Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War

Military geographer Winters and his contributors (geographers and retired military officers) use specific case studies to illustrate the importance in military operations of five elements of physical geography: weather, climate, terrain, soil and vegetation. The range is impressive and the examples are well chosen: ""weather"" includes the ""divine winds"" that frustrated the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Japan and the anomalous conditions in the English Channel that shaped the evacuation from Dunkirk and the invasion of Normandy; ""climate"" encompasses Hitler and Napoleon in Russia and the Wilderness battles of the American Civil War; ""terrain"" refers to peninsulas and islands such as Inchon and Iwo Jima; ""soil,"" to Flanders in 1917-18 and the ""endless beaches"" of the Western Desert and Sinai; and ""vegetation"" to New Guinea during WWII and Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The chapters exhibit few signs of the discrepancies in style and argument that often plague a multi-author work. Geography and history are juxtaposed rather than integrated, however, and there's little effort to explain how commanders used geography in operational planning. Nor does the book address the current shibboleth that technological advances are diminishing the relevance of terrain in warfare. Also, the scientific material included can be heavy going for a nonspecialist. Nevertheless, these case studies will usefully expand the limited sense of military geography possessed by most readers of military history. (Nov.)