Volume 72, Number 2 · April 2008

This article examines the work of the late nineteenth-century German military historian Max Jähns. A career officer in the Prussian Army, he taught military history at the elite War Academy for fourteen years and was a prolific and highly respected author. Significantly, he focused not on operational history–for which the Imperial German Army was and remains well known–but on the place of military institutions and practices in the context of general history. This and the army’s positive response to his work shed new light on the evolution of the new military history and the Imperial German Army’s reaction to it.

This essay investigates the American post-First World War commemorative experience and highlights the significance of the war’s aftermath on a diverse society, and the process by which a democracy remembers war. It examines the efficacy of government policy regarding the return of American war dead that triggered the Gold Star Mothers’ successful efforts to obtain a sponsored pilgrimage overseas. It then asks whether participants truly gained the closure desired. Collectively, these women offer a multidimensional model of ethnic, cultural, economic, and religious diversity prevalent in America during the interwar years while providing scope for exploring racial, gender, and political issues within the context of national mourning.

The Anglo-American air attack on the city of Dresden, in February 1945, has become one of the most famous events of the Second World War. The word “Dresden” is typically one of the first uttered whenever the topic of strategic bombing is raised. And yet, like many other high-profile historical events, the Dresden raid is encrusted with myth and misunderstanding. This essay is an effort to make sense of a complicated and much misunderstood episode in the history of modern warfare-and to make sense of it in the context in which it occurred. The essay draws upon the rich recent literature on Dresden, earlier histories, and a wide array of primary sources in an effort to provide - for teachers, scholars, and general readers - a comprehensive but still concise overview of the air raid that has won such a central place in the history of the Second World War.

Many believe that the United States fought the Korean War with “its hands tied behind its back” because it had decided to restrict its air war to the Korean peninsula. In fact, breaches of this restriction by incursions into Chinese air space occurred more frequently than was generally acknowledged. Mostly deliberate, they were often encouraged and sometimes led by field grade officers. Pilots won fame and glory, while few were punished. Although the violations risked international incidents, they did not expand the war but helped the United Nations achieve air superiority and gave the Communists much less of a sanctuary than has been commonly believed. These infractions also set a dangerous precedent for the future.

This essay considers four critical areas of German-American defense cooperation during the Cold War: personal and material American aid for West German rearmament and its impact on the character of the German army, reorganization of German and American combat divisions in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the ultimately failed joint venture in tank design in the 1960s and the lack of cooperation in developing infantry fighting vehicles, and the impact of German tactical and operational concepts on post-Vietnam War U.S. Army doctrine. The essay will argue that in critical aspects, U.S. Army leaders adopted German modes of operation.

During the decade after the 1973 War of Yom Kippur, the consensus was that Israel’s military defeat in the war’s first stage was caused by the failure of intelligence to provide a warning prior to the Arab attack, but many experts maintained later that it reflected improper preparations for war. Using recently released evidence, this article analyzes Israel’s inadequate war deployment when firing commenced and its impact on the failure to repel the attack. It concludes that since this deficient deployment resulted from the absence of a sufficient intelligence warning, the intelligence failure was at the root of the Israeli failure at the war’s start.

Great military events like the American landing on Omaha Beach in the early morning hours of D-Day, 6 June 1944, do not require embellishment. The invasion was especially horrendous for Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division. Too many facts about that unit have been unnecessarily embellished and misreported. Most books have credited the town of Bedford, Virginia, as the home of many in the company who perished that day, when in fact, more of the casualties came from the county of that same name, not the town. This article attempts to clarify that issue.