Doughty, Robert A. 1943–

(Robert Doughty, Robert Allan Doughty)

PERSONAL:

Born November 4, 1943, in Tullos, LA; son of John Lee and Georgia Louella Doughty; married Diane Ruth Ross, December 16, 1967; children: two. Education: U.S. Military Academy, B.S., 1965; University of California, Los Angeles, M.A., 1972; University of Kansas, Ph.D., 1979. Politics: Independent. Religion: Lutheran. Hobbies and other interests: Fishing and hunting.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—Natchitoches, LA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

U.S. Army, career officer, 1965-2005, retiring as brigadier general; platoon leader and company commander in Germany; adviser to Vietnamese armored cavalry troop, 1968-69, received Silver Star and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star; served in Germany and Belgium; instructor at U.S. Military Academy, 1972-75; instructor in department of strategy at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1976-79; associate professor at U.S. Military Academy, 1981-84, and professor and head of department of history, 1985-2005, received Distinguished Service Medal; visiting professor at Military History Institute of U.S. Army War College, 1995-96. Pierson College, associate fellow, 1983-93; member of historical advisory board and on-camera guest, Smithsonian's Great Battles of the Civil War (video), National Museum of American History, 2006.

MEMBER:

Society for French Historical Studies, Society for Military History.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Paul Birdsall Prize in European Military and Strategic History, American Historical Association, 1986, for The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939; award for excellence in U.S. Army history, Association of the United States Army, 2002, for "More Than Numbers: Americans and the Revival of French Morale in the Great War"; Moncado Prize, Society for Military History, 2004, for "French Strategy in 1914: Joffre's Own"; Arthur Goodzeit Award, New York Military Affairs Symposium, 2005, Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr., Book Prize, Western Front Association, 2006, and Distinguished Book Award for European military history, Society for Military History, 2007, all for Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War; Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, Society for Military History, 2006.

WRITINGS:

MILITARY HISTORY

The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (Fort Leavenworth, KS), 1979.

(Under name Robert Allan Doughty) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1985.

(Under name Robert Allan Doughty) The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1990.

(Editor, with Ira D. Gruber) Warfare in the Western World, Volume 1: Military Operations from 1600 to 1871, Volume 2: Military Operations since 1871, D.C. Heath (Lexington, MA), 1996.

Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Also author of "More Than Numbers: Americans and the Revival of French Morale in the Great War," Army History, spring, 2001; and "French Strategy in 1914: Joffre's Own," Journal of Military History, April, 2003.

Contributor to books, including The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, edited by Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, 1994; Challenging the United States Symmetrically and Asymmetrically, edited by Lloyd J. Matthews, 1998; Mai-juin 1940: Défaite française, victoire allemande, sous l'oeil des historiens étrangers, edited by Maurice Vaïsse, 2000; Les Batailles de la Marne de l'Ourcq à Verdun (1914 et 1918), edited by François Cochet, 2004; and 1917: Tactics, Training, and Technology, edited by Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Political Science Review, Army, Explorations in Economic History, Historian, Joint Force Quarterly, Journal of American History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and Parameters. Member of editorial boards, Joint Force Quarterly, 1993-2005, and Revue historique des Armées, 2005—.

SIDELIGHTS:

A career soldier and longtime teacher at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Robert A. Doughty brings both practical experience and scholarly knowledge to bear in his writings in military history. Well regarded as a historian, he has won a number of awards, particularly for his studies of European subjects. His 2005 book Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War has been especially well received.

Pyrrhic Victory is a detailed study of France's role in World War I. Over the course of the war France's countryside was devastated and its dead numbered nearly one and a half million, yet its contribution to victory, according to several reviewers, has often been overlooked. Writing in the Canadian Journal of History, Daniel Todman observed that Doughty's book "fills a major gap in the literature." Todman felt that "even for a scholar of his standing, Doughty's book is a work of ambitious scope," and he maintained that the author "achieves his aim with some aplomb." Several reviewers noted the extensive research behind the work as well as the quality of its writing. Historian critic John Mosier, for example, commented that Doughty's "exposition is lucid and impressive." He described the book as "a major contribution to the American understanding of the Great War." Other writers expressed similarly high views of the work. In the Journal of Military History, Leonard V. Smith deemed it a "tour de force," and historian Dennis E. Showalter, reviewing it for Parameters, called it "a definitive account of the development and implementation of French strategy in the Great War."

Doughty told CA: "Some of the happiest days of my life have been spent working in French archives and walking World War I and II battlefields. I am currently working on a piece about the armistice of 1918, and my long-term goal is to offer a fresh perspective on France and the origins of the Great War."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, October, 2006, David Stevenson, review of Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War, p. 1260.

Canadian Journal of History, spring-summer, 2007, Daniel Todman, "World War I Battles and Strategy," p. 71.

Choice, September, 2006, A.C. Cain, review of Pyrrhic Victory, p. 187.

English Historical Review, June, 2007, Talbot Imlay, review of Pyrrhic Victory, p. 784.

Foreign Affairs, May-June, 1997, Eliot A. Cohen, review of Warfare in the Western World, p. 128; March-April, 2006, Lawrence D. Freedman, "Military, Scientific, and Technological."

Historian, winter, 2006, John Mosier, review of Pyrrhic Victory, p. 872.

International History Review, March, 2007, Robert J. Young, review of Pyrrhic Victory, p. 174.

Journal of Military History, April, 2006, Leonard V. Smith and Michael Neiberg, review of Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 487-489; July, 2007, Eugenia C. Kiesling, "Illuminating Strange Defeat and Pyrrhic Victory: The Historian Robert A. Doughty," pp. 875-888.

Journal of Southern History, August, 1998, Jerry Cooper, review of Warfare in the Western World, p. 514.

Parameters, spring, 1991, review of The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940, p. 119; spring, 2007, Dennis E. Showalter, review of Pyrrhic Victory, pp. 133-135.

Publishers Weekly, September 26, 2006, review of Pyrrhic Victory, p. 75.

Times Literary Supplement, May 5, 2006, Nathan M. Greenfield, "C'est magnifique," p. 31.