 So when I start talking about the U.S. Navy, this is my favorite picture that I start with in talking about the U.S. Navy. Who can say no to a Schlitz on the beach? Right? This picture in my mind illustrates how you win wars on a scale such that we saw in the Second World War. If you can get a Schlitz on a beach with sailors enjoying a nice day in the sun in the Pacific and have stationary warships on the horizon, many of those warships had not been built in 1941. And you don't have to move those ships because you have complete control of the air, in this case, the land and the sea. That's how you win wars. That's why I like to start my presentations with this picture because I like to go to the beach. Who doesn't, right? So this is where you are. This is the first known image of where you are currently located. And you'll see aptly that the caption talks about what this building right next door, what we call Founders Hall, was used for. It was built round about 1820. The records are sort of hazy on that. But it was built as an asylum for those who couldn't pay their taxes. And then it was used sort of as a hospital and then it was sort of disused. And it was available to the Navy round about the Civil War timeframe. You might ask yourself why the US Navy chose to come to Newport, especially on a day like today when there's no heat. The reason they came to Newport is because, number one, Newport is very well located to defend key areas along the coast. Boston and New York are in close proximity to Newport. The other thing is Newport has this deep anchorage of the Narragansett Bay. So if your enemies are Britain and France and later on Germany, this is a good place to put your fleet in the event that you're gonna have to defend the American coast. The other thing I will say is round about the Civil War, you had the largest Navy in the world, really, almost 700-odd ships, warships. But those warships were built primarily for riverine operations. So if your enemies, after the Civil War, if you think your enemy's gonna be Britain, because that whole revolution thing didn't go as well as many people thought. And by the way, I went to the University of London, so from the British perspective, you Americans didn't win the war. They just got bored with you. And the Empire still exists just so you know. It's just, they're the brains and we're the brawn. These guys come out in the Civil War, okay? You've got Stephen B. Loos, Albert Theramehan, Theodorus Mason, and they're all sort of talking about that experience that they had in the Civil War. Most of what they did is they sat on ships blockading the Confederate States. And they said, you know what? We did a good job of blockading, but we really didn't do all that much in terms of getting the Trafalgar-like sort of experience where I'm a hero and I can come back home and wow people with my medals. We didn't do all that much in terms of battle action in the Civil War, but we essentially won the Civil War by being, and that's Naval Strategy 101. If you have a fleet that precludes your enemy from doing what they wanna do, you're probably gonna win. And so Stephen B. Loos, this guy right here, great hairline ends up saying, you know what, we need to educate ourselves about future possibilities in terms of American Naval Strategy. And so you can see what happens in the hairline. Loos eventually becomes the most senior admiral in the United States Navy. And he's in charge of the Newport torpedo station where they're developing new technologies like torpedoes. He then creates the Apprentice School, which is a training program for enlisted sailors. So the Apprentice Ratings System that we have in the Navy today was created here in Newport for enlisted sailors. And the issue was after the Civil War, you have ships with rifle guns, steam plants, they're made out of steel, very industrial sorts of existence. And the old school age of sail approach to training sailors how to operate on these machines isn't gonna work. I mean, in the age of sail, if you're tying a knot and the sail picks up when, takes your finger off, okay, you're still alive. But in the age of steam and steel, you're basically putting human beings inside machines that like to crush human beings. So Loos said, we can't do that. We have to train these people how to be sailors before we put them in these dangerous things that we use in the Navy called ships. And so he gets together with some of his pals from the Civil War period. And Alfred Thayer Mahan is the guy that he sort of tags with the idea that you need to sort of study history in order to avoid the mistakes of the past. Theodorus Mason is the guy who creates the Office of Naval Intelligence. His job is to collect information on other navies and then feed that information to people like Goodrich, Kasper Goodrich, here at the Naval War College who cluges that together and then Mahan uses that information, throws a little bit of Trafalgar on top of that and you got contemporary naval strategy discussions happening here in Newport. So around about 1884, Stephen B. Loos acquires that asylum and that's Founders Hall. So if you haven't been in Founders Hall, commercial for the museum, go see Founders Hall. There's some good stuff in there to include Alfred Thayer Mahan's sword, Stephen Loos's hat, lots of neat stuff in there. It's right next door, it's free. But that's what it looked like around about 1884, 1885. Loos procured that building because nobody was using it and it was cheap. So he ended up going up the porch and reportedly he pulled out a piece of paper and said, poor little poor house, Naval War College. And then he used political strings to get money for the college. And one of the things I will say about the history of the U.S. Naval War College is that it's a history of trying to survive bureaucratic cutbacks. So you have basically four phases in the current history of the Naval War College. You have the initial phase where you open it. Then you have that phase where everybody's saying, why am I spending all this time up in Newport? Those guys, they're just sitting there reading books. They're not out at sea, learning where they need to learn in the maritime environment. They're just wasting their time up in Newport, hanging around the pubs. Yeah, why are we paying for that? So there's this guy I'm gonna introduce you to named Sims who comes along and says, no, no, no, War College is important. You need education. Sims is that second phase. The third phase comes around World War II time frame. The guy named Ernie King, who on this stage in 1933, graduated for the third time from the Naval War College. And when he became a five-star Admiral in the Second World War, he said, you know what? I'm not gonna close the college like they did in World War I. I'm gonna keep it open. That fourth phase is gonna be the Turner Revolution quote unquote, which happens around about the 1970s. That's when they started using the word like faculty. It's the first time that did academic processions. And around about 1990 is when they started issuing master's degrees. So you can kind of see a chronology there at each of those