Edward Westermann, “Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest” (U. Oklahoma Press, 2016)
The intersection of colonialism and mass atrocities is one of the most exciting insights of the past years of genocide studies. But most people don’t really think of the Soviet Union and the American west as colonial spaces. But while there are limitations to this, both fit well into a kind of geography of colonialism. This is why Edward Westermann‘s new book Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)is so interesting. Westermann teaches at Texas A & M University at San Antonio. Prior to this work, he wrote a well-regarded volume on the German police battalions on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Before joining the university world, he was an officer in the US military, and he brings his training and experience to a study of the strategy and tactics of the armies which fought in each space. In doing so, he sheds new light on how each army behaved. He’s particularly good at understanding how tactics and military culture drove the American army to act in ways that killed women and children without that being their goal. But he’s also good at analyzing the broader cultural climate that informed policy makers in each society. His discussion of the regional splits in policy toward American Indians was noteworthy. It’s a book that made me think about the American west in a new light. 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
2 Mar 201759min
Michael S. Neiberg, “The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America” (Oxford UP, 2016)
In The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2016), acclaimed historian Michael Neiberg examines the background of war fever in the United States between 1914 to 1917 to present a new interpretation on the nation’s slide to entering the First World War in April 1917. In a departure from the general outlook on the war, he presents a case where the American public was more engaged in the process than has been allowed by historians who have traditionally focused on the Wilson administration’s leadership in the varying crises in German-American relations following the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in the winter of 1917. Rather than being passive observers who had to be convinced to join the war, Neiberg argues that many citizens, including ethnic German and Irish-Americans, were convinced by the course of actions over the three year period of neutrality that war was inevitable and the sooner the United States joined, the more quickly it could be resolved. Michael Neiberg is the inaugural Chair of War Studies at the United States Army War College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The views he expresses, both in The Path to War and in our interview, are his own, and in no way reflect the opinion of the United States Army War College or the Department of Defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
28 Feb 201743min
David Curtis Skaggs, “William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812” (JHU Press, 2014)
Though best remembered today for his brief tenure as the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison’s most significant contribution to American history was his service as a general in the War of 1812. In William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), David Curtis Skaggs recounts Harrison’s military career and the lessons he learned that brought him national acclaim. The son of a Virginia aristocrat, Harrison rejected a medical career in favor of service in the United States Army. While serving as an aide to General Anthony Wayne in the 1790s, he learned the challenges of campaigning in what was then the northwestern frontier of the United States. These lessons stood him in good stead later when, as governor of Indiana Territory, he faced the growing challenge of Tecumseh’s confederacy, the defeat of which became his claim to fame. Yet as Skaggs demonstrates it was his subsequent victory over British forces at the Battle of the Thames which was his greatest achievement, as it ensured that the territories that became Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan would return to American control at the end of the War of 1812. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
14 Feb 201757min
Paul Pedisich, “Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921” (Naval Institute Press, 2016)
In the forty years between 1881 and 1921, the United States Navy went from a small force focused on coastal defense to one of the world’s largest fleets. In Congress Buys a Navy: Politics, Economics, and the Rise of American Naval Power, 1881-1921 (Naval Institute Press, 2016), Paul Pedisich describes the role that the legislative branch played in making this happen. At the start of the period, the Navy possessed a more decentralized organization than today, with the bureau chiefs who ran it more responsive to Congress than the executive branch. The legislators who played critical roles in shaping policy during this period were often driven more by local concerns than any overarching vision of what the Navy should become. Starting in the 1880s, however, successive presidential administrations gradually persuaded Congress to provide more funding to build modern ships. Over time, America’s growing engagement in global affairs led to the expansion of the navy, as the acquisition of an overseas empire brought the United States into competition with European powers, which required a naval force that could defend the increasing number of American interests abroad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
30 Jan 20171h 12min
Ellen Eisenberg, “The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII” (Lexington Books, 2008)
