From Battle to Battalion

A History of Warfare, Causes and Tactics

Erica Ellis

2 War has been a constant through history. Without it, the world would remain static, unchanging. As historian Karl Marx put it, history is simply a record of whom took what from whom. As historians we examine not only what was taken from where but the motives for it, the latter being the focus of this thesis. Between the 16th and 21st centuries, the concept has morphed from personal battles of true nationalistic issue between military forces to impersonal, strategically planned executions of all people. Once upon a time war was fought over religion. One group fought another because they believed in a different God, or a different interpretation of the same God. This was followed by a period of enlightenment and a fight for rights. The wars we see today are of chaos, corruption, genocide and the introduction of killing everyone regardless of participation in the military. War began in the modern age with wars on religion. These wars were fought with the mindset that the religion each side was fighting for was in some way superior to the one they were fighting. An early example of religious war was The Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition began in 1478 under the authority of Pop Sixtus IV and the organization of Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain.1 The purpose of this war was to convert the non-Christians of Europe. In 1492 a proclamation went was issued that stated that the Jews in Spain had three months to accept Christianity over Judaism or leave Spain. This was issued by the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. Within the first 12 years of the Inquisition, over 13000 Conversos, or secret Jews, were killed.2 Though there are those who contend that the Spanish Inquisition was not the torture-spree that history has written it as.3

Oxford. The Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
2

Ibid. Golden, Richard M. The Social Dimension of Western Civilization. 5. Vol. 2. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003.

3 Religion has even caused civil war, as it did in England. The Tudor monarchy was so divided by their religious beliefs. The most famous monarch of this monarchy was Henry VIII, whose wives and children all took part in the change of religious beliefs. He was a Catholic as was his first wife Catharine of Aragon. However, he broke with the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn. Upon the succession of his oldest daughter Mary Tudor to the throne, Catholicism was the national religion and Mary declared a war on all Protestants, which earned her the name of Bloody Mary. After her death in 1558, her younger and Protestant sister, Elizabeth took the throne, changing the national religion and from that chaos ensued over the religious fickleness of the royal family in power. The final war of religion is known as the Thirty Years War, a Catholic vs. Protestant conflict fought mostly in Germany. Five years of negotiation yielded the peace of Westphalia/ signed in 1648, this treaty subtly set the stage for the First World War, by giving the valuable territory of the Alsace-Larraine Valley to the French. It also forced the Austrian Hapsburgs to acknowledge Switzerlands independence. Full sovereignty was granted to the German states, which meant failure of the Holy Roman Empire to gain control of it and form a Catholic Monarchy.4 The next phase of wars came in the 1700s. Wars of revolution based off of Enlightenment were common in Europe and in the American Colonies. No longer was religion a central reason for war, as by this time, much of Europe began to adopt secularism. From this idea of secularism came the ideas of enlightenment and the rights of man. The American Revolution began against the tyranny of King George III of England. The colonies grew tired of being taxed by the English Parliament without having any representation

Varela-Lago, Dr. Ana. "Class Notes." HIS 241. Northern Arizona University, Fall 2009.

4 in the law-making body. The hope for democracy pushed the colonists to fight against the monarchical traditions of their mother country. In this war, battles were fought across open fields or sections of land. Weaponry of short range muskets with bayonets proved an ineffective, by later standards, method of killing and thus was able to keep a level of personal interaction with the soldiers. Based off of the success of the American colonies, the French people desired to revolt against their king, Louis XVI. They also believed in democracy and uprising against their oppressor. They desired equal representation in their law-making body, the Estates General. They felt cheated by the fact that 97% of the people only got 1/3 of the vote for laws. On July 14, 1789 the third estate stormed the Bastille prison which essentially began the reign of terror. This period was lead by Maximilien Robespierre. The most famous instrument of the murders during the Terror was the guillotine. In 1793, both King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette were guillotined by the French people. The revolution by the French made a bold statement that the Americas could not. The French people had actually killed the leader whom they blamed for their problems. The 20th century could be called the beginning of the modern age of warfare. Technology was able to make killing faster and easier. Not only was there soldiers to be killed, but history began to see the death of civilians as well, in a policy known as total war. . The idea that the entirety of a society was at war, helped to define total war and put a bulls-eye on everyone. No mercy was spared for anyone. This period followed the industrial revolutions which contributed to this change in fighting. Factories were able to quickly and cheaply mass-produce war machinery essentially making killing quicker and easier.

