Coram’s book is excellent and captures Boyd well. I realize that Boyd was a bit harsh on Clausewitz and Coram gives a good explanation of why Boyd felt as he did regarding the General. However, I think that a closer reading of what Clausewitz demanded of the “military genius” would lead us to the conclusion that Boyd’s “Patterns of Conflict” incorporates more of the General’s philosophy that Boyd readily admitted.

Otherwise, thanks for the review. I would heartily recommend the book also. I was struck by how well written the work was.

Thanks,

Oak

http://www.slideshare.net/noobgank/patterns-of-conflict

Hope this helps.
J

Wanting to undersatand what has happened in modern times (19th-Century to the present) I recently read “The Israeli Army,” by Luttwak & Horowitz and several other other books. The ones by Patton and several of the German officers of WWII are especially interesting.

Searching further on operational-level warfare, I found, and am just finishing, “Blitzkkrieg to Desert Storm: the Evolution of Operational Warfare,” by Robert M. Citino.

Citino’s voluminous and useful endnotes led me to “A Swift, Elusive Sword: What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did a National Defense Review?” by Chester W. Richards (US Air Reserve, ret.)

(Richards was an associate of Col. John Boyd from 1973 unitl his death in 1997 and has a web site devoted to showing how Boyd’s strategies can be used in business. It is found at http://www.belisarius.com )

Richards refers frequently to the Thomas Cleary translation of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” but also to the translation by Samuel B. Griffith, which I somewhat prefer.

I get going on several books at a time, going back and forth for enlightenment and understanding. Maneuver warfare has its roots in the wars of centuries past but saw its most dramatic demonstration by the Germans in 1939-1941.
( Germans called it “Bewegungskrieg,” a war of movement, as contrasted to “Stellungskrieg,” positional war.
The word “blitzkrieg” was concocted by a writer in Chicago in 1940 to describe the startling success of the German offensive that collapsed the French defense and trapped the British forces in Belgium. We all know about Dunkirk, where the British and some of the French soldiers were evacuated but had to leave their equipment behind.)

Ironically, the Israeli Army is the best know practitioner of blitzkrieg/maneuver warfare in the 20th-Century, although the Desert Storm campaign against Iraq, especially by the Marines, is the most recent example.

If you want to read the book that “electrified” Gen. George S. Patton and which he was said to have read and re-read, go get a copy of “Attacks,” by Erwin Rommel.
(Get the recent and complete translation, by J.R. Driscoll, of Rommel’s famous book. Its German title was “Infanterie Greift An,” which was a best-seller in Germany in 1937 and went through 18 printings before 1944. It brought him to the attention of Hitler.)

I hear that the officers of our armed forces are becoming more familiar with military history, especially the successful campaigns of the past which so frequently involved maneuver warfare, “Bewegungskrieg,” and the “indirect approach.”
The German terms Auftragstaktik, Schwerpunkt, Aufrollen, fingerspitzengefuhl, and a term that translates into Surfaces and Gaps, are now not unfamiliar to the U.S. military scholar.

I hope that this is true because, as George Santayana said, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

Gary VH

In the 19th-Century, we could mention Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Lee and (surprisingly) Grant during America’s War Between the States, as well as “Stonewall” Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest and William Tecumseh Sherman.

During the 20th-Century, we should include military historian and theorist B. H. Liddell-Hart (his strategy of the indirect approach), and certainly Erwin Rommel (in both WWI and WWII), Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein and other German generals during WWII.
The only Allied general of WWII who could be included would be George S. Patton, although recent research indicates that the Soviet General Georgii Zhukov should be considered as a practitioner of maneuver warfare also.

I admire the USMC and later the US Army for adopting maneuver warfare as part of their doctrine for war fighting.

Another book that you may find interesting is “The Maneuver Warfare Handbook,” by William S. Lind. Also well worth reading is Chester Richard’s “A Swift, Elusive Sword: What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did a National Defense Review?”

If you have not read it already, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” is a classic well deserving of its reputation. Some like the Samuel B. Griffith translation, others prefer the Thomas Cleary translation.

But these men were the exception. Most nations and their armies slogged away at each other in bloody, exhaustive, protracted attrition warfare, destroying their own countries as well as their enemy’s.

Gary VH

You might also examine the USMC’s manuals on Tactics and Campaigning. Tactics has an especially valuable chapter on how to get things done faster.

Having said that, I don’t think business is like war. Business is like diplomacy. It is cooperative and competitive — coopetition. I recommend two books, Arts of Power and Coopetition.

Now, if I haven’t mangled any of those links, enjoy!