “new” military history?       •      11:55 “History shouldn’t be a mystery”     •      17:55 The Journal     •      20:45 Suggested pieces       •      24:32 Napoleon       •      26:58 Lee Follow along on Instagram or YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

I've commented in an offhand way here and there about the sad state of higher education's treatment of military history. That's our subject today. What's gone wrong on campus and why it's hard to learn the lessons of war there. It is a perspective for war. It's a lot of the invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in history. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the rain situation. We shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I'm delighted to be joined today by Michael Legerre, who is Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida. the author of numerous articles and books. He has a specialty in Napoleonic Studies, the military historian, and he is the editor of a new publication, the War Studies Journal, volume one of which is now out. Michael, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you, Aaron. Happy to be here. What's it like to be a military historian and academia these days and closely related second question? Why did you start this journal? Well, we're a dying breed,

particularly if you do what they call the old military history, which focuses on battles and generals and strategy and diplomacy, all the stuff that you would normally think would go along with military history. We are a dying breed where you find military historians are more so at smaller schools, smaller four-year liberal arts schools. The big universities have largely turned their back on, military history. So it's a very, very dying subject in academia. It all goes back to the Vietnam era and the repulsion of anything that smacks of, of the man and fascism and

the army and in military operations. So what I like to say is all those guys who are out as graduating and getting hot and getting beat over the head by cops, they're now in in positions of power in the universities, and they just don't want military history on the campus. And the succeeding generations, they always tried to prove themselves to be more radical than their professors. So the hatred of military history, traditional military history, just continued with succeeding generations. So then now we've reached the point where most history departments don't want it on campus. And that's real short-sighted because military history puts students in seats. It helps pick up departments that may be struggling for enrollments.

It brings in graduate students. You know, the flip side of that is that there are very few jobs for graduate students in academia. So what I try to do is point my graduate students toward careers in PME, professional military education. your military academies, your general staff schools, and your war colleges. How vulnerable are these staff colleges, the PME establishment, to the downsides of the new military history themselves? Well, they're pretty cognizant of what's going on. And when it comes down to it, their officers don't need to know about masculinity and warfare

and gender warfare, they need to know about strategy operations and tactics. They need to be able to understand the principles of war. They need to be taught the principles of war. They need to understand practical aspects of strategy. So all at all, the PME academies do a good job of filtering out that type of element, so to speak. I'm curious, I mean, it's hard to disentangle these things, but I feel like you and I can both sit here and, of rehearse positive case for the new military history and what what folks in that subfield would say for themselves and why we should study the kinds of things that they're studying.

I'm interested, though, if you could say more about the negative case regarding the quote unquote old miss military history, why shouldn't we study? Why shouldn't an undergraduate, for example? Because you talk about how military officers need to know about, you know, the distinctions between tactics, operations strategy and et cetera. I can make a case that citizens in a republic ought to have at least some grasp of the basics because they're going to be called upon at a minimum to vote in elections where their elected representatives are going to have a say in the conduct of war anyway so i could make that case what's the negative case why shouldn't students be exposed to to that kind of stuff you know harran i've never heard a decent argument against

what about the i'm give the undecent ones i can make some i can make some ones that i disagree with Well, one of the things that they say is that it's tied to, you know, great men. Why should we study great men? You know, why should we study violence? It's not an intellectual exercise. Now, on the flip side, most military historians are very open to having colleagues who do the new military history. We're not generally exclusionary. That's fine if that's what you want to teach. but don't tell me I can't teach the traditional military history and that there's no place in academia force. But the general argument has never been one that has real teeth to it other than the fact that they don't want people teaching that stuff on the university level. I always took whether explicit or implicit, maybe a little bit more implicit, part of the argument against what you do, writing books about how Napoleon made war.

to be something like we as humanity are evolving towards a better future in which the nation-state and the apparatuses, apparatae, of state violence, etc., they are increasingly things of the past. We'll see less of them as time goes on, and people of good conscience and good character across international boundaries should unite to bring about this better future. And so there's something about the study of these things. It's a bit sinister. You know, it's a bit militaristic to study military affairs. What?

