Sea Control - Sea Control 561 - Why We Fight with Sasha Maggio

Episode Date: January 25, 2025

Links1. “Why We Fight” podcast series Spotify catalogue. 2. “Mother of Tanks” official site.3. “Mother of Tanks” Twitter account.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Ahoy, shipmates, and welcome back to Sea Control. I'm your co-host, Brian Kirk, and my guest today is historian, analyst, and podcaster, Sasha Maggio, also known as Mother of Tanks. We'll be discussing her one-of-a-kind podcast series, Why We Fight, a podcast covering just about every aspect of World War II you can think of, including significant elements of naval and amphibious warfare. As a reminder, all of these expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any other organization with which we are affiliated.

Sasha, welcome aboard. It's good to have you on the other end of the microphone for a change. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional background, and perhaps most importantly, the origin of Mother of Tanks? So professionally, I have been a senior intelligence analyst. I focused on Russia and the former Soviet bloc. I've been an information operations trainer for the Army, working large Army warfighter exercises. I spent years working in marketing and content development, which is why I'm good at that stuff.

And years and years and years ago, because I am old, I was a pastry chef. I'm currently a unit deployment manager with the 37th Airlift Squadron here at Ramstein Air Force Base. and we'll see what opportunity presents itself next. I have a master's in forensic psychology and a second master's in intelligence studies focused on collection and collection management. I did graduate certificates in intelligence analysis and joint warfare.

The joint warfare program was designed kind of like, it was modeled after the JPME, the Joint Professional Military Education. And I'm working on a PhD, not officially enrolled, but I will be completing it with Wayne Youth University in Ireland. Let's see. And for six years,

I've been running the Mother of Tanks account on Twitter. It started on Twitter. It's expanded to other platforms, but Twitter was where it initially began. I had been on Twitter for almost a decade at that point. So I joined in like 2010, I think 2010 with my original name, but I wasn't really engaged or engaging. I didn't really have a plan for using the platform. I was just there because if you want to control your online presence, you need to have one. And so I'm everywhere. And the audience that I had built to that point wasn't like a real specific audience. And it was tied to two career fields ago. But then one day, I made a comment about, about tanks and an army public affairs officer jokingly referred to me as

the mother of tanks. And I was like, that's cute. I should go and see if that account is available. And I made it. And then I was like, now I need a plan for what am I going to do? And initially, I tried to do some history threads, but it wasn't really focused. And so I kind of like took a step back and was like, all right, what am I going to do with this account? How am I going to use it? Then it kind of grew. An awful lot to unpack there. I think all of us are looking forward to Dr. Maggio in the not too distant future. I am a little hungry right now. So I would love to pivot and talk about the pastry chef comment if you're out there, but that's probably not why our listeners tuned in. So I definitely appreciate everything you mentioned as far as like the kick

off with the Twitter account. And that allows us, that's a good segue to turning our attention to the Why We Fight podcast specifically. So I understand that you kind of kicked it off with the Twitter, but that's like the initial stage of how this thing grew out. So what is the Why We Fight podcast and what is its purpose? And again, we started to talk to the beginning a little bit. I understand the scope has changed over time until the project took a life on its own. But could you walk us through that bit of the story? Let me start with how the project kind of came to be. I changed jobs in 2020 and I moved from DC to Fort Leavenworth and I was going to work for the mission command training program. And 2020, as some people may remember, a little

bit of a pandemic going on. And so we had to, we had an awful lot of time where we were working from home, but because of the nature of the work, we had to fill a good portion of that time with other stuff. So their suggestion for someone like me, who is extremely prolific, you know, it's like i just okay give me the work to do and i get it done but now i've got all this extra time so they were like how about some professional reading and i was reading um the tank killers by harry yeide and he mentioned the 1941 ghq maneuvers and i thought that sounds an awful lot like what we do here and so i started doing research on that and i realized that i could build an entire like social media series on this just talking about it and i mean you know and i want

to say long story short, right? But I'm going to go, it's going to be long. I'm sorry. We want some longer. Well, I built a plan for 21 days of daily posts talking about the two phases of the Louisiana maneuvers and the two phases of the Carolina maneuvers, plus the after action review and their lessons learned and what they were going to do. And I pitched it to General Rainey at the time. It was Lieutenant General Rainey, the commander of the Combined Arms Center. He's now the commander of army futures command, I believe, but he loved it. And he, he sent me to his public affairs team and they, he told them, make it happen. He goes, I want it on our account.

And so they, they made me sign some agreements and they vetted it through legal to make sure everything was good. And I prepared, so that was all in 2020. And then in 2021, I ran, they couldn't give me a daily post. So they gave me twice a week and I would post twice a week on their account, these 10, 12, 25 tweet threads on different parts of... So that initial series was called Building an American Army. I wanted to focus on the maneuvers as the culmination of the series. So I talked about all parts of the army, modernizing, mechanizing, and then the mobilization of the forces plus the mobilization of the nation, 1939 to 1941. But I started talking a little bit about the interwar period, because I thought that that was a good place to start since there was a

lot of development that happened. And we can still learn from that, especially when technically speaking, the United States is not at war at the moment. And so we are in an interwar period where we could be doing many of those same things. And about a month into that, though, General Rainey had it set up so that they would continue to support as long as I wanted to keep making content. And then he moved on and Lieutenant General Martin took over and he also continued to support and he retired. Lieutenant General Beagle, who's the current commander, also continued to support. And then halfway through this year, I mean, so the written content, the whole thing was initially just written content. And that was how it was for two and a half years. But then the

podcast started last year and they kind of overtook everything. And plus the Combined Arms Center, they had to change up, change like a completely new public affairs team and they want to take their account in different directions. So it all works, but the series evolved. And after the first year of focusing just on the army, I changed the title to Why We Fight, and I decided to take it just one year at a time. So in 2022, I brought in the Marine Corps Museum, and they also were doing threads on like a, just the Pacific focus and just 1942. They were not doing as many threads as I was because I am prolific. It is a great word, but that's what, you know, I put out an awful lot of content. They were doing on average one a week. And then the, for a while, the British

army was also doing weekly threads on another sister series. But with, with the Ukraine kicking off, they found themselves a little bit preoccupied in Europe and they decided they were going to do something else. But I expanded my coverage from the army to include the air force and then other aspects of the service and related topics for 1942. And I decided I was just going to take it one year at a time. And then last year, 43, I thought, okay, I've done this long enough. I think I could probably find 24 historians to do 24 episodes. I'll pick, you know, two topics a month for the year and it'll just supplement the written content. I did not account for the enthusiasm. And so my plan of two episodes a month became 108 episodes and the written content was, you know,

