This lecture is held in the multipurpose rooms of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, 950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The building opens at 6:30 p.m.; the talk begins at 7:15 p.m., and the question period concludes around 8:30 p.m. All are welcome! For further information, please call (717) 245-3972.  February 6, 2020 (Thursday)   Brooks E. Kleber Memorial Reading in Military History with Dr. Michael E. Lynch.
           
           
Title: Edward M. Almond and the U.S. Army: From the 92nd Infantry Division to the X Corps
                 
 Lt. Gen. Edward M. Almond was one of the more controversial leaders in US Army history, but his story is more nuanced than the legends indicate. He commanded the 92nd Infantry Division—one of only two complete African American divisions formed during World War II—and led it through two years of training. He did so in a time when both the Army and American society were segregated, which presented training and stationing challenges. Almond lived by the adage that "units don’t fail, leaders do," but when the 92nd performed poorly in Italy in February 1945, he asserted that it was due to their inferiority as a race. The Almond legends highlight his shortcomings as a leader, but don’t address the maltreatment of all African American Soldiers by a separate but unequal society, and how those cultural mores affected Almond’s perspective. On Thursday, February 6, 2020, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center will host their very own Senior Historian Dr. Michael Lynch to speak about his new book, Edward M. Almond and the U.S. Army.
       
       
 The Korean War brought more command opportunity and controversy for Almond. He led the X Corps during the Inchon landing, and successfully attacked into North Korea, but the Chinese counteroffensive in November 1950 changed the nature of the war. The Almond legends address his tactical mistakes and heavy casualties at the Chosin Reservoir, but generally omit his successful evacuation of 100,000 American and Korean Soldiers and Marines, as well as 100,000 civilian refugees from Hungnam. Though he enjoyed more success after the evacuation, his abrasive personality and previous tactical mistakes overshadowed his accomplishments. Since his death, Almond's bigoted views have come to dominate his place in history and overshadow his military achievements. Lynch offers a thorough assessment of this flawed man, yet talented officer, by setting him in the context of his time, showing that he garnered respect for his aggressive leadership, courage in combat, and skill as a trainer.
       
       
 Dr. Michael E. Lynch is a senior historian and assistant professor at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His personal publications in addition to the present book include "The American Way of Post-War: Drawdowns and their Effects on Readiness" in Drawdown: The Liberty Dilemma (2016) and "'Not Due to Vicious Habits': Local Black Veterans' Struggle for Civil War Pensions" in Black History of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, 1860-1936 (2005). He holds a PhD (History) from Temple University, a Graduate Certificate (Public History) from Shippensburg University, an MA (History) from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a BA (English) from East Tennessee State University. He is also a retired U.S. Army officer and two-time Ironman triathlete. He lives in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, with his wife Machele, son Joseph (17), and daughter Elizabeth, who attends Penn State University-Harrisburg. His other daughter, 2LT Catherine Lynch, is an Engineer Officer at Fort Hood, Texas.

In the waning and bleak months of 1753, a young and naive George Washington trekked through the Ohio frontier on behalf of the British Crown to forge a diplomatic relationship with the French and Native Americans. Washington knew this mission was a considerable honor and an opportunity for advancement to a full commission in the British Army. On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 7:15 p.m., New York Times Best Selling author Mr. Peter Stark will present a lecture based on his newest work, Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father. Stark will discuss how Washington’s experiences in the Ohio Territory dealing with ill-supplied militia troops, adverse weather, and intense combat forged this young officer into the future father of a great nation.

In 1754, Britain's foreign frontier policy was to protect her North American holdings from encroaching French forts in the Ohio River Valley and Western Pennsylvania. Washington desired a commission as a British Officer, yet he never received the education offered to high-born Virginia men. He believed military merit was the path to attaining his goal. In this lecture, Mr. Stark will examine Washington's failed pursuit of a British officer's commission and how he actually gained experience in diplomacy, command of troops, and selfless service to evolve into the future leader of the American Revolution.

Mr. Peter Stark is a freelance writer and long-time correspondent for the New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Outside magazines. His previous published works include New York Times Best Selling book, Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire, which was a finalist for a PEN USA Literary Award. He also wrote the travel guide, The Last Empty Places: A Past and Present Journey through the Blank Spots on the American Map. Mr. Stark earned his B.A. in Anthropology and English at Dartmouth College and his Masters in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin.

On July 2, 1863, the once serene orchard of local Gettysburg farmer Joseph Sherfy was bathed in the blood that forever changed its name to the "Peach Orchard." Under the blazing sun and screaming shells that afternoon, the Confederate veterans of Lieutenant General James Longstreet charged Major General Daniel Sickles’ III Corps troops to occupy the critical high ground of the Peach Orchard. On Thursday, August 1, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA welcomed award-winning author James A. Hessler to speak about his latest book, co-written with Britt C. Isenberg, Gettysburg's Peach Orchard: Longstreet, Sickles, and the Bloody Fight for the "Commanding Ground" Along the Emmitsburg Road. Mr. Hessler discusses the critical importance of occupying the high ground at the Peach Orchard and the influence of that action on the tactical decisions of commanders throughout the famed Battle of Gettysburg.

On July 2, 1863, General Robert E. Lee's plan to attack the southern flank of the Federal line on Cemetery Ridge outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, crashed upon the strong point defenses of the Army of the Potomac's III Corps commander, Major General Daniel Sickles. Mr. Hessler will explore this ferocious attack and defense of the Peach Orchard based on extensive primary sources and his personal knowledge of the terrain. Hessler relates this microcosm of brutal fighting to the broader scope of the Battle of Gettysburg and explores the controversial action that nearly lost this great battle for the Union Army.

In late 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman brought his brand of "hard war" to the Georgia countryside between Atlanta and Savanah. The campaign decimated the agricultural and economic heart of the Confederacy and relied on Sherman's leadership. Known as "Uncle Billy" to his Soldiers, Sherman was a man of contradictions facing the contest of internal Army politics, fighting on the enemy's soil, and coming to terms with the total war he brought to the people of the South. On Thursday, May 2, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA will host author J.D. Dickey to speak about his latest book, Rising in Flames: Sherman's March and the Fight for a New Nation. Dickey will talk about the pressures and challenges Sherman faced, his experiences in the Western Theater, and ultimately how the Atlanta and Savanah Campaigns helped to secure his infamous reputation well into the current century.    

In this lecture, J.D. Dickey will look at how Sherman's skillful and often brilliant campaigns have been viewed by over 150 years of historiography and then delve deeper into his armies' monumental effect on the politics and society of America. Sherman emancipated slaves, demonstrated the war-fighting skills of new immigrants, and marshaled the efforts of women in thousands of Soldiers' aid societies. As Sherman himself was well aware, the social impact of his campaigns could not be divorced from his military strategy, and more than perhaps any Union general of the Civil War, he faced the scrutiny of an often hostile press corps and opposing politicians when he failed to deliver on either aspect. This lecture will discuss the many competitive pressures Sherman faced and how he managed to craft a winning strategy that owed much to his insight, daring, and perseverance.    

J.D. Dickey has been writing American History narratives for 20 years, concentrating on society and culture. His previous book, Empire of Mud, was a New York Times bestseller. Mr. Dickey has also written articles on a broad range of historical, political and travel-related topics for newspapers and magazines, and appeared in media from C-SPAN's Book TV to Public Radio International's program, The Takeaway, as well as lecturing for the New York Historical Society and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, among other organizations.

The early days of the American Revolution were wrought with bloodshed and a confusing mixture of political doubt and military uncertainty. The powder keg of rebellion wreaked havoc on the ability of political and military leaders of the young revolution to concentrate on the strategic and operational imperatives of creating a successful break from their mother country. On Thursday, February 7, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA will host author LTC Derek Beck as he speaks about his two books, Igniting the American Revolution:1773-1775 and The War Before Independence: 1775-1776. LTC Beck will look at the first years of the American Revolution from a strategic perspective, with special emphasis on organizing and equipping the young Continental Army amidst the tribulations American political and military leaders faced.

LTC Derek Beck's first book, Igniting the American Revolution: 1773-1775, covers the period from the Boston Tea Party to the first running battle which began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. His second book, which is a sequel to the first and entitled The War Before Independence: 1775-1776, resumes the story with the Battle of Bunker Hill through to Washington’s battle to retake Boston. In this talk, LTC Beck will summarize the timeline of events while highlighting some of the strategic issues faced by military commanders on both sides of the fight. He will also discuss the organizational and logistical issues the new Continental Army faced.

LTC Derek W. Beck is a historian, filmmaker, and an officer in the US Air Force Reserve. He is a current US Army War College resident student. His recent assignments include serving as a senior operations officer at the Joint Space Operations Center, Vandenberg AFB, California, and most recently at the Air Force Central Command Headquarters, Shaw AFB, South Carolina, where he supported operations in the Middle East. Derek's two books are on the American Revolution: Igniting the American Revolution: 1773-1775 (Sourcebooks, 2015) and its sequel The War Before Independence: 1775-1776 (Sourcebooks, 2016). LTC Beck holds a master's degree in engineering and management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the early hours of September 26, 1918, determined American Soldiers rushed into ‘No Man’s Land’ to play their part in the last great offensive of World War I. Experienced German Soldiers manned the formidable Hindenburg Defenses, and battled the American Doughboys in the Argonne Forest. On Thursday, August 2, 2018, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA will host Dr. Douglas Mastriano as he speaks about the Argonne Offensive of World War I, the topic his recent book Thunder in the Argonne: A New History of America’s Greatest Battle. Mastriano’s book offers an extensive walkthrough of a pivotal moment in American military history. The battle, waged from September 26, 1918 to the November 11 armistice, saw American forces suffer around 20,000 casualties per week. Despite the losses, the U.S. Army used the lessons learned in the muddy, bloody combat to reshape itself into a modern fighting force.

 Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch ordered the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to launch an offensive on the Argonne Forest defensive line in a bid to crush the Germans and end the Great War in late September 1918. In this lecture, Dr. Mastriano will recount the AEF's contribution to ending the war through the eyes of American, British, and French leaders and Soldiers. Mastriano will also present the perspective of German defenders at the Argonne Forest, woven with the tales of the heroism of American Soldiers such as Sergeant York and Major Charles Whittlesey of the Lost Battalion. Mastriano will provide frequent anecdotes from individual Doughboys, alongside discussion of the various levels of command decisions contributing to successes or failures in the bloody, yet decisive battle.

 Dr. Douglas Mastriano retired as a Colonel in the U.S. Army, serving as the Director of Theater Intelligence, Department of Military Strategy, Planning and Operation at the U.S. Army War College. His first duty station after commissioning in 1986 was on the Iron Curtain with the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment. Mastriano deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm, and again in Afghanistan where he commanded Soldiers from eighteen different nations. In 2014, Mastriano published his first book, the award-winning Alvin York: A New Biography of the Hero of the Argonne. Mastriano earned his PhD from the University of New Brunswick and continues to add to the scholarship on the operations of World War I.

Midway through the largest war the world had ever seen, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler lacked a single component to harness nuclear energy and surpass the Allies in creating the atomic bomb. The missing link was water chemically laden with the hydrogen isotope deuterium, also known as "heavy water." Heavy water was only produced in a solitary plant near Rjukan, Norway, known as Vemork and established by Norwegian professor of chemistry, Leif Tronstad. When British intelligence learned about the Führer's plans, they joined forces with the intrepid chemist, who had escaped Nazi control, to prevent the plant from completing Hitler's atomic bomb. On Thursday, November 2, 2017, Author Neal Bascomb will bring a talk to the United States Army Heritage and Education Center about the Allies' harrowing, last-minute attempt to destroy the Vemork plant in 1942.

Bascomb's lecture will provide further depth to the intense historical and scientific research he used to shape his book, The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb. Bascomb will breathe life into the fascinating characters at the center of the real-life drama to stop Hitler's most strategic weapon plans. Using untapped primary source material to tell the stories of the soldiers, scientists, and citizens involved with the episode, he will including his own expedition to Norway, where he retraced the steps of the Norwegian saboteurs scaling their way up the 600-foot snow covered cliff to Vemork in the Østlandet Region of Norway.

Upon graduating from Miami University with a dual degree in Economics and English Literature, Bascomb spent several years in Europe as a journalist. With the experience gained in Europe, he worked as an editor for St. Martin's Press before beginning to write full time. Some of his other noted literary works are The Perfect Mile (New York Times best seller), Hunting Eichmann (international bestseller), Red Mutiny (won the United States Maritime Literature Award), The New Cool (optioned by major producer Scott Rudin for film), Higher (featured in a History Channel documentary), and One More Step (New York Times bestseller). Bascomb's works maintain a common theme of bringing voices to ordinary individuals, who happened to engage and act in something extraordinary.

The shocking Japanese attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii resulted in the devastating loss of more than two thousand Soldiers and citizens. Even as Americans reeled from the blow, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his military advisors were already planning a retaliatory counter-attack on Japan. On Thursday, August 3, 2017, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will host author James M. Scott for a lecture using themes from his latest publication, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor. Scott will shed new light on the details of Roosevelt's counterattack and the brave airmen who risked everything to give their country hope in the coming world war.

The American counterattack on Tokyo, known commonly as the "Doolittle Raid," provided a desperately needed morale boost to Americans still reeling from the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor. The mission, commanded by pilot Jimmy Doolittle, occurred only four months after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, offering the American people a sense of immediate justice. In his lecture, Scott will discuss the triumphs of the Doolittle Raid and the consequent hope the mission provided to the badly shaken American population. He will also examine the effect the tactically ineffective raid had on the confidence the Japanese people held in their leadership's ability to stop the eventual American onslaught. Finally, Scott will bring to the fore the Soldiers responsible for carrying out the near-suicidal mission to strike fear in Japanese hearts.

James M. Scott is the acclaimed author of three books on American naval history, including The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan and The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship. His most recent work, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Throughout his career, Scott has been awarded with multiple honors - he is the recipient of the McClatchy Company President's Award, and was named the 2003 Journalist of the Year by the South Carolina Press Association, as well as the 2005 Young Alumnus of the Year by his alma mater, Wofford College. He is also a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Scott is currently writing a book on the Battle for Manila.

With breakers smashing into the darkened hulk of Corregidor Island behind them, the passengers and crew of Motor Torpedo Boat PT-41 strained their eyes, simultaneously looking for the Japanese Navy and holding down the onset of sea-sickness. For one man on the boat, the "retching" feeling was not necessarily caused by the choppy seas. In General Douglas MacArthur's case, the tight knot in his stomach was due to the men and women he was leaving behind in the Philippine Islands on that cold night in March 1942. General of the Army MacArthur was one of World War II's most controversial figures; by the end of the war, he was a leader of both stunning triumphs and terrible defeats. Only days after his harrowing escape from the Japanese on PT-41, he announced to a crowd in Australia, "I came through, and I shall return!" On Thursday, May 4, 2017 at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) will host Mr. Walter Borneman to present his lecture entitled, "Macarthur at War: World War II in the Pacific." Borneman will discuss the war from a MacArthur-centric point of view, paying particular attention to the myths and realities surrounding his method of command.

Prior to the raid on Pearl Harbor, the career of Douglas MacArthur was unknown to most. By the end of 1942, however, General MacArthur was a national hero. In his lecture, Mr. Borneman will discuss MacArthur's relationships with the President and other senior commanders, his work on developing combined operations, and the men he chose for his staff. MacArthur, and the war he fought, will be brought to life, illustrating why Douglas MacArthur remains one of the most intriguing military leaders of the twentieth century.

Mr. Walter Borneman is a prolific author with undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from Western State College of Colorado (1974, 1975), and a law degree from the University of Denver (1981). Mr. Borneman has won acclaim for many of his books, including Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land (HarperCollins, 2003); 1812: The War That Forged a Nation (HarperCollins, 2004); The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America (HarperCollins, 2006); Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America (Random House, 2008); and the national bestseller, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King (Little, Brown, 2012).

In 1779, General George Washington ordered one of his primary subordinates, Major General John Sullivan, to take "the war home to the enemy and break their morale." Sullivan marched to destroy over 40 Iroquois towns allied with the British, including their stores, weapons, and fighting men. The American Continentals struggled through the dense woodland of central New York, fighting loyalists and Indian warriors at every turn, falling deep into a morass of savagery and a holocaust of burning villages. On Thursday, February 2, 2017, Dr. Wayne Lee of the University of North Carolina, will give a lecture entitled, "Speaking Through Skulls," to explore how death-related objects reflect the way Europeans, Native Americans, and Colonists related to the violence around them throughout the American Revolution, including those involved in Sullivan's Campaign.

Dr. Lee discovered the topic of understanding reactions to death through studying artifacts while researching Continental Army Soldiers' reactions to a "Golgotha" - a field of skulls and bones - during their 1779 campaign against the Iroquois. When he set out to understand what such objects related to death might have meant to those Soldiers, he discovered a surprising variety of magical beliefs, spiritual connections, and even an ancient Latin curse skull. Although we all die, how we think about death and the afterlife has profound implications for the way we respond to violence and how we use violence ourselves. In his lecture, Dr. Lee will explore how those Soldiers responded to death with their own forms of violence, and also how objects related to death served as means of communication, motivation, and spiritual power in eighteenth-century North America.

Dr. Wayne Lee is the Dowd Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina. He specializes in early modern military history and teaches military history from a full global perspective at the undergraduate and graduate level. In addition to his work in the classroom, he works with archaeology projects and recently published, Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), from a project in the mountains of northern Albania.

As World War II expanded into the largest conflagration the earth had ever seen, the U.S. Army realized the need for specialized psychological warfare tactics. The job description was extensive: "prisoner and civilian interrogation, broadcasting, loudspeaker appeals, leaflet and newspapers production, broadcasting, and technical support." The mission was intense: weaken the morale of the Third Reich and then help Germany transition to an era free from Nazi oppression. The American Soldiers selected to man the Army's "Mobile Broadcasting Companies," during the Second World War, however, were uniquely qualified to fight on a different battlefield from their rifle-bearing brethren - a war of hearts, minds, and intelligence. From their training at Camp Sharpe in Pennsylvania, the "Psycho Boys" worked in secret to undermine Nazi propaganda and provide American Forces in combat with another weapon to destroy the fascist juggernaut. On Thursday, November 3, 2016, Dr. Beverly Eddy of Dickinson College will present a lecture based on her book, Camp Sharpe's "Psycho Boys": From Gettysburg to Germany, at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. She will follow five of the German refugees-turned-American Soldiers from the time they joined the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies at Camp Sharpe, to D-Day and the fight for Europe, through the liberation of the concentration camps. She will explore how the Psycho Boys’ nerve and inventiveness led to the desertion of thousands of German troops, and how the Psycho Boys played a vital role as mediators between the American and German forces as the war ground to an end.

Dr. Beverley Eddy is Professor Emerita of German at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She has authored numerous books, as well as other works, including Camp Sharpe's "Psycho Boys": From Gettysburg to Germany, and Abbeys, Ghosts, and Castles: A Guide to the Folk History of the Middle Rhine. Dr. Eddy holds a Bachelors of Arts in Speech and Theatre from the College of Wooster, Ohio, and graduated from Indiana University with both a Masters of Arts in German Literature and a Ph.D. in German Literature, Linguistics, and Scandinavian Literature. She also has courses in Norwegian at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universität in Germany and the Universitetet i Oslo in Norway.

Deep in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam, a routine mission for veteran U.S. Army troops turned into a botched operation with combat casualties, due to poor leadership in the chain of command. A firefight with North Vietnamese troops erupted from communication errors and leader confusion, and at the center, was a young Army officer, groomed for command and assigned to lead the doomed platoon on its fateful reconnaissance mission. The young officer and his band of survivors have since lived with the graphic memories of the action and the grueling months that followed, resulting in a lifetime of severe trauma, guilt, grief, and anger. Mr. Chuck Newhall will present a lecture based on his experiences as that young officer, and the years after, as part of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center's Brooks E. Kleber Memorial Lecture Series. The presentation will be based on his memoir, Fearful Odds: A Memoir of Vietnam and Its Aftermath.

After decades of experience managing the long-term effects of trauma and with the support of his family, Mr. Chuck Newhall has successfully come to terms with his past and the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Mr. Newhall's story is one of perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds and offers a guiding hand to others who are facing challenges on the battlefield, in the boardroom, or back at home.

Mr. Charles W. "Chuck" Newhall III served in Vietnam as commander of an independent infantry platoon, earning decorations including the Silver Star, Bronze Star V (1st OLC), and Purple Heart. After his tour in Southeast Asia, he earned a Master's in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, and an honors degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Newhall is the co-founder of New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and has been instrumental in financing the dramatic changes in the health care and pharmaceutical/biotechnology industries. Mr. Newhall is currently working in an advisory capacity for Greensprings Associates, writing and travelling extensively for continuing education.

Established in 1980, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has become one of the primary actors in America's war efforts. JSOC turned the tide against al-Qaida in Iraq, killed Bin Laden and Zarqawi, rescued Captain Phillips, and captured Saddam Hussein. In his recent book, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, Mr. Sean Naylor chronicles the history of the JSOC, and how they became the premier "go to" weapon in the War on Terrorism. During his lecture at USAHEC on Thursday, 5 May, Mr. Naylor will detail the development of JSOC's training through its 36 year history to include highlighting the stories of notable individuals, such as GEN Stanley McChrystal. He will answer whether the United States' main effort in a war can be secret while describing what is lost and gained by relying on JSOC in our current conflicts. Organizations under JSOC's control include special operations units such as Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, and the 75th Ranger Regiment among other secret units. These JSOC units have participated in nearly every military operation since its founding including Desert One in Iran, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, The Balkans, and most recently, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sean D. Naylor, is the author of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, the New York Times bestseller, Not A Good Day To Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, and co-authored Clash of Chariots - The Greatest Tank Battles. Mr. Naylor received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University in 1988 and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the same institution in 1990. In 1987 he traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan as a freelance reporter covering the Afghan Mujahedeen, meeting and conversing with Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Hamid Karzai, among others. His 2011 series of articles for Army Times about the United States’ secret war in the Horn of Africa won a Military Reporters and Editors prize, while his coverage of 2002's Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan earned him the White House Correspondents Association’s 2003 Edgar A. Poe award for excellence in reporting an issue of regional or national importance.

In 191 days of fierce combat on the brutal front lines of World War I's bloodiest trenches, one of the American Expeditionary Force's units performed above and beyond the call of duty. The unit lost 280 men killed, but never gave up an inch of ground or lost a single man captured. Back home, the unit received accolades and the nom de guerre, "The Harlem Hellfighters," despite the prevailing racism of the day and the fact that the entire unit was black. In the trenches, however, the unit, self-identified as "The Harlem Rattlers," still dealt with racism and bigotry despite their proven prowess in combat. Dr. Jeffrey Sammons of New York University, and Dr. John Morrow, Jr. of the University of Georgia expand on the story of the 369th Infantry Regiment and take it beyond the injustices on the field of battle in their book, Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality. In this lecture, they will go even further, connecting the African American Soldiers' struggle against the Germans and their own command to the wider context of racism in the Army and how the Harlem Rattlers set the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Jeffrey Sammons has served as a professor of history at New York University since 1989. Before joining the faculty at NYU, he taught at the University of Houston, Princeton University, and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Sammons also authored a critically acclaimed book titled Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. Dr. John H. Morrow, Jr. is a professor at the University of Georgia. Dr. Morrow served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1993 to 1995, before returning to full-time teaching and research. Dr. Morrow received the Department of the Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in 2005 for his work as a visiting professor at the United States Military Academy, and is a frequent speaker at numerous Army and Department of Defense schools and organizations. Dr. Morrow's most famous work, The Great War in the Air: Military Aircraft from 1909-1921 (1993) is considered the definitive study of air power in World War I.

"Joined in Common Cause," was the motto adopted by the 28 cadets remaining enrolled at the United States Military Academy at West Point the spring of 1862. Half of their brothers in arms, among the secession of their home states from the Union they swore to protect and the roiling turmoil of war, had resigned and taken their new-found military skills south. Yet these students of military science remained to march in the long gray line to serve their country in the coming years of bloodshed as the leaders down on the front, in the blood and guts of their Soldiers, commanding charges and bringing unions back to the nation.

Brian R. McEnany spent years in archives across the country writing his book, For Brotherhood and Duty: The Civil War History of the West Point Class of 1862. In this lecture-version of his research, he will focus on sixteen young cadets, as they struggle through their classes while watching the country fall to violent pieces around them. Following these twelve Federal and four Confederate officers onto the battlefield, he uses first person accounts, as well as numerous other primary sources, to give life to their personal alliances, demons, and struggles. Each account not only sheds light on the junior leadership during such battles as Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, but also reflects on the senior leadership, national strategy, and the soul of the armies contesting the rights of the Federal government versus the states.

LTC (Ret.) McEnany is a 1962 graduate of the United States Military Academy and served as an artillery officer in combat in Vietnam, as well as in garrison in Korea, Germany, and in the U.S. He retired as an operations research analyst with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In his retirement, he has written several historical articles about West Point during the Civil War.

The Armistice Agreement of March 1953 ended the Korean War, but the discord between the North and South remains unresolved. The lack of a formal peace treaty at the end of the war led to numerous military, political, and economic tensions on both sides. In light of events such as the North Korean raid on the presidential Blue House in Seoul in 1968, its attack on present-day Myanmar in 1983, naval conflicts along the Yellow Sea in the early 2000s, nuclear threats and trade suspension, the endurance of the division between North and South Korea is clear. American, Chinese, and Russian competition for both control within the Korean Peninsula and a hand in decisions concerning aid exacerbate the divide further. For example, the U.S. accommodated the South Korean regime after the war but more recently attempted to aid North Korea in exchange for weapons concessions since the 1990s. North Korean nuclear threats in particular led to U.S. economic assistance, which Dr. Sheila Miyoshi Jager argues North Korea depends on for survival.

Jager is the author of the 2013 book, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea, listed as one of three Best Books of 2013 on Asia and the Pacific in Foreign Affairs, and will focus her upcoming lecture at the United States Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) on the continuing Korean divide. The book devotes a large space to the Korean War itself and brings readers through its consequences to the present. Jager discusses the power motivations of the U.S. and China to enter the war, and how their roles, among other nations, impact current the division on the peninsula. Jager's predictions about the end of the Korean conflict are offered as well.Dr. Sheila Miyoshi Jager is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. Jager's authorial focus is contemporary Korean politics and history, as shown in her previous publications, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (2003) on the effects of gendered tropes on Korean modernity, and Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (2007) about the major reassessment East Asian states' underwent following the end of the Cold War. Jager received her PhD from the University of Chicago, and now directs the East Asian program at Oberlin College in addition to teaching. Dr. Sheila Miyoshi Jager resides with her husband and children in Ohio.

As the war in Germany ended, the trials of Lutheran minister Henry Gerecke were just beginning. Gerecke was a small town minister who, at age 50, volunteered his spiritual support to the U.S. Army during World War II. Gerecke's most challenging assignment was to provide religious services to the twenty-one Nazi prisoners awaiting their day of justice in front of a military tribunal for crimes against humanity. The U.S. Army asked Gerecke to pray with and give religious guidance to the disciples of Hitler, even after he had personally seen the horrors of the German concentration camps. Gerecke came away from the ordeal with a new understanding of morality, sin, empathy, and the limits of forgiveness. Mr. Tim Townsend will speak about the tribulations this Midwest preacher faced externally and internally as he struggled to accept and execute his mission. The compelling story of military service, spiritual service, and personal reflection show how Gerecke’s experiences tested his faith how he influenced the Nuremberg trails.

