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"Illuminating Strange Defeat and Pyrrhic Victory: The Historian Robert A. Doughty" is the first of a new genre of Journal of Military History articles designed to explore particular historiographical areas by focusing on the contributions of their most distinguished historians. In surveying the scholarship of Brigadier General (Rtd.) Robert A. Doughty as well as his role in shaping the History Department at the United States Military Academy, this article explores the evolution of English-language interpretations of the fall of France in 1940 and the French effort in the Great War while highlighting Doughty's efforts to teach the U.S. Army how to harness historical study in the interest of doctrinal development.
COUP d'oeil and determination are essential qualities oí the military commander-and of the military historian. Brigadier General (Rtd.) Robert A. Doughty fortunately began his academic career while the performance of the French Army in the world wars was poorly understood, but he was sagacious in seizing his opportunity and indefatigable in its pursuit. His studies of the doctrine developed by the interwar French Army not only produced new and better explanations of the 1940 campaign but also helped to bring the study of doctrine to its current prominence in military historiography. More recently, he has filled a huge historiographical gap by producing the first comprehensive English-language narrative of French military efforts in the Great War.
When Captain Robert A. Doughty, a 1965 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and decorated Vietnam War veteran, entered graduate school in modern European history in 1971, "France fell" summarized not only the 1940 campaign but the state of the historiography devoted to it. Frenchmen, as John Cairns had pointed out in a pithy 1959 essay, preferred forgetting the disaster of 1940 to analyzing it.1 The commonplace explanations-conspiracy, destiny, divine disfavor-were clearly inadequate, as were efforts to dismiss the débâcle's significance by pronouncing it unnecessary or absurd. Cairns would reiterate his criticism of the historiography of 1940 in a 1974 essay condemning the extant accounts for failure to use the available sources, unjustified disdain for the French government, undue attention to petty scandal, and excessive admiration for the victorious Germans.2 But even as he called for serious study of French military preparations in the...