SLOW LEARNERS? Daniel Drezner recommends a Spiegel interview with Germany's Foreign Minister (English translation in Neu Yorkscher Zeit.) This quote is particularly interesting: "The Americans had no Verdun on their continent. In the US there is nothing comparable to Auschwitz or Stalingrad or any of the other terrible symbolic places in our history." Indeed not. After Shiloh, and Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, and the spring of 1864, U.S. military doctrine paid careful attention to the thinking of Rebel General James Longstreet on the follies of set-piece battles. If memory serves, the French requested that the Allied Expeditionary Force be used as replacements in Verdun. General Pershing had other ideas.