War historians debate myths

John Mosier's essay War Myths (2005) contends that myths "are believed because they provide us with coherent and convincing explanations of complex events." His paper is the opening volley in a debate with several colleagues that has helped me think further about the definition of myth, and the roles of logos, mythos and pathos in argumentation.

Context

Mosier's essay comes from a package of articles in Historically Speaking, the bulletin of the Historical Society. Here's the editor's introduction: 

In recent years, a new voice has entered the crowded field of 20th-century military history to challenge conventional wisdom. John Mosier’s The Myth of the Great War (HarperCollins, 2001) argued, among other things, that American involvement saved the Allies from a German victory. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Mosier’s sequel, The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II (HarperCollins, 2003), continued his assault on standard military historiography, this time claiming that both sides in the European theater of World War II were seduced by the myth that Blitzkrieg tactics were the decisive way to victory. Mosier’s book amount to a challenge to military historians to admit that they have been propagating myths, and we wondered whether Mosier 's revisionism had prompted a rethinking of20th-century military history.

To get at this, Historically Speaking asked Mosier, a professor of English literature at Loyola University, New Orleans, to draft an essay that would introduce his views, especially on World War II, to our readers. We then asked three prominent military historians—James Corum, Victor Davis Hanson, and Dennis Showalter— to comment. Professor Mosier's response concludes our exchange on "War Myths."

(A hat tip to the Wikipedia contributor who cited Mosier on myth in the entry on Urban legend, where I found it.)

Myth and Rhetoric

Mosier evidently takes myth to mean a "widely held but false belief or idea" (Lexico, sense 2). Here's his quote in context:

What is significant here is that at the same time, the fabled German armored sweep was running into major problems. There were significant armored battles in Belgium. In the first great tank battle of the war, fought around the Gembloux Gap in Belgium, French tanks scored what the Germans themselves thought was a tactical victory over two German armored divisions. That the armor of the misnamed French Corps de Cavalerie more than held their own against the panzers of the German 17th Army Corps at Gembloux and that the French 3rd armored division and 5th motorized infantry division then fought the Germans to a bloody draw on the heights of the Meuse suggest that the whole notion animating accounts of 1940 is fundamentally awry.

Myths are believed because they provide us with coherent and convincing explanations of complex events. That's true here: if the German tactics were conventional and predictable, the means used tried and proven, why were the Allies routed? The answer is that in terms of morale, courage, and leadership the Allied governments were bankrupt.

For a view from one of his critics, here's an excerpt from Comment on Mosier's War Myths by Dennis Showalter, a professor of history at Colorado College:

Mosier is a polemicist, not a charlatan. There is often a reasonable case to be made for his interpretation. As a rule, however, Mosier prefers to use one exaggeration to support others, while dismissing alternate positions with one-liners. That road leads at best to succès de scandale, and indeed The Blitzkrieg Myth resembles nothing so much as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. In both cases audiences are at risk not only of replacing one set of myths by another, but of mistaking rhetoric for substance and cleverness for insight.

Mosier's second in this debate was James Corum, a professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies at the time of publication. In Myths of Blitzkrieg—The Enduring Mythology of the 1940 Campaign, Corum writes:

There are many more historical myths from the 1940 campaign. But those I've discussed here serve to illustrate the point that as long as there are generals who need to justify their poor performance and as long as there are enthusiasts peddling new concepts of war, the creation of military myths will flourish. While some myths are relatively harmless and easily refuted and pose little danger to corrupting the military art, other myths can be especially harmful and lead the authors of doctrine and strategy to false conclusions and, eventually, to poorly thought out operational concepts and strategies.

In Corum's telling, which seems to parallel Mosier's view, myths serve to explain away poor performance, and sell tacky new ideas.

