“Corpses in the Grass”: strategic culture and combat effectiveness in the Pacific War; a case study of the U.S. Seventh Infantry Division ...

• Main Author: Burklund, Richard Allan
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Glasgow 2023
• Subjects: Pacific; Attu
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5525/gla.thesis.83669; http://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83669

Rather than accepting the premise that American industrial capacity and the sheer quantitative advantage that it produced were the only reasons that the U.S. was able to prevail over its qualitatively superior foes during the Second World War, I will demonstrate through the four different Pacific theater campaigns of the 7th Infantry Division the decisive importance of willpower and the less explored influence of strategic culture on the outcome of the war. I will challenge the theory of the supposedly inexorable triumph of American military mass as opposed to its superior combat effectiveness through a case study exploring the performance of the 7th U.S. Infantry Division in the Pacific. This case study contains two principal elements: the first is an analysis of the battles of Attu, Kwajalein, Leyte, and Okinawa and the second is a comparison of the strategic/tactical cultures of Japan and the United States and how they contributed to and influenced the relative combat effectiveness of the opposing forces. ...