Dying to Learn

In Dying to Learn, Michael Hunzeker develops a novel theory to explain how wartime militaries learn. He focuses on the Western Front, which witnessed three great-power armies struggle to cope with deadlock throughout the First World War, as the British, French, and German armies all pursued the same solutions-assault tactics, combined arms, and elastic defense in depth. By the end of the war, only the German army managed to develop and implement a set of revolutionary offensive, defensive, and combined arms doctrines that in hindsight represented the best way to fight.

Hunzeker identifies three organizational variables that determine how fighting militaries generate new ideas, distinguish good ones from bad ones, and implement the best of them across the entire organization. These factors are: the degree to which leadership delegates authority on the battlefield; how effectively the organization retains control over soldier and officer training; and whether or not the military possesses an independent doctrinal assessment mechanism.

Through careful study of the British, French, and German experiences in the First World War, Dying to Learn provides a model that shows how a resolute focus on analysis, command, and training can help prepare modern militaries for adapting amidst high-intensity warfare in an age of revolutionary technological change.

Michael A. Hunzeker is Assistant Professor in George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. Follow him on X @michaelhunzeker.

Dying to Learn is a valuable and impressive academic and practitioner's analysis. It is not easy reading. The author demonstrates the value of institutional, organizational, and doctrinal study, however unexciting the topics are for many.

Dying to Learn will be especially relevant to contemporary military service personnel thinking about their own profession as it contends with the complexity of learning in a time of great stress and strain.Hunzeker offers a model to understand wartime learning[.]

From his detailed case studies, Hunzeker develops a theory of wartime learning. Hunzeker specializes in conventional deterrence, war termination, military adaptation, and simulation design.

Thomas G. Mahnken, Johns Hopkins University, author of Technology and the American Way of War since 1945:

Dying to Learn is a major contribution to the field, providing fresh insight into the important question of how military organizations learn in wartime.