The damage one historian with erroneous conclusions can do.

Army historian of World War Two and the Korean War, S. L. A. Marshall

Historians can be enormously influential.

Many people tend to think of historians as tweedy characters, looked up in their rooms wearing thick glasses and going through piles of books. That isn't the case of course, although they do read a lot, but they do research and that research tends to get reflected in their published works. That is inevitable.

Historians aren't always correct.  More often than not, when they're not, its simply inadvertent.  Not everyone understands everything they study or see, and errors can be made.  Those errors can become very hard to correct later.  For example, the widely erroneously believed myth that cavalry played hardly any role in World War One has proven to be darned near impossible to correct, in spite of it simply being demonstrably wrong.  It might never be corrected.

But an error that's intentionally created to advance a point is another matter, and that appears to be the case with the legendary findings of S. L. A. Marshall in his still in print book Men Against Fire.

Men Under Fire reported Marshall's conclusions that only 25% of troops fired their weapons in combat during World War Two.  The finding was so influential that the Army adjusted its training and doctrine as a result, applying its newly learned lessons during the Vietnam War. The problem is that Marshall's own data didn't support his conclusions and they were wholly incorrect.

This did great damage to the U.S. Army at the infantry level.  Marshall's work was later drawn into question and discredited.  Marshall himself has received some criticism for his behavior in how he came to bully his research assistants.  But the book is still in print all these years later and it still shows up on Army recommended reading list, showing I suppose how prevalent an influential work can be once its received initial approval.  At the training level, the Army moved on after Marshall and went back training marksmanship, but not before many years of his influence had had an impact.  The Army's historical branch should withdraw the book lest it have any renewed influence, although that risk is no doubt slight. For historians, and the readers of history, the story has a lesson all of its own.

Some native examples of Holscher's First & Second Law of History

Recently I posted an entry on Holscher's Law of History.  In doing that I expounded that the first law is "Everything first happened longer ago than you suspect" and the second law is "Everything last occurred more recently than you suppose.". 

Here's some interesting example from the story of American Indians.

This photograph was taken in 1906.  We'd tend to think of it as well after the Indian Wars, but it really is not.  Indeed, at this point in time, amazingly, one last conflict between Native Americans and the U.S. Army was yet to occur, although that scrap was an accident.  Be that as it may, we see a family with some native attire, and some not.  The degree to which native attire is hanging on in this photographs is a little surprising.  This photo, for context, was taken after the invention of the airplane and the introduction of the Model T.

But what's really surprising ins the sewing machine.  I wouldn't have expected that.  An example of the first law, to a degree.

This family, by the way, was photographed on the  Crow Reservation of southern Montana.

How about this photograph of a woman drying fish?  She's in a traditional camp, with a teepee and all, drying a traditional food.

This photograph was taken in 1913.  World War One would break out the following year.  Here we see, however, an Indian woman engaged in a very traditional activity.

 

What about this photograph?  For all the world, this photo looks like it was taken in the 1870s or so, but for the fact, perhaps, that the Indian rider (here a Crow Indian in Montana0 is riding a western stock saddle, a detail that's hard to catch without knowing what to look for.  But this is also a 20th Century photograph, taken in 1908.

While this scene comes near, if not in, the 20th Century, it's telling none the less.  This member of the Crow tribe is out riding in winter, probably hunting or otherwise out in some activity that requires his presence outdoors.  In Wyoming, I've seen photos of Indians from the Wind River Reservation out tenting (with teepees) while hunting, on the North Platte, as late as 1912, long after some maintain that long range native hunting forays did not occur.

What about this photograph?  The front rider (the father of the boy in back) is dressed in fairly typical Western attire with modern tack.  He retains the long braids of traditional Indians.  The boy, or rather young man, in back is wearing a newsboy cap.  The 1910s?  1920s?

No, 1941.