Tim Townsend, formerly the religion reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, holds master's degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Divinity School. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. In 2005, 2011, and 2013, he was named Religion Reporter of the Year by the Religion Newswriters Association, the highest honor on the "God beat" at American newspapers. He recently joined the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project as a senior writer and editor in Washington, D.C.

In 1675 and 1676, the Wampanoag Indian alliance violently pushed back against encroaching Europeans, devastating much of New England in the conflict historians have dubbed, "King Philip's War." One colony, however, emerged from the bloody conflict relatively unscathed. With the exception of some remote settlements, Connecticut, unlike the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, did not experience the carnage of this blood-soaked contest. Major Jason W. Warren broadens the history of King Philip's War in his book, Connecticut Unscathed: Victory in the Great Narragansett War, 1675-1676, by reveling a new perspective on this chapter of Colonial America and the critical role of the Narragansetts, the largest Indian tribe in southern New England at the time. Warren explains how Connecticut's comparatively conservative Indian policies were key in making an alliance with the otherwise hostile Mohegans and Pequots possible.

Major Jason Warren graduated from West Point in 1999 and received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Military Police Corps. He served as a Platoon Leader and Logistics Officer with the 10th Military Police Battalion, 10th Mountain Division. Warren received his doctorate in history from Ohio State University and served as an Assistant Professor of History at West Point. In 2012 and 2013, Major Warren served as a strategist and training officer for the 3rd Infantry Division in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Currently, he is a strategist and the Director, Concepts and Doctrine at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership and Development.

In 1939, on the cusp of war, one unsung American hero risked everything to spy on the rising Nazi regime. Like many American officials off the front line during World War II, Colonel Truman Smith's work as a military attaché in Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1939 is not well known. Smith's work during the interwar years provided the United States crucial information about the Third Reich. The first American official to interview Hitler in 1922, he continued to keep tabs on Adolf Hitler's government. To maintain his intelligence network when the war started, he developed and utilized a wide and loyal network of German friends. The network remained a key to understanding Nazi-era Berlin.

In his latest book, Exposing the Third Reich: Colonel Truman Smith in Hitler's Germany, Colonel (Ret.) Henry Gole presents an essential look at one of the many unsung heroes of World War II against the backdrop of the tempestuous history of Germany in the mid-20th century. Gole explores both Col. Smith's fascinating career gathering key intelligence behind the scenes in Hitler's Germany, and Smith's professional career and personal life before and during the Third Reich. Gole goes on to recount the story of this virtually unknown U.S. Army officer and his key role in the development of U.S military planning before and during World War II. Gole's work is a great contribution to the historiography of U.S.-German relations and American military thinking about Germany's strengthening positing in the years before the Second World War.

Henry G. Gole., USA (Ret.), Ph.D., a former Green Beret, fought in Korea and served two tours in Vietnam as a Special Forces officer. He has taught at West Point, the U.S. Army War College, the University of Maryland, Dickinson College, and Franklin & Marshall College. Some of his published work includes, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940 and Soldiering: Observations from Korea, Vietnam, and Safe Places.

For years prior to the globe-shattering events of World War II, relations between Japan and China simmered until the brutal Japanese invasion in 1937. The Chinese fought and suffered until the Allies joined the war against Japan in 1941. The conflict catapulted China to prominence on the world stage as Chinese fighters helped to defeat the Imperial Japanese Army. Eight years of fighting and the daunting task of reconstruction left the Chinese Nationalists weak, opening the door for the Red Army, whose victory over the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War resulted in a Communist China. Richard B. Frank will give a lecture discussing new evidence accumulated during his research for his upcoming Asia-Pacific War trilogy. The new information, uncovered by scholars in the past two decades, reshapes the conventional narrative of the “War of Resistance” as China’s role in World War II. In his lecture, “China in World War II: New History; New Perspectives for Today,” Mr. Frank will discuss a far more nuanced account of the competitors for power within China and restore appreciation for the massive human and economic costs of the eight year struggle against Japan.

Richard B. Frank is a 1969 graduate of the University of Missouri. Following graduation, Mr. Frank spent four years in the United States Army, during which time he completed a tour of duty in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division. He went on to graduate from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976. In 1990, he published his first book, Guadalcanal, and completed his second work, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, in 1999. In 2007, he completed MacArthur as part of the Palgrave Great Generals series. Mr. Frank is the winner of both the William Greene Award and Harry S. Truman Book Award. He is currently working on a narrative history trilogy about the Asia-Pacific War, 1937-1945.

In his latest work, Bill Mauldin: A Life Upfront, Dr. Todd DePastino examines the life of World War II serviceman Bill Mauldin, known throughout the military and civilian worlds as the creator of cartoons depicting the everyday struggles of G.I.’s. In many ways, the enlisted cartoonist was a rogue, standing up to the Army system and even the beloved and aggressive General Patton. Despite his hard look at the Army, General Eisenhower recognized the pressure valve his art provided and issued a directive stating Mauldin’s cartoons were not to be interfered with. Among the 22 year old’s greatest creations were the characters Willie and Joe, instantly recognizable as the personifications of the average American on the frontlines during World War II. Called “A deeply felt, vivacious and wonderfully illustrated biography,” Dr. DePastino lifts the veil on the troubled life of a man who struggled to deal with almost overnight fame and the guilt that came with gaining something positive from such a destructive and devastating war.

Dr. Todd DePastino holds a Ph.D. in American History from Yale University and teaches at Waynesburg University. The winner of the 2008 Lucas-Hathaway Award for Teaching Excellence, Dr. DePastino also authored several books, including Commissioned in Battle: A Combat Infantryman in the Pacific, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America, and The Road by Jack London. Dr. DePastino wrote his dissertation on the history of homelessness and turned it into a book, winning the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship award for his efforts. Bill Mauldin: A Life Upfront is an Eisner Award finalist and took the Sperber Prize for the best biography of a major media figure.

Greatly debated amongst military leaders, strategists, and academics, the counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 has faced criticism from all sides. In his newest book, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War (Yale University Press), Dr. Peter Mansoor provides a behind the scenes look at the most pivotal phase of the Iraq War, the 2007-8 "surge." Through his use of newly declassified information, interviews, unpublished manuscripts, and his personal experience, Mansoor explains the development and implementation of COIN policy during America's bloody years occupying Iraq. Surge covers all perspectives of the conflict: from politicians in Washington D.C. to Soldiers on the streets of Baghdad. In his lecture, Dr. Mansoor will examine COIN policy from its inception through its execution and draw upon his own experiences as a battalion commander in Iraq to analyze the application of COIN doctrine in historical contexts and in current operations.

Dr. Peter Mansoor currently serves as the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair in Military History at Ohio State University and is a retired Colonel with the U.S. Army. During a military career spanning twenty-six years, he held distinguished positions and honors such as Valedictorian of his graduating class at West Point, a variety of command and staff positions throughout the U.S., Europe, and Middle East, and service with the Joint Staff as the special assistant to the Director for Strategic Plans and Policy. His military career culminated with his service in Iraq as the executive officer to General David Petraeus, Commanding General of Multi-National Force-Iraq, during the period of the surge in 2007-2008. In addition to his most recent book, Mansoor has published Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq (Yale University Press) and GI Offensive in Europe: the Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941 - 1945 (University Press of Kansas).

As the Great War raged across Europe, America faced a wide range of challenges, including developing and training junior and non-commissioned offers (NCOs). Advances in warfare technology and training techniques evolved at an astounding rate, forcing the U.S. Army to maintain equivalence with, or even surpass, the professionalism in the armies of her allies and enemies. The U.S. rapidly adapted the Army's training methods to create the leaders the growing Army needed. In his book, The School of Hard Knocks: Combat Leadership in the American Expeditionary Forces (Texas A&M University Press), Dr. Richard Shawn Faulkner highlights the flaws and successes of the U.S. Army in preparing junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) for their positions on the front lines. With increased responsibility and a lack of necessary training, many Captains, Lieutenants, and Sergeants did not understand the skills required to excel at their deadly profession. Not until they experienced combat did these leaders emerge with the skill sets necessary to lead men into battle. Dr. Faulkner's lecture will review the flaws of officer training efforts during World War I and will closely examine the leaders, and the men they commanded, as we hope to glean important lessons about military leadership today.
Dr. Faulkner is an Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Previously, he taught American History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Prior to earning his Ph.D. in American History from Kansas State University, Dr. Faulkner served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army. While with the Army, he served twenty-three years as an armor officer during which he commanded a tank company during Operation Desert Storm.

Scholars have characterized the early decades of the Cold War as an era of rising militarism in the United States, but most Americans continued to identify themselves as fundamentally anti-militaristic. Much of the popular culture in the decades following World War II reflected and reinforced a more nuanced anti-militarist perception of America. This study explores military images in television, film and comic books from 1945 to 1970 to understand how popular culture made it possible for the public to embrace more militaristic national security policies yet continue to perceive themselves as deeply anti-militaristic.

Lisa Mundey received her doctoral degree from Kansas State University and is currently an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. She is interested in modern American military history, particularly during the Cold War, and in the military's relationship with the American people. In addition to her book, American Militarism and Anti-Militarism in Popular Media, she has published "Citizen-Soldiers or Warriors: Language for a Democracy," in Semiotics 2008, and "The Civilianization of a Nuclear Weapon Effects Test: Operation ARGUS" is forthcoming in the Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. She has served on the editorial advisory board for ABC-Clio's The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: A Social, Political, and Military History . As a historian with the U.S. Army's Center for Military History, she has researched the U.S. Army's recent history in Afghanistan.(2010).

To those who have heard of him, Fox Conner's name is synonymous with mentorship. He is the "grey eminence" within the Army whose influence helped to shape the careers of George Patton, George Marshall, and, most notably, President Eisenhower. What little is known about Conner comes primarily through stories about his relationship with Eisenhower, but little is known about Fox Conner himself. After a career that spanned four decades, this master strategist ordered all of his papers and journals burned. Because of this, most of what is known about Conner is oblique, as a passing reference in the memoirs of other great men. This book combines existing scholarship with long-forgotten references and unpublished original sources to achieve a more comprehensive picture of this dedicated public servant. The portrait that emerges provides a four-step model for developing strategic leaders that still holds true today. First and foremost, Conner was a master of his craft. Secondly, he recognized and recruited talented subordinates. Then he encouraged and challenged these proteges to develop their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. Finally he wasn't afraid to break the rules of the organization to do it. Here, for the first time ever, is the story of Major General Fox Conner. Grey Eminence received a Silver Medal for Best Non-fiction Biography of 2011 by the Military Writers Society of America. Major Edward Cox holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and master's degrees in public administration and international relations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. From 2008 to 2011, he was an assistant professor of American Politics, Public Policy and Strategy in the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy. He taught courses in American politics, American foreign policy, and civil-military relations. Cox is a Foreign Area Officer, currently assigned as International Engagements Officer, U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii.

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of U.S. involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the reader from the marshy swamps of the Mekong Delta to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Using never-before-seen archival materials from the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as materials from other archives around the world, Nguyen explores the politics of war-making and peace-making not only from the North Vietnamese perspective but also from that of South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, presenting a uniquely international portrait. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is an associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from Yale University, and has held fellowships from Stanford, Harvard and Yale universities. Her book, Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press.

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. It became known as "the surge." Among those called to carry it out were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry, the battalion nicknamed the "Rangers." About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them. Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home — forever changed. The chronicle of their tour is gripping, devastating, and deeply illuminating for anyone with an interest in human conflict. With The Good Soldiers, David Finkel has produced an eternal story — not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time. In this lecture, Finkel will describe his experiences as an embedded journalist with the battalion, and will be joined by the unit's former commander, COL Ralph Kauzlarich.

On the eve of the Civil War, the Regular Army of the United States was small, dispersed, untrained for large-scale operations, and woefully unprepared to suppress the rebellion of the secessionist states. Although the Regular Army expanded significantly during the war, reaching a peak of nearly 45,000 officers and men by the beginning of 1864, it was necessary to form an enormous army of state volunteers that overshadowed the Regulars and bore most of the combat burden.
Nevertheless, the Regular Army played several critically important roles, notably providing leaders and exemplars for the Volunteers, bolstering Union forces in both attack and defense, and managing the administration and logistics of the entire Union Army. In this first comprehensive study of the Regular Army in the Civil War, Newell and Shrader focus primarily on the organizational history of the Regular Army and how it changed as an institution during the war, to emerge afterward as a reorganized and permanently expanded force. Clayton R.
Newell and Charles R. Shrader both finished their military careers as chief of the Historical Services Division at the U.S. Army Center of Military History and are now independent scholars and historical consultants. Newell is the author or editor of several books, including The Framework of Operational Warfare and Lee vs. McClellan: The First Campaign. Shrader has also written or edited a number of books, including Amicicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in Modern War, and The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1991-1994.

The 100th Infantry ("Century”) Division spent the last six months of WW II in southern France and western Germany as part of the U. S. Seventh Army; thus it shared the historical neglect accorded to those Allied units that failed to serve farther north under Bradley, Patton, and Montgomery. Formed in September 1942 at Fort Jackson, SC, and later transferred to Fort Bragg, NC, the division--consisting of the 397th, 398th, and 399th Infantry Regiments, four field artillery battalions, and a host of support units--lost thousands of recruits as replacements for units that had suffered heavily in Europe and the Pacific. Backfills included U. S. Army Air Forces trainees, Special Services troops, and washed-out members of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), high-IQ youngsters who had been studying engineering, military medicine, and foreign languages. The rather motley composition of the command, a supplemental training program necessitated by the personnel turnover, and the division's frequent participation in combat simulations to impress visiting dignitaries and businessmen gave the Century a reputation as a "show" or "permanent training" division. After finally moving to France in October 1944, however, the division proved itself in battle quickly and decisively. In November it penetrated a defensive line in the High Vosges Mountains that had been the unattained objective of attackers since the first century BC. In December it helped capture works along the vaunted Maginot Line, and the following month was the only element of Seventh Army to hold its position during Operation North Wind, Hitler's follow-up to the counteroffensive that precipitated the Battle of the Bulge. In March 1945 the Century overwhelmed the remaining Maginot forts and captured the citadel of Bitche, another position assaulted by many armies over the centuries but never carried. Crossing the Rhine River, in nine days of house-to-house fighting the self-proclaimed "Sons of Bitche" cleared rubble-filled Heilbronn, Germany, whose defenders--a Waffen-SS division, several Panzer units, a mix of regular troops, and Volkssturm that included 12-year-old Hitler Youth, 70-year-old grandfathers, and female snipers--waged a horrific last stand one month before war's end.

Military commanders turn tactics into strategic victory by means of "operational art," the knowledge and creative imagination commanders and staff employ in designing, synchronizing, and conducting battles and major operations to achieve strategic goals. Until now, historians of military theory have generally agreed that modern operational art developed between the first and second world wars in Germany and the Soviet Union, whose armies were supposedly the innovators and greatest practitioners of operational art. Some have even claimed that U.S. forces struggled in World War II because their commanders had no systematic understanding of operational art. Michael R. Matheny believes previous studies have not appreciated the evolution of U.S. military thinking at the operational level. Although they may rightly point to the U.S. Army's failure to modernize or develop a sophisticated combined arms doctrine during the interwar years, they focus too much on technology or tactical doctrine. In his revealing account, Matheny shows that it was at the operational level, particularly in mounting joint and combined operations, that senior American commanders excelled—and laid a foundation for their country's victory in World War II. Matheny draws on archival materials from military educational institutions, planning documents, and operational records of World War II campaigns. Examining in detail the development of American operational art as land, sea, and air power matured in the twentieth century, he shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, U.S. war colleges educated and trained commanders during the interwar years specifically for the operational art they employed in World War II. After 1945, in the face of nuclear warfare, the American military largely abandoned operational art. But since the Vietnam War, U.S. commanders have found operational art increasingly important as they pursue modern global and expeditionary warfare requiring coordination among multiple service branches and the forces of allied countries.

In the five years or so after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army Center of Military History sponsored a project in which half a dozen senior former South Vietnamese generals wrote lengthy monographs on various aspects of the war as seen from their perspective. There were seventeen such monographs in all, some by individual authors, others by two or more of the group collaborating. Among the authors were General Cao Van Vien, former Chief of the Joint General Staff; Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, former 1st ARVN Division and I Corps commander; and Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, the top logistician. Topics included tactics, logistics, advisors, pacification, leadership, intelligence, and all the major battles (Tet 1968, Cambodian Incursion, Lam Son 719, Easter 1972). In the aggregate this was very valuable material, but the CMH publication of it left something to be desired and distribution was limited.Dr. Lewis Sorley has annotated a compendium of excerpts from the monographs to produce a valuable contribution to the now under-represented South Vietnamese retrospective view of the war and as such will be useful both to scholars of the war and to those who served in it or have an interest in its history.

Many histories of the Vietnam War suffer from a one-sided perspective due to lack of access to Vietnamese source materials. Dr. Lewis Sorley corrects that problem with his edited volume of interviews with some of the senior South Vietnamese generals. Conducted in the 1970s, these interviews received limited publication and then languished in obscurity. Dr. Sorley re-discovered them and has annotated them to provide additional context. This interview, conducted by the U.S. Army Military History Institute's Dr. Conrad Crane, reveals some of Sorley's journey of discovery of these documents leading to eventual publication. It provides insights into the historian's craft, as well as additional information not contained in the accompanying lecture.

WWII in the words of B-17 pilot Ralph Lee Minker, his parents and sisters, captured in an extraordinary collection of over 800 letters written between February 1943 and September, 1945. Spread over the landscape of the war years, the Minker family letters tell a unique story of courage in the air and resolve on the homefront.

When Lieutenant Matt Gallagher first arrived in Iraq in 2007, it was all too surreal. In the midst of a shift in U.S. policy from lethal operations to counterinsurgency, he encountered a world where nothing was as it appeared. Friends were enemies, reconciliation was war, roads were bombs, and silence was deadly. But it was all too real, and there was nothing left to do except learn to "embrace the suck" -- and write about it. Matt Gallagher started a blog that quickly became a popular hit. Read by thousands of soldiers who found in it their war, the real war, the blog covered everything from grim stories about Bon Jovi cassettes mistaken for IEDs to the daily experiences of the Gravediggers - the code name for members of Gallagher's platoon. When the blog was shut down in June 2008 by the U.S. Army, questions were raised in the halls of Congress, and a few eyebrows were raised at the Pentagon.

For too long the eastern front in World War I has remained, in Winston Churchill’s estimation, “the unknown war.” This book examines one of the critical campaigns of the war on the eastern front. With Austria-Hungary threatened by a possible Russian advance through the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary, Germany came to her ally’s rescue. The German Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to commit a new army in an offensive to counter this threat. Headed by August von Mackensen and his chief of staff Hans von Seeckt, the German Eleventh Army, assisted by the Austro-Hungarian Third and Fourth Armies, shattered the Russian defenses between Gorlice and Tarnow. Advancing through the hole created, Mackensen’s forces outflanked the Russian forces in the Carpathians, compelling their retreat. The offensive was steadily extended until both the fortress of Przemysl and the capital of Austrian Galicia, Lemberg, were back in the hands of the Central Powers. Turning north, “Mackensen’s Phalanx,” in concert with other German and Austro-Hungarian forces, was able to overrun Russian Poland by the end of August 1915. Dinardo argues that the Germans were able to accomplish this by a combination of normal infantry tactics combined with the judicious use of heavy artillery, aided by aerial reconnaissance and improved means of communication. DiNardo also suggests that the campaign marked the emergence of August von Mackensen as one of Germany’s most able field commanders. Breakthrough is the first full English language study of one of the most remarkable campaigns of World War I.
Richard L. DiNardo has a B.A. in History in 1979 from Bernard Baruch College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY); and a M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY. DiNardo taught German History and Russian History at Saint Peter’s College, Jersey City, New Jersey. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Air War College at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, from 1994-1996. DiNardo assumed his present position with the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in January 1998. His first book was Mechanised Juggernaut or Military Anachronism?: Horses and the German Army in World War II, and he published Germany and the Axis Powers: From Coalition to Collapse, in 2005. He is also the author of Germany’s Panzer Arm. DiNardo co-edited The Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815, and James Longstreet: The Man, the Soldier, the Controversy, and has published numerous scholarly articles. This lecture is based on his latest book, Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign 1915, due out in June, 2010.

The Vietnam war continues to be the focus of intense controversy. While most people—liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, historians, pundits, and citizens alike—agree that the United States did not win the war, a vocal minority argue the opposite or debate why victory never came, attributing the quagmire to everything from domestic politics to the press. The military never lost a battle; how then did it not win the war?
Stepping back from this overheated fray and drawing upon several decades of research John Prados takes a fresh look at both the war and the debates about it to produce a reassessment of one of our nation's most tragic episodes. He weaves together multiple perspectives across an epic-sized canvas where domestic politics, ideologies, nations, and militaries all collide.
Prados patiently pieces back together the events and moments, from the end of World War II until our dispiriting departure from Vietnam in 1975, that reveal a war that now appears to have been truly unwinnable—due to opportunities lost, missed, ignored, or refused. He shows how—from the Truman through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations—American leaders consistently ignored or misunderstood the realities in Southeast Asia and passed up every opportunity to avoid war in the first place or avoid becoming ever more mired in it after it began. Highlighting especially Ike's seminal and long-lasting influence on our Vietnam policy, Prados demonstrates how and why our range of choices narrowed with each passing year, while our decision-making continued to be distorted by Cold War politics and fundamental misperceptions about the culture, psychology, goals, and abilities of both our enemies and our allies in Vietnam.
John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. His numerous books include “Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975” (2009) on which this lecture is based; The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War, and most recently Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA .

U.S. armed forces have been present in Korea since the armistice of July 1953, but consideration of the reduction and even withdrawal of those forces to a token level has been almost constantly under consideration in Washington. Why is this so? Why has further reduction not occurred? What does treatment of the issue in the past suggest about the future U.S. force presence in Korea? William Stueck received his PhD in History from Brown University. He teaches at the University of Georgia, where he is currently Distinguished Research Professor of History. In 1995 he was a senior research scholar at Hanguk University of foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea.

The 9/11 attack on the Pentagon is the second-worst terrorist strike in U.S. history. The authors of Pentagon 9/11 drew upon over 1,300 oral history interviews, as well as a plethora of published and unpublished sources, to craft the first book detailing the impact of this disastrous event. Highlighting the devastating the airliner crash, the efforts of building occupants to save one another, the emergency response of firefighters, police and medical staffs, and the building operations personnel, the book concludes with a description of the work of the Pentagon Family Assistance Center. Dr. Papadopoulos, a principal co-author of this work, will present the main themes of the book illustrated with pictures derived from its research, and employ some of the more vivid segments to illustrate what transpired at that momentous time.

Before he became a politician Winston Churchill was first a soldier who had a lifelong obsession with all things military that not only shaped the man and war leader he later became but played a major role in the Allied victory in World War II. From Cuba to the Northwest Frontier, the Sudan, South Africa and World War I, Churchill's extraordinary military experiences were the training ground for the great role he was destined to play as Britain's war leader during the Second World War. Carlo D'Este examines Winston Churchill through the prism of his military service as both a soldier and a warlord: a descendant of Marlborough who, despite never having risen above the rank of lieutenant colonel, came eventually at age sixty-five to direct Britain's military campaigns as prime minister and defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito for the democracies. Warlord is the definitive chronicle of Churchill's crucial role as one of the world's most renowned military leaders, from his early adventures on the North-West Frontier of colonial India and the Boer War through his extraordinary service in both World Wars. D'Este paints a masterful, unsparing portrait of one of history's most fascinating and influential leaders during what was arguably the most crucial event in human history.

On September 26, 1918, more than one million American soldiers prepared to assault the German-held Meuse-Argonne region of France. Their commander, General John J. Pershing, believed in the superiority of American "guts" over barbed wire, machine guns, massed artillery, and poison gas. In thirty-six hours, he said, the Doughboys would crack the German defenses and open the road to Berlin. Six weeks later, after savage fighting across swamps, forests, towns, and rugged hills, the battle finally ended with the signing of the armistice that concluded the First World War. The Meuse-Argonne had fallen, at the cost of more than 120,000 American casualties, including 26,000 dead. In the bloodiest battle the country had ever seen, an entire generation of young Americans had been transformed forever. To Conquer Hell is gripping in its accounts of combat, studded with portraits of remarkable soldiers like Pershing, Harry Truman, George Patton, and Alvin York, and authoritative in presenting the big picture. It is military history of the first rank and, incredibly, the first in-depth account of this fascinating and important battle.

The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenberg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war's end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps have received scant attention from historians. Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force-more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that comprised II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the bloody battlefields of Europe. Despite cultural differences, General Pershing's misgivings, and the contrast between American eagerness and British exhaustion, the untested Yanks benefited from the experience of battle-toughened Tommies. Their combined forces contributed much to the Allied victory.

Alexander Jefferson was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. A Detroit native, Jefferson enlisted in 1942, trained at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, became a second lieutenant in 1943, and joined one of the most decorated fighting units in the War, flying P51s with their legendary--and feared--"red tails." Based in Italy, Jefferson flew bomber escort missions over southern Europe before being shot down in France in 1944. Captured, he spent the rest of the war in Luftwaffe prison camps in Sagan and Moosberg, Germany. An unvarnished look at life behind barbed wire--and what it meant to be an African-American pilot in enemy hands. It is also a look at race and democracy in America through the eyes of a patriot who fought to protect the promise of freedom.

On April 22, 2021 at 6:30PM EST, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania welcomed author and scholar Mr. D.M. Giangreco as he presented his lecture, Berlin 1945: The Halt on the Elbe and the Redeployment to the Pacific. In this lecture, Mr. Giangreco discusses the steep increase in U.S. losses during the "casualty surge" of 1944-45 and its relationship to "the Berlin decision" to halt the U.S. Army's drive into Germany instead of allowing them to push on to the German capital. Manpower needs for the planned invasion of Japan and the complex redeployment to the Pacific Theater principally drove this decision and had implications for the decision to use the atomic bomb. Mr. Giangreco highlights the ethical discussions and reasoning behind these strategic decisions, their long-lasting impact, and historical significance.
D. M. Giangreco served over 20 years as an editor for Military Review at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth. He later served as the Editor and Publications Director at the Foreign Military Studies Office. An award-winning author of fourteen books on military and sociopolitical subjects, he has also written extensively for numerous national and international publications as well as news agencies. Among his awards is the Society for Military History's Moncado Prize for "Casualty Projections for the US Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications" in the Journal of Military History.

On March 11, 2021 at 6:30PM EST, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania welcomed author and scholar Dr. Reed Bonadonna as he presented his lecture, How to Think Like an Officer: The Officer as Visionary. In this lecture, Dr. Bonadonna argued that the military officer corps functions as a collective repository of knowledge of the nature of armed conflict, causes and consequences, and of peace and victory. An officers' education and experience, combined with reflection, can equip them for visionary thought, a form of thinking that can enhance their role as a serving officer and as a citizen. He discussed a variety of facets of this topic, including careful consideration of the past and future, death and the officer, the "ethical turn," the problem of political engagement, the officer's dreams, and peace and conflict studies. He also examined the ways in which history and literature provide examples of the officer-as-visionary.

