Volume 14: 1, May 1996

Kelly DeVries

The Use of Gunpowder Weaponry by and against Joan of Arc During the Hundred Years War

Joan of Arc lived in an age of gunpowder weaponry use, and this technoloqy played an enormous role in her military career. There were gunpowder weapons at almost every conflict in which she fought, and her ability to win in these conflicts was sometimes dependent upon these weapons, either in using them in her and her army's offensive tactics or in defending against their use by her opponents, the English and the Burgundians.

Clayton D. Laurie

The Ultimate Dilemma of Psychological Warfare in the Pacific: Enemies who don't Surrender, and GIs who don't Take Prisoners

The greatest dilemma faced by propagandists operating against Japanese forces in the Pacific during World War II was convincing the enemy to surrender and allied soldiers to take prisoners when opportunities arose. Between 1942 and 1945, allied soldiers and civilians laboured to create effective radio and leaflet propaganda. It was soon discovered, however, that mutual racism, rigid Japanese training and social conditioning, and the general allied lack of interest in taking prisoners, tended to undermine combat propaganda campaigns. While propagandists in Europe succeeded in producing Axis prisoners, the same was not true in the Pacific.

Peter Overlack

German Commerce Warfare Planning for the Australian Station, 1900­1914

Australian trade with Britain was a major target for German commerce warfare planners in the decades before the First World War. This threat came from the East Asian Cruiser Squadron based at Tsingtau in northern China. The aim in the event of war was to disrupt the British economy by cutting imports of raw materials and foodstuffs. The ensuing social unrest and inability to conduct an extended war would force the British Government to negotiate on terms acceptable to Germany. Commerce warfare in the Asian-Pacific region was to be implemented concurrently with similar activity in other regions of the world which supplied Britain. The detailed plans formulated for the Cruiser Squadron show that commerce warfare was intended to make an appreciable contribution to Germany's war effort. The climate of uncertainty and fear which was created, the slowing of export and coastal trade, the tying-up of naval forces in search and pursuit, and the delay of troop transports were considerable hindrance to the Australasian war effort in the early months of 1914.

Galen Roger Perras

Anglo­Canadian Imperial Relations: The Case of the Garrisoning of the Falkland Islands in 1942

In early 1942, concerned Japan might seize the Falkland Islands and hand them over to Argentina, Britain asked Canada to garrison that isolated archipelago. But worried about imperial commitments in the wake of the loss of 2000 Canadian soldiers at Hong Kong, and concerned about a possibly hostile American reaction, the Canadian government hesitated for months before declining to provide aid. In the end the British garrisoned the islands, but the episode revealed that both Britain and Canada did not 'play fair' with each other, and demonstrated too that Canada, when faced with a choice between imperial and American interests, was inclined to satisfy the latter.

Wayne Reynolds

Atomic War, Empire Strategic Dispersal and the Origins of the Snowy Mountains Scheme

This article provides a significant study of the British Empire in the atomic age and raises the question of the importance of this in Australia's decision to embark on the ambitious Snowy Mountains Scheme, long held to be the cornerstone of the Chifley Government's plans for the post-war industrialisation of Australia. The article also contributes to the current revision of the nature of the Anglo-American 'Special Relationship' by drawing attention to the role of the Commonwealth before 1957.

Dennis E. Showalter

Past and Future: The Military Crisis of the Weimar Republic

The military aspects of German national strategy between the world wars was determined less by the survival of Wllhelmine militarism than by the failure of the Versailles system to provide alternatives to rearmament that offered reasonable guarantees of Germany's domestic stability and international security. In coping with this dilemma, the Reichswehr developed a concept of elite forces operating within the framework of a mass national army . After 1933 this approach was perceived as a means of restricting the National Socialists' power relative to the armed forces.

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Volume 14: 2, October 1996

Lucian Ashworth

Cities, Ethnicity and Insurgent Warfare in the Hellenic World

Urban insurgency was a feature of the politics of Hellenic antiquity, much as it is a feature of modern urban life. This article sets out to explore how urban insurgency developed in the ancient Hellenic world, concentrating on the experiences of Seleukid Antioch and sixth century Constantinople. Insurgency is a product of the particular politico-economic and cultural patterns that are present in any given area and age. Late Hellenic antiquity exhibits a number of interesting characteristics, among which is the role of ethnic soldiers in controlling urban unrest.

M.B. Biskupski

The Military Elite of the Polish Second Republic, 1918Ð1945: A Historiographical Review

Stephen Brown

Lenin, Stalin and the Failure of the Red Army in the Soviet­Polish War of 1920

The humiliating defeat of the Red Army in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920 put an end to Soviet dreams of forcibly exporting Communism westwards into Europe and led to speculation about disagreements between Soviet politicians and soldiers over war aims. Using material from recently-opened Russian archives, the present paper argues that the incompetence and insubordination which characterised Soviet military operations during the war against the Poles was a result not of deliberate sabotage on the part of Soviet politicians, nor of disagreements between Soviet political and military leaders over war aims, but of a flawed political and military strategy agreed to by Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet high command.

Geoffrey Gray

'The next focus of power to fall under the spell of this little gang': Anthropology and Australia's Postwar Policy in Papua New Guinea

This article examines the use of anthropology and the way war enlarged the role of anthropology as an informing discipline for the treatment of indigenous people. War created an opportunity for anthropologists to use their expertise and their knowledge of indigenous people, principally the application of anthropology in the control and management of indigenous people. Thus the war was an opportunity to enhance a distinctive role for anthropologists and anthropological knowledge.

Ken Hendrickson

A Kinder, Gentler British Army: Mid-Victorian Experiments in the Management of Army Vice at Gibraltar and Aldershot

This article recounts and analyses the rise of military-sponsored moral reform mechanisms in the mid-Victorian British Army. Faced by 1860 with chronic alcohol abuse and resort to prostitutes by the troops, army authorities at the great camp of Aldershot posed various remedies. However, one of the most effectives alternatives to illicit night life proved to be 'Soldiers' Institutes' founded by reform-minded officers and appropriating the space and symbols of the private home. Similar experiments were inaugurated by civilian evangelical missionaries to the army. By 1914 the 'Soldiers' Home' or 'Institute' was one of the most prominent social fixtures of British military bases at home and abroad. While excluding the participation of actual women, military men who pioneered the movement relied surprisingly upon social values of femininity and domesticity to socialise the men against vice.

William Johnston

Losses, Loss Rates and the Performance of No. 6 (RCAF) Group, Bomber Command, 1943­1945

This article takes issue with the assertions made by several Canadian historians that the creation of an RCAF bomber group in 1943 'caused heavy casualties among Canadian aircrew', casualties that would not have occurred had RCAF aircrew continued to be distributed among RAF squadrons and groups. While pointing out that No. 6 Group had a lower loss rate than RAF main force groups during the last two-and-half years of the war, the article also examines the statistical impact that the relative proportion of operationally inexperienced crews had on group loss rates.

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Volume 15: 1, May 1997

Ang Cheng Guan

Vietnam: The Decision to Resume Armed Struggle in the South, Summer 1958­Summer 1959

Using old and newly-published Chinese, Vietnamese, American and British sources, this article attempts to reconstruct a key period of the Vietnamese communist struggle for the reunification of Vietnam from summer 1958, when the North Vietnamese communists re-focussed their attention on the reunification issue, up till the late spring/summer of 1959, when the communiqué of the 15th Plenary session (which took place in January 1959) was made public and the construction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail began. Particular attention is paid to Vietnamese communist relations with China and the Soviet Union during this period. Newly available sources have made it possible to study the communists' decision-making process during the Indo-China War but they have mainly focussed on the Dien Bien Phu episode and the post-1964 period. This article describes an important but somewhat neglected period of Vietnam¹s recent past.

Allen J. Christophers

The Epidemic of Heart Disease Amongst British Soldiers During the First World War

A huge epidemic of 'heart disease', a disease given the popular name of the 'soldier's heart', occurred in British soldiers during the First World War. This article examines the so-called epidemic, considers the explanations offered as to its cause, and questions whether the epidemic ever in fact existed. The role of Sir Thomas Lewis, the heart specialist put in charge of the special military hospital to deal with the large number of cases, is critical in this account.

Azar Gat

Futurism, Proto-Fascist Italian Culture and the Sources of Douhetism

The fascists' modernist fascination with the aeroplane and flight is well known. The article shows that this cultural phenomenon, particularly as it manifested itself in pre-war Italian avant-garde artistic culture, stimulated the life work and writings of Giulio Douhet (1869­1930), the most famous theorist of air warfare. A typical representative of the proto-fascist 'mood' well before the First World War, Douhet joined the fascists as early as 1919. For him, both futuristic visions of air warfare and fascism were the modern responses to the requirements of the modern age, the age of the machine and industrial society.

Lyn Gorman

Television and War: Australia's Four Corners Programme and Vietnam, 1963­1975

The traditional view of Australian media coverage of the Vietnam War (based largely on analysis of the newspaper press) has been negative and uncomplimentary, suggesting acquiescence in Australian involvement in the war and that the Australian media were inferior to their American counterparts. This article, based on research at the National Film and Sound Archive and the Australian Archives, challenges that view. It examines the manner in which Four Corners, a current affairs programme on the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, covered the war between 1963 and 1975.

