Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 128
French nation and the republic’s political leaders, the
French army to France’s allies, and the French army
to its enemies. Each relationship tells us something
important. First, Greenhalgh describes the way a
succession of French military commanders sparred
with the civil government while, at the same time,
depending on the politicians to mobilize and remobilize public support for the war. Second, with France’s
allies, Greenhalgh suggests the many ways that French
generals found Douglas Haig (and later John Pershing),
difficult partners in the project of war. Third, in its lifeor-death struggle with the most powerful army in the
world, the author believes the French army ultimately
proved to be a more successful “learning organization”
than its German enemy was.
With this book, along with her previous works
Victory Through Coalition and Foch in Command,
Greenhalgh has solidified her place as one of the most
important of our current World War I historians.
More important, The French Army and the First World
War will help balance what the author believes are the
unfair judgments of contemporary British observers,
as well as the distortions found in the received views
expressed in current English-language historiography. This new volume reflects both her own extensive
research into the French war effort as well as a comprehensive summary of the new works appearing on
the war. It is well documented and well supported by
detailed maps, and when considering the topic of the
French army in World War I, one should expect this
book to serve as “the” scholarly reference for many
years to come.
Dr. Scott Stephenson,
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
SHAPING U.S. MILITARY LAW: Governing a
Constitutional Military
Joshua E. Kastenberg, Ashgate Publishing Limited,
Burlington, Vermont, 2014, 257 pages
S
haping U.S. Military Law: Governing a
Constitutional Military is a comprehensive study
of the evolution and shaping of U.S. military
law. The military has requirements for a set of governing laws unique to the culture and discipline of the
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military, yet it must allow for a degree of transparency and civilian oversight commensurate with the
military being subordinate to civil authority. Joshua
Kastenberg’s central idea addresses the supposition
by many legal academicians that the federal judiciary
(the U.S. Supreme Court and the appropriate appellate courts) largely shows deference to the military
establishment, thereby allowing the military to provide
its own legal oversight and operate as a questionable
anomaly. This is a common friction point of many of
the cases the author uses to address this claim.
Two major themes recur throughout the book:
the personalities of the Supreme Court justices
throughout the years, and the ways their personal
jurisprudence helped shape military law. The author
provides surprising insight into the political leanings
of the justices and which cases they did or did not
address. From his research findings, you could also
expect which justice would likely write the dissenting
opinion. It might come as a surprise to the reader that
“politics of the court” are alive and well even at the
Supreme Court level.
The other recurring theme is how the courts attempted to define the jurisdiction of crimes committed
by service members that might otherwise be the purview
of a civil court, such as rape of a civilian in an off-post
apartment or sexual assault of a minor. The main idea )