Walter M. Hudson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813160979
- eISBN:
- 9780813165448
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813160979.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Military History
The conclusion begins by focusing on a series of recommendations, reports, and studies prepared during the early postwar period that analyzed the successes and failures of the army’s occupation ...
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The conclusion begins by focusing on a series of recommendations, reports, and studies prepared during the early postwar period that analyzed the successes and failures of the army’s occupation efforts. These documents highlighted the need to institutionalize the lessons of the postwar occupations. However, as the Cold War lengthened into a protracted, highly political struggle, the army concluded that warfare had moved beyond the conventional, nation-state type. Accordingly, the World War II military government paradigm, premised on occupation of a nation-state following major conflict, faded in significance. In retrospect, as the German, Austrian, and Korean occupations reveal in both their successes and failures, postwar occupations are highly complex problems that resist definitive, doctrinal solutions.Less
The conclusion begins by focusing on a series of recommendations, reports, and studies prepared during the early postwar period that analyzed the successes and failures of the army’s occupation efforts. These documents highlighted the need to institutionalize the lessons of the postwar occupations. However, as the Cold War lengthened into a protracted, highly political struggle, the army concluded that warfare had moved beyond the conventional, nation-state type. Accordingly, the World War II military government paradigm, premised on occupation of a nation-state following major conflict, faded in significance. In retrospect, as the German, Austrian, and Korean occupations reveal in both their successes and failures, postwar occupations are highly complex problems that resist definitive, doctrinal solutions.
