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Two review copies sent to me the other day both of which I will review over at Chicago Boyz sometime this summer.

But first, I owe a review to my esteemed collegeague Dan of tdaxp:

So many books….

My Chicago Boyz fellow blogger, Dan from Madison, posted up on an important book – an economic history of Nazi Germany during WWII by Adam Tooze entitled The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy:

“Book Review – The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy”

….I have just finished up a book by Adam Tooze called The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. This book is about WW2 from an economic point of view. The book doesn’t really talk about generalship, tank tactics, or anything else military except in economic terms.

This book is simply outstanding. The beginning portions in particular are very dense and will require a basic understanding of economics to comprehend. I had to re-read several portions, especially in the first two hundred pages. Carl, who recommended the book to me, is an expert in economics and admitted to me that he even had to re-read portions. That aside, after you immerse yourself in this book you are in for a real treat and will learn a lot.

Too many times students of WW2 like myself tend to think of things happening in a vacuum. As an example, I knew that the Germans stormed across Europe in 1939 and 1940, but gave very little thought that this massive army didn’t just “appear”. The German economy had to be managed very effectively for them to be competitive on the world stage.

It was fascinating how the German economic minds managed their production in the thirties, all the while trying to escape from under their war reparations. In detail it is discussed how these minds bashed each other on how to manage their currency, trade, and raw materials.

Also interesting are many predictions by those close in Hitler’s circle of people that once the US got into the war on the side of the Allies all was lost. Germany simply could not produce enough of everything for long enough. After reading this book I can say with relative certainty that even if D-Day had failed, eventually the Allies would have prevailed, simply from the numbers involved. Not to mention Berlin would have been nuked, but that is certainly grist for another post.

Albert Speer, who for a time when he enjoyed Hitler’s favor as the Reichsminister for Armaments and War Production, was able to rationalize the crazy-quilt, quasi-planned, neo-autarkic Nazi economy by pushing decentralization (“industrial self-responsibility”) in the face of opposition by ambitious rivals (like Sauckel), corrupt gauleiters, the SS leadership and Nazi radicals. Such was Speer’s organizational abilities and skill at bureaucratic intrigue that Nazi Germany was actually becoming more industrially productive in the face of Allied bombing and invasion – to a point. Eventually, as Speer realized, critical resources such as wolframite, chromium and oil would simply become unavailable and the war machine would have come to a sudden, screeching, halt in late 1945, early 1946 at the latest, regardless of the progress of the Allied armies.

Economic strength and efficiency does not predetermine victory in war but the longer the war, the greater the weight economic power will have on the outcome.

Aside from hosting Zenpundit, I have for some time been a member of the libertarian and conservative oriented group blog, Chicago Boyz, which has been and continues to be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience for me.  After careful consideration, I have accepted kind invitations to participate in two other, completely different, sites with sharper topical focus. They are:

Progressive Historians: The dynamic, Left of center ( occasionally way Left) history blog.  No, I’ve not made a sudden political conversion, instead I’ve been asked to join as sort of the” house conservative” in order to add a different point to view to the mix. In the words of PH founder, Jeremy Young:

Since Mark is openly politically conservative, this last choice requires some explanation. I want to make clear that the editorial stance of this site has not changed; we remain avowedly progressive and liberal and, if anything, my own personal political beliefs have become far more uniformly leftist than they were when I founded ProgressiveHistorians in September 2006. At the same time, I don’t believe the Internet should be viewed as a safe space where we’re shielded from others who disagree with our views. Back when he ran the now-defunct Tacitus.org, the conservative Josh Trevino featured an avowedly liberal poster named “Harley” on his front page, who interacted respectfully with all commenters and generally enriched the quality of the site. I’ve long been interested in doing the same sort of thing here at PH, and Mark is the perfect person to do it with — an eclectic and nontraditional conservative with real expertise in issues of great importance to America’s present predicament

Jeremy is very gracious in his praise; however, he’s definitely right that blogosphere could use a more frequent – and more civil – discourse between Left and Right than we’ve seen in recent years. No one gets any smarter from inhabiting an echo chamber, which is why I’ve always tried, despite my own right of center philosophy, to keep this blog open to all points of view and to reach out and build relationships with first rate bloggers of all kinds of political and disciplinary backgrounds. I’m also pleased to participate in an excellent site like Progressive Historians where the authors have such a widely varied set of historical research interests. I expect to challenge some assumptions there and be challenged in my turn, and learn some new things along the way.

Now for the second:

Complex Terrain Laboratory: This is a British site dedicated to the emerging field of human terrain mapping and more generally, a consilient approach to analysis and problem solving:

The Complex Terrain Laboratory is a not-for-profit digital thinklab. Founded in 2008 and based in the UK, it is equal parts research platform, virtual portal, and experimental workshop.

Its mission is to explore the conceptual problems that challenge legal and policy approaches to politically violent non-state groups.

Its approach is multidisciplinary, built around the notion that “terrain” is a security metaphor for complex physical, human, and cognitive environments.

Its goals are four-fold:

• Cross-pollinate academic, practice, industry, and policy interests
• Promote relevant concept development and communication
• Establish itself as a creative and authoritative “thinklab”
• Compile a critical mass of analytical output

CTLab culture is predicated on the vigorous pursuit of knowledge, acquired and developed through syncretic practice. It values the documentary record and the eyewitness account equally. It views intelligence as experiential and cumulative. It believes in the primacy of law in international relations. It sees technology as a tool, not an answer. It eschews solipsistic perspectives of crisis and conflict, and is committed to thick understanding. It understands that research by remote fits hand in glove with the tale well told after a long walk in harsh climes.