It pretty much fell off by mid-September. So I still have seven episodes left over from 1943. I will eventually get them on the Patreon page as bonus content. I just don't have, I'm kind of maxing out my bandwidth. You're not in a dangerous situation when you, as somebody who has a hard time saying no, find yourself roping in other people who have a hard time saying no, and then you have no time all year long. So you did it to yourself, Sasha.

You have nobody but to blame. I'm not complaining. I'm not complaining. in. I'm just saying for somebody that is as prolific as I am to be at like max bandwidth is crazy. But yeah, I mean, nobody asked for this. You're right. I saw an opportunity. I saw an opportunity. Initially, I did just talk about the army, but I knew that it could be more. I just didn't have the connections. And so I needed to demonstrate that it would have value and appeal for others if I could just, you know, let me show you what I can do with the army and let's bring

other people into it later and so that's why the series just expanded and by last year so the third year of it we added the i we i added the podcast and um and it ended up including all of the american services army air force navy marine corps well navy to the extent that it was the naval war College. Do they count? They count. Okay. The Marine Corps, absolutely. And the Space Force, Space Force contributed, and Coast Guard. And then I also had Canadian Army, British Army, and then a bunch of veterans and civilian historians from Italy, Spain, England, Ireland, and Canada, and then across the United States. I mean, it was a lot of people. West Point also, and the Air Force Academy contributed as well, and SAMS, SAW, and SAS, which is the most Air

Force acronym. Does the Navy have an equivalent? Well, I wouldn't use the word equivalent. I would say analogous because the folks who work at those schools will be very proud of their programs. But I will say, yes, the Navy has one. It's called the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School, or MAWS. And yes, sister service officers can go there as well. For example, Marine Corps officers go there every year. But no, it sounds like you put up the bat signal expecting just a handful of responses and then the whole city of Gotham showed up and then you had your hands full. So a lot of good stuff that you put out there in that response and that explanation of how

it all began. I heard some gauntlets getting thrown down. I heard Sasha saying that she outcycled entire organizations, institutions in terms of their own commitment to this this project so uh keep up guys let's go um i also heard a lot of uh something that would describe as like a vh1 special of artists going in different directions as they as their creative differences emerge so that was that was really entertaining really appreciate that that backstory uh but i think there's a lot of really interesting uh nuggets that you mentioned in there as far as parallels to today and like why some of this stuff might

matter notably uh when you discuss the start of building the american army and how america wasn't at war yet and in anticipation of potentially getting into a conflict and discussing some of the challenges of growing at scale, knowing that military pressure may come, and then doing it once we are under military pressure. Again, a lot of folks would probably make immediate parallels with the prospect of a conflict with the People's Republic of China and what the U.S. is doing or not doing now and how we might need to, you know, get our stuff together in a little more coherent manner. But that's a great segue to our next question. So at a risk of already answering the question a bit, since I meandered there a bit, on the historical scope of this. The value

of studying history and offering it the way you do, it might be inherently understood by a historian like yourself and others, or maybe a practitioner like me looking at it through an applied lens, but there's always folks who might not get the so what of doing a deep dive on history the way you do. So for the listeners, make the case. Why study history? Why study it through the way you've approached it? Okay, make the case, right? So a few years ago, the Army started changing its doctrine to focus on a thing called large-scale combat operations, or LSCO, we just call it LISCO. And this was a significant shift from COIN or the counterinsurgency focus of the two decades prior. But LISCO is very much like the combined arms and joint focus of World War II. And that,

I think, makes reviewing this history even more beneficial because it offers lessons and examples to fill experience gaps, if that makes sense. Like, even our most seasoned officers are not intimately familiar with things like movement and maneuver of divisions or higher. And while we've been deliberately focused on joints since the mid 80s and combined arms for like a century, we should all understand that this whole doctrine thing, it's a process. It's not an end state that we're working for. And so changing the doctrine doesn't give us a finish line. It's meant to adjust how we train and prepare and think about what we're doing, as well as how we operate and employee forces. Understanding the way we got here, I think, can help significantly with

understanding why we're here and why we do some things rather than others. But without that experience, right, without that experience in things like large-scale combat operations or moving and employing these larger formations, without that hands-on in the field experience, we need something to fill that gap as a sort of placeholder to improve efforts with things like training and planning and conducting professional development, if that makes sense. Now, what I saw four years ago when I started to develop the series was potential to create an opportunity to expand the story as we learn it. Because what we learn is a very like truncated or curated version that focuses on oversimplified facts of very select events that I think are meant to make

teaching and learning a little easier. But as a result, or as a consequence, we don't learn the full story unless we recognize that we have these knowledge gaps and then we go and deliberately strive to fill them. Not everybody does that. Not everybody recognizes that they've got a gap in their knowledge. They think that they've learned all the facts. But there are still tons of lessons that we can learn from this war about how our services managed to accomplish everything that they accomplished. And so from a PME perspective, professional military education, my episodes may not check all the blocks to be considered professional military education, but they can facilitate curiosity and provide some facts while offering resources and ideas

