Journal of Military History
Article Abstracts
Vol. 70, No. 1
January 2006

Articles:

Andrea Brady, "Dying with Honour: Literary Propaganda and the Second English Civil War," The Journal of Military History 70 (January 2006): 9-30.

This article discusses contemporary responses to the executions under martial law of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle in 1648, following General Thomas Fairfax's siege of Colchester. It compares the royalist propaganda, which established these two royalist partisans as martyred heroes, to the Parliamentary and Army propaganda, which lamented the assassination of the well-known New Model Army colonel Thomas Rainsborough two months later. Analysing newsbooks, accounts by participants and observers, and literary responses (especially the elegy), it finds that popular writers used these deaths to impugn the honour of their opponents, and consequently to argue against reconciliation or compromise.

 

Kerry E. Irish, "Apt Pupil: Dwight Eisenhower and the 1930 Industrial Mobilization Plan," The Journal of Military History 70 (January 2006): 31-61.

This article takes the view that Dwight D. Eisenhower's work as a staff officer in the War Department in the early 1930s was significant not only for his own career, but also for the United States. In these years, Eisenhower wrote the first detailed industrial mobilization plan, the blueprint the nation would follow if it entered a major war. Though not formally implemented in 1941, much of Eisenhower's plan provided the basis for a more efficient transition to war production than had occurred during World War I. Moreover, his work enhanced his reputation in the Army.

 

Bob Moore, "Unwanted Guests in Troubled Times: German Prisoners of War in the Union of South Africa, 1942-1943," The Journal of Military History 70 (January 2006): 63-89.

This study examines the role of the Union of South Africa in acting as a detaining power for German prisoners of war taken during the North African campaigns of 1942-43. It highlights the specific problems caused by the sixty-eight hundred German prisoners as potential threats to domestic security in South Africa at a time of internal dissension, contrasting these with the relatively straightforward absorption of one hundred thousand Italian prisoners in the same period. It also looks at the more general problems faced by the British imperial authorities in dealing with German prisoners in this critical period of the war.

 

John M. Hawkins, "The Costs of Artillery: Eliminating Harassment and Interdiction Fire During the Vietnam War," The Journal of Military History 70 (January 2006): 91-122.

In Vietnam during 1966 and 1967, the United States Army expended nearly half of its artillery ammunition in unobserved Harassment and Interdiction (H&I) strikes. By June 1970, the army had nearly eliminated H&I. The reasons for this shift inform the ongoing debate over American strategy during the Vietnam War. Although both General William C. Westmoreland and his successor, General Creighton W. Abrams, emphasized that poorly applied firepower could cause collateral damage, neither leader viewed H&I as inherently counterproductive. Indeed, both leaders responded to budgetary pressures, rather than concern over civilian casualties, when reducing H&I. Neither reduced H&I fire as part of a radical shift in strategy.