New Books in Military History

In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry video of a missile blowing up a pick-up truck that may have had a weapon attached to its flatbed. This was a lethal form of gesture politics: to send a £9-million bomber from Cyprus to Iraq and back, burning £35,000 an hour in fuel, to launch a smart missile costing £100,000 to destroy a truck or, rather, to create a video that shows it being destroyed. Some lives are ended—it is impossible to tell whose—so that the government can pretend that it taking effective action by creating a high-budget snuff movie. This is killing for show. Since the Vietnam War the way we see conflict – through film, photographs, and pixels – has had a powerful impact on the political fortunes of the campaign, and the way that war has been conducted. In Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Julian Stallabrass tells the story of post-war conflict, how it was recorded and remembered through its iconic photography. Through accounts of events such as My Lai massacre, the violent suppression of insurgent Fallujah, or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, Stallabrass maps a comprehensive theoretical re-evaluation of the relationship between war, politics and visual culture. Julian Stallabrass talks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the inescapable complicity of photography and media in warfare, the technical and social evolution of images as lethal weapons, and their changing role as witnesses or propaganda documents. Julian Stallabrass is an art historian, photographer, curator, and professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Thomas Dworzak’s Taliban studio photographs Documentary on Eugenie Goldberg’s Open Shutters of Iraq Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, photographed by Eddie Adams Lisa Barnard James Bridle’s Dronestagram Omer Fast’s 5000 feet is the Best Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

A pioneering work for the history of veterans’ rights in Romania, Maria Bucur's book The Nation’s Gratitude: World War I and Citizenship Rights in Interwar Romania (Routledge, 2022) brings into focus the laws and policies the state developed in response to the unprecedented human losses in World War I. It features in lively and accessible language the varied responses of veterans, widows and orphans to those policies. The analysis emphasizes how ordinary citizens became educated about and used state institutions in ways that highlight the class, ethnic, religious and gender norms of the day. The book offers a vivid case study of how disability as a personal reality for many veterans became a point of policy making, a story that has seen little scholarly interest despite the enormous populations affected by these developments. Overall, the monograph shows how, in the postwar European states, citizenship as engaged practice was shaped by both government policies as well as the interpretation a large and varied group of beneficiaries gave to these policies. Roland Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, and the Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded project on European Fascist Movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Stalinism at War: The Soviet Union in World War II (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) tells the epic story of the Soviet Union in World War Two. Starting with Soviet involvement in the war in Asia and ending with a bloody counter-insurgency in the borderlands of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics, the Soviet Union's war was both considerably longer and more all-encompassing than is sometimes appreciated. Here, acclaimed scholar Mark Edele explores the complex experiences of both ordinary and extraordinary citizens – Russians and Koreans, Ukrainians and Jews, Lithuanians and Georgians, men and women, loyal Stalinists and critics of his regime – to reveal how the Soviet Union and leadership of a ruthless dictator propelled Allied victory over Germany and Japan. In doing so, Edele weaves together material on the society and culture of the wartime years with high-level politics and unites the military, economic and political history of the Soviet Union with broader popular histories from below. The result is an engaging, intelligent and authoritative account of the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1949. Amber Nickell is Associate Professor of History at Fort Hays State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies and Eastern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Admiral John Byng’s execution for failing to “do his utmost” to relieve the British garrison on Minorca in 1756 is remembered today mainly for Voltaire’s quip about the Royal Navy’s use of Byng’s death “to encourage the others.” In The Execution of Admiral John Byng as a Microhistory of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Routledge, 2021), Joseph J. Krulder uses the event as a window into the era. As Krulder shows, Byng’s failure was the consequence of a number of decisions that reflected the priorities of Britain’s military and political leadership, as well as the disruptions caused by the rapid onset of the war with France. These factors combined to send Byng to relieve an isolated and poorly-led Army garrison with an undermanned fleet facing heavy odds. News of the battle and Byng’s subsequent court-martial prompted a popular reaction that was reflected in numerous ballads, pamphlets, and the new medium of newspapers, as well as in riots and other demonstrations. Much of this was subsequently obscured by the overwhelmingly macrohistorical focus on the event, one which overlooks many of the small details that Krulder shows are vital to understanding the dynamics of the affair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The 1949 Geneva Conventions are the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. To this day they continue to shape contemporary debates about regulating warfare, but their history is often misunderstood. For most observers, the drafters behind these treaties were primarily motivated by liberal humanitarian principles and the shock of the atrocities of the Second World War. In Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. Boyd van Dijk “shows how the final text of the 1949 Conventions, far from being an unabashedly liberal blueprint, was the outcome of a series of political struggles among the drafters, many of whom were not liberal and whose ideas changed radically over time. Nor were they merely a product of idealism or even the shock felt in the wake of Hitler’s atrocities. Constructing the Conventions meant outlawing some forms of inhumanity while tolerating others. It concerned a great deal more than simply recognising the shortcomings of Internatinal law as revealed by the experience of the Second World War. In making the Conventions, drafters sought to contest European imperial rule, empower the ICRC, challenge state sovereignty, fight Cold War rivalries, ensure rights during wartime, reinvent the concept of war crimes and prepare for (civil) wars to come.” Dr. van Dijk argues that to understand the politics and ideas of the Conventions' drafters is to see them less as passive characters responding to past events than as active protagonists trying to shape the future of warfare. In many different ways, they tried to define the contours of future battlefields by deciding who deserved protection and what counted as a legitimate target. Outlawing illegal conduct in wartime did as much to outline the concept of humanized war as to establish the legality of waging war itself. Using never previously accessed archival materials, the book provides a comprehensive historical account of the Conventions' past and contributes to a deeper understanding of the most important treaty of humanitarian law. The book therefore presents an eye-opening account of the making of international law and offers both historians and legal scholars with detailed information about international law's origins. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In his new book, Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Devin O. Pendas examines how German courts conducted Nazi trials in the immediate postwar context. His work combines close readings of legal discourses in conjunction with very human stories to present a narrative of both irony and tragedy. In a masterful comparison of all four occupation zones, this book successfully musters historical data to challenge and overturn standard conceptualizations of “transitional justice.” It thus belongs definitively in the repertoire of legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and international relations theorists. Eric Grube is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Boston College. He studies modern German and Austrian history, with a special interest in right-wing paramilitary organizations across interwar Bavaria and Austria."Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I", Madison Historical Review, 2019. "Racist Limitations on Violence: The Nazi Occupation of Denmark", Essays in History, 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the 'Hut Tax' Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-making processes, communication between London and the periphery and the influence of individual colonial administrators in outbreaks of violence. Michelle Gordon's book Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’: Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan (Bloomsbury, 2020) reveals the ways in which racial prejudices, the advocacy of a British 'civilising mission' and British racial 'superiority' informed colonial administrators' decisions on the ground, as well as the rationalisation of extreme violence. Responding to a neglect of British colonial atrocities within the historiography of colonial violence, this work demonstrates the ways in which Britain was just as willing and able as other European Empires to resort to extreme measures in the face of indigenous resistance or threats to the British imperial project. Siddharth Sridhar is a fourth year PhD Candidate (ABD) in History at the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Why do warring parties turn to United Nations peacekeeping and peacemaking even when they think it will fail? In Incredible Commitments: How UN Peacekeeping Failures Shape Peace Processes (Cambridge UP, 2021) , Dayal asks why UN peacekeeping survived its early catastrophes in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans, and how this survival should make us reconsider how peacekeeping works. She makes two key arguments: first, she argues the UN's central role in peacemaking and peacekeeping worldwide means UN interventions have structural consequences – what the UN does in one conflict can shift the strategies, outcomes, and options available to negotiating parties in other conflicts. Second, drawing on interviews, archival research, and process-traced peace negotiations in Rwanda and Guatemala, Dayal argues warring parties turn to the UN even when they have little faith in peacekeepers' ability to uphold peace agreements – and even little actual interest in peace – because its involvement in negotiation processes provides vital, unique tactical, symbolic, and post-conflict reconstruction benefits only the UN can offer. Anjali Dayal is an assistant professor of international politics at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus. Lamis Abdelaaty is an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at [email protected] or tweet to @LAbdelaaty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Robert K. Sutton's Nazis on the Potomac: The Top-Secret Intelligence Operation that Helped Win World War II (Casemate, 2022) is the first full account of the crucial work done at Fort Hunt, Virginia during World War II, where the highest-level German prisoners were interrogated, and captured documents analyzed. Now a green open space enjoyed by residents, Fort Hunt, Virginia, about 15 miles south of Washington, DC. was the site of one of the highest-level, clandestine operations during World War II. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, the US military realized that it had to work on exploiting any advantages it might gain on the Axis Powers. One part of these endeavors was to establish a secret facility not too close, but also not too far from the Pentagon which would interrogate and eavesdrop on the highest-level Nazi prisoners and also translate and analyze captured German war documents. That complex was established at Fort Hunt, known by the code name: PO Box 1142. The American servicemen who interrogated German prisoners or translated captured German documents were young, bright, hardworking, and absolutely dedicated to their work. Many of them were Jews, who had escaped Nazi Germany as children--some had come to America with their parents, others had escaped alone, but their experiences and those they had been forced to leave behind meant they all had personal motivation to do whatever they could to defeat Nazi Germany. They were perfect for the difficult and complex job at hand. They never used corporal punishment in interrogations of German soldiers but developed and deployed dozens of tricks to gain information. The Allies won the war against Hitler for a host of reasons, discussed in hundreds of volumes. This is the first book to describe the intelligence operations at PO Box 1142 and their part in that success. It will never be known how many American lives were spared, or whether the war ended sooner with the programs at Fort Hunt, but they doubtless did make a difference. Moreover these programs gave the young Jewish men stationed there the chance to combat the evil that had befallen them and their families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian journalist and writer born in Donetsk, which at present remains occupied by Russia-backed militants. Sometime after the beginning of the occupation, he was captured for his political views by the militants of the occupied parts of the Donbas and sentenced to 15 years. On the eve of 2020, Aseyev was released in a prisoner exchange. Currently Stanislav Aseyev lives in Kyiv. Aseyev received a number of awards recognizing his active social and political position (including the Free Media Award (2020), the National Freedom of Expression Award (2020). He is also a recipient of the Shevchenko National Prize, the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture and arts. Stanislav Aseyev’s In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2022; translated into English by Lidia Wolanskyj) helps understand a highly entangled and complicated background of the current Russo-Ukrainian war. This book—a chronological account of the events that started in November of 2013, on the one hand, and a collection of journalistic reflections that attempt to explain almost surreal and absurd developments, on the other—documents how the Donbas turned into another flashpoint, following Crimea, whose emergence is directly connected to the Russian Federation and provides commentaries on Russia’s role in sustaining the current war. In Isolation is written from within the zone of conflict; it emerges from the very epicenter of the war that signals not only interstate rifts but also splits that tear apart families and cause uneasiness in long-term friendships. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work of US Museums (University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), Dr. Ceglio argues that attempts during the war years to fit exhibition craft to the aims of social instrumentality constitute an important but forgotten moment in the field’s debates over whether museums should take active stances on public issues or, to use current parlance, remain neutral. In the book, she investigates how many American museums saw engagement with wartime concerns as consistent with their vision of the museum as a social instrument. She examines how these museums worked to strike the right balance between education and patriotism, hoping to attain greater relevance. Dr. Ceglio focuses on exhibitions, which unsurprisingly served as the primary vehicle through which museums, large and small, engaged their publics with wartime topics with fare ranging from displays on the cultures of Allied nations to "living maps" that charted troop movements and exhibits on war preparedness. Dr. Ceglio chronicles debates, experiments, and collaborations from the 1930s to the immediate postwar years, investigating how museums re-envisioned the exhibition as a narrative medium and attempted to reconcile their mission with new modes of storytelling. She demonstrates how what today may seem standard museum practice—that exhibitions take explicitly narrative forms appealing to the mental, emotional, and physical— was still a novel and controversial idea to museums in the 1930s and ’40s. Research for this book drew from administrative records, correspondence, and reports held by the archives of the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Art Gallery, the Newark Museum, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford), among others. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The Ottoman Empire has been many things throughout its long history. One of the greatest and gravest threats to Christian Europe. A source of inspiration for Renaissance and Reformation thinkers. An exoticized realm of sultans, slaves and harems. An equal and key partner in the European system of international relations. And, near its end, “the sick man of Europe”. The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs (Basic Books, 2021) by Professor Marc David Baer charts the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, not just dealing with its sultans and military expansion, but also a wide range of topics like the roles played by women and minorities in Ottoman society. In this interview, Marc and I talk about the Ottoman empire’s rise and “fall”—a term that may actually mischaracterize how the Ottoman Empire transformed after its heights under Selim and Suleiman. We also talk about its legacy, both for Europe and the wider world. Marc David Baer is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of five books, including Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford University Press: 2011), which won the Albert Hourani Prize, and Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide (Indiana Univeristy Press: 2020), which won the Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Ottomans. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare. Tracing the use of economic sanctions from the blockades of World War I to the policing of colonial empires and the interwar confrontation with fascism, Nicholas Mulder uses extensive archival research in a political, economic, legal, and military history that reveals how a coercive wartime tool was adopted as an instrument of peacekeeping by the League of Nations. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (Yale University Press, 2022) casts an overdue light on why sanctions are widely considered a form of war, and why their unintended consequences are so tremendous. Mathias Fuelling is a doctoral candidate in History at Temple University, working on a political history of Czechoslovakia in the immediate post-WWII years. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bucephalus424 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

