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2009-09-15

'It Still Makes Me Shudder': Memories of Massacres and Atrocities during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Dwyer, P. G. — 2009-09-15

This article looks at a number of French testimonies of massacres during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars committed by combatants, for the most part against civilians. Much of what we know about massacres is based on personal testimonies that are invariably from the perspective of the perpetrator, in this case, troops of the Grande Armée. Just as important as understanding why massacres occurred is to understand how they were represented, recalled and remembered by those who witnessed them. In this, memoirs become an indispensable tool for what they tell us about how the killings were justified, either from the individual or the state’s point of view, and for the insights one can glean into the minds of those that either committed or witnessed the atrocities taking place. Descriptions of massacres are commonly used to highlight the horror of war rather than the horror of the event itself. Massacre was also a means of underlining the difficulties encountered by the French in conquering, that is, in ‘civilizing’, Europe. Massacre, the article concludes, was an accepted if not an acceptable part of eighteenth-century European warfare. This, however, did not attenuate the horror; it was something that many veterans had difficulty recalling, even decades after the events described.

'To Check . . . the Very Worst and Meanest of Our Passions': Common Sense, 'Cobbon Sense', and the Socialization of Cadets at Antebellum West Point

Rafuse, E. S. — 2009-09-15

This essay adds to a growing body of scholarship that challenges the image of the United States Military Academy at West Point and US Army officer corps as institutions that were isolated in the nineteenth century from developments in civilian society. It does so by calling attention to parallels between the ideas that shaped the antebellum military academy‘s approach to cadet education and socialization and those of the Scottish-American ‘common sense’ school of moral philosophy that was popular among members of America’s emerging middle class before the Civil War. It describes these parallels, how they reflected a common cultural milieu that shaped the outlook of the common sense philosophers, their adherents and education theorists in antebellum America, and the authorities at West Point, and identifies traits that distinguished how many West Point graduates conducted themselves during the American Civil War that are suggestive of these parallels.

Britain and the Resale of Argentine Cruisers to Japan before the Russo-Japanese War

Yabuki, H. — 2009-09-15

In late 1903 Britain bought Chilean battleships, whereas Japan bought Argentine cruisers in the face of Russian counter-bidding. Previous scholarship has considered this arms trade as a case in which Britain showed its sympathy, or rather gave assistance, to Japan. However, this paper, based on multi-archival research in both Japan and Britain, argues that there was no sign of any such sympathy. The resale and transfer of the Argentine cruisers also shed light on the strategic views of the British government and the actual state of Anglo-Japanese relations just before the Russo-Japanese War.

Atrocities, Conscience, and Unrestricted Warfare: US Submarines during the Second World War

Sturma, M. — 2009-09-15

This article explores the meanings of ‘unrestricted warfare’ as practised by US submarines in the Pacific during the Second World War. The submarine war in the Pacific is typically represented as a series of torpedo attacks that devastated Japanese warships, freighters, and tankers. There was also, however, a less familiar submarine war fought on the surface with deck guns. Particularly in the later stages of the war, submarines attacked hundreds of small craft of questionable military value. Drawing on comparisons with Allied aerial bombing campaigns, it is argued that, while the submarine war involved a similar blurring of combat and atrocity, submariners frequently acted on their consciences in encounters with the enemy and civilians.

The Indian Army, Partition, and the Punjab Boundary Force, 1945--1947

Marston, D. P. — 2009-09-15

How effective was the Indian Army in serving as aid to the civil power in the chaotic period leading up to the independence and partition of India in 1947? This article attempts to shed fresh light, by examining recent scholarship and newly available archival materials, on the performance of the Indian Army, as embodied in the Punjab Boundary Force, in countering and containing the communal violence that rocked India during the momentous events of 1947. The Indian Army’s challenges and achievements during this testing period provide valuable lessons for every army faced with political upheaval and communal violence.

