Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

Edward G. Longacre, "Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

Today I talked to Edward G. Longacre about his new book Unsung Hero of Gettysburg: The Story of Union General David McMurtrie Gregg (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). On the 3rd day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Union cavalry officer David Gregg ensured that Jeb Stuart’s Confederate cavalry troops didn’t succeed. Stuart’s orders were to attack the right flank of the Army of the Potomac and create a pincer movement by attacking from behind while Pickett’s forces made their disastrous frontal attack known as Pickett’s charge. Outnumbered by probably 2 to 1, Gregg’s men and the commandeered cavalry led by George Custer held off the Confederate horsemen, helping to seal the military victory. Gregg and Custer got along well but could hardly have been more different. One was reserved, the other flamboyant. And it would of course be Custer who went down in the history books for being impulsive, while the levelheaded Gregg provided solid leadership whether at Gettysburg or elsewhere during the war. This episode goes into all of that and more, including what type of person tended to be most attracted to the cavalry (independent, hell-for-leather types). Ed Longacre is a retired historian for the U.S. Department of Defense and the award-winning author of numerous books on the Civil War in addition to writing top-secret documents for the U.S. Airforce. One of his ancestors took part in the torching of part of William and Mary College during the Civil War as an act of revenge following the Confederate seizure of some of his comrades in arms. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Episoder(1527)

John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016)

John P. Langellier, “Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army” (Schiffer, 2016)

From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) breathes new vitality into a stirring subject, emphasizing the role men who have come to be known as “buffalo soldiers” played in opening the Trans-Mississippi West. This concise overview reveals a cast of characters as big as the land they served. Over 150 images painstakingly gathered nearly a half century from public and private collections enhance the written word as windows to the past. Now 150 years after Congress authorized blacks to serve in the Regular Army, the reader literally can peer into the eyes of formerly enslaved men who bravely bought their freedom on the bloody battlefields of the Civil War, then trekked westward, carried the “Stars and Stripes” to the Caribbean, and pursued Pancho Villa into Mexico with John “Black Jack” Pershing. Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, historian and author John P. Langellier spent four decades working in public history after earning a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of San Diego and his Ph.D. in military history from Kansas State University. He spent a dozen years with the U.S. Army, helped found California’s Autry Museum of the American West, and served as director for Wyoming State Museum, deputy director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, executive director of Arizona’s Sharlot Hall Museum, and director of Arizona Historical Society’s Central Division. He was also awarded an honorary membership into the 9th and 10th U.S. Horse Calvary Association. He has written dozens of published books, served as a Hollywood film consultant, a Smithsonian Institution fellow, and produced history documentaries for television networks A&E, History, and PBS. Langellier officially “retired” to Tucson in 2015, but still continues his work as one of the preeminent military historians in the United States. After Fighting for Uncle Sam: Blacks in the Frontier Army, one of his current research projects is a book-length work on the connections between the Western art of Frederic Remington and the U.S. Army 10th Calvary (Buffalo Soldiers) in Arizona. James Stancil is an independent scholar, freelance journalist, and the President and CEO of Intellect U Well, Inc. a Houston-area non-profit dedicated to increasing the joy of reading and media literacy in young people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

8 Jun 201758min

Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016)

Patrick J. Hayes, “The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist” (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016)

During the Civil War Father James Sheeran served as a Catholic chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Infantry. Between his various responsibilities Sheeran kept a journal in which he recounted his experiences with, and observations of, life in the Army of Northern Virginia. As editor of The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, Chaplain, Confederate, Redemptorist (Catholic University of America Press, 2016), Patrick J. Hayes has provided readers with the most complete edition yet of Sheeran’s manuscript, one that details the activities of a man of faith in a time of war. An immigrant from Ireland, Sheeran joined the Redemptorist congregation in the 1850s and was serving as a parish priest in New Orleans when the war began in 1861. As a military chaplain, Sheeran witnessed firsthand many of the key battles of the Civil War, from Second Manassas in 1862 to Cedar Creek in 1864, and his recorded observations provide a valuable record of those clashes. Yet Sheeran’s diaries also serve as a window into what life was like for soldiers and civilians during the conflict, as observed by a man whose commitment to the Confederate cause was matched only by his piety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