Dr. Reed Bonadonna received his doctorate in English from Boston University and completed continuing education in leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantry officer from 1979 to 1988, and was deployed for peacekeeping operations in Lebanon. As a Marine Corps reservist, he served 20 years as a company commander, operations officer, liaison to the Naval War College Wargaming Center, and as a field historian in Iraq. He has taught at several institutions, including as adjunct for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, where he was director of ethics and character development. He is a senior fellow for the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and the author of numerous works on military leadership and ethics.

On February 18, 2021, at 6:30 PM EST, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in coordination with the Army Heritage Center Foundation, welcomed Dr. David Danks, who presented a live-streamed lecture via ZOOM that explored the critically important topic of military applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ethical questions that arise with the idea of "responsible AI."  He addressed the increasing focus on ethical & responsible AI, particularly in defense and security contexts. He cited, as an example, that many organizations (including the U.S. Department of Defense) now have principles for ethical & responsible use of AI. In this talk, Dr. Danks provided a short history of military AI ethics discussions and looked carefully at the nature of "responsible AI," with a particular focus on military uses. He argued that we should focus on the processes and practices that we use to design, develop, and deploy AI-enabled systems, rather than fine-grained technical details of the systems themselves.

Dr. David Danks is L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy & Psychology, and Head of the Department of Philosophy, at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the Chief Ethicist of Carnegie Mellon University's Block Center for Technology & Society; co-director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity (IDeaS); and SGE for the Ethics Line of Effort of the National Security Commission on AI. Dr. Danks has examined the ethical, psychological, and policy issues around AI and robotics in transportation, healthcare, privacy, and security. He is the recipient of a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award, as well as an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He received an A.B. in Philosophy from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of California, San Diego.

Amid the stink of blood, the moans of wounded, and the detritus of battle, a Civil War battlefield surgeon, sawed through the shattered remnant of a Soldier’s leg. As he tossed the removed appendage into the nearby pit of other discarded limbs, another victim of the Battle of Second Manassas was placed on his grizzly operating table. On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will host Superintendent Brandon Bies of the Manassas National Battlefield Park to present a talk entitled "Broken Lives and Shattered Bones: Discovering a Field Hospital at Manassas Battlefield." Brandon Bies will discuss the 2015 excavation of a Civil War "Limb Pit" discovered on the grounds of the Second Battle of Bull Run. The archaeological find sheds new light on how battlefield surgery took place during the American Civil War

At Manassas National Battlefield Park in 2014, archeologists monitoring a utility trench excavation observed bone fragments scattered across the soil. Park officials ordered further archaeological excavations in 2015, resulting in the discovery of the remains of a Union field hospital surgeon’s pit dating to the Battle of Second Manassas. Archeologists recovered the nearly-complete remains of two Union soldiers, along with eleven amputated arms and legs. The unprecedented discovery is the first of its kind on a Civil War battlefield and has greatly expanded archaeologists' understanding of the decisions made by surgeons on who could, and could not, be saved.

Superintendent Brandon Bies of the Manassas National Battlefield Park has managed the park since March 2017. Prior to this, he served as the legislative coordinator for the National Capital Region of the National Park Service. Bies was also the Site Manager of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, where he oversaw planning for a $12.35M rehabilitation made possible by philanthropist David Rubenstein. Bies began his work in national parks as an archeologist at Monocacy National Battlefield, and was the Cultural Resources Specialist for the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Site Manager of Great Falls Park. He holds bachelor's degrees in American History and Anthropology and a master's degree in Applied Anthropology.

In mid-January 1777, Lord Cornwallis of the invincible British Army retreated from the New Jersey countryside after two years of epic struggle against up-start American rebels. From the bloodshed on Lexington Common to the defeats at Trenton and Princeton, the American Revolution raged throughout the new United States. On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 7:15PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center will welcome Historian and Pulitzer Prize Winner Mr. Rick Atkinson to present the General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley Memorial Lecture. He will discuss the first book in his upcoming Revolution Trilogy, entitled The British Are Coming. Atkinson combines personal stories, with the savage narrative of the first twenty-one brutal months of the Revolutionary War to give a new perspective on the fight for independence.

In his new book, Atkinson describes the events and personal stories of the men and women fighting for control of the North American continent. He combines in-depth research on the politics of British sovereignty from the British Royal Archives, with the hard-scrabble personal accounts of American fighters, from the lowest private to the most powerful generals. This first installment of a new trilogy on the American Revolution covers the causes of the war from the initial fighting at Lexington and Concord, General George Washington’s defeats near Boston and New York City, the triumph and tragedy of the campaigns in Canada, and concludes with Washington's victories at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton.

Mr. Rick Atkinson received his Masters of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago and worked as an editor and correspondent for the Washington Post for twenty-five years. Atkinson earned the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2003 for An Army at Dawn, his first book in The Liberation Trilogy. He followed with two New York Times Best Sellers, The Day of Battle and The Guns at Last Light. Atkinson received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for National Reporting, and has published numerous award-winning books spanning topics such as West Point and the war in Iraq.

On the night of August 4, 1964, two American warships clashed with torpedo boats in the dark waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The "attack" rapidly pushed President Lyndon Johnson to escalate the tensions between the United States and the communist government of North Vietnam. On Wednesday, August 21, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will host Dr. Edwin Moïse of Clemson University to present a talk based on the new edition of his book, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Dr. Moise will discuss the fateful events of August 4, 1964 by reviewing the extensive primary sources and personal interviews he used, thus concluding no attack on the American ships actually took place.

By August of 1964, the United States government had already sent over 23,000 Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and Sailors to Vietnam as advisors and security for the South Vietnamese armed forces. On August 4th, the rising tensions came to a head when American Naval forces were allegedly attacked by marauding North Vietnamese torpedo boats. On the 5th, American forces retaliated with airstrikes against military targets in North Vietnam, leading to a rapid escalation of tensions. The information surrounding the events, later called "The Gulf of Tonkin Incident," led the U.S. Congress and the president to put forth a resolution increasing the American presence to more than 180,000 troops. Looking at the most current evidence and personal interviews, Dr. Edwin Moise asks, was there really an attack in the first place? Was the escalation based on mistaken intelligence, or was it an excuse for increased American participation in the war?
Dr. Edwin E. Moise is a professor of history at Clemson University, and earned his B.A. in History from Harvard University. He earned his M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan. Dr. Moise has published multiple books on the Vietnam War and other Asian topics, including a text book on Modern Chinese History in 2013, The A to Z of the Vietnam War in 2005, and The Myths of Tet: The Most Misunderstood Event of the Vietnam War in 2017. Dr. Moise began his academic career as a political and economic historian of China and Vietnam, but has recently specialized in the Vietnam War. Dr. Moïse has spoken for numerous universities, societies, and museums over the past twenty years.

Along the steep cliffs and thick, mazelike hedgerows of Normandy, American Soldiers broke Hitler's "Fortress Europe" and flooded France with a new sense of freedom. The American public was glued to their newspapers and radios, awaiting updates from intrepid war correspondents covering the invasion from the front lines. On Wednesday, July 17, 2019 at 7:15PM the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center will welcome acclaimed local historian and Penn State Altoona Professor Jared Frederick, author of Dispatches of D-Day: A People's History of the Normandy Invasion to discuss, in vivid detail, the reality of Operation Overlord. Frederick will tell the story of D-Day, not from the perspective of historians or politicians, but rather through the voices of those who were there.

Using hundreds of reports, personal letters, and newspaper articles, Mr. Frederick will chronicle how the "great crusade" transformed the world. His sources span personal letters of Soldiers scaling the steep cliffs under vicious fire to the brave newspaper and radio correspondents who struggled to record the day's harrowing events for an apprehensive public. Included with the accounts of Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen, Dispatches of D-Day also explores the stories of clergy, civil rights advocates, and even children involved in the attack on the Atlantic Wall.

Jared Frederick received his undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Master’s in History from West Virginia University. He is an avid Civil War and World War II living historian and has served as a seasonal park ranger at both Gettysburg National Military Park and Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. Frederick has appeared on Turner Classic Movies, PBS, C-Span, and Pennsylvania Cable Network to educate a wide public audience on the history of Pennsylvania, the Civil War, and World War II. He is currently an Instructor of History at Penn State Altoona in addition to his role as the president of the non-profit Blair County Historical Society.

"I shall return!" General Douglas MacArthur spoke those words into the dreary darkness in 1942 when he fled the Japanese invasion of the Philippine islands. Almost three years later, as U.S. forces worked to secure a route to invade the Japanese home islands, MacArthur made good on his promise. Standing in his way was a Japanese force bent on fighting to the death to prevent the Americans from retaking the Philippines. On April 17th, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will host renowned author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mr. James M. Scott who will present a talk based on his newest book, Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manilla. Mr. Scott will discuss the 29-day battle and the U.S. military's brutal struggle against the "Tiger of Malaya," General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

After the fall of the Philippines, the conquering Japanese forces systematically subjugated the islands, turning life into a daily struggle for American Soldiers in prisoner of war camps and daily atrocities for the Filipino people. The U.S. Navy, Marines, and Army gradually turned the tide in the Pacific, and MacArthur was prepared to make good on his promise to liberate the population and Soldiers trapped under the Japanese boot heel. Scott's lecture will describe the political, military, and personal decisions made during the Battle of Manilla by General MacArthur and his nemesis, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, leading to the near destruction of the Filipino capital city and over 100,000 civilian deaths.

James M. Scott is the acclaimed author of three books on American naval history, including The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan and The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship. His recent work, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Throughout his career, Scott has been awarded with multiple honors - he is the recipient of the McClatchy Company President's Award, and was named the 2003 Journalist of the Year by the South Carolina Press Association, as well as the 2005 Young Alumnus of the Year by his alma mater, Wofford College. He is also a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Late in January 1945, through the snowy forests and farms of the Ardennes, the cream of Hitler's remaining army struggled through a muddy retreat, defeated in the final offensive the Wehrmacht attempted during World War II. The stubborn American victory over Hitler's "Autumn Mist" attack was by no means a foregone conclusion when the German command launched the attack a month earlier. Actions by the U. S. Army's 1st, 2nd, and 99th divisions from the very start of the offensive stymied the push of the 12th SS Panzer Division on the roads to the essential port of Antwerp. On March 27th, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will host author and scholar Mr. Steven Zaloga who will present a talk based on his newest book, Smashing Hitler's Panzers: The Defeat of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division during the Battle of The Bulge. Mr. Zaloga will argue that the defeat of the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Division in the opening hours and days of the offensive were essential to the over-all failure of the German Ardennes Campaign.

Mr. Steven Zaloga will outline his argument that the German offensive through the Ardennes Forest, known as the "Battle of the Bulge," hinged on the first days of the attack. The only Americans to hold their section of the line capitalized on German planning mistakes pushing back one of the primary components of the attack, the 12th SS Panzer Division. The failure of the 12th in the battles of Krinkelterwald, Krinkelter-Rocherath, and Dom Butenbach against portions of three U.S. Army infantry divisions was essential to the German defeat, well before the fighting at Bastogne.

Mr. Steven Zaloga received his BA in history from Union College in New York, his MA in history from Columbia University, and completed his graduate work at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He has been involved in defense studies since 1978 and has been a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, VA since 1992. He has served as adjunct staff with the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses and is the author of numerous books on military history and military technology, including extensive publications on tank and armored vehicle development, as well as World War II military history. Some of his recent books include The Devil’s Garden, about the German defense of Omaha Beach on D-Day, and Patton vs. the Panzers about the Lorraine campaign in September 1944.

The Vietnam War remains one of the world's most contentious conflicts, with the reverberations of its blood-soaked defiance against American interventionism echoing to the present day. On Wednesday, October 17, 2018, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) will host Sir Max Hastings, author of The Secret War, to present the General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley Memorial Lecture. In this lecture, based on his new book, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, Sir Max Hastings critiques the methods, mistakes, and devastation caused by both sides during the war.

From France's crippling defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to the forced reunification between North and South in 1975, parts of the former French colony of Vietnam pushed back even the greatest powers of the world. The decades of war inflicted a huge material and human price on the Western powers, but the greatest cost inflicted by the war was suffered by the Vietnamese people themselves. Both North and South Vietnamese were forced to endure tyrannical and incompetent governments. For every American who died there, forty Vietnamese perished. When the U.S. pulled out of South Vietnam, the entire nation fell to Communist rule. The world remembers America’s excesses, immortalized in gritty photography and the anti-war movement, yet forgets the vicious acts of terrorism carried out against the Vietnamese people by the Communists. Sir Max Hastings spent three years collecting accounts from both sides of the war and gathered the testimonies of people from many walks of life, both soldier and civilian. Giving no undue praise to either side, Hastings masterfully depicts the cost of misused martial power in complex cultural and political issues that reject simple answers.

Sir Max Hastings is an author, journalist, and once editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph. He has published twenty-six books, and has reported on eleven conflicts as foreign correspondent for the BBC, most notably Vietnam and the Falklands. In 1982, he was Journalist of the Year and Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards, as well as Editor of the Year in 1988. In 2012 the Pritzker Military Library of Chicago presented him its $100,000 Literary Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior in Canton, Ohio when 4,500 miles away Japanese Zeros screamed over Pearl Harbor. Along with thousands of young men and women, Lavin responded by joining the U.S. Army as soon as he turned 18. His decision led him from Ohio to Europe with the 84th Infantry Division, through battle at the front lines, and finally to victory and Occupation. On Wednesday, July 18, 2018, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania will host Carl Lavin’s son, Mr. Frank Lavin, as he gives a lecture based on his book, Home Front to Battlefront: An Ohio Teenager in World War II. Mr. Lavin will tell his father's story, garnered from personal letters and recollections, interviews with Carl Lavin’s brothers in arms, and formal histories.

Carl Lavin's story is a reflection of the experiences of most of the young men and women who were thrust into the horrors of combat in Europe in World War II. Carl Lavin's papers and recollections cover his reaction to the experiences of military life, from intense combat to the idiocies of military bureaucracy. Frank Lavin's unfettered access to Carl's life story adds a richness to the scholarship on World War II.

Frank Lavin is the CEO and founder of the e-commerce firm Export Now. He earned a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service (Georgetown); an M.S. in Chinese Language and History (Georgetown); an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (Johns Hopkins); and an M.B.A. in Finance at the Wharton School (Pennsylvania). Working for the U.S. Government, Lavin served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore from 2001 to 2005 and as Under Secretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce from 2005-2007. Previously, Lavin served in the George H.W. Bush and Reagan Administrations, working in the Department of Commerce, Department of State, National Security Council, and White House. Lavin served as Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs from 1987-89. He is currently a columnist for Forbes.com and has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other periodicals.

"War is a morally treacherous enterprise." So says war correspondent and author, David Wood. Through years of experience embedded with U.S. military units in Somalia, Southwest Asia and the Persian Gulf, Panama, Haiti, and the Balkans, Wood found the nature of war often overcomes a Soldier's reliance on their leaders, training, equipment, and their own internal sense of "what's right." This can lead to a sometimes devastating result: Moral Injury. On Wednesday, April 18, 2018, at 7:15pm, David Wood will present a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania based on his new book, What Have We Done? The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars. He will explore the sometimes impossible choices our Soldiers are presented with, the moral injury that often results, and the impact such injury has on our military and our society in America.

With the entrance of America into World War I, young Arthur Clifford Kimber put down his books at Stanford University and enlisted in the Allied cause on the Western Front. Joining the American Field Service as an ambulance volunteer, Kimber was tasked with carrying the first official U.S. Government flag to France. On Wednesday, February 21, 2018, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA will host Mr. Patrick Gregory as he speaks about Kimber, the subject of his recent book An American on the Western Front, co-authored with Elizabeth Nurser. The remarkable story of Kimber is a microcosm of the patriotism and fervor felt by the young men and women called to serve their country. Kimber tirelessly worked his way from ambulance volunteer in the front-line trenches in an American unit serving with the French army to joining the fledgling U.S. Air Service. He trained with French instructors and worked his way from ferrying aircraft to the front lines to piloting a fighter in combat with both the French and American Air Services. Mr. Gregory will use the letters Kimber wrote to his family to tell the story of a young man whose hopes and dreams for a life after the war were suddenly ended when he was killed in action weeks before the Armistice.

Patrick Gregory and Elizabeth Nurser compiled and edited the letters of American Soldier Arthur Clifford Kimber to tell the story of his experiences, exploits, and the tragedy he saw firsthand on the killing fields of France during World War I. The letters create a stark and detailed story of a young man who finds himself forced into the heroism shown by countless Soldiers across the largest war the world had ever seen. From insight on the war preparation in New York City to personal contact with none other than Theodore Roosevelt himself, Kimber depicts the horror of war mixed with his own integration into the grind of a combat zone.

Mr. Patrick Gregory has spent most of his career in journalism, covering world events for the BBC for over 30 years, before moving on to the job of News Editor and then Managing Editor for the BBC's Political Programmes Department. He also produced several documentaries for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4, before authoring An American on the Western Front. His co-author, Elizabeth Nurser, is Arthur Kimber's niece. She moved from California, USA, to Cambridge, UK, in the 1950s as a Fulbright Scholar. She worked as a copy editor and editor for Cambridge University Press, Melbourne University Press, and Faber & Faber, before opening her own publishing house.

In 1972, as the Paris Peace Accords drew to a conclusion, young William Reeder, Jr. was a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to an AH-1G Cobra Attack Helicopter in Vietnam. For many servicemen and women, the Vietnam War was over for the U.S. military. Reeder was afraid he missed the opportunity to see combat as a Cobra gunship pilot. The North Vietnamese had other plans, however, and the Easter Offensive changed Reeder's life forever. On Wednesday, November 15, 2017, Dr. William S. Reeder will present a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, describing how fighting in the spring of 1972 led to his capture while defending the American base at Ben Het in Vietnam, and how he survived the horrifying ordeal of being a POW in Vietnam.

Dr. William Reeder was the last U.S. Army prisoner captured in the Vietnam War, and his story is one of courage, hope, and survival. In 1971, Reeder was already an accomplished pilot, having flown secret missions deep into enemy territory on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot flying a Cobra Attack Helicopter, but believed the Americans had beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything to the South Vietnamese Army. As the 1972 Easter Offensive raged several months into his second tour, he was providing support to forces at the besieged base of Ben Het, when his chopper went down in a flaming corkscrew. Reeder survived the crash, and evaded the enemy for three days, before finally being captured and held in jungle cages for weeks. After which, he endured a grueling forced march on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, costing the lives of seven of the POWs in his small group of twenty-seven.

Dr. William Reeder is a training and leader development consultant living in the Pacific Northwest. He spends parts of each year teaching at the NATO SOF School at Chievres Air Base, Belgium. He is a retired colonel and a thirty-year Army veteran, with two tours of duty in Vietnam. He has in excess of three thousand hours of flight time, including more than one thousand hours in combat. He is the recipient of the Silver Star for gallantry, two Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism, and three Bronze Star Medals. In 1977, he was named Army Aviator of the Year and was inducted into the U.S. Army Aviation Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2017, he was chosen as the Naval Institute's "Author of the Year."

George Armstrong Custer proved himself a highly capable commander from the battlefields of the American Civil War through the hills of Texas, to his final moments on the Great Plains. On Wednesday, October 18, 2017, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) will host Mr. T.J. Stiles, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, as he presents a lecture entitled, "The Custer Conundrum." The lecture will examine the complicated nature of leadership principals in the U.S. Army through the lens of the peculiar combination of Custer's skills as a combat leader and failings as a regimental field commander.

Brevet Major General of U.S. Volunteers during the Civil War and later, a Lieutenant Colonel in the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, George A. Custer was a highly skilled tactician and inspiring figure in battle, but failed to manage his men well in non-kinetic settings, whether in Texas in 1865-66 or on the Great Plains over the next decade. He also developed a problematic reputation within the army that complicated his relationship with his superiors, who often assumed the worst about him. Custer's career sheds light on the U.S. Army itself, and its role in the transitional time during the push west across the continent in the Post-Civil War years. The Army represented the leading edge of modernization in the United States, introducing finely articulated organization, professionalization, and technical expertise into an individualistic country that was transforming into a corporate, organizational economy and society. Custer was both a highly trained professional-a technical expert-and a romantic individualist; his volatile nature emphasizes the broader themes of this transition. His self-destructive tendencies lead to a story, which highlights the peculiar demands the Army faced in conflict with Native peoples on the Great Plains.

Mr. Stiles is an award-winning author and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2010 and for history in 2016. He graduated from Carleton College with distinction in history and received his Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University. He worked alongside top American historians at Oxford University Press, before starting his extensive writing career publishing, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America.

As each Soldier in the Civil War tramped for endless miles down dusty roads, maneuvered through soggy, slimy mud, or charged into the powder-streaked faces of their enemies on countless battlefields across the warring Nation, they each had an individual reason to continue fighting. Today, we can explore the innermost thoughts and feelings of these Soldiers through the letters they wrote home. On Wednesday, September 20, 2017, Dr. L. Bao Bui of Ball State University will present a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to talk about Civil War letters and their impact on our understanding of Soldiers. This lecture marks a major milestone for the USAHEC and military history - the start of the 50th year conducting the Perspective in Military History Lecture Series.

The Civil War was the first major war in the Postal Age of mass communications and mass literacy. The war saw millions of Americans take to letter writing as the means of maintaining an informational and emotional link to loved ones at home. Through their letters, Civil War Soldiers articulated their feelings, opinions, and observations about their experiences. These letters made it clear that these men fought for more than cause, country, or their brothers in arms. In their hearts and on paper, they nurtured the desire to both win the war, and to perform honorably and known to the public as having done so. Yet in their private letters, these same Soldiers articulated their vulnerabilities, their admissions of doubt and despair, their innermost emotional life, and their revulsion at war and its horrors. For the men who penned these letters, sentimentality or lack of control was considered effeminate or a sign of masculine weakness. Behind the seal of closed envelopes, Civil War Soldiers lived a life they could not share publically, and Soldiers were left to their own devices to maintain the security of their private thoughts, and by extension, their social reputation and public standing.

Dr. L. Bao Bui received his doctorate in history in 2016 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and his dissertation examined the culture of letter-writing during the Civil War. At the University of Illinois and at Ball State University, he has taught courses on American history, foreign policy, military history, human rights, film and social media, food politics, and gender studies. He is a past recipient of the USAHEC's General Matthew B. Ridgway Grant.

No epoch in American history is more deeply shrouded in myth than the Indian Wars of the American West. According to author Peter Cozzens, the past 125 years of American popular history, academic scholarship, film, and fiction have depicted the era as a struggle between absolute good and evil, changing the roles of heroes and villains to accommodate the shifting national consciousness. On Wednesday, July 19, 2017, Cozzens will present a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to illuminate the wars and the U.S. Army's role in the destruction of one culture enabling another to flourish.

As the great Civil War ended, the expanding United States relied on the Army to both spearhead westward expansion and protect the industry and culture frontiersmen brought with them. The push west sparked a three-decade war with the Native Americans, who sought to defend their traditions, their lands, and their lives. In his talk, which will be enhanced with a vividly illustrated PowerPoint, Cozzens will examine and debunk the most pervasive and pernicious of the myths surrounding the Indian Wars. He also will address the nature and limitations of the U.S. Army during the era of the Indian Wars, a period he believes represents the nadir of the American military establishment.

Peter Cozzens has written or edited seventeen books about the American West and the American Civil War. His writings include This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga and The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga, among others. His most recent book, The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West, published in 2016, was chosen by Smithsonian Magazine as one of the top ten history books of 2016, and received the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History. Aside from writing, Cozzens has also served as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, and is a recipient of the American Foreign Service Association’s highest award. Prior to his work with the Department of State, Cozzens served as an Army officer for four years.

By the late 1950s, the Cold War threatened every American with world-ending thermonuclear annihilation. To help stem the bone-chilling fear gripping the country in the wake of fears over Soviet aggression, the U.S. Army pushed a radically new method of warfare into the public consciousness. The Army claimed it could, and would, limit the atomic warfare to the battlefield by revolutionizing its equipment, organization, and training practices. The Army showed the world their new face, placing large parts of the Army in buffer zones like Germany and Korea, testing portable nuclear weapons, and recruiting young, motivated, professional Soldiers. The Army accented its effort by recruiting none other than Elvis Presley, demonstrating that even this icon of youth culture was not too cool to wear the Army's uniform. On Wednesday, May 17, 2017, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center will present a lecture from Dr. Brian M. Linn to tell the story of Elvis and the Cold War's Soldiers.

To reinforce the changes the Army was making to how it presented its reaction to the nuclear threat, they drafted Elvis Presley in 1958. Elvis quickly became a model Soldier in an army facing the unprecedented challenge of building a fighting force for the Atomic Age. The Army of the 1950s was America's most racially and economically egalitarian institution, providing millions with education and opportunity. With the cooperation of both the Army and the media, military service became part of this generation’s identity, a common theme in television, music, and movies. Dr. Linn traces the origins, evolution, and ultimate failure of the Army's attempt to transform itself for atomic warfare, revealing its vital role in the making of Cold War America.

Brian McAllister Linn is the Ralph R. Thomas Professor in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He is the author of five books on American military history, including Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940 (1997). The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (2000), The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War (2007), and Elvis's Army: GIs and the Atomic Battlefield (2016). He has published widely and given numerous international lectures on the American Way of War, counterinsurgency, and the U.S. Army. He has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Birmingham, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship, and the Bosch Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. In 1999-2000, he was the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor at the U.S. Army War College.

Every day, no matter the environment or specific duties, U.S. Army officers are bombarded with overwhelming demands for their units to accomplish tasks, and sometimes tasks are far beyond their capacity. According to a study from the U.S. Army War College's (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), many Army officers allow their own honor and integrity to slip in the face of long-term exposure to overwhelming demands. On April 19, 2017, the authors of the study, Dr. Leonard Wong and Dr. Stephen Gerras, will make the case that a U.S. Army Officer's signature and word have, in many cases, lost the luster of true honor and integrity. Their lecture begins at 7:15 PM at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center and will outline the issue of untruthfulness among officers, and discuss the steps the Army should take to affect the culture.

In February 2015, Drs. Wong and Gerras published an extensive study outlining the deception occurring at all levels of the Army's leadership in response to the pressure officers are placed under to report success in their unit, even when success does not necessarily exist. In response to their study, the authors offer solutions to change the culture in the Army and the military as a whole. In this lecture, the authors will outline the issue, offer solutions, and review the impact their 2015 study had on the U.S. Army in the two years since publication.

Dr. Leonard Wong is a research professor for SSI at the USAWC, focusing on the human and organizational dimensions of the military. He is a retired Army officer, whose career includes teaching leadership at West Point and serving as an analyst for the Chief of Staff of the Army. Dr. Wong’s work has been highlighted in multiple news media outlets, and he holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.

Dr. Stephen Gerras is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the USAWC. His 25 year Army career included commanding a light infantry company and a transportation battalion, teaching leadership at West Point, and serving as the Chief of Operations and Agreements for the Office of Defense Cooperation in Ankara, Turkey. He holds a B.S. from USMA, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Penn State University.

