Under the Shadow of Napoleon (Volume 9)

The way an army understands warfare and how to achieve victory on the battlefield has a tremendous impact on its organization, equipment, training, and doctrine. The central ideas of that understanding form an army’s Theory of Victory, which informs how that army fights. From the disasters of the War of 1812, Winfield Scott ensured that America adopted a series of ideas formed in the crucible of the French Revolution and perfected by Napoleon Bonaparte as the United States Army’s Theory of Victory. These French ideas dominated American warfare on the battlefields of the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.

The American Army remained committed to these ideas until the successes of German blitzkrieg led George C. Marshall to orchestrate the adoption of a different set of ideas that formed a different Theory of Victory in 1940. The US Army’s cycle of adopting a Theory of Victory, perfecting it, and replacing it strongly mirrored the cycle of the scientific paradigm outlined by Thomas Kuhn. The French influence in this period is remarkably consistent throughout the Army regulations and doctrine and officer education at West Point, Fort Leavenworth, the Army War College, and on American battlefields across the globe. Understanding the French ideas that dominated American warfare provides a new context to the military actions, policies, and decisions from 1814 through 1941. That new context informs more accurate analyses and helps provide more satisfying answers to the questions of American military history.

This second edition is updated from the first edition of 2012 with a significant expansion of primary sources from the curriculum of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. Michael A. Bonura offers new analysis of how the Theory of Victory was adopted, refined, and replaced, which will inform both the study of such transitions and the attempt to do so in the future.

MICHAEL A. BONURA is an assistant professor in the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College, where he teaches military officers about strategy, policy, and joint operations. He graduated from the US Military Academy in 1997, received his PhD in history from Florida State University in 2008, and was an assistant professor of history at the US Military Academy from 2006 to 2009. Bonura retired from the US Army as a colonel after twenty-five years of service.