Digital Commons Network^™

The Lure Of Strike, Conrad C. Crane

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Female Soldier, Anthony C. King

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Looking Back: Understanding Abu Ghraib, George R. Mastroianni

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Commentaries And Replies, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Patriot, Pet, And Pest: America Debates The Dog's Worth During World War I, Alison G. Laurence

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

During World War I, dogs held a contradictory place in American society. These animals functioned simultaneously as patriots, pets, and pests. This essay surveys the ways in which dogs either contributed to the war effort or seemed to subvert it through their uselessness as companion animals and their predation as feral ones. Ultimately, even worsening conditions on the homefront could not cause the American public as a whole to consider surrendering its affection for these animals, including the worthless ones. In the face of impending legislation that threatened to eliminate man’s best friend as a war measure, the American people …

Terror Unrealized: German Blunders, American Occupation Strategy, And The Failure Of The Nazi Werwolf Movement, Nicholas Jon Hurley

Honors Scholar Theses

The Nazi Werwolf movement is an often overlooked and forgotten subject during historical examinations of the end of the Second World War, due in large part to the fact that it never fully developed or reached the scale envisioned by its creators. Originally devised to conduct commando-style partisan operations behind Allied lines, the organization's failure can be attributed to a number of factors, both German and American. This work examines the logistical and organizational problems that crippled the movement prior to the end of hostilities in Europe, as well as the American postwar counterinsurgency campaign that wiped out what surviving …

The Wrong Track: Errors In American Tank Development In World War Ii, Jacob Fox

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

American main battle tanks in the European Theater of World War II were technologically inferior to their German counterparts. Crews in the M4 Sherman tank thus suffered extreme casualties in the fight to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi Germany. This thesis contends that the U.S. Army had another tank available by the fall of 1944 that could have saved the lives of many American soldiers and might have also ended the war sooner than May 1945. The existing historiography fails to consider much of the records from the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department about the development of this more advanced tank: …

Limited War, Limited Enthusiasm: Sexuality, Disillusionment, Survival, And The Changing Landscape Of War Culture In Korean War-Era Comic Books And Soldier Iconography, Joshua K. Akers

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis investigates how Korean War-era comic books and soldier-produced iconography between 1950 and 1953 reflected the conflict and helped construct ideal soldier masculinities. Differentiating between romantic, soldier-produced, and realist imagery, this thesis argues that comic books—traditionally treated as low-brow children’s literature—articulated diverse and sophisticated discussions about the nature of warfare and its impact on manhood. Soldiers and artists reflected a war that came on the heels of World War II, and the disillusionment expressed in these sources reflected a broader cultural conflict between representing World War II sentimentalism and the new, limited war in Korea. This struggle resulted in …

Giant Ants And Killer Children: Fear And Popular Culture In 1950s America, Kathleen Elizabeth Ford

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This public history thesis consists of three main sections that combine to form a complete plan for a museum exhibit on 1950s American fears as seen through the lens of popular culture. In American popular memory, postwar America often emerges as a somewhat simplistic time in which every citizen was mired in conservatism and concerned only for communist spies and nuclear devastation. Though these were very real fears for the majority of the population, their fears also went much deeper than this. Through the museum exhibit medium, this thesis explores fears of loneliness, humanity’s capacity for evil, and societal collapse …

Retaliation With Restraint: Destruction Of Private Property In The 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Jeannie Cummings Harding

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Second Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1864 created new challenges for commanders, soldiers, and civilians on both sides. Pressure on General Grant and President Lincoln to end the war quickly precipitated an increase in the use and severity of hard war policies in the South. Meanwhile, Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early worked against his foe, implementing hard war in southern Pennsylvania in a desperate attempt to maintain his supply base in the Shenandoah Valley. Soldiers and civilians found themselves caught in the middle of an increasing cycle of destruction that they seemed to find equally demoralizing. Three towns suffered significant …

A Western Empire, Grace Garrett

Young Historians Conference

Over a hundred year period spanning the 17th and 18th centuries, Russia underwent sweeping social and political reforms. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great stand as bookends to this great transformation, with the latter embracing and expanding on the former's initial vision. This essay focuses on the role art played in Russia's efforts to become "a Western Empire".

Biomimetic Robots At War: The Ethical Ramifications Of American Military-Industrial Complex, Nina Kostur

Young Historians Conference

This paper discusses the correlation between the American military-industrial complex and the application of robotics over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. The military-industrial complex has encouraged scientists to spend time developing weaponry and reconnaissance devices designed to hurt other human beings rather than investing in machines that have to potential to provide humanitarian aid. This has caused the application of robotics to become unethical.

