The Old Is New Again - Tentative Manuals and Amphibious Doctrines in the 1930s and 2020s

This episode features a timely discussion that, as today’s Marine Corps develops its concept of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations in the context of competing in the Pacific, looks back to our historical roots to a time when the Corps had a similar problem in a similar part of the world. The 1920s saw the U.S. Marine Corps come out of conventional ground operations in France and then out of small wars operations in Latin America in the 1930s. The United States military’s strategic posture also shifted outward across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. During those interwar years, the U.S. Marine Corps made critical strides toward fulfilling war plans, formulating amphibious doctrines, creating force structures, and procuring landing craft. Today in the 2020s, the Marine Corps is again coming out of ground and counterinsurgency operations and reorienting toward amphibious missions during another interwar era. This presentation will glean insights and lessons from the twin amphibious studies, Tentative Manual for Landing Operations (1934) and Tentative Manual for Defense of Advance Bases (1936), and find connections to the recently completely Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (2021).

Dr. David Ulbrich joins #TeamKrulak for this #BruteCast. Dr. Ulbrich is associate professor and director of the online Masters of Arts in History and Military History Programs at Norwich University. He also served as a civilian historian at the U.S. Army Engineer School in 2009-2013. Dr. Ulbrich’s books include Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps 1936-1943. The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation honored this book with the “2012 General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Book Award.” The U.S. Marine Corps History Division also recognized Dr. Ulbrich’s historical scholarship with the inaugural “Brigadier General Edwin Simmons-Henry Shaw Award” in 2012. More recently, Dr. Ulbrich has co-authored the 6th edition of World War II: A Global History, which will be published in about three weeks from now.

Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com)

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