From his earliest days Winston Churchill was an extreme risk taker and he carried this into adulthood. Today he is widely hailed as Britain's greatest wartime leader and politician. Deep down though, he was foremost a warlord. Just like his ally Stalin, and his arch enemies Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill could not help himself and insisted on personally directing the strategic conduct of World War II. For better or worse he insisted on being political master and military commander. Again like his wartime contemporaries, he had a habit of not heeding the advice of his generals. The results of this were disasters in Norway, North Africa, Greece, and Crete during 1940-41. His fruitless Dodecanese campaign in 1943 also ended in defeat. Churchill's pig-headedness over supporting the Italian campaign in defiance of the Riviera landings culminated in him threatening to resign and bring down the British Government. Yet on occasions he got it just right, his refusal to surrender in 1940, the British miracle at Dunkirk and victory in the Battle of Britain, showed that he was a much-needed decisive leader. Nor did he shy away from difficult decisions, such as the destruction of the French Fleet to prevent it falling into German hands and his subsequent war against Vichy France. In Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at War 1895–1945 (Bloomsbury, 2021), acclaimed historian Anthony Tucker-Jones explores the record of Winston Churchill as a military commander, assessing how the military experiences of his formative years shaped him for the difficult military decisions he took in office. This book assesses his choices in the some of the most controversial and high-profile campaigns of World War II, and how in high office his decision making was both right and wrong. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

South of the Norman city of Caen, the twin features of the Verrières and Bourguebus ridges were key stepping stones for the British Second Army in late July 1944--taking them was crucial if it was to be successful in its attempt to break out of the Normandy bridgehead. To capture this vital ground, Allied forces would have to defeat arguably the strongest German armored formation in Normandy: the I. SS-Panzerkorps "Leibstandarte." The resulting battles of late July and early August 1944 saw powerful German defensive counterattacks south of Caen inflict tremendous casualties, regain lost ground and at times defeat Anglo-Canadian operations in detail. Viewed by the German leadership as militarily critical, the majority of its armored assets were deployed to dominate this excellent tank country east of the Orne river. These defeats and the experience of meeting an enemy with near-equal resources exposed a flawed Anglo-Canadian offensive tactical doctrine that was overly dependent on the supremacy of its artillery forces. Furthermore, weaknesses in Allied tank technology inhibited their armored forces from fighting a decisive armored battle, forcing Anglo-Canadian infantry and artillery forces to further rely on First World War "Bite and Hold" tactics, massively supported by artillery. Confronted with the full force of the Panzerwaffe, Anglo-Canadian doctrine at times floundered. In response, the Royal Artillery and Royal Canadian Artillery units pummeled the German tankers and grenadiers, but despite their best efforts, ground could not be captured by concentrated artillery fire alone. Arthur W. Gullachsen's book Bloody Verrieres: The I. SS-Panzerkorps Defence of the Verrieres-Bourguebus Ridges (Casemate, 2021) a detailed account of the success of I. SS-Panzerkorps' defensive operations, aimed at holding the Vèrrieres-Bourgebus ridges in late July 1944. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Alliance politics is a regular headline grabber. When a possible military crisis involving Russia, North Korea, or China rears its head, leaders and citizens alike raise concerns over the willingness of US allies to stand together. As rival powers have tightened their security cooperation, the United States has stepped up demands that its allies increase their defense spending and contribute more to military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere. The prospect of former President Donald Trump unilaterally ending alliances alarmed longstanding partners, even as NATO was welcoming new members into its ranks. Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century (Polity Press, 2022) is the first book to explore fully the politics that shape these security arrangements – from their initial formation through the various challenges that test them and, sometimes, lead to their demise. Across six thematic chapters, Alexander Lanoszka challenges conventional wisdom that has dominated our understanding of how military alliances have operated historically and into the present. Although military alliances today may seem uniquely hobbled by their internal difficulties, Lanoszka argues that they are in fact, by their very nature, prone to dysfunction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

The Thirties and Forties were some of the first instances of aerial bombardment of civilian populations—and an indication of their destructive power. We often point to the Nazi bombing in Guernica, Spain in 1937—immortalized by Pablo Picasso—as the first instance of what happens when “the bomber gets through”, to paraphrase then-Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. But just a few months later, across a continent, the world got a glimpse of what bombardment would look like in one of the world’s most built-up and international cities of the time: Shanghai, and “Bloody Saturday”: August 14th, 1937. Paul French’s Bloody Saturday: Shanghai's Darkest Day (Penguin Australia: 2018), recently republished by Penguin’s Southeast Asia arm, is a short telling of what happened on that fateful day. In this interview, Paul and I talk about what happened in Shanghai on August 14th, and what it tells us about the nature of the city, the foreigners that lived there, and how the rest of the Sino-Japanese War developed. Paul French was born in London, educated there and in Glasgow, and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin Group USA: 2012) was a New York Times Bestseller, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Mystery Writers of America Edgar award winner for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai (Picador USA: 2018) are currently being developed for television. More can be found on Paul French’s blog China Rhyming. In our interview, we also mention another one of Paul’s works: Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao (Hong Kong University Press: 2009) You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Bloody Saturday. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When most people think of the Irish Republican Army, they naturally think of terrorism. But what of the political context that led to some 10,000 Irish nationalists to take up arms against a divided Ireland? With One Man's Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA (Verso, 2021), Daniel Finn tries to answer this question. This thoroughly researched study of the IRA explains the ideological and tactical decision making processes that led to The Troubles and the deaths of some 3,500 between 1968 and 1998, as well as the many disputes within the movement itself. Daniel Finn is a journalist. Formerly at the New Left Review, he is currently the features editor at Jacobin. He also hosts the Jacobin podcast Long Reads, one of my favorite podcasts (and not just because he let me do a 2-part episode on Indonesian politics). He’s done great work on Vichy, the Algerian War, Albert Camus, and a range of other historical topics. Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr. Nathaniel L. Moir studies the thought of this overlooked figure, one of the most important experts on counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina. Dr. Moir’s intellectual history analyses Fall’s formative experiences: his service in the French underground and army during the Second World War; his father’s execution by the Germans and his mother’s murder in Auschwitz; and his work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials. Moir demonstrates how these critical events made Fall “an insightful analyst of war because of the experience and knowledge he brought to his study and his early recognition of the Viet Minh’s approach to warfare, which they used to defeat the French in 1954 during the First Indochina War.” Dr. Moir investigates how Bernard Fall understood and described Vietnamese revolutionary warfare in Indochina after World War II.The book tells a history indelibly tied to Bernard Fall, but also centers on the unique circumstances through which Fall came to identify, study, and describe revolutionary warfare in Indochina. In the years before conventional American intervention in 1965, Fall argued that—far more than anything in the United States’ military arsenal—resolving conflict in Vietnam would require political strength, willpower, integrity and skill. Number One Realist illuminates Fall’s study of political reconciliation in Indochina, while showing how his profound, humanitarian critique of war continues to echo in the endless conflicts of the present. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, Lviv… The city, which is located in the western part of Ukraine, evokes a highly entangled past that contains references to a number of nations, ethnicities, empires, states, and communities. They have their own (hi)story and they claim their right to make this story visible. Ola Hnatiuk’s Courage and Fear (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2019) focuses on the crossroads of Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian dwellers that happened to share one geographical space that, however, was fragmentized and diversified, shared and contested at a time. In addition to these three communities, there is an overbearing shadow of both Soviet and Nazi occupants. The triangle of the knotty relations of Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian residents that makes one travel back in time in hopes to understand how contested legacy took shape and what influence it exercised on generations is further complicated by the arrival of forces whose status was hard to define. Hnatiuk delicately guides her readers into and through these entanglements and attempts to offer routes for uneasy and complicated conversations which, one way or another, touch upon the issues of choice and compromise, courage and responsibility, fear and hope. These are never black-and-white. Courage and Fear exposes unhealed wounds and invites readers to confront the uncomfortable and the painful. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In Northern Ireland, the United States and the Second World War (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr. Simon Topping analyses the American military presence in Northern Ireland during the war, examining the role of the government at Stormont in managing this 'friendly invasion', the diplomatic and military rationales for the deployment, the attitude of Americans to their posting, and the effect of the US presence on local sectarian dynamics. He explores US military planning, the hospitality and entertainment provided for American troops, the renewal and reimagining of historic links between Ulster and the United States, the importation of 'Jim Crow' racism, 'Johnny Doughboys' marrying 'Irish Roses', and how all of this impacted upon internal, transatlantic and cross-border politics. This study also draws attention to influential and understudied individuals such as Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Sir Basil Brooke and offers a reassessment of David Gray, America's minister to Dublin. As a result, it provides a comprehensive examination of largely overlooked aspects of the war and Northern Ireland more generally, and fills important gaps in the history of both. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Over 75 years have passed since the end of World War II, but the collective memory of the conflict remains potently present for the people of the Russian Federation. Professor David Hoffman, editor of a new collection of essays about war memory in “Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia” suggests that this is no accident. Together with an impressive, interdisciplinary roster of academic contributors, Hoffman examines how the current leadership of Russia has put war memory at the heart of national identity, and used it as a powerful unifying force. Professor Hoffman and his fellow contributors were inspired by the memory studies of Pierre Nora, and in the fifteen well-crafted essays that make up The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2021) they examine a wide range of what Nora called the “lieux de mémoire” or sites of memory, which includes textbooks, memorials, monuments, archives, and films. Hoffman’s choice of this international group of scholars, working in Russia, Ukraine, Britain, France, Norway, Austria, Germany and the United States across a range of academic disciplines, from film to sociology ensures that the essays offer a wide range of viewpoints and subjects, moving in a deft chronological sweep from just after the war to the present day. World War II, known in Russia today as The Great Patriotic War, was a defining moment for the twenty-four-year-old Soviet State. If the Revolutions of 1917 created the USSR, it was the hard-won victory over the Nazis in The Great Patriotic War that turned it into a Great Power. The cost of that victory remains breath-taking today: 27 million men and women lost their lives, major cities were destroyed, and millions were left displaced. No family escaped the collective trauma, which is still felt today. In examining the sites of memory, the essays in “Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia” offer a comprehensive look at the developing deployment of war memory, particularly by the current Russian leadership. Although Vladimir Putin was not alive during World War II, he has sought to weave his own personal narrative into that of the memory of the Great Patriotic War. Putin revived and expanded the countrywide commemorations of May 9 or Victory Day, which provided the vivid backdrop to his first inauguration ceremony in 2000. As president and prime minister, Putin spearheaded a renewed respect for the dwindling cadre of World War II veterans, and by creating state-of-the-art historical museums dedicated to the war, he ensured that war memory is kept alive for a new generation of Russians. “Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia” also explores the changing narratives around Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, the Holocaust, Lend-Lease, local media, and other key aspects of the collective memory of World War II in Russia. While the collection is a valuable contribution to the emerging scholarship on World War II memory begun by Nina Tumarkin and others, I suspect that “Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia” will ultimately enjoy a much wider audience: the essays offer rich insight into the mindset of Russia’s leaders and people, at a moment of heightened tensions between Russia and the West. Professor David Hoffman is Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor. Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer who writes about travel, culture, cuisine and culinary history, Russian history, and Royal History, with bylines in Reuters, Fodor's, USTOA, LitHub, The Moscow Times, and Russian Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When France fell to Hitler's armies in June 1940, a flood of refugees fleeing Nazi terror quickly overwhelmed Europe's borders and spilled across the Mediterranean to North Africa, touching off a humanitarian crisis of dizzying proportions. Nelly Benatar, a highly regarded Casablancan Jewish lawyer, quickly claimed a role of rescuer and almost single-handedly organized a sweeping program of wartime refugee relief. But for all her remarkable achievements, Benatar's story has never been told. In Years of Glory: Nelly Benatar and the Pursuit of Justice in Wartime North Africa (Stanford UP, 2021), Susan Gilson Miller introduces readers to a woman who fought injustice as an anti-Fascist resistant, advocate for refugee rights, liberator of Vichy-run forced labor camps, and legal counselor to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. Miller crafts a gripping biography that spins a tale like a Hollywood thriller, yet finds its truth in archives gathered across Europe, North Africa, Israel, and the United States and from Benatar's personal collection of eighteen thousand documents now housed in the US