Four Corners moving image and documentary archives provide insights into contemporary images of the war and into the way in which ABC television current affairs analysed the issues. The current affairs format was used to scrutinise, investigate and report in a manner which differed qualitatively from the previous main source of moving images of war, the newsreel. The critical manner in which Four Corners reported the Vietnam War provides a basis for modifying general conclusions about the Australian media and the Vietnam War.

George Raudzens

In Search of Better Quantification for War History: Numerical Superiority and Casualty Rates in Early Modern Europe

The aim of this article is to clarify the effects of numerical superiority and casualty rates in early modern European battles, by resort to recent historiography and standard reference works. Clearer cause and effect patterns can indeed be constructed, and probably for other times and places too. Numerical superiority, for example, does facilitate most victories. Inconsistencies in the numbers given by reputable dictionary/encyclopedias turned out, however, to be alarming. We need urgently to go back to sources and standardise the numbers information of our standard reference works.

David Zimmerman

'Tucker's Acoustical Mirrors: Aircraft Detection Before Radar

From the First World War until the discovery of radar in 1935 Dr William Tucker pursued research into an acoustical mirror long range aircraft detection system. Working at the Air Defence Experimental Establishment, Tucker built huge concrete mirrors, up to 20 feet in diameter. Research on the mirrors was conducted with little outside scrutiny until the formation of the Anti-aircraft Research sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1925. Tucker was forced to confront Professor Frederick Lindemann, who persistently opposed the continuation of the mirror programme. Despite this harsh criticism of the mirrors erratic and indifferent performance, the Air Ministry authorised the construction of an even larger 200-foot long strip mirror. The mirror was tested in air exercises in the 1930s. In 1934 the Air Ministry agreed to build an acoustical defence system for the Thames Estuary approaches to London. The invention of radar led to the cancellation of this programme. The mirror programme is a case study of everything that can go wrong in a military scientific development programme. It is the story of a scientist whose attempts to perfect a fatally flawed technology became an obsession that almost left his country open to aerial assault.

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Volume 15: 2, October 1997

John Childs

War, Crime Waves and the English Army in the Late Seventeenth Century

When armies and navies in the early modern Europe were disbanded at the termination of major wars, waves of crime ensued as the veterans failed to readjust to civilian society. This pattern, however, does not appear to have been repeated in later seventeenth century England when armies were disbanded following the Restoration in 1660 and in 1667, 1674, 1679, 1688-9, and 1697. Various reasons are suggested: the nature of recruitment, the state of the economy, government preparations, the existence of alternative military employment, and the already high level of domestic crime.

Anne-Marie Cond$eacute;

The ordeal of adjustment": Australian psychiatric casualties of the Second World War'

Historians have tended not to challenge the widespread belief that the symptoms of 'shell shock' represented the effects of the appalling conditions on the western front during the First World War. However, during the Second World War, Australian psychiatrists did not accept of the notion that there was a simple, causal relationship between war and neurosis. It was thought that the experience of fighting was only one factor in the mental breakdown of a soldier. Predisposition, and not the circumstances of war, were thought to be largely to blame. This article explores this issue, with reference both to the First World War and the Vietnam War.

S.P. MacKenzie

On Target: The Air Ministry, RAF Bomber Command and Feature Film Propaganda, 1941­1942

The Air Ministry did relatively little to promote the RAF on film during the Second World War. Yet there was a short attempt, largely overlooked, to manipulate public opinion in the period 1941­1942. Bomber Command was overshadowed by Fighter Command during the first year of the war and so Bomber Command's role required promotion. The cinema, it was becoming clear, was a good medium for achieving this aim. The article discusses the production of three feature films during this early period and their effects on the cinema-going public. It ends by evaluating the reasons why no further films were produced in 1943­44, when area bombing of German cities and better navigational aids became such prominent features of Bomber Command's role.

Kay Saunders

Propaganda in Australia During the Second World War

The power of the state centralised rapidly during the Second World War and nowhere can this be seen better than in the area of propaganda. The new Department of Information produced both morale-boosting and overt propaganda materials, based at first on the British Ministry of Information's blueprint. With the advent of the war in the Pacific, propaganda directed towards the Japanese became increasingly 'Australianised'. These campaigns linked directly back into Australians' deep-seated fears and horror of an Asian invasion.

Klaus Schmider

The Mediterranean in 1940/41: Crossroads of Lost Opportunities?

Of all World War Two theatres of operations, none has attracted more speculation with regard to its 'might-have beens' than the one centred on the Mediterranean and Middle East. Interestingly enough, the first 12 months of this conflict (June 1940‹June 1941) have always been overshadowed by the subsequent events which, as common wisdom would seem to have it, constitute the climax of the North African campaign: the fall of Tobruk, the Alamein battles and the 'Torch' landings. It therefore is the aim of the article to take a closer look at this hitherto neglected first year and try to determine in what way any of the contestants‹their scope of decision-making as yet unimpaired by new theatres of war in Russia and the Far East‹could have turned the Libyan Desert of Mesopaotamia into the decisive battlefield of the war.

