Students to Soldiers
Secret Military Education at Elite Schools, 1815–1945
John F. Morris
awards:
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, (2025, Winner)
An expansive study of the brutal rites of initiation at elite institutions that shaped young men into military leaders
Informed by his own experience as a cadet at West Point, John Morris offers the first transnational history of student life at elite military preparatory institutions in Europe and America and the unofficial, underground rituals, practices, and codes that formed a crucial part of the education there. Comparing British public schools, the monarchical cadet schools in Imperial Germany, Austria, and Russia, and the US Military Academy over the course of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century and the world wars, Morris presents critical insights on the unsanctioned methods employed to transform young students into leaders of men.
Extracurricular traditions—including but not limited to severe hazing—Morris argues, shaped the officers-in-training much more than their official courses of study. He also shows how romantic and sexual relations between boys facilitated the cultivation of hypermasculinity at these institutions. Students to Soldiers offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the budding military elites of Europe and America, both unpacking the arcane rituals that eventually became codified into honored traditions and analyzing their influence over the long term.
Students to Soldiers highlights the ways in which student communities controlled much of their own world, setting rules of behavior for themselves - along with rituals and hazing marked by an often stunning level of violence - that later became formalized by the institutions. The international, comparative aspect of this study is unusual and invaluable.- David Silbey, Cornell University, coauthor of The Other Face of Battle: America's Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat
Students to Soldiers takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the historical origins and manifestations of the clandestine tribal rituals that undulate underneath the formal surface of elite educational institutions designed to socialize young men and prepare them for war. Morris insightfully observes how initiation rites spontaneously seem to generate in unsupervised societies of young boys. With exhaustive research, he outlines how the finest schools in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States engage in humiliating and physically painful indoctrination that teaches young men to suffer, to follow, and finally to lead.- Dr. Lissa V. Young, United States Military Academy
- CHOICERelying on primary source materials, Morris depicts a world more reminiscent of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies than praiseworthy academic institutions, including hazing rituals, harassment, homoeroticism, and sexual exploitation, all done in the guise of a feudal and chivalric educational environment. Such environments were designed mainly to turn boys into men as either soldiers or statesmen and reinforced the existing patriarchy without appreciating women in their world view. . . Students to Soldiers is a must for anyone interested in understanding the education of the future leaders who guided the great powers into the Age of Total War.
John F. Morris is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and Special Advisor to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
