Military History Commons^™

Calamitous Pursuit: The Fetterman Fight, Marc C. Jeter

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Since that fateful December day in which Captain William Fetterman, two civilians, and 78 officers and men were annihilated in the present-day state of Wyoming, culpability has rested entirely with that officer. The oft- reason for this disastrous result is that Fetterman was effectively a reckless officer that dismissed out-of-hand the martial capabilities of warriors from the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe tribes. This derogatory opinion therefore, led to his leading the task force placed under his command on December 21, 1866 into an ambush and wholescale death to every soldier and civilian.

California’S Dilemma: Northern And Southern Sympathies During The American Civil War, Brendan Harris

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The goal of this article is to highlight the military, social, and political issues between Northern and Southern sympathizers in California during the American Civil War. The California Gold Rush saw many Americans move west to cash in on the Gold Mines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. However, the move west also meant that people would bring their politics and ideas with them, which included how to create slave and free territory. California would become a free state due to the Missouri Compromise, but many Southerners living in the state contested the idea. During California's first decade of statehood, state …

Urban Warfare: Emerging Geopolitical Conundrum, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Urban warfare is as old as human history. It is becoming increasingly important in international political and military planning due to increasing global urbanization and the presence of megacities (urban areas with populations exceeding 10 million) in many global regions and being in areas of recent and potential military conflict. 2018 World Bank data notes that approximately 56% of the world's population lives in urban areas which is up from 34% in 1960. Many of these megacities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Manila are adjacent to oceanic waters and vulnerable to trade and supply …

World War I Collections In Manuscripts & Folklife Archives At Western Kentucky University, Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

This is a list of collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections that relate to World War I. Included are letters and diaries of soldiers and civilians, military records and papers, research projects, photographs, scrapbooks and other, mostly unpublished material. Our collections are particularly strong in documenting the experiences of Kentuckians at home and overseas, and of others who found themselves in Kentucky (most notably, at Camp Zachary Taylor, the Army training facility in Louisville) during the war and its immediate aftermath.

Disintegrating The Enemy: The Pla’S Info-Messaging, Jacqueline N. Deal

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The DoD can exploit weaknesses in Chinese military attempts at political warfare, or “enemy disintegration,” most recently observed in PLA media on the subject of the pandemic. Targeted information efforts will signal the United States’ refusal to be intimidated, expose untruths in Chinese government messaging to its citizens, and reassure relevant third parties of US military resolve.

Technology And Strategic Surprise: Adapting To An Era Of Open Innovation, Audrey Kurth Cronin

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Technological revolutions affecting state power are either open or closed. The precursor to the digital age is not the twentieth century, with state-controlled programs yielding nuclear weapons, but the late nineteenth century, when tinkerers invented the radio, airplane, and high explosives—all crucial to subsequent wars. To avoid strategic surprise, the US government must take a broader view of how today’s open innovation is changing society and adapt.

Parameters Autumn: 2020, Usawc Parameters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Covid-19 Enemy Is Still Advancing, Ryan J. Scott, Odelle J. Means, Patricia M. Shields

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The US military has a historical precedence for dealing with a pandemic while simultaneously conducting large-scale combat operations. Two twentieth-century examples assess the extent to which the military adapted operations following an influenza outbreak, and make clear military and civilian leaders must balance strategic objectives when facing threat multipliers such as COVID-19.

Training Better Arab Armies, Michael J. Eisenstadt, Kenneth M. Pollack

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

US security force assistance missions to Arab partner states have had limited success, due in part to a tendency to impose American doctrine, which embodies American cultural values and norms, on Arab armed forces. Accordingly, US security force assistance missions should train Arab partners to fight in a manner better suited to their own cultural preferences and operational requirements.

The Us Army And The Pacific: Legacies And Challenges, David M. Finkelstein

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The Indo-Pacific will loom large in the future of the US Army. The region is increasingly important to myriad US national interests and is a major playing field for great-power competition. As it deepens its Pacific orientation, the Army has a rich institutional and operational legacy to draw upon, as well as encouraging recent initiatives that auger well for its ability to support the Joint Force in this critical part of the world.

Enduring Information Vigilance: Government After Covid-19, Nina Jankowicz, Henry Collis

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The framework of Enduring Information Vigilance will help ally and partner governments deny advantages adversaries gain through their use of information operations in our new global perpetual information environment. This approach recognizes the persistent threat, unifies responses within and between governments, and resolves societal fissures toward a more global democratic information environment.