You think war is a good thing. You know, I mean, it's a sort of, it's like a self-evidently sort of silly argument. It's like, oh, you're, I mean, first of all, it's not like you're sitting there saying, and wouldn't it be fun? Wouldn't it be fun to march to Moscow with Napoleon? You're not advocating for war to study military history. I'll give you a two examples. of some general ignorance.

When the Gulf War started, the second Gulf War started, I had a math professor walk into my office and say, well, I guess you're happy. And I said, why is that? You know, because war. And I said, that's as stupid as saying an oncologist is happy every time he gets a new patient with cancer. Yeah.

And an offensive thing at that, whether it's intentional or not. He wasn't real bright, math professor, you know. And then I had, I was hired by the University of North Texas to be a French historian because the woman who did French history decided that she was going to devote her time to gender studies. So when I ran into her in the hallway for the first time, she said, oh, you're the new French Rev Napoleon guy. And I said, yeah. And she said, oh, but you do, you do military. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm still going to talk about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

You know, what does that mean? Oh, you do military. So that means that I'm going to only teach classes specifically on military history, that military historians can't see anything larger than talking about Army A marches here and Army B marches there. So those are two examples of the type of weirdness in academia. But more to your point about education. you know, citizens and preparing them for what they might confront.

What better way to understand the situation in Ukraine by looking at what the Nazis did to Czechoslovakia? You know, the Ukraine, the Crimea is the sedate land. And now Putin is going after the rest of Ukraine, just like Hitler went after the rest of Czechoslovakia. So whether it's diplomatic history, or strategy or operations or even tactics, there's something that every American citizen can benefit from

when, like you said, they're making an informed decision at the polls. And if their child goes off to war, brother goes off to war, a friend goes off to war, maybe they would have a better understanding of the circumstances in which their loved one is marching to war. Yeah. I also am of the view that whether it's the study of military history or maybe military service or some combination of the two, there is a way in which exposure to the subject matter, one way or the other, teaches you realities about the world that it's harder to trip and stumble upon, like in the kind of place that I grew up. I grew up in middle class, suburbia, northern Virginia, a very pleasant, happy place to grow up, to be quite honest.

you know, good schools, nice families for the most part, you know, not a lot of, not a lot of, not a lot of, not a lot of settling disputes by violence. Right. It's a nice, nice neighborhood. And so you don't necessarily inherit as a birthright in a place like that knowledge of the fact that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily work that way. And then if you start, if that's your starting point, and then you go and you study political science as an undergraduate, and then you go get a law degree.

And because of our system of government. works, you then not long thereafter find yourself in positions of responsibility at the State Department or the Defense Department as a civilian, which this is how it works. I'm describing a lot of people's resumes, people like correctly. You know, and all of a sudden it seems like Putin's going to invade Ukraine. It's a bit confusing. Yeah. Like, why? Like, doesn't he see? Doesn't he see it's going to be a disaster? Or Syria, for that matter, to go back a decade. Doesn't he see it's going to be a quagmire? Can't he see that military action never leads to good outcomes? And I remember in the winner of like 21, 22, when everyone was sort of wringing their hands over

bluffing, which is what most people thought. There was a debate over amongst sort of people I was in touch with, you know, what would his objectives be? What would he want? And a friend of mine sort of immortally contributed into the debate, guys, what if he just wants Ukraine? What if his objective is what he explicitly says it is. Exactly. It was so fantastical to so many people in Washington. that it could be as simple as territorial acquisition by military force because of a erudentist belief that this belonged to him, that this belonged to the Russian people, to the Russian Empire. And I love those who almost defend his actions by saying, well, you know, he warned Ukraine, warned the world that, you know, Ukraine goes closer to NATO, he's going to invade. and, you know, it is his backyard and NATO shouldn't be there.

But what about Ukraine's sovereignty? What about their, you know, ability to make their own decisions and not be pushed or pulled by either the West or you or Putin? But that's a great example of where some history would really come in handy, not just military history, but history in general. History shouldn't be a mystery as well. China's life. Yeah.

