Hoover Digital Wargaming Collection Offers Unique Historical Perspectives

Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) - A new digital repository of the Hoover Institution's collection of wargames and wargaming history is now online and available to the public.

The Hoover Institution Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative Collection contains wargames, as well as reports, historical materials, and academic literature on the craft of wargaming.

Wargaming originated in military settings, but the subjects entertained in the repository's exercises relate to more than armed conflict. There are wargames concerning food shortages and pandemic scenarios like an Ebola outbreak or the rise of hand, foot, and mouth disease.

The collection is designed to be easily searchable across a wide array of substantive and methodological terms, facilitating both large-N analysis and deep case studies. It also increases methodological transparency and rigor within the wargaming discipline by hosting wargaming design materials and data for evaluation, replication, and testing.Finally, the collection is a pedagogical resource that provides open-source game design and materials for use in the classroom.

Importantly, the repository provides enormous value for individuals using and studying wargames across government, policy, industry, and academia. The collection is expected to grow over time.

"The Hoover Institution Library & Archives was proud to partner with the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative to create a custom repository complete with wargaming reports, game design documents, declassified data, and more," said Eric Wakin, deputy director of the Hoover Institution and the Everett and Jane Hauck Director of the Library & Archives.

"Building the wargaming collection marks a milestone in Library & Archives' collaboration with the Hoover fellowship and demonstrates our ability to provide access to historical and contemporary records for the benefit of the general public and the wargaming community."

Using and examining wargames and their related documents provide a rich resource to researchers and historians. For instance, the collection includes a significant trove of materials related to the Sigma Wargames, a series of tabletop exercises run by senior Pentagon officials in the mid-1960s, through which they tried to understand possible outcomes for the growing conflict in Vietnam.

The Sigma Wargames indicated that the United States faced no good option in continuing the conflict. The findings of the Sigma Wargames went unheeded by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the American military became enmeshed in a costly quagmire for nearly a decade afterwards.

On October 8, 2024, Hoover's Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative will host To War or Not to War: Vietnam and the Sigma Wargames. This event will involve a panel discussion about the significance of the Sigma Wargames featuring the initiative's director, Hargrove Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider; Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster; Hillsdale College's chair of military history Mark Moyar; and Mai Elliott, author and expert on the Vietnam War era. Jacob Ganz, the initiative's program director, will provide introductory remarks.

The event will also feature an immersive experience where attendees will get to experience the Sigma Wargames through the eyes of one of four of its main historical participants: National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Earle Wheeler, and CIA Director John McCone.

The oldest of the wargame documents in the collection dates to 1824. It is a guidebook on how to depict military maneuvers that was developed by Georg von Reisswitz, considered to be the father of wargaming.

There are wargames and other historical documents from nations including Sweden, Russia, and Japan.

The collection even includes CONPLAN 8888 (Counter-Zombie Dominance), a completely fictitious wargame depicting a worldwide zombie apocalypse created in 2011 by junior US military officers undergoing training on contingency planning.

"The hyperbole involved in writing a 'zombie survival plan' actually provided a very useful and effective training tool," the CONPLAN 8888 report states.

Click here for more information on the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative.

Click here for more information the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative Collection

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