Military History Commons^™

The Shelburne Line Allowed Up To 200 Airmen To Get Back To England To Fly Against Nazi Germany, Kellian Clink

Library Services Publications

The Shelburne Line, facilitated by Military Intelligence, Section 9, was something like the American Underground Railroad, but in this case, it was developed during the waning days of World War II to help evading or escaping aircrew to get back to fly against the Nazis. Wherever the airmen went down, they were first housed in Paris, then were accompanied to a small town in Brittany, where a BBC announcement would alert the helpers to start conducting the airmen to “la maison d’Alphonse” atop a Nazi patrolled promontory. From that house, they would have to descend a steep cliff, wait anxiously …

Not So Cavalier: Technical Study And Conservation Treatment Of A Potential 17th Century Anglo-Dutch Military Portrait Painting, Josephine Ren

Art Conservation Master's Projects

A potential 17^th century Anglo-Dutch military portrait painting from the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York arrived at the Garman Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State University for conservation research and treatment in 2022. The painting’s title, date, and artist were unknown and the subject was initially referred to as a “17^th Century Dutch Cavalier.” Little information existed on the provenance and history of the artwork. The painting was in a state of structural instability and aesthetic disfigurement and showed evidence of a past restoration campaign. This master’s project attempted to broadly …

Parameters Autumn 2024, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Autumn 2024 issue of Parameters. The Autumn issue consists of a special piece from the US Army War College Commandant and Provost on their strategic vision for the college, three In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Cooperative Partnerships, Professional Development, and Historical Studies), two regular forums (A Major’s Perspective and the Civil-Military Relations Corner), and a review essay focused on strategy in India.

Eisenhower As Supreme Allied Commander: A Reappraisal, Richard D. Hooker Jr.

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article argues that the historical assessment of Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II lacks objectivity and balance. It identifies several strategic errors and missteps attributable to Eisenhower, which resulted in severe casualties and prolonged the war in Europe. The conclusions can help US military practitioners and policymakers assess the background and qualities required for successful theater command during wartime and senior commanders’ performances.

From The Acting Editor In Chief, C. Anthony Pfaff

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Autumn 2024 issue of Parameters. The Autumn issue consists of a special piece from the US Army War College Commandant and Provost on their strategic vision for the college, three In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Cooperative Partnerships, Professional Development, and Historical Studies), two regular forums (A Major’s Perspective and the Civil-Military Relations Corner), and a review essay focused on strategy in India.

Exploring Strategy In India, Vinay Kaura

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This review essay discusses Rajesh Basrur's Subcontinental Drift: Domestic Politics and India’s Foreign Policy and Feroz Hassan Khan's Subcontinent Adrift: Strategic Futures of South Asia and explores Indian strategy, especially concerning domestic issues and the relationship between Pakistan and India. The review concludes by noting that the two books agree on the oversized role of the Pakistani military in India’s national politics, where most security and foreign policy decisions are directed toward Pakistan.

Book Reviews, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Ua94/6 Pershing Rifles Company B, 3rd Regiment Reunion Album, Stewart Wade

Student/Alumni Personal Papers

Reunion album created by Stewart Wade for the 2024 Pershing Rifles & Rebelettes reunion.

The Architect Of The Past: Heinrich Himmler's Remaking Of Germany's History., Chad M. White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complex interplay between historical narratives, ideological manipulation, and cultural artifacts in Heinrich Himmler’s efforts to reshape Germany’s history during the Nazi regime. The study shows how Himmler used historical revisionism to mythologize Germanic history to support Nazi ideology. Himmler used the Ahnenerbe, an SS organization, to research and propagate distorted narratives, fabricating artifacts to legitimize the Aryan myth and assert Germanic superiority. Influenced by movements like the Völkisch Movement, Himmler's ideology relied on pseudo-historical narratives to shape public perception and Nazi policies. The study analyzes Himmler's writings and the spatial transformation of sites like Wewelsburg Castle …

Integrate To Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create A Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander, Tam N. Pham, Walter A. Berbrick

