Interview with George Nafziger

[Cole]

Link below to an great Q&A I conducted with George Nafziger.  

I post some Wargame Wednesday articles at the Castalia House blog.  CH mostly publishes Sci Fi and Fantasy and the demand for wargame content is somewhat limited, but I labor on, trying to attract some to our hobby.  I usually get a couple of comments of "that's good" but if wargamers can comment with questions or substantive input, it will improve the quality of the post.

http://www.castaliahouse.com/wargame-wed...ollection/

George Nafziger is a name I have known for ages but I didn't know how varied his career was and just the sheer amount of work he has published.

[geoff]

Maybe off-topic post for this forum but:

"One thing about published authors – Just because you find it in print doesn’t mean it’s correct." That's a double edged sword statement. Imperial Bayonets is nothing but bunk and never was revised. His Napoleonic OOBs are full of incorrect data as well. Both of you should re-read what Siborne actually modelled and how he arrived at the model. It wasn't pro-British enough and so the "Great Man" shot him down leaving Siborne destitute.

Now his compilations on WW2 OOBs are excellent and we owe him alot for donating his work to the DoD and having it open sourced. Certainly a man who's brain I'd like to pick just not concerning his role as the director of the Napoleonic Society of America.

[Cole]

Maybe off-topic post for this forum but:

"One thing about published authors – Just because you find it in print doesn’t mean it’s correct." That's a double edged sword statement. Imperial Bayonets is nothing but bunk and never was revised. His Napoleonic OOBs are full of incorrect data as well. Both of you should re-read what Siborne actually modelled and how he arrived at the model. It wasn't pro-British enough and so the "Great Man" shot him down leaving Siborne destitute.

Now his compilations on WW2 OOBs are excellent and we owe him alot for donating his work to the DoD and having it open sourced. Certainly a man who's brain I'd like to pick just not concerning his role as the director of the Napoleonic Society of America.

Geoff,

Thanks for your comments on the WW post.  I haven't dived into Siborne's story and my question to Nafziger outlined what I understood Hamilton-William's argument to be (i.e. Siborne slanting results to the British). 

By Great Man, I believe you mean Wellington so this is an interesting topic to follow up on for some later post.

Hopefully, your comment generates some discussion.

I managed to slide in a question from Jason asking if he planned to revise some of his work in light of recent scholarship.  Quick answer was he used what was available at the time and doesn't plan to go back.

[geoff]

Yeah, he is old and your question about Siborne was leading. I didn't want to leave my real contempt for Nafziger which concerns the three rank line being perceived by modern scholars as not firing as a three rank line based on this or that strawman. Invariably when I argue logically that they formed and fired in three rank lines the opposition brings up Nafziger's statements by Mortier or Napoleon himself... It has caused me great pains that something so obvious could be twisted by "historians" who write in order to be agreeable and sell their work quickly. Although, I point out that Nafziger never says that the French generally fired as two ranks the poision was planted. Les grandes querrelles continues ;]

His story about the BCTP wargame involving the Stryker Brigade getting overrun by armor is hilarious. I was a member of the 3/2 SBCT and at National Training Center we field tested the entire Brigade versus an armor battalion. The armor caught my infantry battalion while we were manuevering and destroyed half of our vehicles. The US Army does not learn.