for further research. So for the military audience, there's a lot of value there. For the civilian audience, there are opportunities to learn more about the history that they didn't learn in school. They could refresh memories on facts that they did learn. And then it provides insight that may or may not help with that ever-present civ-mil gap. There's a lot of gaps. um this year this year i also have a few episodes with officers and retirees that are talking about their family connections and i think that that's really important because we all have them even if we don't realize it if you think i say it a lot in my series if you think you don't have a connection to world war ii you haven't looked because we're all connected to it in some way but i also think

that it's important that we do this together which was ultimately where i was going with this Because like for 80 years, right, we have told stovepiped versions of this history. And I think that that undermines our efforts to prioritize things like jointness. Great answer. I definitely appreciate all that stuff. And I found your comment about facilitating curiosity, that was very resonant. And it brought immediately to mind what a professor at the School of Advanced Warfighting told my class. He described what they look for in military planners. So a lot of traits, right? Somebody who performs well over time in the hardest jobs, in key jobs, that's like, okay, that's something important. You want that as a prereq. But one of the things that they look for specifically in their applicant pool is our applicants who are naturally curious, because those will be the people who of their own accord will see, come across an event or a history or a doctrine, and then they'll pull on the thread because they'll ask why.

And they'll be like, okay, why did this happen this way? Or why do we do this this way? And they will teach themselves and they'll do the research and dig and dig and dig to build a coherent enough or holistic understanding of the problem as it was framed and the solution that was developed and be able to have a greater appreciation for the utility of what we're doing or why we're doing it. There's so many applications of that now. So my current seat, my current ability, I have many other, you know, subordinate leaders who are constantly learning, I'm constantly learning as well. And rather than just seeing the thing and just being like, we're going to throw that out and do it this other way. Well, I think it's important that we teach people, train them to first ask why, to be curious as to the why. that process exists the way it does because somebody else before us probably saw another problem and developed this as a solution maybe it's not ideal and that's not to endorse the like well we've always done it this way a solution right or approach but rather you have to understand why they're doing it a certain way before you can perhaps improve upon it because maybe your solution is actually just sending the pendulum back because you're going back to what they were trying to fix so that's just one uh really important note i thought that uh really came

know, when you talk about facilitating curiosity with your series. And I think it's also worth double tapping doing it together. So many Serbs histories or other histories or wherever they may come from, naturally, they're going to emphasize their own contribution, but that can come across as we did it all ourselves, right? As you know, Sasha, the Marine Corps won the Pacific War all by itself. And we swam to those islands and the Army didn't help at all. It was all the United states marine corps and that's why that's our theater and that's how i want to see it with i see that i say that in jest of course uh you and i are both on the same page again it's everybody uh we're going together in the same direction it was a joint and uh coalition team

that helped us win that war uh in both theaters so it's really important to understand okay you are just this one piece of the pie and you are greater than some of your parts because of the contributions of everybody else and if you don't understand that you are going to fall on your face when reality punches you right in it. So I'll stop rolling on there and turn it back to you. So noting some of the naval and maritime angle of the Sea Control podcast, so I gotta be selfish.

I want you to focus on my audience now and that our listeners have that maritime bit as their focus. Can you talk us through some of the key elements of naval or amphibious warfare history that you've covered on the series? Maybe some notable episodes and takes. Absolutely.

So I'm gonna start with 1943 and then I'll talk about the ones this year. So for 43, I had two episodes with Dr. Ryan Wadley. He's at the Naval War College, a teacher at the Naval War College. One of them, he sort of gave an overview of the Navy to that point. And then the other one was on the USS Kidd. That was the Ice Cream Pirates episode. I had a couple of episodes with, a few actually, with Dr. David Dvorak. He's the provost of the Army War College. And while his focus was on the Mediterranean theater, the lessons on things like sustainment and administration of a theater, as well as an episode on contested logistics, I think that those offer value for any AOR. It doesn't necessarily have to be a European one or an Africa one or a, you know, it doesn't have to be this side of the planet. It could be yours. What else? I've got an episode with, oh, I have an episode on planning Operation Husky with Dr. Greg Hospidor. He is the chief of military history, education, and curriculum at the Army's Training and

Doctrine Command, TRADOC. He did it with Dr. Lee Windsor, who's a Canadian Army veteran and a professor at the University of New Brunswick. Since Operation Husky involved an amphibious operation, an amphibious landing, it provides some insight into that process. They also did a two-part episode on Operation Husky itself, but that went more into the Sicilian campaign as well. Dr. John Curratola, who is with the National World War II Museum and a retired Marine officer,

he did a couple of episodes with me. In particular, the episode on, it's called Learning Organizations Under Fire. It offered a lot of insight into the way that the Army and Marine Corps were working together to enable things like Operation Husky, and then later Operation Avalanche, and eventually Operation Overlord. Cater Miller, who is a Marine veteran and curator at the Marine Corps Museum. He did several episodes that are absolutely fantastic. Guadalcanal, Marine Raiders.

And I want to say he did one on Operation Toenails, but I can't remember what. There was another one, at least one more there. But his episodes were fantastic. Trent Hone is a Navy historian. He did a couple of episodes on Admiral Nimitz, like Nimitz reconfiguring his staff in the Pacific and also the night battles in the Solomons. They were both very good episodes. I had a couple of episodes with the U.S. Coast Guard, and I have an episode that's coming up in the 44 series with a retired Navy lieutenant commander on the battle off Samar.

