Seeds of Victory: Defeat, Triumph, and the American Way of War

How pivotal American defeats fueled crucial victories through resilience and strategic adaptation, shaping the nation's path from loss to triumph in warfare

Like all armed forces, the United States military—while celebrated for its victories—has been repeatedly defeated on the battlefield throughout its long history. Unlike other nations, the United States has shown a remarkable ability to bounce back from defeat: to learn from the loss, recover, and achieve victory. In this book James Ellman, who has established a reputation for his reconsiderations of military history, takes a close look at eight such pivot points on the ground, in the air, and at sea, from the American Revolution through the Korean War:

• Long Island (1776) to Trenton and Princeton (1777)
• Charleston (1780) to Cowpens and Guilford Court House (1781)
• Invasion of Canada (1812) to Battles of Lake Erie and the Thames (1813)
• First Bull Run (1861) to Antietam (1862)
• Pearl Harbor (1941) to Midway (1942)
• Luzon (1942) to Buna-Gona (1943)
• Schweinfurt (1943) to the "Big B" (1944)
• Chongchon River (1950) to Operation Ripper (1951)

In brisk narratives, Ellman describes each battle, explaining how it was fought and lost, and then shifts gears to detail how leaders—military as well as civilian—such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Chester Nimitz, Douglas MacArthur, James Doolittle, and Matthew Ridgway assessed the factors that led to defeat, and made changes to training, tactics, and strategy, so that American forces entered the next battle wiser and able to win.

Ellman then uses this framework to evaluate the wars waged in more recent decades in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Surprisingly, despite the accepted consensus that these conflicts resulted in painful defeats, the American military repeatedly showed its historic ability to react and recover, and if not achieve victory, at least stabilize the situation on the battlefield. While US forces eventually pulled out of these three conflicts, the overarching Cold War and War on Terror were still concluded in America’s favor.

As this book makes clear, the history of the United States at war is, to a surprising degree, the story of tenacity in the wake of defeat, of flexibility and adaptability on the path to victory. This is essential reading for understanding how battles are lost and won.