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhroughout the history of warfare, militaries have sought advantages by conducting information warfare (IW) to affect the perception and behavior of adversaries. Advances in IW capabilities are increasing the reach, speed, and effectiveness by which individuals, organizations, and systems can collect, process, disseminate, or act on information—and deny adversaries the same. The United States is not the only power to recognize the importance of IW in achieving national objectives. Russia and China have made great strides in improving and employing their IW capabilities to offset U.S. joint (and allied combined) forces in competition and conflict. Russia’s and China’s ability to …

The New Fire: War, Peace, And Democracy In The Age Of Ai, John P. Ringquist

Joint Force Quarterly

Ιn November 2023, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer of the Department of Defense (DOD), Craig Martell, stated, “Technologies evolve. Things are going to change next week, next year, next decade. And what wins today might not win tomorrow.” This sense of rapid technological change and disruption echoes what Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie have written in The New Fire. The authors are deeply steeped in the world of cyber and AI. Buchanan is the former Director of the CyberAI Project at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), currently Special Advisor for AI at …

The Political Thought Of Xi Jinping, Ian Forsyth

Joint Force Quarterly

Νot long after Xi Jinping assumed the post of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, a debate among China-watchers emerged over the nature of Xi’s leadership. How ambitious was he? Would he try to change the norms of institutionalization that had existed since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976? What bureaucratic constraints would he face, and could he overcome them?

From Peril To Partnership: U.S. Security Assistance And The Bid To Stabilize Colombia And Mexico, Nerea M. Cal

Joint Force Quarterly

Recent scrutiny from Congress on U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan has stimulated among both scholars and practitioners an increased interest in the topic of security assistance. One book that neatly bridges the gap between these two communities is Paul J. Angelo’s From Peril to Partnership. In this comprehensive and detailed account, Angelo conducts a comparative historical analysis of two multibillion-dollar security assistance initiatives—Plan Colombia in Colombia from 2000 to 2011 and the Mérida Initiative in Mexico from 2007 to 2016—to assess the effects of security-sector reform in different domestic contexts.

Five Truths For Foreign Area Officers, Michael L. Burgoyne, Albert “Jim” J. Marckwardt

Joint Force Quarterly

Colonel John Collins served in the U.S. Army through three wars and went on to be a revered military strategist and scholar. He founded the Warlord Loop, an organization of defense and security thinkers that remains active today. In 1987, Collins captured five “truths” regarding special operations forces. In so doing, Collins helped define the principles and attributes of special operations forces, which had been misunderstood by the larger conventional military. Foreign area officer (FAO) is another often misunderstood specialty in the military that would also benefit greatly from an exploration of its own truths. This is especially important given …

Winning In The Competition Continuum With Engineer Civic Assistance Projects, James M. Ward

Joint Force Quarterly

With a credible threat gap between the United States and competitor states shrinking, strategic dialogues increasingly emphasize competition to gain relative superiority prior to armed conflict.1 To frame the term competition, Joint Doctrine Note (JDN) 1-19, Competition Continuum, states, “Rather than a world either at peace or at war, the competition continuum describes a world of enduring competition conducted through a mixture of cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict.”2 The JDN 1-19 perspective suggests that a state’s policies and objectives vary by its temporal position in the competition continuum.

The World Is Not About Us: Information And Power In The Current Strategic Environment, Will Reno, Jesse R. Humpal

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhe Taj Mahal Guest House made a unique offer: Give us data, get beer.1 The Jalalabad, Afghanistan, café offered beer to anyone who brought video files, voice recordings, documents, and data dumps. The Taj shut down after Jalalabad became too hostile to outsiders, but not before its proprietors amassed extensive fine-grained data on local political and economic matters and supported projects that set up communications networks for local people. At least as important was the Taj’s role in facilitating informal personal relationships across government (foreign and local), commercial, humanitarian, and ordinary social networks. While not overtly a U.S.-led information operation, …

Cognitive Warfare: The Fight For Gray Matter In The Digital Gray Zone, Michael J. Cheatham, Angelique M. Geyer, Priscella A. Nohle, Jonathan E. Vazquez

