Donald A. Neill, "Ancestral Voices: The Influence of the Ancients on the Military Thought of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,'' Journal of Military History 62/3: 487-520 .
The author examines the question of the origin of the impetus for the rapid evolution in military thought which took place during the period of the Enlightenment. With particular reference to the physical and scholarly works of Vegetius, de Saxe and Vauban, the author determines that the tactical and strategic innovations achieved by post-Renaissance thinkers are due less to the direct influence of the works of the ancients than to the reasoned application, by professional and experience soldiers, of principles readily generalizable to the gunpowder weaponry of the time. The military progress of the Enlightenment is thus revealed as the result neither of historically nor technologically determined factors, but of an amalgam of the two within the context of the newly-emerging rationalist paradigm.
Mark R. Grandstaff, "Preserving the Habits and Usages of War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Professional Reform, and the U.S. Army Officer Corps, 1865 1881, Revisited,'' Journal of Military History 62/3: 521-545 .
This paper examines the arguments of Samuel Huntington (Soldier and the State, 1957) and William Skelton (An American Profession of Arms, 1992) in regards to when and how the American Army professionalized. The study modifies both Skelton and Huntington (along with Russell Weigley, History of the U.S. Army, 1967, Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Social Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1986, and major revision in the literature of American military reform historiography. Indeed, the study significantly revises the current conception that the origins of professionalization of the officer corps is largely connected to the work of Emory Upton.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and Defending the Decision,'' Journal of Military History 62/3: 547-570 .
Analyzing the 1945 "decision" to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Bernstein's essay emphasizes the targeting of noncombatants, explains why President Truman used the A-bomb, critically examines some of the postwar explanations, and briefly discusses the vexing problem of pre-Hiroshima casualty estimates for US troops in the invasion(s) of Japan. The essay also challenges the US Strategic Bombing Survey's postwar criticism of the A-bombs' use, notes the postwar doubts expressed by various WWII US military leaders about the need for the atomic bombing, and briefly speculates on whether the 1945 atomic bombing would be so heated an issue in the 1990s if "only" about 30,000 Japanese had been killed, if the dead had been almost entirely Japanese soldiers and sailors, and not mostly noncombatants, and if the bomb had not also killed and injured by means of radiation, which seems more frightening to most people than do blast and heat.
Mustafah Dhada, "The Liberation War in Guinea-Bissau Reconsidered,'' Journal of Military History 62/3: 571-593 .
This article consolidates the research done previously on the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau where in September of 1974 four hundred years of imperial rule was brought to an end in Guinea-Bissau, Portugal's former colony in West Africa, by the Partido Africano de Independdencia de Guiné e Cabo Verde, PAIGC (the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands) then headed by Am. Lopes Cabral. The article argues that existent scholarship in the field has all too readily portrayed the war as a linear straightforward march to freedom with the Portuguese at the losing end of the battle and the PAIGC at the helm of victory under Cabral. In reality the truth is somewhat less linear and less hagiographic. The war was truly a complex contest between the PAIGC and the Portuguese army, each seeking to outwit the other's countermoves, each desperately attempting to outmaneuver the other in a series of economic and military moves and counter-moves. The article should prove of interest to the specialist as well as the general reader interested in the dynamics of guerrilla war and or decolonizing insurgency.
David M. Glantz, "The Red Army at War, 1941-1945: Sources and Interpretations,'' Journal of Military History 62/3: 595-617 .
This article fulfills three critical functions for those interested in researching or simply reading on the subject. First, for the would be researcher who wishes to study the Red Army in World War II and associated military operations, the article identifies and critiques the most important Soviet and German primary and secondary sources material necessary to conduct research. Second, in terms of source materials, it enables readers to access critically the soundness, completeness, and credibility of books that appear on the subject. Finally, it identifies for readers and researchers alike the most important historical controversies now associated with the subject so that they can identify authors biases and contending points of view.