It's about six destroyers, three destroyers and three destroyer escorts. So basically, knowing that it's going to cost them, they slow down a Japanese fleet long enough to exhaust their logistics so that the Japanese have no choice but to turn around. It costs them. I mean, it costs the destroyers a lot, but it's a fantastic story, and I can't wait to get that episode out. And, Brian, I would be remiss if I didn't include all of the episodes that you've done. probably one of, I think that you are the only person that has done six. So yeah, we've got the Axis retreat from Sicily or Operation Laragon, which you weren't planning on doing. We have an Operation, I'm sorry, we have an Operation Cherry Blossom episode, which focused on marine amphibious

operations, as well as the command culture. We had an episode on Tarawa. And then this year, we had an episode on Operation Flintlock. And we have another episode that's not out yet, But it was on Saipan. And we did a bonus episode, too, but that's not sea related. So nobody's going to care. I think everybody's going to care deeply about zone troopers for the Halloween episode for that. That's a silly shenanigans. Oh, this is fantastic. Yeah, it was. It was a good time. So, hey, listeners, if you need something about aliens arriving in Italy after the Allies have landed there and are pushing up the peninsula, that's some good viewing. There's a lot of operational lessons in that film. Oh, speaking of aliens, Ian Brown did an episode.

It's not out yet, but it's on UFOs. It all circles back. It's all connected. It all goes back to aliens. You know, it's funny. I asked Ian if he wanted to contribute, and I expected a Marine story. And he's like, how about UFOs? And I'm like, oh, my God.

That is the most Ian Brown thing I've ever heard. And I say that with the greatest professional and personal respect for that great American. It's a great episode. He did he did a lot of research. It's professional research. It's good quality work. But when I invited him, I thought he was going to do a Marine Corps episode. And so when he's like he goes, what are the stipulations? And I was like, you know, the guidelines for picking a topic. And I was like, well, anything 1944, I just need it anchored in 1944. Right. It can be back history. It can be future implications, et cetera. And he's like, OK, I got one.

And that's what he comes up with. That's incredible. I love it. I love it. And what that shows, again, is there's something for everybody in why we fight. We follow the instructions. That's right. That's right. Well, I'll say for most maritime listeners, you had me and them at Ice Cream Pirates. That phenomenon, as a historical phenomenon, and your vessels committed to providing specifically ice cream

is just a remarkable testament to humanity at large. What I loved was the USS Kidd, right? they kept getting in trouble for painting the pirates and using the pirate flag the jolly roger they kept getting in trouble for it and they would go and they would pick up like down pilots and whatever and they would go and try and return them to their ships but they would ransom them for ice cream for the ice cream mix for their machines yeah and and i just thought that is hilarious they're ice cream pirates i mean it's phenomenal that okay so put yourself in the shoes of a sailor aboard one of those ships where the threats of being sunk by say an imperial japanese

Navy sub or name the the fighter attack or whatever your life is in peril at all times and yet even then you are able to indulge in this level of of silliness uh within your own service culture wherein again you're jokingly uh holding the recovered pilots hostage for ice cream of all things like that's it's like the spice the spice must flow in Dune the ice cream must flow uh and that's that's what really helped us win the war I'm a fan I think it's I think it's great if you can't if you're not having war is hell right war is hell these guys were fighting hard and they were in danger real danger like all the time real danger they didn't know none of them were coming home until the war was over some of them don't even come home right right away because there's

still work to be done which is another series i'm working on for when i finish the war but they're finding ways to like still i don't know they're still finding joy somewhere you know and i think that that's important i'm a perpetual optimist that's what i do i think that that's you got to find you got to make it bearable and if possible enjoyable so i got a great message and you see a lot of that throughout i think it was phenomenal with so many of the episodes many of the the contributing guests as they're telling their story they then they were doing the research they found a tidbit like that and it just it was so remarkable or tickled them or it was just a reflection of joy found in hell the the hell that is war that they were compelled to

share it like they're like i have to include this on the episode so that's that's remarkable um let's pivot a bit so hey made the case as far as hey maritime listeners there's a lot of great maritime content phenomenal maritime content and you just scratched the surface of some of the episodes on why we fight uh but there's a lot of it that is land-centric right so why do naval and maritime centric listeners why would they want to listen to the many land warfare centric and army centric episodes could you make that case and also describe some notable episodes that could scratch that itch sure this year especially i don't have the same navy and marine corps contributions i think that a lot of a lot of people just got busier than they thought they would be

it's been a busy year for a lot of people so i don't have as many i do have some and the ones the episodes i do have are really really good so i think that even if they're no any appearance by pixel on any podcast is a good omen yeah the um let's see where was i uh but okay i do have a few episodes i think they're fantastic but i also have i think that the other episodes offer value even if they're not marine or navy specific or pacific specific i don't i don't have a lot of navy episodes to begin with but i they're just there they're just a delivery mechanism anyway right i'm just joking let's see uh leadership studies planning and execution organizational challenges if you immediately

brush off a story just because it's not uh it's not your specific service i think that you're missing opportunities to fill experience and knowledge gaps you need to be a little bit creative with that sometimes because even the organizational structures are a little different um what and well i am all for peace right especially as i get older uh we can't guarantee it and we can only guess what the next conflict might be and without knowing when we have to treat all time as precious and make the most of it now is a time to fill those experience gaps with historical case studies with vignettes podcasts whatever works to provide more information movies you know movies whatever works to fill to give you information pixel please pixel just wants to be on

the show really i'm trying to do it i'm trying to like talk around him so that they can edit hopefully editors leave them in leave pixel in whatever works to provide enough information that you might that might one day be useful you know i hope that you never have to use it but if you do you want something to fill those knowledge gaps um the experience gaps rather all this information can hold the place of experience until you have like the actual experience and i think that filling those experience gaps is, I'm all over the place. I think filling those experience gaps with information through historical research or even podcasts, whatever you have to do, it's better than leaving them empty. Every episode that I listed a few moments ago,

