’My Soldiers Above All’: Justifying Violence Against Noncombatants in French Algeria, 1830–1847

Military violence against noncombatants in the French conquest of Algeria (1830–1847) resulted as much from the actions of ordinary soldiers as from commanders and politicians. This article examines the justifications that officers used to explain their attacks on noncombatants in North Africa. Instead of using the well-known twentieth-century excuse for atrocity, that the participant was following orders from above, nineteenth-century officers tended to justify controversial acts as necessary to the preservation of the lives of their soldiers and indigenous allies. Reports from lieutenants and captains on French expeditions at Miliana (1840) and Dahra (1845) suggest that low-ranking soldiers had more agency in escalating violence against noncombatants than did their leaders. Eyewitness accounts reveal that soldiers’ emotions such as fear, anger, and greed drove violence against North African noncombatants.

’’’Will the Germans Bombard New York?’: Hugo Gernsback and the Future War Tale,” by Frederic Krome, Journal of Military History 86:1 (January 2022): 54–76

During the first decades of the twentieth century the American public developed a fascination with the concept of the future war. Indeed, by the interwar years future war tales had become a staple of American popular culture, primarily via the mass circulation pulp magazines, where they played a pivotal role in promoting the growth of the science fiction genre. This study considers the role of the future war story in engaging the American public’s interest in military affairs during the first decades of the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the role of the author/editor/publisher Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967).