Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A War Won In The Skies: Air Superiority In The Second World War, Chandler Dugal

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper studies the impact that air superiority had on the outcome of the Second World War in both the European and Pacific theaters of war, and argues that it was the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict. The paper outlines both the tactical and strategic aspects of air-power along the respective 'fronts'. In addition, the relative quantitative and qualitative strength of the air forces of the belligerent nations are discussed, along with their aircraft production and technological capabilities.

The Jewish Response To The Nuremberg Trials, Melody Pruitt

History Class Publications

World War II was characterized by extreme violence and hardship. People from all over the world faced incredible circumstances of hunger, destitution, disease, and death. Millions of lives were lost both through the waging of war and the extermination of people groups. World War II characterized the globe in several different respects that still affect it today. Political systems, societies, and policies would forever be changed by the war, and people began to see each other quite differently. Perhaps the most well-known example of this is the mass murder of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime known as the …

Strahm Family Collection (Mss 655), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 655. Data, clippings and information about the Strahm family and related families. Most of the material relates to Franz J. Strahm, WKU music director from 1910-1941, and his son Victor H. Strahm’s career in military service. Includes photographs of Franz, Victor, and other family members.

Military Working Dogs In The United States Armed Forces From World War I To Vietnam, Tristan J. Kelly

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

At the beginning of World War I, the only military working dogs the United States owned were sled dogs. In comparison, European nations in World War I used canines as sentries, messengers, ambulance, and draft dogs. In 1942, members of the American public, created Dogs for Defense Inc. to help recruit dogs for military use. By the end of the Vietnam War, dogs no longer were donated by the American public for use, rather the American military owned the dogs they deployed.

This thesis examines the use of dogs by the American military from World War I to the Vietnam …

Bowles Family Collection (Mss 653), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 653. Correspondence of the Bowles family of Barren and Warren counties in Kentucky, chiefly letters to Eleanor Bowles during her youth and as a nursing student in Baltimore, Maryland. Includes unidentified photographs, perhaps of ancestors.

Chambliss, Landon Baird "Hank," 1921-1994 (Sc 3295), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3295. Poems by Baird “Hank” Chambliss, Cave City, Kentucky, collected under the title “Yesterday’s” [sic]. Chiefly based on aspects of the lives of Chambliss, his family and of young people he knew, the poems also feature romantic, genealogical and nostalgic themes. Includes an alphabetical list of titles. This collection is in digital format only in TopSCHOLAR.

Watson, Nancy Anne, 1924-2013 (Sc 3294), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3294. Letters, 9 and 15 June 1945, of Nancy Anne Watson, Louisville, Kentucky, to future husband A. Park Shaw, Jr. during his military service. She encloses her poem about the upcoming Kentucky Derby, and writes of her related social activities and wagers on the races. Her comments about a dinner with meat, and of using old clothes and cosmetics, allude to wartime shortages.

Reflections On My 1990 Taped Interviews With Pows Of Wwii, Mark Rieman

WWII Prisoner of War Taped Interviews

No abstract provided.

Vetetran Interview Questions/Format, Mark Rieman

WWII Prisoner of War Taped Interviews

No abstract provided.

The Dieppe Raid: Avoidable Disaster Or Lesson In Amphibious Assault?, Jennifer Munson

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

During World War II, the allied forces mounted an amphibious assault on the occupied French coastal town of Dieppe. Since its execution, the raid on Dieppe has become a very controversial topic. The operation had an abundance of flaws that caused many casualties. This paper analyzes both issues and who, if anyone, should have been held responsible.

Stewart Family Letters (Sc 3263), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3263. Letters to Charles T. Stewart, written by his mother in Cerulean, Kentucky and his wife in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, during his military service in World War II. His mother acknowledges receipt of his letter and a "wolf head souvenir," while his wife reports on life at home. She answers his question about members of another Stewart family and refers to Charles's recent comment about having children.

Jackson, Carlton Luther, 1933-2014 (Mss 581), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 581. Research and manuscripts for books written by Western Kentucky University history professor Carlton Jackson. Includes some personal and professional correspondence, unpublished writing, and a partial memoir. Click on "Additional Files" below to see a listing of correspondents who provided information about the influenza pandemic of 1918. This correspondence is found in Boxes 13 and 14.

