Publisher's Weekly Review
On November 15, 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led 60,000 troops on a 700-mile march through Confederate territory. In their wake they left a trail of destruction that has since become the stuff of military legend. In assessing the influence of Sherman on 20th-century war, Carr (Fortress Europe) argues that his greatest contribution lies not in the march itself-though his tactics did inform Patton's Third Army and MacArthur's Pacific campaign-but rather in Sherman's willingness to wage war against civilians. Though he stops short of repeating the claim that Sherman ushered in the age of total war, Carr finds that Sherman's concept of "indirect warfare"-avoiding direct battle and instead disrupting the enemy's economy and communications while terrorizing civilians in order to bring about a swifter end to conflict-has become a lasting characteristic of American warfare, from the Philippine War of 1898 to Vietnam and the Gulf War. Even today's modern warfare, wherein the military claims to engage in decisive "surgical strikes," is in certain ways very similar. Yet seeing a fundamental morality and limit to Sherman's tactics, Carr believes the general himself would have condemned these later campaigns. Much has been made of Sherman's insistence that "war is hell." Time, it seems, has only proven Sherman more correct. Photos. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Carr (journalist) analyzes William Tecumseh Sherman's Civil War march to the sea, considers its legacies for subsequent US warfare, and argues for an important, albeit often indirect, linkage between them. The author explores debates about targeting civilians in warfare, whether economically, psychologically, or physically, and asks searing questions: Are civilian populations and the infrastructure that sustains them appropriate targets in warfare? Do civilian populations hold collective responsibility for conflicts that they support? To demonstrate Sherman's legacies, Carr details food denial operations in the Philippines from 1898-1902, the WW I Allied blockade, strategic bombing of German and Japanese cities in WW II, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer's blitzing of North Korea from 1950-1951, rural pacification campaigns in the Vietnam War, and counterinsurgency during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He also traces Sherman's influence on such military strategists as Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, B. H. Liddell Hart, J. F. C. Fuller, and Heinz Guderian. A lucid examination of how strategic decisions produce cascading consequences, not all of them positive. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --William Alan Taylor, Angelo State University
Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Carr (Fortress Europe) challenges the reader by asking the question: If Sherman represents the enduring symbol of military barbarism, to what extent have America's subsequent wars followed the template that he created? The author's concern is not with military operations, strategies, and battles per se, but rather with Washington's wars on innocent civilians. Carr devotes half of his treatise to Sherman's capture and depopulation of Atlanta, his brutal "March to the Sea" (Savannah), and his devastating swing through the Carolinas. There are grim but insightful examples of the multifarious relationships between the occupied (including slaves) and the occupiers, whose actions ranged from unbridled foraging and arson to examples of gallantry on the part of federal troops in defense of those most vulnerable. Carr moves on to the Civil War's end, the "unreconstructed South," and Sherman's subsequent "Hard War" campaigns against Native American tribes out West. He finally considers Sherman's influence on a succession of U.S. theater commands, such as the bloody antiguerilla tactics employed in the Philippine insurrection of 1898-1902 and the horrendous noncombatant casualty lists caused by predator drone warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. VERDICT A powerful, if disturbing reflection on America's past and contemporary military policies. Recommended for political and military historians, Pentagon theorists, antiwar proponents, all public libraries, and general readers.-John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.