Military Innovation in the Interwar Period

Although this excellent book is primarily aimed at military readers, it is a must for students of the history of technology because of the impressively comprehensive way in which the contributors and editors have treated the subject. Their approach is multidimensional, integrating organizational, institutional, personal, cultural, political, and technological factors with tactical and strategic considerations. Further, they offer not only multinational comparisons but an all-service perspective that goes far beyond the usual single-service, single-country monographic treatment.

The key subject-matter chapters include armored warfare (British, French, German), amphibious warfare (American, British, Japanese), strategic bombardment (British, American, German), close air support (German, British, American), carrier aviation (British, American, Japanese), submarine warfare (German, British, American), and radar (German, British, American). These case histories are followed by three interpretive chapters that explore the larger implications of the process by which technological advances are fostered and incorporated into ongoing institutions and cultures. The authors have made superb use of the best available monographic literature. It is no disparagement to say this, for few readers will have read as widely as the authors in the specialized literature that underlies these case histories. Military Innovation in the Interwar Period presents a mature summary of the contributors’ years of research, writing, and reflection. The result is a book that should be required reading in all service staff schools and war colleges. It is so well written that it should prove useful in undergraduate courses in military history as well as the history of technology.

Wisely, the authors avoid pontification or offering any pat “lessons learned” packaged for senior decision makers. Their purpose is “to provide insights into the nature of the processes involved in major innovation and change” during the interwar era and “to highlight those factors that encourage success as well as those that inhibit innovation” (p. 3). The crucial term is insights. In a period when scientific advances and technological innovations in society at large race ahead but military budgets are eroding sharply, a book such as this has much to offer today’s decision makers.

No review can capture the richness of the many insights offered here, not only in the text but in numerous footnote commentaries. A couple of illustrations will have to suffice. No institution will thrive if it regards intellectual effort with contempt and represses truly objective analyses of its ongoing experience. Williamson Murray provides an account of British army leaders’ attempts to skew the official history of World War I to cast the army’s performance in an unduly favorable light, their repression of critics such as Colonel Fuller and Liddell Hart, and their sidetracking of imaginatively innovative officers. All of this contributed to leaving the British army intellectually ill-prepared when World War II arrived. The Germans, it appears, were more ready to tolerate prickly or even obnoxious personalities such as Guderian, so long as they produced useful ideas. As an example of a provocative footnote that suggests an idea worthy of elaboration in depth, consider this: “aircraft-engine technology may well have been one area in which the Versailles treaty succeeded in constraining German military developments” (p. 113). Any precedent here for dealing with contemporary Iraq?

The payoff comes in the concluding chapters, which reflect constructively on the substantive case histories. Here the editors seek “to tease our perspectives to help in thinking about the future” (p. 30). Virtually every page rewards the reader: “Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected, but political and strategic mistakes live forever” (p. 305). War games, as used by the German army and the U.S. Navy, were open-minded experiments aimed at “suggesting what questions one might ask” (p. 317) rather than justifying current doctrine. “Messiahs are not enough; they need disciples” (p. 549).Words on paper will not suffice. Reformers need operational units that have exercised and tested their ideas. “Senior military commanders . . . are not won over by manuals.” They are...