de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est - But Ambrose was asking for it

[Bigduke6]

Hi there military history fans. We all know there have been over the years some questions about Stephen Ambrose's fidelity to the truth and nothing but the truth, on the WW2 research front.

Without rehashing those accusations, here is something new, or at least that I wasn't aware of. It appears Ambrose's recollection of how often and in what detail he interviewed Eisenhower, doesn't exactly square with Eisenhower's personal records.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/04/26/100426ta_talk_rayner

If I were a suspicious type with a bad opinion of human nature, I might just start wondering about the veracity of all those great Band of Brothers stories.

[dieseltaylor]

Great find BD.

I was just faintly dubious since I am sure it was Ambrose who said the aversage bocage field was 75 acres. So the guy is a fraudster. Makes you puke. ANd what is more the lies could have been exposed a lot earlier.

[ArgusEye]

It is always a bittersweet discovery when a source of information turns out to be unreliable. One is wiser after the discovery, but it is unpleasant that it happened in the first place.

And this is not unusual. In the field of history, too many researchers set out to prove a point, and are willing to distort context, perspective or even facts to do it. If you find something important to get right, often you have no choice but to go to the original source material - and even that is often biased.

If you think this one is bad, there are some real shockers when you get to medieval military history. There are plenty people who seem to think that it's more acceptable to distort facts the further you descend into the past.

[Michael Emrys]

If you think this one is bad, there are some real shockers when you get to medieval military history. There are plenty people who seem to think that it's more acceptable to distort facts the further you descend into the past.

And if you want to get really crazy, go for prehistory/anthropology. There you get to create a whole species and its probable culture based on nothing more than a scrap or two of bone. Whoopee!

Michael

[JasonC]

dt - why do you assume intentional fraud when simple error is far and away the most likely explanation?

[Michael Emrys]

I don't know that it is a matter of deliberate fraud so much as that the man was heavily biased and interpreted his "facts" to reinforce his preconceptions. That's not exactly rare in this business, but what is unusual is the extent to which this occurs in his work. It is almost as if he did consciously avoid the usual checks that conscientious historians employ to correct for their biases. And if he did not intentionally commit plagiarism in The Wild Blue, he was incredibly sloppy not to provide a source for a passage that he copied verbatim.

Michael

[ArgusEye]

dt - why do you assume intentional fraud when simple error is far and away the most likely explanation?

I'm trying to come up with ways in which a dyed in the wool historian can accidentally fudge his sources like this. I'm not having any success.

[dieseltaylor]

dt - why do you assume intentional fraud when simple error is far and away the most likely explanation?

Jason, if I were being charitable I would say that you simply have not read the article. The only other alternative would be your comprehension of the article is faulty.

How anyone could forget how many interviews they had with Ike, or alternatively manage to remember the dates of fictitious ones beggars belief in any theory of simple error.

[Bigduke6]

The problem on the Ike interviews seems to be a big disconnect from the amount of time Ambrose says he spent with Ike according to Ambrose's footnotes, and the amount of time Ike spent with Ambrose according to Ike's daily schedule records.

Like, at one point Ambrose seemingly notes the date and location of an Ike interview, according to Ike's records he was somewhere else, playing golf. This is not to say I've compared the logs personally, I'm just going from the magazine article.

This is not to say Ike wasn't above fudging facts or otherwise massaging the record to suit his purposes, he was quite the slick bureaucratic player behind that Midwest grin.

The thing is, if one has to guess which of the two has it wrong, it's seems clear Ambrose had more motivation to document imaginary interviews with Ike, than Ike had to keep evidence of his having spent time with Ambrose out of his personal schedule.

Personally I have my suspicions about Ambrose's academic rigor on his WW2 writing, he strikes me as more than a bit preachy. I can't really judge his war writing though, I'm not really that up on the Western campaign.

But as to the Ike interviews, you have to wonder, if Ambrose did invent even some of those discussions, where did it stop and where did it end?

[Michael Emrys]

...where did it stop and where did it end?

Probably in the same place.

Michael

[wolf66]

And if you want to get really crazy, go for prehistory/anthropology. There you get to create a whole species and its probable culture based on nothing more than a scrap or two of bone. Whoopee!

Michael

That is nothing compared to all the scientific mumbo-jumbo regarding scientists "discovering" the "man-made" change of climate .....

[dieseltaylor]

That is nothing compared to all the scientific mumbo-jumbo regarding scientists "discovering" the "man-made" change of climate .....

: ) Thats really funny.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Here we go again. All those 1,000's of scientists are part of some giant conspiracy.

Regards

KR

[Michael Emrys]

Here we go again. All those 1,000's of scientists are part of some giant conspiracy.

Right. They are conspiring to bring down Big Oil because they all foolishly bought stocks in green technology companies back in the '80s. Or somefink.

Michael

[ArgusEye]

I've been connected to research in the climate field, and let me tell you this: There's no way this conversation will end in anything constructive.

By the way, as to the remarks about prehistoric civilisations being reconstructed on a sliver of bone: At least they're just making stuff up where there is no knowledge. In the field of medieval military history, there *is* real information, but it is *replaced* with convenient fantasy. That, to my mind, is worse.

[dieseltaylor]

But one could end up better informed : )

It is amazing how much has happened in the field of drivetrain under the impetus of pressure brought about by concerns on climate change. Rather than the world economy spending inordinate amounts of consumer crap there is a lot of money going into effectively infra-structure for the future. What I would call a good war

Ambrrose. At a loose end I actually was reading the two Ambrose books I have been lent. Some of the anecdotes he relates are quite moving, then followed with the chill feeling - are they true.

