Syllabus
History 390

Modern Military History

Section 2:
Mon-Wed-Fri, 1:25, Hardin 233
(Spring 2008)

Prof. Edwin E. Moise
Office: Hardin 102
Office phones: 656-5369, 656-3153
Home phone: 654-7087
e-mail: eemoise@clemson.edu

Messages can be left in my mailbox in Hardin 124, or in the box on my office door.

Office Hours

    Monday     10:10-11:00, 2:30-3:20
    Tuesday    11:00-12:00
    Wednesday  10:10-11:00, 2:30-3:20
    Thursday   11:00-12:00
    Friday     10:10-11:00

Course Objectives

To give students an overview of the nature of modern warfare (primarily but not exclusively land warfare), including discussion of strategy, tactics, technology, and the relationship of the military to society. The main focus will be on the period from the late 19th century to the present, but there will be some background on earlier periods.

What goes into your grade

Your grade in the course will be based mainly on the written work I have assigned. You cannot do extra papers for extra credit. You can improve your grade a bit by participating in class discussion. The best way to pick up extra points is to argue against me in class; If you can point out to me that I have made a mistake you get two points extra in the gradebook. If you present a good clear argument that I am wrong about something, with evidence, then your grade may be boosted even if you do not succeed in convincing me.

I do not emphasize trivial factual details in this course. On tests and quizzes I will NOT ask you to tell me the dates of the battle of Arnhem, or the names of the commanders in it. There are some facts you need to know, but they are more important things than dates and names. On the other hand, I will expect you to get an idea of the sequence of events, what came first and what came later.

The most important single part of your grade will be the course paper. You can write it on whatever topic you please, within the limit of the subject matter of this course. Most of the papers should be about eight to ten pages long typed double spaced, or the equivalent in handwriting. Longer papers acceptable.

For more detailed guidelines on the term paper, see Writing a Term Paper in Military History.

The paper is due Wednesday, April 23. It is late if I have not gotten it before I go home that day (definitely not before 4:30 PM, maybe later than that). There will be a five point penalty if it is handed in on April 24 or 25. The penalty will be fifteen points if it is not turned in by the time I go home on Friday, April 25.

You can have a pretty free choice of topics for this paper, within the limits of the subject matter of this course. You must come in and talk to me about your paper, and discuss the sources you will be using. It is not enough to say to me as we are walking out of the classroom one morning "Professor Moise, is it OK if I write about the Battle of Chancellorsville?" You will need to talk things over with me for ten or maybe even twenty minutes, not just a few seconds. After we have talked, you must give me a written statement of your topic, with a list of the main sources you plan to use. There will be a five point penalty if you have not given this to me by March 5, and an additional five points if it is not in by March 12. If it still is not in by March 26, I will either give you yet another five-point penalty, or else simply hand you a sheet of paper telling you what topic you must write on, and what sources you must use.

The deadlines in the paragraph above have now been extended. The new dates are: There will be a five point penalty if you have not given your term paper source sheet to me by March 10, and an additional five points if it is not in by March 24. If it still is not in by March 31, I will either give you yet another five-point penalty, or else simply hand you a sheet of paper telling you what topic you must write on, and what sources you must use.

If you bring in a preliminary draft of your paper ten days or so before it is due, I will read it and then tell you what needs changing. You can then go home and re-write it. This will almost certainly improve the grades of the few students who bother to take advantage of this offer, so don't be one of the lazy majority who don't start work on the paper until a week before it is due, and then have no time for re-writing.

The paper is worth 150 points. The other written work will be:
    --Two newspaper research exercises, worth 40 points each.
    --One essay quiz (20 points).
    --The midterm test (70 points) and the final exam (120 points), which will be mostly essay questions.
This adds up to 440 points for the course. The basic grade scale is that 90% (396 points) is the bottom of the A's, 80% (352 points) is the bottom of the B's, and so on. Sometimes I alter the scale in the students' favor, never against them. Thus 396 points is a guaranteed A; 392 or even 388 points might be an A, if the average for the class is low.

Academic Integrity Policy

Academic integrity requires that we not try to pass off other people's work as our own. The ways students have gotten into problems of academic dishonesty in this course, in past years, have been:

Large portions of a term paper copied from a book or web site, without any indication that the material was copied. Typically this involves both large amounts of material quoted word-for-word, without quotation marks, and also a serious shortage of source notes pointing to the book from which the material came. Often there are misleading source notes claiming the material came from some source other than the one from which it was actually copied word-for-word. These false source notes are especially strong evidence of academic dishonesty.

