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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Military life & institutions > General
Scholars have argued about U.S. state development in particular its laggard social policy and weak institutional capacity for generations. Neo-institutionalism has informed and enriched these debates, but, as yet, no scholar has reckoned with a very successful and sweeping social policy designed by the federal government: the Servicemen s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill. Kathleen J. Frydl addresses the GI Bill in the first study based on systematic and comprehensive use of the records of the Veterans Administration. Frydl s research situates the Bill squarely in debates about institutional development, social policy and citizenship, and political legitimacy. It demonstrates the multiple ways in which the GI Bill advanced federal power and social policy, and, at the very same time, limited its extent and its effects.
The literature on trench journalism is well-established for Britain and France during the First World War, but this book is the first systematic study in English of German soldier newspapers as a representation of daily life and beliefs on the front. Printed by and for soldiers at or near the front line these newspapers were read by millions of 'ordinary soldiers'. They reveal an elaborately defined understanding of comradeship and duty. The war of aggression, the prolonged occupation on both fronts and the hostility of the local populations were justified through a powerful image of manly comradeship. The belief among many Germans was that they were good gentlemen, fighting a just war and bringing civilization to backward populations. This comparative study includes French, British, Australian and Canadian newspapers and sheds new light on the views of combatants on both sides of the line.
How much power does the Soviet military exert on the politics of the Kremlin? This is one of the most controversial questions in the study of the Soviet Union, here addressed by eight top Western specialists on Soviet politics and security policy. While the authors assert that the civil-military relationship has been less turbulent than often believed, they also point out that Gorbachev's reforms threaten the system of buffers that have until now shielded the military-industrial world from disruption and change. Introduced by Timothy Colton's essay, "Perspectives on Civil-Military Relations," the volume discusses civil-military relations in relation to political change (Bruce Parrott), the KGB (Amy Knight), resource stringency and civil-military resource allocation (Robert Campbell), the defense industry (Julian Cooper), response to technological challenge (Thane Gustafson), social change (Ellen Jones), and consequences of external expansion (Bruce D. Porter). Gustafson has written a concluding chapter, "Toward a Crisis in Civil-Military Relations?" Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This volume examines how Imperial Russia's armed forces sought to adapt to the challenges of modern warfare. Russian rulers always understood the need to maintain an army and navy capable of preserving the empire's great power status. Yet they inevitably faced the dilemma of importing European military and technological innovations while keeping out political ideas that could challenge the autocracy's monopoly on power. Reforming the Tsar's Army touches on many broader issues in politics, international relations, economy and society, and combines the efforts of leading specialists of Russian military history from North America, Europe and Russia to consider many aspects of this dilemma. Grouped around broad themes of resources, intelligence, personality, and responses to specific wars, these essays benefit from the new archival openness to yield some surprising insights into the empire's willingness and ability to adapt to change.
This is the story of two airmen - an RAF Rear Gunner and a Luftwaffe Pilot. Alexander Ollar was raised in the Highlands of Scotland. He became an exceptional sporting shot and volunteered as an RAF Air Gunner in 1939. Helmut Lent enrolled for pilot training in the Luftwaffe as soon as he was old enough. Both were men of integrity and honour. Alec completed his first tour of 34 operations with 115 Squadron and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal by the King. After a year as an instructor, Alec was commissioned and returned to 115 Squadron as Gunnery Leader. He took part in the first 1,000 bomber raid and was described by his Squadron Commander as the best rear gunner he had ever flown with. At the same time Helmut was building up an impressive score of victories as a night fighter pilot and a national hero who was decorated by the Fuhrer. In July 1942, just as both men reach the apex of their careers, they meet for the first time in the night skies over Hamburg. As this fascinating book reveals, only one will survive.
The 'personal rule' of Louis XIV witnessed a massive increase in the size of the French army and an apparent improvement in the quality of its officers, its men and the War Ministry. However, this is the first book to treat the French army under Louis XIV as a living political, social and economic organism, an institution which reflected the dynastic interests and personal concerns of the king and his privileged subjects. The book explains the development of the army between the end of Cardinal Mazarin's ministry and the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, emphasising the awareness of Louis XIV and his ministers of the need to pay careful attention to the condition of the king's officers, and to take account of their military, political, social and cultural aspirations.