Merchant Seamen, Sailortowns, And The Shaping Of U.S. Citizenship, 1843-1945, Johnathan Thayer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that merchant seamen, because of their inherent transience, diversity, and the unique nature of their work, occupied a marginal position in U.S. society, and that that marginalization produced a series of confrontations with shoreside people, communities, institutions, and the state, most specifically over the nature and definition of citizenship. This argument is developed through examination of a series of encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked from the piers, back alleys, and boardinghouses of the nation’s “sailortowns” from the 1830s through World War II, including: 1) nineteenth century maritime ministry projects in the Port of New York …

Consuming Victory: American Women And The Politics Of Food Rationing During World War Ii, Kelly Cantrell

Dissertations

Life on the home front formed the most ubiquitous American experience during World War II. Americans in the early 1940s found themselves caught in a rapidly evolving world, which wrought changes both great and small on their daily lives. This project explores women’s responses to some of that change. The federal government created wartime agencies to control and direct most elements of daily life from public opinion, to factory production, to employment practices, to family food procurement. The Office of Price Administration was charged with creating a food rationing program to insure steady availability of foodstuffs at home while suppling …

Tanks And Tinsel: The American Celebration Of Christmas During World War Ii, Samantha Desroches

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

“Tanks and Tinsel: The American Celebration of Christmas during World War II” is an examination of the American celebration of Christmas during World War II. As the first comprehensive investigation into the most well-known holiday in Western culture and its role in shaping Americans’ experience and understanding of the war, it contributes to historical scholarship in three ways. First, it continues the trend of blending analyses of society into military-focused narratives of the war, and it expands the scope of this by fusing the literature of War and Society with that of Holiday History. Second, it challenges traditional views of …

Threads Of The Zoot Suit Riots: How The Initial Explanations For The Riots Hold Up Today, Antonio Franco

Voces Novae

This paper is about the 1943 Los Angeles Zoot suit Riots. These riots lasted for five days and were fought between the city’s young Mexican-American population and U.S. servicemen who were in the city. The name comes from a popular style that many young Mexican-Americans in L.A. wore at the time called the zoot suit. The Zoot Suit Riots was one of the most important moments in Chicano history. Throughout the riots as well as sometime afterward, many who were in the city at the time tried to discern its origins. The local newspapers, the Los Angeles Police Department, Mexican-Americans, …

Fighting A War Without Rifles: Deconstructing The Image Of The Unflappable Medic, Robert Del Toro

Voces Novae

“Fighting a War Without Rifles: Deconstructing the Image of the Unflappable Medic” focuses on comparing the official romanticized image of the medic in World War II and the soldiers’ reality. During the Second World War, the US Army in Europe faced high casualty rates, and the soldiers of the Medical Department were tasked with treating the wounded. The medic was the first echelon of care that the wounded would receive, as well as the most important. After the War, the medics were portrayed in a romanticized light. Official literature presented them as highly competent soldiers; infantry men saw them as …

The Warner Brothers Prove Their Patriotism, Lara Jacobson

Voces Novae

Warner Bros. Pictures did not become the widely successful company they are today by sitting back and letting “the world go to pot.” The Brothers patriotic beginnings in America earned them a reputation as trailblazers in the motion picture industry. Their Polish and Jewish family heritage initially motivated the four brothers to take a stand when they released Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) as a direct result of Hitler’s growing reign in Europe. Many of the Brothers’ early movies focused on injustice, prejudice, and violation of basic human rights; the era of World War II would be no different. …

Memory Through Manga: Japanese Comic Book Representations Of Mass Death In Hiroshima And World War Ii, Julianna Christine Leach

History Theses

Discusses the themes of trauma and the anti-nuclear, pro-humanity, political messages of four manga—Barefoot Gen, I Saw It, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, and Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms—depicting mass death during World War II from the point of view of Hiroshima victims and low-ranking Japanese soldiers sent on two suicide missions.

A Horrific Choice Or Willing Complicity: Medical Ethics In Nazi Germany, Hope Schulman

History Theses

This paper seeks to answer the question of whether or not doctors in Nazi Germany were forced to commit medical atrocities, or if they were working on their own volition.

Operation Barbarossa Interpreted In Light Of The Primacy Of Stalin's Economic Plan And Trade With Germany, Adam G. Novey

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The controversy over who was the aggressor behind Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union, has focused largely on political and military analyses. However, a study of Soviet economics sheds critical light on this debate. The success of Joseph Stalin’s regime rested squarely upon a foundation of economic growth. In the late 1930s, he viewed trade with Germany as the way to achieve his capital investment objectives. Any economic gains proffered by Stalin’s Third Five-Year Plan would be threatened by the prospect of war. Thus, Stalin tenaciously held to his non-aggression pact with Germany. It is the contention …

George C. Marshall, A Dynamic Leader Of Transition & Adaptation, John Robert Isaiah Emmert

Masters Theses

George Catlett Marshall was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the tumultuous years of the Second World War. Prior to the war, Marshall headed various officers’ schools and professional development centers, mentoring an entire generation of young officers who would become field commanders and general officers during the World War II. Eventually, he oversaw the monumental task of modernizing and enlarging the United States Army as World War II began and escalated. Together with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his opposites in the British military, he helped formulate the grand strategy that the Allied powers implemented …

