This anthology of historical war studies looks at military expansion from the French Revolution to WWII—and the enduring lessons for today. In the years after the Cold War, many governments sought to reduce the sizes of their armed forces. Along with this general reduction came a shift in military doctrine away from conventional warfare and toward counterinsurgency operations. But in light of new geopolitical developments, the pendulum is swinging back. Once again, armies are growing in size. Now is the time to look back at the age of total war and the hard-won military lessons about the buildup, composition and use of large formations. It is these lessons from history that this book addresses. What does history tell us about military expansion? How did armies prepare and train for a major conflict in times of peace? How did the armies ensure that the doctrine and training used in a small army was adequate for a drastically enlarged army in the case of total war? All these questions were as relevant then as they are now. This anthology analyzes a number of case studies and provides insights into themes and topics that characterized the so-called ‘reconstitution’ of armies in their historical and social contexts.

“A must-read book that explores a vital pre-war effort [with] deep research and gripping writing.” —Washington Times In The rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941, Paul Dickson tells the dramatic story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II. In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, America had strong isolationist leanings. The US Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men—unprepared to defend the country, much less carry the fight to Europe and the Far East. And yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American army led the Allied invasion of North Africa, beginning the campaign that would defeat Germany, and the Navy and Marines were fully engaged with Japan in the Pacific. Dickson chronicles this transformation from Franklin Roosevelt’s selection of George C. Marshall to be Army Chief of Staff to the remarkable peace-time draft of 1940 and the massive and unprecedented mock battles in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas by which the skill and spirit of the Army were forged and out of which iconic leaders like Eisenhower, Bradley, and Clark emerged. The narrative unfolds against a backdrop of political and cultural isolationist resistance and racial tension at home, and the increasingly perceived threat of attack from both Germany and Japan.

"Recent discussions about granting direct commissions as field-grade officers (major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel) to people with highly-desirable civilian experience are often couched in terms of "that was done during World War II." Responses that such wartime commissions were temporary commissions in the Army of the United States (AUS), rather than in the Regular Army (RA), are usually met with blank looks. During World War II, almost all Army commissions--the authorization from the government that gives a military officer the right to command--were temporary AUS commissions. The AUS commission saw continued use in limited numbers after the war, but has been in hiatus since the early 1980s. The AUS commission was the last of several types of temporary commissions the United States government used to expand the Army officer corps during wartime. The use of temporary commissions to provide enough officers to lead the quickly growing ranks was the standard practice during most of the major wars fought by the United States until after the end of the Vietnam War, varying only in the type of commission and method for raising additional wartime forces. Only since 1980 has the US Army sought to wage war without issuing some sort of temporary commission to expand the officer corps"--

This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.

Winner of the 2019 William E. Colby Award "The book I had been waiting for. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Bill Gates The era of autonomous weapons has arrived. Today around the globe, at least thirty nations have weapons that can search for and destroy enemy targets all on their own. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in next-generation warfare, describes these and other high tech weapons systems—from Israel’s Harpy drone to the American submarine-hunting robot ship Sea Hunter—and examines the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. “A smart primer to what’s to come in warfare” (Bruce Schneier), Army of None engages military history, global policy, and cutting-edge science to explore the implications of giving weapons the freedom to make life and death decisions. A former soldier himself, Scharre argues that we must embrace technology where it can make war more precise and humane, but when the choice is life or death, there is no replacement for the human heart.

How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army's inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight. In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries—and for wars still to come.