As Ronald Reagan traveled across the United States campaigning for the highest office in the land, the Governor of California possessed an ace in his hand unmatched by his opponents: the ear and advice of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Reagan was in constant contact with Ike, following his advice at every turn and going so far as to base his entire 1966 campaign on his mentor's own successful run years before. Eisenhower's astute view of internal Washington politics, foreign affairs, military matters, and the swirling pool of primary rivals, provided his protégé the fuel he needed to learn, and eventually win, the war of words. In his latest book, Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan's Emergence as a World Statesman, Dr. Gene Kopelson outlines the story of Reagan's first presidential bid with an in-depth look behind the scenes. On Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Dr. Kopelson will give a lecture titled, "Ike and Dutch: Mentor, Protégé, and Common Sense," to delve deeper into the relationship between Reagan and his mentor and how it not only shaped Reagan's future campaigns, but his presidency, as well.

In his lecture at the USAHEC, Dr. Kopelson will use never-before-tapped audio clips, interviews with the original 1968 campaign staff, Eisenhower's personal diary, and material straight from personal correspondence to show how Eisenhower influenced Reagan's politics and eventually, his far-reaching presidential policies. From Reagan's hawkish views on Vietnam to his perspective on the Arab-Israeli situation, his groundbreaking steps with Gorbachev and the Soviets to nuclear defense, Eisenhower and Reagan had a close and personal relationship which changed America's future.


Dr. Gene Kopelson is a cancer physician and former director of one of Yale University's cancer centers. He is a prominent speaker on radiation oncology and an accomplished scholar and historian. Dr. Kopelson is the president of the New England Chapter of the Theodore Roosevelt Association and a holocaust educator. His book has received rave reviews from former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, numerous Reagan and Eisenhower historians, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, the New York Post, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and Newsmax. Kopelson has spoken at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, the Stanford University Hoover Institution's combined lecture with The Heritage Foundation, The Institute for World Politics, and the Discovery Institute.

In the spring of 1941, the Red Army high command sat poised to strike the German occupied Polish hinterland in a daring push to alter the course of the Second World War. Meanwhile, the German General Staff was likewise preparing for a blitzkrieg against the Russian western territories with the final prize of Moscow itself. The Russian commanders never carried out their plan to strike the Germans, however, and the German's treacherous onslaught sprang forth first, resulting in the devastation of much of western Russia and contributing to the final defeat of the Nazi regime. The plan to invade Poland, though never carried out, offers fascinating insight into Soviet military thinking at the highest levels in response to a rapidly changing political-military situation.

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, Dr. Richard W. Harrison will give a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania based on his years of research on the Russian plan to invade Nazi-occupied Poland. He will break down the Russian plan and tie his conclusions to todays' preemptive warfare theory. The lecture will open with a brief review of previous Soviet mobilization plans as they developed in 1938 and throughout World War II. The early plans were defensive in nature and tasked the Red Army, due to its slower pace of mobilization, to absorb the initial enemy attack, followed by a counterstroke to pulverize the Nazi menace. The idea of a massive counteroffensive gradually evolved into the preemptive attack plan of 1941, carrying the high command's desire to push through southeastern Poland, followed by an advance into Germany. The lecture will examine the forces allotted for the preemptive attack, the route of their projected advance, and the interplay of personalities among the plan's authors and Stalin. Dr. Harrison will conclude with a discussion of the strategy's utility and the lingering consequences of some of its component parts during the first weeks of the war.

Dr. Richard W. Harrison received his Ph.D. in War Studies from King's College London in 1994. He spent several years studying and working in the Soviet Union and Russia, specializing in the development of the Red Army's military theory between the world wars. Dr. Harrison has written two books on this subject: The Russian Way of War: Operational Art, 1904-1940 (University Press of Kansas, 2001) and Architect of Soviet Victory in World War II: The Life and Theories of G.S. Isserson (McFarland & Co., 2010). He is also the translator and editor of several major studies of the Red Army's major operations during World War II.

On September 20, 1943, George Strock's famous Buna Beach photograph brought battlefield death to the pages of Life Magazine, representing the home front's first "official" glimpse of the hideous face of death in World War II. In reality, the photograph was months behind other efforts to show the reality of death on the far-away battlefields of the Pacific to the American public. Earlier in 1943, the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) embarked on a campaign to convince Americans at home to make greater sacrifices in support of the war effort. Though officially censored, the OCD campaign included depictions of dead or dying Soldiers in their push. On Wednesday, November 16, 2016, Dr. James J. Kimble of Seton Hall University, will give a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to place the OCD’s efforts in the context of the U.S. government's fervent censorship of American servicemen's death on the battlefield. Since the imagery of death was officially censored at that point in the conflict, the campaign became a defining moment for the emotional involvement of civilians in what had been, for many, a distant war. Dr. Kimble will reveal vital connections between the home front and the battlefront, and critique the Roosevelt Administration's handling of the war's most gruesome propaganda.

Dr. James J. Kimble is Associate Professor of Communication & the Arts at Seton Hall University and, in early 2016, a Fulbright Scholar at Croatia's University of Rijeka. Dr. Kimble earned his PhD from the University of Maryland, and researches domestic propaganda, war rhetoric, and visual imagery. He is the author of Mobilizing the Home Front: War Bonds and Domestic Propaganda (2006), and Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II (2014), as well as the writer and co-producer of the feature documentary, Scrappers: How the Heartland Won World War II. Professor Kimble is a Distinguished Honor Graduate of the U.S. Army's Chaplain Center and School and was a Senior Fellow at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies. He has been recognized by the National Communication Association with the Gerald R. Miller Award and the Karl R. Wallace Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Discourse. His newest book project (co-edited with Trischa Goodnow) is called, The 10cent War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II, due to be published in early 2017.

In the late summer of 1915, the German military powerhouse turned from the growing stalemate on the western front of World War I to a new objective: the conquest of Serbia's mountainous and treacherous terrain to open a corridor to the Ottoman Empire. The fight for Serbia represented a "proto-blitzkrieg," showcasing every technological advancement the German juggernaut had at its disposal. Dr. Richard DiNardo will give a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center based on his book, Invasion: The Conquest of Serbia, 1915, in an effort to dissect the German push into the tiny country. He will describe the difficult terrain, the horrendous weather, and the brutal combat of the campaign. Dr. DiNardo will also examine the military innovations on which the Germans capitalized to subdue their eastern enemies. Previously overlooked by historians, these innovations were integral to the future of modern warfare: telephones, railroads, extensive use of aircraft, heavy artillery, coalition warfare, and continued development of the famed German general staff.

Richard L. DiNardo is Professor for National Security Affairs at the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College at Quantico, Virginia. He obtained a Bachelors of Arts in History in 1979 from Bernard Baruch College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). DiNardo then attended the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY, receiving his Masters of Philosophy and his Ph.D. degrees in History in 1985 and 1988, respectively. DiNardo assumed his present position with the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in January 1998, and has an extensive record of publication. He has authored, co-authored or co-edited seven books on topics ranging from German military history, to the American Civil War, to the Royal Navy in the age of sail. His most recent work, Invasion: The Conquest of Serbia, 1915, published by Praeger, appeared in 2015 following his previous book, Breakthrough: The Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign, 1915, also published by Praeger, in 2010. One of DiNardo's earlier publications, Germany and the Axis Powers: From Coalition to Collapse, published by the University of Kansas Press in 2005, is part of the required reading in a course on coalition warfare at the Air War College. Aside from books, he also has published an extensive number of articles on a variety of topics in scholarly journals and professional military publications.

With the outbreak of the greatest war the world had ever seen, American Soldiers and the war-fighting materials supporting them spread slowly over the face of the planet, waging a total war, involving not only the hard-fighting men on the front lines, but also the industrial might of the United States. American strategic decision-makers during World War II directed everything from the operations of the massive assembly lines turning out tanks, aircraft, and artillery shells to the boots on the ground. A handful of men made these decisions, forced to balance politics and economics against military necessity. On Wednesday, September 21, 2016, author Jonathan W. Jordan will give a lecture showing how personality, politics, and the professional backgrounds of America’s top leaders shaped the grand strategy in mankind's greatest military conflict. Focusing on the four main subjects of his book, American Warlords, - a liberal Democrat, a conservative Republican, a bipartisan general, and an apolitical admiral - Jordan will describe how decision-makers of the United States’ high command set aside fundamental differences and pulled together when their country needed them most.

As the Second World War turned into a total war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt found his ability to expertly deal with Congress and the press did not translate into running a conflict on such a grand scale. He turned to his high command, a three-sided team in constant, but effective, conflict with each other and all of the Allies’ powerful players. The team included Secretary of War Henry Stimson, whose forward thinking pushed new weapons and industry, General George C. Marshal, who built the Army that saved the world, and Admiral Ernest J. King, who handled the Japanese, General MacArthur, and the British to conduct a campaign in the Pacific which resulted in unconditional victory. The triumvirate was by no means without conflict: Soldiers and politicians clashed as the Army and Navy learned to work together. Despite the trials, the team set aside personal, political, and professional differences to lead America and the Allies through four years of bitter, unrelenting warfare and ultimately, to victory.

Jonathan W. Jordan is the author of American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II, the New York Times bestseller Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe, and the award-winning book Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West. His writing has appeared in World War II Magazine, Armchair General, Military History, World War II History, and MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

Since the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army has seen numerous African American Generals rise through the ranks and take the fore in leading our fighting men and women. The U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center is proud to present a lecture from Dr. Jimmie Jones, former U.S. Army officer and author of the new book, Shock and Awe: An Introduction to African American Army Generals (1968-1992), as part of the Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series. The lecture, studded with names such as Major General Frederic E. Davison, General Roscoe Robinson Jr., and General Colin L. Powell, will include a detailed discussion of prominent contributions African American general officers have made to the Army. These officers forged the way towards a truly professional fighting force by combining unmatched leadership with a steady progression of race equality and equal rights in the Post-Vietnam War Army.

The officers Dr. Jones will discuss developed their leadership styles in the 1960's and 70's when turbulent and violent racial tensions in the United States were a very real threat to the stability of the U.S. Army. These officers' leadership practices demonstrated their resolve to accomplish their mission, while simultaneously advancing racial equality in the service. Failure was never an option; these Soldiers steadfastly believed they had to be the best in order to be considered successful.

Dr. Jimmie Jones is a retired U.S. Army colonel and author of the recently published book Shock and Awe: An Introduction to African American Army Generals (1968-1992). His 26 years as an Air Defense Artillery officer led to his command of an Air Defense Artillery Patriot Missile Battalion, after which he continued his career as an assignment and professional development officer in the Army Military Personnel Center. Dr. Jones was the Personnel Director for the Army National Guard, followed by a career in education, including positions as a college professor and a school principal. Dr. Jones earned the NCAACP's Wilkins Meritorious Service Award in 2003, after which the City of Las Vegas proclaimed April 6, 2006 be recognized as "Dr. Jimmie Jones Day." Dr. Jones earned degrees from several institutions, which include a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, Master's degree in Counseling, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership.

Did you know there was a second War in Vietnam, after cessation of hostilities with America in 1975? Despite a long history of alliance against France and the United States, China launched a so-called "punitive war" against Vietnam on February 17, 1979. As a result, the two countries remained hostile, fighting along their borders for over a decade. The history of the conflict is seldom studied due to the lack of access to official records in both countries. At 7:15 PM on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, Dr. Xiaoming Zhang of the Department of Strategy at the Air War College will give a lecture entitled, "What Can We Learn from the China-Vietnam War?" at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Drawing upon newly available Chinese sources, the lecture will be based on Dr. Zhang's new book, Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979-1991. The text attempts to address the question of why these two countries went to war against each other after many years of "brother plus comrade" relations. It retraces the thirteen years of hostility between China and Vietnam, arguing that the intimate, two-decade relationship was far more fragile than it appeared. Dr. Zhang's talk will cover how China made the decision to go to war against Vietnam, and how their decision affects security in the region today.

Dr. Xiaoming Zhang is professor in the Department of Strategy at the Air War College, teaching strategy and subjects on China and East Asia. He earned his Doctorate of Philosophy in history from the University of Iowa in 1994, and taught at Texas Tech University and Texas A&M International University, prior to joining the Air War College. Dr. Zhang is the author of over twenty articles and chapters on Chinese military involvement in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Sino-Soviet relations during these conflicts. His writings have appeared in China Quarterly, Journal of Cold War Studies, The Journal of Conflict Studies, Security Studies, and The Journal of Military History. The Society for Military History has twice selected him to receive the Moncado Prize for excellence in the writing of military history. His current research focuses on America's and China’s South China Sea policy from a historical perspective.

In the early days of November 1918, over a million of General John "Black Jack" Pershing's doughboys emerged victorious from the bloody mists of the Argonne Forest. The battle, lasting 47 devastating days, was the largest Allied offensive of the largest war the world had yet seen. The shocking butcher's bill tallied more than 26,000 Americans dead on the field, and nearly 100,000 more being transported to the hospital. The toughness of the American Soldiers, coupled with Pershing's exemplary leadership, demonstrated to the world, and especially the German adversary, the formerly untested American Army had come of age.

Based on his recent book, Forty-Seven Days: How Pershings's Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I, Dr. Mitchell Yockelson will lecture on General Pershing's leadership during the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne. The talk will center on Pershing's management of the American Expeditionary Forces' First Army during the struggle. He will discuss how, through excellent leadership, the Americans accomplished what the French and British failed to do over the preceding four years: beat the Germans.

Dr. Mitchell Yockelson is the author of Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing's Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I; Borrowed Soldiers: Americans under British Command, 1918; MacArthur: America's General; and Grant: Savior of the Union. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and he has appeared on 60 Minutes, Fox News, PBS, and the History Channel. He has received the Army Historical Foundation's Distinguished Writing Award and earned his doctorate from the Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, in the United Kingdom. Yockelson is an investigative archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, historical advisor to the U.S. World War One Centennial Commission, and former professor of military history at the United States Naval Academy. He leads World War I battlefield tours for the Smithsonian Journeys and New York Times Journeys series, and frequently lectures on military history.

The leadership at the top of the United States' military and government attempted to solve the problems in Colombia once and for all in 2000. The strategy, dubbed Plan Colombia, would cut drug trafficking, support peace, build democracy, and defeat the guerillas terrorizing the countryside. Unfortunately, the program has increased the militarization of drug policy, allowed fear of Colombian security forces to overcome human rights, and generally worsened the crisis it was designed to resolve. This lecture, from Dr. Winifred Tate, will detail the history of the U.S. involvement in Colombia's internal drug wars, while also examining the U.S. policymaking process through a unique anthropological lens.

In her new book, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: U.S. Policy Making in Colombia, Dr. Tate discusses how more than 80 percent of the assistance provided by the U.S. through Plan Colombia was military aid, despite the Colombian security forces link to abusive, drug-trafficking, paramilitary organizations. This talk examines the design, implementation, and assessment of this aid package. Challenging the conventional wisdom about Plan Colombia, which has been widely praised by pundits and policymakers in Washington, Tate will argue that the security challenges presented by Colombian paramilitary forces continue to be underestimated.

Winifred Tate is an associate professor of anthropology at Colby College and the author of Drugs, Thugs and Diplomats: U.S. Policymaking in Colombia (Stanford University Press 2015) and the award-winning Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia (University of California Press 2007). Dr. Tate has more than 25 years' experience with issues regarding Colombia, beginning with an extensive period of volunteer work and study abroad in the 1980s. She spent another three years working with human rights NGOs in Guatemala and Colombia, after completing her Bachelor's Degree. In addition, she worked for three years as the Colombia policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, before completing her doctorate at New York University.

In 1982, a lone admiral urged Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to deploy a military task force to counter Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. The archipelago, 8,000 miles from the United Kingdom, was the source of dispute over sovereignty between the two nations for more than a century. With no forward presence other than a tiny garrison on the islands, no allies in the area or intermediate support bases en route, and not even ships to mount the British military, Thatcher nevertheless decided to order deployment to retake the Falklands. The Prime Minister’s bold move sparked an expeditionary war, surprising many of the world’s other great powers. The British deployed forces nearly half the world away to achieve a complete victory only 74 days after the Argentine invasion. In this lecture, MG (Ret) Kenneth L. Privratsky, author of the recently published book, Logistics in the Falklands War, will provide an overview of the war to include key actions leading to the victory, the aftermath, and most importantly, its relevance to the U.S. Army as it continues to focus on expeditionary warfare.

MG (Ret) Kenneth L. Privratsky served 33 years in the U.S. Army, initially as an infantry officer and then as a logistician. He commanded in airborne, airmobile, light infantry, and heavy units, and fought as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam. As a general officer, he had responsibility for supply distribution and then, surface transportation for the Department of Defense worldwide. He is a graduate of the Airborne and Ranger Schools, the School of Advanced Military Studies, and has been a senior service college fellow at the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Upon leaving the military in 2002, he became an executive in the ocean shipping industry before fully retiring in 2010, after which he completed his book, Logistics in the Falklands War. Privratsky has lectured several times on the Falklands War to international and university audiences, to include Royal Marines at the Commando Training Centre in England.

The United States military has been in a continual state of change and growth, from the earliest interactions between Native Americans and settlers, to the more recent efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The way scholars, Soldiers, and politicians examine military history has also evolved over the course of the nation's expansion into a world power. The history of the military is not merely a narration of battles and campaigns; it involves the social and political events which affect military action from the outside. In their book, Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the 21st Century, Dr. Matthew Muehlbauer and Dr. David Ulbrich create a comprehensive explanation of the military's place within the wider context of the history of the United States. Their upcoming lecture will encompass why battles were fought and their broader consequences, as well as the political, social, cultural, and economic factors which accompany military thought.

In their book, Dr. Muehlbauer and Dr. Ulbrich produce a chronological study of American military conflicts and interactions and show the centrality of the military to American culture and politics. Due to the completeness of their work, Ways of War was adopted by the U.S. Air Force Academy as part of their military history course required for all cadets. In this lecture, Dr.s Muehlbauer and Ulbrich will examine the evolution of the military from the colonial era to the present War on Terror. Their examination will cover American wars and campaigns as well as issues of policy, strategy, and leadership. The authors will also speak on the importance of the relationships between the war-front and the home-front during times of war and conflict.

Dr. Matthew Muehlbauer is an Assistant Professor in the History and Philosophy department at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee and an online instructor at Norwich University. Dr. Muehlbauer was also the Lead Historian for Rowan Technology Solutions where he helped develop content for the multimedia textbook, West Point History of Warfare. His co-writer, Dr. David J. Ulbrich, is an Assistant Professor in the History and Political Science department at Rogers State University located in Claremore, Oklahoma. Dr. Ulbrich is also an online instructor at Norwich University, where he is currently the Senior Instructor of Military History. He previously worked as the Command Historian for the U.S. Army Engineer School.

After the defeat of the British in the War of 1812, the young but burgeoning United States found itself far from a lasting peace. Along its extensive borders, the fledgling republic struggled to maintain its territorial integrity, push west against hostile Native Americans, and sustain a military force capable of defending the country against internal and external enemies. In 1821, the United States Army downsized yet again, putting a strain on the armed forces to perform their duty to its fullest. In the cauldron of frontier service and political frustration, the Army's officer corps met the challenge and evolved into the bulwark of leadership that eventually led both sides in the next great conflagration, the American Civil War. The story of the professional evolution of the Army's officers from their early days of struggling through massive cuts to their strength through to fighting the country's bloodiest battles is laid out in a book by Dr. Samuel J. Watson of the U.S. Military Academy entitled, Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1846. In this lecture, Dr. Watson will follow the themes of his book to discuss how the officer corps not only avoided the politics of the expanding nation, but also instilled a lasting professionalism among the young men destined to lead. He will examine the officer corps' role in the campaigns against the Creeks, Cherokee, and Seminole, and explain how their role in calming tensions with Canada avoided another war with the British. The lecture will show how a great transformation among the professional officers led them to conquer the west, calm or subdue the interior, and defend the borders.

Dr. Watson is a Professor of History at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA). He has taught at Houston Community College, Texas Southern University, and the University of St. Thomas in Houston between 1993 and 1999. He began his service at West Point in 1999, as an Assistant Professor in the Military History Division, moved to the American History Division in 2002, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005, and to full Professor in 2013. Professor Watson chairs the USMA Library Committee and serves on the USMA Academic Freedom Advisory Committee. In 2014, his books Jackson's Sword and Peacekeepers and Conquerors together won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award. Professor Watson is an editor for The West Point History of the Civil War and a volume editor for The West Point History of Warfare.

On May 10, 1970, deep in the Cambodian countryside just beyond the border with Vietnam, Specialist Leslie Sabo Jr. sacrificed his life for another Soldier by throwing himself upon a grenade during an ambush. In his last moments, he went on to save more American lives by charging the enemy and dispatching them with his own grenades, all while mortally wounded. On Wednesday December 16, 2015 at 7:15 PM, author and reporter Eric Poole will give a lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, about the stories of Sabo and his brothers in the 3/506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Based on his recent book, Company of Heroes: A Forgotten Medal of Honor and Bravo Company's War in Vietnam, Poole's lecture will explore how narratives stemming from the Vietnam War affected the men he profiled.

The Vietnam War was the first conflict in which the American people received unfiltered news on the actions of their nation's combat troops, immediately establishing narratives, both deliberate and inadvertent. The narratives had a profound impact on the Soldiers on the ground and may even have influenced the war's outcome. Poole's book, Company of Heroes: A Forgotten Medal of Honor and Bravo Company's War in Vietnam, tells the story of Leslie H. Sabo Jr., a child born to refugees who fled war-torn Europe to the tiny steel town of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. Sabo was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army only five years after taking the oath of citizenship and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division's storied 506th Infantry Regiment. Sabo's distinct heroism in Cambodia earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2012, forty-two years after his sacrifice. Based on interviews done with Sabo's comrades, Company of Heroes follows the veterans through their struggles in dealing with the effects of war and their unified quest to see a fallen brother receive the recognition he earned.

Eric Poole is a reporter and columnist for the Ellwood City Ledger (PA). A retired rugby player and a former steelworker, Poole has worked for 20 years as a full-time newspaper journalist with more than 30 regional, statewide, and national awards. In 2009, he wrote a self-published book which directly influenced the speeches of President Barack Obama, former Chief of Staff of the Army General Raymond Odierno, former Secretary of the Army John McHugh, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at Sabo's Medal of Honor ceremonies. Poole's book, Company of Heroes: A Forgotten Medal of Honor and Bravo Company's War in Vietnam, was released in March 2015 by Osprey Publishing.

In 2010, the United States Army created Cultural Support Teams (CST), a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations Soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The women of the CSTs put themselves in the line of fire to build relationships with the women of both the Afghan mountains and the tough streets of the Afghan cities. At 7:15 PM on Wednesday, November 18, 2015, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania will present a lecture by Gayle Lemmon, author and Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, based on her New York Times bestselling book, Ashely's War. Lemmon will discuss the complexities of war, as well as tell the stories of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of the members of the team. The talk will also cover why the Army believed women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams.

In Ashley's War, Lemmon uses on-the-ground reporting to understand the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked by the Army to serve in the highly specialized and challenging role. The pioneers of CST-2 proved, for the first time, women are physically and mentally tough enough to become part of the Special Operations community. This professional acceptance, came with the hefty price of personal loss and social isolation; the only people who really understood them were the other women of CST-2.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The New York Times best sellers Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. She is also a contributor to Atlantic Media's Defense One website. In 2004, she left ABC News to earn her MBA at Harvard, where she began writing about women entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict zones, including Afghanistan and Rwanda. Following her MBA study, she served as a vice president at the investment firm PIMCO. She has written for Newsweek, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune, as well as for the World Bank and Harvard Business School. She gave a TED Talk on Ashley's War and all-women Special Ops teams in May 2015, following on her 2011 TED Talk on the importance of investing in global entrepreneurs. A Fulbright Scholar and Robert Bosch Fellow, Lemmon speaks Spanish, German, French, and is conversant in Farsi.

Writer Kimberly Dozier noticed a serious disconnect between Soldiers returning home from the front lines and the civilians receiving them. She saw people distance themselves from Soldiers with the generic phrase "thank you for your service," and could not ignore the increased labeling of servicemen and women as "walking PTSD time bombs." Though she is a civilian, Dozier identifies with this issue more than most noncombatants: as a CBS News correspondent in 2006, a vehicle on location in Iraq hit an IED while carrying Dozier, her reporting team, and her interviewee, U.S. Army officer Captain James Funkhouser. Her CBS colleagues and Capt. Funkhouser were killed, while Dozier was seriously wounded. Dozier used her recovery process to educate the public about Soldiers' resiliency post-trauma in her 2011 memoir Breathing Fire: Fighting to Survive and Get Back to the Fight. Dozier offers perspective on recovery for military personnel, many of whom helped her heal while facing their own struggles.

Ms. Dozier will focus this lecture on her current research on resilience and special operations forces, addressing the gap among Soldiers and the public. She hopes to help Americans move past the narrow view of active duty Soldiers and veterans as "broken," and motivate troops to share their experiences of trauma with those close to them. Dozier will also discuss her endeavor to reconcile two contrasting post-traumatic stress narratives; one argues Americans are not yet prepared to acknowledge or heal the extent of the damage Soldiers undergo in war, and the other contends Soldiers are empowered by the labor of recovery through the strength and wisdom the process can provide. Dozier plans to include these thoughts in an upcoming book of anonymous stories of officers, counselors, NCOs, and family members, each coping with war, from the post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to more recent action in the Horn of Africa. Work on the book was part of Dozier's 2014-2015 role as the Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College.

 

Throughout history, the drive for new military technology has precipitated the rise and fall of nations. This legacy has taken a new shape between the United States and China. In the past decade, China increased its military spending over ten percent, and sent its military through a comprehensive overhaul of its equipment, tactics, and training. United States policy makers have debated how to respond to China's new, aggressive military development. Mr. Dennis Gormley, co-author of A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China's Cruise Missile Ambitions, will lecture on China's cruise and ballistic missile arsenal and argue that it is China's most dangerous weapon.

In his lecture, Mr. Dennis Gormley will examine the extent to which China has incorporated elements of the Soviet Union's approach, developed during the early 1980s, to exploiting the effectiveness of conventionally armed missiles to achieve major military objectives against NATO in wartime. He argues that much of what the Soviets planned in this regard was passed on to the Chinese and now manifests itself in current Chinese exploitation of both ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles. Mr. Gormley will also provide an overall assessment of the direction and pace of China's military developments.

Mr. Dennis Gormley has 10 years of experience in the United States intelligence community, and served 20 years as a senior vice president of a major consulting company. He has also been affiliated with the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Mr. Gormley has testified frequently before U.S. Senate and House congressional committees. He is the author of four books, including, most recently, A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China's Cruise Missile Ambitions (2014) and Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security (2008), which has recently been translated into the Chinese language.

Chief Petty Officer and Navy SEAL Christopher Scott Kyle is known as the most effective sniper in United States history. Over his ten year career in the Navy, including four tours in Iraq, Kyle claimed a record 160 "confirmed kills" as part of SEAL Team 3. Kyle is highly recognized for his bravery in combat, participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), the Battles of Fallujah (2004) and Ramadi (2006), and finally the Baghdad Campaigns (2008). Retiring in 2009, Kyle came away from the military with two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, and the sobriquet "The Devil of Ramadi," applied by enemy insurgents for his marksmanship. Unfortunately, Kyle's life post-military had its challenges due to the grueling years of overseas service and time away from his family. In response to his troubles, he founded CRAFT Security Company and shared his combat experiences in a bestselling book. Shortly after the book reached print, a Marine under Kyle's mentorship killed the former Seal in 2013 at a gun range in Texas. His tragic death left behind his wife, Taya Kyle, and two children. However, Kyle's legacy lives on in his autobiography, entitled American Sniper, written alongside best-selling author and screenwriter Jim DeFelice. DeFelice will center his lecture on Chris Kyle's background and how it informs the content of the book. American Sniper discusses Kyle's upbringing in Texas, though it focuses on his combat experiences as part of the SEALs. Published in 2012, American Sniper quickly made the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and remained there throughout 2013. In 2015, Warner Brothers and Clint Eastwood made an Academy Award-nominated movie based on Kyle's exploits and DeFelice's book.