Review Article: British Society and the First World War: The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War. By Adrian Gregory. Cambridge University Press. 2008. Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914--1918. By Jane Potter. Clarendon. 2005. Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory and the First World War in Britain. By Janet S.K. Watson. Cambridge University Press. 2004. British Popular Culture and the First World War. Edited by Jessica Meyer. Brill. 2008. Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914--1919. Volume 2. A Cultural History. Edited by Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert. Cambridge University Press. 2007

Pennell, C. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 1775--2003. By Janice E. McKenney. US Army Center of Military History. 2007. 394 pp. US$64.00. ISBN 978 0 16 077114 9

Gudmundsson, B. I. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Fighting Newfoundlander: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. By Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2006. 545 pp. Maps and appendices. ISBN 978 0 7735 3133 8

Boire, M. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction. By Mark E. Neely. Harvard University Press. 2007. 277 pp. US$27.95. ISBN 978 0 674 02658 2

Quigley, P. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: More Than a Contest between Armies: Essays on the Civil War Era. Edited by James Marten and A. Kirsten Foster. Kent State University Press. 2008. xii + 310 pp. {pound}33.50. ISBN 978 0 87338 912 9

Grant, S.-M. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Late Victorian Navy: The Pre-Dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War. By Roger Parkinson. Boydell. 2008. xii + 323 pp. {pound}75 boards. ISBN 978 1 84383 372 7

Hamilton, C.I. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914--1918. By Richard S. Fogarty. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2008. viii + 374 pp. US$60.00. ISBN 978 0 8018 8824 3

Lunn, J. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Embattled Self: French Soldiers' Testimony of the Great War. By Leonard V. Smith. Cornell University Press. 2007. xi + 214 pp. US$39.95, {pound}20.50 boards. ISBN 978 0 8014 4523 1

Philpott, W. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Brusilov Offensive. By Timothy C. Dowling. Indiana University Press. 2008. 208 pp. {pound}18.99 boards. ISBN 978 0 253 35130 2

Marshall, A. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century. By Jenel Virden. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. x + 203 pp. US$31.95, paper. ISBN 978 0 333 72661

Sweeney, J. K. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: The Forsaken. From the Great Depression to the Gulags: Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia. By Tim Tzouliadis. Little, Brown. 2008. 472 pp. {pound}20.00 boards. ISBN 978 0 316 72724 2

Marshall, A. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: Hitler, the Germans and the Final Solution. By Ian Kershaw. Yale University Press. 2008. {pound}16.99 paper. ISBN 978 0 300 15127 5

Steinberg, J. — 2009-09-15

Book Review: War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans. By Dagmar Barnouw. Indiana University Press. 2005. 320 pp. US$21.95. ISBN 978 0 253 22040 0

Mulligan, W. — 2009-09-15

Roon, the Prussian Landwehr, and the Reorganization of 1859--1860

Walter, D. — 2009-06-01

Historians have overestimated the impact of the so-called `Roon reforms' on the Prusso-German military system. Allegedly, these reforms abolished the Landwehr, an independent militia force of dubious military value, and thus enhanced the efficiency of the Prussian army so that it became capable of winning the Wars of Unification. This article argues that the Landwehr was not a militia but an extension of the regular army. It had lost its independence long before the reforms and remained a part of the field army long after them. The real military impact of the reforms was instead the increase in annual recruitment that made a much larger field army possible.

John Buchan and the First World War: Fact into Fiction

Strachan, H. — 2009-06-01

John Buchan, best remembered today as a novelist, was also a man of affairs, historian, and propagandist. During the First World War these attributes were the basis of his public reputation, but he did not cease to write fiction, and the war permeated the novels which he wrote after it. This article explores the ways in which Buchan exploited his privileged knowledge of the facts to write his fictions. It also considers Buchan's thinking both about the war's conduct and the function of propaganda within it.

US Assessments of Japanese Ground Warfare Tactics and the Army's Campaigns in the Pacific Theatres, 1943--1945: Lessons Learned and Methods Applied

Ford, D. — 2009-06-01

The article examines the evolution of US intelligence assessments of the Imperial Japanese Army's tactical methods during the Pacific War, and explains how the resulting perceptions influenced the development of American doctrine for fighting the Japanese. It argues that US evaluations of the Japanese were characterized primarily by the need to gain a realistic understanding of enemy fighting capabilities, coupled with a realization of the need to improve the army's techniques for fighting a successful campaign.

