New Books In Military History

In his new book, The First Soldier: Hitler as a Military Leader (Yale University Press, 2018), Stephen Fritz professor of history at East Tennessee State University reexamines Hitler as a military commander and strategist. That Hitler saw World War II as the only way to retrieve Germany’s fortunes and build an expansionist Thousand-Year Reich is uncontroversial. But while his generals did sometimes object to Hitler’s tactics and operational direction, they often made the same errors in judgment and were in agreement regarding larger strategic and political goals. A necessary volume for understanding the influence of World War I on Hitler’s thinking, this work is also an eye-opening reappraisal of major events like the invasion of Russia and the battle for Normandy. Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad cho

Guy Beiner, who is professor of modern history at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, has written one of the longest and certainly one of the most extraordinary recent contributions to the historiography of Ireland and of memory studies. His new book, Forgetful Remembering: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster(Oxford University Press, 2018), argues for the complexities and ambiguities of communal recollection by focusing on the contested memories of one of the shortest and certainly the bloodiest of politically driven Irish insurrections. In 1798, Catholics, protestants and dissenters joined together in armed uprisings against British state forces. Their defeat was followed by prolonged and traumatic reprisals, and by the union of the British and Irish parliaments to create a new “United Kingdom.” Within a decade of their participation in the rebellion, protestants and dissenters had swung to support the new state, beginning a long process of forgetting and remembering that

Michael J. Mazarr has written a history of the policy planning process leading up to the Iraq War in 2003.  Mazarr has conducted over one hundred interviews with senior policy officials from the George W. Bush administration, combined with a comprehensive review of published memoirs and declassified government documents, to provide a richly detailed history of America’s involvement in Iraq.  In his new book, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (Public Affairs, 2019), Mazarr reviews the key faulty assumptions that hampered the war planning process, including assuming the intelligence was sufficient that weapons of mass destruction existed, assuming that Iraq had a middle-class technocratic elite just waiting to take over after liberation, assuming that the U.S. could intervene with only a “light footprint,” without any need for prolonged occupation, and failing to plan for the security situation in the aftermath of the war.  In addition to providing a

In his book, Fegelein’s Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare: The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Dr. Henning Pieper, examines the conduct of the SS Cavalry Brigade during World War II. The SS Cavalry Brigade was a unit of the Waffen-SS that differed from other German military formations as it developed a dual role: SS cavalrymen both helped to initiate the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and experienced combat at the front. Pieper’s book highlights an understudied aspect of both the Holocaust and World War II.Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. President Eisenhower threatened the use of nuclear weapons. These were dramatic events, and it can be a difficult to disentangle military and political posturing from the real concerns of the three involved powers. Using newly available sources, Pang Yang Huei reexamines the Taiwan Strait Crises and concludes that China, Taiwan, and the United States were much more aware of each other’s concerns than previous studies have indicated. Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958(Hong Kong University Press, 2019) traces the role of ritual, symbols, and gestures in the tacit communication between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington. Ultimately, this detailed history contributes to a better understanding of the history of the Asia-Pacific region during the Cold War.Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angel

In his new book, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (Yale University Press, 2018), Christian Goeschel, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Manchester, examines the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini and how their relationship developed and affected both countries. In this highly readable book, Goeschel, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler’s key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public. The first comprehensive study of the Mussolini-Hitler relationship, this book is a must-read for scholars and anyone interested in the history of European fascism, World War II, or political leadership.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial officials, and military officers. In her stunning revision, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Elena Schneider restores the central roles of enslaved Africans in all stages of the story. The relevance of the slave trade and the multiple and essential roles of African and African descended people in battle and in urban life emerge in this beautifully written account. In the aftermath, their valor and loyalty were omitted from contemporary accounts and the ensuing historiography. This book draws from a wide range of sources and multiple archives in a careful narrative that connects the Atlantic worlds of Spain, London, Havana, Kingston and the colonial United States, and zooms in on the enslaved individuals that made that world possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices w

This episode of the New Books in Military History podcast is something of a sea change, so to speak, as we turn our attention to naval policy and strategy.  Institutional reform is a well-established topic in studies of the ground and air forces of the United States, ranging from Alexander Hamilton and John C. Calhoun through to Emory Upton and Billy Mitchell.  By comparison, with the noted exception of Alfred Thayer Mahan, much less has been written about the growing professionalism and institutional transformation of the United States Navy in the late nineteenth century.  Our guest for this episode addresses this gap directly.  Scott Mobley is a former naval officer and University of Wisconsin PhD who has written Progressives in Navy Blue: Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity, 1873-1898 (Naval Institute Press, 2018).  Not only does Scott address many open question about the technological transformation of the Navy, from a wooden hulled, s

Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2019), investigates the mobilization of female fighters, women’s roles in combat, and what happens to women when conflicts end.  The book focuses on three case studies of asymmetric conflicts. Jessica Trisko Darden contributes research looking at Ukraine, Alexis Henshaw discusses the civil war in Columbia, and Ora Szekley provides insights into conflict involving Kurdish groups. The book includes lessons for policy makers on women’s motivations for joining armed groups and unique issues facing female combatants during reintegration.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Macedonian king Alexander III is best remembered today for his many martial accomplishments and the empire he built from them. Yet as Fred S. Naiden details in Soldier, Priest, and God: A Life of Alexander the Great (Oxford University Press, 2018), this ignores what for his subjects were his even more important responsibilities as a religious figure. Alexander’s religious practices were a vital part of his legitimacy as a ruler of his people, and were interwoven into his daily activities. As his armies advanced into southwestern Asia, Alexander insinuated himself into the religions of the lands he conquered, which aided the acceptance of his rule. This became increasingly difficult the further east he marched, however, as the religious systems he encountered there often contained obligations often at variance from the traditions which he had accepted. As Naiden describes, Alexander’s increasing disregard for the religions he encountered contributed to the difficulties he faced with his later campaigns, fu