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhe United States is facing unprecedented challenges in the cognitive domain. While democracies struggle to develop frameworks that promote collective understanding, adversaries are employing gray zone tactics—those that never rise to the level of war—as a form of cognitive warfare against the United States and other democratic societies. François du Cluzel, head of innovative projects at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s Allied Command Transformation Innovation Hub, describes the key distinctions of the emerging cognitive domain:

Cognitive warfare degrades the capacity to know, produce, or thwart knowledge. Cognitive sciences cover all the sciences that concern knowledge and its processes (psychology, …

A New Army Air Force, R.D. Hooker Jr.

Joint Force Quarterly

Αfter 75 years, it is time. The U.S. Army needs its own airplanes for sound reasons that deserve careful consideration. This bold assertion should draw a strong reaction from Airmen, but the simple truth is that close air support (CAS) for the Army runs counter to everything an independent, strategic air force stands for. In war after war, bitter inter-Service rivalry recurs over the use of airpower. In the end, the Army needs fixed-wing combat aircraft for the same reasons that the Navy and Marine Corps do. Moreover, the Army cannot get reliable CAS from the Air Force, and its …

After Afghanistan: The Need For A New Noncombatant Evacuation Operation, E.R. "Elle" Klein

Joint Force Quarterly

With the noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) in Afghanistan almost 3 years past and a NEO in South Korea an ever-present possibility, it is time to reevaluate the framework that governs the roles and responsibilities of Federal agencies in these life-and-death operations. What the Afghanistan NEO demonstrated—and what conflict on the Korean Peninsula bodes—is that the present framework buckles, if not collapses, under pressure. The United States must rethink the way it conducts NEOs if it is to properly protect noncombatant U.S. persons and allies in the increasingly unstable geopolitical terrain. This article argues that it is time for a new …

The Marine Corps The United States Needs, Adam Clemens

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhe U.S. Marine Corps is in the process of a bold modernization initiative known as Force Design, and Congress has called for an independent review, assessment, and analysis of this initiative.1 Force Design began during the tenure of the previous commandant, General David H. Berger, and the new commandant, General Eric M. Smith, sworn in last year, endorses it in his official guidance, FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) 01-2024, Maintain Momentum.2 The continuation of Force Design under a new commandant and the congressional attention it is receiving provide opportune circumstances to consider the Marine Corps’ roles and missions.

Engines Of Chaos: Counterlogistics In Competition, 2023-A Class Of The Advanced Logistics Readiness Officer Course

Joint Force Quarterly

U.S. success at the operational level of war has led to a blossoming of competition in domains below the level of open hostility. The 2023 Joint Concept for Competing (JCC) points out that our adversaries seek to “win without fighting” and that the joint force is at risk of “losing without fighting.”2 The JCC attempts to reorient the joint force to better compete below the level of high-intensity conflict.

Jointness As Virtue: Increasing The Value Of Joint Qualification To The Joint Force And Services, Thomas D. Crimmins, Eric S. Fowler, Daryl A. Chamberlain

Joint Force Quarterly

Ιn “Balancing Nonresident Joint Professional Military Education With Military Life,” Commander Doug Morea makes the salient point that the current joint professional military education (JPME) process fails the individual joint warfighter in preparing for the challenges of serving in combatant commands and other joint forces.1 As joint educators, we agree with Commander Morea’s premise and offer that the current JPME model not only fails the individual joint warfighter but is also wholly inadequate for what the joint force requires both today and in an uncertain future. From the start, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense (DOD) Reorganization Act of 1986 enshrined …

Balancing Nonresident Joint Professional Military Education With Military Life, Douglas M. Morea

Joint Force Quarterly

Education has been a top focus in the United States since its earliest days. The Nation’s leaders have recognized the importance of dedicated, formal military education for over two hundred years. Although training in the field, wartime experience, and studying the military profession in foreign countries provided benefits, leaders such as George Washington, Henry Knox, and Alexander Hamilton understood more was needed. The United States would fail in the face of future challenges if its military leaders were not well-versed in the art and science of war.