points that I'm talking about. Those are points where the college survived a budget cut. And it's a constant battle to explain what education does for the Navy. So Loose Hall right next door, that's what it looked like when it was built. You notice there's nothing back there. And Stephen B. Loose is saying, look, all naval operations, whether peace or war are strategic. Whenever a US Navy warship gets underway, that is a strategic operation. That warship is a little piece of the United States floating on the high seas. That is strategic. If that ship gets sunk, for whatever reason, that's a strategic problem. So what you have in the services is sort of a debate about where money should be spent. It's always about money and personnel. So over in the War Department side, they're saying, well, in the Army, we need money too. So a lot of this sort of discussion about education is wrapped up in those inner service sort of rivalries. And that's also an underlying theme in the discussion about education and its role in the Navy. War College is the very first in the United States, this college, so it's a very historic place. And one of the reasons why it's so historic is because Stephen B. Loose was smart enough to pick Dennis Hartmahan's kid, Dennis Hartmahan being the West Point professor, who taught Robert E. Lee how to think about fortifications. Who else would you pick to sort of represent naval thinking? Get his kid. Alfred Theramahan is recruited after his father, Dennis Hart, committed suicide to come to the Naval War College and write the histories that we all know. Right, we all know, yes. Influence of history upon sea power, types of naval officers from sail to steam, check. Okay, good. You pass. I like this one too. Seems like a never-ending debate. The problem of Asia, what's the Navy talking about today? So one of the things I'm selling a used car here because I'm a historian and history is a used car, so I gotta sell it. One of the things about history is there's a lot of continuity here because guess what? Alfred Theramahan, he's dead, I promise. But if he walked into the room right now, you could talk to him. You could take him down to the O-Club, you could buy him a beer. He was a human being, just like you. There's nothing sort of new about what Mahan is talking about because basically all he's doing is looking at history. This is one of my favorite quotes. Oops, nevertheless, a vague feeling of contempt for the past supposed to be obsolete combines with natural indolence to blind men even to those permanent strategic lessons which lie close to the surface of naval history. Anybody buying my car yet? So in other words, Mahan's telling us history is important, page 11, paragraph three. Mahan is also thinking about the role of the United States in this globe and how the Navy integrates into that global economic, military, diplomatic mix. How does the United States fit into that? And he's looking at resources. So coal's kind of important in Mahan's time, but round about Mahan's time, you're also switching into something else called oil. And so Mahan, looking at the world, identifies this quote vast region that is unregulated and what he means by unregulated is the British Empire hasn't made it there yet. And so there's this area between the Near East and the Far East in British terms and then Mahan says in an article the Middle East, if I may adopt the term which I have not seen, will someday need its Malta as well as its Gibraltar. He's talking about the British Empire, but what we just did here is this Yankee, Mahan, created a phrase called the Middle East and he did it right here in Newport. The British were not talking about the words, these words in those ways. So I'm trying to give you a little bit of a foundation to understand how the 20th century unfolds. It's round about the time that Mahan and Luce are doing what they're doing, building the Naval War College that a newer generation is coming into the ranks of the United States. And they're all reading the Mahans, they're all reading what Mahan was reading. So I mean essentially Mahan is ripping off Spencer Wilkinson and John Knox Lawton of King's College London who's writing about sea power. All Mahan's doing is he's taking the King's English and transforming it into this other variation known as American and using ideas that are really coming out of Britain in terms of what sea power is all about. And they're reading all this stuff and it's this younger generation coming into the service round about 1895 to 1905 who are the guys who are gonna go on and fight and win the Second World War. What's important about that is when you're trying to think about how the Second World War unfolds we have to think about the people, right? So I was born in 1970. People were wearing polyester jumpsuits and they were smoking things that are now legal I guess in some parts of the country and they had really awesome long hair. That's part of me because that's where I come from. I grew up when the Chicago Cubs were in WGN and it was great but it's a different world. That doesn't mean that my past isn't still with me. I'm from Iowa too but that's a different story. So when we're thinking about World War II and the people who fought in World War II you have to understand that these guys all come with their own sort of baggage. When they were growing up they were meeting Civil War veterans. Luce and Mahan were still alive. Mahan dies in 1914, Luce dies in 1917. First World War is happening. So it's an interesting discussion when you take a humanistic approach to history. It's not just about dates, times and events, it's about the people. Okay, so I told you I would introduce you to this guy named Billy Sims. Billy Sims is an interesting cat. He went to London in 1910 and at the time the British were kind of a rival. We weren't friends with the British. We still had this memory of George Washington beating Cornwallis and of course the British said, you didn't beat us, we got bored with you and we had to India so you didn't win. We just left and oh by the way who renovated the White House in the War of 1812? Where's the White House China today from the War of 1812? Oh, it's at Windsor Castle, oops. Did you really win the Revolutionary War? Okay, that's fine. Americans, I'm from Iowa, just so you know. Billy Sims though is coming out of that early 20th century mix where Britannia rules the waves and waves the rules as it suits Britannia. And you spell waves differently by the way. So in other words, when you hear that phrase Britannia rules the waves and waves the rules. What they're saying is we own the ocean and we wrote the rules. And so Billy Sims is coming into this discussion about strategy and the role of the Navy in the 20th century and it's still a process of negotiation here. Because Britannia is the global sea power. The United States is this interesting little Navy with an interesting group of funny Americans who have some interesting ideas, but we're certainly not the Navy second to none. But it's guys like Billy Sims who are saying we can be the future Britannia if only we invest in navies. So it's all part of that