Book Review: Seize, Burn, or Sink: The Thoughts and Words of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. By Steven E. Maffeo. Scarecrow. 2007. xxi + 629 pp. No price indicated, paperback. ISBN 13: 978 0 8108 5781 0; 10: 0 8108 5781 2

Crimmin, P.K. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Quand les enfants parlaient de gloire: l'armee au c{oelig}ur de la France de Napoleon. By Jean-Paul Bertaud. Aubier. 2006. 460 pp. 25 paper. ISBN 2 7007 2348 1

Dunne, J. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West. By Steven E. Woodworth. Praeger. 2008. xiii + 165 pp. {pound}22.95 boards. ISBN 978 0 275 98759 6

Reid, B. H. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: The German Army at Passchendaele. By Jack Sheldon. Pen and Sword. 2007. 336 pp. {pound}25.00. ISBN 1 84415 564 1

Gudmundsson, B. I. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Dowding of Fighter Command: Victor of the Battle of Britain. By Vincent Orange. Grub Street. 2008. 320 pp. {pound}20.00 boards. ISBN 978 1 906502 14 0

Campion, G. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Merchant Mariners at War: An Oral History of World War II. By George J. Billy and Christine M. Billy. University Press of Florida. 2008. viii + 322 pp. US$30 boards. ISBN 978 0 8130 3246 7

Prysor, G. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Dulag Luft/Auswertestelle West: Vernehmungslager der Luftwaffe fur westalliierte Kriegsgefangene im Zweiten Weltkrieg. By Stefan Geck. Peter Lang. 2008. xx + 544 pp. SFR 125.00. ISBN 978 3 631 57791 2

Monteath, P. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. By Jonathan Pearsall and Anthony Tully. Potomac. 568 pp. US$28 boards. ISBN 978 1 57488 923 9

O'Brien, P. P. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: 'To the Last Man': The Battle for Normandy's Cotentin Peninsula and Brittany. By Randolph Bradham. Praeger Security International. 2008. xi + 183 pp. {pound}25.95 boards. ISBN 978 0 313 35026 9

Buckle, J. — 2009-06-01

Book Review: Rumsfeld's Wars: The Arrogance of Power. By Dale R. Herspring. University of Kansas. 2008. 247 pp. US$34.95. ISBN 978 0 7006 1587 2

Hoffman, F. — 2009-06-01

`Black Bob' Craufurd and Ireland, 1798--1804

Durey, M. J. — 2009-03-06

This article represents a reassessment of Robert Craufurd, focusing on his role as a soldier-politician concerned with the position of Ireland in the wider empire during the era of the Act of Union. It explains the impact Irish conditions had on his political thought and explores how he used his new awareness while an MP not only to support his military defence policy, but also to promote a reform programme for Ireland, even though his military career was threatened as a consequence.

The United States Army and Urban Combat in the Nineteenth Century

Beall, J. A. — 2009-03-06

Scholars have investigated the effectiveness of military organizations in twentieth-century warfare and have evaluated their ability to defeat their enemies in wartime or adapt to changes that developed in peacetime. Few have studied the military effectiveness of nineteenth-century armies as closely. This paper examines the operational and tactical effectiveness of two American armies in the mid-1800s by comparing how they approached urban combat, something for which the United States military was not prepared. This paper compares how Americans reacted to urban combat in the battle of Monterrey in 1846 with urban combat in the battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. It also seeks to explain why one army fought effectively and the other did not.

Officering Kitchener's Armies: A Case Study of the 36th (Ulster) Division

Bowman, T. — 2009-03-06

This article reassesses the original composition of the officer corps of the Kitchener armies formed in late 1914 using the recently released officers' personal files at the National Archives, Kew. It challenges the existing historiography by showing that many Kitchener units did not draw their officers from pre-war Officer Training Corps products and relied on men with very limited or no previous military experience. It demonstrates that the officer composition of the 36th (Ulster) Division was similar to that of its counterparts in Great Britain, and that the Ulster Volunteer Force influence on officer appointments was much more limited than has been assumed.