A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons For Cyber Conflict, Jason Healey

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The lessons of counterinsurgency have deeper implications for cyber conflict than previous research has identified. Two decades of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan provide insights into the cyber strategy of defending forward including treating major cybersecurity and technology companies as host-nation partners and focusing on winning the hearts and minds of global netizens.

Book Reviews, Usawc Parameters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

A Land Of Poets And Warriors: The Connection Between Warrior Culture And Bardic Culture In Medieval Wales C. 1066-1283, Sarah Lynn Alderson

Dissertations and Theses

Wales in the Middle Ages was a region both divided by war and united by culture. Frequent raids from the Hiberno-Irish, Scandinavians, and Flemish threatened Wales from the outside, while the kings within the borders of Wales fought for supremacy. During the late eleventh century, William the Conqueror made his way to the Welsh border in an attempt to secure his fledging kingdom. Under the premise of protecting his borders, William established the first March of Wales on the eastern border of Wales in 1087. This started the slow process of Anglo-Norman expansion and colonization into Wales.

The Welsh maintained …

Publicly Accessible National Security Information Resources: An Untapped Treasure Trove, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This presentation demonstrates the wide variety of publicly accessible U.S. Government national security information resources. It includes information on the U.S. constitutional foundations of national security policy, a recent annual defense spending bill, documents from the White House/National Security Council, Department of Defense, various military branches including professional military educational institutions, assorted U.S. intelligence agencies, congressional legislation, congressional committee reports on legislation, congressional committee hearings, and reports from congressional support agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office. It concludes by stressing the multiple benefits provided by having public access to these information resources.

The Good War?: Reinterpreting The Second World War In Contemporary Musical Theatre, Leana Sottile

SURF Posters and Papers

For years, American musicals have contributed to the mythologization of the Second World War and upheld ‘Greatest Generation’ nostalgia in mainstream war memory. For example, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific is effectively silent on the brutality and dehumanization of the Pacific Theater and exoticizes the experience of service members. In the past five years, the New York theatre scene has seen three shows that portray the Second World War more accurately and less romantically: Allegiance, Bandstand, and Alice by Heart. While none of these shows ran for longer than a few months in New York, in that short …

The 1918 Anti-British Revolt In Najaf: Local Primary Sources Vs National And Religious Narratives, Mohammed Harba

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This research examines the diverse historical narratives of the 1918 Najaf Revolt against British forces during the concluding months of World War I on the Mesopotamian front. For a century, two distinguishable narratives have been developed and promoted in Iraqi literature: Pan-Arabist and religious, reflecting the objectives, motivations, and present-mindedness of two political eras in modern Iraqi history. Several local primary sources, mostly memoirs of Najafis who witnessed or participated in the revolt, have been re-surfaced and re-visited during the past twenty years. These primary sources shed new light on the established Pan-Arabist narrative or the recent religious framing of …

So Others May Live: The Price Of Healthcare In Combat, Robert Del Toro

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

“Medics carried more responsibilities than dry feet, salt tablets, syphilis, and puncture wounds,” U.S. Army Medic Ben Sherman stated after reflecting on his tour in Vietnam. On the battlefields of North Africa, Italy, France, and Vietnam, the medics of the U.S. Army Medical Department faced the difficult duty of preserving life while death surrounded them. Their patients were not strangers but, men they had grown close to, they were comrades and family. Analyzing the memoirs and letters of forward medical personnel from the Second World War and the Vietnam War, this thesis analyzes how a medic’s care went beyond the …

Militarizing Marriage : West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions In Modern French Empire, Sarah J. Zimmerman

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Following tirailleurs sénégalais’ deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s to 1962, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how African servicemen advanced conjugal strategies with women at home and abroad. Sarah J. Zimmerman examines the evolution of women’s conjugal relationships with West African colonial soldiers to show how the sexuality, gender, and exploitation of women were fundamental to the violent colonial expansion and the everyday operation of colonial rule in modern French Empire.

