A Study of Generalship
'The Mask of Command' is about generals: who they are, what they do and how what they do affects the world in which we live. Most studies of generalship have focused on character or behaviour. Though these are not neglected in this remarkable book, its central argument is that, like warfare itself, generalship is a cultural activity, providing a key to understanding a particular era or place, as much as it is an exercise in power or military skill.
Through portraits of four generals - archetypal hero Alexander the Great, anti-hero Wellington, the unheroic Ulysses S Grant and the false heroic of Hitler - John Keegan propounds the view of heroism in warfare as inextricably linked with the political imperative of the age and place. He demonstrates how the role of the general alters with the ethos of the society that creates him and concludes that there is no place for heroism in a nuclear world.
