Military commanders turn tactics into strategic victory by means of "operational art," the knowledge and creative imagination commanders and staff employ in designing, synchronizing, and conducting battles and major operations to achieve strategic goals. Until now, historians of military theory have generally agreed that modern operational art developed between the first and second world wars, and not in the United States but in Europe. These historians consider the Germany and the Soviet Union armies as the innovators and greatest practitioners of operational art. Some have even claimed that U.S. forces struggled in World War II because their commanders had no systematic understanding of operational art. Michael R. Matheny believes previous studies have not appreciated the evolution of U.S. military thinking at the operational level. Although they may rightly point to the U.S. Army's failure to modernize or develop a sophisticated combined arms doctrine during the interwar years, they focus too much on technology or tactical doctrine. In his revealing account, Matheny shows that it was at the operational level, particularly in mounting joint and combined operations, that senior American commanders excelled-and laid a foundation for their country's victory in World War II. Matheny examines in detail the development of American operational art as land, sea, and air power matured in the twentieth century. He finds evidence of increasingly sophisticated U.S. military thinking in records of the military education system. Drawing on archival materials from military educational institutions, planning documents, and operational records of World War II campaigns involving land, air, and sea power, Matheny shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, U.S. war colleges educated and trained commanders during the interwar years specifically for the operational art they employed in World War II. After 1945, in the face of nuclear warfare, the American military largely abandoned operational art, but military planners embraced it again following the Vietnam War. Since then, U.S. commanders have found operational art increasingly important as they pursue modern global and expeditionary warfare requiring coordination among multiple service branches and the forces of allied countries.

Includes maps of: Last Allied Offensive of 1918; Army War College Student Solution for War Plan Orange Exercise in 1938; Operation Torch; Concept of Operations Sketch for Bolero, March 1942; Command Organization in the Pacific; Concept of Operations Sketch for Outline Plan Reno V; Sixth Army Objectives in Leyte Operation; Operation Iceberg. Library has paperback (2012 ed.) copies with same pagination, 23 cm, by University of Oklahoma Press.

The roots of operational art --Operational art in the American Army before 1919 -- Landpower -- Airpower -- Seapower -- The European theater of war -- The Pacific theater of war -- Lessons and legacy. The roots of operational art -- Operational art in the American Army before 1919 -- Landpower -- Airpower -- Seapower -- The European theater of war -- The Pacific theater of war -- Lessons and legacy.