I think that they can help all of us, even though there's a lot of European episodes, and I'm sorry, but that's where all the historians are from. So it's like, I'm trying my best to make it as, as joint as possible, but it's an uphill battle. Um, I'd say at least 80% of the episodes though, that I put out have something of value to offer all of the modern force, but I do try to avoid pointing it out. I want people to reach the decision that, oh, this has value for me on their own. So, um, I think that they'll get more from it if they recognize it themselves. Yeah, that's, that's really good stuff. Uh, as you were talking and you were talking about, other opportunities that are more modern forms of getting these lessons learned via you know

podcasts or movies um i was thinking of masters of the air which released not too long ago so that's joining the the canon right of band of brothers the pacific and now masters of the air uh and that has a very visceral way just one lesson among many which you see in many of the episodes of your podcasts just what is the cost and what is the risk when you need to conduct air operations and you do not have command of the air and it's easy to think of the heroism and the sacrifice and valor of say an amphibious landing and just how many people you know die just trying to get ashore and then immediately at the beach and then trying to expand the lodgement or how many may die in a large you know division or core size attack attacking up the italian peninsula

but those casualties pale in comparison to those incurred by a bomber raid just going in deep into Europe and just rolling the dice and you see, I mean, I'm flipping a coin. I'm flipping a coin if I come back or not. And then you can apply that in a modern sense to if we have to fight someone and we don't have command of the air because we can't achieve it, but we can't run this up without air cover or, you know, air assault or some sort of air operation supporting a land or a naval element of that operation and what that is going to mean and the implications of that. You and I could talk, you know, at length about what those could be, but when I to listen to your episodes and i hope other contemporary practitioners when they listen

like those are the connections that are happening and connections that would not happen on their own without a vehicle like why we fight as a podcast to develop those lessons so i think i think you're doing god's work all things considered um so let's turn back to the project uh to this to the start of the project rather uh and it started as you noted with the pre-war maneuvers undertaken by the u.s army so can you describe a little bit what is the value of studying that specifically and how does it apply to the modern maritime professional um well without enough knowledge of how everyone else trains i can only look at it from like an army perspective because that's what i know so when i looked at this the 1941 ghq maneuvers they are still the largest exercise that

the army has ever conducted it was over half a million men or it was about a half a million men vehicles, horses, weapons, land. The government had to buy or rent land just to conduct these exercises because they needed them. They had embedded journalists writing articles as if this was an actual war that they were fighting for this. I mean, they're in the newspapers. It's amazing. But just the sheer size of the exercise was incredible. There were umpires, which I have jokingly referred to as human miles here, they would, well, because they didn't have the technology, right? They would determine the points, who was taken out, who wasn't, how long were they injured for? There were no God guns, you know? So it's basically like,

okay, you're going to go sit over there, get on the truck. If bridges were out or if something was off limits, how effective the mock artillery or the tank fire was, levels of damage. And they would like flip a coin and try to figure it out i mean just like a war game like a tabletop game trying like rolling dice trying to figure out what the damage was how effective it was um they had tables you know like charts and stuff it was i mean there's a whole manual for it it's scientific it's dungeons and dragons like role playing uh they're rolling dice like i think you know you didn't know yet well i got a plus 10 to my fireball or a plus 10 to my artillery attack because the bridge is out or whatever the multiplier might be. I'm sorry.

Well, there's a story, right? There's a story. Christopher Gable wrote the 1941 GHQ Maneuvers book that was published by the Army Center of Military History. And in it, he tells a story about, I want to say that it's Eisenhower or either witnessing it or retelling it. But one of the officers was observing. There was a bridge that had a sign on it saying the bridge is out. the bridge has been destroyed he watches his private come up to the bridge look at the sign look at the bridge look at the river look back at the sign and then proceed to walk across the bridge and he shouts what are you doing can't you see the bridge is out and the private goes can't you see i'm swimming you know because they have to pretend the whole time he's like why am i going to get in

the water if they you know just pretend but um there was an air component to the exercises i don't recall if I covered that in like my threads on Twitter, but there was a component to it. So it's like, so they were working on that joint and dropper ability as well. But setting aside the lack of technology, right, compared to now, what they were doing is very much like the exercises we conduct today. They were similar enough to rotations at NTC or JRTC, maybe not exactly like the warfighter exercises that MCTP runs, but still offering opportunities to train staff functions and command of large formations. And I think that these are things that,

like, we can still learn lessons from this. At the end of the maneuvers, they had a sort of AAR process and wrote up all the lessons learned. And I think that they did a good job. They were prepared to apply this knowledge to their training. And they thought that they would have a year.

But within a couple of weeks, we're attacked at Pearl Harbor. And so that one more year and we'll be good becomes now we're at war, we'll have to make it work. And I think that that is a really important, lesson uh but the you know there are more lessons here though and throughout the history like if we just look you have to know what you do now in order to recognize it in the past so if you're

just looking at the history and you don't understand what you do now you're not going to be able to make the connection if that makes sense it makes makes perfect sense i think a lot of listeners can sympathize with uh you know again we're staring down the barrel of constant saber overrattling from name it uh china russia north korea iran or whatever and then we're like okay cool well we're going to get this new capability or this new formation or whatever to help us deal with this very specific threat and then you ask like well when will it be delivered and then they say 2035 and you're like but didn't you also say that the bad guys might probably do this thing like next year's 2035 sounds too late in understanding there are significant acquisitions

and production and industrial-based challenges and budgetary limitations that tie our hands and make the answer 2035. But just you wait for when, guess what? The other side isn't waiting until you're ready to go. The war starts now. And to that end, if modern practitioners are not reading these lessons or listening to episodes like this to know to where to get pointed on, to see how we did it at scale under military pressure, then you're going to be on the back foot like that's how they got around it like they found fixes they adapted we can learn all that on our own again painfully and slowly or we can look and see how we did it before and cheat a step steal a march and be postured to respond when suddenly the rules change and then maybe the

budgetary things go out the window and the whole nation mobilizes the economy toward this if you have those resources how do you adapt and put those resources to use more aggressively so So, yeah, I think, again, everything you're saying is going to resonate with listeners in perhaps different ways. But those connections, as you've indicated before, they'll probably, those sparks will happen in the minds of the listeners, even unconsciously. So let's pivot back to the show's joint and combined approach. And you've already hit on some of these elements as we've been talking, but it's notable that your show is not just a U.S. Army show, even though that is where the show was born. You've taken a joint and combined approach. So let's start with the joint element.