mix and he goes to London in 1910 and he says, for my fellow British friends, thank you for all the wine. I've enjoyed being here in Britain. I'm the skipper of the battleship Minnesota. And you know, a couple wines in them and he says, you may count on your kindred spirits across the seas to the last drop of blood. I never reached here and you know, Guild Hall is this important place in the center of London. It's where all the great parties happen. Captains of industry getting together. And you know, Bill Sims gets back on his ship and starts heading home to the United States. And guess what? The New York Times newspaper. I don't think I have that slide in here, but guess what you think the headline was? Quote, love feast in London. If you're William Howard Taft and you start getting telegrams from Kaiser Wilhelm, the Japanese emperor and others about this commander Billy Sims and the speech that he made at the Guild Hall. If you're President Taft, you're probably thinking, I got a problem here because I got a naval officer who just made policy for the United States of America. I can't have that. So William Howard Taft had to remove Sims from command of the battleship Minnesota. What do you do with the guy that you had fired in the Navy of that time? Anybody, fueler? Send them to the war college, right? And oh, by the way, let's create the long course so that we make sure that he's at the war college for a long time because he's really kind of too senior to be there now because he's now a captain. So Sims came here in 1911 and he was here until 1914 as part of the long course. So it's a different curriculum, but he was here for quite a time. And he wrote this great little article published in 1916 called Cheer Up. There is no naval war college. The article is designed to say that the war college isn't really a college, it's a forum where practitioners come together and they talk about important things like strategy and policy. And they talk about important things like, how do you sustain operations on the global commons without access to bases? I mean, eventually you're gonna run out of fuel, which wouldn't have been a problem in the age of sale, but it's the 20th century for God's sakes and we're using coal-fired ships. Oh, by the way, another thing that Sims did, he wrote an article, why are we using coal? It's dirty, it's heavy, it's rocky, let's just use oil. And Sims is the guy who convinced the president, in this case it was Teddy Roosevelt, in a room right down the corner here during the general board of the Navy's meeting of 1906 and 1907, he convinced Teddy Roosevelt to build the standard type battleships. Now, many historians have said that the standard type battleship means standard caliber guns, that's incorrect. What they mean by standard type battleships is oil, standard oil type battleships. And guess who had stock in standard oil? Yes, Teddy Roosevelt, smart guy. Bottom line is, World War I is sort of a complicated story. I can't get into it too much, but I think this little slide illustrates the point. Because in reality, the United States Navy was not thinking that they were going to be involved in the First World War. When the First World War happened, it was the result of a series of minor disasters, mistakes, misunderstandings. There was a guy named Franz von Rentelein, German guy, used to run around Newport at a girlfriend up on Bellevue Avenue. And he was here primarily to observe the US Navy in Newport. And yes, he was working out of the German embassy under von Bernstof down in DC. And he was collecting information and then he obtained bombs that were delivered by the U-Deutschland, which was a submarine that actually was a merchant submarine, not a torpedo carrying submarine, but that ship delivered bombs to Baltimore. And those bombs ended up in von Rentelein's hands. He went up to Boston, met a couple of Irish guys, and he said, hey, can you go down to New York City and blow up Black Tom Island, which is an island right off of New York City? Yes, in July of 1916, there was a terrorist attack in New York City that created an estimated 5.6 Richter scale earthquake and it damages Statue of Liberty. So when they found out that this Rentelein guy was involved, that kind of raised tensions for the United States with regards to Germany. October of 1916, Billy Sims is the commander of the battleship Nevada, and Austin Knight is the president of Naval War College right down the hallway. In an October of 1916, Sims is here. They're actually examining the Battle of Jutland, which had just taken place. And guess what happens? German submarine shows up, the U-53. The skipper of the U-53 sails right into the harbor here, right? Down by where the O-Club is right now, gets onto a water taxi, gets over to Dewey Field right outside, walks up the hill, knocks on the front door of loose hall. Poor Marine at the quarter deck is looking at a German submarine captain. What do you say to a guy like that? And according to the ONI report, the skipper of the German submarine said, well, I'm just playing, paying a visit. You know, I'm paying a call to the Naval War College, which of course is very important. And I'm here to send this postcard to my mother. Now what he was really doing is trying to say, German submarines can reach American waters, so it's best that you guys stay neutral in the First World War. Sims is saying, oh my God, these guys, they really are really pushing the limits here. So in January 17, there was this crazy plot by the German embassy to support an invasion from Mexico into Texas and the southern states, and there was also phrasing in this message that if Imperial Japan wants to take California, well, we're all in, we'll support you. And that message was intercepted by the British, and then it was leaked to the media. So Woodrow Wilson ended up saying, oh my God, I gotta declare war on Germany. How do I do this? Who do I send to figure out how to fight the war against Germany? It's Billy Sims. At the time, he had just become president of Naval War College, and they sent him to London, and they said, look, we'd just as soon fight the British as we would the Germans, so be careful what you say to the British. We're not quite sure if we wanna be allies, but you know those people, and you have a good relationship with them, so go to London and figure out who we need to talk to in the event that we declare war. 31 March, 1917, he gets on a ship. He was told not to take a uniform. He's an admiral select, he's a captain. And when he gets to London, four days after the declaration in April of 1917, his friend John Jellico, the first sea lord, said, hey, we're about to go see the King of England. Where's your uniform? And Sims is like, well, I was told not to bring one. Just, I don't have a uniform. So Jellico said, okay, so you're an admiral, right? Well, no, I'm an admiral select. I haven't pinned it on yet. I'm still technically a captain. Yeah, no, so you're gonna meet the King of England. You're the most senior guy here in London right now. So you need a uniform. Go down to Stovall Mason. They do all my uniforms. And Sims had this uniform made. It's