But the argument against military history is multifaceted in the sense that everybody who is against it has something different to say, whether it's bringing in the wrong type of students, or you want to argue that it's not on the intellectual plane that the rest of the genres in history are, or it's out of touch with what the students want, or out of touch with the rest of the faculty and the department. So it's really hard to put your thumb on a made argument against doing traditional military history. But the Society for Military History, I'm sure you're aware of that group. I was on a few of the program committees back in the late 90s, in early 2000s, when that shift occurred in which they started moving old military history, a traditional military history, off the program. and putting more and more of the new military history on there. And once again, like I said, it shouldn't be an either-or situation. When I was on that committee, the program committee that was accepting papers, accepting paper panels in which it was declared that this is the old stuff,

we don't want that. We're trying to get, we're trying to modernize and catch up with the rest of academia. So it's convenient on their part because they have so many different ways of arguing their position, you know, that if you refute one of them, they'll just come back with another. So it's a no-win situation really, even though if you follow the money, if you follow the enrollments, military history puts butts in seats. Now, what you'll see is you'll see some articles come out that claim that military history is not dying in academia. But they don't make the distinction between the new and the old.

I once had a colleague who said that they were proud of the fact that they could teach the U.S. survey and cover the Civil War without ever mentioning Gettysburg. Great accomplishment. You just throw up your hands. How do you respond to that without getting into a nasty argument? I had a brilliant AP U.S. history teacher in high school, Mr. Kelly. And he was great. And we all loved his class, a very charismatic teacher, deeply learned.

And he made this big production of his frustration with the sort of standards imposed by the AP test. Because we spent, you know, days, about weeks studying the causes of the Civil War and, you know, the affairs of the 1840s, 1850s, etc. It was fascinating. It was a political history. And then I remember, I'll never forget, there's this great moment where we kind of, you know, Lincoln's elected. The first shots are fired at Fort Sumter. and then Mr. Kelly looks up and looks at the class and says, and then the Civil War happened and the Union won.

Yep. And then, I mean, you got a riff after that. I won't be able to reproduce it word for word, but saying, like, you don't need to know the rest for the AP test. They're never going to ask you about it, and it would be irresponsible of me. My job is to prepare you for the exam. You don't need to know the rest.

I once encountered a professor at Columbia through a friend of mine who taught the sort of Western Civ survey that all the undergrads have to take. And she was proud of teaching the Iliad as a study or as a way to examine the theme of the trafficking of women in the ancient world. Now, it is the case as lynching is a part of the American story and any survey of American history can't ignore it. Similarly, the trafficking women is in fact an important both plot development and I'm not sure if I would agree it's a theme. But it's an important part of the plot of the Iliad. And it happens.

And the institution clearly exists to teach the Iliad as though that's what the Iliate is about and imply that it's more important than what the Elliott is actually about. Seems to me to be something that's borderline criminal. Certainly, it's an intellectual crime. See, I want to ask you about the journal, which we share, you know, in its own modest way, the School of War podcast is devoted to reviving what is obviously in academia, a field that is not in good shape.

And, you know, a field in which this serious study is, you know, in need of a shot in the arm. We wanted to provide a platform for people who are thinking seriously about different aspects of military history. And then strategy as well, contemporary strategy. We kind of go back and forth and hope that the one informs the other. In your journal, war studies seems obviously devoted to a similar end. I'm just looking at the table of contents here. I mean, this is obviously, this is by and for professionals, but I would think that, you know, you could have an expansive understanding of what a professional is. I would think a lot of officers might be interested in what's in here and not just academics, creation of the seven military classics, revisiting Russian strategic planning against Napoleon

