Jonathan Grant, "The Sword of the Sultan: Ottoman Arms Imports, 1854-1914," Journal of Military History 66/1: 9-36.
The growing dependence of the Ottoman Empire on imported armaments in the nineteenth century resulted from the interplay of external forces such as rapid technological change and the development of an international armaments mass market, with the internal factor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II's personal and political decisions. Rather than attributing this dependence to any conscious plan by European suppliers or foreign states to force the Turks into a subservient position, greater significance should be given to Turkish agency as the key to understanding the erosion of Ottoman defense industries. Ultimately, the Germans dominated the army orders and the British dominated naval orders.
Evgenii F. Podsoblyaev, "The Russian Naval General Staff and the Evolution of Naval Policy, 1905-1914," Journal of Military History 66/1: 37-70.
No abstract available.
Roger R. Reese, "Red Army Professionalism and the Communist Party, 1918-1941," Journal of Military History 66/1: 71-102.
This article posits that the Red Army officer corps, in the years 1918-41, was by and large an unprofessional organization in that, for a variety of reasons, it lacked autonomy in internal affairs, was deficient in military expertise, usually failed to upgrade its standards of performance, lacked a sense of group identity, and suffered from a curtailed ability to recognize and articulate its special interests. The lack of developed professionalism was an important factor, but by no means the sole one, in the failure of the Red Army to defeat Hitler's invasion in 1941.
Thomas R. Searle, "'It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers': The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945," Journal of Military History 66/1: 103-34.
The famous March 1945 air raid on Tokyo was the most destructive in history, destroying nearly sixteen square miles of the city and killing over eighty thousand Japanese civilians, but historians have misunderstood critical aspects of the incendiary campaign against Japan. Civilian casualties were not accidental or incidental but an explicit goal of the incendiary raids on Japanese cities. Additionally, the bombing campaign that devastated Tokyo and other Japanese cities was generally similar to the U.S. bombing of Germany and a part of U.S. plans since 1943, rather than a change of plans made by U.S. generals in 1945, as suggested by previous historians.
Kelly C. Jordan, "Right for the Wrong Reasons: S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire in Korea," Journal of Military History 66/1: 135-62.
Samuel Lyman Atwood (S. L. A.) Marshall developed a method of analyzing the actions of infantrymen in battle during World War II, and his findings and methodology have become controversial, especially during the past decade. According to Marshall, only about 15 percent of United States infantry soldiers fired their weapons in combat during World War II, and this number never increased to much higher than 25 percent for even the best of American units. Marshall determined that this percentage increased to 55 percent in the Korean War, and he attributed this dramatic rise to improved training during the interwar period. This article suggests that, despite its controversial nature, Marshall's attempt to account for the differences in the behavior of soldiers in combat between World War II and the Korean War warrants critical examination.
Rather than resulting from innovative training methods, the
historical evidence suggests that the increase in the ratio of
fire in the Korean War identified by Marshall was due to organizational
changes made to the U.S. Army's smallest tactical elements in
combat, the squad and platoon, during the period 1945 to 1950.
These changes added additional machine-guns to these units, whose
operators proved to fire in almost every engagement, significantly
increased the proportion of crew-served weapons to riflemen,
and allowed these units to tap into powerful small-unit sociological
forces by transforming the squad into a more effective "primary
group." The enhanced ratio of crew-served weapons to riflemen
brought about by the reduction in the size of the squad and the
addition of machine-guns to the squads and platoons increased
the number of soldiers who actually fired their weapons in combat
by placing more soldiers into positions shown by experience to
improve their participation in battle. Concurrently, the increased
effectiveness of the squad as a primary group reduced the isolation
of the individual rifleman on the battlefield. Marshall's observations
bear this out and suggest that the anticipated increase in the
ratio of firing soldiers within a squad or platoon occurred at
almost exactly the amount expected by the specific changes made
to these two organizations, regardless of the training methods
employed. Thus, while his data and methodology have largely been
discredited, it appears that Marshall's observations about the
increases in small unit ratios of fire during the Korean War
were right for the wrong reasons.
Jan Hoffenaar, "'Hannibal ante portas': The Russian Military Threat and the Build-up of the Dutch Armed Forces, 1948-1958," Journal of Military History 66/1: 163-191.
This article discusses the build-up of the Dutch armed forces in the period between 1948 and 1958. It gives a clear picture of the perceived threat posed by the former Soviet Union, particularly where this had a bearing on the Netherlands, and of the planned military response to this threat. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the build-up of the Dutch defence. The article concludes with a discussion of the extent to which the perceived Soviet threat led to the build-up of the Dutch armed forces. The author shows that various other factors also came into play, such as historical experiences, national and international competing interests, and perceptions of the threat, as well as economic possibilities and impossibilities. The build-up of the Dutch armed forces exemplifies the difficult and erratic process of the build-up of the Western armed forces in general and as such serves as a useful case in point.