What have been either challenges or discoveries you've made as you expanded your project from an Army-centric project to a joint endeavor? I'm going to try to be very tactful. Oh, no. So I would say that my biggest challenge remains convincing the other services that this can be good for all of us. I've had no Navy officers contribute, none. But I've had officers from almost every other branch. I've had several naval historians, including one from the Naval War College. And this year I have a couple episodes with a couple of historians from the Naval History and Heritage Command. But the Navy itself, like Navy officers could be contributing, I think. And I feel like they would get something out of it by being part of this. I think that that would help more of the Navy see, oh, yeah, we've got, you know, there's something over here for us to the Coast Guard contributes.

Come on. Last year, I had contributions from the Air Force Academy, the Air Command and Staff College, School of Air, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Space Force PME at Johns Hopkins, one Air Force lieutenant colonel. But, and I hate to make, I hate to say this, but the Army and the Marine Corps have largely carried the 1943 series. And I don't want to make a joke about it, but isn't that kind of telling? And let's see, this year I didn't have as many episodes. I still have a lot, like probably have 90. And I had a lot of guests that lined up initially, but didn't end up having the time. So that was a little, it was a little frustrating because I didn't, I don't have the same diversity of topics.

but that doesn't mean I'm not going to include the topics that people want to contribute. So that makes my series look much more army than before. But I think that part of the hesitation with some guests, especially if they haven't done it, is that they don't understand how I try to make it easy for everybody. Like I don't need a perfect, I will edit and edit and edit and I'll fix it. I promise. Just hop on and tell me a story. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect. I'll clean it up, I promise. But yeah, I would love to see more officers involved because I think that there are opportunities to repurpose what you were already working on, right? I don't know what the other services call their CGSC and ILE equivalents, but if you go to school, right? You

go to school, a military school, any of your PME stuff, if you worked on something that could be linked to this series, reach out. Tell me, I will help you repurpose it. I had, what is it? I recently had released an episode with an army lieutenant colonel who I found him because he wrote a paper at Sam's on military police in World War II. And when I reached out and asked if he would contribute that story to my series, he said, yes, but can I also talk about the future force structure stuff that I've been working on for the last two years, if I can relate it to World War II? And I said, absolutely. And we did. And I think that that's, I think it's an episode that offers kind of a little bit of insight that other branches of service and other branches

within services, it might resonate with them as well. But we connected the history and the present and we discussed some recurring and perpetual challenges. So, I mean, that alone should resonate with just about everybody. My coverage of World War II, at least for now, will be over next year because it'll be 1945. And I'm working on a post-World War II series to talk about what that involved, what that post-World War II period looks like, right? There's a lot of responsibilities associated with winning, with fighting a war like this on this scale to actual victory. And then you have to do things like take care of people. We don't learn this part of the history. Occupation, rebuilding, eventually the Marshall Plan, shifting geopolitics and global

status. What's a superpower? Who is one? You know, who's a superpower now? And why? And who isn't? and why and what does that get us? And eventually I want to do a series that focuses on NATO in the Cold War because I want to do things like talk about Korea and Vietnam because we don't learn enough about that. We barely touched on them when I was in school. Yeah, I think that the fact that we don't learn enough of this part of the history unless we learn it very deliberately. And I'm just trying to help do that, but I can't do it by myself. And that's where my challenges are. yeah i don't know if i answered your question but like i said my biggest struggle has been has been and remains convincing all of the services that this is a good thing for everybody

like a marine at guadalcanal sasha is asking where is the navy so i i kid and i'm going to pick on him because this is uh sea control the sea control podcast and so i haven't focused so i would offer this as an observation and i'm offering it to somebody who is not a member of the United States Navy, though I am in the Department of the Navy and work with lots of naval officers and do get to work a lot with or understand their PME continuum and their professional development. And the observation is this. The U.S. Navy today does not appear to value PME as much as operational experience, i.e. time at, say, the Naval War College as a student is time away from a ship, you know, maintaining your falls and getting that

experience or is time away from flying or is a time away from being on a submarine and so there seems to be a preference to not go if you do not have to and there are some folks who get sent against their will because they still have to fill a certain number of seats notably to the school i mentioned before the maritime advanced war fighting school whereas at the school of advanced war fighting for the marine corps and um sam's for for the army right i don't know about sass but i can say for saw and sam's those are highly competitive processes you apply you fight we we incentivize it we make it something where the selection rate is small and those people get used very aggressively and then they are generally rewarded for their efforts in some way, shape, or form. Whereas

MAWS students, many are, you know, voluntold to go to fill the quotas and many of them fall out. And it is, I have not heard of a Marine officer failing out of the School of Advanced Warfighting, for example, but there are Navy officers who, I'll say, I'll use the term, are disinvited from MAWS for reasons. And again, that's not me casting stones saying, you know, hey, the Navy's bad. I'm just saying, as a service, it appears that they do not value PME and the things that are consequent to that, that I would say naval history as an example, as much as the other services, which is ironic considering when you look at the reports of so many senior naval commanders after World War II, they contribute or attribute so much of the success, the operational

success to the fleet battle problems that were fought over and over again at the Naval War College in the interwar period. And again, credit where credit is due. There's many remarkably committed Navy officers who do love the subject and committed folks at the Naval War College and many of the specialized institutions under it. I would say I would call it the China Maritime Studies Institute specifically as a remarkable enterprise that's really informing a lot of our modern planning efforts. However, as a service, it does not appear to be something that is incentivize as much. And so that could probably be a key contributing factor to the discouragement of some to be in a position to contribute to the Why We Fight podcast and tell the Navy story.