America, An Aloof Friend: The Limits Of U.S.-Czechoslovak Relations From Munich To War, Connor Schonta

Masters Theses

Between 1918 and 1938, the United States and Czechoslovakia maintained unique, friendly, and special diplomatic relations. This was mainly due to the two countries’ shared commitment to liberal, democratic values. In 1938, however, Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy came to a head in the form of the Munich Agreement, which not only set Czechoslovakia on a course of destruction but also fundamentally transformed the nature of U.S.-Czechoslovak relations. This study seeks to unpack the development of U.S.-Czechoslovak relations in the eleven months between Munich (October 1938) and the start of World War II (September 1939). During this time, the friendly ties …

Both Sides Of The Barbed Wire: Lives Of German Prisoners Of War And African Americans In Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, 1944-1946, Claire Delucca

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Located outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, Camp Claiborne was temporarily home to more than 500,000 U.S. servicemen and women during its short existence. Thousands of German prisoners of war also were held for more than two years in a section of the camp. Racial problems stemming from the policies of Jim Crow South and the blatant inequality eventually led to an African American mutiny within the camp. The events from 1944 to 1946 at Camp Claiborne provide insight into the mindsets of white Southerners and the generation of African Americans who would influence the major civil rights victories in the following …

Counter Currents: Arthur Lower, Lincoln Colcord, And Ideological Isolationism In Interwar Canada And The United States, James Spruce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative study of the ideology of isolationism in interwar Canada and the United States. It proceeds with that comparison using an individual subject from each country as a case study. For Canada, the subject is the historian and social scientist Arthur R.M. Lower; for the United States, it is the journalist and fiction author Lincoln Ross Colcord. Both men are worthy of study as individual isolationists of note, but they are also appropriate for the comparison because of the similarity of their isolationist positions and due to their personal backgrounds. Through the 1930s, Colcord and Lower …

Picturing And Preserving The War: Herbert Hahn's World War Ii Photograph Album, Samantha Sue Schwarz

Theses and Dissertations

Following his return from World War II, Herbert Hahn assembled an album using photographs he had taken during the war, photographs he had collected, and other materials that he had acquired during his time overseas. This thesis addresses questions posed by the album in Hahn’s collection, including: What was the purpose of the photographs taken by Hahn? Why did he assemble them into an album, which he then kept hidden? And, finally, what can the photograph album contribute—beyond understanding Hahn’s experiences—to larger discussions regarding soldiers’ personal photograph collections. While there is no single answer as to why Hahn created the …

The Winter War: Its Causes And Effects, Ethan D. Beck

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-1940, also known as the Winter War, forms a curious portion of World War II history that bears further study. Occurring during the “Phony War”—the period of calm following Hitler’s invasion of Poland—the Winter War offers a glimpse into the attitudes of the major powers as the growing necessity of the coming war becomes increasingly clear during 1939 and 1940. Specifically, the Winter War provides insight into Soviet imperialism and its concerns over German aggression, and forms a crucial portion of the German decision to invade Russia in the summer of 1941. Without consideration of the …

Honor, Courage, Commitment: Navy Recruitment Posters In World War Ii, Shelby A. Georges

Honors College Theses

Navy recruitment posters from World War II are an important piece of American culture. The iconic signage can be seen in antique stores and textbooks alike. However, these posters provide more than just bold imagery and vintage decor. By analyzing recruitment posters as if they were advertisements and placing them in the context of the time period, many facets of American identity can be understood, especially regarding race, gender, and patriotism. These posters, while they almost never stated the specific outlined duties of Naval careers or requirements for enlisting, advertised to readers under the premise that they understood the guidelines …

Besatzungskinder: Die Schweigenden Geister Des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Besatzungskinder: The Silenced Ghosts Of The Second World War), Aimee C. Bosman

Student Publications

Diese Forschungsarbeit konzentriert sich auf die Erfahrung von Besatzungskindern in Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Sie diskutiert die Exposition oder mangelnde Sichtbarkeit von Besatzungskindern in der Gesellschaft und wie sie kulturell dargestellt wurden. Diese These stellt die Frage, wie Besatzungskinder in der Gesellschaft gesehen wurden, und ob die Gesellschaft ihnen half, eine deutsche Identität zu entwickeln.

The Battle Fdr Lost:The Failed Nomination Of Boss Ed Flynn As Minister To Australia, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

Shortly after Christmas in 1942, the U.S. minister to Australia, Nelson Trusler Johnson, decided the time was right for a break from his wartime duties. Johnson and his wife, Jane, agreed that a seaside vacation with their young children was in order. The Johnson family duly motored to Narooma, about 150 miles southeast of Canberra, for what they expected to be a three-week holiday during the peak of the Australian summer. They chose the spot for its beauty—and because the children would be able to swim without worrying about sharks.The Johnsons’ holiday was cut short on January 8, when wire …