In Memoriam: Douglas Michael “Dorothy” Morea Commander, U.S. Navy, National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly

Commander Doug “Dorothy” Morea hailed from Port Washington, New York, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. Doug earned his Wings of Gold in July 2006 and began training in the F/A-18 Hornet shortly thereafter.

Was 50 Years Long Enough? The All-Volunteer Force In An Era Of Large-Scale Combat Operations, Kent W. Park, John A. Nagl

Joint Force Quarterly

Ιn an era of geopolitical competition among major powers, a large-scale war could last longer and result in more casualties than anything the United States has experienced since World War II. It is unclear whether the all-volunteer force (AVF) that the United States has relied on for the past 50 years, with extraordinary and unexpected success, can meet the manpower requirements in quality and quantity and in time to win the large-scale combat operations that the Department of Defense (DOD) is preparing for.

Civilian Harm Mitigation And Response: The Imperative Of An All-Domain Approach, Alexus G. Grynkewich, Thomas R. Burks, Alex B. Coberly, Samantha A. Mcclure

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhe Department of Defense (DOD) seeks to reduce civilian harm caused by military operations and to improve its ability to respond when civilian harm occurs. To this end, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved and released the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) on August 25, 2022. CHMR-AP is a watershed initiative in which DOD commits to improving its ability to prevent, mitigate, and respond to civilian harm. No amount of prevention or mitigation will eliminate civilian harm in armed conflict, nor does international law demand that civilian harm be eliminated. Still, providing civilians more protection than international …

Deviance And Innovation: Change In A “Society Of Saints”, Thaddeus V. Drake, Derrick L. Mcclain

Joint Force Quarterly

Μilitary innovation and adaptation studies are a growth industry. Since the publication of Barry Posen’s seminal study The Sources of Military Doctrine in the early 1980s, the field has grown extensively. Despite well-known military thinkers’ recent book-length treatments of the topic, most studies of change in the military retain two key commonalities. First, nearly all assume that innovation or adaptation is inherently good and worth pursuing. Second, they agree that militaries are famously resistant to change and accept this as part of the fundamental nature of the military system. This article acknowledges the first point; indeed, modern military leaders continually …

The Future Of Great Power Competition: Trajectories, Transitions, And Prospects For Catastrophic War, Thomas F. Lynch Iii

Joint Force Quarterly

Τhe dominant geostrategic framework of international relations today is that of a Great Power competition (GPC) among three rivalrous, globally dominant states: the United States, Russia, and China. After more than two decades of mainly cooperation and collaboration, they drifted into de facto competition at the end of the 2000s. By the middle of the 2010s, their undeclared but obvious rivalry intensified. Fully acknowledged GPC arrived in late 2017 when the United States published its National Security Strategy and declared a formal end to the 25-year era of U.S.-led globalization and active American democratization initiatives.

Executive Summary, William T. Eliason

Joint Force Quarterly

Αs I have written before in this space, change is a constant. NDU Press and Joint Force Quarterly are not immune to this fact. Recently, we moved to a more modern Web-based platform that will be less expensive to maintain and operate. The work became more complicated than anticipated, causing JFQ 113 to be a bit tardy online and in the mailbox, but our team worked out a way to daylight. Leading the charge was our “unicorn” Internet Publications Editor, Ms. Joanna “Joey” Seich. She took a suggested path from my director here at NDU’s Institute for National Strategic Studies …

Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 114, 3rd Quarter 2024, National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly

Joint Force Quarterly 114 explores the evolving dynamics of great power competition, military innovation, and the future of joint force effectiveness. The issue opens with insights from senior leadership, setting the stage for discussions on the trajectories of global power shifts, civilian harm mitigation, and the viability of the all-volunteer force in modern warfare. Contributions to joint professional military education (JPME) highlight the need to balance career development with military obligations, enhance joint qualification value, and address logistics challenges in contested environments. Commentary pieces examine the strategic direction of the Marine Corps, the future of noncombatant evacuation operations post-Afghanistan, and …