And consequently, if you don't tell your story, either it will not be told or other people will tell it for you. And then you'll be listening to a podcast like this, where people like you and me are throwing stones at the Navy for not caring about their history. So I challenge Navy officer listeners to tell us we're wrong and to reach out to sasha and appear on the mother of tanks why we fight podcast and tell a navy story period um i'm sorry i did not mean to rant let's let's no no no i i agree a hundred percent and i don't i don't know like because i'm not around the navy i don't know and the marine corps is close enough to the army in shape i guess and style that it's maybe the army's a little rounder but it's not whoa wouldn't be my shots fired

but yes they are you know what i mean like the um if we're doing comparisons the marine corps and the army are closer than any of the other services are to each other and i think that the way that you guys think is close enough that you could almost speak the same language i don't know what the navy does maybe they don't even know what they do certainly don't know their history if they're not going to come on and tell us you know but it's one of those things where it's like you have to have how can they not be curious about where they come from you know how did you get here how are your ships similar to how is what you do on these ships similar to what they did 80 years ago yeah don't they want to know that i would want to know that but yeah we'll see

maybe we've effectively we will effectively uh shame some into uh again appearing out of the missed to to tell enable for us or we both get fired worst worst i'll get is i'll get a yell in it you know i've been yelled at before i can survive those um so so let's turn it back let's not pick it on the navy navy pick on the sky uh expanding a bit and noting that sea control is the podcast of the set for international maritime security can you kind of point us to the same or have a similar discussion regarding your approach to bringing in international guests to your project. So what have you gleaned from, I know you've had British, Canadian, Italian, Brazilian, and probably other contributors. What have you learned in that

process? Sure. Well, let me start by saying that as you and I both know, the Army has long been very good at telling the Army's story. The Marine Corps is really good at telling the Marine Corps story. Americans in general learn American history. What we don't learn is the Canadian story. You know, hardly no one tells the Italian story, certainly not in English. The Brazilian army sent 25,000 men and 67 women to fight in World War II. I didn't even know that. I was aware of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. I didn't know much about it until earlier this year. why why don't we know this um for me the idea of combined arms and joint operations needs to extend to the history as well um i think that that's the only way that we're going to get better

i am the whole you know the whole stronger together thing i think that that's that's absolutely the key but we aren't we can't do some of the things together and not all of the things together you know and i think that part of the thing one of the things that we definitely should be doing together is looking at the history. We should understand that the Canadians and the Brits were right there with us. In the Pacific, the Australians, the New Zealanders, Indian Army, all of them, China. There are stories here that we don't talk about. We don't tell them. We don't learn them. We should understand what the war was like for Italy. What happened after the Italians signed the armistice in September 1943? What did the rest of the war look like for them?

But we don't tell that story because we weren't going to win the war in Italy. You know, we weren't going to end the war fighting in Italy. We should know what the Army and the Marine Corps were doing together in the Pacific and what they were getting right. We should know that the amphibious landings in 43 and 44 by the Army in the Mediterranean and the European theaters were made possible because of the work that the Marine Corps had done. You know, it's like those landings might not have been as successful if it wasn't for the Marine Corps. And then we have things like the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings here. And the Marines are invited by the French to participate and people are making jokes. And I have at least two episodes where I spend probably 10 minutes arguing with why their jokes are stupid.

You know, it's like I have a friend that jokes that it doesn't matter what it is. As soon as somebody is picking on something that I find important, I will absolutely be ready. I'll draw blood. I don't care. You know, I'm ready to fight. But we made this history together, right? We should be telling it together. And I think the fact that we haven't is doing a disservice to all of us. As for what I've gleaned, everyone that has contributed has been extremely grateful for the opportunity to be involved.

These stories are important. And I think highlighting our shared contributions to the war effort and ultimate victory tells a much better story than stovepiping individual and national or service accomplishments. And that's, yeah. So I will say it till I'm blue in the face. I think that we need to be doing more of this stuff together so that we understand how to do everything together when we need to. Very well said. In addition, your willingness to draw blood for something you believe in is the sign of any great podcast host.

So that's the fallout of the work you do. But yes, lessons abound as far as what it means to be a part of a coalition, coalition command and control. Just the matter of more, right? Like, hey, we can only put so many people, stuff, things at decisive points across time and space. And so without allies, partners, et cetera, we're not going to win a global war, right? So understanding not just that other people contributed, but how and why and how you stitch it together. I think all of that just comes out in some of these episodes you talked about and also reveals, again, what do we think about in World War II as a basic vanilla American listener? It's like, okay, D-Day in Europe and fighting the Nazis on one end.

And maybe we understand there was also the Pacific War and, oh, that was just U.S. Marines and Iwo Jima, the end, right? That's our very basic standard issue World War II history. Whereas, again, something is – you noted a whole bunch of examples. One that draws to mind for me is the China-Burma-India Theater. um like oh dear god like a whole other theater of operations with its own unique challenges that was critical in pinning down a decisive amount of imperial japanese forces that could not be used elsewhere so again we could we could trade lessons back and forth all day but i'll leave that with the listeners and just say again more reason to listen to why we fight as a podcast so sasha what

else haven't we talked about that you think is important to discuss regarding the series um i do try, right? Anytime that somebody, because I do want it to be useful. And I like to save people an extra step if I can help it. So any books that are mentioned in books or websites or any kind of resources that are mentioned in the episodes, I generally link to them, especially if they're freely available. I link to them in the episode description. I don't know how many people actually read the episode description, but there are links in there. Any, I do try to draw attention to all of the resources that are available from the services like the green books and the blue books from the air force and i imagine the navy's books are also blue the marine books and i imagine those

ones are red are they red yeah the marine for books are red um there are versions of the the naval official histories that are a darker blue than the air force blue but you can also get them with pretty uh amazing colors the one the the ones that samuel elliot morrison i believe hold on i have a closet full of them uh wait one i'll scurry over in real time and i'll show you some so yes uh samuel elliot morrison writing the history of the united states naval operations and they are they are abundant uh and modern missions have lots of big arms you can procure them with a wonderful holiday discount from the united states naval institute and they will dominate an entire bookcase as they do mine such that listeners right behind me i have my third bookcase that i've not

