Notes on U.S. Military Culture
The United States is a mighty maritime power, the successor of the British Empire in terms of global maritime dominance, and the owner of the most powerful naval forces on the planet.
Geopolitical doctrines classify the United States as one of the "civilizations of the Sea" – in contrast to Russia and China, the classic "civilizations of the Land". By the way, one of the fathers of geopolitics is considered to be the American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, author of the major work "The Influence of Naval Power on History" (1890).
It would seem that the great American novel with philosophical generalizations like "War and Peace" should be dedicated specifically to the sea and naval battles.
AMERICAN MARINE SCIENCE
And Americans really have a great novel of this kind. This is the famous "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville (1851). However, it is not about a military ship, but about a whaling ship. And not about any particular military campaign, but a worldwide battle of good and evil, refracted through the prism of human obsession.
Most of Melville's books can be attributed to the Marine science department. He himself had some maritime experience: he served as a cabin boy on a packet boat (mail ship), was a whaler, lived among the natives of the Marquesas Islands, returned to his homeland on a warship. His books "White Pea Jacket", "Billy Bud" and "Israel Potter" (partially) are devoted to naval adventures. But their popularity is much inferior to "Moby Dick".
By the way, another famous American novel was written on the material of whaling – "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London (1904).
Another founder of American literature, Fenimore Cooper, wrote several naval novels ("The Pilot", 1823, "The Red Corsair", 1825, etc.). And his last completed book was "The History of the American Navy" (1839).
But Cooper's marine studies are still inferior to his novels "about Indians": the main element of this writer is still not the sea, but the prairie. And the Americans soon forgot Melville's novels and rediscovered them with noisy pomp only in the 1920s. And Jack London is even more famous in Russia than in the USA – in his homeland he is a half-forgotten author.
American literature in general experienced an obvious inferiority complex during the 19th century. Most of the national classics were recognized first in Europe, and only then in their homeland. And it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that Americans conquered their cultural complexes – and began to be shamelessly proud of the genres that they were really good at. In the theater - musicals, in music – jazz, rock and roll and a variety of pop, in movies – westerns and thrillers. This cultural emancipation naturally coincided with the post-war rise of the United States as one of the two world superpowers.
At the same time, the American marine industry is quite rich. It has authors who specialize in historical novels from the age of sailboats, like William White. On political technotrillers like Tom Clancy ("The Hunt for Red October", "Red Storm", etc.), or Patrick Robinson ("Nimitz Class", "Kilo Class", etc.), or Peter Singer and August Cole ("Ghost Fleet"), on novels about the marine infantry, like Robert Flanagan ("Worms", in the original Maggot – "maggot").
There is also pure marine fiction in the genre of alternative history (the trilogy "Stars and Stripes" by Harry Harrison). There are also "minor prophets" like the half-forgotten Morgan Robertson, who, it turns out, already in the early twentieth century predicted the collapse of the Titanic, the invention of the periscope and the war at sea between the United States and the Japanese Empire. And there is no shortage of scrupulous research on all the nooks and crannies of national naval history.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The term "lost generation", dropped by avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, was popularized by Ernest Hemingway. This galaxy usually includes the German writer Remarque, the Americans Hemingway and Dos Passos, the Frenchman Celine, the Englishman Aldington. These are writers who visited the First World War and wrote books about it, if not directly pacifist, then at least full of bitterness and disappointment.
Sometimes the "lost generation" is understood in an expanded way, including such American writers as Francis Scott Fitzgerald (who was not at war, but expressed disappointment with the ephemerality of American prosperity before the Great Depression), Nathaniel West, and others. Of course, there were many reasons for disappointment in the American reality of the 1930s.
At the same time, in defeated Germany, for example, one of the most notable writers was Ernst Junger, who refused to consider his front-line experience negative. His book "In Steel Thunderstorms" is primarily a glorification of human courage and the "sacred horror of battle", without deviations into Nietzschean vulgarities or national revanchism. One can see in this another apotheosis of German militarism. Or you can just compare the front-line experience of Junger and the same Hemingway.
The American served as an orderly in the Italian army, was seriously wounded, and later was a front-line correspondent in the Turkish–Greek war - in short, he saw sights and smelled gunpowder. But still, his experience does not compare with the experience of Junger – a platoon commander, then a company, a participant in several major battles, a cavalier of the highest military awards. "When you're bored lying down, you look for all sorts of ways to unwind; so, one day I spent time counting my injuries. I found that, apart from such trifles as ricochets and scratches, I had a total of 14 hits, namely: five rifle shots, two shell fragments, four hand grenades, one shrapnel bullet and two bullet fragments, the entrance and exit holes from which left 20 scars on me. In this war, where there were more spaces under fire than individual people, I was nevertheless honored that 11 of these shots were intended for me personally. And that's why I rightfully affixed a gold wound badge to my chest." Junger does not mention that among his injuries was a through wound to the head – by a happy accident, with no visible consequences.
The First World War forged not only disillusioned and pacifists. But American writers were not affected by her heroic mythology in any way.
