Max Boot Quotes
It was not always the case, of course, that navies paid for themselves. In wartime, costs often exceeded revenues, and those deficits grew over time as fleets and armies got bigger. But this was hardly an insurmountable obstacle for the most dynamic economies in the world. The United . . . Read more

-Max Boot
Some lasting terms of military organization owe their origin to Spain: colonel comes from cabo de colunela, or head of a column; infantry most likely comes from infante, the name for a Spanish prince, who often led these formations of foot soldiers.

-Max Boot
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Here commenced a scene of horrors,” the dramatist Friedrich von Schiller later wrote, “for which history has no language, poetry no pencil.

-Max Boot
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There were few more unlikely candidates in 1611 for Great Power status than Sweden. Even with its satrapy of Finland, the total population numbered no more than 1.3 million. They lived on the northern edge of Europe in an impoverished, barren, half-frozen country with almost no indust . . . Read more

-Max Boot
But in the military sphere, just as in science, economics, art, or culture, change is not evenly distributed across space and time. Sometimes innovations cluster together to produce a major change in the way people live—or, in the case of the military, the way they die.

-Max Boot
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At the beginning of his reign, England had to import almost all of its guns from abroad; by the time of his death, England’s cannon industry was among the finest in the world. Under the supervision of the Ordnance Board, which carefully parceled out contracts to a small group of pri . . . Read more

-Max Boot
The blitzkrieg is one of the best-known examples of a “military technical revolution”—and one of the most misunderstood by the general public. It is commonly assumed, based on the ease with which German armies overran Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France, that . . . Read more

-Max Boot
a crucial element of English success was their commanders’ ability to learn on the fly, make adjustments, and attempt new tactics. The Spanish paid a heavy price for their lack of equal flexibility.

-Max Boot
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