The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.

By 1918, Japan had achieved lofty goals conceived more than fifty years previously by those known in the West as the oligarchs, and in Japan as genro (elder statesmen). Over the next twenty-five years, these gains were lost as Japan experienced crises at home and launched disastrous military adventures abroad. In Japan, power had long adhered to those close to the emperor, who, himself, seldom ruled and who stood for no particular ideology. Japanese society consisted of many autonomous, competing groups. The father of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), Yamagata Aritomo, equipped it with several advantages in this competition, allowing it to eventually seize control of the state. The IJA led the nation into war with Manchuria, then China, and then the Allies. Its organizational culture produced tough, proficient, and courageous soldiers, who won three conventional conflicts. But its culture left it unable to deal with military losses; it was a culture that prized reputation over public honesty, ritualized death and placed its own judgment above question. According to its own creed, the IJA should have “done its utmost to protect the state.” Instead its soldiers are remembered in Japan and much of the world as “beasts.”