A Renault tank turns up and fires its 20mm gun!!!! What is it with Ambrose and getting details right. I am also getting the Ike asked me up and we discussed bit. The man seems to have strung together peoples reminisces of which I am sure most are true basically, and got a reputation as a historian.

Incidentally Mulberries are disposed of summarily with the throwaway that only 15% of the supplies were landed over them. You may well ask 15% over what period - 6 months. Two weeks. Or might one say 15% of total tonnage but 95% of all tanks and vehicles landed. What a wanchor.

[Bigduke6]

Also, WHICH 15 per cent.

Lots of light stuff you can unload directly onto a beach using, wait for it, lighters. Most stuff can with sufficient will and planning be made into light stuff, this is smaller packages, more muscle-based loading/unloading, etc. Pretty much any food, ammo, and fuel, construction materials, given sufficient manpower and organization, didn't need mulberries or something like that to get onto shore.

But some things need a wharf. Tanks and trucks usually. Locomotives and most RR related stuff, for sure. Power-generating equipment, and so on. Yes you could take it apart and unload it bit by bit, but these are not boatloads of flour, you need to reassemble on the shore and even in the days of American can-do know-how (sadly gone from our lives forever, unfortunately) it was not a great idea to take a locomotive apart and just assume once you got the bits to shore, there would be enough railroad workers in uniform to put the thing back together again.

None of which the 15 per cent stat takes into account.

But even if

[Michael Emrys]

But some things need a wharf. Tanks and trucks usually.

Er, vehicles and whatever was loaded on them if brought over in LSTs would be driven off right onto the beach.

Michael

[JonS]

Morale is a key principle in war. Perhaps the key principle, right after selection and maintenance of the aim.

Even if the Mulberries ended up with only 1% of supplies being landed over them, the fact remains that before D-Day the mere existence of them lent a remarkable degree of confidence to all concerned. The Allies deliberately chose to eschew landing at a fortified port, and they had a plausible and workable plan for how they would move supplies from ship to shore. That that plan wasn't fully realised - or even if it had completely fallen apart - and they had to improvise is besides the point. Going in to D-Day everyone believed it would work (or work well enough), and that gave them the confidence to carry on.

If, on the othe hand, the logistics plan had consisted of

1) Invade

2) ... ?

3) We win!

well, morale may not have been quite so high.

Mike; yes that's true about the LSTs, but drying out the LSTs was part of the post-invasion 'oh heck the Mulberries aren't working as well as we need them to' improvisation.

One other thing - we need to be a little careful with our nomenclature here. The portable-ports consisted of a wide range of seperate elements. The floating piers were perhaps a too fragile and ended up being less useful than intended, but the Corncob and Pheonix breakwaters (but not the Bombardons) were very important and more than justified themselves.

[JonS]

Here we go again. All those 1,000's of scientists are part of some giant conspiracy.

Millions, KR. Millions.

Link

[Michael Emrys]

Mike; yes that's true about the LSTs, but drying out the LSTs was part of the post-invasion 'oh heck the Mulberries aren't working as well as we need them to' improvisation.

Correct. And given the limitation on the number of LSTs, it was not the most efficient way of moving stuff. But like a lot of the ETO logistics, it worked well enough, if just barely at times.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Well if the Yanks had actually constructed their Mulberry properly and put in the right number of anchors, and also under stood that the 25 ton and 40 ton bridging items were not to be used interchangeably then the percentage delivered may well have been higher.

: )

Oops Ambrose skipped that bit?!

[Joachim]

Millions, KR. Millions.

Link

Disagreeing and signing a petition ain't the same thing. That statistics is nice, but an example for a certain book "So lügt man mit Statistik (How to lie with statistics)". Lots of the scientists will not be involved in climate theory and thus not take up sides.

How many would sign a petition that they are 100% sure the dominant climate theory is exact and correct? That number would still be biased due to fundamental beleifs that we have got to fight pollution.

I wouldn't sign both petitions (if Germans with degrees were asked).

Back on topic:

Numbers and statistics seem scientific and thus tend to make claims believable. Numbers do not say anything without a full context.

Forget any "shortened" statistics. If not all details are given, it has no value. Those 15% are shortened (just like the petition, were only the convenient facts are given).

So much from someone who taught statistics at university (and wouldn't call himself a scientist since 10 years)

[ArgusEye]

Speaking as a physicist, climate science is on the very border of being called 'hard' science. It studies a natural phenomenon, but due to its nature testing of hypotheses is extremely hard to do in isolation. This makes the field rather susceptible to pleasantly acceptable-sounding assumptions being taken as fact. The trick in science is to simplify as much as possible, but no further - and that's where climate science often goes too far.

Since getting funding for your research is almost impossible if the subject is not politically popular, my colleagues and I pain ourselves to show that our new project is useful to combat global warming. The result is money for the project and being listed on the IPCC lists of agreeing scientists. I am, and I have not protested. Some more courageous colleagues have, and it did their career no good.

The very fact that there is such pressure to agree contaminates all research, and that is a shame. We cannot know now whether or not this problem exists, as it may well do.

[dieseltaylor]

ArgusEye - I don't doubt there is considerable pressure for science to be studying the hot topic. I would like to deplore it however in this particular case I have to accept for the greater good it is best to accept the "fact" of climate change. Note I do not use global warming as there is always people who will say in my neck of the woods it was way cold last year. Duh!

The reason why it is good to "believe" is that lots of money is going to sciences, alternative power is a very pressing need, improved food yields , improved water utilisation etc. Some years back I was saying that this should be framed as a war , but a war without bloodshed and the potential to get things done. And not coincidentally to give people a cause , with no USSR, and religion becoming a debatable dead duck, a cause is not a bad idea.

It also may prove to be an economy driver as economic activity is ofen raised during a war. : )