`Defend Lanka Your Home': War on the Home Front in Ceylon, 1939--1945

Jackson, A. — 2009-03-06

In December 1941, Ceylon was transformed from a backwater into a key Allied military base when Japan went to war, though its wartime significance is largely unknown. The nature of the changes visited upon the island, and the manner in which an apparently insignificant colonial home front contributed tellingly to the strategic prosecution of the war, is the subject of this article. Several key themes are examined: the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean and Ceylon; the transformation of Ceylon's physical infrastructure as it became a military encampment; the work of Ceylonese-led departments of state in bringing the island to war readiness; the dire food situation caused by the Japanese conquest of import-supplying countries; propaganda and public information drives aimed at ensuring local participation in the war effort; the recruitment of indigenous labour for war-related tasks; unrest caused by the influx of thousands of foreign soldiers and provisions made for their welfare; and the role played by the media in conveying war information and propaganda. The article concludes with an assessment of the intimate links between Ceylon's war experience and the coming of national independence in 1948.

Book Review: The Battle of Hastings, 1066. By M.K. Lawson. Tempus. 2002. 319 pp. {pound}16.99. ISBN 0 7524 2689 3

Rogers, C. J. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: The Hundred Years War for Morocco: Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the Early Modern Muslim World. By Weston F. Cook, Jr. West View. 1994. xix + 332 pp. ISBN 0 8133 1435 6

Black, J. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: George Goring (1608--1657): Caroline Courtier and Royalist General. By Florene S. Memegalos. Ashgate. 2008. x + 392 pp. {pound}60 hardback. ISBN 978 07546 5299 1

Graham, A. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History. By Craig L. Symonds. Oxford University Press. 2006. 378 pp. {pound}17.99 hardback, {pound}10.99 paperback. ISBN 10: 0 19 517145 4; ISBN 13: 978 0 19 517145 7

Grove, E. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Naval History 1850--Present. Edited by Andrew Lambert. Ashgate. 2007. 2 vols: xxvii + 537 pp., ix + 600 pp. {pound}300. ISBN 978 0 7546 2535 3

Grove, E. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power. By Howard J. Fuller. Praeger. 2008. xxix + 409 pp. US$49.95/{pound}27.95 boards. ISBN 10: 0 313 34590 2; ISBN 13: 978 0 313 34590 6

Rodger, N.A.M. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Shock Troops of the Confederacy: The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia. By Fred L. Ray. CFS. 2006. 413 pp. US$34.95. ISBN 0 9649585 5 4

Gudmundsson, B. I. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914--1918. By Alexander Watson. Cambridge University Press. 2008. xvi + 288 pp. {pound}50.00 boards. ISBN 978 0 521 88101 2

Todman, D. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918. By Mitchell A. Yockelson. University of Oklahoma Press. 2008. xx + 308 pp. US$29.95 boards. ISBN 13: 978 0 8061 3919 7

Sheffield, G. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940--1941. By Alex J. Kay. Berghahn. 2006. xii + 242 pp. ISBN 1 84545 186 4

Shepherd, B. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941--45. By Bruce Elleman. Routledge. 2006. 179 pp. {pound}65. ISBN 0 415 33188 9

Fedorowich, K. — 2009-03-06

Book Review: Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War. By Edward C. O'Dowd. Routledge. 2007. x + 234 pp. {pound}75.00 boards. ISBN 0 415 41427 X

Newmyer, J. — 2009-03-06

Disease, Wilderness Warfare, and Imperial Relations: The Battle for Quebec, 1759--1760

Charters, E. M. — 2008-12-03

During the siege at Quebec, 1759—60, which followed the battle on the Plains of Abraham, high rates of disease contributed to the British defeat by French forces in April 1760. While historians have not previously discussed military medical preventative measures, a detailed examination of the siege demonstrates sophisticated attempts to adapt to a foreign environment and its disease, as well as how disease contributed to the development of American provincial and British antagonism and perceptions of difference.

Reconstructing `Front' and `Home': Gendered Experiences and Memories of the German Wars against Napoleon -- A Case Study

Hagemann, K. — 2008-12-03

The article analyses gendered experiences and memories of the German wars against Napoleon by focusing on the port city of Hamburg, the second largest German town, which was occupied by the French army between 1806 and 1814. The case study centres on the `ego-documents' of the renowned bookseller, publisher, and patriot Friedrich Perthes (1770—1843) and his family. The article shows that these first `modern' wars involved civilians — men and women alike — in new ways. The discursively constructed lines between `front' and `home' were blurred, and male and female war experiences were closely intertwined. After the wars, female war experiences were suppressed in collective memory. A wartime gender order was reconstructed in retrospect that distinguished clearly between front and home, and emphasized male heroism and patriotism. This helped to reinforce the gender hierarchy and thereby the postwar social order.