This is, in my view, exactly the “Think Tank 2.0” road that academia, government and civil society need to go down in order to get a grasp on evolving global problems that are increasingly interdependent, complex and transnational. When Michael Innes, CTLab’s executive director, invited me to join his roster of distinguished contributors I readily agreed to do so, starting next month. This site is one that I think is only going to grow in terms of influence and policy impact.

What does this mean for Zenpundit ? Business will continue as usual here with some pieces being cross-posted elsewhere where appropriate ( historical posts at PH, cognitive-synthesis and thought pieces at CTLabs, book reviews, economics and mil-theory at Chicago Boyz etc.) and original material posted elsewhere will be linked to here.  Should be a good way of getting different blog audiences to interact as well.

This is the great thing about blogging – the times when other people pick up where you had left off and turbocharge the conversation with their own posts. Some of the best kind of P2P feedback around. Here Younghusband and Lexington Green carry the ball downfield in two different threads. Both posts should be read in full but here are snippets and links:

Coming Anarchy -“History vs. the Future”

….A brief glance shows a gap in the qualitative area reflected in your comment that “History is a craft, not a science.” However, futurism is also about the “craft” of qualitative analysis as well, so the two are not necessary diametric. One common aspect of both fields is the philosophic, specifically the epistimelogical consequences (once again I would like to do a double-take at the term “discrete facts”) and the eternal quest to pare down bias. This is an area that I think could be explored more. If you know any good journal articles about this let me know.

Moving on, I would like to challenge one of your statements: “The problem with futurists is that their predictions are all too frequently in error.”

Error denotes precision. Futurists are in the forecasting business not the prediction business. If a futurist constructs a number of variant scenarios, none of which exactly fit the present conditions, but are able to be used to inform decision-making, where is the error? The fact that the scenarios could be drawn upon for guidance makes the futurist a success. Qualifying uncertainty is a key aspect of forecasting, one that is often overlooked by the public. Hey, we all can’t be fans of Sherman Kent

Younghusband is right – the best Futurism involves forecasting and work with intriguing scenarios of reasonable internal validity and the attempt to nail down hard predictions ( frequently demanded by journalists and politicians) often fails because the greater attempt at precision increases the probability of error. Scenarios are tools for guidance, they reduce our “surprise” through mental rehearsals and the extension of our anticipation of possibilities ( Taleb would say turning some black swans into gray ones).

Regarding “discrete facts”, it would have been more accurate for me to have written to say “primary source documentary evidence that is generally regarded as factual support for the narrative itself” by historians as opposed to “speculation” regarding motivations, plausibility, nuances inferred from the documents by the historian. Note that the content of the documents themselves may be decidedly non-factual or fantastic but for historians, what matters in terms of “fact” is that  they represent evidence of what was considered at the time.

Chicago Boyz – “Academia’s Jihad Against Military History: Further Thoughts”

A good recent piece on this issue which Zen did not link to is Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction by the excellent military historian Robert M. Citino. Citino’s essay was published in the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the American Historical Association, which modestly describes itself as the major historical journal in the United States. Hence, Citino’s article is a case for the defense, made by a very qualified military historian, in the main forum of the profession.

….Citino concludes his essay by virtually imploring the rest of the profession:

Despite these problems, which no doubt promise to be contentious, military historians today are doing enough good work, based on exciting and innovative approaches, to re-engage the attention of historians in any number of areas. My final advice to my professional colleagues and friends in the broader discipline? Try something genuinely daring, even countercultural, in terms of today’s academy. Read some military history.

There is something grotesquely wrong when the author of many numerous top-quality works feels he has to grovel before his peers. Unfortunately for him, he has to live and function in a shark-tank of political correctness and ideological hostility. I wish him well.

I wish Citino well too, however it’s a quest that I fear is straight out of Cervantes and this example cited by Lex demonstrates how parlous the state of affairs for military history in academia has become. More effectively than my post had done. Lex’s post has stirred some excellent feedback as well as a possible solution from Smitten Eagle in the comments section.

Lexington Green sent me this PARAMETERS review essay by Colonel Arthur C. Winn – on the five volume series on Strategic Intelligence [Five Volumes] (Intelligence and the Quest for Security) , edited by Dr. Loch K. Johnson and issued by Praeger Security International.

The five volumes present empirical inquiries, historical views, theoretical frameworks, memoirs, case studies, interviews, legal analyses, comparative essays, and ethical assessments. The authors come fromvarying backgrounds, including academia, intelligence agencies, think tanks, Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, the legal field, and from seven countries. Each author has different personal experiences andwrites fromhis or her own perspective. The books provide an excellent reference for students of the military, political affairs, foreign policy, or strategic planning. The supporting notes at the end of each chapter are especially helpful and should not be overlooked by the reader.

Lex kidded me about putting this on my Christmas List but it looks to be a “must read” or at least a “must have reference” set for scholars of intelligence, IR, diplomatic or military history. Very DIME oriented format. I’m impressed as this is exactly what I was looking for years ago when I shifted outside of diplomatic and economic history to delve into intelligence and strategic studies.

Maybe a corporate card or institutional account order is a good idea with this one ($ 360 – Ouch!).