War is never merely a struggle over concrete things. Instead, as great generals from the Theban Epaminondas to Napoleon saw, it remains a contest of wills, of mentalities and perceptions that lie at the heart of all military exegeses, explaining, for example, why a Russian army that collapsed in 1917 on its frontier held out in its overrun interior during World War II, or how a completely outnumbered and poorly supplied Israeli army between 1947 and 1967 overwhelmed enemies that enjoyed superior weaponry and a tenfold advantage in military manpower.
