Volume 85, Number 4 · October 2021

Most of the military encounters of the Peninsular War (1808–1815) have been analyzed, mapped and subjected to critical assessment. The quantitative data available regarding the cost in lives, however, have been used only rarely to refine our understanding of the war and the influence of the different military actors in its outcome. This article compares the fatal combat casualties (killed in action and died of wounds) of the British and French officers during the six-year campaign in the Iberian Peninsula. It also compares the available data on other battles in Europe to analyze important aspects of combat in the Napoleonic Age. By making innovative use of new quantitative data available, the article raises questions for further research.

Using the under-explored relationship between the press and Major General George G. Meade as a case study, this article argues for a new method of analyzing war reporting. Past investigations of Civil War reporting tend to focus on censorship, the societal impact of media, or the adventure stories of war correspondents. Instead of seeing war correspondents as passive recorders of events, the new history of war reporting views journalists as powerful actors with the ability to influence military decisions. This included retaliating against military excesses and shaping how commanders were remembered in history.

The Luochuan Conference of August 1937 was a crucial moment in Mao Zedong’s struggle for power. Mao tried to force the party to adopt his guerrilla war strategy; he failed. Mao nonetheless exploited his position as the Politburo member in charge of military affairs, and put his strategy into action in fall 1937. Mao’s actions worried Josef Stalin, who was depending on Chiang Kai-shek to keep Japan from invading Siberia. Mao therefore moderated his behavior, but clung to his strategy. This article shows how Mao managed to win Stalin and the CCP over to his strategy, and thus consolidated his hold on the CCP.

By 1943, the German army deployed in the Soviet Union was engaged in a total war with an enemy far superior in material and manpower resources. Recognizing this disparity, German field commands instituted more systematic and conciliatory policies designed to mobilize Soviet resources for the German war effort. Attempts to win over the population changed following German defeat in the Battle of Kursk, however; German policy became more violently coercive. An examination of the policies and actions of three German divisions will demonstrate that the army’s shifting conduct was due to its understanding of the reality of total war.

This paper analyzes the origins of two 1946 sightings of Soviet submarines in the Davis Strait, placing the various reports about them into an international and interservice framework. It shows how the Davis Strait and the surrounding area (Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, and Newfoundland and Labrador) fit into early post–World War II war plans for strategic deterrence. The Davis Strait sightings combined with American and British appreciations to spur Canada to endorse postwar joint defense plans with the Americans; to pursue trilateral intelligence, research, and defense work; and to agree to defense preparations in the north, including supporting American plans to establish strategic air forces in Goose Bay, Labrador.

This article examines the relationship between American combat personnel and C-rations (MCIs) during the Vietnam War. It argues that these canned field rations helped grunts to endure the trials of deployment in three principal ways. The delight and dread generated by C-rations helped American troops to create shared wartime superstitions and battlefield mythologies; the ad hoc systems that units created to redistribute meal choices promoted group harmony and unit discipline; and some meals, such as ham and lima beans, acted as catalysts for venting anger or demonstrating jubilation that provided healthy outlets for stress.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld directed Department of Defense geographic combatant commands to create Standing Joint Force Headquarters to improve joint military operations and promote new approaches to joint warfighting. At U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), the expert deployable command and control unit contributed to almost every major U.S. military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2004 and 2011. Yet chronic staff shortages and bureaucratic resistance limited its transformational potential. The small USSOUTHCOM unit exposed the big challenges of change in the Department of Defense during the early twenty-first century.