The War Managers: American Generals Reflect on Vietnam by Douglas Kinnard (Professor of Strategy, National Defense University, Washington, USA)
In 1947 Douglas Kinnard sent out an extensive questionnaire to the 173 Army generals who had managed the war in Vietnam. A surprising sixty-seven percent of them completed the questionnaires, with many adding pages of comments. Kinnard then personally interviewed twenty of the respondents and supplemented the data with research from the files of the Army's military history center. The War Managers is the astonishing result of Kinnard's analysis of the responses of these men. Kinnard had focused on such central issues as the quality of both American and Vietnamese troops, the generals' own chains of command, the influence of the media, civilian authority, U.S. objectives, the importance of the "body count," and many others. What emerges from the generals answers, compiled in an absorbing manner in this book, is a uniquely fascinating and penetrating view of the Vietnam War from the perspectives of the U.S. Army generals who commanded there.