Using data from more than 40,000 soldiers of the Union army, this book focuses on the experience of African Americans and immigrants with disabilities, investigating their decision to seek government assistance and their resulting treatment. Pension administrators treated these ex-soldiers differently from native-born whites, but the discrimination was far from seamless - biased evaluations of worthiness intensified in response to administrators' workload and nativists' late-nineteenth-century campaigns. This book finds a remarkable interplay of social concepts, historical context, bureaucratic expediency, and individual initiative. Examining how African Americans and immigrants weighed their circumstances in deciding when to request a pension, whether to employ a pension attorney, or if they should seek institutionalization, it contends that these veterans quietly asserted their right to benefits. Shedding new light on the long history of challenges faced by veterans with disabilities, the book underscores the persistence of these challenges in spite of the recent revolution in disability rights.
Fighting The Enemy, first published in 2000, is about men with the job of killing each other. Based on the wartime writings of hundreds of Australian front-line soldiers during World War II, this powerful and resonant book contains many moving descriptions of high emotion and drama. Soldiers' interactions with their enemies are central to war and their attitudes to their adversaries are crucial to the way wars are fought. Yet few books look in detail at how enemies interpret each other. This book is an unprecedented and thorough examination of the way Australian combat soldiers interacted with troops from the four powers engaged in World War II: Germany, Italy, Vichy France and Japan. Each opponent has themes peculiar to it: the Italians were much ridiculed; the Germans were the most respected of enemies; the Vichy French were regarded with ambivalence; while the Japanese were the subject of much hostility, intensified by the real threat of occupation.
In many ways the German soldiers who marched back from the Western Front at the end of World War I held the key to the future of the newly-created republic that replaced the Kaiser's collapsed monarchy. To the radical Left, the orderly columns of front line troops appeared to be the forces of the counterrevolution while to the conservative elements of society they seemed to be the Fatherland's salvation. However in their efforts to get home as soon as possible, most soldiers were indifferent to the political struggles within the Reich, while the remnant that remained under arms proved powerless to defend the republic from its enemies. This book considers why these soldiers' response to the revolution was so different from the rest of the army and the implications this would have for the course of the German Revolution and, ultimately, for the fate of the Weimar Republic itself.
Women in the military and their relationship with war are subjects
that often provoke controversial reactions that reveal entrenched
stereotypes and cultural values central to many societies.
Scholars have argued about U.S. state development in particular its laggard social policy and weak institutional capacity for generations. Neo-institutionalism has informed and enriched these debates, but, as yet, no scholar has reckoned with a very successful and sweeping social policy designed by the federal government: the Servicemen s Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill. Kathleen J. Frydl addresses the GI Bill in the first study based on systematic and comprehensive use of the records of the Veterans Administration. Frydl s research situates the Bill squarely in debates about institutional development, social policy and citizenship, and political legitimacy. It demonstrates the multiple ways in which the GI Bill advanced federal power and social policy, and, at the very same time, limited its extent and its effects.
Through much of recorded history, monuments of stone and metal have honored victorious armies and successful leaders. Following the American Civil War this commemorative tradition expanded to include soldiers of the defeated Confederacy. By the early twentieth century, memorials to the Southern dead and surviving veterans were regional icons, and men of the Confederate army ranked among history's most commemorated troops. This illustrated history details one state's commemorative response to a war in which more than 30,000 of its soldiers died in military service: 101 Confederate monuments - and eight Union memorials, including one honoring African American troops - were dedicated across the Tarheel State between 1865 and the Civil War centennial in 1961. The location, design, funding and dedication of these memorials reveal a society's evolving grief and the forging of public memory. Committee minutes, financial records, legal documents, and contemporaneous accounts are quoted, highlighting the challenging and often contentious process through which these monuments were realised. Manufacturers' catalogs and advertisements, as well as spirited editorial exchanges in newspapers and magazines, provide further insight into the sculptural, technological and cultural milieu in which these North Carolina monuments were raised.
Chaplaincy highlights the need for faith and society to re-engage with vital moral questions. Military chaplains continue to operate within the dynamic tension between faith communities, the armed services and society, offering a distinct moral presence and contribution. Drawing the reader into the world of the military chaplain, this book explores insights into the complex moral issues that arise in combat (especially in Afghanistan), and in everyday military life, These include the the increasing significance of the Law of Armed Conflict and the moral significance of drones. Through the unique chaplain's eye view of the significance of their experience for understanding the ethics of war, this book offers clearer understanding of chaplaincy in the context of the changing nature of international conflict (shaped around insurgency and non-state forces) and explores the response of faith communities to the role of the armed services. It makes the case for relocating understandings of just war within a theological framework and for a clear understanding of the relationship between the mission of chaplaincy and that of the military.
