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Rating: 
Summary: A Classic in the Making
Review: In this book Odom sets himself up as a true groundbreaker. Many historians have looked at the interwar period (1918-1939) from a European perspective, seeking to find the start points for military success or disaster depending upon the nation under study. Odom is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of the American Army during this period without dwelling on the mere artifacts of technology (specifically the tank and the airplane) but rather upon the heart of any military organization, their doctrine. Right now and for some time to come this is the single best source to examine how the United States military, and specifically the Army, experienced and viewed this period of important changes and developments. Odom sets the bar high and places himself on a par with such classics of military doctrine studies as Doughty's Seeds of Disaster and Winton's To Change and Army. In light of the striking parallels between that period and the present day, no professional can safely claim to understand the factors at work in either period until they read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Essential to understanding the Army's development
Review: Many readers who lack a deep professional interest in military doctrine may be put off by a book with the word in its title, fearing it will be a dry, abstract, and labored tome on military theory. That is true of some books, but not of this one. The author, a distinguished U.S. Army infantry officer with a history Ph.D., has really produced a history of the entire development of the service between the world wars. It makes a fascinating and often pretty colorful story, and it does a great deal to explain the Army's successes and failings in World War II. Odom shows an army essentially paralyzed and left in a state of suspended animation from which it was aroused only on the brink of war. Remembering the agonizing difficulties of raising, training, and equipping a mass army after America's entry into World War I, the Army's leaders and their civilian masters placed first priority on an expansible force. At the same time, shortsightedly pennypinching Republican administrations in the 1920s and the first FDR administration's absorption in the Depression kept military expenditures and manning meager. The handful of Regulars who remained after meeting needs for deployed forces in China, the Philippines, the Canal Zone, Hawaii, and on the Mexican border were scattered across America to train Guard and Reserve forces. What little money the Army had for R&D and equipment procurement went almost entirely to an Air Corps with little interest in supporting the ground forces it wanted only to break away from. With widely scattered forces, no modern equipment, and no money for "luxuries" like transportation, the rare exercises amounted to little more than musters. Deprived of the stimulus of real-world experience in the field and muffled by senior officers and civilians unwilling to hear critical or even novel views, the Army's officers were left with little but their memories of World War I to guide them, with the natural result that the service remained backward-looking. Had the United States been drawn into World War II in 1939 or 1940 rather than late in 1941, it would have found the Army catastrophically unprepared -- not simply in terms of manpower and matériel but in ideas about how to organize and fight. Bad as the Army's condition was in December of 1941, it vastly better than it had been two years before. All of this is made vividly clear in this well written and well structured book. Some may feel that the author pulls his punches a little bit with respect to the responsibility of the Army's own leaders. As he makes clear, they found themselves in a very difficult corner. But I think it is fair to say that they could have prepared the Army somewhat better had they been more willing to make and defend painful tradeoffs within the limited resources they were granted. (For instance, unmentioned by Odom, the Army spent relatively substantial sums on construction of buildings in the mid to late 1930s -- badly needed, to be sure, but how badly compared to other things?) Still, Odom provides us with much of the information needed to make up our own minds on these issues. I found this book both valuable and enjoyable. I would recommend pairing it with David E. Johnson's _Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945_ (Cornell U. Press, 1998), which complements it in many ways. Hopefully, Odom's publishers will follow the lead of Johnson's in issuing an affordable paperbound edition. When they do so, they might consider dropping the "doctrine" from the subtitle; it will still be strictly accurate, and less likely to confuse non-professional readers. Will O'Neil
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Study in the Development of Army Transformation
Review: The Army is undergoing a fundamental transformation today. However, this is not the first transformation that the US Army has undergone, and if history is any judge, it won't be the last. William Odom has captured the essence of the tumultuous transformation of our Army during the period between the two World Wars in his superlative treatise After the Trenches. The transformation of our Army during the inter-war years was as profound as the transformation we are experiencing now. If you are looking for a guide that explains the importance of doctrine, weapons, and organizations to transformation, you must read Odom's After the Trenches. Imagine the challenges facing the US Army of 1919, one year after the end of the War to End All Wars. The years 1914 to 1918 were years of profound and dramatic change. The methods of warfare that the Army had practiced before the Great War had been completely overturned. The Army went into World War I with a tradition that was largely formed from the frontier Army of he Indian Wars and the brief fighting in the Spanish American War. Armed with revolvers, sabers and wearing campaign hats in 1914, the Army finished 1918 wearing tin helmets and armed with gas masks, machine guns, rapid firing artillery, airplanes, and tanks. True to our American tradition, after the Great War, the Army was largely disbanded. Only a small corps of professional soldiers was retained during the period from 1919 to 1939. In that time, however, warfare continued to change. In the meantime, Germany studied the lessons of the Great War, improved on the methods and weapons of WWI, and transformed its doctrine and training. This historical appreciation is what Odom brings so masterfully to print in After the Trenches. The author explains the evolution of Army doctrine throughout this period and traces the intellectual