on display in the museum right next door. This is the label, Stovall Mason, Savile Row London. And all the newspapers announced Commander US Naval Forces Europe. Now, if you're the chief naval operations, did you know that? If you're the Atlantic Fleet Commander who owns all the ships, whoa, wait a minute. He's the commander, what about me? So right away at the beginning of World War I, you've got this train wreck because the United States has zero experience working with foreign navies at this point. We've studied it, we have a general idea, but there's no practical experience. By the way, in June, the picture you see here is Sims standing there with John Pershing who's arriving in June with the American Expeditionary Force. So Commander US Naval Forces Europe has no actual control over ships, but he's there, he's the most senior guy and it's politically impossible to remove him from that position. And John Pershing shows up, I'm the commander of the American Expeditionary Force. He's five years junior in Lineal Standing and in rank to Sims in 1917, but when he arrives in London, he's wearing three stars. Sims is wearing two stars and technically he's not supposed to be wearing those two stars yet. So who's in command? Sims is senior. Pershing's like, well, I gotta go fight the war in France. You do what you want here in London, I'll see you later. There is no joint command, as we would call it today, in the First World War. It's all personality driven. So the other part here is we need ships over there and we're burning all this oil. How do we get those ships over there, especially the destroyers, which are the ships we need to fight the U-boats. And so a couple of junior officers, the engineer of the Atlantic Fleet up in the upper left-hand corner and the exo of a ship called the Maomi get together and the chief engineer of the Atlantic Fleet, this is his drawing of the procedure for doing underway replenishment in 1917 and for the first time in wartime, these two guys executed underway replenishment in almost exactly the same way that we do it today in the 21st century. Ships side-by-side doing oil refueling. Now those two guys, anybody know who they are? Anybody? Bueller? Nope, okay, fine. The guy, that guy, I'll get my laser beam. That's Chester Nimitz and that's Ernest King, World War I. Those destroyers based out of Queenstown, Ireland, today's Cove, by the way, you have to go. It's wonderful down there. This is Halbaline Island, it's still there and from this position I can figure out this is a painting that was done at the officers club which is also a long story, I gotta watch my time but I'm gonna tell you this story. 1914, Joe Daniels took our liquor away. General Order 99, all Navy ships go dry, right? And he's a tea-toler, he said no more drinking on our ships or on our base facilities. And so guess what? Our guys got to Ireland in 1917 and they were offered lifetime memberships of the Royal Navy Officers Club. It would be bad for them to deny membership, right? I mean, so all of our guys were members of the Royal Yacht Club in Cork and they were getting alcohol and this got back to Joe Daniels who sent a message to Sims. Hey, did you not understand my order that US Naval personnel are not supposed to drink on US Naval ships and facilities? Sims' response is very simple. Sir, we are not drinking on US Naval ships and we are not on US Naval facility. We're in a Royal Navy facility and they're at the Officers Club with the Royal Navy. So you'll have to talk to the King of England. So it's an interesting mix. I mean, I could go out for hours but that building right there is still in London and it's now apartments but very expensive apartments in Grove and Ursquare. But that's the headquarters in the US Navy in the First World War and that was known as the London flagship. What's interesting about the London flagship is this is where intelligence was used to inform planning for the naval operations that took place in the First World War and it's all being done by naval war college graduates who created the planning section and et cetera and they figured out how to use wireless communications to execute operations on the high seas. They're pioneering procedures for what we do today. So history's kind of interesting. They figured out how to do it. This Allied Naval Council, you can see Sims standing with his friends, one of his best friends is Admiral Funo Kashi of the Imperial Japanese Navy. And these guys are coming up with ideas for the post World War One period, things like League of Nations Navy, which later is conceived as the United Nations Navy in the Second World War context. And this idea that all navies can operate together so that we're not having wars like this. The objective in naval strategy is to avoid the war and they're all thinking in these terms after the First World War. Now this slide basically shows the jumbled command organization of the First World War. And what's important about this is when they come home, they said, let's not do it that way again. Who's in command? Well, you are, or I am, or somebody's in command, right? And that's kind of the lesson of the First World War. We're learning a lot in that experience, our first actual operations with foreign naval forces and we're bringing foreign ideas back home with us from operating with the Royal Navy. We're really looking at how the Royal Navy is operating in the global commons. Now, what I'm trying to show you here is you can see that our uniforms shift from this sort of Germanic style to this British style. And it's a reflection of how interacting with other navies can influence things as fashion. Big point here is that generation who came into the ranks at the beginning of the 20th century had their experiences of the First World War. And those are the people who end up going on to the Second War. And what I have here is the five-star admals and also the one that should have been a five-star. All of them are Naval War College graduates. And what the Naval War College is doing is it's providing a forum for these guys to think about their profession. It's really not a college in the sense that I went to the University of London and got beat up by a professor for splitting the infinitive and for using American English as opposed to the Queens. That's not what we do here. What we do here is learn how to win or better yet, avoid future wars. It's one of my favorite slides, but the point being that fashion is reflected in interactions such as those of the First War. Okay, so I'm gonna push really, really quick. Just a happy snap of Mahan Ratunda. You can go see it. Bottom line is Admiral Sims came back and reopened the Naval War College because it had been closed during World War I. And one of his tasks that he issued to his faculty, actually they weren't faculty, they were staffed back then, was to people like Dudley Knox to create means by which to infuse history into the curriculum. The other thing he did is do an analysis of how education can be mobilized strategically to educate the future generation, how to learn lessons from the past and apply those lessons to contemporary discussions of operations and strategy. And the Knox King Pie Board, all these guys are war college grads. He's a future Naval War College president and of course five star future. They put together this report and it said, basically the Naval officer is really somebody who's gotta think about all different aspects of human endeavor. But then they said, at present, the average Naval officer is only educated to the lowest commission grade. Now think about that for a second. These guys are saying that the highest-ranking admirals in the Navy of the dime are really only educated to be ensigns. So when you get these young guns put in a report like that together saying, hey Admiral, sorry, you're dumb. How do you think that report goes? How do you think that's received at the Bureau of Navigation where there's an admiral who's been on active duty since before the Spanish-American War? Who's this Captain King? Why is he a captain? Isn't he too young for that? So there's this big debate that takes place after World War I about the role of education. One of the reasons why they were looking at education is because history is this sort of weird sort of foundation that everybody has a piece of, but not everybody really understands all that much. And so one of the things that they found out in Britain when they were there in the First World War was that British are using history as a foundation to examine future problems. And the person that was doing that was a guy named Julian Corbett who wrote the book, you know, Principles of Maritime Strategy and Other Works. And Corbett actually worked for the admiralty in the First World War, part of the intelligence division, and he had this thing called the historical section. And so when Sims came back to the Naval War College, he created a historical section with Chacy Kittridge who was his intelligence officer in the First War, Knox. And basically their job was to use history as a vehicle for examining things like, how do you make a decision in the heated combat? How do you sustain operations at long range without access to bases? How do I use intelligence? How do I use a radio? What's the role of technology? That's what they're doing here at the Naval War College. The first class that graduates in the Sims curriculum includes this guy, Commander Nimitz. There we go, Ernie King. He's another character I keep coming back to because guess what? He came back here three times in his career. This is his graduation certificate from 1924. There's his thesis from 1933. He graduated on this stage, 1933. So education's important to these guys. What they're doing is they're looking at past battles, they're analyzing decisions, and they're bringing the people who made decisions during those battles of the First World War at least. Obviously you can't get Nelson back. He's dead. But we can get Jellico, we can get Beatty, we can get those guys, and they can tell us why they made the wrong decision. And of course, are they always gonna say that they made the wrong decision? No, they're gonna say I made a decision, which is the answer. Because you don't know if you made the right decision until after you made the decision, and then things unfold the way it unfolds. That's literally what Nimitz's thesis concludes about the Battle of Jutland. So the key here is learn how to make a decision, commander. Try and be informed about it. The way you can inform yourself about making decisions is by looking at past examples, and try and put yourself in the position of that commander. So they're basically replicating past battles, not for the purpose of understanding what really happened in the battle, but to try and transport themselves into the moment where you have to make a decision. Part of the thing that we do here at the Hattendorf Historical Center at the Naval War College and with the CMAL, we've done this a couple times now. We did what they did when Nimitz was here as a student. We actually put you in the Battle of Jutland. This picture is in my hand, Rotunda. As you can see, we're playing with toys. I mean, obviously you wanna come to the Naval War College, play with toys, right? But there's a practical purpose for this. You're learning how to support operations, and you're learning how to make a decision. So when you're looking at the college, you're also looking at a large number of foreign naval officers who come to the college to learn what the Americans are doing, right? And in 1924, this gentleman came down from Boston. He's the naval attaché in Boston. And he comes to the Naval War College. He's like, hey, what are you guys doing? Well, we're looking at logistics. We're looking at airplanes. You know, I mean, those are interesting submarines. I mean, whoever thought of that. And he's saying, wow, that's cool. That's great. I think I can learn something from you guys. Oh, this is the book you're reading. That's great, published in 1925. The Great Pacific War, published in 1925. It's a fiction book. But this book, published in 1925, written by Hector C. Bywater, who is part of British intelligence in World War I, predicts a battle off midway, a battle off the Philippines, the importance of China for naval thinkers, published in 1925. Go figure. So we all know who that guy is, right? Oops, not that guy. This guy. Nope, okay. It's Oryoku Yamamoto. I didn't say it, right? But nevertheless, he's a really smart guy. And Yamamoto is the one who commands the combined fleet during the early phases of World War II. He's the one who executed flawlessly the attack at Pearl Harbor. And it's really a feat of logistics for them to be able to conduct that attack. But it's also a feat of operational security. Nobody knew. It was a surprise. That's a different presentation. The thing about Pearl Harbor that I wanna tell you, we all know when Pearl Harbor was quote unquote bombed in December of 1941. Most people don't know that Ernest King bombed it twice before 1941. And he did it on board the USS Lexington in 1932 in a fleet exercise. Then he did it again in 1938. One of the interesting things that I like to do when I'm doing history stuff is I find interesting little tidbits. We all know who Robert Heinlein was, right? Starship Troopers, the book, not the movie. Science fiction. He's actually the communications officer under Ernest King on board the USS Lexington in 1932. And he talks about being there when they bombed Pearl Harbor and all the battleship guys are upset because you can't do that. That's not in the rules. Later on Heinlein did write this book and a guy named Gene Roddenberry read it and said, you know, I think I can do better. And Gene Roddenberry created a character named Captain James T. Kirk, which is interesting. And one of the things as we talk about the space force of the future, the one thing I would say is Captain James T. Kirk has a naval rank, not Air Force, sorry. Go Navy. Army likes to have principles, principles of war. They adopt the principles of war after GFC Fuller writes them down. Principles, a bunch of words you're supposed to remember. You can memorize these things. It's very handy, very army. Clean your weapon, go Navy. Kalpa says, okay, that's great, principles. That's really cool. I can't remember all those words. So what we really need to know is how to make a decision. So he writes his book called Sound Military Decision, better known as the Green Hornet if you were a student at the Naval War College. Green Hornet is your how to make a decision manual. And it's about 400 pages, but there's lots of great little charts and sort of word puzzles that can help you make a decision quickly. One of the things that Kalpa says is other people talk about the value of principles of war and even listen. These are the Army Principles of War. And bottom line is he says to rely on principles of war, to rely on a list of this nature as a condensation of fundamentals of war has been known to cause confusion and to result in failure to recognize the fundamental point of the principle of war. So the bottom line is what are you trying to do in making a decision? And this is the sort of call out on making a decision. You make a decision that you want to do something, then you ask yourself, okay, is it sustainable? Is it feasible? And is it worthy of the effort in terms of human lives and material? So make a decision. Don't worry about the principle, just make a decision. That's the Navy way. Now, there's a fight happening in the 30s because the Air Force wants to be separate, the Army wants to have principles and the Navy just wants to make a decision. And there's an effort to create a unified staff college. They want to close Newport because you already moved the fleet south to Virginia. And the Army, they got their thing, let's just all put it in one place. So when Chester Nimitz becomes the CNO after World War II, this fight is happening. And it's all about money, it's about personnel and everything else. And this list is a list of the Army principles of war. And then Nimitz says, the principles of war have been known to be important to victory, but such principles have limitations straight out of some military decision. And then he says, topper, make me 48 copies and he signs it twice. But here's the tell. Fleet Admiral and topper is, I'm sorry, Trotter is his aide when Nimitz is the chief naval operation. So when is this document written? After World War II. And it's in the context of these inner service fights about doctrine and you guys want principles, but we just want to make a decision. And that debate still happens today at the Naval War College. How do you solve this puzzle? Now there is an account from The Life Magazine that talks about Nimitz having rules of thumb on his desk during World War II. Those rules of thumb, if you go to the original source, are listed out. And again, it's straight out of the Naval War College's curriculum. So the whole point here is that the Naval War College is serving as a forum where, quote unquote, students come here to learn how to make a decision. And then they make decisions on factors like is it sustainable, is it achievable, and is it worthy of the effort? And those are your three rules of thumb in life, really. And the great thing about being a Naval War College practitioner is you're coming here and you're able to sort of explore these ideas in a very critical way. If you were one of my students in the classroom, I always like it when my students, if I say, hey, did you know that Hugo Boss actually designed the Nazi uniform? And I get Googles, all the people like to use the Google machine. Oh my God, he did. History is great. It's there for all of us. Okay, so I'm gonna blow through this really quick. How am I doing on time, Dave? Really? I got 20 more minutes? You don't have to block questions though. Ah. All right, so guess what? Neutrality in a war is a strategy. How are we doing it? I mean, am I killing you? Nobody's throwing stuff at me or making, you can ask me questions if you want. Like, why don't you have a tie on? I hate ties. Okay, neutrality in a war is a strategy if you're a naval thinker. The fleet and being is a fleet in being. You don't actually have to be in contact with the enemy to do your job. Remember what I said about the Civil War? The Union Navy didn't really have to do anything to win. You just have to be. So there's a little nuance here about naval strategy. If you have a navy that is credible and capable and you demonstrate the ability to use it, you don't have to actually use it. You just have to demonstrate that you can. You're actually executing naval strategy. In another forum, I like to teach naval strategy like this. I don't have these slides, but I'll do it to you anyway. First picture is John Lennon on a bed with a guitar and it says, give peace of chance. On the slide. Next slide is Sherman and Sheridan standing over the little bighorn and the quote is, kill them all. Give peace of chance, kill them all is naval strategy. So if you have an enemy who's dead set on having a war with you, you just gotta create the conditions where they don't do that. That's what you have to try and do. And so what you see on this slide is on the Atlantic side, what Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt was trying to do around about 1938. He declared the Pan American Neutrality Zone. Hey, Germans, don't be sinking ships in my Pan American Neutrality Zone because freedom of the seas, the basic principle from the Dutch is that all shipping should have freedom of the seas and all mariners should help each other. So you shouldn't be out there sinking them without warning them with your U-boats. And if you do it in the American Hemisphere, I am going to attack you in the American Hemisphere. I'm not coming to Europe. Same principle applies in the Pacific. This is your theater geography from rainbow plans, not war plan orange for those of you who know that phrase, war plan orange was never executed in World War II. The rainbow plans were, this is the theater geography in the Pacific and what you have here is Kiska to Hawaii to Guam and that is your Pan American Neutrality Zone. And this area is the area that in the event that you're attacked from an Asiatic enemy, those are your sort of logistical planning basics that you should anticipate. So in other words, if you're gonna have a war in the Pacific, you're gonna have to figure out a way to get fuel, personnel, food, ammunition to the farthest extents of the Pacific. So it's not easy. That's the bottom line. So the rainbow plans are not the war plans that we think about when we have war plan orange, war plan red, war plan black, which is a totally different discussion. The point being that these rainbow plans take the army plans, which are those color codes and they collude them all together and they say, okay, well, if there's a war in Asia, this is kind of what we think we're gonna do. And this is what we were executing in 1938. All the people involved with war planning at that time are war college graduates. One thing I will say, because it comes to mind at the moment, is in July of 1941, the Navy Register published its register of flag officers on active duty. Out of the 86 flag officers on active duty, only one was not a Naval War College graduate. So that tells you the