The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost\u2014From Ancient Greece to Iraq<\/em><\/a>. Considering what is transpiring overseas, the timing couldn’t be better. (It also makes for great summer reading.) At a lunch sponsored by the Hoover Institution, where Hanson is a senior fellow (he’s also a raisin farmer), the author discussed at length the five men who rose to the occasion.<\/p>\nDespite formidable odds, the Greek commander Themistocles led his beleagured army to victory at Salamis against the Persians. General Flavius Belasarius prevented Byzantium from falling in the 6th century and secured borders and fortifications that held up for the next\u00a0nine<\/em>\u00a0centuries\u2014until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Hanson moves on to William Tecumseh Sherman, who captured Atlanta in 1864, and General Matthew Ridgeway, aka “Old Iron Tits,” who reversed the largest retreat in American history\u2014when the Chinese Red Army came down the Korean Peninsula and pushed U.S. forces back 400 miles. His last profile, interestingly enough, focuses on David Petraeus and the surge that saved Iraq.<\/p>\nOf course we all know what became of General Petraeus (who now works for the global investment firm KKR). But as Hanson pointed out, all of these generals had this in common: They were military geniuses who had less than glorious endings to their careers. Themistocles committed suicide while commanding\u00a0Persian<\/em>\u00a0forces. Belasarius spent his last years as a beggar on the street. Sherman did not become Grant and Ridgeway couldn’t escape from MacArthur’s shadow. Hanson notes these were men who were not responsible for launching wars, but they came in to do a job and did it well\u2014and their superiors got to take the credit.<\/p>\nIn\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/em>, credit is given where it’s due.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five generals who turned the tide. by Victorino Matus The Weekly Standard The military historian Victor Davis Hanson was in Washington, D.C., to promote his latest book,\u00a0The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost\u2014From Ancient Greece to Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[297],"tags":[1067,873],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1zL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6308,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/uncommon-knowledge-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":0},"title":"‘Uncommon Knowledge:’ Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Military historian Victor Davis Hanson discusses his latest book \"The Savior Generals\" with Peter Robinson. Hanson identifies the shared characteristics of generals throughout history who saved wars deemed \"lost.\" \"Uncommon Knowledge\" is produced by the Hoover Institution.","rel":"","context":"In "Interviews"","block_context":{"text":"Interviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/interviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6161,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/c-span-after-words-with-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":1},"title":"C-Span: After Words with Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"VDH talks about his new book,\u00a0The Savior Generals: How Five Commanders Saved Wars that Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq\u00a0with Kim Kagan, president and founder of the Institute for the Study of War","rel":"","context":"In "Interviews"","block_context":{"text":"Interviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/interviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/41xj0UH-0rL._SY320_.jpg?fit=211%2C320&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-on-the-savior-generals\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":2},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson on the ‘Savior Generals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Paul Schnee \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, former classics professor, scholar of ancient warfare, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and the author of some 20 books. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Literature"","block_context":{"text":"Literature","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/literature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5994,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/book-review-the-savior-generals-the-tough-who-got-going\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":3},"title":"Book Review: The Savior Generals – The Tough Who Got Going","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Mark Moyar Wall Street Journal For a police chief, keeping the streets of Beverly Hills safe will probably never qualify as an act of great leadership, if only because the task itself lacks a certain degree of difficulty. The value of leadership is much clearer when circumstances are unfavorable\u2014especially\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3842,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-and-the-savior-generals\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":4},"title":"Victor and the Savior Generals","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas What factors decide wars? Luck? Fervent ideology? Preponderance of material resources? Or is advantage achieved by superior manpower and morale? In modern times, is victory found largely in lethal cutting-edge technology?\u00a0 All these factors in varying degrees have in the past explained military success.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6251,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/valley-public-radio-interview-2054\/","url_meta":{"origin":6061,"position":5},"title":"Valley Public Radio Interview (20:54)","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"An interview with Joe Moore about\u00a0The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq.","rel":"","context":"In "Interviews"","block_context":{"text":"Interviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/interviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6061"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6063,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions\/6063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}