23 Mai 201758min

Michael Bryant,” A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present,” (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Michael Bryant,” A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present,” (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Michael Bryant’s book is both less and more ambitious than its title. He’s writing less of a history of war crimes than he is a history of the idea and concept of war crimes. He’s most interested in what people have considered a breach of the norms of warfare and how this concept has changed over time. The triumph of A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2016) is it’s reminder that, while expectations about how soldiers (and others) would act during warfare are not new at all, the notion of war crimes is actually quite recent. Bryant argues that ideas about the proper conduct of war go back to the ancient Near East. But these ideas were rarely based on the dignity of human person. Instead they derived from religion or from the shape of the political institutions in society. It was only in the 18th and 19th century, in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, that norms about conduct during warfare began to be based on the idea that mistreating civilians or wounded soldiers was a crime. And even then, these notions were activated through bilateral or multilateral treaties–implying that the recognition of human dignity had very real limits. It’s an audacious task to attempt to survey the history of war crimes, especially a global history. Meant as a textbook, Bryant inevitably privileges European history. But it’s a thoughtful, well-written, provocative survey, exactly what we hope for in a textbook. Kelly McFall is Associate Professor of History at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, where he directs the Honors Program. He is particularly interested in the question of how to teach about the history of genocides and mass atrocities and has written a module in the Reacting to the Past series about the UN debate over whether to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Mai 20171h 14min

Steve Dunn, “Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol, 1914-1918” (Seaforth/US Naval Institute, 2017)

Steve Dunn, “Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol, 1914-1918” (Seaforth/US Naval Institute, 2017)

Most accounts about the naval battles of the First World War focus upon the stalemate between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, or the German raiders who attempted to disrupt Allied commerce. In Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol 1914-1918 (Seaforth Publishing, 2017; distributed in the US by Naval Institute Press), Steve Dunn focuses on the often overlooked service of the British naval forces stationed in the English Channel during the conflict. The eclectic collection of destroyers, converted yachts, and requisitioned trawlers that comprised the patrol made for a considerable contrast with the dreadnoughts at Scapa Flow, yet, as Dunn demonstrates, they played a vital role in securing the Channel for the safe transport of British troops to France and in opposing the transit of German U-boats to their stations. In describing the admirals who commanded the station over the course of the war, the lives of the men who served aboard the ships, and the various engagements which they fought against their German opponents, he explains the unglamorous yet frequently dangerous contribution the patrol made to Britain’s victory over Germany in 1918, one that was subsequently glossed over in the postwar era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

15 Mai 201746min

Lynn Dumenil, “The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I” (UNC Press, 2017)

Lynn Dumenil, “The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I” (UNC Press, 2017)

When America went to war against Germany in 1917, the scale of the conflict required the mobilization of women as well as men in order to achieve victory. In The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Lynn Dumenil describes the many ways in which women participated in the war effort and the ways in which it transformed their lives. As she notes, in the years leading up to the war increasing numbers of American women were employed outside the home and involved in the public sphere. For many the politically-engaged among their number, the decision to go to war presented an opportunity to demonstrate their gender’s patriotism and worthiness for the vote. Thousands showed their support for the soldiers by participating in a variety of volunteer activities, with some even traveling to Europe to work in canteens or as nurses. Many more took up the jobs that the men left behind, filling the void created by their enlistment. These efforts were celebrated in the popular media of the time, though often with the message that these new roles were only temporary. Yet as Dumenil demonstrates, while postwar gains were indeed limited, the involvement of women in the war accelerated many of the changes taking place in politics and society, changes which were reflected in new attitudes and expectations held by these women in the 1920s and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