Jim DeFelice is a prolific fiction and non-fiction author. Many of DeFelice's books, along with American Sniper, are New York Times bestsellers. He specializes in military and political topics, as seen in his co-authored work, Code Name Johnny Walker (2014), about an Iraqi translator aiding American forces, and the biography, Omar Bradley: General at War (2011). DeFelice most recently finished writing American Wife (2015) with Taya Kyle about her experiences as the wife and widow of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. When DeFelice is not working on book projects he helps develop and write video games, including the successful, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. DeFelice resides in Warwick, New York with his family.

The Gettysburg Campaign and the resulting battle is among the most studied topics in military history. As General Robert E. Lee's army coalesced around the tiny crossroads town, a significant yet lesser-known skirmish, 38 miles to northeast, had a distinct impact on the larger battle: the June 1863 Battle of Sporting Hill, Harrisburg. The fight resulted from Lee's larger goal for an invasion of Pennsylvania, a takeover of the capital, and a forcing of the state, and possibly the Union, to capitulate. Lee sent Brigadier General Albert Jenkins to Harrisburg to confirm the city's vulnerability and to increase the number of rebel troops in the area. A Harrisburg militia out on a reconnaissance mission met and forced Jenkins' cavalry back at Sporting Hill into Carlisle. This lead to a fight, which left the area ablaze as another of Lee's cavalry brigades shelled Carlisle and the Union general defending the city refused repeated demands for surrender. The Confederates set the entirety of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks aflame before moving, resigned, towards Gettysburg, leaving Harrisburg and the surrounding country under Union control. An overview of this interval, as well as its role in the Gettysburg Campaign, is presented in detail in Mr. Cooper H. Winger's 2012 book, The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg: The Gettysburg Campaign's Northernmost Reaches. Wingert will give a lecture about his book and the extensive research that informed it, some of which he conducted at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.

Mr. Wingert is a well-known author and historian, especially in Pennsylvania and the Harrisburg region. He is the author of three published books about Harrisburg and the Gettysburg Campaign in the Civil War including, The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg. In 2013, at the age of 15, Wingert released, Emergency Men!: The 26th Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia and Harrisburg and the Civil War: Defending the Keystone of the Union. Prior to 2013, he published his first piece, A Virginian in the Vanguard: The Diary of Lt. Hermann Schuricht, 14th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, at the age of 12. He draws inspiration from historical societies, archives, and Civil War collections across Pennsylvania and the northeast. Wingert's future ambitions include studying history in college and completing a book on the pre-Civil War period.

What was it like to kill German soldiers, or to watch a comrade succumb to a violent death at the hands of a hated enemy? Or to return home after facing such violence? Telling the stories as only a doughboy could, American Soldiers answered these and similar questions upon returning home from the Great War in 1918. Thousands of Soldiers completed questionnaires detailing their experiences, duties, interactions, and frustrations about their time spent in Europe while it was still fresh in their minds. Dr. Edward Gutierrez, in a lecture based on his recent book, Doughboys in the Great War, will examine the shell-shocked stories and use the doughboys' own voices to paint a picture of their experiences, from volunteering or being drafted to their involvements in dangerous battles. Gutierrez discovered, from the Soldiers' own opinions and views, a distinct contradiction between the accepted popular history of Soldier-level warfighting and the truth from stories of the men in the trench. By using their reflections, Gutierrez learned these Soldiers were not disillusioned by the mud and slog of trenches and shell holes; instead, he argues the war-hardened doughboys were proud of their service, duty, honor, and country.

Dr. Edward Gutierrez received his PhD in history from The Ohio State University and is an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford. He recently received the University of Hartford's Sustained Excellence in Teaching Award, which recognizes the outstanding contribution to teaching and learning by part-time faculty. Gutierrez' scholarship has earned him other recognitions, including the "War and Trauma, Memory and Memorialization" Fellowship from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifque in France, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the publication of "Sherman was Right: The Experience of AEF Soldiers in the Great War."

On January 16, 1863, spending the hard-earned political capital earned on the bloody fields around Sharpsburg just months earlier, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, turning the American Civil War towards a conflict based on the concept of human freedom. The proclamation was not a foregone conclusion, however, nor was it written as a result of the Battle of Antietam. Rather, it was the product of six months of struggle within Lincoln's government; the "most tumultuous of his presidency." In his lecture, based on his recently published book, Lincoln's Gamble, Mr. Todd Brewster will explore the six months prior to the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, studying Lincoln's conflict with his generals, cabinet, and even his own depression. He will take on the myths of Lincoln's belief in inequality and the triumph of freedom over slavery, and ask exactly how Lincoln overcame adversity to free the slaves held in the Confederacy.

Todd Brewster is the Director of the National Constitution Center's "The Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution." He was a Senior Editor of LIFE magazine from 1988 to 1992, and was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2000. From 2004-2006, he served as a Knight Fellow at Yale Law School and as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, moving on to take over the Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at the U.S. Military Academy from 2008 to 2013. In 2013, Brewster turned to film production as the Executive Producer of the film, Into Harm's Way. His latest book, Lincoln's Gamble, and was published by Scribner in September 2014.

Winning hearts and minds is an idea in which mission success is not a function of superior force, but rather emotional and intellectual appeals to gain supporters from the other side of a conflict. In America's bellicose past, the strategy was alternatively emphasized, implemented, and ignored during war, insurgencies, and other conflicts. The Iraq War (2003-2011) is no exception; the war demonstrated the efficacy of the "hearts and minds" tactic if it is remembered and put into practice. In his book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, former Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren describes, from first-hand experience, how America's decade-long occupation and the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq was mismanaged, leading to grievous misspending and waste.

Mr. Van Buren will present a lecture at the USAHEC based on his book, and will emphasize the military and civilian leadership's poor planning, disorganization, and lack of forethought for the future of Iraq and its people. He will describe how the U.S. State Department's good intentions to defeat terrorism led down a road of counterintuitive and frivolous spending. Van Buren's inside look at the State Department's misguided efforts span from spending taxpayer money on a sports mural in Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhood, to pastry classes meant to train women to open cafés on bombed-out streets without water or electricity. Because of ineffective projects and bureaucratic fumbling, the Iraq reconstruction project is remembered as the most expensive hearts-and-minds campaign since the Marshall Plan.

Peter Van Buren is a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer at the State Department, who spent a year in Iraq (2009-2010) leading two State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). He is the author of the books Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent, and We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.

From June 1864 to March 1865, hard-bitten veteran Union and Confederate armies converged on the Virginia town of Petersburg. The resulting siege remains the longest in American history, inflicting nine brutal months of trench warfare on the soldiery of both sides. Union forces, commanded by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, assaulted the reeling Confederates under the indomitable General Robert E. Lee, but the unsuccessful attack forced the Federals into more than thirty miles of muddy trenches surrounding the city. The Siege at Petersburg ultimately involved more than 180,000 soldiers, thirty percent of which became casualties. Grant only realized victory after dwindling resources forced General Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond in April 1865, leading to his retreat and surrender at Appomattox Court House. Dr. Richard Sommers, a world renowned Civil War expert, will give an in-depth lecture highlighting enduring lessons in leadership at corps, army, theater, and national levels of command, which General Grant, General Lee, and their senior subordinates demonstrated in the Siege of Petersburg. The talk will be based in his book, Richmond Redeemed: the Siege of Petersburg.

Dr. Sommers is a native of Hammond, Indiana, and attained his bachelor's degree in history from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He earned his doctorate in history from Rice University in Texas in 1970. The U.S. Army hired him as Chief Archivist and Military Historian for the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, a position he held until 1997. From 1997 to 2013, he served in various positions in the archives and patron services at the USAHEC and was the U.S. Army War College's Harold K. Johnson Professor of Military History in 2007 and 2008. He teaches American history courses at the U.S. Army War College and has made numerous television appearances. Dr. Sommers has written over 100 books, articles, entries, and reviews, primarily on the Civil War, and is a distinguished member of several historical organizations, including the Southern Historical Association, the Society of Civil War Historians, and the Civil War Trust.

September 1862 may have been the greatest crisis the Lincoln administration faced in the American Civil War. Following the stunning Confederate victory in the Seven Days Battles in June and early July, two Union armies were defeated at the Battle of 2nd Manassas in late August by the seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. On the heels of this victory, Lee led his army into Maryland. Lincoln turned to General George B. McClellan to lead a reorganized Army of the Potomac into the field to defeat Lee, a decision so controversial that it nearly dissolved the president's cabinet. The next two weeks proved highly eventful. In a daring operation, Lee's forces captured Harpers Ferry and its 12,000 man garrison - the largest capitulation of U.S. forces until World War II. The Army of the Potomac surprised Lee and defeated his forces in the battles of South Mountain, then Lee chose to make a bold stand behind Antietam Creek, setting the stage for bloody Battle of Antietam on September 17. D. Scott Hartwig, author of To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of 1862, will focus this lecture on the decision to restore McClellan to field command, the strengths and weaknesses of the reorganized Army of the Potomac that McClellan led into Maryland, and Lee's controversial decision to offer battle behind Antietam Creek.

D. Scott Hartwig is a thirty-four year veteran of the National Park Service and served as Gettysburg's supervisory historian for twenty years. He won the NPS regional Freeman Tilden Award for Excellence in Interpretation in 1993, and was fundamental in the growth of Gettysburg's on-site interpretation and living history programming, distance and satellite education efforts, and a key player for the design of all aspects of the new Gettysburg museum/visitor center. He retired from the NPS in January 2014. Hartwig has authored numerous articles, essays, and books on Civil War subjects, and has appeared on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and Pennsylvania Cable Network. His most recent publication is To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign from September 3 to September 16, an 800 page in-depth study of the campaign up to the eve of the Battle of Antietam, published in September 2012 by Johns Hopkins University Press. Hartwig is currently working on the sequel which will cover the Battle of Antietam, its aftermath, and the end of the campaign.

Scholar and author Dr. Jack Jarmon will discuss the need to bridge the gap between industrial age defense policies and the new complexities presented by the global reach of the information age. Beginning by forming a historical perspective of Cold War politics, Dr. Jarmon will transition into the past decade of asymmetric warfare and technology’s impact on institutions and policy makers. He will culminate the discussion by highlighting the cyber warfare threat of the crime-terrorist nexus as the latest emerging threat to U.S. national security.

Dr. Jack Jarmon started his career studying Soviet and Russian affairs at Fordham University and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. He is fluent in Russian and holds a doctorate degree in Global Affairs from Rutgers. He taught international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, and Rutgers University, where he was also Associate Director of the Command, Control, and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data. He was the USAID technical advisor for the Russian government in the mid-1990s. His private sector career includes global consultant firms, technology companies, financial institutions, and was the Director of Strategic Alliances at Nortel Networks, Brampton, Ontario.

By 1864, the battle weary and bloodied Confederate armies lacked the means to conquer the Union forces pushing into Southern territory. In response to the continued Northern aggression, Confederate leaders opted for a strategy of survival and attrition. The strategy required Richmond and Atlanta to redouble their defensive efforts in the face of a scorched earth offensive led by Major General William T. Sherman. Sherman’s objective was the annihilation of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee and the capture of Atlanta. The campaign faltered at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and might have stalled completely but for a daring flank attack. Dr. J. Britt McCarley of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) will give a lecture examining the brilliant maneuver based on his new book, The Atlanta and Savannah Campaigns, May-December 1864. Dr. McCarley will discuss Union Major General John M. Schofield’s successful and far-reaching envelopment of the eight-mile Confederate line and its critical strategic implications. Join Dr. McCarley and the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) for an examination of how maneuver achieved more than battering-ram assaults on June 27, 1864.
Dr. J. Britt McCarley earned a Ph.D. from Temple University in 1989. After serving nine years as the TRADOC Field History Programs Chief, and 18 years overall in the Army History Program, Dr. McCarley was selected as TRADOC’s Chief Historian in June 2006. His first book, The Atlanta Campaign: a Civil War Driving Tour of Atlanta-area Battlefields, was published in 1989, and he has been published in several collections, such as Beyond Combat: Essays in Honor of Russell F. Weigley. Dr. McCarley also served as editor of Victory Starts Here: A Short 40-Year History of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command published in spring 2013.

The United States' entry into World War II started with the dreadful surprise attack and defeat at Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan. The event sparked a resolve in the U.S public; a resolve the U.S. military fed upon to rebuild and viciously claw its way across the Pacific to the tide-turning battle of Midway. Dr. Charles Kupfer of Penn State University, Harrisburg, will give a lecture examining the U.S public and military's reactions to the Japanese surprise attacks and conquests of U.S and other Allied territories based on his latest book, Indomitable Will: Turning Defeat into Victory from Pearl Harbor to Midway. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese forces seemed unstoppable, as they assaulted U.S forces in Bataan, Corregidor, Wake Island, and the Java Sea. However, Dr. Kupfer will illustrate how the assaults on Allied forces actually strengthened the alliance between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, paving the way for turning the war against the Japanese. Furthermore, Dr. Kupfer will explain how the defeats steeled the will of the American people and military to continue the war effort. Join the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) for an in-depth examination of the unbreakable American resolve during it's entry into World War II and how this resolve propelled the U.S forces to their later victories.
Dr. Charles Kupfer received his Bachelor of Arts from John Hopkins University and studied at Oxford University and the University of Texas to earn a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1998. Dr. Kupfer taught for three years at Michigan State University and served as president of the Middle Atlantic American Studies Association. He currently serves on the Eastern American Studies Association Board and is active in several Commonwealth Public Heritage initiatives, serving on the Pennsylvania Historical Marker Commission, the Friends of Fort Hunter Board of Directors, and as Penn State Harrisburg American Studies Program liaison to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Dr. Kupfer published his first book in 2013, We Felt The Flames: Hitler's Blitzkrieg, America's Story, published by Sergeant Kirkland's Press. Academic articles he wrote appeared in several journals, such as Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, The International Journal of the History of Sports, Iron Game History: The Journal of Physical Culture, and Pennsylvania History.

1943 marked the end for the German Army's advance in World War II. The German forces, known as the Wehrmacht, lost the initiative on all fronts, and found themselves on the defensive against the U.S, British, and Soviet forces slowly pushing their way into the German heartland. Pulling material from German primary sources and information collected in his book, The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943, award winning author Dr. Robert M. Citino will discuss the reactions and decisions made after the tables turned against the German forces. The decisions made by the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, the German High Command, and the German Officer Corps helped to bring about the end of the Wehrmacht’s command of continental Europe. Despite the effects of the command’s disastrous decisions, the German Army maintained cohesion, morale, and aggression, prolonging the bloody conflict. Join us for an in-depth look at the decisions made by the Wehrmacht, which lead them to their eventual defeat.
Dr. Citino, a renowned military history professor from the University of North Texas, is the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History at the United States Army War College. He has studied Nazi Germany and American military history, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War. Dr. Citino's career extends to several universities: he served as the Charles Boal Ewing Visiting Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth. He published nine books, one of which earned the American Historical Association's Paul M. Birdsall Prize for book of the year in military and strategic history. The Society for Military History awarded him the Distinguished Book Award in 2013 for his latest book, The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943.

In his latest work, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA, Dr. Richard Immerman of Temple University takes a sobering look at the agency behind some of America's greatest triumphs and her most humiliating blunders. Dr. Immerman explores the various missions of the CIA, from the collection and analysis of information, to secretive operations around the globe. Using the most up to date information available, Dr. Immerman examines the CIA's place in American culture and global affairs, presenting the intricate and divisive nature of the CIA in a way that lets the reader view the Agency in a whole new light. Immerman works to tie together national intelligence and national strategy, highlighting the relationship between the two. From its foundation in 1947 to its heavy involvement in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency plays a key role in the modern day American government. Drawing from his years in the intelligence field, Dr. Immerman will present a lecture which blends experience and a lifetime of study into a powerful, and controversial, narrative.
A former Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence and the current Chair of the Historical Advisory Committee to the Department of State, Dr. Richard H. Immerman has spent a lifetime researching, writing, and teaching U.S. foreign relations, Cold War history, and intelligence policy. Dr. Immerman is the author of numerous award winning works, such as The Foreign Policy of Intervention to Waging Peace, and The CIA in Guatemala, and was the 40th president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In 2009, Dr. Immerman began a 3-year term as representative to the Department of State's Advisory Committee on Historical Documentation, becoming the committee's chair in 2010. Dr. Immerman is the Edward J. Buthusiem Distinguished Faculty Fellow in History and the Marvin Wachman Director of Temple's Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy. He is also serving as the Francis W. DeSerio Chair of Strategic Intelligence at the U.S. Army War College.

Before the USS Maine, Pearl Harbor, or the attacks on 9-11-01, the United States suffered an often forgotten national tragedy: the burning of Washington, DC in 1814. Washington Post correspondent Steve Vogel’s second book, Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks that Saved the Nation, will focus on the events surrounding the British campaign during the War of 1812, which included burning the Capitol Building and the White House. He will tell the story of the fateful summer of 1814, when the United States was on the brink of defeat at the hands of its former masters. Vogel’s character-driven narrative highlights both the American and British main players in the Burning of Washington and the Battle of Baltimore. While President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe contemplated American defense, British Admiral George Cockburn and his men invaded Washington and burnt city landmarks in an attempt to cripple the government and crush the American spirit. After the attack, American troops regrouped and successfully defended Baltimore, changing the outcome of the war. During the Battle of Baltimore, a Washington lawyer, Francis Scott Key, witnessed this “perilous fight” and composed “Defense of Fort M’Henry,” a poem eventually turned to song and renamed, “The Star Spangled Banner.” Steve Vogel is a reporter on the National staff for The Washington Post. He covers the federal government, specializing in military and veterans’ issues. From 1989 to 1994, he reported first-hand accounts of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, and U.S. military operations in Africa and the Middle East. Vogel’s reporting on the war in Afghanistan contributed to a selection of Washington Post articles nominated for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He covered the September 11th attack on the Pentagon and followed its reconstruction, leading to his first book, The Pentagon: A History, published in 2007 by Random House. Vogel is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and earned a master’s degree in international public policy from John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong made one of the most daring and unexpected attacks in American military history. The impact of this turning point in the Vietnam War had ramifications far beyond South East Asia. Dr. William Allison's fascination with the impacts of the Tet Offensive on the American Homeland and its politics led to his latest project, On Nostalgia's Alter: America 1968, to be published by the University Press of Kansas in 2014. In a lecture based on the book, Allison will outline the pivotal months surrounding Tet and place the attack in the context of its immediate impact on American socio-political events in 1968. The relative success of the Tet Offensive caused renewed opposition to the Vietnam War during the 1968 Presidential Campaign; leading President Lyndon Johnson to forgo reelection, and encouraging Robert Kennedy to announce his candidacy. Tragically, Kennedy's success in the democratic primary elections led to his assassination. From politics, assassinations, and conflicts to civil rights and pop culture, please join us for discussion on 1968 through the lens of the Tet Offensive, a turning point in American history.
Dr. Allison is the General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History at the United States Army War College. He is visiting from Georgia Southern University where he is a professor of military history. In addition, Allison's military history scholarship earned him the position of Visiting Professor in the Department Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War College in 2002-2003 and Visiting Professor of Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies from 2010-2011. He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Society for Military History and he served as an editor for the Journal of Military History. He has nearly a dozen published books covering various military history topics: The Russian Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the American West.

When failure rears its ugly head, tough decisions must be made. In war, that means accepting defeat or trying a new strategy. In response to insurgencies, the U.S. Military's historical reaction has been to implement counterinsurgencies using a wide array of strategies and tactics. However, the benefits of the military's use of counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts are widely debatable. Colonel Gian Gentile was the first to expose the discord amongst military strategists, analysts, and academics in their philosophies regarding COIN and its effectiveness in accomplishing the U.S.'s goals in Afghanistan in his 2008 article, "Misreading the Surge," World Politics Review. In his new book, Wrong Turn: America's Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency, Gentile further explores the dissent surrounding COIN doctrine. Gentile, using his personal experiences as a battalion commander in Iraq, coupled with his research into historical counterinsurgency efforts, provides a summation of his historical findings and evaluates the success of current efforts in Afghanistan. In this lecture, Gentile will be brutally honest in his assessment and will provide critical analysis of COIN policy. The lecture will also highlight his historical findings regarding COIN doctrine and how history can help with the analysis and application of current military operations.
Colonel (Ret) Gian Gentile is the Senior Historian for the Rand Corporation and recently retired from the U.S. Army where he served as a professor of history at the United States Military Academy. Gentile has served as a visiting fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and is an award winning historian and accomplished author. Gentile has numerous publications regarding military policy, including his previous book, How Effective is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo. Gentile served in the U.S. Army from 1986 to 2014, commissioning through the ROTC program at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his bachelor’s degree. He holds a Masters of Military Arts and Science from the School of Advanced Military Studies at Ft. Leavenworth and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. He served two tours of duty in Iraq in 2003 and 2006.

The United States Army has been under constant adaptation since its conception. Warfare waged by early 20th century armies on a grand, industrialized scale is now superseded by diverse conflicts of differing size and scope. The U.S. Army, in dealing with its role in each of the "small wars," has changed to meet the unique challenges presented by conflicts in lands governed by tribal traditions and ethnicity. Dr. Michael D. Gambone explores these changes in his book, Small Wars: Low Intensity Threats and the American Response Since Vietnam (University Of Tennessee Press). Dr. Gambone discusses not only the goals of America's involvement in these "small wars" since the Vietnam War era, but also the conduct and consequences of each military engagement.
Dr. Gambone will present a lecture based on his book, and provide analysis of the dramatic shift in all aspects of planning and logistics in American war-making from Vietnam to interventions in Central America, through the Cold War, to the Global War on Terror. Gambone will dissect each mission as an evolution toward our current hybrid of traditional and innovative military techniques. Dr. Gambone is a professor of history at Kutztown University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1993.
Dr. Gambone is the author of Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua (2001) and The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (2005). Between 1985 and 1988, he served as an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. In 2006, he deployed to Iraq as a contractor for the U.S. Army.

Robert Komer was the leading national security expert during the Cold War and proved his capabilities serving no less than three United States Presidents. While his abrasive personality and curt interactions with officials earned him the nickname, "Blowtorch," he became President Johnson's "point man" in working towards peace in Vietnam. In the first biography ever written about Komer, Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy (Naval Institute Press), Professor and Scholar Frank Leith Jones highlights Komer's actions as he labored to eradicate Communism in Southeast Asia through his multi-dimensional approach which included social, economic, and military facets. Jones' lecture will focus on the American involvement in Vietnam within the wider scope of the Cold War, allowing for analysis of the conflict and Komer's impact on American policy and strategy in more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Frank L. Jones is Professor of Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, where he holds the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security. As a retiree from the Senior Executive Service, he has more than thirty years of federal experience. During the course of his civilian career, he held a number of high-level policy and strategy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Policy and Support. Professor Jones has published several book chapters and articles on national security topics. His awards and accolades are numerous and include the Department of the Army Outstanding Service Award. He attended St. Lawrence University on a four-year Army ROTC Scholarship and received a B.A. in History. He holds an M.A. in public administration from the State University of New York at Albany. Mr. Jones served the U.S. Army as a commissioned officer.

The true nature of war is sometimes lost to the sands of time. Though the horrors of World War II were not so long ago, the reality of its cost in sweat and blood is gradually disappearing from the American consciousness. To bring the realities of the bloodiest war in history back into focus, Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson has finished the final book in his WWII Liberation Trilogy, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945. Rick Atkinson will give a lecture outlining the powerful narrative of Soldiers' stories throughout the war in Northern Europe, which ended the Nazi regime in Germany. Following the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the Allied forces set their sights on the main source of trouble, Nazi-held Europe. On June 6, 1944, the Allied coalition assaulted fortress Europe with a bloody and costly invasion of Normandy, France. The Allies, led by the United States Army, took their first step towards ultimate victory, but many more battles such as Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge continued to claim lives and resources. In The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, Mr. Atkinson gives new life to the struggle of a generation by using the perspectives of all those involved, from veteran generals to inexperienced privates in the field, fundamentally explaining the true cost of Europe's liberation. Rick Atkinson is a bestselling author of six works of narrative military history, including the Liberation Trilogy, The Long Grey Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. He received his B.A. in English from East Carolina University and went on to obtain an M.A. in English Language and Literature from University of Chicago. In addition to his books, he was also a reporter, foreign correspondent, war correspondent, and senior editor at The Washington Post for more than twenty years. Besides winning Pulitzer Prizes, he has also won the George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

Though the Korean War was a limited conflict, there were many operational and technological temptations to expand it. America's allies feared the United States would again resort to atomic bombs as they did against Japan, and Communist enemies propagated elaborate accusations about the employment of biological warfare. Political and military leaders certainly considered using such weapons, though the reasons they never did are varied and complex. Dr. Conrad Crane will describe the practical and ethical reasoning behind strategic leaders' decisions, particularly emphasizing the pressures they faced in a limited war with the potential to be much worse. He will also discuss the research process to investigate such decision-making and the special difficulties involved in dealing with classified sources about weapons of mass destruction. The lecture is a detective story with twists and turns and more than a little luck involved. Dr. Conrad Crane is the Chief of Historical Services for the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks. Previously, he has worked as the Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, served with the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at the U.S. Army War College, where he held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research, held the General Hoyt S. Vandenberg Chair of Aerospace Studies at the U.S. Army War College, and served for twenty-six years in the U.S. Army, including nine years as a Professor of History at the U.S. Military Academy. He holds a B.S. from USMA and both an M.A. and Ph. D from Stanford University. He has authored or edited books and monographs on a wide range of military topics. While at SSI, Dr. Crane coauthored a prewar study on Reconstructing Iraq and influenced the Army in their decision-making. He was also the lead author for the new Army-USMC counterinsurgency manual which was put into action in Iraq at the request of General Petraeus. For that effort, he was named one of NEWSWEEK's people to watch in 2007. In November 2008, he was named the international Archivist of the Year by the Scone Foundation.

The modern Gettysburg National Military Park encompasses 6,000 acres of preserved farm land over which the battle was fought. One hundred and fifty years ago some thirty-eight farms formed the core of what became a three-day battlefield. Long after the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac marched back south across the Potomac River, the people who owned the land over which the battle was fought struggled to rebuild their lives and their livelihood. Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide and Adams County cattleman COL (Ret) Tom Vossler recounts the stories of the civilian population of the Gettysburg area in the battles' aftermath. Focusing on key phases and places of the battle, he describes and illustrates many of the Gettysburg area farms and farm families before, during and after the battle. He also recounts the landowners' continuing post-war battle with State and Federal governments for financial reimbursement for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to property and real estate. Tom Vossler, a combat veteran and retired U.S. Army colonel, is former director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. He holds a BA in History from Pennsylvania Military College, and and MA in Education from Georgia State University. As a licensed battlefield guide, he leads over one hundred battlefield tours and leadership seminars each year. This presentation is based on his recently completed book A Field Guide to Gettysburg (with Carol Reardon), published June, 2013 by the University of North Carolina Press.

