ABSTRACT
Some military historians insist they are misunderstood "intellectual historians" who, on occasion, write about things bellicose. Others declare themselves students of "cultural" or "economic" history who sometimes write about war, largely because of its radical alterations of national economies and social mores. The general public loves to read about war and to watch military documentaries and movies from a safe and suburban distance. Most contemporary military historians who shy away from acknowledgment of their craft teach at universities, where they face various dilemmas. In the late twentieth century, the great task of the military historian is to return to the Hellenic practice of identifying stupidity, barbarity, and tragedy in needless battles, not necessarily to condemn war as uniformly wrong or immoral. Many social scientists in the universities implicitly see the history of war as the history of European dynamism used for largely evil purposes.