These conjugal behaviors became military marital traditions that normalized the intimate manifestation of colonial power in social reproduction across the empire. Soldiers’ …

Maumelle Ordnance Works: From Wartime To The New Town, John Hoganson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers the history of the Maumelle Ordnance Works from its creation to its eventual shutdown in the 1950’s. It goes into detail on the buildings of the plant along with the materials that the plant manufactured for use in the Second World War. This thesis also covers the early history of the community of Maumelle.

Return To The Pentagon: Marshall And The Korean War, Jared Dockery Ph.D.

Faculty Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

A Suspected Democratic Regiment: The Fourth New Hampshire Volunteers In The American Civil War, Eric Paul Totten

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Fourth New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry was suspected of being a Democratic regiment due to the intense partisanship of the antebellum and Civil War era. The political socialization of New Hampshire’s citizens divided communities and fostered animosity towards political opponents. The unit’s recruits came from regions that were political battlegrounds and contained a large number of Irish immigrants. The intemperate and disorderly conduct of the officers and men of the Fourth during the Port Royal expedition seemingly confirmed the suspicions of civilians on the home front. The arrest of Colonel Louis Bell by Major General David Hunter led to further …

The Octofoil, July/August/September 2020, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

Desegregation Through Entertainment: Rodgers And Hammerstein’S South Pacific As An Instrument Of Military Policy, Leana Sottile

Voces Novae

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific became a staple of mainstream popular culture. However, the musical also served a specific function within the American military where its usage by the United Service Organizations and Department of Defense was widespread. This case study examines how South Pacific arguably served a way to ease the blow of desegregation on the military by other means, in this case, entertainment. This was achieved by combining the show’s progressive views on racial tolerance with the prevalent wartime nostalgia and romanticism in the piece. All of …

A War To Save Civilization: African American Soldiers In Britain During The Second World War, Joseph Dickinson

Voces Novae

During the Second World War, thousands of African American servicemen and women were sent to the British Isles as part of the war effort. Their arrival sparked a debate over American racial beliefs and how they would affect society in Britain, with many white Americans quickly finding that the locals were largely disapproving of the systems of segregation and discrimination common in the United States. Conflicts concerning race often escalated into violence between white soldiers, black soldiers, and the British civilians, forcing the American military to reevaluate their stance on discrimination and segregation in the armed forces.

“Reticent As The Sphinx As To His Own Valour:” The War Experience Of Lieutenant Samuel Honey, Vc, Dcm, Mm, Tim Cook, Jessica Parsons

Canadian Military History

Lieutenant Samuel Honey, VC, DCM, MM served in the Canadian Corps from 1916 to his death on 30 September 1918 during the Hundred Days campaign. Based on Honey’s letters and correspondence, this article offers a new perspective into his wartime experiences, the challenge of leadership, and his own insight into his role as a hero.

Le lieutenant Samuel Honey, VC, DCM, M.M. a servi dans le Corps canadien de 1916 à sa mort le 30 septembre 1918 pendant la campagne des Cent Jours. Inspiré des lettres et de la correspondance du lieutenant Honey, cet article apporte un nouveau regard sur …

Strategic Parasitism, Professional Strategists And Policy Choices: The Influence Of George Lindsey And Robert Sutherland On Canadian Denuclearisation, 1962-1972, John Keess

Canadian Military History

Between 1957 and 1963, Canada acquired numerous nuclear delivery systems to fulfill commitments to the defence of North America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In 1972, Pierre Trudeau’s government divested most of these systems. Much of the literature ascribes Trudeau’s decision to purely political reasons. By examining the contributions of two operational researchers from the Defence Research Board, Dr. R.J. Sutherland and Dr. George Lindsey, this article assesses the influence of professional advice on denuclearisation. This research has found that Lindsey and Sutherland provided a strategic grammar which helped shape the nature and timing of partial denuclearisation.

The Suicide Clause, Eliza Richardson

Canadian Military History

This article explores the ways in which Canadian military authorities responded to suicide during the Second World War. Attestation papers represented an agreement between Canadians and the state. They would serve, but in return, Canada owed them certain considerations should they die during their service. Servicemen suicide, then, raised questions about Canada’s obligations to its servicemen. Divided by the requirements of the law and compassion for families, military authorities struggled to find the appropriate way to handle suicide. This paper argues that convention treated suicide as insufficient grounds upon which to break the covenant between serviceman and state.

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

Full Issue: Volume 1, Issue 1, Editorial Board

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The first issue of the Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal.