Thanasis S. Fotiou, "Hitler’s Hunting Squad in Southern Europe: The Bloody Path of Fritz Schubert through Occupied Crete and Macedonia" (Pen and Sword, 2024)

In his new book, The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Vladimir Dzuro, a retired Czech police commissioner, provides a first-hand look at the establishment of the International Crime Tribunal for Yugoslavia to prosecute Balkan war criminals. In contrast to the Nuremberg trials, these trials relied upon the traditional work of police detectives to provide the evidence and witnesses for the trials in the Hague. Through his thoughtful yet tantalizing narrative, Dzuro humanizes both the victims and the perpetrators of these late twentieth century acts of genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

22 Okt 201956min

In his new book, Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University Ricky W. Law examines the cultural context of Tokyo and Berlin’s political rapprochement in 1936. This study of interwar German-Japanese relations is the first to employ sources in both languages. Transnational Nazism was an ideological and cultural outlook that attracted non-Germans to become adherents of Hitler and National Socialism, and convinced German Nazis to identify with certain non-Aryans. Because of the distance between Germany and Japan, mass media was instrumental in shaping mutual perceptions and spreading transnational Nazism. This work surveys the two national media to examine the impact of transnational Nazism. When Hitler and the Nazi movement gained prominence, Japanese newspapers, lectures and pamphlets, nonfiction, and language textbooks transformed to promote the man and his party. Meanwhile, the ascendancy of Hitler and his regime created a niche for Japan in the Nazi worldview and Nazified newspapers, films, nonfiction, and voluntary associations. 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 Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

22 Okt 20191h 16min

What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought "Wild" Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team of religious activists for the Office of Strategic Services. They entered into a world of lies, deception, and murder, confident that their nefarious deeds would eventually help them expand the kingdom of God. In Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War (Basic Books, 2019), historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine. Working for eternal rewards rather than temporal spoils, these loyal secret soldiers proved willing to sacrifice and even to die for Franklin Roosevelt's crusade for global freedom of religion. Chosen for their intelligence, powers of persuasion, and ability to seamlessly blend into different environments, Donovan's recruits included people like John Birch, who led guerilla attacks against the Japanese, William Eddy, who laid the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa, and Stewart Herman, who dropped lone-wolf agents into Nazi Germany. After securing victory, those who survived helped establish the CIA, ensuring that religion continued to influence American foreign policy. Surprising and absorbing at every turn, Double Crossed is the untold story of World War II espionage and a profound account of the compromises and doubts that war forces on those who wage it. Stephen Colbrook is a graduate student at University College London, where he is researching a dissertation on the interaction between HIV/AIDS and state policy-making. This work will focus on the political and policy-making side of the epidemic and aims to compare the different contexts of individual states, such as California, Florida, and New Jersey. Stephen can be contacted at stephencolbrook@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

17 Okt 201928min

In his new book The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Security (Naval Institute Press, 2019), Joshua Tallis uses the “broken windows” theory of policing to reexamine the littorals, developing a multidimensional view of the maritime threat environment. With a foundational case study of the Caribbean, Tallis explores the connections between the narcotics trade, trafficking, money laundering, and weak institutions. He finds that networks are leveraged for multiple streams of illicit activity, but enforcement efforts sometimes only focus on a single threat. Additionally, Tallis compares these findings in two comparative case studies in the Gulf of Guinea and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Hybrid threats emerge as a theme in these case studies, marked by the fusion of criminality and terrorism and conventional and unconventional tactics. Ultimately, Tallis recommends actors in the maritime environment evaluate threats in this multidimensional context and collaborate with communities to achieve overarching strategic objectives. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. 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 Okt 201953min

Military history is thought by some to be a valuable field of study to both professional soldiers and civilians. It is indeed one of the most popular fields in the genre of history. And yet many academics tend to look down upon the field as fundamentally unserious and not therefore meriting attention by academic based historians. Historian Jeremy Black, who has written extensively in the field of military history discusses with Charles Coutinho of the Royal Historical Society the question: is military history worth studying?  In a wide-ranging discussion they delve into the various criticisms that can be made about the genre of military history while also stating why the discipline is still valid, worthy of study. Professor Jeremy Black MBE, Is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A graduate of Queens College, Cambridge, he is the author of well over one-hundred books. In 2008 he was awarded the “Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Lifetime Achievement.” Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society,  received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. 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 Okt 201957min

On April 8, 1865, after four years of civil war, General Robert E. Lee wrote to General Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender terms he would discuss. As Gregory P. Downs, Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, reveals in this gripping history of post–Civil War America, Grant’s distinction proved prophetic, for peace would elude the South for years after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Harvard University Press, 2015; Paperback Edition, 2019) argues that the war did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase commenced which lasted until 1871—not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction but a state of genuine belligerency whose mission was to shape the terms of peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in hundreds of outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking study of the post-surrender occupation makes clear that its purpose was to crush slavery and to create meaningful civil and political rights for freed people in the face of rebels’ bold resistance. But reliance on military occupation posed its own dilemmas. In areas beyond Army control, the Ku Klux Klan and other violent insurgencies created near-anarchy. Voters in the North also could not stomach an expensive and demoralizing occupation. Under those pressures, by 1871, the Civil War came to its legal end. The wartime after Appomattox disrupted planter power and established important rights, but the dawn of legal peacetime heralded the return of rebel power, not a sustainable peace. Readers can also visit the book’s companion website. Ryan Tripp is part-time and full-time adjunct history faculty for Los Medanos Community College as well as the College of Online and Continuing Education at Southern New Hampshire University.   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 Okt 20191h 22min

Christopher Mauriello’s groundbreaking book Forced Confrontations: The Politics of Dead Bodies in Germany at the End of World War II(Lexington Books, 2017) focuses on American soldiers reactions to the victims of the Holocaust.  Using photographs, memoirs, and letters from US soldiers, Mauriello attempts to recreate the emotional and traumatic reactions these men had when confronted with the worst of Nazi Germany.  And, as a result, they made German civilians confront these horrors as an unofficial policy of the Military Government.  Mauriell’s methodology converges historical analysis with the latest in analytical theory to explain these reactions and humanize the end of World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

25 Sep 201940min

In his splendid military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Matthew Hughes of Brunel University shows how the British Army was so devastatingly effective against colonial rebellion in the mid to late 1930s by the Palestinian Arabs. The Army had a long tradition of pacification to draw upon to support operations, underpinned by the creation of an emergency Mandate / colonial state in Palestine. After conquering Palestine in 1917, the British established a civil Government that ruled by proclamation and, without any local legislature, the colonial authorities codified in law norms of collective punishment that the Army used in 1936. The Army used 'lawfare', emergency legislation enabled by the colonial state, to grind out the rebellion. Soldiers with support from the RAF launched kinetic operations to search and destroy rebel bands, alongside which the villagers on whom the rebels depended were subjected to curfews, fines, detention, punitive searches, demolitions and reprisals. Rebels were disorganised and unable to withstand the power of such pacification measures. Professor Hughes opus is the definitive account of the British military suppression of the Arab Revolt. Based upon voluminous archival research, It is difficult to imagine that it will be superseded anytime soon. According to Chatham Houses’ International Affairs, Britain’s Pacification of Palestine is “one of the most important and comprehensive accounts”, of this historical episode. Charles Coutinho has 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. He has written recently for the Journal of Intelligence History and Chatham House’s International Affairs. 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

24 Sep 201954min