effect that Sims had back in World War I upon the Navy to say that education is kind of important. And he's got these younger guys coming up through the ranks like Ernie King, Chester Nimitz saying, yeah, war college is kind of important. So when you're thinking about naval neutrality, and you're thinking about education, this idea of freedom of the seas, I said, if this was a quiz, I'd say, okay, whose idea is this freedom of the seas stuff? It's Grodius, it's Dutch. And of course, when they did that, Dutch East India companies and all that, 500 odd years ago, they were coming up with these ideas. Well, Franklin Roosevelt resurrects the idea with the Atlantic Charter. So hey, German submarine captain, stop sinking ships. Hey, Japanese Navy, you're welcome to come visit, but keep the weapons off the rails, okay? And then there's that unease where Roosevelt's trying to stay out of the war. And at the same time, he's trying to help friends of the United States, friends being the British. So in August of 41, you have this scene where they go up to Argentina. And Franklin Roosevelt, who we all know had polio and he really couldn't stand, is making a point when he's shaking hands with Winston Churchill. To an audience that includes the Imperial Japanese, the Germans, and the Italians, and all the other folks who were having wars in Europe and Asia, he's trying to say, look, we maritime nations of America, the United States, we're gonna work together. And it's a complicated discussion that's taking place in 1938, 3940, and of course we all know it happens. I mean, World War II ends up happening, but there you have Ernie King standing right behind Winston Churchill. And he's heavily involved with these discussions about in the event of a war, how are we gonna execute? Does everybody remember that I said Ernie King has already bombed Pearl Harbor twice in exercise? So it's not as though we didn't recognize that targets like Pearl Harbor were not vulnerable. We knew that. The point being that we decided to place the fleet at Pearl Harbor as an effort to try and create that buffer to isolate, not isolate, but to defend the Western hemisphere against enemies in Asia and potential enemies in Asia and Europe. The effort was not designed to create the conditions to have a war. It's just the opposite. That's another discussion. But we all know it happened. And when war comes, the United States historically speak, if you believe there's a book called The American Way of War written by Russell Weigly. And the one, the conclusion that Weigly comes to is when the United States goes to war, the nation goes to war. Now that was the case in the Second World War. It's after the Second World War that that rule that Weigly gives you sort of changes. And that comes with other baggage of a new role for the United States, which we're still in and we're still trying to figure out. And that's another discussion too. I'll save it for the questions. Now, when we find ourselves in that Second World War, we didn't wanna be in it. Now you have to work with allies, which remember World War One, how well that went. Some of those allies are people like Winston Churchill. What's his desired end state in the Second World War? To restore the British Empire. Because the British Empire has been there forever. And of course, you wanna restore that because it works so well for Britain. Britannia rules the waves, right? Franklin Roosevelt said, no, we're not gonna fight this war to restore historical empires. We're not going to revisit mistakes of the past by subjugation of people around the world. We're not gonna be an empire. We're gonna have a United Nations. We're gonna have four policemen. It's gonna be basically Starfleet. Now when he said four policemen, who do you think he's talking about? Who's the four policemen? Does anybody know? It's easier when I have students because they're, oh, I know. Barney Fife, no. The four policemen are Britain and the United States. The maritime powers. And in Asia, it's gonna be the land powers. It's gonna be Russia and China under the United Nations. Kind of interesting. This is what we're fighting for. We're fighting for a strong China and we're fighting for a strong Russia and Europe. Those were the desired end objectives as negotiated at the Casablanca Conference and as renegotiated multiple times over at Tehran, Casablanca, I already said Casablanca, Tehran, Cairo and at Quebec. You were fighting World War II for the purpose of creating this thing called the United Nations. So when you won World War II, you created things like NATO. CETO is another one. So when we talk, in the contempt, I don't wanna talk about contemporary issues too much, but when we hear people saying, let's get rid of NATO, I get really upset because you fought to create that. That's your victory of the Second World War. You shouldn't get rid of these things. You spent time to create these things. I mean, you have to fix the car once in a while but in the end, you gotta sort of maintain your car too. So when we think about the Second World War, we should think about what the desired end objectives of the war was. Now I said what Wigley said, right? When the United States goes to war, the nation goes to war. What you see here are a lot of sort of pie charts. You can see that at the beginning of the war, the industrial capacity was very small. By 1944, our industry is really mobilized. What you see here, about 300 ships at the beginning of World War II, by the end of World War II, you're almost at 7,000 warships. One of the things that I will stress about World War II that people need to understand, the people who were on active duty in World War II at the beginning when Pearl Harbor happened, a lot of those guys and guys are not in combat operations by 1943. They're worn out. They're done. They're in offices or they're dead. The people who are fighting the war after 1943 are people who didn't know they were gonna be in the Navy or in the Army in 1941. So when we think about war and you think about national mobilization and you think about the role of the military in American society, we have to think about some of those things. What is the role of service? That's what some of these guys are talking about as the war is progressing. Now the person who's most responsible for mobilizing these resources is Ernest King, war college graduate. And he's thinking about the role of the Navy in this multinational context and you probably can't read it but it's right out of his notes. He basically says mixed forces are hard but forces operating in tandem in separate, clearly delineated lines of effort, that works and that's how we can do coalition warfare. And they really figure out how to do that not in the First World War but because of their lessons learned in the First World War they figure out how to do it in the Second World War. And here at the college we study all this and we apply those lessons. So it's this World War II context that all these guys, war college graduates, that's Caldpheus King, guy named Pi, Knox, Nimitz, Spruance, they're drawing from their own experiences and they're passing on the lessons