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7. ‘Popular’ Military History
The popularity of military history outside the confinesofuniversitiesandstaffcolleges,atleastwithintheUKand the USA, makes military history an obvious routebywhichtointroducethenonspecialistpublictohistorymore generally. Some of the writing, such as that of Henri Lachouque or Georges Blond in France, cancome close to romantic nostalgia; the work of others,such as Paul Carell on the Wehrmacht in World WarII,canseemstrikingforwhatitleavesout.Butthebestwork in this genre—both German Werth and AlistairHorne on Verdun, for example—deserves, and hasreceived, serious attention from scholars. In Britain,John Keegan and Antony Beevor have thrived on thebackofmilitaryhistory’sfloweringinacademiccircles.Much of what they do is traditional. Keegan, likeLiddellHart,rangesacrosstimeandspace;likeLiddellHart he too writes with the fluency and ease of a journalist; and, as with Liddell Hart, there is adidactic thrust. But the appeal is also in the narrative,as the staggering success of Beevor’s
Stalingrad 
(1998)displays. Keegan (1976) criticized historians of warwho focused on its operational and tactical level butfailed to explain the experience of combat itself.Beevor’s book puts such precepts into practice. Theacademic world has also responded to Keegan’s call.Research on war ‘from below’ not only has popularappeal but also interdisciplinary potential.Military historians continue to complain that theyare marginal figures in the academic world. In main-land Europe, that complaint has some substance, butbecoming less year on year. And in the USA, where itis stated most vociferously, it is without seriousfoundation. However, its current strength derives inlarge part from its past battles to establish itself.Lacking a linear pedigree, military history is a hybridwhose resilience derives from the multiplicity of itsapproaches.
See also
: Arms Control; Chemical Sciences: Historyand Sociology; Enlightenment; Military and Politics;Military Geography; Military Sociology; Science,Technology, and the Military; War: Causes andPatterns; War, Sociology of; Warfare in History
Bibliography
AlgerJ I1982
TheQuestforVictory:TheHistoryofthePrinciplesof War
. Greenwood, Westport, CTBeevor A 1998
Stalingrad 
. Viking, LondonBucholz A 1985
Hans Delbru
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ck and the German MilitaryEstablishment
. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, IABucholz A 1997
Delbru
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ck’s Modern Military History
. Universityof Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NECharters D A, Milner M, Wilson J B 1992
Military History and the Military Profession
. Greenwood, Westport, CTClausewitz C von 1976
On War
[trans. Howard M, Paret P].Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJDeist W 1998 Hans Delbru
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Ubi Sumus? The State of Na
al and Maritime History
. Naval War College Press, Newport, RIHoward M 1983 The Use and Abuse of Military History. In:Paret P (ed.)
The Causes of Wars
. Temple Smith, LondonJomini A H de 1992
The Art of War
. Greenhill, LondonKeegan J 1976
The Face of Battle
. Jonathan Cape, LondonKennedy P 1989 The fall and rise of military history.
The YaleJournal of World Affairs
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Hans Delbru
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ck und der ‘Strategiestreit’.Kreigsfu
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hrung und Kreigsgeschichte in der Konto
erse 1879– 1914
. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau, GermanyParet P 1992 The history of war and the new military history. In:Paret P (ed.)
Understanding War: Essays on Clausewitz and the History of Military Power
. Princeton University Press,Princeton, NJRogers C 1995
The Military Re
olution Debate: Readings on theMilitary Transformation of Early Modern Europe
. Westview,Boulder, COShy J 1986 Jomini. In: Paret P (ed.)
