Tag Official history

Historians and the Early Era of U.S. Army Operations Research

While perusing Charles Shrader’s fascinating history of the U.S. Army’s experience with operations research (OR), I came across several references to the part played by historians and historical analysis in early era of that effort.

The ground forces were the last branch of the Army to incorporate OR into their efforts during World War II, lagging behind the Army Air Forces, the technical services, and the Navy. Where the Army was a step ahead, however, was in creating a robust wartime historical field history documentation program. (After the war, this enabled the publication of the U.S. Army in World War II series, known as the “Green Books,” which set a new standard for government sponsored military histories.)

As Shrader related, the first OR personnel the Army deployed forward in 1944-45 often crossed paths with War Department General Staff Historical Branch field historian detachments. They both engaged in similar activities: collecting data on real-world combat operations, which was then analyzed and used for studies and reports written for the use of the commands to which they were assigned. The only significant difference was in their respective methodologies, with the historians using historical methods and the OR analysts using mathematical and scientific tools.

History and OR after World War II

The usefulness of historical approaches to collecting operational data did not go unnoticed by the OR practitioners, according to Shrader. When the Army established the Operations Research Office (ORO) in 1948, it hired a contingent of historians specifically for the purpose of facilitating research and analysis using WWII Army records, “the most likely source for data on operational matters.”

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, ORO sent eight multi-disciplinary teams, including the historians, to collect operational data and provide analytical support for U.S. By 1953, half of ORO’s personnel had spent time in combat zones. Throughout the 1950s, about 40-43% of ORO’s staff was comprised of specialists in the social sciences, history, business, literature, and law. Shrader quoted one leading ORO analyst as noting that, “there is reason to believe that the lawyer, social scientist or historian is better equipped professionally to evaluate evidence which is derived from the mind and experience of the human species.”

Among the notable historians who worked at or with ORO was Dr. Hugh M. Cole, an Army officer who had served as a staff historian for General George Patton during World War II. Cole rose to become a senior manager at ORO and later served as vice-president and president of ORO’s successor, the Research Analysis Corporation (RAC). Cole brought in WWII colleague Forrest C. Pogue (best known as the biographer of General George C. Marshall) and Charles B. MacDonald. ORO also employed another WWII field historian, the controversial S. L. A. Marshall, as a consultant during the Korean War. Dorothy Kneeland Clark did pioneering historical analysis on combat phenomena while at ORO.

The Demise of ORO…and Historical Combat Analysis?

By the late 1950s, considerable institutional friction had developed between ORO, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU)—ORO’s institutional owner—and the Army. According to Shrader,

Continued distrust of operations analysts by Army personnel, questions about the timeliness and focus of ORO studies, the ever-expanding scope of ORO interests, and, above all, [ORO director] Ellis Johnson’s irascible personality caused tensions that led in August 1961 to the cancellation of the Army’s contract with JHU and the replacement of ORO with a new, independent research organization, the Research Analysis Corporation [RAC].

RAC inherited ORO’s research agenda and most of its personnel, but changing events and circumstances led Army OR to shift its priorities away from field collection and empirical research on operational combat data in favor of the use of modeling and wargaming in its analyses. As Chris Lawrence described in his history of federally-funded Defense Department “think tanks,” the rise and fall of scientific management in DOD, the Vietnam War, social and congressional criticism, and an unhappiness by the military services with the analysis led to retrenchment in military OR by the end of the 60s. The Army sold RAC and created its own in-house Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA; now known as the Center for Army Analysis).

By the early 1970s, analysts, such as RAND’s Martin Shubik and Gary Brewer, and John Stockfisch, began to note that the relationships and processes being modeled in the Army’s combat simulations were not based on real-world data and that empirical research on combat phenomena by the Army OR community had languished. In 1991, Paul Davis and Donald Blumenthal gave this problem a name: the “Base of Sand.”

U.S. Army Releases New Iraq War History

On Thursday, the U.S. Army released a long-awaited history of its operational combat experience in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. The study, titled The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006 and The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011, was published under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.

This reflects its unconventional origins. Under normal circumstances, such work would be undertaken by either the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute (CSI), which is charged with writing quick-turnaround “instant histories,” or the U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), which writes more deeply researched “official history,” years or decades after the fact.[1] Instead, these volumes were directly commissioned by then-Chief of the Staff of the Army, General Raymond Odierno, who created an Iraq Study Group in 2013 to research and write them. According to Odierno, his intent was “to capture key lessons, insights, and innovations from our more than 8 years of conflict in that country.[I]t was time to conduct an initial examination of the Army’s experiences in the post-9/11 wars, to determine their implications for our future operations, strategy, doctrine, force structure, and institutions.”

CSI had already started writing contemporary histories of the conflict, publishing On Point: The United States Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (2004) and On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign (2008), which covered the period from 2003 to January 2005. A projected third volume was advertised, but never published.

Although the Iraq Study Group completed its work in June 2016 and the first volume of the history was scheduled for publication that October, its release was delayed due to concerns within the Army historical community regarding the its perspective and controversial conclusions. After external reviewers deemed the study fair and recommended its publication, claims were lodged after its existence was made public last autumn that the Army was suppressing it to avoid embarrassment. Making clear that the study was not an official history publication, current Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley added his own forward to Odierno’s, and publicly released the two volumes yesterday.

NOTES

[1] For a discussion of the roles and mission of CSI and CMH with regard to history, see W. Shane Story, “Transformation or Troop Strength? Early Accounts of the Invasion of Iraq” Army History, Winter 2006; Richard W. Stewart, “‘Instant’ History and History: A Hierarchy of Needs” Army History, Winter 2006; Jeffrey J. Clarke, “The Care and Feeding of Contemporary History,” Army History, Winter 2006; and Gregory Fontenot, “The U.S. Army and Contemporary Military History,” Army History, Spring 2008.