action of an Army trying to find its way in a brave new world. He describes how the thinkers of that time guarded their uniquely American approach to war and rejected many of the European, and particularly the French, concepts that grew out of the horror of the trench warfare. In the inter-war years, the US Army, guided by men such as General John Pershing, Hugh Drum, George Lynch, Frank Parker, and Lesley McNair tried to balance technology and the human dimension of war, and came up short. Rapid changes in the methods of war during the interwar years changed military doctrine form one "built on infantry-artillery coordination to one based on a highly mobile combined arms team." Army doctrine did not keep pace with these changes. With few men, little material, almost no funding, and no maneuvers during the years 1919-1939, it is not surprising that Army doctrine was so inadequate. Bureaucratic hassling, friction between the branches of the Army, and an inept doctrinal development process combined to create a situation that was so bad that the Army failed to coordinate a combined arms doctrine up to the eve of World War II. With the German victories in Poland, Norway, and France at the outbreak of WWII providing a blueprint for doctrine, the US Army raced to catch up. In the end, our Army paid a price in blood for its inability to transform more rapidly. The lesson that Odom provides us is that this period of rapid change almost left the Army unprepared for the kind of combat that was to characterize World War II. Odom clearly shows in After the Trenches that the single most important reason US Army doctrine lagged so far behind was the Army's institutional deficiency to employ a tightly-run, well-coordinated doctrine development process. He provides us with a very valuable precautionary story, one that is well written and thoroughly researched Now, imagine the challenges that our Army faces today, more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As Odom points out in his conclusion: "Establishment of an organization dedicated to monitoring and accommodating change is the most important element in successful modernization. This organization must address weapons, organizations, and doctrine to avoid the same calamity that befell the Army from 1919-1939. With that in mind, anyone involved in the transformation of today's Army will find After the Trenches an account worth studying.
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Study in the Development of Army Transformation
Review: The Army is undergoing a fundamental transformation today. However, this is not the first transformation that the US Army has undergone, and if history is any judge, it won't be the last. William Odom has captured the essence of the tumultuous transformation of our Army during the period between the two World Wars in his superlative treatise After the Trenches. The transformation of our Army during the inter-war years was as profound as the transformation we are experiencing now. If you are looking for a guide that explains the importance of doctrine, weapons, and organizations to transformation, you must read Odom's After the Trenches. Imagine the challenges facing the US Army of 1919, one year after the end of the War to End All Wars. The years 1914 to 1918 were years of profound and dramatic change. The methods of warfare that the Army had practiced before the Great War had been completely overturned. The Army went into World War I with a tradition that was largely formed from the frontier Army of he Indian Wars and the brief fighting in the Spanish American War. Armed with revolvers, sabers and wearing campaign hats in 1914, the Army finished 1918 wearing tin helmets and armed with gas masks, machine guns, rapid firing artillery, airplanes, and tanks. True to our American tradition, after the Great War, the Army was largely disbanded. Only a small corps of professional soldiers was retained during the period from 1919 to 1939. In that time, however, warfare continued to change. In the meantime, Germany studied the lessons of the Great War, improved on the methods and weapons of WWI, and transformed its doctrine and training. This historical appreciation is what Odom brings so masterfully to print in After the Trenches. The author explains the evolution of Army doctrine throughout this period and traces the intellectual action of an Army trying to find its way in a brave new world. He describes how the thinkers of that time guarded their uniquely American approach to war and rejected many of the European, and particularly the French, concepts that grew out of the horror of the trench warfare. In the inter-war years, the US Army, guided by men such as General John Pershing, Hugh Drum, George Lynch, Frank Parker, and Lesley McNair tried to balance technology and the human dimension of war, and came up short. Rapid changes in the methods of war during the interwar years changed military doctrine form one "built on infantry-artillery coordination to one based on a highly mobile combined arms team." Army doctrine did not keep pace with these changes. With few men, little material, almost no funding, and no maneuvers during the years 1919-1939, it is not surprising that Army doctrine was so inadequate. Bureaucratic hassling, friction between the branches of the Army, and an inept doctrinal development process combined to create a situation that was so bad that the Army failed to coordinate a combined arms doctrine up to the eve of World War II. With the German victories in Poland, Norway, and France at the outbreak of WWII providing a blueprint for doctrine, the US Army raced to catch up. In the end, our Army paid a price in blood for its inability to transform more rapidly. The lesson that Odom provides us is that this period of rapid change almost left the Army unprepared for the kind of combat that was to characterize World War II. Odom clearly shows in After the Trenches that the single most important reason US Army doctrine lagged so far behind was the Army's institutional deficiency to employ a tightly-run, well-coordinated doctrine development process. He provides us with a very valuable precautionary story, one that is well written and thoroughly researched Now, imagine the challenges that our Army faces today, more than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As Odom points out in his conclusion: "Establishment of an organization dedicated to monitoring and accommodating change is the most important element in successful modernization. This organization must address weapons, organizations, and doctrine to avoid the same calamity that befell the Army from 1919-1939. With that in mind, anyone involved in the transformation of today's Army will find After the Trenches an account worth studying.
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