yet assembled that i purchased for the express purpose of giving these books a home there you go um okay great uh so uh sasha you sold the listeners they want to listen to why we fight they want to listen to it right now where can they find it everywhere anywhere that they stream podcasts they can they can find it they can search for so i post on all the social media platforms and i generally link to it but they can search why we fight and this year it'll say why we fight 1944 but in a couple weeks it'll say 1945 same series all i do is change the title um i labeled the 1943 series as season one so season one are all the 43 episodes season two are all the 44 episodes and season three will be all the 45 episodes what else it's also available on audible

because i do have some people who are guests that don't listen to podcasts so they didn't even know how to find them, but they listen to audio books. I know. Look, I'm trying to help them. They listen to audio books. So if they listen to audio books, I go, well, do you use Audible? And they say, yes. So I made sure that the podcast was also available on Audible. And when I post, I generally post the Apple link because that's what I listen to. But lately I've been adding Apple and Spotify. So that generally covers, I don't know, it covers like 80% of the audience okay no that's phenomenal um and yeah i'll definitely include links in the show notes so if listeners uh are listening to you here on uh c control they'll easily be able to pivot over

to why we fight so noting again you're everywhere but finally sasha where can listeners find you online and what else are you working on um so i am on twitter facebook instagram threads blue sky as mother of tanks um youtube also but i i'm not really using it so they can search mother of tanks some of them have underscores separating the words some of them have periods some of them have nothing but um they'll find me and then um so if you want my history content search for mother of tanks on whatever platform you're on and that's me i do have a website with links to just about everything on it and that's it also has links to the the written threads the the twitter threads from the first two and a half years. Those are organized by series and those are also on my

website and it's just motheroftanks.com. And I do engage my audience on all platforms. And I ask people, like I get a lot of people that send me private messages with comments on the podcast episodes, but I get a lot of people sending me the same comments. So it's like, before I know it, it'll be like two hours. And I've just been replying to people, multiple people saying the same thing. So like make those comments public, just respond to my post about the episode and I'll answer it there and that way other people see it maybe they'll engage and you guys can validate each other and it'll be good but it's just one of those things where like I lose a lot of time with the messages with people just making comments about the series where they could be

public and it would be a little bit easier so that's my only request but uh but yeah um what am I working on I am working on the 45 series which will end the war and then start talking about that immediate post-war period. I'm trying to shape a post-World War II series. I don't know what it's going to look like, whether it's going to cover 46, 46 to 49, 46 to 50. I don't know what it's going to cover. I think I need to figure out who the guests are going to be and what kind of stories they want to tell. And then I'll be able to shape it a little bit better. And I'm working on my dissertation because I would like to get a doctorate. And I'm working on two history books that are related to my dissertation research and a novel, well, a series of novels, but yeah,

just a little bit, just a few things. Can you throw some chum in the water for listeners who are now going to be slathering at the mouth and waiting to read those novels? What are the novels about? So my dissertation is focused on the tendency to undervalue the contributions of the military police and criminal investigators. And so whenever we have a drawdown period or an interwar period where the force gets smaller, they are almost immediately thrown on the chopping block. And then what we're doing is we're kind of, while we're undervaluing their contribution, we're also underestimating and undervaluing what it takes to create these one professional service members, but also professional law enforcement. So they've got kind of two hats

at the same time. And it's not just as simple as slapping an MP armband on them and telling them, hey, go forth, you're good. Go direct traffic. Don't cause any problems. Don't take any bribes. You know, it's not that simple. So my dissertation is focused on that. And I'm looking at problems stemming from that across all of the 20th century and into the 21st. So World War I, World War II, Vietnam, global war on terror. I've got examples from all that show that this is a perpetual problem that we should address a little bit differently because we keep solving it the same way. And then the history books that I'm writing, one is focused on just the World War II story, talking about the MPs, CID, IG, and JAG, given an almost impossible task, right, to prevent

and fight crime in every theater while the war is going on. And there's conflicting interests because, you know, big army in D.C. is really comfortable from D.C. saying, hey, if it's violent crime, especially punish it, punish the violent crime, especially, but all crime, punish it as severely as possible. And then you've got combat leaders on the ground going, I need every man on the front. We're losing guys left and right. And so, yeah, so there's a little bit of conflict there, but I think that the story could be, I think that it needed to be told as an underdog story instead of as a look at all these criminals story, you know, so that's what I'm doing. I'm focusing it on the heroes because those are the stories that I like to tell. I'm also writing

another history book related to that. And then the novels are a fictionalized version of this history so that it becomes a little bit more palatable for people that aren't likely to pick up a history book, but they will pick up a novel and then they'll be able to learn because all the history is factual. All the events are going on at the same time. And I've got them mapped out from um let's say if i just look at the like so the i'm starting with the european series because the pacific requires more research i'm sorry i will get there i will get there i will become a really good semi-good um okay i will become an acceptable pacific historian well you're already superior to uh the overwhelming preponderance of active serving uh naval officers um so that's a

pretty good place to start basically bars on the ground you said it not me um yeah so if i look at just the pacific the just the european story i've got from england of 42 through uh germany of 45 and i spread that out 12 novels so that sounds incredible uh and i can't wait to read them and i hope that uh listeners can't wait to read them as well so i'm a little ambitious just a bit just Make sure you sleep between now and publication. But, Sasha, this was a really great time. I had a blast. I hope you did as well.

Thanks again for joining us. Fair winds and following seas. To listeners, bravo, Zulu, for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. Help me, Bob-I, pull in the alley. Hey, hey, pull in the alley. Help me, Bob-I, pull in the alley. Pull it out of the shimbo now. A porter of a porter gin, oh.

Hey, hey, pull in the alley. A porter of wine, both white and red, oh. Pull it out of the shimbo now. So help me, Bob-I, pull in the alley. We'll be right back.