Syllabus
History 390

Modern Military History

Section 1:
Mon-Wed-Fri, 11:15, Hardin 232
(Spring 2007)

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), and the ways it has changed since the 18th century, in Strategy, tactics, technology, and the relationship of the military to society.

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 date of the battle of Antietam, or even the name of the Union commander there. 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 25. 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 26 or 27. The penalty will be fifteen points if it is not turned in by the time I go home on Friday, April 27.

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 9, and an additional five points if it is not in by March 16. If it still is not in by March 30, 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 four books you should buy:
    The Face of Battle, by John Keegan
    Overlord, by Max Hastings
    Baptism, by Larry Gwin
    It Doesn't Take a Hero, by Norman Schwarzkopf

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

In the listing 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 10: Introduction to the course.

January 12: >>> Read the chapter on Agincourt in Keegan, The Face of Battle

January 15: No Class

January 17: Gunpowder weapons change the nature of battle.
--- War in European History, by Howard, pp. 54-74
--- From Crossbow to H-Bomb, by Brodie,

January 19: The American Revolution and the French Revolution
>>> Matloff, American Military History, pp. 41-58.

First section, pp. 41-52.

Second section, pp. 52-58.

--- The American Way of War, by Weigley, pp. 3-39

January 22: Napoleon, and the War of 1812.
>>> Keegan, The Face of Battle, pp. 117-203
--- On War, by Clausewitz

January 24: The Civil War Begins; QUIZ
>>> Matloff, American Military History, pp. 184-202, on the beginning of the Civil War.

January 26: The serious fighting begins
>>> Attack and Die, by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson (University of Alabama Press, 1982), Chapter One.

First section, pp. 3-14

Second section, pp. 14-15, 18, and 24

January 29: 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 31: The Civil War, 1864-65
>>>Matloff, American Military History, pp. 262-280.

First section, pp. 262-274.

Second section, pp. 274-280.

February 2: Warfare in the Late Nineteenth Century
>>> Matloff, American Military History, pp. 322-335, describing the U.S. conquest of Cuba in the Spanish-American War.

February 5: World War I: 1914
>>> Start The Face of Battle, pp. 204-84
--- The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman

February 7: World War I: The meat-grinder
>>> Finish The Face of Battle, pp. 204-84

February 9: World War I: Air and Naval power

February 12: Further comments on the ground war
    --- Trench Warfare, by Ashworth, pp. 1-23
    --- All Quiet on the Western Front, by Remarque
    --- From Crossbow to H-bomb, pp. 173-80

February 14: The End of the First World War; legacies of the war.

Hand in newspaper research exercise. Check to see what one or two newspapers or newsmagazines were saying 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) during May and/or June 1918. Use at least four articles. 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 Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, 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.

February 16: The Beginning of the Second World War
    --- To Lose a Battle, by Horne
    --- Ultra Goes to War, by Lewin
    --- Top Secret Ultra, by Calvocoressi

February 19: Second World War, continued

February 21: TEST

The reading will diverge from the lectures somewhat on the five days February 23, 26, and 28, and March 2 and 5. You will be expected to read Overlord, by Max Hastings, from beginning to end during this period. However, class discussion of the book will not take even close to five days. The extra class time will be used for general discussion of the nature of warfare in the European Theater from 1943 to 1945, with particular reference to weapons technology.
>>> Overlord, by Max Hastings
--- Eisenhower's Lieutenants, by Weigley

March 7: World War II in the Pacific
--- At Dawn We Slept, by Prange

March 9: The War in the Pacific, continued.
Term Paper Topic Sheets Due

March 12: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War
--- From Crossbow to H-Bomb, pp. 233-267

March 14: The Korean War
>>> Matloff, American Military History, pp. 545-565, on the Korean War.

First section, pp. 545-553.

Second section, pp. 553-565.

--- Chosin, by Hammel

March 16: The Origins of the Vietnam War
>>> Moise, "The Vietnam Wars"

1. Background

2. The Emergence of the Viet Minh

3. The First Indochina War

4. The Geneva Accords

5. The Aftermath of Geneva: 1954-1960

6. The Fall of Ngo Dinh Diem

7. The Escalation

    --- The Endless War, by Harrison
    --- The Second Indochina War, by Turley
    --- War comes to Long an, by Jeffrey race

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)

SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS MARCH 19-23

March 26: The Americans in Vietnam.
>>> Baptism, by Larry Gwin, chapters 1-29

March 28: Air war in Indochina
>>> Moise, "The Vietnam Wars"

8. The Tet Offensive of 1968, and its Aftermath

9. The Negotiations

10. The Final Battles

March 30, April 2: The Later portions of the Vietnam War
>>>Schwarzkopf, Chapters 9-11
On April 2, hand in newspaper research exercise. Look at at least four articles published in October 1972. You can deal with any part of the war going on at that time in Indochina, or with the political arguments over the war that were occurring in the United States. Aside from that, follow the instructions for the first newspaper exercise.

April 4: The world strategic situation during the Cold War; the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; the nature of limited war Moise, "Limited War"

April 6: The Post-Vietnam U.S. Military; Grenada
>>>Schwarzkopf, Chapters 12-15

April 9: The Arab-Israeli Wars

April 11, 13: The Post-Vietnam evolution of the US armed forces; the Persian Gulf War.
>>>Schwarzkopf, Chapters 16-23

April 16: The end of the Persian Gulf War
>>> Schwarzkopf, Chapter 24 to end

April 18, 20: 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: Guided Search: General News: Magazines and Journals.
    >>> 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 23, 25, 27: The U.S. war in Iraq.

April 25: HAND IN TERM PAPERS

Final exam: Wednesday, May 2, 8:00 a.m.

Syllabus History 390