“It Doesn't Matter ... Whether the Stories Really Happened

Michael Walsh. Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2020. 368 pp. $28.99, cloth, ISBN 978-1-250-21708-0. Reviewed by Jonathan Abel (Command and General Staf College, Ft. Leavenworth) Published on H-War (January, 2021) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University) “It Doesn’t Matter ... Whether the Stories Really Happened: What Matters Is That They Are True” Michael Walsh’s Last Stands: Why Men Fight Drift/Khartoum. As a result, it cannot be said to be When All Is Lost is a new entry into the popular a consistent theme of the work, despite Walsh’s history market, aimed at securing an audience in‐ stated intention and the book’s cover quote from terested in military history and military affairs. It Victor Davis Hanson. relates the stories of fifteen battles, ranging from Instead, Walsh’s primary theme is a variety of classical Greece to World War II, from the author’s neo-Huntingtonianism (or, given the author’s age, perspective. These serve as case studies of the au‐ perhaps simple Huntingtonianism). He posits a thor’s thesis, which purports to be to reawaken the clash of civilizations between a civilized, Christian, masculinity of the West, and of America specific‐ individualist West and an uncivilized, Muslim, col‐ ally. The result is a problematic text that does little lectivist East determined to destroy it. In his intro‐ more than epitomize the pop culture history of duction, Walsh admits that he has curated his case America after 1950 and impregnate it with the au‐ studies to include only those that support this thes‐ thor’s troublesome views. is. When his examples allow, this theme is literal, Walsh’s stated theme is to use his case studies as in the case of the largely Christian Habsburg de‐ to illustrate examples of masculinity: “this book is fenders of Szigetvár against the Muslim Ottomans a testament ... to the concept of manliness itself” in 1566 or the Christian British forces killed at (p. 2). However, this waxes and wanes throughout Khartoum by the Mahdi’s forces in 1885. In cases the text. Some chapters, like the ones on Thermo‐ where the analogy cannot be direct, Walsh finds pylae and Roncevaux Pass, make frequent re‐ recourse to myth to make it so; thus the 778 Battle course to masculinity, while it is largely absent in of Roncevaux Pass becomes a Christian-versus- others, like those on Masada/Warsaw and Rorke’s Muslim fight via the later Song of Roland, and the H-Net Reviews chapter on nineteenth-century conflicts in Mexico and scholarly, but fails to reference the seminal posits a second Reconquista of the former lands of work on the topic by S. L. A. Marshall, among oth‐ New Spain by current Mexico, echoing the Christi‐ ers. Walsh uses the aforementioned work by Whit‐ an Reconquista of Umayyad Iberia. When the neo- man to illustrate the immutable nature of war Huntington thesis cannot be forced, Walsh rather than referencing Carl von Clausewitz, the provides surrogates like the “savage” tribes of preeminent scholar of the unchanging nature of Little Bighorn; the voracious Protestants of the war, even to popular historians. In the same 1527 Sack of Rome; or the implacable, faceless, pa‐ chapter, Walsh refers to the “afterlife” of a battle, gan empires of Achaemenid Persia, Rome, and citing theater critic Jonathan Miller’s Subsequent Nazi Germany. The result of this bifurcation is a Performances (1986) and seemingly unaware of narrative that is succinct and pointed in some pas‐ the vast, cross-disciplinary field of memory stud‐ sages and meandering in others. ies. Occasionally, this presents a missed opportun‐ Last Stands is not a work of academic history ity; for example, Walsh contends that “no one or historiography nor does it make any pretense of should ‘take care’ of a man once he hits puberty being so. Therefore, it lacks the scholarly apparat‐ and grows into what we call manhood,” an argu‐ us found in such works. It does not have a biblio‐ ment that might benefit from an understanding of graphy, and most of the footnotes are elaborations the related views on child-rearing of Jean-Jacques of Walsh’s points rather than citations of sourcing. Rousseau (p. 15). Finally, many of Walsh’s refer‐ As a result, Walsh’s sourcing must be gleaned from ences and footnotes are only tangentially connec‐ the text. He makes use of primary source docu‐ ted to the arguments in which they are embedded, ments, usually a single main source for each particularly the references to fiction. The result is a chapter/case study. Portions of these are printed in sporadically sourced book with little connection to an appendix to the book, which begins with a non- any work beyond those of Creasy, Johnson, and, ul‐ sequitur citation from the Christian Bible. timately, Samuel Huntington. Few secondary