1810 to 1812 by Alex McAbridze, he's been on the show a number of times. You've got, let's see what else. You've got all sorts of stuff here that is a great, David Stahl, who's been on the show, a review of his book, a review of a book by Sean McMikin, who's been on the show. It looks like a really great convening and platform. Tell me about starting it, you know, beyond the obvious, why did you start it? What have the challenges been? What are you excited about in it? We started it for the reasons that we just talked about. We just spent half hour talking about. There's a vacuum caused by the Society for Military History and its journal, the

military history, catering more towards the new military history. And we wanted to fill that void. And I put together a great editorial team. Sometimes I wish I shouldn't, I wish I didn't ask some of those people because I could really see them contributing some great pieces and we don't want to make it a journal just for the editors to publish their material lane. But, you know, we've got on the cover page, we've stayed explicitly what we're dedicated to, and that is serious study of military history in all of its dimensions, strategic, operational, tactical, diplomatic, technological. And, you know, we want to

provide meat and potatoes. We want to revisit genres that have been glossed over, like I said, technology, diplomacy, operational history, which is really something that the new military history dislikes is operational history. I know great military historians who have lost out on jobs at major universities that were advertising for military historians because these historians did military, did operational military history, and so they weren't hired. Numerous occasions, this is. So the journal is an outlet for folks who are frustrated with the new military history, who want to have an opportunity to publish in a scholarly venue. You know, our editorial board is first rate, and once it clears, you know, we have a subject expert in just about every season.

field. And when a, when a submission, manuscript submission comes in, I sent it to our editorial board member who was a subject specialist. Once they clear it, we send it out to two blind readers. And, you know, it's very much academic rigor, rigorous academic process. But we're hoping to expand the journal, to get more articles, get more hooky views in it. And, you know, the idea behind And it was simply the disgust with the blackballing of traditional military history. Yeah. I don't want to get you in trouble with your contributors here, but I named a couple of the pieces. But anything in this first edition that you are particularly excited about or you would recommend to Lister's?

Yeah. They're all special. They're all unique in their own special way, but maybe you name a couple. Well, being a Napoleonic historian, I really like Micah Breits' piece on war planning. You know, there's so much misinformation out there about Russia's war planning up to Napoleon and Vading. And he just lays out a great, great piece there. When you walk away from reading it, you know exactly what the Russians were doing and thinking.

I also like Tanner's piece. I think that every American needs to know a little bit more about China. And for academics, we need to have a place in every department that's teaching Chinese history. Chinese military history, PLA. And what I like about Tanner's piece is it gives the long view of the U.S. view of China instead of just Chinese military history. And it's useful. There's lessons there for anyone, the practitioner, the statesman, the student, the academic. So those two pieces really stood out to me.

Yeah, so this is American understandings of Chinese strategy, a first draft genealogy, of the search for a Chinese way of war. I thought it was fascinating. And it's also for those of us like me who, you know, I sort of, I'm not a professional scholar of these things, but I've toyed around with in my writing about policy and other subjects over the years, the notion of, you know, strategic culture or ways of war. And is there an American way of war, et cetera. The peace is an opportunity to sort of reflect on the origins of that very frame of thinking and to think. carefully about, you know, how useful is such a way of thinking, how it can be overdone and employed in a way that's overdeterminative, which seems to be his main point about how we thought about China over the years, but how maybe it shouldn't be thrown out entirely

and everyone reduced to billiard ball political science entities colliding off each other according to natural law. Yeah. It was great. It was great. Yeah, Alex, you know, he came on to talk about his Kutuzov book a year ago or so now on the show. We had a great kind of spirited debate, which that's flattering me, to put it that way, because, of course, he knows this stuff. And my knowledge of this period of history comes from Tolstoy, which is not exactly the same thing as Syria's research. But we sort of went back and forth on, you know, does Telstoy sort of have Katuzov basically right? You know, is he, you know, and Alex, of course, takes the opposite view very strongly. It was great. It was a totally fascinating conversation.

He's a brilliant guy. He's a dear friend. He's helped me with the Russian archives. I actually had the opportunity to hire him when I was the chair of the Department of LSU-Streeport. We went through the same program at SSU. I was a little ahead of him, so we were never in class at the same time. But we started under the same mentor. I had the largest dissertation over 800 pages, but he beat me with his over 1,000 pages. I guess he doesn't make short books. Now on the other side of that, I would never allow one of my PhD students to write.