Holocaust Museum. Years of Glory offers a rich narrative and a deeper understanding of the complex currents that shaped Jewish, North African, and world history over the course of the Second World War. The traumas of genocide, the struggle for anti-colonial liberation, and the eventual Jewish exodus from Arab lands all take on new meaning when reflected through the interstices of Benatar's life. A courageous woman with a deep moral conscience and an iron will, Nelly Benatar helped to lay the groundwork for crucial postwar efforts to build a better world over Europe's ashes. Avery Weinman is a PhD student in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She researches Jewish history in the modern Middle East and North Africa, with emphasis on Sephardi and Mizrahi radicals in British Mandatory Palestine. She can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Unlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II (Purdue UP, 2021) offers the first comprehensive and scholarly English-language analysis of German-Ukrainian collaboration in the General Government, an area of occupied Poland during World War II. Drawing on extensive archival material, the Ukrainian position is examined chiefly through the perspective of Ukrainian Central Committee head Volodymyr Kubiiovych, a prewar academic and ardent nationalist. The contact between Kubiiovych and Nazi administrators at various levels shows where their collaboration coincided and where it differed, providing a full understanding of the Ukrainian Committee's ties with the occupation authorities and its relationship with other groups, like Poles and Jews, in occupied Poland. Ukrainian nationalists' collaboration created an opportunity to neutralize prewar Polish influences in various strata of social life. Kubiiovych hoped for the emergence of an autonomous Ukrainian region within the borders of the General Government or an ethnographic state closely associated with the Third Reich. This led to his partnership with the Third Reich to create a new European order after the war. Through their occupational policy of divide to conquer, German concessions raised Ukrainians to the position of a full-fledged ethnic group, giving them the respect they sought throughout the interwar period. Yet collaboration also contributed to the eruption of a bloody Polish-Ukrainian ethnic conflict. Kubiiovych's wartime experiences with Nazi politicians and administrators--greatly overlooked and only partially referenced today--not only illustrate the history of German-Ukrainian and Polish-Ukrainian relations, but also supply a missing piece to the larger, more controversial puzzle of collaboration during World War II. Paweł Markiewicz is currently chief specialist analyst in the International Security Program at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw, Poland. He has contributed articles and reviews to such journals as Slavonic and East European Review, Canadian Slavonic Papers, The Polish Review, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Dzieje Najnowsze, and Polski Przegląd Dyplomatyczny while providing commentaries, including to the Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza newspapers. Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Omar Ashour has written a detailed and data-rich analysis of ISIS's way of war. He analyzes the tactical and operational levels of war to depict what makes ISIS successful and unique. He reveals that ISIS was tactically and organizationally innovative, redefining not just what a terrorist organization is, but what it does. Not only did SIS pioneer a number of highly innovative tactical and procedural techniques, it also built an extremely cohesive and coherent personnel structure characterized by intense loyalty, delegation and creativity. This book is essential for anyone wanting to understand what ISIS did, exactly, to gain battlefield success and what happened to cause it to lose those gains once made. In our interview, we discuss the origin of this study, how ISIS franchises spread and cohered to the main body, its potential threats as an international terrorist organization and why it grew as quickly as it did. We also consider what the future might hold for ISIS. Jeffrey Bristol holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Boston University, a J.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. He practices law, works as an independent scholar and serves as an officer in the US Navy Reserve. He lives with his wife and two children in Tampa, Fl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tribe had owned enslaved Blacks since the 1720s. By the eve of the Civil War, 14 percent of the Choctaw Nation consisted of enslaved Blacks. Avid supporters of the Confederate States of America, the Nation passed a measure requiring all whites living in its territory to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and deemed any criticism of it or its army treasonous and punishable by death. Choctaws also raised an infantry force and a cavalry to fight alongside Confederate forces. In Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country (UNC Press, 2021), Fay A. Yarbrough reveals that, while sovereignty and states’ rights mattered to Choctaw leaders, the survival of slavery also determined the Nation’s support of the Confederacy. Mining service records for approximately 3,000 members of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles, Yarbrough examines the experiences of Choctaw soldiers and notes that although their enthusiasm waned as the war persisted, military service allowed them to embrace traditional masculine roles that were disappearing in a changing political and economic landscape. By drawing parallels between the Choctaw Nation and the Confederate states, Yarbrough looks beyond the traditional binary of the Union and Confederacy and reconsiders the historical relationship between Native populations and slavery. Brandon T. Jett, professor of history at Florida SouthWestern State College, creator of the Lynching in LaBelle Digital History Project, and author of Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South (LSU Press, 202) Twitter: @DrBrandonJett1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France--all without destroying itself in the process? In Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire (Pegasus Books, 2021), Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Throughout history, warfare has transformed social, political, cultural, and religious aspects of our lives. We tell tales of wars--past, present, and future--to create and reinforce a common purpose. In A Short History of War (Yale UP, 2021), Jeremy Black examines war as a global phenomenon, looking at the First and Second World Wars as well as those ranging from Han China and Assyria, Imperial Rome, and Napoleonic France to Vietnam and Afghanistan. Black explores too the significance of warfare more broadly and the ways in which cultural understandings of conflict have lasting consequences in societies across the world. Weaponry, Black argues, has had a fundamental impact on modes of war: it created war in the air and transformed it at sea. Today, as twentieth-century weapons are challenged by drones and robotics, Black examines what the future of warfare looks like. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In Quagmire in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Dr. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war, moving beyond the notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl demonstrates that quagmire is made, not found. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts. Her qualitative work has examined the Angolan, Mozambican, and Lebanese civil wars, all of which fit Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl’s definitions of quagmire. Miranda Melcher (Ph.D., Defense Studies, Kings College, London) studies post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with deep analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

“Kashmir” carries the burden of being known as one of the world’s biggest flashpoints. If a novel, TV show, or video game wants an easy international crisis, there’s a good chance Kashmir will be the crisis of choice. But while Kashmir is globally known, few understand the roots of the conflict—or what the people that live in Kashmir actually think. For those that do, Professor Sumantra Bose’s Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict (Yale University Press, 2021) walks readers through the origins, developments, and potential future of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, going right to the present day with the Modi administration’s turning of the state into two Union territories. In this interview, we run through the history of Kashmir, and how we should think about recent developments in this part of the world. Sumantra Bose is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Kashmir conflict. He is the author of seven previous books including Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka (Harvard University Press: 2007) and Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press: 2018). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Kashmir at the Crossroads. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