At the end of three days of bloody fighting around the town of Gettysburg on July 1,2 and 3, 1863, over 7,000 soldiers from the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia lay dead upon the battlefield. Over the next six months, several thousand more died of their wounds, sealing their commitment to their respective causes with lives. But death did not silence their voices. Their surgeons, their comrades-in-arms, and their families mourning them in cities and towns stretching from the coasts of Maine to the hill country of Texas picked up the soldiers' stories and shared their lessons with us. Some of the most profound of those voices emerge from the pension applications submitted by new widows and newly-appointed guardians of fatherless children, by bereaved mothers and even--on occasion--by their fathers. The families of Confederate dead could submit claims to collect a one-time payment of all pay and allotments still due their fallen soldier. In the North, the Congress passed legislation in July 1862 to establish a pension system for the support of the survivors of fallen Union soldiers, but it could not have foreseen the complications and challenges each individual case might present for its highly legalistic administrative processes for the awarding of a monthly support check usually amounting to $8 for the families of enlisted men. The families and friends of the Gettysburg slain tell yet one more important--and underappreciated--part of the Army Story. Carol Reardon is George Winfree Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University and author of four books, including With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North. She has taught at West Point and the U.S. Army War College, and she leads staff rides and tours of Gettysburg for many military and civilian groups. This presentation is based on her recently completed book A Field Guide to Gettysburg (with Tom Vossler), published June, 2013 by the University of North Carolina Press.

President George H.W. Bush famously announced at the end of the 1991 Gulf War that the United States had finally "kicked the Vietnam Syndrome." What was the Vietnam Syndrome, and did the United States actually "kick" it through its apparently decisive victory over Iraq? Why did Vietnam cast such a great shadow over the Gulf War? How did memory and national mythology interact in the Gulf War? Did we finally get over Vietnam in 1991? The lecture will address these and other provocative questions concerning the first Gulf War. Bill Allison is Professor of History at Georgia Southern University, joining the faculty there in 2008. He earned his Ph.D. in history at Bowling Green State University in 1995, then taught at the University of Saint Francis before joining the History Department at Weber State University from 1999-2008. During the 2002-2003 academic year, he was Visiting Professor in the Department Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War College and he was Visiting Professor of Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies from 2010-2011. He is currently the General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College. He is author of The Gulf War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War (University Press of Kansas, 2007), among other works. He has lectured at numerous conferences and universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is a Trustee of the Society for Military History and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History. He has also served as a member of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee. He is currently writing a book on 1968 in America titled "On Nostalgia's Altar: America, Mayhem, and 1968." A native of Texas, he lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with his wife Jennifer and black lab Moose.

During the American Civil War, German- and Irish-American soldiers fought with gallantry for both the Union and the Confederacy for a variety of reasons and comprised a large percentage of the Union armies. However, recent scholarship has shown that ethnic enthusiasm for both causes waxed and waned throughout the conflict, a fact determined largely by perceptions of the foreign-born by Anglo-Americans. These perceptions, ranging from the stereotypes of the "drunken Irishman" to the "flying Dutchman," were primarily caused by events on the battlefield and, in some cases, by political developments to which the northern and southern ethnics strongly responded. By the end of the war, the actual contributions of both sides' ethnic soldiers became clouded by myth, misconception, and outright prejudice. Inaccurate assessments, created primarily by non-ethnic northerners, thus set the foundation for over a century of incomplete and erroneous scholarship. This talk, based on primary source research in both English- and German-language sources, will debunk some cherished myths, question others, and raise some new questions about the role of ethnic soldiers in the war. Christian B. Keller is Professor of History in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College. Previously, he served as Professor of Military History for five and a half years at the Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Belvoir, VA, and has taught at numerous civilian institutions, including Shippensburg University, Gettysburg College, and Dickinson College. In 2001-2002 he was a Fulbright Professor of American History at the University of Jena, Germany. Along with many scholarly articles focusing on the ethnic experience in the Civil War, he is author of Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory (Fordham, 2007) and co-author of Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg (Stackpole, 2004). He is currently working on a study of Confederate strategy in 1862-1863. . Dr. Keller is a Carlisle native.

History has been kind to the American generals of World War II - Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley - and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In part it is the story of a widening gulf between performance and accountability. During World War II, scores of American generals were relieved of command simply for not being good enough. Today, as one American colonel said bitterly during the Iraq War, "As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." In The Generals we meet great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and those who failed themselves and their soldiers. Marshall and Eisenhower cast long shadows over this story, as does the less familiar Marine General O. P. Smith, whose fighting retreat from the Chinese onslaught into Korea in the winter of 1950 snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of annihilation. But Korea also showed the first signs of an army leadership culture that neither punished mediocrity nor particularly rewarded daring. In the Vietnam War, the problem grew worse until, finally, American military leadership bottomed out. The My Lai massacre, Ricks shows us, is the emblematic event of this dark chapter of our history. In the wake of Vietnam a battle for the soul of the U.S. Army was waged with impressive success. It became a transformed institution, reinvigorated from the bottom up. But if the body was highly toned, its head still suffered from familiar problems, resulting in tactically savvy but strategically obtuse leadership that would win battles but end wars badly from the first Iraq War of 1990 through to the present. Tom Ricks has made a close study of America's military leaders for three decades, and in his hands this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails. Thomas E. Ricks is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a contributing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, for which he writes the prize-winning blog The Best Defense. Ricks covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. Until the end of 1999 he had the same beat at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, he covered U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He is the author of several books, including The Gamble and the #1 New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Americans often think of the Civil War as the conflict that consolidated the United States, including its military values and practices. But there was another, earlier, and more protracted struggle between "North" and "South," beginning in the 1600s and lasting for more than two centuries that shaped American geopolitics and military culture. The American way of war emerged from a lengthy struggle with an unlikely enemy: Canada. Five peoples - the British, French, Americans, Canadians, and Indians - fought over the key to the North American continent: the corridor running from Albany to Montreal dominated by the Champlain valley and known to Native Americans as the "Great Warpath." The conflicts along these two hundred miles of lake, river, and woodland shaped the country's military values, practices, and institutions. What emerged was a distinctively American approach to war developed along the Great Warpath. Cohen weaves together tactics and strategy, battle narratives, and statecraft, introducing the audience to such fascinating but little-known figures as Justus Sherwood, loyalist spy; Jeduthan Baldwin, self-taught engineer; and La Corne St. Luc, ruthless partisan leader. And he reintroduces characters we thought we knew - an admirable Benedict Arnold, a traitorous Ethan Allen, and a devious George Washington. A gripping read grounded in serious scholarship, Conquered into Liberty will enchant and inform readers for decades to come. Eliot Cohen holds BS and a PhD in government from Harvard. From 1982 to 1985 he was Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard, and Assistant Dean of Harvard College. In 1985 he joined the Strategy Department of the Naval War College. In 1990 he joined the Secretary of Defense's Policy Planning Staff, and later SAIS. In addition to directing the strategic studies program he is the founding Director of the Center for Strategic Education, a curriculum development and university teacher training program. From April 2007 through January 2009 he served as Counselor of the Department of State. In addition to the book on which tonight's lecture is based, Eliot Cohen is the author of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (2002) His other books are Commandos and Politicians (1978) and Citizens and Soldiers (1985). He is, also co-author of Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (1990), Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in the Persian Gulf (1995), and co-editor of Strategy in the Contemporary World (2002) and War over Kosovo (2001). From 1991-1993 he directed and edited the official study of air power in the 1991 war with Iraq. He has also authored numerous articles in a variety of journals.

When Greg Tomlin deployed to Baquba, Iraq, in March 2004, he began a mission that would redefine how conventional U.S. army forces fight an urban war. Leading his field artillery platoon through a transition into a counterinsurgency rifle platoon and carrying out daily combat patrols in one of the region's most notorious hotspots, Tomlin chronicles Task Force 1-6 Field Artillery's year in Iraq and its response to the insurgency that threatened to engulf their corner of the Sunni Triangle. After Tomlin relinquished control of his platoon, he spent five months in the Diyala provincial police headquarters in Baquba. In this environment he found himself living with and advising senior Iraqi security leaders, many of whom had served as colonels and general officers in the former Iraqi army. Together they planned security operations for the province's 165 polling stations during the January 2005 national elections, Iraq's first democratic elections in nearly thirty years. Rather than presenting a snapshot dominated by battle scenes, Tomlin presents a wide-angled view of his experiences. He assesses the implications of his platoon's mission, starting with their pre-deployment training in Germany and ending with the handing over of duties to the replacement task force at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Tomlin discusses his impressions of the benefits and liabilities of working with embedded journalists and relates both his frustrations with and his admiration for the fledgling Iraqi security forces. From chaotic security planning and grieving the loss of fallen comrades - both U.S. and Iraqi - to late-night debates with Iraqis about democracy, Tomlin discusses how Iraqis perceived the value of their post-Saddam elections and the political future of their country as it tried to reinvent itself in the wake of a dictator's fall.

During the early months of World War II as the American forces fought for the Philippines, tensions grew between Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Navy. Using a rich collection of American and newly discovered Japanese sources, Dr. John Gordon details the unusual missions of the Navy and Marine Corps in the largely Army campaign. He recounts sailors fighting as infantrymen alongside their Marine comrades at Bataan and Corregidor, crews of Navy ships manning the Army's heavy coastal artillery weapons, and Navy submarines desperately trying to supply the men with food and ammunition. He also chronicles the last stand of the Navy's colorful China gunboats at Manila Bay. Gordon also provides a detailed account of the Japanese bombing of the Cavite Navy Yard outside Manila on the third day of the war, which was the worst damage inflicted on a U.S. Navy installation since the British burned the Washington Navy Yard in 1814. It also closely examines the surrender of the 4th Marines at Corregidor, the only time in history that the U.S. Marine Corps lost a regiment in combat. Gordon also draws on the recently discovered diary of a leader of the Japanese amphibious assault force that fought against the Navy's provisional infantry battalion on southern Bataan, and uses the U.S. ship logs and the 4th Marine unit diary that were evacuated from Manila Bay shortly before the U.S. forces surrendered.
Dr John Gordon is a Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. He holds a BA in History from The Citadel, an MA in International Relations from St. Mary's University, and MBA from Marymount University, and a PhD from George Mason University. Since joining RAND in 1997 after a 20 year US Army career, he has participated in and led numerous studies for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Departments of the Army and Navy. Dr Gordon has authored or co-authored several RAND studies on counterinsurgency and irregular warfare. He has led or participated in RAND research projects for the governments of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, and Germany. Dr Gordon is also an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown and George Mason Universities where he teaches graduate-level courses on counterinsurgency and military operations. In addition to the book on which tonight's lecture is based, he has authored numerous articles on military subjects in a variety of professional journals.

In the decades since the "forgotten war" in Korea, conventional wisdom has held that the Eighth Army consisted largely of poorly trained, undisciplined troops who fled in terror from the onslaught of the Communist forces. The generalizations historians and fellow soldiers have used regarding these troops do little justice to the tens of thousands of soldiers who worked to make themselves and their army ready for war. This careful study of combat preparedness in the Eighth Army from 1949 to the outbreak of hostilities in 1950 shows that the U.S. soldiers sent to Korea suffered gaps in their professional preparation, from missing and broken equipment to unevenly trained leaders at every level of command. But after a year of progressive, focused, and developmental collective training - based largely on the lessons of combat in World War II - these soldiers expected to defeat the Communist enemy. By recognizing the constraints under which the Eighth Army operated, Hanson asserts that scholars and soldiers will be able to discard what Douglas Macarthur called the "pernicious myth" of the Eighth Army's professional, physical, and moral ineffectiveness.
Lieutenant Colonel Tom Hanson enlisted in the US Army as an infantryman in 1988. He earned a commission as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry from the US Army Officer Candidate School in 1992. He has commanded infantry units from fire team to battalion, and has served as a staff officer in several Army and joint organizations. He earned a PhD in history from The Ohio State University in 2006, and served as both an instructor at the US Military Academy and as a professor of military science. Since redeploying from Iraq in April 2012 LTC Hanson has served as Deputy Director, Combat Studies Institute, at Fort Leavenworth. Lieutenant Colonel Hanson is married to Lieutenant Colonel Karen S. Hubbard. They have three adult children and a son and daughter in high school.

The grandson of the legendary World War II general George S. Patton Jr., documentary filmmaker Benjamin Patton explores his family legacy and shares the inspirational wit and wisdom that his grandfather bestowed upon his only son and namesake. In revealing personal correspondence written between 1939 and 1945, General Patton Jr. espoused his ideals to Benjamin's father, then a cadet at West Point. Dispensing advice on duty, heroism and honor with the same candor he used ordering the Third Army across Europe, the letters show Patton to be as dynamic a parent as a military commander.
Following in those famous footsteps, Benjamin's father became a respected and decorated hero of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. Ironically, as he rose to Major General, he also proved himself just as brave, flamboyant, flawed and inspiring as his father had been. A study of a great American original, Growing Up Patton features some of the pivotal figures in Benjamin's father's life, including Creighton Abrams, the WWII hero who became his greatest mentor; Charley Watkins, a daredevil helicopter pilot in Vietnam; Manfred Rommel, the son of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; Joanne Patton, the author's mother and a resourceful fighter in her own right; and Benjamin's mentally challenged brother, George. Growing Up Patton explores how the Patton cultural legacy lives on, and in the end, reveals how knowing the history of our heritage-famous or not-can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Benjamin Patton, the youngest grandson of WWII's General George S. Patton Jr., is the co-author of Growing Up Patton: Reflections on Heroes, History and Family Wisdom (Berkley, 2012). Formerly a producer at New York City's PBS affiliate, he recently established the Patton Veterans Project, which holds filmmaking workshops designed especially for veterans coping with Post Traumatic Stress as a tool for healing and self-expression.

Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in Union and Southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Donald Stoker provides for the first time a comprehensive and often surprising account of strategy as it evolved between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. Reminding us that strategy is different from tactics (battlefield deployments) and operations (campaigns conducted in pursuit of a strategy), Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them--or how they often failed to do so. Stoker shows that Davis, despite a West Point education and experience as Secretary of War, ultimately failed as a strategist. Lincoln, in contrast, evolved a clear strategic vision, but he failed for years to make his generals implement it. And while Robert E. Lee was unerring in his ability to determine the Union's strategic heart--its center of gravity--he proved mistaken in his assessment of how to destroy it. Historians have often argued that the North's advantages in population and industry ensured certain victory. In The Grand Design, Stoker reasserts the centrality of the overarching prosecution of the war by each side, arguing convincingly that it was strategy that determined the result of America's great national conflict.

The decade of the 1990s saw the end of the Cold War, conflict in Southwest Asia, emerging threats from new actors, retrenchment of US military activities around the world and a concomitant drawdown of forces. The reduced budgets of the post Desert Storm era forced the Army to make painful but necessary cuts in personnel and equipment, while transforming to meet new threats and ways of war. Civil and political leaders hoped for a "peace dividend" that would mean a smaller, cheaper military, yet one no less effective than the one that had served the Cold War so well. The Army's senior leaders worked to balance projected requirements, changing roles and missions, emerging technology, re-stationing, and personnel drawdown requirements against reduced budgets and the need to modernize the force and continue to care for Soldiers and their families. General Sullivan will discuss the issues he faced as Army Chief of Staff and discuss some of the methods he used. The strategic leader must manage the complexity ever changing situations while simultaneously building the joint, combined and interagency teams necessary to operate in a dynamic environment. Dealing with the present is not enough, and the successful leader must also shape the future of the Army to continue to fight and win the nation's wars.

General Gordon R. Sullivan is the President and CEO of the Association of the United States Army a dynamic organization with over 100,000 members that represents Soldiers, families, and the defense industry. GEN Sullivan was commissioned an Armor officer in 1959 from Norwich University. He holds a BA in History from Norwich and an MA in political science from the University of New Hampshire. His professional military education includes the U.S. Army Armor School Basic and Advanced Courses, the Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College. In addition to his many awards on active duty, he is also the recipient of the West Point Association of Graduates Sylvanus Thayer Award and a member of the Sergeants Major Academy's Hall of Honor. General Sullivan retired from the Army on 31 July 1995 after more than 36 years of active service. He culminated his service in uniform as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Staff of the Army. He is the co-author of Hope Is Not a Method (Random House, 1996), which chronicles the enormous challenges encountered in transforming the post-Cold War Army through the lens of proven leadership principles and a commitment to shared values. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Norwich University and the Marshall Legacy Institute as well as a member of the MITRE Army Advisory Board and a Corporate Member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

The Civil War in the Eastern Theater in 1862 was the stage for a grand confrontation between two distinctly different armies and commanders. When the year began, Robert E. Lee languished in relative obscurity, while George McClellan strode the Union war effort like a colossus. By June, McClellan had led his Army of the Potomac to the proverbial gates of Richmond and ultimate victory for the Union seemed within sight. Then, however, Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia struck back and by the middle of September had carried the war to the outskirts of Washington and then across the Potomac River into Maryland before McClellan managed to turn back the Confederate tide. This talk will look at both of these commanders and how the dialogue between their respective approaches to the war--and their mutual understanding of the strategic and operational dynamics in the East--colored its conduct in 1862 and cast a long shadow over the entire war. Ethan S. Rafuse earned his Ph.D. in history and political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A former park ranger at Manassas National Battlefield and Harry S Truman National Historic Site, in 2001-03 he taught military history at the United States Military Academy at West Point and since 2004 has been a member of the faculty at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where he is a professor of military history. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of several books, including McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 1863-1865, and the forthcoming Army War College Guide to the Richmond and Petersburg Campaign of 1864-65.

This presentation examines the challenges and opportunities encountered by Rita Pilkey, an American Red Cross Club Director stationed in China’s Yunnan Province from January 1944 until August 1945. Pilkey’s first assignment at the U.S. Army Field Artillery Training Center, twelve miles outside of Kunming, provided her with the opportunity to witness the training of Chinese soldiers in modern artillery warfare. These soldiers would go on to play a critical role in the Salween Campaign and the reopening of an overland supply route from India to China in early 1945. Her second assignment at Luliang, eighty miles southeast of Kunming, brought her to a remote airfield where the roar of bomber, fighter, and transport aircraft was a constant reminder of the war that was raging nearby. Rita Pilkey’s feisty and daring spirit, her grit and determination, her ingenuity, and her equanimity served her well during her assignment in China. Indeed, she epitomized the energetic fortitude of the 5,000 American Red Cross recreational workers assigned to distant and remote overseas postings during World War II. Her Red Cross story helps to broaden and modify our definition of war so that we no longer perceive as a phenomenon belonging exclusively to men. In the early 1990s, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War, an outpouring of books, memoirs, films, and public programs helped to move the discussion of war to include the varied and complex stories of women. Rita Pilkey’s story is a continuation of this quest to insure that women’s voices remain an integral part of our understanding of war.

When the United States entered World War II, it took more than industrial might to transform its tiny army--smaller than even Portugal's--into an overseas fighting force of more than eight and a half million. The determination of American Army officers to be prepared for the next big war was an essential component in America's ultimate triumph over its adversaries. The Army schools at Fort Leavenworth became crucial to that preparation. Interwar Army officers, haunted by the bloodshed of World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive, fully expected to return to Europe to conclude the "unfinished business" of that conflict, and they prepared well. Schifferle examines for the first time how they accomplished this through a close and illuminating look at the students, faculty, curriculum, and essential methods of instruction at Fort Leavenworth. He describes how the interwar officer corps there translated the experiences of World War I into effective doctrine, engaged in intellectual debate on professional issues, conducted experiments to determine the viability of new concepts, and used military professional education courses to substitute for the experience of commanding properly organized and resourced units. The Fort Leavenworth education provided intensive instruction in general staff procedures, hands-on experience with the principles and techniques of combined arms, and the handling of large division-sized formations in combat. This readied Army officers for an emerging new era of global warfare and enabled them to develop the leadership decision making they would need to be successful on the battlefield. Dr. Peter J. Schifferle is a graduate of the U.S. Army Armor Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the School of Advanced Military Studies. He holds Masters Degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in German History, and the School of Advanced Military Studies in Theater Operations. He was awarded a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Kansas in 2002. He is the author of America's School for War: Fort Leavenworth, Officer Education, and Victory in World War II (Kansas, 2010), several journal articles in Military Review and Armor, as well as numerous book reviews.

Conventional wisdom holds that the US Army in Vietnam, thrust into an unconventional war where occupying terrain was a meaningless measure of success, depended on body counts as its sole measure of military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian Gregory Daddis looks far deeper into the Army's techniques for measuring military success and presents a much more complicated-and disturbing-account of the American misadventure in Indochina.

On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson thrust the United States into World War I by declaring, "The world must be made safe for democracy." For the 380,000 African American soldiers who fought and labored in the global conflict, these words carried life or death meaning. Relating stories bridging the war and postwar years, spanning the streets of Chicago and the streets of Harlem, from the battlefields of the American South to the battlefields of the Western Front, Chad L. Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in World War I and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens alike, committed to fighting for democracy at home and beyond. Using a diverse range of sources, Williams connects the history of African American soldiers and veterans to issues such as the obligations of citizenship, combat and labor, diaspora and internationalism, homecoming and racial violence, "New Negro" militancy, and African American historical memories of the war. Democracy may have been distant from the everyday lives of African Americans at the dawn of the war, but it nevertheless remained a powerful ideal that sparked the hopes of black people throughout the country for societal change. Torchbearers of Democracy reclaims the legacy of black soldiers and establishes the World War I era as a defining moment in the history of African Americans and peoples of African descent more broadly.

During World War II, the U.S. Army gained an enormous amount of amphibious knowledge and experience with most of the Army’s amphibious operations taking place under General Douglas MacArthur. General MacArthur also carried out four major amphibious operations in the early months of the Korean War. The Inchon landing spearheaded by the 1st Marine Division was the most famous, but two of those amphibious operations were conducted exclusively by U.S. Army units and Navy ships that bypassed enemy forces to land in unexpected or lightly-defended areas. The Army also used amphibious vessels to insert and extract special operations forces, to shape enemy perceptions and actions through the threat of amphibious landings, and to sustain forces across unimproved beaches. During the last two years of the war, Army forces trained for and planned to conduct a major amphibious operation if circumstances had permitted. Since the Korean War, the Army’s amphibious maneuver role has greatly diminished, but Army over-the-shore logistics capability remains vital, and Army forces must be prepared to participate in amphibious operations as part of the joint force. Thus, this historical study chronicles an aspect of the U.S. Army’s history that may seem remote but continues to be very relevant.

The myths surrounding the German high command in World War II deviate significantly from the reality. Many people have an image of the German high command (or, loosely, the German General Staff) as an entity that was independent; organized and centralized; expert; and anti-Nazi. While not wholly false, this picture is also far from accurate. This talk will examine the high command's structure, ideas, and culture, in order to reveal weaknesses that severely inhibited its performance and contributed to the onset, nature and ultimate loss of the war. Geoffrey Megargee received his undergraduate degree in history from St. Lawrence University in 1981. Following stints as an army officer and in the business world, he entered San Jose State University, where he received a Masters in European history in 1991, and then Ohio State University, from which he graduated with a doctorate in military history in 1998. He is the recipient of, among other honors, a J. William Fulbright grant for research in Germany, upon which he based his book Inside Hitler's High Command (winner of the Society for Military History's 2001 Distinguished Book Award). He is also the author of War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Dr. Megargee currently holds the position of Senior Applied Research Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he is editor-in-chief for the Museum's multi-volume Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. The first volume of that work appeared in June 2009, and has received a National Jewish Book Award and a Judaica Reference Award, among other distinctions. Dr. Megargee is also a Presidential Counselor for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, a member of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee, and has served for the last five years as treasurer of the United States Commission on Military History.

When President George W. Bush stood on the decks of the U.S.S. Lincoln in May 2003 and announced the victorious end to major combat operations in Iraq, he did so in front of a huge banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished." American forces had successfully removed the regime of Saddam Hussein with "rapid decisive operations"-and yet the United States was unprepared to effectively replace that regime. Between the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that May, the Allied forces struggled to plug the governance gap created by the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime. Plugging that gap became the job of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Cobbled together with staff from diverse federal agencies and military branches, ORHA was led by Jay Garner, a key figure in assisting Kurdish refugees following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Garner and ORHA were given mere weeks to stabilize a nation that had come completely apart at the seams. Iraq's infrastructure was in such a shambles-thanks to years of poor maintenance, international sanctions, and massive looting-that the mission was doomed to fail from the start.

The Union Army scored its first major victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in 1862. Here, Gen. U.S. Grant took the first big step that would take he and his soldiers on to bloody Shiloh, to Chattanooga, and to Vicksburg . Many of the troops who stood with Grant at Donelson were destined to march with Gen. William T. Sherman through Georgia and the Carolinas. The road ahead took Grant from Chattanooga to General-in-Chief and on to Appomattox Court House. In early February, 1862 , Grant moved against Fort Henry on the Tennessee River with an amphibious force supplied by four ironclad gunboats under army administrative control. The fort surrendered on Feb. 6, and Grant boasted that "I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry." Grant was not able to do so, but Bearss argues that few could. Some 16,000 soldiers defended Fort Donelson, and Grant's vanguard arrived in front of it on Feb. 12. By the following day, Grant had partially invested the Confederate stronghold. Rebel water batteries defeated Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote and his fleet (four ironclads and two timberclads) on Feb. 14 as they exchanged "iron valentines." The following day, the Confederates boldly seized the initiative and rolled back the Union right. With victory seemingly in Union grasp and the road to Nashville opened, Grant ordered a counterattack. The Confederates retired into the fort's perimeter and the next day surrendered unconditionally. The Union had a legitimate hero as Captain Sam Grant morphed into "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

Is this man the real reason the Vietnam War was lost? How did he get there, why did he fail, and how did he last so long? Unless and until we understand General William Westmoreland, we will never understand what happened to us in Vietnam, or why. An Eagle Scout at fifteen, First Captain of his West Point class, Westmoreland fought in World War II and Korea, rising rapidly to command the 101st Airborne Division and become Superintendent at West Point, then was chosen to lead the war effort in Vietnam.

That turned out to be a disaster. He failed to understand a complex war, choosing a flawed strategy, sticking to it in the face of all opposition, and misrepresenting the results when truth mattered most. In so doing he squandered four years of support by Congress, much of the media, and the American people. The tragedy of William Westmoreland provides lessons not just for Vietnam, but for America's future military and political leadership.

