New Books in Military History

Films that feature war as a theme have been made almost since the beginning of the industry. In The Philosophy of War Films (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), part of the "Philosophy of Popular Culture Series," David LaRocca brings together a number of prominent authors to discuss the genre as a way to consider how war films have impacted us. The contributors explore a variety of topics, including the aesthetics of war as portrayed on-screen, the effect war has on personal identity, and the ethical problems presented by war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

31 Des 201859min

How did the search for Nazi fugitives become a vehicle to oppose South American dictatorships? Daniel Stahl’s award-winning new book traces the story of three continents over the course of half a century in Hunt for Nazis: South America's Dictatorships and the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes (Amsterdam University Press, 2018). Through a rich transnational history, Daniel traces the ebb and flow of political will alongside the cooperation between far flung governments and civil society groups. The result is unique insight into how post-war justice became a battleground for the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes. Daniel Stahl is a research associate at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Hunt for Nazis was distinguished with the Opus Primum award from the Volkswagen Foundation. Stahl has also worked on the Independent Historian’s Commission on the History of the German Foreign Office and is currently researching a history of arms trade regulation in the 20th century. Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His research exploring Gestapo enforcement practices toward different social groups is nearing completion under the working title A Discriminating Terror. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

26 Des 201854min

When World War II ended, Americans celebrated a military victory abroad, but the meaning of peace at home was yet to be defined. From roughly 1943 onward, building a postwar society became the new national project, and every interest group involved in the war effort—from business leaders to working-class renters—held different visions for the war's aftermath. In Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Laura McEnaney plumbs the depths of this period to explore exactly what peace meant to a broad swath of civilians, including apartment dwellers, single women and housewives, newly freed Japanese American internees, African American migrants, and returning veterans. In her fine-grained social history of postwar Chicago, McEnaney puts ordinary working-class people at the center of her investigation. What she finds is a working-class war liberalism—a conviction that the wartime state had taken things from people, and that the postwar era was about reclaiming those things with the state's help. McEnaney examines vernacular understandings of the state, exploring how people perceived and experienced government in their lives. For Chicago's working-class residents, the state was not clearly delineated. The local offices of federal agencies, along with organizations such as the Travelers Aid Society and other neighborhood welfare groups, all became what she calls the state in the neighborhood, an extension of government to serve an urban working class recovering from war. Just as they had made war, the urban working class had to make peace, and their requests for help, large and small, constituted early dialogues about the role of the state during peacetime. Postwar examines peace as its own complex historical process, a passage from conflict to post-conflict that contained human struggles and policy dilemmas that would shape later decades as fatefully as had the war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

24 Des 201832min

In his new book, Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National Security State (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), Brian Crim, Associate Professor of History at the University of Lynchburg, looks at the controversial program to bring German scientist to the United States after World War II. The book draws on recently declassified documents from the Department of Defense, State Department, the FBI and other intelligence agencies to show how these German scientists were incorporated into military and civilian agencies to work on various projects, most importantly rocket technology. Ultimately the book engages with the legacy of Project Paperclip and its place in national memory and how this Cold War program reflects the ambivalence of the American people about the national security state and the military industrial complex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

21 Des 201859min

Jonathan W. White, an associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, is the co-author of “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (Kent State University Press, 2018). Ever since their famous naval encounter in 1862, the Monitor and Merrimack (a.k.a., C.S.S. Virginia) have been part of American Civil War lore.  In this work White and his co-author, Anna Gibson Holloway, investigate the history of one of the most popular elements of the American Civil War: the Monitor ironclad ship.  The ironclads were innovative combat ships, which sat at the waterline and could prove effective against the then-dominant wooden-hulled ships of the world’s navies.  Although other nations had designed ironclads, the U.S.S. Monitor’s encounter with the C.S.S. Virginia on March 9, 1862 was the first test of ironclads in combat.  In this interview Professor White discusses the design and development of the Monitor, the famous Battle of Hampton Roads, the conditions under which crews served, and the popular memory of the Monitor from the Civil War through today. 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 201848min

One of the most recent additions to the well-known and highly regarded Eerdmans series, the Library of Religious Biography, is The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee (Eerdmans, 2017), by R. David Cox, a professor of history at Southern Virginia University. Professor Cox’s book presents his perennially controversial subject was a consistently religious thinker, working from the deist and evangelical influences of Lee’s parents towards the religious convictions and commitments of his maturity. But what does Christian faith look like in times of civil war? Did Lee think about slavery within any kind of religious frame? And how could a man of sincere, if evolving, Episcopal faith come to terms with the fact that hundreds of thousands of men had died under his leadership? In today’s podcast, Professor Cox steers us through these troubled times. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). 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 Des 201843min

In her new book, Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen (Otago University Press, 2018), Annabel Cooper, an Associate Professor in the Gender Studies Programme at the University of Otago, explores how filmmakers have portrayed the New Zealand wars of the 19th century and how those productions serve as a snapshot of the complex cultural moment of their creation. Exploring today's new forms of media and innovative platforms, Cooper charts the growth of Maori creative control in telling these important national stories. 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 Des 201817min

Was World War II really the 'Good War'? In the years since the declaration of peace in 1945 many myths have sprung up around the conflict in the victorious nations, especially the United Kingdom. In his newest book, The Phoney Victory: The World War II Illusion (I.B. Tauris, 2018), writer and journalist, Peter Hitchens, past winner of the Orwell Prize and regular columnist for the Mail on Sunday, takes on the myth of World War II as the 'good war', and in the process he deconstructs the many fables which have become associated with this highly popular historical narrative. Whilst not per se arguing against the idea that at some point in time Hitler's Germany had to be defeated, Hitchens queries the need to have commenced that war in September 1939. Along the way, Hitchens queries and or attacks various other myths such as Anglo-American solidarity and the so-called 'Special Relationship'; that the Battle of Britain was an important turning point in the war, or that British and American involvement were the key aspect to the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. By turns, erudite, unorthodox and even funny, Hitchens book is a must read for anyone who is interested in the run-up to World War II and the way in which that conflict was fought. Charles Coutinho holds a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to Charlescoutinho@aol.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

12 Des 201846min