How Did The Use Of Propaganda Affect The Development Of Nazi Germany As A Single-Party State?, Lindsey Schiager

Young Historians Conference

This Internal Assessment investigates how propaganda in the media influenced Nazi Germany's development as a single party state. It reviews Adolf Hitler's background and role in the development of a propaganda ministry as well as Joseg Goebbels, the man who created the propaganda itself. Single party states use propaganda to increase and spread the popularity of the party. There is also a focus on propaganda techniques, such as bright colors to draw a viewer in, and the different propaganda outlets a citizen would have been exposed to. In this investigation, propaganda was found to have positively affected Germany's rise as …

Soldiers For Democracy: Karl Loewenstein, John H. Herz, Militant Democracy And The Defense Of The Democratic State, Ben Plache

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the work of two German Jewish émigré scholars, Karl Loewenstein and John H. Herz, and how they confronted the conflict between fascism and democracy throughout the 1930s and during World War II. Loewenstein, in academic publications and later through a campaign of public advocacy, urged the adoption of his theory of militant democracy for the protection of democratic institutions. Originally conceived as temporary legislation to deprive fascists of the fundamental rights they abused in order to seize power, this theory evolved into the understanding by Loewenstein that fascist and democratic states could not coexist, and that fundamental …

The Napoleonic Empire And The Making Of A Modern Public: Policing, Politics, And Parades In Nineteenth-Century Hamburg, 1806-1830, Brendan Haidinger

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the attention historians have given to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras in Central Europe, few works have sought to understand these events' reverberations throughout the nineteenth century in a local or regional context. Taking the northern German city of Hamburg as its focal point, this study investigates the change in the urban political culture affected by eight years of Napoleonic occupation. In the process of replacing Hamburg's sprawling and archaic government with one characterized by Gallic centralization and rigor, the French introduced a new style of politics that relied on consistent, public, and martial presentations of its authority. This …

The British Occupation Of Southern New York During The American Revolution And The Failure To Restore Civilian Government, Frank Paul Mann

History - Dissertations

A decade of political unrest over the question of parliamentary taxation resulted in the development of an alternate political structure of committees and congresses in the province of New York. By 1776, a revolutionary government led by the Provincial Congress controlled the province. Upon learning of the Declaration of Independence, the New York Provincial Congress declared independence from the British. Within months of this declaration, southern New York was occupied by British troops, and remained under British control for the duration of the Revolutionary War. The area was under martial law for the duration. Britain's loss of the Saratoga Campaign …

Many Worlds Converge Here: Vision And Identity In American Indian Photography, Alicia L. Harris

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Photographs of Native Americans taken by Frank A. Rinehart at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898 were then and continue to be part of the construction of indigenous identities, both by Anglo-Americans and Natives. This thesis analyzes the ramifications of Rinehart’s portraits and those of his peers as well as Native American artists in the 20^th and 21^st centuries who have sought to re-appropriate these images to make them empowering icons of individual or tribal identity rather than erasure of culture.

This thesis comprises two sections. In the first section, the analysis is focused on the historical …

Active Religion: James Ireland, The Separate Baptists, And The Great Awakening In Virginia, 1760-1775, Cooper Pasque

Masters Theses

In the mid-eighteenth century, the religious fervor of the Great Awakening entered Virginia. Evangelical Baptists soon threatened to undermine the authority of the Anglican Church and its planter patrons. Despite their efforts to quiet the Baptists, evangelical religion took root in Virginia by the end of the American Revolution. Historical works on these events offer valid but incomplete explanations. Puzzling dynamics in the Virginian context require a more complex interpretation. The life of James Ireland provides a unique window into possible answers. His autobiography provides evidence for what appears to be the most fundamental reason for evangelicalism's successes in Virginia. …

Kemalism: A Revolutionary Ideology And Its Islamist Opposition, Juliann Merryman

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“Kemalism: A Revolutionary Ideology and its Islamist Opposition” seeks to define the Kemalist reform period as a revolutionary movement. During the 1920s and 1930s, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his authoritarian government undertook a series of sweeping social and political reforms. This paper seeks to establish these reforms and the underlying Kemalist ideology as a revolutionary ideology. Using a functionalist perspective, the essay illustrates the various crises that faced the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A number of reform efforts failed to effectively address the entirety of Ottoman societal ills.

The rise of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the …

Wartime Art: A Study Of Political Propaganda And Individual Expression In American Commercial And Combat Art During World War Ii, Jennifer M. Wilcott

History Theses

This thesis will explore the mediums and functions of American art during World War II. The purpose of exploring art during World War II is not simply to provide an overview of the multiple media of art produced during the war, but to investigate the role that commercial artwork and combat soldiers’ artwork had on the lasting interpretation of the war. Themes addressed are propaganda, the role of posters, comic books, and cartoons along with their influence on American society at the time. Further analysis examines the role of three artists: Howard Brodie, Edward Reep, and Robert N. Blair. Their …

The Effects Of Chistianization On Identity Among The Indigenous Communities Of Kongo And Lower Canada, Jessica Dauterive

Senior Honors Theses

Historians have written extensively about the process of Christianization within the Kongo nation, as well as among the Native Americans of Lower Canada. Scholars agree that this process was disparate across the Atlantic World. This paper explores the process within each region through the analysis of two dominant missionary accounts representing each region during the late seventeenth century. These missionary accounts are joined with the stories of Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and Catherine Tegahkouita, two notable indigenous Christians from each region. A comparative analysis of Kongo and Lower Canada reveals that the process of Christianization is highly dependent upon the …

Adapting To A Changing World: An Environmental History Of The Eastern Shoshone, 1000–1868, Adam R. Hodge