sources appear in the work or Thus, the text of Last Stands illustrates that its notes. According to the text, Walsh relies most Walsh made little effort to locate his study or argu‐ on Edward Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the ments within historical literature, particularly his‐ World (1851) as his model, and indeed Last Stands toriography. Instead, beyond the few aforemen‐ could be said to be an entry into the “great battles” tioned secondary sources, he prefers to make use canon of popular military history. Walsh draws his of works of fiction, both in print and film, to sup‐ cultural and social analysis from the works of Brit‐ port his arguments. These range from authors like ish writer Paul Johnson, whom he references regu‐ Virgil and Thomas Mann to John Ford westerns larly. Most of the remaining referenced secondary and Zach Snyder’s Thermopylae film 300 (2006). He works are either non-scholarly works or ones that thus appears to have wholeheartedly adopted the are old, like Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall title of this review, drawn from the text, as his of the Roman Empire, published in the late 1700s, or modus operandi: “it doesn’t matter ... whether the J. E. A. Whitman’s How Wars are Fought, from stories really happened. What matters is that they 1941. are true” (p. 105). Indeed, Walsh’s case studies ap‐ pear to have been selected primarily because they Walsh’s choices of sourcing lead to puzzling almost all have such cultural productions related passages and conclusions throughout, as illus‐ to them. The Siege of Szigetvár is an excellent ex‐ trated by three examples from his introductory ample of this; Walsh appears to have selected it in chapter. He presents the theme of soldiers’ motiva‐ place of a similar case study like the 1453 Fall of tions, a common one in military history, popular Constantinople because it allows him to draw a 2 H-Net Reviews direct analogy between Szigetvár and the Syrian most chapters. Walsh states that Switzerland “won refugee crisis in late 2010s Europe. Worse still for independence from the Holy Roman Empire in an ostensible work of history, in several chapters, 1499”; while Switzerland did win a degree of most notably on Thermopylae and Roncevaux, he autonomy from imperial taxation and law in that uses these fictional narratives in place of history. year, it remained a part of the empire until 1648 (p. Thus, Thermopylae, like 300, becomes a heroic 142). He finds a “Cathedral of Saint Sophia” in Con‐ stand of individuals against mechanistic, slave- stantinople; while occasional reference may be owning Persians despite the fact that classical made to a “Saint Sophia,” the Hagia Sophia was Greece was literally built by slaves, and Ron‐ dedicated not to a person but rather to “Holy cevaux Pass, like The Song of Roland, becomes a Sophia,” the anthropomorphization of Wisdom in heroic fight of Christian against raving Muslim the Christian tradition (p. 164). He makes Abu Bakr hordes despite the historical battle’s being between Abdullah ibn Uthman to be “a friend of Franks and Basques. As a result, Last Stands is Muhammad” without mentioning that he was also more a history of the popular memory of the Muhammad’s father-in-law (p. 269). He argues that battles presented, as filtered through Walsh’s own China “has been defeated many times by its neigh‐ views, rather than a history of them per se. bors”; while China has suffered from two notable As is unfortunately the case in many works invasions, those of the Mongols in the thirteenth aimed at a popular audience, Walsh’s text suffers century and the Japanese in the 1930s, China has from numerous infelicities of historical analysis instead been in the opposite position, exerting he‐ and fact throughout. Examples from its second gemony over its neighbors, for the vast majority of chapter illuminate the issue. Page 49 finds that the its history (p. 16n4). He contends that “Western sol‐ “Roman civil war was fought largely in Greece” diers do not have to be prodded into battle by despite the various civil wars that plagued Rome political commissars. They do not have to be con‐ throughout the first century BCE taking place scripted on a vast and permanent scale. They need across the Mediterranean, including, but certainly not be propagandized to come to the defense of not predominantly, in Greece. The following page the homeland,” seemingly unaware that all of states that Muslims destroyed the Great Library at those occurred in French revolutionary armies, to Alexandria, the “great seat of classical and early cite just one example to the contrary (p. 19). In an‐ Christian learning,” despite that institution’s other chapter, Walsh makes Vercingetorix a Ger‐ largely having been destroyed by the Romans in man rather than a Gaul of the Arverni tribe.

Load more