Any hundred page dissertation. But now he's a fine scholar. Well, a great scholar. I always say, Alex, you're a giant among pygmies. That's what Napoleon said to one of his marshals once. But, yeah, he's first raid. Go ahead. We didn't, you know, this is an episode about the journal and about military history studies in academia,

but I would be remiss to not ask you about your shield, which is Napoleonic studies and Napoleonic warfare. you contributed a chapter to Newmakers of Modern Strategy, where we did a whole series on the show last year on different chapters, and I regret that we didn't do yours, Napoleon and the strategy of the single point. What was it about Napoleon that drew you in, and maybe this gets to the chapter, maybe it doesn't, but what is it about the Napoleonic contribution to the military art

that you find significant and worth reflecting on? I love the operational level of war. To me, it's fascinating, moving troops, moving equipment to, you know, the right place, the right time. The way Napoleon timed everything, you know, the arrival of reinforcements, and the way he used time to his advantage. It's just remarkable. And, you know, there's a book out there by a very venerable Napoleonic historian, historian, historian, the late Mike Connolly, Owen Connolly, called Blundering to Glory. And his basic argument is that, you know, Napoleon really didn't plan. He just felt around like a blind man.

And once he, you know, got his hands wrapped around what he needed, then he, you know, then he did what he had to do. But all you've got to do is go through Napoleon's correspondence. And I've looked at much of his correspondence, particularly for the year 1813. And this man had a mind like an iron trap. And the one thing is that he always demanded. communication. And you could follow the trail, you know, from the scouts out in the seal. They're reporting to their superiors. They're reporting to their superiors. The superiors are reporting to the marshals and the marshals reporting to Napoleon. You could follow how he

pieces together all of this stuff. And if you were to ask what was the most important thing, then Napoleon's waging of war, I would say communication. Because you could follow the net that he creates and actually understand what he's thinking. When you look at the correspondence, when you look at the dispatches coming in that are found in the archives today. So I really found the operational level of war to be fascinating to me, fascinating to the point where some of my books can be a little tedious getting through, but that's what I really enjoy working on. You know, just as you outline this Napoleonic style, we just recorded, I mean, I'm put in mind of this episode, I just recorded with Scott Hartwig about his new book about the Battle of Antietam

and the Maryland campaign, which he wrote a prior book on, which was really well done, if I may say so. And it was a fascinating, we had a long conversation. It was one of the longer episodes we recorded because we kind of went through the Maryland campaign at a sort of schematic introductory level. And what you were just saying about Napoleon, it seems to be evident. you would know the answer to this as with Scott, I actually don't know, that Lee must have been paying attention to the Napoleonic, you know, sort of multiple columns, you know, core level

semi-independent operations, but being able to be brought together. I mean, that sort of describes the Maryland campaign and all those, you know, all those Civil War generals who are educated at West Point, they all studied Napoleon. I mean, you know, the famous thing about Stonewall Jackson in having a copy of Napoleon's principles of war and, you know, in his knapsack and so forth. But they all studied Jean-Many's interpretation of Napoleon. There was a textbook on Napoleon written for the students, the name of the general escapes him, but he actually went on to command and army during the Civil War. Gosh, I'm sorry, I can't think it was name off the top of my head.

It starts with an H. Last thing starts with an H. I'm not going to. I will play this game. I'm just going to agree with myself. I'm not, okay. But they were all very well versed in Napoleonic operational warfare. And yes, the core system, the columns, the enveloping movements, even, you know, the

once they turn to using railroads and amphibious attacks, all of it was based on the Napoleonic principles of envelopments and, you know, refusing your rights and pushing your left and so forth. So yes, the Civil War is really the last great Napoleonic war in Western civilization. Michael Legier, Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida, editor of War Studies Journal, Volume 1 of which out now, author of numerous books on Napoleon. Thank you so much for making the time. Thanks for what you do. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. This is a nebulous media production. find us wherever you get your podcasts.