The Ypres League and the Commemoration of the Ypres Salient, 1914--1940

Connelly, M. — 2008-12-03

This article explores British visions of Ypres between 1914 and 1940, and concentrates on the work of the crucial interwar remembrance movement, the Ypres League. The city of Ypres became a crucial symbol of all Britain was fighting for during the course of the First World War, and rapidly developed a holy aura. Led by the league, the horrors of industrial warfare were commuted into a spiritual quest in which British and imperial troops were purified by their experiences in the Ypres salient. After the war, British people visited Ypres in large numbers in order to imagine the sufferings of the servicemen and gain a spiritual benefit often with the assistance of the Ypres League and its publications. This reflected a culture of high diction and ritual greatly at odds with the idea that the twenties and thirties saw the dawn of an age disillusioned with the values of 1914. The British also became resident in Ypres in considerable numbers, and the article explores the relationship between the local population and the immigrants. By exploring the nature of war commemoration through the detailed case study of one particular site, it is intended to deepen the historiography of commemoration studies.

With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1943

Shepherd, B. — 2008-12-03

This article contributes to greater understanding of the forces that shaped the prosecution of Wehrmacht anti-partisan warfare at the level of divisions in the field. The article explains the approach to anti-partisan warfare of the divisional command of the 369th Infantry Division and compares it with the approach of other divisional commands which operated in the same region of Yugoslavia during early 1943. In doing so, it highlights the particular importance of the troops' level of fighting power, and of the formative life experiences of divisional commanders during the First World War, in shaping conduct.

All Present and Correct: The Verifiable Army of the Schlieffen Plan

Holmes, T. M. — 2008-12-03

Despite the recent wave of attacks on his view that `there never was a "Schlieffen plan"', Terence Zuber stands by his `central thesis', which is that the Schlieffen plan called for 96 divisions at a time when the German army could deploy only 72. This article will disprove Zuber's calculations. The Schlieffen plan called for 90 divisions, not 96. The official deployment plans of 1906 involved 78 divisions, including two of the ersatz corps that Zuber says were `non-existent'. From the official discussion about those two ersatz corps we can prove that it would have been perfectly feasible to raise eight of them altogether, as required by the Schlieffen plan.

Book Review: The Development of Mine Warfare. By Norman Youngblood. Praeger Security International, 2006. xv + 258 pp. ISBN 0 275 98419 2

Mcaslan, A. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: American Military Technology: The Life Story of a Technology. By Barton C. Hacker with the assistance of Margaret Vining. Greenwood. 2006. US$45.00. ISBN 0 313 33308 4. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. pp. xiii + 205. US$19.95. ISBN 13: 978 0 8018 8772 7

Ruttan, V. W. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Steering to Glory: A Day in the Life of a Ship of the Line. By Nicholas Blake. Chatham. 2005. 286 pp. {pound}19.99. ISBN 1 86176 177 5

Grove, E. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Imagining Future War: The West's Technological Revolution and Visions of Wars to Come, 1880--1914. By Antulio J. Echevarria II. Praeger Security International. 2007. xvi + 117 pp. ISBN 978 0 275 98725 1

Strachan, H. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Warfare in Europe, 1919--1938. Edited by Geoffrey Jensen. International Library of Essays on Military History. Ashgate. 2008. xxi + 535 pp. {pound}135.00 hardback. ISBN 978 0 7546 2519 3

Marshall, A. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Atlantic Convoys and Nazi Raiders: The Deadly Voyage of HMS Jervis Bay. By Bruce Allan Watson. Greenwood. 2006. 194 pp. {pound}22.95. ISBN 0 275 98827 9

Grove, E. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Vietnam War. By Christopher S. DeRosa. University of Nebraska Press. 2006. iv + 328 pp. {pound}29.00. ISBN 0 8032 1734 X

Virden, J. — 2008-12-03

Book Review: Local Consequences of the Global Cold War. Edited by Jeffrey A. Engel. Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press. 2007. xvii + 334 pp. ISBN 978 0 8047 5947 2

Bracke, M. — 2008-12-03