Book Review: How Great Generals Win

How Great Generals Win, by Bevin Alexander

Source: Amazon.com

From the book’s cover:

"An astute military historian's appraisal of what separates the sheep from the wolves in the great game of war."—Kirkus Reviews

If a key to military victory is to "get there first with the most," the true test of the great general is to decide where "there" is—the enemy's Achilles heel. Here is a narrative account of decisive engagements that succeeded by brilliant strategy more than by direct force. The reader accompanies those who fought, from Roman legionaries and Mongol horsemen to Napoleonic soldiery, American Civil War Rebels and Yankees, World War I Tommies, Lawrence of Arabia's bedouins, Chinese revolutionaries, British Desert Rats, Rommel's Afrika Korps, and Douglas MacArthur's Inchon invaders. However varied their weapons, the soldiers of all these eras followed a commander who faced the same obstacles and demonstrated the strategic and tactical genius essential for victory. "All warfare is based on deception," wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War in 400 BCE. Bevin Alexander shows how great generals have interpreted this advice, and why it still holds true today.

The Review:

As with so many books I review, there are two ways to look at this book. On the one hand, for those who are interested in military history, How Great Generals Win is an excellent overview of the campaigns of some of histories greatest leaders. The book goes into detail on tactics and strategy of the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Ghengis Khan, William Tucumseh Sherman, Mao Zedong, and Douglas McArthur.




The author, Bevin Alexander, while he was serving in Korea /  Source: BevinAlexander.com

Bevin Alexander pursues the idea that warfare is at its best when it follows the dictates of the great Sun-Tzu, who advocated that a great military leader (or any leader at all) will try to take advantage of his or her opponent's weakest places while protecting his or her own weakness(es). And that suffering heavy casualties from lack of planning and pointless frontal attacks is a sign of foolishness and should be avoided at all costs. And finally that deception and skill are the keys to well-earned victory. This is especially true if that victory comes with the least amount of casualties and with the greatest benefit for a "more perfect peace."

The other way to look at Bevin's book is to see it through the lens of being about military strategy, in which he describes all the maneuver and tactics and strategy of the military leaders covered. If this second explanation sounds much like the first one, it is meant to. The problem is, if the reader is a student of military history and tactics (and if they have reference materials to turn to or are familiar with most of the particulars - and especially if they aren't reading the book in audiobook format, which made some of the finer details often tough to grasp and left me often wishing for a map), they probably will more easily comprehend the book, and will thus be able to enjoy the points Bevin is making. If the reader is not of that sort, they will, in all likelihood, find the book dull and complicated before even the first chapter concludes.




The details are difficult to make out if you don't "super-size" the image, but this is a map showing Mao Zedong's "Long March."  If you think about the size of the country of China, and then trace the path he took, even a lay-person can see this was a great undertaking in and of itself.  When you further take into consideration that Mao was leading his troops under combat conditions, and had their families in the supply train, the situation appears even more drastic. / Source: Wikipedia.com

How Great Generals Win, though it is certainly not light reading for most audiences, does have an important message. It is one that all military thinkers and planners should read and ponder. The truly great generals of history did not waste lives and resources on fruitless frontal assaults on the enemy, and they did use every trick at their disposal to check their opponent and force him to make mistakes, or to confuse him as to their real intent until it was too late. 

Bevin draws out some great examples, such as the perfect trap used by Hannibal against the Romans, in which he caught a force in a valley and completely decimated them while losing only a tiny fraction of his own force. Then there is the brilliance of McArthur's Inchon invasion during the early days of the Korean Conflict, and then the novice mistakes he made when dealing with the threat that the Chinese presented when US and ROK forces rushed through North Korea up toward the Yalu river (and their subsequent date with disaster, to put it a bit poetically). In fact, had McArthur used better discretion and not thought himself infallible, hundreds of thousands of men would not have died when the Chinese became involved in the war. Further, the partitioning of Korea between north and south, with its attendant problems (and they are significant, just as I write these notes - what with North Korea making threatening overtures toward Japan and S. Korea), would probably not have occurred.

One last point, and I'll finish this review. I made the observation that the text was difficult to read in audiobook form. Let me clarify. The narrator was not bad by any means, but the book was sometimes difficult to follow without a map handy or enough information already in my head to give context to what I was hearing. The stuff on the American Civil War, for instance, was fairly easy to follow, as I know enough of my own nation's geography and the circumstances of the conflict sufficiently to extrapolate things pretty well. But when Bevin spoke of Napoleon's wars, with all those unfamiliar French names, or of the long conflict between Mao Zedong and the Chinese Nationalists (with some real tongue-twisters for a non-Chinese speaker), it was easy to zone out. The description of the book on Amazon.com says that it comes with notes and maps, so I'd say this one would be preferred reading via paperback. That's my advice, for those who are curious on whether it is audiobook worthy, at least.




Though I've repeated it in the review, the point the author makes about the needless wasting of troops in combat can not be over-stated, in my opinion.  Had Napoleon not let his hubris drive him into a reckless attack on Russia, the bitter defeat of the Battle of Borodino, and the long return march in the Russian winter would have been avoided. / Source: MageDesign.com

In conclusion, How Great Generals Win has a good premise, and it is worth reading if the subject matter sounds interesting to you and if you want to gain a stronger appreciation for the need to use Sun-Tzu's axioms in a combat setting. If more military and national leaders imbibed these axoims before committing troops to conflicts, more wars could be won with hopefully less casualties.

Oh, one last note, the book was written in 1993, so it only covers the events of Operation Desert Storm as a brief reference in the first chapter. Therefore, all the advances in military conflict since that time, as well as the numerous global conflicts that have taken place, are not covered. It would be interesting to see if this book has a second edition that touches on these topics, though it is probable that the author would not have much to say in favor of what has gone on (especially in the West) since the book's initial publication.


Learn more about How Great Generals Win, by Bevin Alexander, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: LOLSnaps.com

How great liars get out of traffic school.