Whole term paper obtained from some source (a commercial term paper service, or the Internet, or the collection of term papers that one of the fraternities used to have, and may still have).

One student copies another student's 40-point newspaper research exercise, maybe changing a few words and substituting synonyms, but leaving the two papers still so similar that it is obvious the resemblance could not be coincidence. I would be likely to bring charges both against the student who copied and the student who allowed his or her paper to be copied.

There are some ways in which it is perfectly all right for student to help each other. If two students want to study together getting ready for a test, great. Only after I have handed out the questions does help on a test become improper. But if two people work together on a newspaper research exercise, and turn in papers that are very similar because each has been getting a lot of help from the other in writing it, both will be in deep trouble. If one of your fellow students asks to look at your paper, to get a better idea of how the assignment was to be done, please say no. They should come to me to ask for further explanations of the assignment, rather than looking at a completed paper to give them their clues. If two papers are so similar it is obvious the author of one must have seen the other, I will file charges.

Policy on late work

If you do not do written work on time, then with any reasonable excuse you will be able to make it up. However, you will be marked off for lateness. You will be marked off even if your excuse is very, very good. You can avoid a penalty only if I have told you before the work was due that you would be able to do it late without penalty. Research exercises will not usually be accepted at all (you just get an F) if they are more than seven days late.

Attendance policy

You are allowed up to six cuts INCLUDING EXCUSED ABSENCES. You lose two points for every unexcused absense after that. I would advise you not to take even five. I am going to be saying quite a few things in lectures that are not in the reading. Even if you are very careful about doing all the assigned reading, you will have trouble answering the questions on my tests if you have not been at the lectures.

If I am Late

If I have not gotten to class by five minutes after it was supposed to begin, I would be grateful if a student would go bang on my office door and see whether I am there. If I still have not arrived by ten minutes after the time the class was supposed to begin, you can give up on me and leave.

Assigned reading

I will try to hold the assigned reading in this course down to a fairly low level, since you are supposed to be putting a lot of work into your course papers. There are three books you should buy:
    The Face of Battle, by John Keegan
    Warfare in the Western World, volume II, by Doughty, Gruber, et al.
    It Doesn't Take a Hero, by H. Norman Schwarzkopf

There will also be reading assignments that I will make available online.

Course Outline

In the schedule that follows, items marked >>> are required reading; items marked --- are optional reading. Most optional items are simply books that you can look for in the library.

January 9: Introduction to the course.

January 11: >>> Read the chapter on Agincourt in Keegan, The Face of Battle

January 14: Gunpowder weapons change the nature of battle.
--- War in European History, by Howard, pp. 54-74
--- From Crossbow to H-Bomb, by Brodie, chapters 3 and 4

January 16, 18: The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and Napoleon
>>> Keegan, The Face of Battle, pp. 117-203
--- On War, by Clausewitz

January 21: No Class

January 23: The Civil War Begins; QUIZ
>>> Matloff, American Military History, pp. 184-202, on the beginning of the Civil War.

January 25: The serious fighting begins
>>> Attack and Die, by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson (University of Alabama Press, 1982), Chapter One. I have placed this in the content pages for this class on Blackboard, as
bbattack1.html

January 28: The battles of 1863.
>>>Matloff, American Military History, pp. 241-254, on the Battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, in the Eastern Theater, in 1863.

January 30: The Civil War, 1864-65; the Franco-Prussian War
>>>Matloff, American Military History, pp. 262-280.

First section, pp. 262-274.

Second section, pp. 274-280.

February 1: Making War More Lethal, 1871-1914
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 16

February 4: The Beginning of World War I
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 17

February 6: World War I, 1914-1916
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 18

February 8: The Battle of the Somme, 1916
>>> Keegan, the chapter on the Battle of the Somme

February 11: World War I: Air and Naval

Hand in newspaper research exercise. Choose four articles about the fighting on the Western Front (which means France and Belgium, and you need to figure out where the places discussed in the articles are, at least vaguely; if you choose an article that is actually about Italy or Greece or some such place, not the Western Front, I will mark you off for it), published during July and/or August 1916. Write an essay of about two pages (typed double spaced) about what you found. How did the press portray the military action? Say what there was in the articles that you found interesting or surprising. Evaluate them for bias: is there anything that leads you to distrust them, or to think that the facts may be being distorted to fit the author's viewpoint? Do they use loaded language? Notice the source; did the reporter say that something was true, or only that somebody else had said it was true? If you say there is bias, please make it clear exactly what was said, that you consider biased. I want to see one essay based on several articles, not a string of essentially separate mini-essays, each based on a single article. Try to select articles that will allow you to have some unifying themes in your essay.