The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Pacific West is one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. As the United States waged war against fascism, it removed tens of thousands of American citizens and their families from their homes. The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII (Lexington Books, 2008) invites us into a community in the middle of that contradiction. American Jews knew too well the dangers of prejudice but remained firmly committed to the fight against Nazism, at any cost. Professor Ellen Eisenberg invites us into the complexity of Jewish response to Japanese incarceration. In doing so, she parses the tense and near universal silence that Jewish institutions kept as their Japanese neighbor disappeared. This silence, she proposes, reflected not indifference but a struggle to reconcile opposition to bigotry with an unwillingness to risk speaking out. But she also tells other stories at the margins of that silence. Jewish civic leaders, academics, and Rabbis who raised their voices in resistance. And one Jewish institution that chose a different path, and in doing so providing the federal administration propaganda to support the incarceration policy. Professor Eisenberg paints in great detail the larger context of the Western ethnic landscape and argues that Jewish responses to Japanese incarceration were linked to, and help to illuminate the identity of western Jews both as Westerners and as Jews. Jeremy Wood is a Seattle attorney. Much of his legal and scholarly work has concerned Native American interests. He also serves as Co-Chair for the Seattle City Human Rights Commission and teaches Jewish literature to high school students after school. You can learn more about his work by visiting https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyfwood. He can be reach at jeremywood10@gmail.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
27 Jan 20171h 20min
Tim Brady, “His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr.” (NAL, 2017)
Tim Brady’s book His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. (NAL, 2017) is not just the biography of the eldest son and namesake of America’s 26th president, but an account of a life that was adventurous and consequential in its own right. Coming of age in the years in which his Theodore Roosevelt served as president, Ted at times struggled to measure up to the daunting example set by his dynamic father. While often emulating his father’s path, Ted nonetheless sought to be judged on his own achievements, and distinguished himself in both business and in command during the First World War. To many Ted was on his way to becoming the second Roosevelt to occupy the White House, yet his electoral career came to a premature end in 1924 with his loss to Al Smith in the race for the governorship of New York a loss which paved the way for his subsequent political eclipse by his distant cousin, Franklin. Yet as Brady demonstrates, the growing animosity between the two branches of the family did nothing to dim Ted’s commitment to serve his country in its hour of greatest need, and it was while in uniform as a United States Army general in France that his life came to its tragically early end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
19 Jan 20171h 15min
Timothy S. Huebner, “Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism” (U. Press of Kansas, 2016)
Timothy S. Huebner, the Irma O. Sternberg Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, has written Liberty & Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism (University Press of Kansas, 2016), a one-volume history of the constitutional debates regarding slavery and sovereignty from the Declaration of Independence through the end of Reconstruction. Huebner brings together three strands of history: African American history, military history, and constitutional/political history. In doing so, he joins often disparate areas of inquiry in an account of the unresolved questions from the Founding Era: 1) what would become of slavery? and 2) what was the nature of the Union and how was sovereignty divided between the states and federal government? Huebner reviews the competing theories and political events that repeatedly stoked debate and conflict over how slavery would be handled in a federated constitutional republic. Huebner makes original contributions to the debates about the Civil Wars origins and outcomes by integrating the political and military contributions of African Americans, especially norther free blacks of the antebellum period and blacks from North and South who sought freedom and fought in the war. Additionally, Huebner denotes how the conduct of the war revealed the political and constitutional views of military and civilian commanders on both sides. Huebner concludes that the Civil War and Reconstruction provided definitive answers to the questions of slavery and sovereignty: slavery was extinguished and the sovereignty of the people (rather than the states) had been vindicated. This is a work intended for general readers and professional historians. 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
19 Des 20161h 10min
Jane Eppinga, “Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate” (Wild Horse Press, 2015)
The remarkable story of Henry Ossian Flipper, a young man born into slavery on the eve of the Civil War, and his struggle for recognition left its mark on our nations history. Through extensive research of military documents, court records, appeals, and from Flippers personal journals and published papers, Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate (Wild Horse Press, 2015) captures the sum and substance of a nation torn apart by political ambitions and extreme prejudices and reveals the uncertainty of acceptance and intolerance of blacks in America following Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. In 1878, Flipper seemed destined for a long military career. Four years later, he was on trial at Fort Davis, Texas, for embezzlement of government funds and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. But his journey through the West did not end in West Texas, it was only the beginning. Before Flipper’s life was over his adventures would take him through Mexico, South America, and Arizona. It was on that journey that he found fame and redemption. Historian and author Jane Eppinga is a legendary Arizona writer. Her writing credentials include more than 300 articles for both popular and professional publications covering a broad spectrum of subjects including children’s fiction, travel, personal profiles, biology, construction, food, and public relation pieces. A long-time resident of Arizona and a graduate of the University of Arizona, Eppinga is a member of Western Writers of America, Southern Arizona Authors, the National Federation of Press Women, and serves on the board of directors of Arizona Press Women. In addition to Henry Ossian Flipper: West Points’ First Black Graduate, Jane Eppinga has written on many diverse topics concerning the American West. Unsolved Arizona, La Malinche, Black Heroes: America’s Buffalo Soldiers, and They Made Their Mark: an Illustrated History of the Society of Woman Geographers are some of her more recent works. Her articles have also often appeared in Wild West Magazine and Persimmon Hill, the official publication of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. 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
9 Des 201636min