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machia
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H. F. A. Strachan
Military Psychology: United States
Military psychology, a special discipline of workpsychology, has as its primary focus the application of psychological principles and methods to the manyfacets of specialized work environments in innumer-able military settings. Military psychologists work ingovernment and university settings where they con-duct both laboratory and field research. They alsowork in schools of medicine, or at military installationoutpatient mental health or family counseling clinics.Psychologists provide clinical treatment to militarypopulations, either by improving the lives of armedservices personnel and their families away from home,or by providing support for those who are separatedfrom loved ones while deployed to other countrieswithunfamiliarculturesandsurroundings.Uniformedpsychologists may work in troop units on fieldassignments where occasionally they deploy on dan-gerous military missions. Military psychologistssupply guidance to military leaders and decisionmakers on behavioral issues of individual combatantor team performance, and on procedural matters toprevent or reduce physical and psychological casual-tiesthataccompanybattlefieldexigenciesofwar.Somepsychologistsserveasadvisorsatstaffheadquartersorfor defense contract consultant groups. Occasionally,9868
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they serve on governmental legislative committeeswith oversight of a broad range of national personnelpolicies impacting millions of military personnel. Innew military venues, psychologists analyze humani-tarian and peacekeeping missions to determineprocedures for saving military and civilian lives.Military forces helped psychology develop both asan applied profession and as a scientific discipline.From 1940 to 2000, military forces were the largestsingle employers and trainers of research psycho-logists. Following diminished threats of Soviet com-munist world domination (ca. 1989–90), countriesdownsized their military forces, and consequentlydecreased sponsorship, financial support, and per-sonnelpositionsformilitarypsychologists.Evenso, in2000, the three US armed services employ 300–400clinical psychologists in uniformed service. About anequal number of research psychologists do militaryresearch. These include uniformed psychology officersand full time government civil servants in militaryresearch laboratories, and a sizable number of defensecontractors, do military research.
1. Military Psychology’s Roots: World Wars I and II 
Military personnel have always been interested in thepsychology and behavior of leaders and warriors incombat. Writings about such Captains of War asAlexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon, and bymilitary philosophers such as Carl von Clausewitz,readily strike an appreciation of the psychologicalimplications of leading men in combat. Militarystrategists assess troop readiness by gathering in-telligence information regarding an adversary’s vul-nerabilities to gain tactical advantage in combat.However,throughoutthenineteenthcenturytherestillwas no ‘organized body of knowledge’ concerning theprinciples or practice of military psychology.In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,university-based intellectual study and laboratoryresearch on predicting human behavior formallyestablished the scientific discipline and profession of psychology, albeit predominately an academic one.World War I wedded applications of the relativelyyoung discipline of psychology to the military. Inhelping to resolve national conscript and militarypersonnel issues, psychologists’ close working rela-tionships to the military catapulted psychology as anapplied profession in the workplace. Many behavioralscientists in Europe, and hundreds of psychologists inthe American Psychological Association (APA;foundedin1892),dedicatedthemselvestodeterminingsolutions to numerous wartime specialized militarywork-related issues. In 1917, Robert M. Yerkes,President of the APA and an experimental psycho-logist, formally organized APA psychologists intocommitteestoapplyscientificprinciplesofpsychologyin aiding the US government in the war effort. Theirpioneering work expanded upon the psychologyknown at the time, adapted it, and applied it tomilitary support roles. Such work became identifiableas military psychology.
1.1 Selection and Placement
The influx of millions of conscripted men into the USArmy required an economical and efficient method of classifying new soldiers and identifying potentialofficer candidates. Psychologists in the US ArmySurgeon General’s Division of Psychology developedthe Army Alpha and Beta tests, as expansions of theresearch of the French psychometrician Alfred Binet.These first large-scale group-administered tests of intellectual ability rapidly screened and identified theintellectual level of 1.7 million conscript recruits, andclassifiedthoseyoung menforplacement into jobs, fortraining, and for preparation as combatants for war.The Division’s tests selected 42,000 of the recruits foradmission to officer training. World War (WW) Ipsychologicaltestsandmeasurementworkconstitutedthe first formalized psychological research in militarysettings.The Division of Psychology developed a system tograde individuals and grouped them according toabilities to learn; they provided lectures on trainingmethods,andadvisedtrainingofficers.Theymeasuredtroop morale and assimilation into the military;developed special trade tests to assess skills or combatleadership abilities, and contributed to developmentof methods and procedures to improve combat effec-tivenessandmorale.Inadoptingmentalmeasurement,and using psychometric screening tests for personnelselection and classification programs, the US ArmedForces made them a principal instrument of man-power management, and thereby gave credence toapplied psychology within the academically basedAPA (Johnson 1991).
1.2 Clinical Psychology
Early in WW I, psychologists played an educationalrole in military medical settings by training hospitalstaff and surveying patients. In 1918, the US ArmySurgeonGeneralauthorized thefirstdutyassignmentsof psychologists to assist in evaluation of neuro-psychiatric patients at the Walter Reed Army GeneralHospitalinWashington,DC.Thisboostedtheclinicalpractice role of psychologists within the military.