Please give source notes. I want to be able to tell in each section of your paper which article or articles you are discussing in that section. It is not enough to have a list at the end, if I can’t tell as I read the paper which article you are discussing where. Source notes must give page numbers. I don’t care about the format of source notes as long as they tell me what I need to know. Any format that allows me easily to discern the name of the author, the title of the article, the title of the publication, and the date and page, is OK.

There is no requirement that you use The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or The Times of London, but those papers have the advantage that you can access them online through the Clemson Library's Articles Access Page. If you want to use newspapers other than those, your best bet is to go to the Microfilm Reading Room on level 2 of the Library, which has quite a few newspapers on microfilm. If you want to use weekly newsmagazines, the easiest way is to use the ones that have been bound into volumes, on the shelves on level 1 of the library.

February 13: 1917
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 19

February 15: The End of World War I
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 20

February 18: TEST

February 20: The Interwar Perid and the Beginning of World war II
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 21

February 22: Germany's War Spreads more Widely
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 22
Map: North Africa
Map: The Eastern Front, June-August 1941

February 25: Air and Naval War; The Pacific Theater
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 23
Map: The Pacific Theater

February 27: The Eastern Front; the Mediterranean Theater
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 24

February 29: The Defeat of Germany
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 25
Map: The Plan for Overlord (the Normandy Invasion)
Map: The Normandy Invasion, June 6-12, 1944
Map: Expansion of the Normandy Beachhead up to July 24
Map: After the Breakout: August 1-13
Map: The Drive across France, August 26 to September 14

March 3: The Defeat of Japan
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 26

March 5: The Nuclear Era
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 27

March 7: The Korean War
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 28
Map: The Korean War

March 10: The Vietnam War: Background and Early Stages
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 901-916
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapter 8 (pp. 120-152): Schwarzkopf's 1965-66 tour in Vietnam

Map of Indochina

Photos of Vietnam

The countryside of northern Vietnam

The countryside of southern Vietnam

The Mekong Delta: Photos by Robert D. Jester

Transportation in North Vietnam tended to be rather simple

Weapons, etc. (1)

Weapons, etc. (2)

March 12: The Vietnam War: Middle period
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 916-928
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapter 10 (pp. 169-200): Schwarzkopf's 1969-70 tour in Vietnam

March 14:

Newspaper research exercise

the instructions for the first newspaper exercise

SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS MARCH 17-21

March 24: The Vietnam War: Final Stages
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 928-933
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapter 11 (pp. 201-227)

March 26: Small Wars
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 965-979
>>> Schwarzkopf, pp. 282-299 (Grenada)

March 28: Wars in the Middle East
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, chapter 30
>>> Moise, "Limited War"

March 31: Background to the First US-Iraq War
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 980-985
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapters 15-16 (pp. 309-357)

April 2, 4: Desert Shield
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapters 17-19 (pp. 358-435)

April 7: Beginning Desert Storm
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 985-988
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapters 20-21 (pp. 436-496)

April 9: Toward The Ground Campaign
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 988-994
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapters 22-23 (pp. 497-547)

April 11: The End of the First US-Iraq War, and its Aftermath
>>> Schwarzkopf, chapter 24 (pp. 548-577)

April 14: Peacekeeping Operations
>>> Doughty, Warfare in the Western World, pp. 994-1003

April 16, 18: Terrorism and the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
    >>> James Dao and Thom Shanker, "Special Forces, On the Ground, Aid the Rebels", in The New York Times, October 31, 2001. I suggest you go to ProQuest through the Library's articles access page.
    >>> Jon Lee Anderson, "The Surrender: Double agents, defectors, disaffected Taliban, and a motley army battle for Kunduz.", in The New Yorker, December 10, 2001. You can find this on LexisNexis. Choose "Power Search" and then choose "Magazine Stories, Combined" from the "Select Sources" menu.
    >>> Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, "Afghans' Retreat Forced Americans to Lead a Battle", in The New York Times, March 10, 2002. I suggest you go to ProQuest through the Library's articles access page.

April 21, 23, 25: The Second US-Iraq War (2003- )
>>> John Lee Anderson, "The Collapse: A Regime Disappears and Chaos Ensues." The New Yorker, April 21, 2003. You can find this on LexisNexis. Choose "Power Search" and then choose "Magazine Stories, Combined" from the "Select Sources" menu.
>>> Additional assigned reading to be added later

April 23: HAND IN TERM PAPERS

Final exam: Tuesday, April 29, 1:00 p.m.

Syllabus History 390