This book is an innovative comparative history of how German and British soldiers endured the horror of the First World War. Unlike existing literature, which emphasises the strength of societies or military institutions, this study argues that at the heart of armies' robustness lay natural human resilience. Drawing widely on contemporary letters and diaries of British and German soldiers, psychiatric reports and official documentation, and interpreting these sources with modern psychological research, this unique account provides fresh insights into the soldiers' fears, motivations and coping mechanisms. It explains why the British outlasted their opponents by examining and comparing the motives for fighting, the effectiveness with which armies and societies supported men and the combatants' morale throughout the conflict on both sides. Finally it challenges the consensus on the war's end, arguing that not a 'covert strike' but rather an 'ordered surrender' led by junior officers brought about Germany's defeat in 1918.
With a focus on mental illness, Shell-shocked British Army veterans in Ireland provides the first in-depth investigation of disabled Great War veterans in Ireland. The book is a result of five years of researching previously untouched archival sources including psychiatric records of former patients otherwise closed to the public. The remit of the work contributes to various historiographical fields including disability history, the social history of medicine, the cultural history of modern war, the history of psychiatry and Irish studies. It also seeks to extend the scope of the First World War with an emphasis on how war-induced disability and trauma continued to affect large numbers of ex-servicemen beyond the official cessation of the conflict. -- .
In January 1966, navy nurse Lieutenant Kay Bauer stepped off a pan am airliner into the stifling heat of Saigon and was issued a camouflage uniform, boots, and a rifle. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she said of the weapon. "I'm a nurse." Bauer was one of approximately six thousand military nurses who served in Vietnam. Historian Kim Heikkila here delves into the experiences of fifteen nurse veterans from Minnesota, exploring what drove them to enlist, what happened to them in-country, and how the war changed their lives. Like Bauer, these women saw themselves as nurses first and foremost: their job was to heal rather than to kill. after the war, however, the very professional selflessness that had made them such committed military nurses also made it more difficult for them to address their own needs as veterans. Reaching out to each other, they began healing from the wounds of war, and they turned their energies to a new purpose: this group of Minnesotans launched the campaign to build the Vietnam Women's Memorial. In the process, a collection of individuals became a tight-knit group of veterans who share the bonds of a sisterhood forged in war. Kim Heikkila is an adjunct instructor in the history department at St. Catherine University, where she teaches courses on U.S. history, U.S. women's history, the Vietnam War, and the 1960s.
The period between World Wars I and II was a time of turbulent political change, with suffragists, labor radicals, demagogues, and other voices clamoring to be heard. One group of activists that has yet to be closely examined by historians is World War I veterans. Mining the papers of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion (AL), Stephen R. Ortiz reveals that veterans actively organized in the years following the war to claim state benefits (such as pensions and bonuses), and strove to articulate a role for themselves as a distinct political bloc during the New Deal era. Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill is unique in its treatment of World War I veterans as significant political actors during the interwar period. Ortiz's study reinterprets the political origins of the "Second" New Deal and Roosevelt's electoral triumph of 1936, adding depth not only to our understanding of these events and the political climate surrounding them, but to common perceptions of veterans and their organizations. In describing veteran politics and the competitive dynamics between the AL and the VFW, Ortiz details the rise of organized veterans as a powerful interest group in modern American politics.
Both harrowing and redeeming, this is the history of a unique 'adoption' system. The book tells how, for generations, local families, grateful for the sacrifice of their liberators from Nazi occupation, have cared for the graves of over 10,000 US soldiers in the cemetery of Margraten in the Netherlands, keeping their memory alive.
The U.S. Navy SEALs have long been considered among the finest, most courageous, and professional soldiers in American military history--an elite fighting force trained as parachutists, frogmen, demolition experts, and guerrilla warriors ready for sea, air, and land combat. Born out of a proud naval tradition dating back to World War II, the first SEAL teams were commissioned in the early 1960s. Vietnam was their proving ground. In this remarkable volume, fifteen former SEALs--most of them original founding team members, or "plankowners"--share their vivid first-person remembrances of action in Vietnam. Here are honest, brutal, and relentlessly thrilling stories of covert missions, ferocious firefights, and red-hot chopper insertions and extractions, revealing astonishing little-known truths that will only add strength to the enduring SEAL legend.