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Using the Eastern Shoshone Tribe as a case study, this dissertation argues that the physical environment must be considered integral to processes of ethnogenesis. It traces the environmental history of the people who became known as the Eastern Shoshone over the course of several centuries, exploring how those Natives migrated throughout and adapted to a significant portion of the North American West – the Great Basin, Rocky Mountains, Columbia Plateau, and Great Plains – prior to the reservation era. In examining that history, this project treats Shoshones, other Natives, and Euro-Americans not as people who simply used the environment, but …

A Progressive Mind : Louis D. Brandeis And The Origins Of Free Speech., Elizabeth Diane Todd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study argues that Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis played a key role in shaping the jurisprudence of free political speech in the United States. Brandeis's judicial opinions on three freedom of speech cases in the post-World War I era provide the evidence for this argument. This thesis demonstrates how the Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I allowed Brandeis the opportunity to reflect and rule on the Founding Fathers' meaning of free speech in a political democracy. Chapter I offers a detailed historiography of the Progressive Era and World War I. Chapter II provides a biography …

The Forgotten Footnote Of The Second World War: An Examination Of The Historiography Of Scandinavia During World War Ii, Jason C. Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Anglo-American interpretation of the Second World War has continuously overlooked the significance of the Scandinavian region to the outcome of the war. This thesis seeks to address some of the more glaring errors of omission that have dampened the Anglo-American understanding of the war. Attention will first be paid to Finland and how its war against the Soviet Union in 1939-1940, known as the Winter War, influenced Adolf Hitler and his decision to launch Operation ‘Barbarossa.’ In regards to Sweden, attention will be paid to how critical Swedish iron ore was to the Nazi war economy. Finally, the thesis …

A Contested Policy: Irish And American Perspectives On Eire's Neutrality, Leah Egofske

All Theses

Although the Irish Free State had close relations and connections to the United Kingdom from its inception in 1922, Eire pursued a policy of neutrality throughout the Second World War. Although the majority of the Irish population supported neutrality, it attracted much criticism in Britain and America. The aim of this study is to explore Irish men and women's experience with neutrality alongside how American newspapers as well as American war correspondents based in Britain addressed and viewed Ireland's neutrality. In many ways, the Irish benefited from the policy of neutrality and the small nation was united on a level …

The Creation And Evolution Of The Acholi Ethnic Identity, Leslie Whitmire

All Theses

Abstract
On March 5th, 2012, the Kony 2012 video was released by the authors and director of Invisible Children, and Uganda instantaneously became the center of young America's focus. This graphic video contained disturbing images of child soldiers and dead children, aiming to draw sympathy and awareness to the ongoing problem the Lord's Resistance Army's violent attacks on the Acholi of Northern Uganda and recruitment measures. While many Americans responded to the video's urgent request for support by encouraging the government to act, others adhered to the popular belief that this conflict was nothing more than another tribal conflict among …

For Want Of Sloops, Water Casks, And Rum: The Difficulties Of Logistics In The Canadian Theater Of The Seven Years War, Daniel Bazan

Masters Theses

The thesis examines the various difficulties with logistics the British needed to overcome in Canada during the Seven Years War and those who helped . Without the necessary supplies and provisions for frontier campaigning, Britain would have lost the war. The thesis provides primary accounts of the geography during the war, various logistical factors, and the men that helped provide the necessary materials for the successful outcome of the British offensive in Canada.

Death By Bullet, Fire, Or Vapor: Examining The Decision To Use The Atomic Bomb To End World War Ii In The Pacific Theatre, Jonathan Keenan

The Exposition

The atomic bomb is one of the most destructive devices man has created for warfare. Able to wipe out entire city blocks and dissolve a person’s body leaving only a shadow behind. How can any good be found in such a weapon? The paper will evaluate the process Americans went through to create this weapon and then use it. It will convey how different key players felt about the Bomb, such as politicians, scientists, and military figures. Both sides of the argument will be looked at whether the Bombs should have been dropped or if there was a way around …

The Battle Of Beersheba: Strategic And Tactical Pivot Of Palestine, Zachary D. Grafman

Senior Honors Theses

The Battle of Beersheba, fought on October 31, 1917, was a vital turning point in the British campaign against the Ottoman Turks. The battle opened a gap in the Turkish line that eventually resulted in the British takeover of Palestine. The British command saw the cavalry charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade as a new tactical opportunity, and this factored into the initiative for new light tank forces designed around the concepts of mobility and flanking movements. What these commanders failed to realize was that the Palestine Campaign was an anachronistic theater of war in comparison to the rest …

Vestal Virgins Of Rome: Images Of Power, Melissa Huang, Amanda Coles, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

From humble beginnings, the Vestal Virgins were able to create a foothold in political life through the turbulence of the transition from Republic to Principate. In part due to the violent and perilous transition, the Vestal Virgins of Rome began to represent a sense of what it meant to be Roman. The manifestation of the symbolization of Rome gave the Vestals great power, which they expressed in political and social venues. In order to describe these expressions, this presentation explains the religious and social roles of the Vestals established before the Late Republic. This is necessary because most of the …