 

First World War Digital Resources

Informal portrait of Charles E. W. Bean working on official files in his Victoria Barracks office during the writing of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918. The files on his desk are probably the Operations Files, 1914-18 War, that were prepared by the army between 1925 and 1930 and are now held by the Australian War Memorial as AWM 26. Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial. [Defence in Depth]

Chris and I have both taken to task the highly problematic state of affairs with regard to military record-keeping in the digital era. So it is only fair to also highlight the strengths of the Internet for historical research, one of which is the increasing availability of digitized archival  holdings, documents, and sources.

Although the posts are a couple of years old now, Dr. Robert T. Foley of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London has provided a wonderful compilation of  links to digital holdings and resources documenting the experiences of many of the many  belligerents in the First World War. The links include digitized archival holdings and electronic copies of often hard-to-find official histories of ground, sea, and air operations.

Digital First World War Resources: Online Archival Sources

Digital First World War Resources: Online Official Histories — The War on Land

Digital First World War Resources: Online Official Histories — The War at Sea and in the Air

For TDI, the availability of such materials greatly broadens potential sources for research on historical combat. For example, TDI made use of German regional archival holdings for to compile data on the use of chemical weapons in urban environments from the separate state armies that formed part of the Imperial German Army in the First World War. Although much of the German Army’s historical archives were destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of the Second World War, a great deal of material survived in regional state archives and in other places, as Dr. Foley shows. Access to the highly detailed official histories is another boon for such research.

The Digital Era hints at unprecedented access to historical resources and more materials are being added all the time. Current historians should benefit greatly. Future historians, alas, are not as likely to be so fortunate when it comes time to craft histories of the the current era.

Structure Of The U.S. Defense Department History Programs

With the recent discussions of the challenges facing U.S. government historians in writing the official military histories of recent conflicts, it might be helpful to provide a brief outline of the structure of the Department of Defense (DOD) offices and programs involved. There are separate DOD agency, joint, and service programs, which while having distinct missions, sometime have overlapping focuses and topics. They are also distinct from other Executive Branch agency history offices, such as the Office of the Historian at the State Department.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense has its own Historical Office, which focuses on collecting, preserving, and presenting the history of the defense secretaries. Its primary publications are the Secretaries of Defense Historical Series. Although the office coordinates joint historical efforts among the military services and DOD agency history offices, it does not direct their activities.

The Joint History Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) provides historical support to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the Joint Staff. Its primary publications are the JCS and National Policy series, as well as various institutional studies and topical monographs.

The Joint History Office also administers the Joint History Program, which includes the history offices of the joint combatant commands. Its primary role is to maintain the history programs of the commanders of the combatant commands. Current guidance for the Joint History Program is provided by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Instruction 5320.1B, “Guidance for the Joint History Program,” dated 13 January 2009.

Each of the military services also has its own history program. Perhaps the largest and best known is the Army Historical Program. Its activities are defined in Army Regulation 870-5, “Military History: Responsibilities, Policies, and Procedures,” dated 21 September 2007. The program is administered by the Chief of Military History, who is the principal advisor to the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff for all historical matters, and is dual-hatted as the director of the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

The Air Force History and Museum Program is outlined in Air Force Policy Directive 84-1, “Historical Information, Property, and Art,” dated 16 September 2005. The Director of Air Force History and Museums, Policies, and Programs oversees the Air Force Historical Studies Office, and its field operating agency, the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

The Navy History Program is managed by the Director of Navy History. Its activities are described in OPNAV Instruction 5750.4E, “Navy History Programs,” dated 18 June 2012. The Navy’s central historical office is the Naval History and Heritage Command, which includes the Navy Department Library and the National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Marine Corps History Division, a branch of Marine Corps University, runs and administers the Marine history program. Its policies, procedures, standards, and responsibilities are outlined in Marine Corps Order 5750.1H, dated 13 February 2009.

In future posts, I will take a closer look at the activities and publications of these programs.

Military History In The Digital Era

Volumes of the U.S. Army in World War II official history series published by the U.S. Army Center for Military History [Hewes Library photo]

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released a draft strategic plan announcing that it will “no longer accept transfers of permanent or temporary records in analog formats and will accept records only in electronic format and with appropriate metadata” by the end of 2022. Given the widespread shift to so-called “paperless” offices across society, this change may not be as drastic as it may seem. Whether this will produce an improvement in record keeping is another question.

Military historians are starting to encounter the impact of electronic records on the preservation and availability of historical documentation of America’s recent conflicts. Adin Dobkin wrote an excellent overview earlier this year on the challenges the U.S Army Center for Military History faces in writing the official histories of the U.S Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. Army field historians on tight deployment timelines “hoovered up” huge amounts of electronic historical documentation during the conflicts. Now official historians have to sort through enormous amounts of material that is often poorly organized and removed from the context from which it was originally created. Despite the volume of material collected, much of it has little historical value and there are gaps in crucial documentation. Separating the useful wheat from the digital chaff can tedious and time-consuming.

Record keeping the paper age was often much better. As Chris wrote earlier this year, TDI conducted three separate studies on Army records management in the late-1990s and early 2000s. Each of these studies warned that U.S. Army documentation retention standards and practices had degraded significantly. Significant gaps existed in operational records vital to future historians. TDI found that the Army had better records for Red Cloud’s War of 1866-1868 than it did a hundred years later for Vietnam.

TDI is often asked why it tends to focus on the World War II era and earlier for its analytical studies. The answer is pretty simple: those are the most recent conflicts for which relatively complete, primary source historical data is available for the opposing combatants. Unfortunately, the Digital Age is unlikely to change that basic fact.