WORLD WAR II
Vladimir Berezin writes: "There was one war in the Ardennes, another in Stalingrad, a third in Libya, and a fourth in Iwo Jima. Of course, it can be said that people everywhere are equally afraid of death. But no, it's not like that. Go hear a story about some farmer from Iowa, whose Japanese gathered all the household in a stable, and then set fire to this barn from four sides. Or about a soldier in the Ardennes who remembers that his entire Jewish family from a small town in New England was rolled into a moat on the outskirts. Or about a guy from San Francisco who would fight for several months in the ruins of a city on the Mississippi, realizing that there is no land for him beyond the Mississippi."
It was noted that there are many anti-war notes in the books of American novelists about the Second World War, but there are practically no anti-fascist notes. Indeed, the main enemy of the United States was not Germany, but Japan, while the war was not fought on American territory – even Hawaii was subjected only to bombing and airstrikes. In terms of atrocities and war crimes, the Japanese were practically as good as the Germans in anything – but this war was much less ideologized for the Americans than for the Russians.
According to writer William Styron, "for millions of Americans, the personification of evil was not the Nazis, but the legions of Japanese soldiers who, like slanted rabid monkeys, invaded the jungle and threatened the American continent." Hatred of the enemy was introduced at the level of racial prejudice. But we in Russia in 1904-1905, during the time of Tsushima and Port Arthur, also went through this. And forty years later, our brightest publicists like Ilya Ehrenburg often appealed to simple and ancient instincts.
American writer Lesya Malanchuk writes: "American literature has a very rich tradition of a novel about the Second World War... Here are the realistic "Across the River in the Shade of trees" by Ernest Hemingway, "From Here to Eternity" by James Jones, "Young Lions" by Irwin Shaw, and the naturalistic "Naked and Dead" by Norman Mailer, and the semi-fantastic "Massacre No. 5" by Kurt Vonnegut. But they have one thing in common – a critical, often satirical anti-war orientation."
By the way, the novels about the same era by the British – Graham Greene ("The Office of Fear", "The Essence of the Matter") and Evelyn Waugh (The Sword of Honor trilogy) are adjacent to the same tradition.
In Russia, not to mention the USSR, such a picture is, of course, impossible. In our country, Vladimir Voinovich's books about Ivan Chonkin (where the war remains only a background) and Viktor Astafiev's late prose ("Cursed and Killed", etc.), filled with heavy sarcasm, somehow fit into the designated tradition.
At the turn of the 1940s - 1950s, a whole group of "war novelists" appeared in the United States; all of them were participants in World War II and adhered to the naturalistic principles of depicting reality. Among them, Gore Vidal is usually singled out ("Willivo", 1946), James Jones ("From Here to Eternity", in another translation "From Now on and Forever", 1951; "Thin Red Line", 1962; "Just Call", 1977). But most of all, the laurels in the fresh traces of the war were collected by Norman Mailer's novel "The Naked and the Dead" (1948).
Mailer served as a Marine private, spent a year and a half in the Philippines as part of the 112th Regiment, and published his first and main novel at the age of 25. It takes place on the fictional Pacific atoll of Anopopei, on which the division of General Edward Cummings lands (the author used his experience of landing on the Philippine island of Leyte here). The plot depicts an adventure that is unnecessary in a military sense – throwing a platoon of scouts behind the Japanese. The course of the operation is shown through the eyes of soldiers, sergeants, officers and the general commander, and the author constantly emphasizes the mechanical nature of their actions.
One of the storylines is the conflict between General Cummings and his adjutant, Lieutenant Hearn. As a result, the general directs Hearn to the formation, to the reconnaissance platoon of the headquarters company, commanded by Sergeant Sam Croft. The sergeant, of course, does not want to give up command to an untrained officer. As a result, he puts Hearn under enemy bullets, and he dies. At the same time, Sergeant Croft is feuding with Private Red Volsen, etc. The Japanese are practically not depicted in the novel – their actions are reduced to mortar and machine gun attacks. The whole war is shown as a senseless massacre, and its participants as senseless victims. That, in fact, is the whole philosophy.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ABSURD
Let's say a few more words about Joseph Heller's novel "Catch-22" (in another translation, "Correction-22"). The author joined the American Air Force in 1942, at the age of 19, and managed to fight in Italy (60 combat missions on a B-25 bomber). His novel was published in 1961. The main villains here are not Germans or Italians, but American generals who enjoy violence and turn the lives of military pilots into a viscous absurdity. The novel is often compared to the "Adventures of the brave soldier Schweik" by Yaroslav Hasek. To my taste, Hasek's book is much brighter, and its main character is much more attractive than the American whiner Captain Yossarian. However, Heller's novel has its own authoritative supporters.
Finally, Kurt Vonnegut in the novel "Massacre number Five, or The Children's Crusade" (1969) described the night of the bombing of Dresden by the Allies at the end of the war – he himself witnessed it as a prisoner of war. This is already a completely anti–war book - as, indeed, William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice (1979) and a number of other books of the same kind.
In general, the great American literature can in no way serve as a source of patriotism or a storehouse of fruitful military philosophy. One can conclude that "American literature is in great debt," etc. Or one can look into other sources that undoubtedly exist in American culture. For example, in the same westerns. But talking about them will have to be postponed until another time.
Yuri Yudin