that they're learning and that's really the function of the college. So my generation has, I mean I've been, I like to tell people I've been to landlock countries as a Navy guy. There's a lot to learn from that. These guys are looking at battles as they're happening so this guy, Richard Bates, he became an admiral later on, he created something called the Battle Studies Group here at the Naval War College and as battles took place he would get war college students to actually examine how those battles transpired and they'd publish these little booklets and these would be disseminated out to the fleet and there's a whole section in this, this one's on Midway, there's this whole section about Nelson's decision-making at Trafalgar and the bad decision that Nimitz made at Midway, which is interesting, another discussion. But it's this guy, Commodore Bates, who's on the staff of the college during World War II and he remained here until he died in the 1970s and he's running this historical branch. I like to think that I'm running a branch very similar to what Bates was running, at least that's where we're trying to go. I cannot emphasize enough the global context of where we are today in the 21st century and a lot of it has to do with that World War II experience. The global scale of that conflict, you can see the distances that had to be traversed. Simultaneous operations in Europe, in wartime. Now in war, is your objective to have a war? Yes or no? Okay, so your objective in a war is to create the conditions for establishing a sustainable peace, right? Does that mean that you annihilate the enemy? You can't, you can't do that, it's bad. You can't do that, we're all human. They're thinking about these things in the context of World War II. Planning for the reconstruction of Europe and Asia begins in the fall of 1942. Anybody know where? I'm selling this car, come on, Naval War College. They're thinking about post-war reconstruction as early as the fall of 42. You just got into the war. Big takeaway, when you have to operate at long distances, it's all about logistics. Hey, I gotta have my Schlitz. So it's that World War I experience that they're drawing from, the first time that they're doing underway replenishment, to that World War II experience where I gotta get guys on the beach with ammunition and I gotta give them a mission. You're going to fight for a United Nations, a better world. You're not gonna fight for the restoration of some empire. You're fighting for a United Nations. We're all gonna work together so that we don't have another war like this so that your grandkids don't have to fight a war like the one you're in in World War II. They come home from the Second World War and they did exactly what they did after the First World War. This picture is in Pringle, right upstairs. And that's Admiral Spruance, four-star Admiral, one of King's favorites, who's reconstructing of all things the Battle of Jutland. And later on, he brings into the mix the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Ladygolf. And they're studying these historical battles. They're bringing blowhards like me in to talk about those battles, how did Nelson make a decision? I can go on for hours, as you know. But I love the picture also because he brought his dog, hello. That generation who fought the Second World War informed the generation that followed. Stansfield Turner is depicted on that picture next to Ernest King, the five-star Admiral. And Stansfield Turner comes out of the Naval Academy having met people like King and Nimitz. And he's in the Navy during the Cold War era and he eventually becomes the president of the Naval War College. And it was under Turner in the early 1970s who said, you know what? I went to Oxford University because the Navy sent me there. And there's a lot of interesting long hairs over there. I've learned a lot from them. And I'm going to up our game. You know what? I'm gonna teach you how to write. I'm gonna teach you how to think. And one of the key things here is know how to make a decision, make a sound military decision, but also think critically about the decision you're making. And that's part of what Turner does with the quote-unquote Turner Revolution of the 1970s. Another thing that he gave to the college was the first academic procession where people wear their Harry Potter outfit. You should see mine. It's very cool. And he's wearing the garb with his uniform, which I think is kind of interesting. Turner Revolution is still going in many respects because my mentor, John Hattendorf, who's depicted there, had been a lieutenant fresh out of Vietnam. And he came to the Naval War College. He said, I don't want to be in the Navy anymore. And Turner said, hey, you look like a smart guy. Tell you what, I want you to go to Oxford and I want you to get a PhD and I want you to come back. I want you to help the Navy learn from the past. I want you to be a historian. So John Hattendorf went to Oxford, got his PhD, came back, wrote this book called Sailors and Scholars. And then another lieutenant showed up here, 2006. And I'm like, I don't want to be here. I don't know why I'm here. I thought I was in the reserves. I guess I'm in the Navy now. That's a long story. But the bottom line is John Hattendorf said, hey, history's important. You're a practitioner. You're part of something. You're part of a longer tradition at the Naval War College. You need to be proud of that. And it's because John Hattendorf said to me that I'm here on this stage today. John retired last two years ago. Here he is, back at Oxford, 2016. There are three people in American history who received a PhD above a PhD. One of those people is a guy named Samuel Clemens from Oxford University. And another one is John Hattendorf. So if you ask yourself why I'm the director of the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research, which is his convention, by the way. The short form is Hattendorf Historical Center. The reason why I'm the director of that is because John Hattendorf is the best used car I have on my lot. He's one of the smartest guys that I know. He's still around. He's in an office here. If you ever stop by, you can go visit him. And of course I gotta stop my presentation on the beach, right? Because that's where you wanna be if you're thinking in naval strategic terms, you wanna be on the beach, drinking a beer with your ships out on the horizon. With that, thank you. I'll leave you with that actually. You heard him joke earlier. You have all been conant. Your Q&A period has been eaten alive by Dr. Dave. We will take one question and then I have a feeling he's more than happy to stay up front and talk to folks one on one, but we wanna make sure everyone gets out of here on time. Are there any questions from the group for Dr. Dave? If not, I'll let you go right up front and talk to him. I'm just gonna pitch two weeks from now on Tuesday, February 5th. We'll have Professor Jim Holmes talk about US naval power in the Pacific. That is an equally awesome presentation. We look forward to seeing you here. Dave, thanks again. Everyone drive home safe. Thanks for coming.