Roughly on the same topic, a few years ago I read Intelligence in War by John Keegan. I was expecting a glorification of that attribute which I believed to be so important; to read story after story of how proper intelligence made the critical difference during military battles.

Much to my surprise, Keegan spends the whole book basically shooting down that theory. Instead, he has example after example where one side clearly had a dominant intelligence advantage (admittedly, here we're talking about "information", not strictly "rationality"), but it always wound up being a mere minor factor in the outcome of the battle.

Definitely worth checking out, if you're at all interested in the power (or lack thereof) of being smarter, rather than all the other factors that determine the outcome of military battles.