Military History Commons^™

Mr. Jefferson's Army In Mr. Madison's War: Atrophy, Policy, And Legacy In The War Of 1812, David Alan Martin

Master's Theses

President Thomas Jefferson is a well-known figure, who is not well understood. His military policies are under-examined in the historiography. Yet, he had a tremendous impact on martial development in the Early Republic. Jefferson reshaped the military to suite his pragmatic republican ideals. His militia system expanded while the regulars were disbanded. The Navy was greatly decreased, and the remainder of his military was used for frontier exploration, riverine trade, road development, and other public works. This disrupted the precedent of strong federal military development as set by his predecessors: George Washington and John Adams. His reforms also left the …

Silenced Voices: Sexual Violence During And After World War Ii, Cassidy L. Chiasson

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the different types of sexual violence present during and immediately after World War II and focuses specifically on the European Theater of the war. Memoirs, journals and diaries were used as primary sources. This research focuses on the overlapping themes of sexual violence in the form of forcible rape and sexual violence as a means of protection and survival. The goal of this research is to provide a comprehensive view of the complexity surrounding many situations in which sexual violence occurred. It also aims to partially fill the gap in historical literature on this topic, and bring …

The Soldier And The Cigarette: 1918-1986, Joel Richard Bius

Dissertations

The military-industrial complex has been the topic of intense conversation among historians since President Dwight Eisenhower first gave the phrase life in January 1961. The term typically conjures up images of massive weapons procurement programs, but it also ironically involved one of the world’s most highly-engineered consumer products, the manufactured cigarette. “The Soldier and the Cigarette: 1918–1986” describes the unique, often comfortable, yet sometimes controversial relationships among the military, the cigarette industry, and tobaccoland politicians. The dissertation argues that the federal government’s first cigarette warning in 1964 changed a relationship between soldiers and cigarettes that the Army had fostered for …

Letters Home: Change In Mental State Of Soldiers During The American Civil And Vietnam Wars Seen Through Their Letters Home, Austin W. Hill

Honors Theses

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, has only been studied since its diagnosis after the Vietnam War. However, soldiers have always felt the affects of the wars they fought. These affects are physical, mental and emotional. Currently, PTSD is one of the most common affects of war on a soldier. While PTSD has only been studied since its discovery after the Vietnam War, symptoms almost exactly like PTSD have been present in soldiers for decades. This thesis uses letters from soldiers in the Vietnam War to create a basis of trauma that could create PTSD in soldiers. Using this base of …

Direct Responsibility: Caspar Weinberger And The Reagan Defense Buildup, Robert Howard Wieland

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the life of Caspar Weinberger and explains why President Reagan chose him for Secretary of Defense. Weinberger, not a defense technocrat, managed a massive defense buildup of 1.5 trillion dollars over a four year period. A biographical approach to Weinberger illuminates Reagan’s selection, for in many ways Weinberger harkens back to an earlier type of defense manager more akin to Elihu Root than Robert McNamara; more a man of letters than technocrat. And yet Weinberger, the amateur historian, worked with budgets his entire public career. Essentially, Pentagon governance is the formation of a military budget that proscribes …

Just Good Advice: The American Advisors In The Vietnam War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Honors Theses

This thesis uses government documents and post-combat interviews to explore the effectiveness of the American Advisory effort during the Vietnam War. This study focuses on the war in 1963 and 1964 before American ground forces entered the war and the advisory effort changed to include supporting American forces. By analyzing the reasons given by each advisor for his successes and failures, the American military could learn why the initial advisory effort failed, and why some American advisors could not work well with their counterparts in the Vietnamese leadership.

Chapter One examines the advisory effort as a whole before and during …

Unnecessary Evil: An Examination Of Abu Ghraib Torture Photographs As Postcolonial Resistance Rhetoric, Patrick Gerhardt Richey

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the rhetorical nature of visual artifacts in a postcolonial context. In order to examine the nature of visual artifacts as a form of resistance against static ideologies and prevailing power structures, the author uses both media and cultural artifacts created in response to photographs taken of abused prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Correctional Facility. The dissertation adds to scholarly knowledge of communication by addressing the intersections of iconographic visual communication and postcolonial resistance rhetoric. The dissertation provides a scholarly review of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, as well as of literature explicating …

Following The Principles: Case Studies In Operations Other Than War, 1945-1999, Kevin Joseph Dougherty

Dissertations

In the post-World War II-era, operations other than war (OOTW) were the types of conflict most commonly faced by the United States. This term for what had previously been called by such names as small wars and low intensity conflict was incorporated in the Army’s capstone manual, Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations, in 1993. Field Manual 100-5 also listed objective, unity of effort, legitimacy, perseverance, restraint, and security as the six principles of OOTW. An analysis of eight OOTWs that occurred between 1945 and 1999 indicates that the balanced application of these principles is a reliable predicator of the operation’s …

Beneath The Surface: American Culture And Submarine Warfare In The Twentieth Century, Matthew Robert Mcgrew

Master's Theses

Cultural perceptions guided the American use of submarines during the twentieth century. Feared as an evil weapon during the First World War, guarded as a dirty secret during the Second World War, and heralded as the weapon of democracy during the Cold War, the American submarine story reveals the overwhelming influence of civilian culture over martial practices. The following study examines the roles that powerful political and military elites, newspaper editors and Hollywood executives, and ordinary citizens – equal players in a game larger than themselves – assumed throughout the evolution of submerged warfare from 1914 to 1991. In each …

Beneath The Surface: American Culture And Submarine Warfare In The Twentieth Century, Matthew Robert Mcgrew

Master's Theses

Cultural perceptions guided the American use of submarines during the twentieth century. Feared as an evil weapon during the First World War, guarded as a dirty secret during the Second World War, and heralded as the weapon of democracy during the Cold War, the American submarine story reveals the overwhelming influence of civilian culture over martial practices. The following study examines the roles that powerful political and military elites, newspaper editors and Hollywood executives, and ordinary citizens - equal players in a game larger than themselves - assumed throughout the evolution of submerged warfare from 1914 to 1991. In each …