History Commons^™

The Making Of A War Memoir, Mary Smethers

Honors Theses

Each of us is able to experience only small slices of history. We live only a shade of the painting. This does not give us a false perspective, but a unique, slim portion of the bigger picture. Though many of us live through epic periods of history that have been enumerated in many millions of pages, it is only a few dozen of those pages that we can actually point out as moments that we lived. Each memory comes with its own perspective. We can only experience that moment of history from the view of the life that we lived …

The International Military Tribunals: An Overview And Assessment, Joshua Daniel Franklin

Honors Theses

As World War II drew to a close in Europe, the victorious Allies faced the question of what to do with the political and military leaders of defeated Germany. The war had been like none other; they needed a drastically new approach to the final treatment of those in charge of the Axis powers. While war crimes could be punished under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, no international agreements assigned personal responsibility to those who ordered the crimes.

While Axis leaders could have been simply executed, the Allies chose to plan a cooperative international trial. The resulting International Military Tribunal …

Pibun Songkram's Role In Thailand's Entry Into The Pacific War, Lukasz Staniczek

Honors Theses

On January 25, 1942, Thailand followed the Japanese example and declared war on the United States and Great Britain. The reasons for Thailand's entry into the war remain controversial. The extent and timing of Japanese pressure and the genesis of the Thai commitment to the Axis side are in dispute. There is not a generally accepted view on why Thailand declared war; however, the issue has been thus far analyzed principally in consideration of Thai national interest. This paper provides a different approach by focusing on the main decision-maker: Thai Prime Minister Pibun Songkram, as the key to solve the …

An Analysis Of Success And Failure: The Manhattan Project And German Nuclear Research During The Third Reich, Jon Tate Self

Honors Theses

Without doubt, the years since World War II have seen a new player on the international scene. Not a person, yet to many, it personifies man's inhumanity to man. Neither is it a nation, yet it wields more power than the most powerful empire or state. Nor is it good or evil in and of itself, but like all fruit of knowledge, it defers to man in its use. The new player is the atom by virtue of its awesome explosive power.

The atom did not burst onto the scene in our context until 1939. That year saw the discovery …