5 World War I was fought as an accident. Stemming from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, European countries declared war, simply based on alliances framed that had been forged with countries already at war. Only the original two countries had any real reason to enter this brutal conflict. The other countries jumped on the bandwagon of war with no rhyme or reason. In Europe, the war was fought from trenches dug in the ground, separated by large mine fields known as no-mans land. These methods were still somewhat reminiscent of the older wars fought across fields like American Revolution. In this war, the beginning of bombing by airplanes began as well as the use of U-Boats, German submarines. The sinking of two ships carrying civilians, the Sussex and the Lusitania, was what brought the United States in the war. Of the 20 million deaths, half were civilian people. War was no longer just a fight between men in uniform. The interwar period between the first and second world wars one day may be erased and historians could view it as one Great War. This could be plausible because during the wars, there was also conflict, the most famous being the Spanish Civil War. The war has been historically named the dress rehearsal for the second World War. Adolf Hitler intervened on the side of General Franco and was able to provide him arms to fight his war. Hitler used this conflict to test the ability of his new weapons for when he would wage his own war on Europe in only a few years time. The damages caused to Germany by the peace treaty of World War I was the center and reason behind the vengeful destruction by Adolf Hitler in the Second World War This war saw an increase in civilian attacks that had never before been witnessed A new aspect of fighting introduced the US into the war. The idea of attacking those who were not in war with anyone. On December 7, 1941, Japanese naval forces launched over 300

6 planes to attack Pearl Harbor Naval Base on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. The bombing caused deaths to soldiers and civilians alike. The most famous battleship that was destroyed was the USS Arizona, hit so hard that it immediately sank, entombing almost everyone onboard. The United States entered the war the next day. The London Blitz, or the Battle of Britain, was an attack on civilians. For 57 days Germany dropped bombs on England during the night. This psychological warfare was an attempt to weaken the country so they couldnt make weapons, ammunition or anything to fight back. The blitz killed people but it did not leave a huge impact on the country. The bombing of the island was met by even greater resistance. The London Blitz was not the cruelest instance of civilian warfare because there was some escape. However, the bombs covered the island in mainly non-military areas suggesting that civilians were the targets. The London Blitz was a deliberate attack on civilians. The Rape of Nanking was probably the worst civilian attacks by Japans army. Japans presence in China because of the war led to them occupying cities. For seven days Japanese soldiers captured women and children, raping over 1,000 per night. In addition to being raped, they were killed afterwards, usually by burning. Two, even up to five men at once, raped some of the victims. The hostilities against Nanking were mostly to women, non-military people. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was perhaps the most violent war tactic in the history of war. It is said that Japan had woken a sleeping giant, the United Sates, and they retaliated. In a display of power, American forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima killing thousands, three days later one was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Civilians became targets in order to demonstrate this power because the bombs were dropped on civilian areas. The government told bomber pilots to leave four areas, Hiroshima,

7 Nagasaki, and two other cities virgin, meaning only attacked by atomic bombs, or left unbombed as a control in the experiment to assess the damage of the bomb more accurately. The atomic bomb, though only used twice, changed the course of warfare and began an arms race that forever changed the world. Genocide also became a new method of slaughter during this war. Hitler had in part blamed the Jews for German suffering after the Great War. He issued a plan which he called his Final Solution. This plan placed people of Jewish ancestry into camps were they would until they were too weak, than were sent to be killed. In 5 years over 6 million Jews from Germany and Poland were murdered. This war against an entire ethnic group has been up until recently been kept out of German history books and German national memory. Slowly the past is being taught and high school students must visit a concentration camp to witness the war against humanity that Hitler created. Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitlers Willing Executioner, argues that this was not just the actions of the men in the German military or the SS. He suggests that all Germans were involved in one way or another. The idea that an entire country could be involved in a plot to exterminate an whole ethnic group of people who were once a citizen of the same country brought about an even more amazing definition of total war. During the Cold War, the United States never directly fought the Soviet Union. The smaller wars of these great conflicts have come to have been called peripheral wars. The issue was over communism versus democracy, which at heart a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, and later China who became a socialist state. China backed North Korea as it tried for takeover in the Korean War. The communism that had spread into North Korea was trying to reunite Korea under communism. The US sent

8 help to South Korea to fight off communism due to the domino theory that if one country fell to communism, so would many others. This theory helped with many of the anti-communist moves made by the UN. Though no winner was declared and there was a stalemate at the 38Th Parallel, the peace has been kept. The communists stood no chance of the total takeover of Korea. As the first military struggle the US did not win, it put fear in many that the US has met his match. Like Korea, the Vietnam War was a place of struggle for the US and the communists. Also like Korea, the northern communists invaded the south with hope of takeover. Again the south was aided by the US and 58,196 of the 500,000 troops were killed. In the end the communists prevailed in winning the war. The capital of Saigon was captured by the North Vietnam army in 1975; two years after the United States ended their presence. The war was fought in a communist against democratic struggle, as well as Korea. The domino theory may have taken over if not for the US support against China and its allies. War was once a simpler thing. Men fought for religion in small and almost personal battles. Through time ideals of freedom took the place of religious motives. Today we are faced with a form of war fought for vengeance, impersonal alliances and in ways where all people are at stake.

Bibliography
Golden, Richard M. The Social Dimension of Western Civilization. 5. Vol. 2. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. Grun, Bernard. The Timetable of History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Oxford. The Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Varela-Lago, Dr. Ana. "Class Notes." HIS 241. Northern Arizona University, Fall 2009.