Americans love war. We've never run from a fight. Our triumphs from the American Revolution to World War II define who we are as a nation and a people. Americans hate war. Our leaders rush us into conflicts without knowing the facts or understanding the consequences. Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan define who we are as a nation and a people. Why are we so often at war? Do we fight conflicts in a uniquely American way? Why do we win and lose? Tierney has created a secret history of American foreign policy and a frank and insightful look at how Americans respond to the ultimate challenge. Dominic Tierney is assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a correspondent at The Atlantic. He completed his PhD in international politics at Oxford University in 2003, and has held fellowships at the Olin Institute and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His latest book is How We Fight, which Ambassador James Dobbins, former Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, described as, "A great theme, beautifully written and compellingly organized, it's an important contribution to a national debate over the war in Afghanistan which is only gathering steam." Tierney is also the author of FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America, and Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics, with Dominic Johnson, which won the International Studies Association award for the best book of the year, and was nominated for the best book of the decade. Tierney's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, and on NPR.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, numerous challenges confronted the U.S. Marine Corps, including fiscal restraints, manpower shortages, promotion bottlenecks, and isolationist sentiments. An entirely different set of difficulties emerged after Pearl Harbor.
Despite these obstacles, Commandant Thomas Holcomb supervised the Marine Corps' mobilization in the Second World War's initial twenty-four months. During his entire commandancy, the Corps grew from 18,000 men in 1936 to 385,000 in 1943. Not only did Holcomb leave the Corps much larger, but he also guided its transition into an armed service capable of making amphibious assaults thousands of miles across the Pacific. Although a visionary leader, shrewd publicist, meticulous planner, and progressive manager, he has been ignored or given short shrift in most histories of the Corps. This presentation will write Holcomb back in the history of the Second World War. It will evaluate him as a manager using such case studies as the development of amphibious warfare, the reorganization of Headquarters Marine Corps, and the introduction of women and African Americans into the Corps. Ultimately, Commandant Holcomb did more than any other Leatherneck to transform the Marine Corps into the modern force-in-readiness that would help win the Pacific War and see action during the Cold War and more recent conflicts.

Most Civil War generals were graduates of West Point, and many of them helped transform the U.S. Army from what was little better than an armed mob that performed poorly during the War of 1812 into the competent fighting force that won the Mexican War. Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh demonstrates how the "old army" transformed itself into a professional military force after 1814, and, more important, how "old army" methods profoundly shaped the conduct of the Civil War. Hsieh demonstrates the importance of the Old Army's post-War of 1812 professionalization to American military success during the Mexican War, and he examines both the strengths and the weaknesses of the U.S. Army's institutions during the antebellum period. He reveals how an antebellum American military culture that idealized the citizen soldier allowed regular army men a virtual monopoly on professional military expertise, and how that forced both sections to use old army veterans as the leadership cores of their armies. Hsieh draws out the implications of that reliance, which produced an equilibrium of competence between both armies that helped prolong the conflict, because both sections' armies began with roughly comparable levels of military competence, and learned the business of war at roughly the same rate. Furthermore, the weakness of American military institutions gave an outsized importance to individual military leaders, the two most important being Lee and McClellan, who could thus stamp their respective armies with distinctive command cultures.

While it lasted only sixteen months, King Philip's War (1675-1676) was arguably one of the most significant of the colonial wars that wracked early America. As the first major military crisis to directly strike one of the Empire's most important possessions: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Philip's War marked the first time that Massachusetts had to mobilize mass numbers of ordinary, local men to fight. In this exhaustive social history and community study of Essex County, Massachusetts's militia, Kyle F. Zelner boldly challenges traditional interpretations of who was called to serve during this period. Drawing on muster and pay lists as well as countless historical records, Zelner demonstrates that Essex County's more upstanding citizens were often spared from impressments, while the "rabble" - criminals, drunkards, the poor- were forced to join active fighting units, with town militia committees selecting soldiers who would be least missed should they die in action. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, A Rabble in Arms shows that, despite heroic illusions of a universal military obligation, town fathers, to damaging effects, often placed local and personal interests above colonial military concerns.

Colonel Ha Mai Viet presents a historically accurate and detailed account of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the South Vietnamese armored forces. Highly decorated for his valor and leadership of the armored units, he spent ten years documenting what went on so he could offer an analysis of the war based on facts. He interviewed hundreds of people, including all senior South Vietnamese officers involved and many of lesser rank, as well as American advisers. Viet tells the story without glossing over the shortcomings of his fellow soldiers. His efforts serve as an invaluable record of his army's organization, combat operations, and interaction with U.S. advisers. Colonel Viet will provide background on himself and his family, then describe research for his history of the South Vietnamese armored force, publication of the book in Vietnamese (in 2005) and in English (2008), and highlights of the account.

Following World War I, the Imperial Japanese Army sought to modernize its weapons and equipment and transform its force structure. For almost two decades, the best and the brightest staff officers assigned to the War Ministry and General Staff grappled with transformation issues as they sought to create a modern force capable of protecting Japanese interests in Northeast Asia. The fundamental question revolved around how to prepare Japan for a future conflict that would require national, industrial, and military mobilization to fight and win a protracted war. Shifting political trends and Japan’s weak industrial infrastructure limited the parameters for transformation. This resulted in fierce debates about Japan’s future military strategy and diverse theories about total war in the offices of the Army General Staff and the War Ministry that set officer classmates against one another. The Imperial Army’s story of military transformation involves more than weapons procurement and acquisition policies. It was a twenty-year struggle for the soul of the Army. The officer education and promotion systems played central roles in the drama because these determined the choice assignments for future advancement and high command. Between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s, multiple transformative initiatives faltered until one brilliant but eccentric Army colonel seemed on the cusp of achieving the Army’s goal of a national mobilization state.

Ulysses S. Grant was neither a magnetic leader of Soldiers (such as George McClellan or George Patton) nor a military genius (in the mold of Robert E. Lee or Douglas MacArthur). Yet his qualities of command mark him as the best general in the Federal Army and one of the most successful generals in all of American history. Most significantly, he understood how to convert advantages into achievements. Our February program analyzes the generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, identifies his many strengths as a military commander, and yet also acknowledges limitations in his leadership. The presentation proceeds to place his generalship in the overall context of the American Civil War.

LTC Mark A. Viney, the Director of the U.S. Army Heritage & Education Center, synthesizes new oral history with recently declassified documents to provide a fresh perspective on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle G. Wheeler, who as a senior strategist during the Vietnam War, consistently advocated an offensive strategy for victory over North Vietnam. The centerpiece of General Wheeler’s strategy was Operation Mule Shoe, a heretofore unknown Joint Chiefs of Staff operation plan for a limited invasion, or “lodgement”, into southern North Vietnam to reduce enemy sanctuary areas above the demilitarized zone. Primarily intended to reveal new information about a heretofore unknown aspect of Joint Chiefs of Staff activity, this presentation also challenges perceptions of General Wheeler and his JCS colleagues as derelict, passive accomplices to civilian mismanagement of the war.

The First World War set in motion the train of events that gave us fascism, World War II, genocide, the Cold War, and the modern Middle East. Most also know that the war supposedly started when the assassination of an Austrian archduke unleashed the nationalist hatreds that dominated the European continent. Almost one hundred years after the start of the war, this explanation is no longer sufficient. To understand why this most important of all wars began, we must get beyond the simple, yet incorrect, views of Europe that have dominated this discussion for a century. Dr. Neiberg provides a more accurate picture of Europe and the impact of the events of 1914 presenting the context of the First World War in all its complexity.

The Red Army's leading operational theorist in the 1930s, Georgii Samoilovich Isserson was the mastermind behind the "deep operation"--the cornerstone of Soviet offensive operations in World War II. Drawing from an in-depth analysis of Isserson's numerous published and unpublished works, his arrest file in the former KGB archives, and interviews with his family.

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the leaders of the victorious powers convened to negotiate the necessary protocols, territorial occupancy agreements, rites of passage, and myriad other details as to how Germany was to be governed. Generally, the powers agreed that Germany would be treated as an entity and not as a partitioned state. As time passed, however, it became apparent that the occupation of Germany was not only costly to the victors but also was increasingly harmful to the prospects for a recovered, democratic state as a member of the European community once again. The Soviets were unalterably opposed to a revitalization of the economy because such recovery would render the German and western European populations less vulnerable to the expansion of communism, which fed vigorously on poverty. The Soviets opposed cooperation on any of the four-power coordinating committees, and shut down access to Berlin in the early summer of 1948. The U.S. Air Force reallocated transport aircraft to Europe and recalled reserve officers and airmen with scarce personnel skills, and built an unequalled task force, while the world looked on-- in disbelief. In a twelve-month period the Berlin Airlift fed people and maintained industry, while averting an armed confrontation.

Abraham Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate. Now, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Fate of Liberty", Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed.

In the spring of 1832, when the Indian warrior Black Hawk and a thousand followers marched into Illinois to reoccupy lands earlier ceded to American settlers, the U.S. Army turned to rival tribes for military support. John Hall explores these alliances and provides a rare view of Indian attitudes and strategies in war and peace. Hall deepens our understanding of Native Americans and the complex roles they played in the nation’s history. More broadly, he demonstrates the risks and lessons of small wars that entail an “uncommon defense” by unlikely allies in pursuit of diverse, even conflicting, goals.

The 1942 campaigning season ended in disaster for the German Wehrmacht, with twin and nearly simultaneous defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein. Analysts have usually assigned responsibility for the catastrophe to the amateurish strategy of Adolf Hitler, or to miscalculations on the part of the German General Staff, or to various mistakes by the field commanders at critical junctures. But what if we have misconstrued the true causes of the catastrophe? What if, in fact, the Wehrmacht failed in 1942 not because of fundamental problems within the classic "German way of war," a unique combination of doctrines, attitudes, and assumptions whose roots lay deep in the history of Prussia and Germany? In Death of the Wehrmacht, military historian Robert Citino offers not only a detailed analysis of the German campaigns in the Soviet Union and North Africa, but also ties them into the traditional pattern of German operations extending back hundreds of years. In a major reevaluation of the campaigns of 1942, Citino shows how the German army’s emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the "war of movement" as they were in Hitler’s deeply flawed management of the war. Citino examines how one of history’s most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

American military strategy in the Pacific during World War II hinged on the debates over the rival end game strategies of invasion versus blockade and bombardment, and in particular, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King’s role in the development of the strategy and what light it sheds on U.S. civil-military relationships. 
King, in keeping with carefully honed navy strategy between the wars, was adamantly opposed to any invasion of Japan. But he also realized that if he forced a showdown on this in the first half of 1945, he likely could not prevail. He advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he agreed that the JCS must issue the order for the invasion so that this could be prepared as an option, but that he expected they will revisit the issue of whether they really must invade Japan in August or September of that year. 

This raises very interesting and provocative questions about King's conduct and how this fits into any model of U.S. civil-military relations. Should King have masked his views (and those of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas) to Truman in the June 1945 meeting which was for the explicit purpose of getting the doubtful Truman to agree to an invasion? Should he instead have forthrightly stated his objections before Truman in June? Did King's decision to postpone a showdown over the invasion strategy effect the effort of the navy contingent on the staff of the JCS in presenting casualty estimates to Truman when he asked for them? Finally, how does this episode tie in to the still larger issue of the significance of military factors in the end of the Pacific War on both sides in the ongoing controversies surrounding these events?

Richard B. Frank was born in Kansas in 1947. Upon graduation from the University of Missouri in 1969, he was commissioned in the United States Army, in which he served almost four years, including a tour of duty in the Republic of Vietnam as an aerorifle platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. In 1976, he completed studies at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. The following year he began research on his first book, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Campaign, which was published in 1990. He lives in Annandale, Virginia. Mr. Frank is a consultant to the HBO miniseries The Pacific, airing 14 MAR-16 MAY 2010.

Pham Van Dinh and Tran Ngoc Hue were two of the brightest young stars in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Both men fought with valor in a war that seemed to have no end, exemplifying ARVN bravery and determination that is largely forgotten or ignored in the West. However, while Hue fought until he was captured by the North Vietnamese Army and then endured thirteen years of captivity, Dinh surrendered and defected to the enemy, for whom he served as a teacher in the reeducation of his former ARVN comrades.
An understanding of how two lives that were so similar diverged so dramatically provides a lens through which to understand the ARVN and South Vietnam’s complex relationship with Americas government and military. The lives of Dinh and Hue reflect the ARVNs battlefield successes, from the recapture of the Citadel in Hue City in the Tet Offensive of 1968, to Dinhs unheralded role in the seizure of Hamburger Hill a year later. However, their careers expose an ARVN that was over-politicized, tactically flawed, and dependent on American logistical and firepower support. Marginalized within an American war, ARVN faced a grim fate as U.S. forces began to exit the conflict. As the structure of the ARVN/U.S. alliance unraveled, Dinh and Hue were left alone to make the most difficult decisions of their lives.
Once both military superstars, Dinh is viewed by a traitor by many within the South Vietnamese community, while Hue, an expatriate living in northern Virginia, is seen as a hero who never let go of his ideals. Their experiences and legacies mirror that of the ARVNs rise and fall as well as the tragic history of South Vietnam.

On the eve of the Civil War, the Irish were one of America's largest ethnic groups, and approximately 150,000 fought for the Union. Analyzing letters and diaries written by soldiers and civilians; military, church, and diplomatic records; and community newspapers, Susannah Ural Bruce significantly expands the story of Irish-American Catholics in the Civil War, and reveals a complex picture of those who fought for the Union. While the population was diverse, many Irish Americans had dual loyalties to the U.S. and Ireland, which influenced their decisions to volunteer, fight, or end their military service. When the Union cause supported their interests in Ireland and America, large numbers of Irish Americans enlisted. However, as the war progressed, the Emancipation Proclamation, federal draft, and sharp rise in casualties caused Irish Americans to question and sometimes abandon the war effort because they viewed such changes as detrimental to their families and futures in America and Ireland. By recognizing these competing and often fluid loyalties, The Harp and the Eagle sheds new light on the relationship between Irish-American volunteers and the Union Army, and how the Irish made sense of both the Civil War and their loyalty to the United States.

If the Battle of the Bulge was Germany's last gasp, it was also America's proving ground-the largest single action fought by the U.S. Army in World War II. Victory in this legendary campaign was built upon the remarkable resurrection of our truncated interwar army, an overhaul that produced the effective commanders crucial to GI success in beating back the Ardennes counteroffensive launched by Hitler's forces. Understanding leadership during this period requires examining the largely neglected level of corps command. Focusing on the decisions and actions of six Army corps commanders-Leonard Gerow, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgway, John Millikin, Manton Eddy, and J. Lawton Collins, Dr. Hal Winton recreates their role in this epic struggle through a mosaic of narratives that take the commanders from the pre-war training grounds of America to the crucible of war in the icy-cold killing fields of Belgium and Luxembourg. Winton introduces the story of each phase of the Bulge with a theater-level overview of the major decisions and events that shaped the corps battles and, for the first time, fully integrates the crucial role of airpower into our understanding of how events unfolded on the ground. Unlike most accounts of the Ardennes that chronicle only the periods of German and American initiative, this study describes an intervening middle phase in which the initiative was fiercely contested by both sides and the outcome uncertain. His inclusion of the principal American and German commanders adds yet another valuable layer to this rich tapestry of narrative and analysis. Ultimately, Winton argues that the flexibility of the corps structure and the competence of the men who commanded the six American corps that fought in the Bulge contributed significantly to the ultimate victory.

The Virginia campaign of Spring 1864 was a single, massive operation stretching hundreds of miles. The story of the campaign is also the story of the demise of two great armies. The scale of casualties and human suffering that the campaign inflicted makes it unique in U.S. history. Mark Grimsley's study, however, is not just another battle book. Grimsley places the campaign in the political context of the 1864 presidential election; questions conventional interpretations; and explores the campaign as a touchstone of the Southern myth of the "Lost Cause." Professor Grimsley is currently on leave from The Ohio State University where he teaches American military history with an emphasis on the Civil War. He is the author of The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (1995), which won the Lincoln Prize. His other work includes Warfare in the Western World; Civilians in the Path of War (2002) (with Clifford J. Rogers); The Collapse of the Confederacy (2001) (with Brooks D. Simpson); And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864 (2002), Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide (1999) (with Brooks D. Simpson), and Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide (2006) (with Steven E. Woodworth). He is currently writing a book on the connections between the 1864 military and political campaigns for the "Pivotal Moments in American History" series, published by Oxford University Press.

Commencing in December 1995, Operation Joint Endeavor sought to implement a peace agreement concluding a bloody, ethnically motivated civil war in Bosnia. Over 57,000 NATO Soldiers participated in the year-long operation, which was the first-ever ground operation conducted by NATO and the largest military operation in Europe since World War Two. The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry (Quarterhorse) was one of the first combat units of NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) to enter Bosnia, where it played a pivotal role in the international effort to mend that nation still smoldering from three and a half years of brutal civil war. Despite the mountainous terrain, bad weather, tens of thousands of land mines, the periodic threat of terrorist attack, and the political imperative to minimize American casualties, Quarterhorse upheld the peace in one of the most challenging parts of the American sector. A useful case study of stability operations during the Age of Interventions (1989-2001), the American experience in Bosnia contributed to the development of military leaders who would go on to lead combat and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon. They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible of Iraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century. Theirs is a story of successes and failures, of ambitions achieved and thwarted, of the responsibilities and perils of command. The careers of this elite quartet show how the most powerful military force in the world entered a major war unprepared, and how the Army, drawing on a reservoir of talent that few thought it possessed, saved itself from crushing defeat against a ruthless, low-tech foe. In The Fourth Star, you'll follow:

•Gen. John Abizaid, one of the Army's most brilliant minds. Fluent in Arabic, he forged an unconventional path in the military to make himself an expert on the Middle East, but this unique background made him skeptical of the war he found himself leading.
•Gen. George Casey Jr., the son of the highest-ranking general to be killed in the Vietnam War. Casey had grown up in the Army and won praise for his common touch and skill as a soldier. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam but would take much of the blame as Iraq collapsed around him.
•Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an emotional, take-charge leader who, more than any other senior officer, felt the sting of the Army's failures in Iraq. He drove his soldiers, the chain of command, and the U.S. government to rethink the occupation plans–yet rarely achieved the results he sought.
•Gen. David Petraeus, a driven soldier-scholar. Determined to reach the Army's summit almost since the day he entered West Point, he sometimes alienated peers with his ambition and competitiveness. When he finally got his chance in Iraq, he–more than anyone–changed the Army's conception of what was possible.

Masterfully written and richly reported, The Fourth Star ranges far beyond today's battlefields, evoking the Army's tumultuous history since Vietnam through these four captivating lives and ultimately revealing a fascinating irony: In an institution that prizes obedience, the most effective warriors are often those who dare to question the prevailing orthodoxy and in doing so redefine the American way of war. Greg Jaffe is the Pentagon correspondent at the Washington Post and previously held the same position at the Wall Street Journal. In 1999, he was part of a team of reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

  World War I marked the first war in which the United States government and military took full responsibility for the identification, burial, and memorialization of those killed in battle, and as a result, the process of burying and remembering the dead became intensely political. The government and military attempted to create a patriotic consensus on the historical memory of World War I in which war dead were not only honored but used as a symbol to legitimize America's participation in a war not fully supported by all citizens. The saga of American soldiers killed in World War I and the efforts of the living to honor them is a neglected component of United States military history, and in this fascinating yet often macabre account, Lisa M. Budreau unpacks the politics and processes of the competing interest groups involved in the three core components of commemoration: repatriation, remembrance, and return. She also describes how relatives of the fallen made pilgrimages to French battlefields, attended largely by American Legionnaires and the Gold Star Mothers, a group formed by mothers of sons killed in World War I, which exists to this day. Throughout, and with sensitivity to issues of race and gender, Bodies of War emphasizes the inherent tensions in the politics of memorialization and explores how those interests often conflicted with the needs of veterans and relatives.

Baghdad at Sunrise presents an unparalleled record of what happened after U.S. forces seized Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Army Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, the on-the-ground commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division - the "Ready First Combat Team" - describes his brigade's first year in Iraq, from the sweltering, chaotic summer after the Ba'athists' defeat to the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government a year later. Uniquely positioned to observe, record, and assess the events of that fateful year, Mansoor now explains what went right and wrong as the U.S. military confronted an insurgency of unexpected strength and tenacity. Drawing not only on his own daily combat journal but also on observations by embedded reporters, news reports, combat logs, archived e-mails, and many other sources, Mansoor offers a contemporary record of the valor, motivations, and resolve of the 1st Brigade and its attachments during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet this is more than a personal memoir or unit history. Baghdad at Sunrise provides a detailed, nuanced analysis of U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Iraq, and along with it critically important lessons for America's military and political leaders of the twenty-first century.

Forty years ago, Buzz Aldrin became the second human, minutes after Neil Armstrong, to set foot on a celestial body other than the Earth. The event remains one of mankind's greatest achievements and was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. In the years since, millions more have had their Earth-centric perspective unalterably changed by the iconic photograph of Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon, the blackness of space behind him and his fellow explorer and the Eagle reflected in his visor. Describing the alien world he was walking upon, he uttered the words "magnificent desolation." And as the astronauts later sat in the Eagle, waiting to begin their journey back home, knowing that they were doomed unless every system and part on board worked flawlessly, it was Aldrin who responded to Mission Control's clearance to take off with the quip, "Roger. Understand. We're number one on the runway."

The American conquest of Indian communities east of the  Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped  by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major  revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the  American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US  'special operations' in the War on Terror. He explores the evolution of  American war, showing how the first war waged against Indian noncombatant  populations and their agricultural resources became the standard method of war employed by early Americans and which ultimately defined their military heritage.

On July 4, 1863, Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army retreated in tatters from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the Union began its march to ultimate victory in the Civil War. Nine days later, the largest riots in American history broke out on the streets of New York City, nearly destroying in four days the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of the nation. Northerners suspected a Confederate plot, carried out by local "Copperhead" sympathizers; however, the reality was more complex and far-reaching, exposing fault lines of race and class still present in America today. Barnet Schecter argues that the cataclysm in New York was anything but an isolated incident; rather, it was a microcosm-within the borders of the supposedly loyal northern states-of the larger Civil War between the North and South. The riots erupted over the same polarizing issues--of slavery versus freedom for African Americans and the scope of federal authority over states and individuals--that had torn the nation apart. The riots' aftermath foreshadowed the compromises that would bedevil Reconstruction and delay the process of integration for the next 100 years.

From its inception in 1947 until the late 1970s the primary missions of the United States Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) involved maintaining a presence in East Germany for confidence building measures and reporting on items related to indicators and warnings of hostilities initiated by the Soviet Army. There are some who believe that USMLM was responsible for the United States and Russia not waging a nuclear war. Stephen V. Hoyt served two tours at USMLM. His Ph.D. dissertation involved analyzing the intersection of ideology and literature in East Germany. He has written more than 60 articles on a variety of topics and is currently an assistant professor of English at Eastern Washington University.

Most Americans fail to appreciate that the Civil Rights movement was about the overthrow of an entrenched political order in each of the Southern states, that the segregationists who controlled this order did not hesitate to employ violence (law enforcement, paramilitary, mob) to preserve it, and that for nearly a century the federal government tacitly or overtly supported the segregationist state governments. That the Civil Rights movement employed nonviolent tactics should fool us no more than it did the segregationists, who correctly saw themselves as being at war. Significant change was never going to occur within the political system: it had to be forced. The aim of the segregationists was to keep the federal government on the sidelines. The aim of the Civil Rights movement was to "capture" the federal government-to get it to apply its weight against the Southern states. As to why it matters: a major reason we were slow to grasp the emergence and extent of the insurgency in Iraq is that it didn't-and doesn't-look like a classic insurgency. In fact, the official Department of Defense definition of insurgency still reflects a Vietnam era understanding of the term. Looking at the Civil Rights movement as an insurgency is useful because it assists in thinking more comprehensively about the phenomenon of insurgency and assists in a more complete-and therefore more useful-definition of the term.

Kindsvatter examines the Korean War soldier's experiences to show how something akin to "mass disaffection" did indeed take hold during the Korean War, a pattern repeated over the course of the Vietnam War. He addresses the soldier's faltering belief in the cause, the perceived lack of home front awareness or concern, the G. I.'s lack of faith in their South Korean allies, and the increasing challenges for junior leaders tasked to prosecute a war that their soldiers increasingly believed, as one put it, "was being fought for nothing."

From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, the United States Army was a demoralized institution in a country in the midst of a social revolution. The war in Vietnam had gone badly and public attitudes about it shifted from indifference, to acceptance, to protest. Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams directed a major reorganization of the Army and appointed William E. DePuy commander of the newly established Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), in 1973. DePuy already had a distinguished record in positions of trust and high responsibility: successful infantry battalion command and division G-3 in World War II by the age of twenty-five; Assistant Military Attache' in Hungary; detail to CIA in the Korean War; alternating tours on the Army Staff and in command of troops. As a general officer he was General Westmoreland's operations officer in Saigon; commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam; Special Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, Army. But it was as TRADOC Commander that DePuy made his major contribution in integrating training, doctrine, combat developments, and management in the U.S. Army. He regenerated a deflated post-Vietnam Army, effectively cultivating a military force prepared to fight and win in modern war.

With the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940s, and the specter of monolithic Communism and growing Soviet military strength, the US sought to counter Soviet expansionism and hegemony with a series of treaties, both multilateral and bilateral, the most important being the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, signed in 1949. Additional treaties such as SEATO and CENTO would over time, fall by the wayside. It is the endurance of the NATO treaty and America's presence in Europe that has over the past six decades contributed to the peace and stability of that continent. The American military in Germany in the immediate post-war years, went from an Army of Occupation, to that of a forward deployed force, trained to meet a Soviet attack on Western Europe. The American forces needed basing and through a series of negotiations with the various host nations, American troops found homes in practically every Western European nation. From Keflavik NAS, Iceland, to Incirlik AB, Turkey, and points in between, the US military has stood as a guardian, along with its NATO allies, against Soviet Communism and helped to win the Cold War.

Traveling back to the red-dirt battlefields, commanders and veterans from both sides make the long and difficult journey from old enemies to new friends. After a trip in a Russian-made helicopter to the Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands, with the Vietnamese pilots using vintage U.S. Army maps and Galloway's Boy Scout compass to guide them, they reach the hallowed ground where so many died. All the men are astonished at how nature has reclaimed the land once scarred by bullets, napalm, and blood. As darkness falls, the unthinkable happens-the authors and many of their old comrades are stranded overnight, alone, left to confront the ghosts of the departed among the termite hills and creek bed.

The 87th Infantry Division fought in General George S. Patton's Third U.S. Army during World War II. After months of training, first at Camp McCain, Mississippi, then at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the division shipped overseas. They first entered combat in France's Alsace-Lorraine, and after extremely bloody fighting, crossed the German border in the Saar, capturing the towns of Walsheim and Medelsheim. Caught up in the Third Army's historic counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge, the 87th Division raced off into Belgium - attacking the German Panzer Lehr Division near Bastogne at the towns of Pironpre, Moircy, Bonnerue, and Tillet. Soon after breaching the Siegfried Line in the Eifel Mountains, the division crossed the Moselle River and captured Koblenz. Then the Rhine River crossing near Boppard and the dash across Germany which took them to Plauen, near the Czech border.

Taking a nation to war is a complex and difficult proposition. Dr. David M. Kennedy will discuss the core premises of American grand strategy in World War II, and their implications for war-fighting, the nature of the victory that was achieved, and the U.S. role in the post-war international order. The general line of argument is to develop the idea that America's war was like that of no other belligerent. The presentation builds from Winston Churchill's observation in August 1945 that "The United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world," and tries to explain how that came to be -- contrary to popular mythology, not just as an incidental effect of the war's progression, but as a result of some quite specific, concrete decisions to fight a particular kind of war, on a particular time-table, with a particular configuration of forces.

