University of Chicago Press: New Titles in History: Military History

What Soldiers Do

Mary Louise Roberts — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways.

That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty.

While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.

Nazi Symbiosis

Sheila Faith Weiss — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The Faustian bargain—in which an individual or group collaborates with an evil entity in order to obtain knowledge, power, or material gain—is perhaps best exemplified by the alliance between world-renowned human geneticists and the Nazi state. Under the swastika, German scientists descended into the moral abyss, perpetrating heinous medical crimes at Auschwitz and at euthanasia hospitals. But why did biomedical researchers accept such a bargain?

The Nazi Symbiosis offers a nuanced account of the myriad ways human heredity and Nazi politics reinforced each other before and during the Third Reich. Exploring the ethical and professional consequences for the scientists involved as well as the political ramifications for Nazi racial policies, Sheila Faith Weiss places genetics and eugenics in their larger international context. In questioning whether the motives that propelled German geneticists were different from the compromises that researchers from other countries and eras face, Weiss extends her argument into our modern moment, as we confront the promises and perils of genomic medicine today.

Selling War

Josef Seethaler; Matthias Karmasin; Gabriele Melischek; Romy Wöhlert — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This book is the first collection of essays to explore the changing relationships between war, media, and the public from a multidisciplinary perspective and over an extended historical period. It is also the first textbook for students in this field, discussing a wide range of theoretical concepts and methodological tools for analyzing the nature of these relationships. Shedding new light on conflicts spanning from World War I through the so-called War on Terror, the contributors explore the roles of traditional media, war blogs, and eyewitness reporting; of war correspondents and embedded journalism; and of propaganda, wartime public relations, and information warfare.

Welcome Home, Boys!

Sebastian Jobs — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

During the first half of the twentieth century military victory parades in New York became an iconic part of the American cultural memory—ticker tape and soldiers returning to their sweethearts symbolized the joy of a nation at peace. In this incisive new study, Sebastian Jobs approaches these events as political street theater. Focusing on organizers, spectators, and soldiers, Jobs explores each group’s participation in the action, as well as the ways in which they interacted with each another. This book also demonstrates how abstract concepts, like the nation-state, were embodied in these events, and how these political performances made an impact on American culture and society.