Sherman's Ghosts
Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
This “thought-provoking” military history considers the influence of General Sherman’s Civil War tactics on American conflicts through the twentieth century (The New York Times).
“To know what war is, one should follow our tracks,” Gen. William T. Sherman once wrote to his wife, describing the devastation left by his armies in Georgia. Sherman’s Ghosts is an investigation of those tracks, as well as those left across the globe by the American military in the 150 years since Sherman’s infamous “March to the Sea.”
Sherman’s Ghosts opens with an epic retelling of General Sherman’s fateful decision to terrorize the South’s civilian population in order to break the back of the Confederacy. Acclaimed journalist and historian Matthew Carr exposes how this strategy, which Sherman called “indirect warfare,” became the central preoccupation of war planners in the twentieth century and beyond. He offers a lucid assessment of the impact Sherman’s slash-and-burn policies have had on subsequent wars and military conflicts, including World War II and in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, and even Iraq and Afghanistan.
In riveting accounts of military campaigns and in the words of American soldiers and strategists, Carr finds ample evidence of Sherman’s long shadow. Sherman’s Ghosts is a rare reframing of how we understand our violent history and a call to action for those who hope to change it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