1.3 Military Psychologists in World War II 
Astheworld’smilitaryforcesdemobilizedafterWWI,most psychologists returned to academia to advance9869
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thescienceofpsychology.Asaconsequence,therewasa paucity of military psychology efforts until the onsetof WW II. During the 1930s and early 1940s, militaryforces resumed interest in psychological applicationsforselection, classification, and assignment of militarypersonnel. In several European countries, militaryestablishments created and maintained behavioralscience activities and research groups. In the USA,over 2,000 civilian and uniformed psychologists ad-dressed WW II military problems, firmly establishingthe role of psychology in the military. Their well-documented work pervaded published articles in APA journals in the mid- to late 1940s.To replace the Army Alpha test, US Army psycho-logistsdevelopedthenewArmyGeneralClassificationTest(AGCT)intheearly1940s.Itwasadministeredto12 million men during WW II. Instead of striving toeliminate bad risks, the newer psychometric screeningtools sought to identify individuals who could effec-tivelyacquire certainmilitaryskills or perform specifictasks. These tests evolved to become the widely usedArmed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery(ASVAB). In Western countries, WW II psychologistsused psychomotor tests of coordination and physicalability for the selection of pilot candidates, andemployed specialized tests for navigators and othermilitary specialties. Psychological assessment centerswere formed to develop performance-oriented testsand to select and train military operators for theBritish Special Operations Executive (SOE) and theUS Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
1.4 Leadership
During WW II, leadership was established as a topicof military research. The build-up of military forcesrequired identifying leaders at all levels of newcommandstructures.Psychologistsinitiallydevelopedselection tests to identify individuals possessing innatecharacteristics and abilities desirable in leaders. How-ever, some psychologists downplayed the innate ap-proach, and instead insisted leadership could betrained and developed as an acquired skill. Militarystudies of the leadership performance of officers, andinstructional innovations, gave credence to both view-points. These continuously have been in the forefrontof military psychology since.
1.5 Human Factors and Engineering Psychology
Radar, sonar, command and control centers, high-performance aircraft, submarines, large naval surfacevessels, and other new military hardware challengedthe cognitive capabilities of military personnel tooperate complex equipment systems effectively. In theearly 1940s through the late 1950s, hundreds of experimental psychologists teamed with military sys-tem design engineers in conducting laboratory andsimulation research to assess demands for increasedhuman performance. Numerous experimental psy-chology studies were done assessing sensory andperceptual demands, aviator visual capabilities, visualsearch techniques, psychomotor skills required of equipment operators, cognitive skills of sonar andradar operators, design and location of controls anddisplays in aircraft and other vehicles, other man-machine interfaces, and work–rest schedules for com-mand and control personnel. Important militaryresearch topics included studies of effects of extremeheat, cold, high altitude, and other environmentalfactors on military performance.Military engineering psychologists aided weapon-system designers to apply an understanding of humancapabilitiesandlimitationsinthedesignofequipment,materials, and jobs so as to optimize the integration of human operators into a ‘total system’ design within amilitaryoperationalconcept.Togetherwithengineers,psychologists used the ‘systems approach’ to analyzecomplex human–machine environments in
system
terms. They used techniques such as functional, task,and time-line analyses of proposed operational pro-cedures, information flow and decision making, andsimulationinexperimentaltrialtesting(Parsons1972).In Europe, engineering psychology was embedded inthe field of ergonomics with a particular emphasis onbiomechanics and physiology (Zinchenko and Mun-ipov 1989), whereas in the USA it was variously calledengineering psychology, human factors psychology,or human engineering, with more focus on cognitiveprocessing. System engineering practices integratedprinciples of engineering psychology, and becametrends in military equipment design centers in indus-trialized countries. (See
Engineering Psychology
.)
1.6 Social Psychology
Military social psychologists conducted hundreds of attitude surveys and experiments concerning soldierand sailor morale and motivation to support for-mulation of US military personnel policies for WW II.Social psychologists developed small group perform-ance assessment techniques, expanded psychologicalwarfare techniques, added new psychological perspec-tivestoenemyintelligenceanalyses,initiatedstudiesof prisoners of war, and developed small group per-formance assessment techniques.Social psychological studies in several allied coun-tries provided useful information to WW II militarypolicy makers and established use of the social surveyas a military personnel management tool. Theirappliedresearchsolidifiedgeneralizablesocialpsycho-logical findings. Most impact-making findings, de-scribed at length in
The American Soldier
(Stouffer et9870
Military Psychology: United States
of 00

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