Monica Kim provides a fresh look at the Korean War with a people-centered approach that studies the experiences of prisoners of war. As the first major conflict after the 1949 Geneva Conventions, POW repatriation during the Korean War became a new battleground for the recognition of state sovereignty and a larger tool for political propaganda. The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History (Princeton University Press, 2019) opens with a captured Korean solider who must navigate what identities and documentation to leverage depending on his captor. The extraordinary stories of everyday people involved in the Korean War illustrate how the effects of war span past and future conflicts.  The thoroughly researched book is full of fascinating stories and sheds light on lessons from the Korean War that are still relevant today.Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noah Coburn's Under Contract: The Invisible Workers of America's Global War (Stanford University Press, 2018) is about the hidden workers of American’s foreign wars: third country nationals who while not serving in their country’s militaries, still work to support the American war effort. These men and women serve as laborers, cooks, logisticians, engineers and security guards. They bear the burden of service in a war zone with the hopes of good pay, but are sometimes, maybe even often, disappointed. Prof Coburn explains in this book how they come to be in America’s wars, why they want to sign on a contract, how America’s government incentivizes and perpetuates the contracting system and what that means for the world both in the present and future.In our talk, we discussed how Prof. Coburn came to this project, his personal experience in Afghanistan, what it means to be a contractor and how contracts are established as well as what happens to these contractors when they no longer have America’s wars to fight.

Andrew Lambert, Professor of Naval History at King’s College, London, author of eighteen books, and winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal—turns his attention in a book that historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto describes as full of ‘ambition’, ‘verve’ and at times ‘brilliance’ - to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain. In Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World (Yale UP, 2018), Professor Lambert, examines how each of these polities identities as “seapowers” informed and determined their individual histories and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size.Lambert by delving into the intricacies of each of these seapowers is able to show how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only when they forgot this aspect of their identity did these states begin to decline. Recognizing that the United States and China are modern naval powers

Even now, eighty years after its beginning in Europe, the Second World War continues to exert tremendous cultural and social influence on American historical writing. Perhaps one of the best testaments to this phenomenon is the increased interest in biographies of the war’s primary and secondary army commanders. Remarkably there are still quite a number of misplaced or even “lost” personalities who exerted tremendous impact on the course of the war. The guest for this episode of New Books in Military History, Mark T. Calhoun, directly engages the mysteries and legacies of one such individual in his book, General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army (University Press of Kansas, 2018). In this pioneering study of one of the World War Two era US Army’s primary architects of victory, Calhoun presents a portrait of a deeply intellectual and loyal commander who took on responsibility for many unpopular doctrinal and ToE choices. From his early career as a young first lieutenant before the First World

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de Gaulle was without a doubt, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon Bonaparte. Why so? In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troops, one junior general who had fought in the trenches in Verdun refused to accept defeat. He fled to London, where he took to the radio to address his compatriots back home. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.” At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered history. For the rest of the war, de Gaulle insisted he and his Free French movement were the true embodiment of France. Through sheer force of his personality and the grandeur of his vision of France, he inspired French men and women to risk their lives to resist the Nazi occupation. Usually proud and aloof, but almost always confident in

I don’t know about the colleges and universities you’re familiar with, but the U.S. military has a pretty visible presence on my campus—through the ROTC, a newly remodeled Veterans Resource Center, and the student veterans themselves who enroll in my classes each semester. So I was immediately intrigued when I heard about the book Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus (Duke University Press, 2017) by Ellen Moore. In Grateful Nation, Moore uses interviews and observations to document the experiences of student veterans, the challenges they face re-integrating into academic life, strategies they use to navigate that experience, and the nature of the resources available to them along the way. Moore considers an interesting paradox—that despite the presence of overtly military-friendly programs and practices on most US campuses today, there is still a perception, stemming from the Vietnam War era, that college campuses are anti-military and anti-veteran spaces; this misper

By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars(Harvard University Press, 2018), the Durham University historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it. This new type of society that emerged from Rome’s conquest and unification of Italy would serve as a political model for centuries to come. Archaic Italy was home to a vast range of ethnic communities, each with its own language and customs. Some such as the Etruscans, and later the Samnites, were major rivals of Rome. From the late Iron Age onward, these groups interacted in inc

In November 2013, two mass burials were discovered unexpectedly on a construction site in the city of Durham in northeast England. Over the next two years, a complex jigsaw of evidence was pieced together by Christopher Gerrard, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Durham, and a team of archaeologists to establish the identity of the human remains. Today we know them to be some of the Scottish prisoners who died in the autumn of 1650 in Durham cathedral and castle following the battle of Dunbar on the south-east coast of Scotland. Fought between the English and the Scots, this was one of the key engagements of the War of the Three Kingdoms. Using the latest techniques of skeleton science, this book gives back to the men a voice through an understanding of their childhood and later lives. Archaeological and historical evidence also allows us to reconstruct with vivid accuracy how and why these men vanished off the historical radar. Of the prisoners who survived their ordeal after Dunbar, new evidence

As the island of Puerto Rico transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule, the military and political mobilization of popular sectors of its society played important roles in the evolution of its national identities and subsequent political choices. While scholars of American imperialism have examined the political, economic, and cultural aspects of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, few have considered the integral role of Puerto Rican men in colonial military service and in helping to consolidate the empire.In Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868-1952 (University of Nebraska Press, 2018),Harry Franqui-Rivera argues that the emergence of strong and complicated Puerto Rican national identities is deeply rooted in the long history of colonial military organizations on the island. Franqui-Rivera examines the patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socioeconomic and political enfranchisement.