Volume 88, Number 2 · April 2024

Since the 1860 discovery of a plan written by Charles Lee during his captivity in the American War of Independence, historians have asserted that he was a traitor or pursued self-serving motivations. A detailed analysis of the plan from the perspective of its intended audience of British commanders, however, reveals that Lee sought to persuade readers that the British could not win the war and should pursue a negotiation strategy. While the plan might represent a technical violation of the articles of war, British contemporary correspondence indicates that British generals considered Lee a dangerous adversary, loyal to the rebel cause.

This article focuses on the local defense threat posed by German commerce raiders and warships operating in or near the Caribbean between August 1914 and May 1915, when the War Office sanctioned recruitment in the Caribbean for what would eventually become the British West Indies Regiment. We argue that in addition to institutional racism and other factors, the War Office’s decision to begin recruiting Black West Indians in May 1915 should be understood within a larger strategic context, and ongoing discussions between the War Office, the Colonial Office, and the Admiralty, about the German naval threat to the British West Indies and the safety of Britain’s overseas possessions.

This article discusses the racialization of venereal disease during World War II at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the installation with the largest number of African American troops, arguing that medical and law enforcement surveillance overlapped in venereal disease prevention efforts in ways unique to the post’s location and racial demographics. It analyzes how military and civilian agencies attempted to limit venereal disease and how Black officers and enlisted men and women responded to and influenced these policies. The U.S. Army used statistics to construct venereal disease as a racially specific problem and developed venereal disease education efforts at the post. Gendered effects of venereal disease control policy included a proposal to quarantine civilian women within the post hospital. As the army tried to maintain racial, gender, and geographic boundaries, the biomedical and carceral technologies used to police venereal disease grew more similar.

This article explores the campaign by Italian military and civilian authorities following the 8 September 1943 armistice to whitewash the war crimes committed by Italian units from 1940 to 1943 in occupied Europe. This campaign followed a two-pronged strategy: first, the transformation of the Italians from perpetrators to victims by distinguishing the Italians from their former German allies and highlighting war crimes against them; and second, the use of fictitious trials to whitewash the records of military commanders. This concerted effort was finally sanctioned by the Western Allies in the increasingly confrontational climate of the Cold War to bolster one of their main partners, whom they needed to contain the spread of communism.

This article reads the political thought of a collection of treasonous and treason-sympathizing French military officers who supported the cause of the OAS (Organisation de l’armée secrète), a terrorist organization that fought President Charles de Gaulle’s decision to leave Algeria in 1960. It draws upon a selection of the doctrine they wrote, that of guerre révolutionnaire or counterrevolutionary warfare; the novels that popularized their perspectives for broader audiences; and the transcripts from the trial of General Raoul Salan, the leader of the OAS. Based on these texts, it argues that counterrevolutionary warfare doctrine attempted to circumvent decolonization by articulating a form of violent nostalgia that continued colonial war without colonial conquest. In this way, counterrevolutionary warfare was a military doctrine, an ideological world view, and a theory of decolonization.

This article originated with a simple question: why do the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the service chiefs, all serve four-year terms? The evolution over the course of a century towards that fixed length reflects debate and tension about balancing three concerns: becoming familiar with one’s duties and responsibilities, offering independent military advice, and preventing the military’s accumulation of power. This article argues that the last was the real, underlying concern, and four years is the compromise that satisfied members of both the executive and legislative branches, as well as the military.