In this episode, we discuss:

-What drew Col Reynolds to studying history

-The value of history for the military professional

-Avoiding traps and pitfalls in studying and using history

-Studying at Oxford

-German General Ludwig Beck

-Doctrine in the German army (1914-1945)

-How the Marine Corps used history while Col Reynolds was a company-grade officer

-His time as a student at The Basic School (TBS)

-The state of the Marine Corps in the mid to late 1970s

-The decision to leave the Marine Corps and transitioning

-Col Reynold’s time in the Central Intelligence Agency

-His experiences at TBS as an individual mobilization augmentee

-How TBS had changed since his time as a student

-Tactical decision games (TDGs) and sand table exercises as intellectual revelations

-Writing good TDGs

-Col Reynold’s contest-winning article, “Turn on Your Lights!”

-Criticisms of studying and drawing from the 20th-century German military tradition

-Researching and writing Just Cause and A Skillful Show of Strength

-Serving as the officer-in-charge of Marine Corps Field History in Operation Iraqi Freedom-I

-Interviewing Marine and Coalition leaders in Iraq

-Writing Basrah, Baghdad, and Beyond

-Areas where Marine forces in Iraq could have improved

-The relief of Colonel Joe Dowdy, the commander of Regimental Combat Team-1

-The turnover of Tikrit from Task Force Tripoli to the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division

-The U.S. failure to adequately prepare for Phase IV (stability) operations

-How Marine Corps historians seem less critical of Marine leaders compared to Army historians writing about Army generals

-The controversy and conversation surrounding Force Design 2030

Links

"Turn on Your Lights!" by Major Nicholas E. Reynolds, USMCR, Proceedings, November 1991

Fear as Negative Expectation and Approval Trap

The AI-powered Podcast Player