During World War I, the British Empire enlisted half a million young men, predominantly from the countryside of Egypt, in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC) and put them to work handling military logistics in Europe and the Middle East. British authorities reneged on their promise not to draw Egyptians into the war, and, as Kyle Anderson shows, the ELC was seen by many in Egypt as a form of slavery. The Egyptian Labor Corps: Race, Space, and Place in the First World War (U Texas Press, 2021) tells the forgotten story of these young men, culminating in the essential part they came to play in the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. Combining sources from archives in four countries, Anderson explores Britain’s role in Egypt during this period and how the ELC came to be, as well as the experiences and hardships these men endured. As he examines the ways they coped—through music, theater, drugs, religion, strikes, and mutiny—he illustrates how Egyptian nationalists, seeing their countrymen in a state akin to slavery, began to grasp that they had been racialized as “people of color.” Documenting the history of the ELC and its work during the First World War, The Egyptian Labor Corps also provides a fascinating reinterpretation of the 1919 revolution through the lens of critical race theory. Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas and Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

From the 1960s through 1970s there were a series of conflicts in Africa involving Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal in conflict with the so-called Frontline States. There was an international element with the Cold War and saw American interest at the diplomatic, economic, and social level. In the post-Vietnam period there was participation by individual American soldiers and politicians. Most of what has been published to date about this conflict has been fashionable journalism, narrow unit histories, or personal accounts that lack balance or insights beyond the level of experience. In part, this is because Rhodesian senior leaders did not leave memoirs or analysis and because there was a belief that the Rhodesian diplomatic and political situation was too unique to learn from. Fighting for Time: Rhodesia's Military and Zimbabwe’s Independence (Casemate Academic, 2021), drawing on a wealth of primary sources, examines the transition of the Rhodesian armed services from a general-purpose force to a special operations force conducting intelligence-driven operations, and identifies the lessons that can be learned from the study of this low-intensity conflict at the level of ''tactics, techniques, and procedures." Charles Melson offers a detailed examination of the military response to the emerging revolutionary threat, and the evolution of general and special-purpose units. He addresses the critical use of airpower as a force multiplier supporting civil, police, and army efforts ranging from internal security and border control to internal and external combat operations; the requirement for innovative units and full-time joint command structures; and the escalation of cross-border attacks and unconventional responses as the conflict evolved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2022) examines how the public funerals of major figures from the Civil War era shaped public memories of the war and allowed a diverse set of people to contribute to changing American national identities. These funerals featured lengthy processions that sometimes crossed multiple state lines, burial ceremonies open to the public, and other cultural productions of commemoration such as oration and song. As Sarah J. Purcell reveals, Americans' participation in these funeral rites led to contemplation and contestation over the political and social meanings of the war and the roles played by the honored dead. Public mourning for military heroes, reformers, and politicians distilled political and social anxieties as the country coped with the aftermath of mass death and casualties. Purcell shows how large-scale funerals for figures such as Henry Clay and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson set patterns for mourning culture and Civil War commemoration; after 1865, public funerals for figures such as Robert E. Lee, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Winnie Davis elaborated on these patterns and fostered public debate about the meanings of the war, Reconstruction, race, and gender. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Holocaust movies have become an important segment of world cinema and the de-facto Holocaust education for many. One quarter of all American-produced Holocaust-related feature films have won or been nominated for at least one Oscar. Yet most Holocaust movies have fallen through the cracks and few have been commercially successful. In Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide (McFarland, 2021), Rich Brownstein explores these trends--and many others--with a comprehensive guide to hundreds of films and made-for-television movies.Recommendations and reviews of the 50 best Holocaust films are included, along with an educational guide, a detailed listing of all films covered and a four-part index-glossary. The book also has a companion website, Holocaust Cinema Complete. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America’s revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years’ War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of ’76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

On July 17, 2018, starting an unjust war became a prosecutable international crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Instead of collective state responsibility, our leaders are now personally subject to indictment for crimes of aggression, from invasions and preemptions to drone strikes and cyberattacks. Noah Weisbord, The Crime of Aggression: The Quest for Justice in an Age of Drones, Cyberattacks, Insurgents, and Autocrats (Princeton UP, 2019) is Noah Weisbord’s riveting insider’s account of the high-stakes legal fight to enact this historic legislation and hold politicians accountable for the wars they start. Weisbord, a key drafter of the law for the International Criminal Court, takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most consequential legal dramas in modern international diplomacy. Drawing on in-depth interviews and his own invaluable insights, he sheds critical light on the motivations of the prosecutors, diplomats, and military strategists who championed the fledgling prohibition on unjust war—and those who tried to sink it. He untangles the complex history behind the measure, tracing how the crime of aggression was born at the Nuremberg trials only to fall dormant during the Cold War, and he draws lessons from such pivotal events as the collapse of the League of Nations, the rise of the United Nations, September 11, and the war on terror. The power to try leaders for unjust war holds untold promise for the international order, but also great risk. In this incisive and vitally important book, Weisbord explains how judges in such cases can balance the imperatives of justice and peace, and how the fair prosecution of aggression can humanize modern statecraft. Jeff Bachman is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict's first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles questions such as: Could the war have been avoided? Could it have been lost? Were the strategic decisions the rights ones? How well did the British organize and fight? How well did the British live up to their own values? What difference did the war make in the end to the fate of the nation? In answering these and other essential questions he focuses on the human contingencies of the war, weighing directly at the roles of individuals and the outcomes determined by luck or chance. Moreover, he looks intimately at the changes in wartime British society and culture. Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941 (Knopf, 2020) draws on a large cast of characters--from the leading statesmen and military commanders who made the decisions, to the ordinary men, women, and children who carried them out and lived through their consequences--in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. For better or worse, much of Britain today is ultimately the product of the experiences of 1938-1941. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In Governing for Revolution: Social Transformation in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Dr. Megan Stewart argues that despite significant risks, some rebels undertake costly governance projects during wartime, to achieve transformational goals. Dr. Stewart explores the development of this model by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how its become a prototype ever since. Dr. Stewart uses different kinds of qualitative case studies as well as quantitative analysis to prove her theory, using archival data from six countries, primary rebel sources, and fieldwork. Miranda Melcher (Ph.D., Defense Studies, Kings College, London) studies post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with deep analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

