Holger H. Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short-War' Illusion: Toward a New Interpretation?' The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 681-694.
Historians by and large agree that Imperial Germany in 1914 went to war on the assumption that it would be short and swift--what Lancelot L. Farrar has called the 'short-war illusion.' But a new cohort of scholars, led by Professor Stig Förster of Bern University in Switzerland, argues instead that most senior military planners feared and indeed accepted the notion of a long war (from six months to two years). Using recently recovered Reichsarchiv materials from the former East German military archive, they suggest that even a long war seemed the best solution to Germany's perceived ills in 1914. Their interpretations suggest a rethinking of long-held notions concerning "the seminal catastrophe" of the twentieth century.
Mark M. Hull, "The Irish Interlude: German Intelligence in Ireland, 1939-1943," The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 695-718.
The article concerns the efforts of two agencies of German intelligence (the Abwehr and the SD) to use neutral Ireland as a base for wartime espionage directed against Great Britain. Though eleven agents were dispatched during a four-year period, a host of home-grown problems in the German system all but insured failure, and a brilliantly effective Irish army counterintelligence system mathematically eliminated any chance of German success. Because of the intelligence debacle in Ireland, German operations directed against England--including Operation Sea Lion--were hopelessly compromised.
Ashley Jackson, "Supplying War: The High Commission Territories' Military-Logistical Contribution in the Second World War," The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 719-760.
This article examines the role of the African territories of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland in providing military labour for the British Army during the 1939-45 war. In doing so, the whole issue of the logistical support of Allied forces fighting in the Western Desert and Southern Europe is analysed. The methods of recruitment, war service and conditions, and the logistical role of the colonial troops is examined in the context of the war in the Middle East. It is argued that the use of colonial troops represented an outstandingly successful mobilization of the empire in support of the British war effort.
Timothy K. Nenninger, "United States Prisoners of War and the Red Army, 1944-45: Myths and Realities," The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 761-782.
This article details the experiences of the several groups of American prisoners of war who came into the custody of the Red Army at the end of World War II, describes the difficult conditions under which they were held and confused procedures by which they were repatriated, but principally takes issue with those accounts that allege up to 23,000 were not repatriated but disappeared into the Soviet Gulag.
James D. Marchio, "Risking General War in Pursuit of Limited Objectives: U.S. Military Contingency Planning for Poland in the Wake of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising," The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 783-812.
The Eisenhower administration secretly grappled with the issue of how to defend Poland and other East European nations in the wake of the brutal Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Multiple working groups considered a spectrum of actions ranging from diplomatic posturing to general war in pursuit of this limited objective. Military planning revealed deficiencies in the means to defend Poland and the costly consequences of such actions. These insights ultimately produced less confrontational policies toward the Soviet Union and added to the urgency of developing more flexible response options to complement the nuclear doctrine of Massive Retaliation.
Bill Nasson, "Waging Total War in South Africa: Some Centenary Writings on the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902" (Historiographical Essay), The Journal of Military History 66 (July 2002): 813-828.
This historiographical review essay on Anglo-Boer War literature provides a critical commentary on a selection of recently published English- and Afrikaans-language historical works and war fiction associated with the centenary of the South African conflict, pointing to the growth of several new perspectives on the experience of the 1899-1902 hostilities, such as gender and the notion of total war. It suggests that there is now an increasingly inclusive scholarly understanding of the terms of the conflict, and that fruitful future study of its significance may well lie in historical comparison.