The First Battle of the Marne produced the so-called Miracle of the Marne, when French and British forces stopped the initial German drive on Paris in 1914. Hundreds of thousands of casualties later, with opposing forces still dug into trench lines, the Germans tried again to push their way to Paris and to victory. The Second Battle of the Marne (July 15 to August 9, 1918) marks the point at which the Allied armies stopped the massive German Ludendorff Offensives and turned to offensive operations themselves. The Germans never again came as close to Paris nor resumed the offensive.

The present historical end of World War II in Europe in American history books is this: "...When World War II was over in Europe the Americans were on the west bank of the Elbe River." Tony Vaccaro, a veteran of 83rd Infantry Division in World War II argues that is incorrect. That is where the fun begins, as he documents with personal photographs the 83rd Infantry Division's operations on the way to Berlin. While the other units celebrated V-E Day west of the Elbe, the 83rd Infantry Division and the 2nd Armored Division stopped nearly at the Gate of Charlottenburg of Berlin. In other words, World War II needs a coda, an end- the historical ending chapter. Vaccaro provides that ending through his photography and reminiscences of the last days of World War II.

It was America's first imperial war, and America's last war of the frontier. It was a war of battles, of frontal assaults, of artillery, and flank attacks, and barbed wire and trenches. It has been termed an insurgency, a revolution, a guerrilla war, and a conventional war. As David Silbey demonstrates in this taut, compelling history, the 1899 Philippine-American War was in fact all of these.

From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, the wars of the United States have defined the nation. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts in order to prepare for the next clash of arms. In the echo of battle, the army develops the strategies, weapons, doctrine, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee a future victory.

Histories of the American Revolution tend to start  in 1763, the end of the Seven Years’ War, a worldwide struggle for empire that  pitted France against England in North America, Europe, and Asia.  Among its surprising results was the  disruption of the British empire as a political system; indeed, within a dozen  years that empire fell into the civil war that produced in the American  Revolution.  Fred Anderson, Professor of  History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will seek to explain the  significance of the American phase of the Seven Years’ War – commonly called  the French and Indian War -- in American history, affirming that the best way  to understand the Revolution is as part of a 40-year-long attempt to assert  imperial control over the Forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh now stands.  He will argue in favor of the perhaps  surprising proposition that winning an imperial war in a decisive way may  ultimately carry consequences more harmful to the victor than the  vanquished.

Captain Roger H.C. Donlon commanded Special Forces Team A-726 at Camp Nam Dong, Vietnam, west of Da Nang near the Laotian border. The Green Berets provided physical security and health and welfare service to over 5,000 local villagers, and advised some 300 South Vietnamese personnel assigned to the camp. On July 6, 1964, more than 900 Viet Cong soldiers attacked Nam Dong with mortars, grenades, small arms fire and automatic weapons. The attack proceeded all night, and many of the South Vietnamese defenders were wounded in the fierce fighting. Donlon was wounded, and two of his team were killed. For his actions, Donlon received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first Special Forces soldier so honored. In this talk, Donlon reflects on the influences from childhood through his Army career which shaped his life.

Beyond Band of Brothers is Winters's memoir-based on his wartime diary-but it also includes his comrades' untold stories. Virtually all this material is being released for the first time. Only Winters was present from the activation of Easy Company until the war's end. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, only he could pen this moving tribute to the human spirit.

"War is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means." For generations military history students committed this timeless refrain from Clausewitz's On War to memory in hopes of impressing their professor. But did they truly understand Clausewitz's meaning? And how does it apply to modern day conflicts? Join Dr. Antulio Echevarria as he explains Clausewitz's theories on war and their application to U. S. Army operations today."

An innovative and controversial look at Vietnam, Dr. Mark Moyar's lecture brings to light new evidence about the conflict, the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, and how these events affected United States policy. Moyar, the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Terrorism and Insurgency at the United States Marine Corps Academy, graduated from Harvard and Cambridge University and has published numerous books and articles on military history.

A staggering forty percent of the historic record about the German eastern front remained shrouded in mystery. Col. (Ret) David Glantz seeks to unearth this information and dispel myths that have perpetuated the Soviet-German War of 1941-1945. This conflict encompassed immense scale, scope and consequence. The cultural and ideological conflict surrounding the German-Soviet clash presented something never witnessed before by an American Army.

The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women pilots to fly combat missions. During World War II the Red Air Force formed three all-female units--grouped into separate fighter, dive bomber, and night bomber regiments--while also recruiting other women to fly with mostly male units. Their amazing story, fully recounted for the first time by Reina Pennington, honors a group of fearless and determined women whose exploits have not yet received the recognition they deserve. Pennington chronicles the creation, organization, and leadership of these regiments, as well as the experiences of the pilots, navigators, bomb loaders, mechanics, and others who made up their ranks, all within the context of the Soviet air war on the Eastern Front. These regiments flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties, produced at least thirty Heroes of the Soviet Union, and included at least two fighter aces.

General George S. Patton. His tongue was as sharp as the cavalry saber he once wielded, and his fury as explosive as the armored attacks he orchestrated in Sicily and France Despite his profane, posturing manner; despite the sheer enthusiasm for conflict that made both his peers and the public uncomfortable, Patton's mere presence commanded respect from his enemies. Had his superiors given him free rein, the U.S. Army might have claimed victory in Europe as early as November of 1944. General Erwin Rommel. .His courage was proven in the trenches of World War I when he was awarded the Blue Max. He was a front line soldier who led by example from the turrets of his Panzers. His conduct of battle was as decisive as it was imaginative. Appointed to command Adolf Hitler's personal security detail, Rommel nevertheless had nothing but contempt for the atrocities perpetrated by the Reich. His open, direct challenges to Hitler's conduct of the war in the west after D-Day earned him the Fuehrer's suspicion, then a death sentence.

On February 8, 2010, the history community of the United States lost a very learned scholar in the untimely death of Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr, Ph.D. Presented is Dr. Bergeron's perspectives lecture from 18 January 2006.
Born in Bavaria, Godfrey Weitzel moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, with his family while a young boy. He graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and became a lieutenant of engineers. During the American Civil War, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and later major general. Weitzel commanded the Twenty-Fifth Army Corps (an all black unit) during the closing months of the war, and his men occupied the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, on April 3, 1865. Weitzel’s somewhat meteoric rise in rank and responsibility was somewhat unusual because he had been an engineer officer rather than having served in a combat unit. He was a protege of the notorious General Benjamin F. Butler, but that relationship seems not to have had an adverse impact on his Civil War career. Art Bergeron will explore the background, education, and experiences of this fascinating and complex officer and assess his generalship.

As British troops trudged away from their bloody defeat on the banks of the Monongahela River just miles from capturing their objective, Fort Duquesne, General Edward Braddock laid mortally wounded. In the first major battle of the French and Indian War, the commander of British forces led a combined force of British redcoats and American militia under the command of Colonel George Washington. The army was stopped short of victory, leading the British American colonies into a global conflict, ultimately changing the face of European empires. On Saturday, August 11, 2018, at 2:00 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania will host Dr. David L. Preston to present a lecture based on his award-winning book, Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution. Dr. Preston will be accompanied by two experts on the French and Indian War in an extended roundtable event.

In 1755, the British high command sent General Edward Braddock to the American colonies with the mission of stopping French advances into British territory. Braddock combined his troops with local American militia under the command of Colonel George Washington and other officers who would one day become lynch pins on both sides of the American Revolution. Preston will discuss the strategic and operational overview of Braddock's campaign to take Fort Duquesne, as well as introduce the major military players on both sides of the resulting battle. The discussion will finish with a post-battle analysis, tying Braddock's campaign planning and coalition building to concepts which still apply to our military planning today.

Dr. David Preston is the Westvaco Professor of National Security at The Citadel. Dr. Preston earned his B.A. in History from Mary Washington College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from the College of William and Mary. His first book, The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783, received the 2010 Albert B. Corey Prize and the 2010 Annual Archives Award of Excellence in Research from the New York State Archives. His most recent book, Braddock's Defeat, won the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History and a 2016 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History.

Long before Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt brought British-American cooperation into the spotlight on the eve of World War II, staff officers and diplomats worked hard to lay the foundations for an alliance to stand strong against the growing power of the Axis states. The story of this collaboration begins in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on the USS Panay in China - within days, U.S. Navy personnel sat in London to work out an answer to Japanese aggression. On Saturday, June 16, 2018, at 2:00 PM, Dr. William T. Johnsen of the U.S. Army War College will be joined by scholars to lead a roundtable lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He will discuss the evolution of the Anglo-American military relationship and cooperation, beginning with the Panay incident and continuing through the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. The lecture and discussion will be based on Dr. Johnsen's latest book, The Origins of the Grand Alliance: Anglo American Military Collaboration from the Panay Incident to Pearl Harbor, and will delve into the details of the nuts and bolts of coalition warfare and casts new light on the "special relationship" between the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom.

In his book, Dr. Johnsen explores the developing military relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. from the late 1930's to Pearl Harbor through the eyes and actions of the numerous staff officers and diplomats, exploring the deep roots of the coalition that would win World War II. As the first comprehensive analysis of the relationship, he discusses the evolving grand strategy, policy agreements, operational planning, and the creation of communication channels and chains of command to carry the alliance through the war.

Dr. William T. Johnsen is a Professor of Military History and Strategy in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC), where he holds the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies. Prior to that post, he served as Dean of the USAWC from 2003-2012, and has instructed there since 1991, following 20 years as an Infantry officer. Dr. Johnsen holds a B.S. from USMA, and an M.A. (History) and a Ph.D. (History) from Duke University.

When the dust settled after Desert Storm in 1991, the First Infantry Division had engaged and defeated at least twelve Iraqi divisions, taken over 14,000 prisoners of war, and destroyed over 1,000 enemy tanks and armored vehicles. As they rolled into Safwan, Iraq to secure the air strip as a base for later surrender talks, the unit's leaders looked back at a rocky, but ultimately successful, evolution stretching back to Vietnam. Desert Storm proved that the 1st ID was indeed prepared for modern war. On Saturday, March 17, 2018, at 2:00 PM, Colonel (Retired) Gregory Fontenot will be joined by scholars to lead a roundtable lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to discuss how the First Infantry Division underwent rapid and dramatic change between Vietnam and Desert Storm.

In the two decades between Vietnam and Desert Storm, the First Infantry Division was faced with institutional collapse, required to adapt rapidly to volunteer manning, and dealt with a radical change of mission orientation. The U.S. Army's post-Vietnam leadership rewrote service doctrine and revised unit organization, training, and leader development for all ranks. As a result, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the First Infantry Division began preparing for war, though they were not on the announced troop list. Then the Division spearheaded the rapid ground attack with minimal loss of life. This roundtable event will feature a lecture from Colonel Fontenot, a veteran of Desert Storm, as he describes how the history of the division fits into the wider story of the U.S. Army, the stories and experiences of Soldiers who fought in Desert Storm, and why understanding the experience of the First Infantry Division in the Gulf War is relevant to preparing for the wars of the future.

Colonel Gregory Fontenot retired from the U.S. Army after 28 years of service as an Armor officer in the United States, Europe, the Balkans, and Southwest Asia. He also taught history at the United States Military Academy, and served as Director of the School of Advanced Military Studies. After retirement, he served as Director, Training and Doctrine Command's Wargaming Directorate, and later, as part of the Army's Red Team Leader Course for the University of Foreign Military Studies Course. He left the civil service in 2013 to pursue his interest in writing military history.

As the German Army continued its advance against the French bastion of Verdun in the early months of 1916, the American border town of Columbus, New Mexico, was ablaze. The flames that consumed the town were the result of a raid conducted by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in the early morning of March 9, 1916. Villa's raiders secured horses, as well as armaments and ammunition, and killed 24 Americans, before fleeing back across the border. In response to this latest in a string of spillovers from the Mexican Revolution, President Woodrow Wilson sent General "Black Jack" Pershing, with nearly 10,000 men, to pursue Villa into Mexico and attempt to capture him. Over the next year, the Mexican Expedition was plagued by supply problems and the inability of mounted cavalry to find Villa. Pershing turned to the use of airplanes and trucks to master this difficult landscape; Pershing never captured Villa, but northern Mexico proved to be an important testing ground for new technologies that would be crucial to the Army on the battlefields of France a few months later. On Saturday, August 19, 2017, at 2:00 PM, Dr. Julie Irene Prieto will lead a roundtable lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The lecture will focus on the impact of changes the Army made during the Mexican Expedition, and how those changes affected the American actions in World War I. Dr. Prieto will be joined by two scholars, who will discuss the finer points of the Expedition and the technological advances of the late 1910's.

Dr. Julie Irene Prieto earned undergraduate degrees in History and Sociology from UCLA (2004), her doctorate from Stanford (2013), and is currently a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. She authored the book The Mexican Expedition, 1916-1917 (2016), part of a commemorative series being published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History for the centennial of American involvement in the Mexican Expedition and the First World War. She also authored the article, "The Sword and the Book: The Benjamin Franklin Library and U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1936-1962," (2013), and is currently writing a book entitled, Making Better Neighbors: United States Public Diplomacy in Mexico, 1920-1953. 

As the blood dried on the fields around the crossroads town of Gettysburg in early July 1863, the American people did not fully realize the impact of the Civil War's largest battle on the future of the American consciousness. Those 72 hours may be the most well-known in Civil War history, but the following century and a half has seen the battleground itself shift in shape, function, and interpretation at the hands of scholars, government officials, and the U.S. Army. The "hallowed ground" remains the most tangible reminder of the sacrifices made by the Civil War generation. On Saturday, June 17, 2017, at 2:00 PM, Dr. Jennifer Murray will lead a roundtable lecture at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The lecture will shift focus away from the battle itself, and toward the controversial, and often divisive, history and preservation of the fields and ridges those Soldiers died upon. Murray, in discussion with panelists Dr. Jared Peatman and Park Ranger John Heiser, will explore the initial commemorative efforts of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, and how the following decades of social, political, and academic trends have impacted the battlefield and shaped the way that the story of the Battle of Gettysburg is told.

Dr. Jennifer Murray is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia - Wise. She authored the book On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013 (2014), winner of the 2014 Bachelder-Coddington Award and named one of the best Civil War books of 2014 by the Civil War Monitor. She also authored The Civil War Begins (2012), and is currently writing a biography of Major General George Meade entitled Meade at War. Additionally, Dr. Murray worked nine summers as a park ranger at Gettysburg. The second panelist, Dr. Jared Peatman, received his Ph.D. at Texas A&M and went on to found Four Score Consulting, LLC and publish several books on the topic of Gettysburg, including most famously The Long Shadow of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; and currently serves as the Director of Curriculum for the Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg. The final panelist, John Heiser, began work as a park ranger in Gettysburg in 1980 and has since served in many departments at Gettysburg including Historian’s Office and Library. He is also well known for the maps of Gettysburg, which he researches and produces for various historical books.

In the years following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the United States military grasped at the best way to engage in two wars, while remaining the world's super power. Dr. Conrad Crane, only recently retired from active duty service in the U.S. Army, found himself a modern Cassandra, warning the military leadership about the preparation requirements for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to conduct stability operations and counterinsurgency in Iraq. Dr. Crane’s continued push for proper planning in the eventual reconstruction of Iraq attracted the scrutiny of then-commanders General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army (Retired) and General James Mattis, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired). On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 2:00 PM, Dr. Crane and GEN Petreaus will discuss the development of the formal response to the unpreparedness of American Forces: Field Manual 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency. The presentations will be complimented by questions and discussion from panelists Dr. Richard Lacquement, Colonel John Martin, U.S. Army (Retired), and Colonel Robert Balcavage, all of whom either served under GEN Petreaus and were implementers, or worked with Dr. Crane in development of the Counterinsurgency (COIN) manual. They will discuss the implementation of the COIN doctrine, details about what went right and wrong in Iraq, and the lessons learned from over a decade of war.

Dr. Conrad Crane is the Chief, Historical Services Division, at the USAHEC, following ten years as the Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. Dr. Crane previously served with the U.S. Army War College's (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute after a 26 year career as an officer in the U.S. Army, including ten years as a Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. GEN David Petraeus is a Partner at KKR, and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute. He is the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. He also commanded the U.S. Central Command from 2008 to 2011, and served as the Commanding General for the Multi-National Force-Iraq from 2007 to 2008. Dr. Richard A. Lacquement, Jr. is the Dean of the School of Strategic Landpower at the USAWC. He served for more than 29 years in the U.S. Army, to include assignments with ISAF in Afghanistan, as Chief of Plans for U.S. Forces Korea, and in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. COL John R. Martin served at the USAWC Strategic Studies Institute, after he retired from active service in the U.S. Army in 2004. He has extensive experience in the Republic of Korea and at the Pentagon on the Army Staff, and was deployed over his career to Kosovo and Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. COL Robert Balcavage serves as the USAWC Chief of Staff. He commanded the 1/501st Infantry Regiment (ABN) during the surge in Iraq, and served combat tours in Operations Desert Storm/Desert Shield, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom.

As dawn broke on the chilly, dank morning of December 13, 1776, General Charles Lee sat writing letters in his sleeping gown in his room at White’s Tavern, three miles from where his shivering American army was camped in New Jersey. The quiet mists outside the inn broke around twenty-four horsemen slipping slowly off the road to surround General George Washington's most trusted subordinate. Leading the raiding party, "Bloody" Banastre Tarleton motioned his green-coated Loyalist troopers to take the building, trapping the rebel general and kidnapping him for the British. General Lee's sudden abduction was not a unique event during the American Revolution. On Saturday, December 17, 2016, at 2:00 PM, Mr. Christian McBurney will lead a roundtable lecture event outlining the tactical and strategic implications of the wide-spread efforts to capture both American and British leaders. His formal presentation will be followed by a discussion with two other Revolutionary War scholars, bringing the conversation full-circle by connecting kidnapping as a military option to other wars in U.S. Army history, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Christian McBurney is an independent scholar from Kingston, Rhode Island, and a graduate of Brown University in 1981. He earned his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from New York University in 1985, and now serves as an attorney in Washington, DC. Throughout his legal career, Mr. McBurney has continued his research and study into American military history. He is an accomplished speaker, appearing at the National Archives, the Naval War College Museum, the Society of Cincinnati, and numerous American Revolution historical organizations on the east coast. Mr. McBurney is also a widely published author on the topic of special operations and Revolutionary War era spies. His books include Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott (Westholme, 2014), The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War (Westholme, 2011), Spies in Revolutionary Rhode Island (History Press, 2014), and most recently, Abductions in the American Revolution: Attempts to Kidnap George Washington, Benedict Arnold and Other Military and Civilian Leaders.

In 1864, Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick led his Union cavalrymen on an ambitious assault of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, with the help of Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren. Kilpatrick and Dahlgren split forces after crossing the Rappahannock River, resulting in a devastating Confederate ambush and Dahlgren's murder. On Saturday, June 25, from 2:00 to 5:00 PM at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC), Dr. Bruce Venter, author of Kill Jeff Davis: The Union Raid on Richmond, 1864, will give a lecture and hold a roundtable discussion about the raid, giving the minute-by-minute details surrounding Dahlgren's rumored mission to assassinate the Confederate President.

The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid was an attempt to free Federal prisoners of war and to spread word of President Abraham Lincoln's "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction." Allegedly, Dahlgren was found carrying papers with instructions to burn Richmond, kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and decimate his administration. It is not clear who these orders came from, or if these orders were accurate, but some scholars say they were forged by Confederates. Nevertheless, the raid was a Union failure and ended in Confederate victory. Venter's book focusses on the controversies and debates surrounding the American Civil War's Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. This roundtable event will cover, in detail, the Raid’s poor execution, the veracity of newly discovered documents, myths, and misperceptions, all with the input from a panel of Civil War experts.

Dr. Bruce M. Venter is the 1st Vice-President of Goochland County Historical Society and CEO of America's History, LLC. He is a past president of the Richmond Civil War Round Table and spent 36 years in public education, mostly as a superintendent. He earned his B.A. in history from Manhattan College, followed by a master’s in public administration and a doctorate in educational administration from the University at Albany-SUNY. His articles have been published in Blue and Gray, Civil War, Patriots of the American Revolution, Goochland County Historical Society Magazine, and the Washington Times.

As the brutal summer of 1864 closed, the Federal Army under General Ulysses S. Grant pinned the hard-fought troops of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia down in the town of Petersburg, Virginia. This roundtable presentation analyzes the generalship, strategy, operations, and tactics of the Federal Fifth Offensive in the Siege of Petersburg in the early autumn of 1864. This onslaught overran the outer defenses of Richmond and gave the Northerners the greatest opportunity they ever had to capture the Confederate capital with a field army capable of holding the city. So dire was the danger, that the Graycoats were prepared to abandon their main rail center, Petersburg, if required, to rescue Richmond. How the Unionists came so close to taking one or both cities -- and yet fell short -- and how the Confederates fought back, not just defensively but offensively, and succeeded in prolonging the war for another half year forms the focus of our roundtable presentation.

These operations pitted Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee directly against each other. Their generalship is assessed, as is that of their senior subordinates, Benjamin F. Butler and George G. Meade for the North and Richard S. Ewell and A.P. Hill for the South. In this offensive, Pennsylvania was well represented, with such generals as Meade, Winfield Scott Hancock, John G. Parke, David B. Birney, Andrew A. Humphreys, and David M. Gregg. Some 83 Keystone State regiments, battalions, batteries, and detachments participated in these operations including six regiments of U.S. Colored Troops credited to Pennsylvania. Indeed, the first of these fights, Chaffin's Bluff, marked the biggest, bloodiest battle for black troops in the entire Civil War. Fourteen black soldiers and one of their white officers earned the Medal of Honor for their service in these battles. Twenty-nine soldiers and officers of white units were comparably recognized.

This presentation will feature Dr. Richard Sommers and is based on his new book, the expanded 150th anniversary edition of Richmond Redeemed: The Siege at Petersburg, published by Savas-Beatie in September of 2014. Dr. Richard J. Sommers served for over 43 years at the U.S. Army Military History Institute of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, until nominally "retiring" as the Senior Historian in January of 2014. He continues teaching at the U.S. Army War College, writing about the Civil War, and speaking to Civil War groups across the nation, and he has published over 100 books, articles, chapters, entries, and reviews on the Civil War. Two expert panelists will join him to discuss the battle, its results, and its long term effects on the outcome of the Civil war.

As the British soldiers marched from the streets of Yorktown, Virginia on October 17, 1781, their heads hung and their colors remained cased. They marched toward the officers representing General George Washington's Continental Army where their arms, and pride, was to be surrendered. Each soldier wondered how the increasingly victorious and mighty British Army could possibly be sent into ignoble defeat by their very own colonies. Since that day, scholars, military leaders, and historians have studied the victory of a relatively unprofessional army over their far superior foes. On Saturday, December 5, 2015, the latest installment in this 234 year debate will be the center of a lecture and discussion led by Professor Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy in the 4th edition of the First Annual Discussions on Military History Roundtables at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC). Dr. O'Shaughnessy will be joined by a panel including Dr. James Scudieri, Senior Historian at the USAHEC, and Dr. Gregory Urwin, Professor of History at Temple University.

The roundtable discussion will center on the arguments made by O'Shaughnessy in his latest book, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the Revolutionary War and the Fate of the Empire. The book follows the careers and decisions of the primary leaders during the war, from King George III himself to the generals on the front line. How could the British, who captured every major American city throughout the war, lose to the colonial forces? O'Shaughnessy weaves a narrative of political turmoil in London undermining the war effort and the fearsome desperation of the American fighters to outline how each of the primary British actors in this martial saga failed to maintain the holdings of the British Empire.

Dr. O'Shaughnessy is a Professor of History at the University of Virginia and serves as the Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He has written several important books on the history of the American Revolution, including An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean. Dr. James Scudieri, formerly of the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations at the U.S. Army War College, is currently serving at the USAHEC as Senior Historian. Dr. Gregory Urwin teaches history at Temple University and is currently writing a book with the working title of When Freedom Wore a Red Coat: A Social History of the British Invasions of Virginia, 1781.

General (Retired) James T. Conway experienced only war during his four-year tenure as the 34th Commandant for the United States Marine Corps. He served in the conflict in Iraq at multiple levels: commanding hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground for the invasion, on the operations side as J3 (Operations) on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the President. When he assumed the Commandant position, General Conway's accountability within the war increased. He was responsible for the organization, training, equipping, and overall support of over 250,000 Marine Corps active duty, reserve, and civilian personnel. These perspectives allow General Conway to offer detailed insights on military lessons learned, the quality of intelligence during the Iraq invasion and beyond, and the next steps in the Global War on Terrorism. General Conway's leadership style focused on developing the quality of the individual Marine, a strategy he believes was essential to a U.S. victory in Iraq.

In this installment of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center's (USAHEC) quarterly "Discussions on Military History," General Conway will present this extensive understanding of the Iraq War. He will cover the U.S. Marine Corps' preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom, anecdotes from his Expeditionary Force's journey to Baghdad, weapons of mass destruction, the transition of the U.S. presence in Iraq from liberation to occupation, planning and executing phase four operations, the Surge and the Awakening, and critical mistakes made. His lecture will conclude with his view of present-day Iraq, and how the country factors into U.S. international operations and challenges over the next decade. After the talk, our esteemed panel of experts will respond to General Conway with their own thoughts and questions about the Iraq War.

General Conway served as the President of the Marine Corps University, Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and Commander of the 1st Marine Division, prior to his Joint Chiefs of Staff and Commandant positions. As Commandant, he spearheaded wounded warrior initiatives and post traumatic stress awareness. In 2007, he founded the Wounded Warrior Regiment to help injured Marines and their families through recovery, reintegration, and transition into the force or civilian life. He also increased the size of the Marine Corps to 202,000, troops in order to decrease each Marine's deployment rate and also reduce mental/physical fatigue. In 2010, General Conway retired after 40 years of service. He remains involved with policy as co-chair of the Energy Security Leadership Council of SAFE (Securing America's Future Energy), working to reduce U.S. oil dependence

Although the Revolutionary War is widely taught and written about, the important role of intelligence activities in the conflict is underreported by authors and educators. In his 2014 book, Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War, professional intelligence officer Kenneth A. Daigler posits that American intelligence during this period is a new lens from which to study the Revolutionary War era and colonial independence. He explores the tradecraft of intelligence collection through multiple groups. For example, the United Front Organization was essential to inter-colonial communication, coordination, and spreading political action through propaganda. Other organizations, such as Hortalez and Company, aided intelligence efforts through weapons contributions and technical expertise. The renowned General George Washington led American military intelligence activities with his skills of observation, tactical and strategic deception, elicitation, and defensive counterintelligence. Key battles, from the Battle of Trenton to the Battle of Yorktown, succeeded because of intelligence operations.

In the second roundtable of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center's (USAHEC) quarterly "Discussions on Military History," Mr. Daigler will discuss how intelligence played a major role in Revolutionary War events using his unique point of view as a former Career Operations Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He will cite several examples of intelligence collection and provide an overview of the major American intelligence activities during the Revolutionary War era. After the talk, our esteemed panel of experts will examine the implications of intelligence and how this lens changes the understanding of the Revolution.

Mr. Daigler, alongside his career with the CIA, consulted for the Department of Defense in the counterintelligence field. He is also a Veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Vietnam War. Daigler is the author of numerous articles for journals on the subject of intelligence, such as Studies in Intelligence and The Intelligencer. His writing and research concerns American intelligence activities in the period between 1765 through 1865.