| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets, editors. The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918–1941. (Studies in War, Society, and the Military.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2000. Pp. xix, 246. $50.00.

This book, edited by Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets is a collection of essays that aim to discover the process of change and innovation (or lack of it) in five armies during the interwar period. The armies in question are those of France, Germany, Britain, Russia, and the United States. A concluding essay by Dennis Showalter sums up the book and offers his own typically hard-hitting analysis. Sometimes, such a collection does not work very well, due to too much diversity and variability, but in this case, the essays are of high quality, have a common theme, and reflect the latest research. 1

Needless to say, each country was strongly influenced by its own participation in World War I, and so, to a considerable extent, each country based its interwar doctrine and the structure of its armed forces on the particular "lessons" of World War I. Eugenia C. Kiesling's essay on France argues that the French army came out of World War I with a winning doctrine, that of the artillery-dominated methodical battle (known as the "set piece" battle in the British army). As a result, the French army developed a "long war" doctrine in which the French defense would methodically blunt any offensive threat and then use material superiority to wear down the enemy, preferably on foreign soil (Belgium in the case of a German attack). This long war strategy was reinforced by the French traditional opposition to a professional army and preference for a conscript/reserve army, potentially a very large force, which would eventually grind down the enemy, perhaps over a period of several years. It seems that the combination of a winning doctrine related to the victory of 1918, and a constraining political system, were two key factors in shaping the interwar French army. . . .

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