The Military Mind

A Great Read!

"The military mind has always been especially immune to new ideas."  

Those were William Manchester's words from his book, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968.  He wrote them describing the closedminded opposition on the part of the Prussian, English, and Berlin governments to Alfred Krupp, in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, when he tried to interest their armories in cast steel barrels for artillery and small arms.

In the same breath, Manchester noted that Samuel Morse, who was perfecting his code about the same time as Krupp's experimentations with weapons of steel, "was to spend eight years hammering on Washington doors before the first strand of wire went up." (Emphasis mine).

Manchester further points out that similar standoffishness was encountered by America's Richard Gatling, England's Henry Shrapnel, and Germany's Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

Things are no different in the present century.  I can appreciate the timelessness of Manchester's observation, having just spent four years trying to write doctrine for the Army.