This book examines Pakistan's nuclear behaviour from the 1950s onwards against the background of the emerging global non-proliferation system. The author probes the broader questions of the extent to which Pakistan's conduct was factored into the global non-proliferation regime and why that regime failed to constrain Pakistan's choice to go nuclear. The book goes on to argue that in order to fully understand Pakistan's nuclear policy, the Indian case must also be considered. Therefore, this book provides a comprehensive scholarly account of the history of both India's and Pakistan's technological developments leading to their decision to develop nuclear weapons and confront the NPT constraints. The question of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan's most prominent scientist, Dr A. Q. Khan, its nuclear behaviour after the disclosure of this proliferation case, and the recent development of counter-proliferation measures at a global level are all analysed in this volume. The security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the question of the state's reliability within the ranks of the global community remain hotly debated issues. Pakistan and the New Nuclear Taboo offers the compelling argument that a new nuclear taboo against proliferation has emerged to prevent nuclear risks regionally and globally: since 2004, it is argued, Pakistan has played a key role in helping to establish this new nuclear taboo against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The 'three models' approach adopted here provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date theoretical perspective on Pakistan's nuclear behaviour and helps illuminate nuclear policy dynamics and the role of international institutions in regulating the conduct of states in other regions as well.
Change is a given in the United States military, but the soon to be applied "Blended Retirement System" is a financial change like no other the military has ever experienced. It is a huge deal that will not only affect the wallets of many active duty service members today and certainly 100% of them beginning in 2018, but it could also have a significant impact on future recruiting and retention of our volunteer military force. Mission Transition: Managing Your Career and Your Retirement is a needed introduction of the military's new "Blended Retirement System," representing the big shift in how the DoD manages military retirements. In the process, it encourages service members to adopt the new concept of retirement in the military, improve their own financial literacy, and assume responsibility for their own retirement planning. Finally, it provides new civilian job survival tips and strategies for service members in the process of leaving the military for civilian life. For those who are contemplating joining the armed forces and who wish to better understand the myriad of changes to the overall military retirement system this is the ideal guide.
This book develops a new approach to the analysis of civil-military
relations by focusing on the effectiveness of the armed forces in
fulfilling roles & missions, and on their efficiency in terms
of cost. The approach is applied to the United States using
official documents and interviews with policy-makers. In addition
to analyzing the impact of defense reform initiatives over the past
thirty years, the book includes the recent phenomenon of
"contracting-out" security that has resulted in greater numbers of
contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than uniformed military
personnel.
This book develops a new approach to the analysis of civil-military
relations by focusing on the effectiveness of the armed forces in
fulfilling roles & missions, and on their efficiency in terms
of cost. The approach is applied to the United States using
official documents and interviews with policy-makers. In addition
to analyzing the impact of defense reform initiatives over the past
thirty years, the book includes the recent phenomenon of
"contracting-out" security that has resulted in greater numbers of
contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than uniformed military
personnel.
The Scum of the Earth follows the men Wellington called just that from victory at Waterloo to a Regency Britain at war with itself, and explodes some of the myths on the way; such as that the defeat of Napoleon ended the threat of revolution spreading from France. Did the victorious soldiers return to a land fit for heroes? They did not. There was the first of the Corn Laws in the same year as the battle, there was famine and chronic unemployment. In 1819, the Peterloo massacre saw 15 killed and at least 500 injured when cavalry sabred a crowd demanding parliamentary reform. Peace in Europe perhaps for 50 years - but at home, repression and revolution in the air. And at the same time, the sheer exuberance of the Regency period, with new buildings, new art, even 17 new colonies more or less accidentally acquired. By 1848 the whole of Europe was once more set for complete upheaval. There is no one better to take a cold, hard look at the battle itself and its aftermath, in order to save us from an anniversary of misty-eyed backslapping, than political editor Colin Brown.
An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen 'warriors' from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Max Hastings. Over the course of forty years of writing about war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) - and by their practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from different nationalities in modern history - including Napoleon's 'blessed fool' Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early 19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who became the hero of Rorke's Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron Leader Guy Gibson, the 'dam buster' whose heroism in the skies of World War II earned him the nation's admiration, but few friends. Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be - and how it has changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for gallantry - and why it is that so often the most successful warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men. |
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