New oral histories from Black Namibian and Angolan troops who fought in apartheid South Africa’s security forces reveal their involvement, and its impact on their lives, to be far more complicated than most historical scholarship has acknowledged. In anticolonial struggles across the African continent, tens of thousands of African soldiers served in the militaries of colonial and settler states. In southern Africa, they often made up the bulk of these militaries and, in some contexts, far outnumbered those who fought in the liberation movements’ armed wings. Despite these soldiers' significant impact on the region’s military and political history, this dimension of southern Africa’s anticolonial struggles has been almost entirely ignored in previous scholarship. Black troops from Namibia and Angola spearheaded apartheid South Africa’s military intervention in their countries’ respective anticolonial war and postindependence civil war. In Apartheid's Black Soldiers: Unnational Wars and Militaries in Southern Africa (Ohio UP, 2021), Lennart Bolliger challenges the common framing of these wars as struggles of national liberation fought by and for Africans against White colonial and settler-state armies. Focusing on three case studies of predominantly Black units commanded by White officers, Bolliger investigates how and why these soldiers participated in South Africa’s security forces and considers the legacies of that involvement. In tackling these questions, he rejects the common tendency to categorize the soldiers as “collaborators” and “traitors” and reveals the un-national facets of anticolonial struggles. Finally, the book’s unique analysis of apartheid military culture shows how South Africa’s military units were far from monolithic and instead developed distinctive institutional practices, mythologies, and concepts of militarized masculinity. Lennart Bolliger is a lecturer in international history at Utrecht University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies of the Humboldt University of Berlin and a visiting researcher at the History Workshop of the University of the Witwatersrand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi by Mary Talusan focuses on the Philippine Constabulary band, a military band organized in 1902 that served the colonial government in the Philippines until World War II. Founded and led for most of its history by Walter Loving, a Black soldier in the American military, the band visited the United States four times between 1904 and 1939 and it is these visits that Talusan examines in Instruments of Empire. Listening with what Talusan calls the imperial ear, American commentators understood the group’s command of the standard band repertory of the period not as a result of the Filipino musician’s training and skill, but as evidence of their so-called natural musical ability which had been tamed by the allegedly civilizing influence of American colonial rule. Tracing the band’s reception over time, Talusan analyzes the cultural, political, and social causes and byproducts of American imperial ambitions. Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Eighteen months after Iran’s Revolution in 1979, hundreds of thousands of the country’s women participated in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) in a variety of capacities. Iran was divided into women of conservative religious backgrounds who supported the revolution and accepted some of the theocratic regime’s depictions of gender roles, and liberal women more active in civil society before the revolution who challenged the state’s male-dominated gender bias. However, both groups were integral to the war effort, serving as journalists, paramedics, combatants, intelligence officers, medical instructors, and propagandists. Behind the frontlines, women were drivers, surgeons, fundraisers, and community organizers. The war provided women of all social classes the opportunity to assert their role in society, and in doing so, they refused to be marginalized. Despite their significant contributions, women are largely absent from studies on the war. In Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War (Syracuse UP, 2021), Farzaneh chronicles in copious detail women’s participation on the battlefield, in the household, and everywhere in between. Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh is associate professor of history and the Principal of the Mossadegh Initiative at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He is an expert in the history of Iran and the modern Middle East. His first book, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani won the National History Honor Society Best First Book Award in 2016. For more info visit https://www.mateofarzaneh.com. Amir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

December 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the Second World War. In fact, this interview was recorded on December 12th: the 80th anniversary of Japanese troops landing on the Philippine island of Luzon. That invasion marked the four-year war over the Philippines: the surrender of American forces on May 8th, 1942; the invasion of Leyte by MacArthur on October 20th, 1944; and the surrender of Japan on August 15th, 1945. But what happens in between these major dates? How did Filipinos live their lives under the occupation—and how did some choose to fight back? What did resistance, whether carried out by Americans who stayed behind, or Filipinos seizing their country’s future for themselves, look like? War and Resistance in the Philippines, 1942–1944 (Naval Institute Press: 2021) by James Kelly Morningstar is one of the first attempts to repair our understanding of the war in the Philippines, showing how American, Filipino and Japanese actions influenced each other. James Kelly Morningstar is a retired U.S. Army armor officer and decorated combat veteran with degrees from West Point and Kansas State University, a master's degree from Georgetown University, and a PhD from the University of Maryland. He currently teaches military history at Georgetown. He is also the author of Patton’s Way: A Radical Theory of War (Naval Institute Press: 2017). Today, we talk about the Philippines: the Japanese invasion and occupation, the nature of resistance, and American grand strategy. We’ll also discuss what makes the resistance movement important to our understanding of today’s geopolitics. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of War and Resistance in the Philippines: 1942-1944. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

NB: This interview contains material about wartime experiences that may be upsetting to some listeners. When Alex Panasenko was born in 1933, his native Ukraine was devastated by Stalin’s program of mass starvation; millions were murdered and, soon after, millions more removed in Stalin’s Great Purge. In 1941, when Panasenko was eight years old, Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded and he was deported with his family for slave labor. As the tide turned against the Nazis, Panasenko, now separated from his family, tramped westward with the retreating German army. The Long Vacation is Alex Panasenko’s war memoir, remembering the formative, often harrowing experiences that shaped his character. In this conversation, Mr. Panasenko discusses the extremities of life, death, terror, lust, and hunger from a child’s perspective, and with a child’s canny reactions aimed at survival, even when the prospect seemed most unlikely. With things falling apart around him—laws, governments, the conventions of the adult world—Panasenko came to rely only on himself. Consequently, as an adolescent in the chaotic period following the war, he became an astonishingly successful black marketeer in the liberated Bavarian town of Memmingen. Finally, Mr. Panasenko reflects on his life in the 75 years since the war, including his forty years as a biology teacher at Berkeley High School in northern California. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Early Modern Europe and the Spanish Empire; he had the privilege of being one of Alex Panasenko’s biology students in 1993-94. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Why do some armies fare better than others on the battlefield? In Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War (Princeton UP, 2020), Jason Lyall argues that a state's prewar treatment of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The author tests this argument using Project Mars, a new dataset on conventional wars fought since 1800. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, he also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Divided Armies was awarded the 2021 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize, the 2020 Joseph Lepgold Prize, and was named a "Best of 2020" book by Foreign Affairs. Jason Lyall is the inaugural James Wright Chair of Transnational Studies and Associate Professor in the Government department. He also directs the Political Violence FieldLab at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. His research examines the effects and effectiveness of political violence in civil and conventional wars. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, and World Politics, among others. He has received funding from AidData/USAID, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the MacArthur Foundation, the Folke Bernadotte Academy, and the United States Institute of Peace. He has conducted fieldwork in Russia and Afghanistan, where he served as the Technical Adviser for USAID's Measuring the Impact of Stabilization Initiatives (MISTI) project during 2012-15. He was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2020. Aditya Srinivasan assisted with this episode. Lamis Abdelaaty is an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at [email protected] or tweet to @LAbdelaaty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Over the last 20 years the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations, spaces which had previously been exclusively for generals and commanders. These professionals, trained and hired to give legal advice on an array of military operations, have become known as war lawyers. In The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Craig Jones examines the laws of war as applied by military lawyers to aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israel military in Gaza. This book shows just how important law and military lawyers have become in the conduct of contemporary warfare, and how it is understood. Craig Jones is a Lecturer in Political Geography in the School of Geography, Sociology and Politics at Newcastle University. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) compares how three prewar German cities shared decades of postwar development under three competing post-Nazi regimes: Frankfurt in capitalist West Germany, Leipzig in communist East Germany, and Wrocław (formerly Breslau) in communist Poland. Each city was rebuilt according to two intertwined modern trends. First, certain local edifices were chosen to be resurrected as “sacred sites” to redeem the national story after Nazism. Second, these tokens of a reimagined past were staged against the hegemony of modernist architecture and planning, which wiped out much of whatever was left of the urban landscape that had survived the war. All three cities thus emerged with simplified architectural narratives, whose historically layered complexities only survived in fragments where this twofold “redemptive reconstruction” after Nazism had proven less vigorous, sometimes because local citizens took action to save and appropriate them. Transcending both the Iron Curtain and freshly homogenized nation-states, three cities under three rival regimes shared a surprisingly common history before, during, and after Hitler—in terms of both top-down planning policies and residents’ spontaneous efforts to make home out of their city as its shape shifted around them. Amber Nickell is Associate Professor of History at Fort Hays State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies and Eastern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Today's guest is former US Army general, Stanley McChrystal. A retired four-star general with 34 years of service, Stanley was the commander of all US and coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010. Previously, he served as commander of JSOC or the Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing the US military’s most elite units including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6. According to journalist Sean Naylor, in his Book, Relentless Strike, McChrystal was, “the general whose vision and intensity transformed JSOC into a global man-hunting machine.” His tenure included the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing infamous terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Today Stanley is founder and CEO of the McChrystal Group, a strategic consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His new book is, Risk. A User’s Guide, published by Portolio in October of 2021. Colin Miller and Dr. Keith Mankin host the popular medical podcast, PeerSpectrum. Colin works in the medical device space and Keith is a retired pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Is it possible that efforts to make war more humane can actually make it more common and thus more destructive? This tension at the heart of this query lies at the heart of Samuel Moyn's new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021). He draws fascinating connections between literary figures such as Tolstoy and Bertha von Suttner, civil society organizations such as the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch, and politicans and military figures to try to understand a central question: why, when we have done so much to limit the violence inherent in war, has war remained so common. His answer is counterintuitive and challenging--it is precisely the limitations on violence that have taken some of the urgency out of the effort to eliminate war itself. The result, he suggests, is as series of forever wars. Moyn's anaylsis is fascinating. But Moyn also reminds the reader about historical figures and movements widely known at the time but largely ignored in recent times. The result is a fascinating survey of the history of anti-war movements and the debates within them as they tried to imagine and create a world in soldiers, or some of them, put down their weapons, or some of them, to end the violence, or as much of it as they could. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American response--a policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American planners' strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military conscription, and domestic spying to weed out potential fifth columnists. Abroad, the United States decided to work with Vichy France despite its pro-Nazi tendencies. The US-Vichy partnership, intended to buy time and temper the flames of war in Europe, severely strained Anglo-American relations. American leaders naively believed that they could woo men like Philippe Pétain, preventing France from becoming a formal German ally. The British, however, understood that Vichy was subservient to Nazi Germany and instead supported resistance figures such as Charles de Gaulle. After the war, the choice to back Vichy tainted US-French relations for decades. Our collective memory of World War II as a period of American strength overlooks the desperation and faulty decision making that drove US policy from 1940 to 1943. Tracing the key diplomatic and strategic moves of these formative years, When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance (Harvard UP, 2021) gives us a more nuanced and complete understanding of the war and of the global position the United States would occupy afterward. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

More than one million Indian soldiers were deployed during World War I, serving in the Indian army as part of Britain's imperial war effort. These men fought in France and Belgium, Egypt and East Africa, and at Gallipoli, in Palestine, and in Mesopotamia. While Indian contributions to the war have long been recognized (unlike other colonial contributions), it has long been disparaged and lacked significant scholarly attention, especially in the western academy. In Indian Soldiers in World War I: Race and Representation in an Imperial War (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), Andrew T. Jarboe reconstructs the Indian experience of the war, examining the contested representations that British and Indian audiences drew from the soldiers' wartime experiences and the impacts these representations had on the British Empire's racial politics. Presenting overlooked or forgotten connections, Jarboe argues that Indian participation contributed decisively to the war effort. At the same time, Indian participation in the war led to a hardening of the British Empire's prewar racist ideologies and governing policies, and did not result in advancement toward Indian national aspirations or improvements in racial equality. When Indian soldiers participated in the brutal suppression of anti-government demonstrations in India at war's end, they set the stage for the eventual end of British rule in south Asia. Indian Soldiers in World War I will interest readers with an interest in World War I, imperial history, South Asian history, and is an important contribution to a growing field of scholarship about the contributions of colonial subjects to the war effort--and how broken promises made during the war continue to have ramifications long after decolonization. Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas and Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history