History

Piece of History:

Blogger David Hardy points to an article he's written about the American military, the NRA, and World War I. He brought it up because the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme occurs this month; it gave cause for him to remember why the American military of that time wasn't regularly subject to the massive losses seen on the Somme by the British and French.

The thesis of this article is that the NRA played a significant role in making the American military victorious in the first World War; this also caused a fundamental change in infantry tactics used by miliataries around the world. Plenty of supporting facts are offered, including personal correspondence between President Wilson and the Secretary of War.

Continuing my ideas from the previous post, it is possible that Hardy is only telling part of the story. But unlike the most troublesome historical story-tellers, his account doesn't ask me to believe that most of the other scholars are wrong about a subject area. Instead, his account asks me to believe that most other scholars haven't noticed (or have forgotten) what he is writing about.

In terms of being a careful historian, Hardy's article is full of verifiable information. In my reading, I didn't notice heavy use of inference to fill in gaps in knowledge.

Finally, in my case, the reading of this article changed my understanding of the course of World War I--the War to End All Wars, as it was styled at the time. When one nation is training its soldiers to use their weapons with high precision while the other combatants are training their soldiers to fire barrages and march into the fray with bayonets, there is little reason to be surprised that the soldiers who shoot with better precision end up on the winning side. I don't believe it was the sole cause, but it was a strong contributing factor in the victory.

It is also not a surprise that when the American military decided to implement a strict riflery-training regimen that they enlisted the services of the many experts at the NRA.

The article looks good, and reminded me of the way in which warfare was changed by the introduction of better weapons technology and training to use the technology. The combination of technology and training was much more effective than technology all alone.