It's striking that each side accuses the other, in Showalter's words, of "mistaking rhetoric for substance." In his closing argument, Rhetoric or Reality?: A Few Problems with Military History, Mosier says:

Also—and this speaks directly to the substance of my critics [Hanson and Showalter]—one reason for the persistence of the old model is to be found in the eloquence of those who cling to it. They argue convincingly, displaying an admirable mastery of that branch of persuasion known as rhetoric. Hanson's second paragraph is a perfect example. . . . Hanson is a skilled rhetorician, and one of his skills involves setting up straw men. . . . Accusations of subjectivity—made explicitly by Showalter and implicitly by Hanson—are likewise shrewd rhetorical attempts to shift the argument back to the older paradigm.

Alas, poor Rhetoric! Abused by all sides, who presumably all want to wrap themselves in the distinguished mantle of Logic, Fact, and Reason. Some examples, first from Mosier's War Myths: "But when I examined the records of the French antiaircraft defenses around Paris in the First World War, I found . . . . And when I started looking at the specifications of the strategic bombers of the 1930s, I discovered that . . . . But upon any close examination of the actual events themselves, . . ." It's also telling that Mosier titles his second article "Rhetoric or Reality? A few problems with military history"; by implication, the problem is too much eloquence, and not enough fact.

On the other side, Victor Hanson in An Overextended Argument enjoys pointing out failures in Mosier's logic: "Yet there is a fallacy of overextending that argument, . . . The same pattern of overgeneralization is again true of . . . ."

Ironically, logic is part of rhetoric, at least according to Aristotle; it's one of his three modes of persuasion. Presumably the rhetoric these academics resent is pathos, the appeal to emotion. They probably also frown on ethos, an appeal to someone's character. Ethos is definitely in play in this debate, though more to undermine an opponent's credibility that buttress the speaker's. Here's how Showalter opens his Comment: "John Mosier's academic credentials are in literary history—a field where subjectivity is highly valued." Ouch!

What is myth for Mosier?

Mosier's second article provides more information about what he takes myth to be:

Myth (or legend) is an imprecise term. There are also falsehoods (or lies) and false ideas. False ideas are a mixture of truth and lies, and thus have great persistence. Technically speaking, I believe they are not myths. A myth is a false idea whose support derives from literary or folkloric beliefs. The Guderian legend cited by Corum is a false idea whose appeal comes mostly from a literary myth: the lone hero does battle against powerful forces. Whether those forces are monsters or monster bureaucrats of the Reichsheer, it's the same myth: Shane, Guderian, Beowulf, or Spider Man.

In closing, it's worth noting that Mosier frames his work in terms of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: "that the models of the universe that scientists construct, which he calls paradigms, are with time replaced by new ones, as the older paradigm has too many things it can't explain." Mosier fancies that he's fighting for a new paradigm, on the side of Copernicus and Galileo:

The Myth of the Great War refers to the older paradigm that my research had led me to question. The major anomalies that led me to question it were all—despite Showalter's claim—entirely quantitative: . . . The Blitzkrieg Myth refers to a more focused instance of the prevailing paradigm about the Second World War in Europe— . . . 

Paradigms, world-views and social imaginaries are, in my mind, roughly equivalent terms for belief systems that are aggregations of more granular beliefs – theories, mind-sets and myths (both "true" and "false"), respectively.

Myth for me

I think myth as used in these papers is not just about falsity and hallowed belief, but also the speaker's attitude. Here's my cut at a definition that reflects both:

Myth (pejorative). A claim (often used as an explanation or in an argument) that an opponent finds to be uncomfortably pervasive and persuasive.

The myth debunker is uncomfortable about the claim because of the hold it has on a large number of people - it's persuasive and pervasive. The root problem is that the claim is believed, i.e. considered to be true. Thus, seen from the another perspective:

Myth (pejorative). A widely held, influential belief that the speaker believes to be false.

"Widely held, influential" is the equivalent, in this dual definition, of "pervasive and persuasive." The qualifier "influential" is important, since a widely held but innocuous false belief (e.g. in the tooth fairy) wouldn't generate any animus in the speaker.

(For comparison, I defined myth as "A widely held belief in significant or far-reaching truth claims, presented in narrative form, that influences thought or behavior" in my post "Myth" in tech journalism, which has more examples of myth used in the pejorative sense.)

Update 7 Jul 2020: Added the "Myth for me" heading, and added a second part to the definition.