Victor Davis Hanson, author of the highly regarded Western Way of War, presents an audacious theory of what makes military campaigns successful.Examining the campaigns of three brilliant generals from WWII, the Civil War, and Ancient Greece, Hammond argues that the moral vision they imparted to their troops was as significant as any strategy. Each led largely untrained forces to victory over tyrannical enemies. In August 1944, George S. Patton began pushing his newly formed Third Army into Germany so fast that in nine months he would liberate the death camps. In his famous Civil War March to the Sea, William Tecumseh Sherman led a motley army across the South, ravaging the landscape, liberating slaves, and demoralizing the Confederacy. And in the fourth century B.C., Theban General Epaminondas led an army of farmers nearly two hundreds miles to defeat the long invincible Spartan empire. Informed by great moral conviction, The Soul of Battle is narrative history at its best.