18 Apr 201748min

Phil Gurski, “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

Phil Gurski, “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

Phil Gurski‘s Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) is his second recent monograph on terrorism, and another useful resource for practitioners and non-specialists alike. Written in an approachable, grounded style, Western Foreign Fighters is both topical and novel; its comparative analysis of volunteers’ participation in non-sanctioned conflicts both jihadist and secular is especially notable. Gurski’s measured, thoughtful analysis is a credit to the Canadian intelligence community (wherein he spent his entire career) and I look forward to his further publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

17 Apr 201753min

Seth Barrett Tillman, “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship,” Military Law Review 481 (2016)

Seth Barrett Tillman, “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship,” Military Law Review 481 (2016)

Seth Barrett Tillman has written “Ex Parte Merryman: Myth, History and Scholarship,” an article about the famous case that is popularly thought to demonstrate a conflict between the President and the federal courts during the American Civil War. Tillman’s article is an effort to revise the standard historical understanding of the case called Ex Parte Merryman. In the spring of 1861, just as the hostilities had begun in the Civil War, famously issued an order to the U.S. Army granting army officials discretion to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if resistance or treasonous activity were encountered in Union territory. That spring, as soldiers poured into the Washington, D.C. area through Maryland, the Army was confronted with popular protests and violence by civilians. One suspect was John Merryman, a young man from a prominent Maryland family. Merryman hired lawyers to seek his release via the traditional method of asking the federal courts for an order to release Merryman pending his trial. However, Merryman was not initially released and was confined in Ft. McHenry, a military base near the port of Baltimore. The traditional account of the case portrays Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney as heroically seeking to vindicate the rights of a civilian prisoner wrongly held by the military and Lincoln as defying an order to comply with the Constitution. In this podcast Professor Tillman, a lecturer in the Department of Law at Maynooth University in County Kildare, Ireland, discusses his arguments that the traditional account of the Merryman case is built upon multiple myths. If Tillman’s view of the case is correct, it holds the potential for overturning our understanding of this important period in constitutional history and civil-military relations. Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

4 Apr 20171h 17min

Norman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)

Norman Ohler, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)

Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) explores the drug culture of Nazi Germany. Far from being a nation of physical and mental purity portrayed by Goebbels’s propaganda machine, Ohler shows Germany was a hub of drug production and abuse during the 1920s. Manufacturers like Merck and Bayer openly marketed their wares to the public, building the basis of so-called big pharma on intoxicants. Produced by Temmler, the Nazi elite embraced methamphetamine as a wonder drug, free of the connotations of disease and degeneracy associated with the drug culture of the Weimar years. Stimulants became a valuable tool in Germany’s wartime arsenal. The German military acknowledged the value of amphetamines and distributed Pervitin en masse. Ohler argues amphetamines powered the Wehrmacht’s armored Blitzkrieg of 1939-1941, defeating the Allies in France and elsewhere. These gains were short-lived, however. Nazi Germany’s Faustian bargain with drugs evaporated during the Battle of Stalingrad and in the distant steppes of the Soviet Union. Ever more powerful drug combinations were desperately sought by the Nazi state to save the Reich from annihilation, exposing horrors of the regime from experiments on concentration camp prisoners and drugged child soldiers. Blitzed details how Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Theo Morell, administered vitamin concoctions and hormone injections common to athletic doping to pump up Hitler’s ailing body during the war years. Though Hitler had promised to cleanse the nation of drug abuse, he himself became utterly dependent on drugs to survive. Military defeat and destruction took their toll on Nazism embodied, Morell increasingly looked towards methamphetamine and oxycodone (Eukodal) to keep Hitler wake and alert during the last apocalyptic years of the Reich. In so doing, Morell himself built an impressive medical empire based on quack medicines and bought political access. Ohler shows how in the final months of the conflict, Morell’s supplies of drugs ran out, exposing Hitler’s frail body to his inner circle with health crises, symptoms of chemical withdraw, and fits of madness. James Esposito is a historian and researcher interested in digital history, empire, and the history of technology. James can be reached via email at espositojamesj@gmail.com and on Twitter @james_esposito_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

8 Mar 201752min

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