Edward Meade Earle's Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton University Press, 1943) brought together many of the leading historians of the period, including Craig and Gilbert, R.R. Palmer, Hajo Halborn, Stefan T. Possony, and Margaret Sprout. The contributors considered those writers, statesmen,
It is precisely during the historical lulls, the quiet backwaters, that the most thinking about strategy should be done—by officers and by political leaders, both serving or aspiring to service. Nor are democracy's other citizens free to ignore defense and foreign affairs; they too might attend to Kipling's poem of warning. Thinking about strategy in peacetime is even more vital than material preparation, though both are vital. Because when war comes, it may be too late. During war, it may be too difficult. In defeat, it will be of no use.
Robert R. Palmer, professor of history at Princeton and Yale, was one of the 20th Century's most influential scholars of modern European history. His textbook, A History of the Modern World, now in its 10th edition, with associates Joel Cramer and Lloyd Kramer, has long been the standard in high school and university classrooms. His two-volume