Index

This issue also contains a full index to the the articles published in volumes 1­15 of the journal.

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Volume 16: 1, May 1997

Allain Bernède

'The Gardeners of Salonika': The Lines of Communication and the Logistics of the French Army of the East, October 1915­November 1918

Faced with endemic illnesses, the French commander of the troops in Salonika was soon compelled to institute a policy of growing fresh vegetables locally in order to compensate for the lack of supplies. This policy provoked Clemenceau to comment that the soldiers at Salonika preferred to cultivate their gardens rather than to fight. This article examines the logistic and supply problems faced by the French and suggests that the successful solutions that were put in place contributed directly to the success of 1918.

Philip D. Dillard

Georgia Soldiers and the Movement to Arm the Slaves

During the final winter of the American Civil War, white southerners struggled mightily with the idea of arming black soldiers, the price that must be paid to win their loyalty, and the black veterans' role in the postwar South. This piece attempts to trace one element of the larger national debate by examining the impact of Georgia soldier opinion on discussions of the issue at home. Although military necessity forced these southerners to make the choice, clearly Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John B. Gordon, and a host of less well-known Georgia soldiers concluded that the war demanded that they sacrifice slavery and the worldview that supported it.

Prue Torney-Parlicki

'Grave Security Obligations': The Curtin Government's Refusal to Accredit Australian Newspaper Photographers to Combat Areas during the Second World War

Despite constant lobbying by Australian newspaper organisations during the Second World War to send their photographers to combat areas n the same manner as print correspondents, only official government and army cameramen were permitted to photograph in operational areas. This article examines the domestic dispute between the Curtin government and the press over the accreditation of newspaper photographers, and considers the political and cultural factors that informed the government's policy-making. It argues that the government's intransigence resulted from a combination of political, ideological and practical motives, and in particular its anxiety about the impact of photojournalistic realism on the prosecution of the war. It suggests further that the policy of excluding newspaper photographers from combat areas seriously inhibited the achievement of the desired publicity for Australia's war effort overseas.

Guangqiu Xu

The Chinese Air Force with American Wings

China began to develop its military aviation at the end of 1920s, and Americans played an active role in the development of all of the elements of modern military aviation. American influence was the strongest foreign influence in China's military aviation, and Nationalist wings were almost completely American in equipment and training. With strength in the air, Chiang Kai- shek's military power gained a preponderance over his internal rivals before 1937. The Chinese Air Force played an important role in defeating the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War. Without American air support during the Civil War, the Chinese Air Force did not provide valuable support in ground operation, which partly contributed to the Nationalists' defeat.

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Volume 16: 2, October 1998

Matthew Trundle

'Epikouroi, Xenoi and Misthophoroi in the Classical Greek World'

This article discusses the way in which Greek authors used and adapted the words which identified Greek mercenary soldiers. It identifies the way words for mercenaries evolved from the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE and on into the Roman imperial period; and shows that writers in the later fifth and fourth centuries BCE and consequentially the Roman period used words which were more accurate than their literary ancestors. Noting that the Greeks of the early fifth century and earlier were keen to disguise the real nature of the mercenary and mercenary service (using euphemisms like epikouroi and xenoi) which writers of later periods were less inclined to do, the article assesses why the Greeks of the later fifth and fourth centuries utilised more realistic words for mercenary soldiers (for example misthophoroi) and argues that context and in particular socio-economic phenomena lay behind this change in identification. It was not, of course, until the modern age that the image and name of the mercenary became so degraded.

Nikolas Gardner

'Command in Crisis: The British Expeditionary Force and the Forest of Mormal. August 1914'

The 'Great Retreat' of August 1914 placed overwhelming stress on the British Expeditionary Force. After separating to bypass the Forest of Mormal on 25 August, the two corps which comprised the army failed to reconnect, retiring independently until 1 September. This seven-day period proved extremely perilous, with Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien's II Corps fighting alone at Le Cateau on 26 August and consequently falling into disarray. While the battlefield exploits of British soldiers in this period have been well documented, the behaviour of their commanders remains largely unexplained. This article examines the British command system in August 1914, arguing that fractious interpersonal relationships combined with ambiguities inherent to the prevailing philosophy of command to produce the prolonged and dangerous separation of the army.

Rich Schweitzer

'The Cross and the Trenches: Religious Faith and Doubt among some British Soldiers on the Western Front'

Given the absence of a satisfactory scholarly study, the topic of British Great War soldiers' religious responses to battle has been left to the comments of contemporary participants who tended to view the war as either a revivalistic event, or an event that crushed religious faith. Neither of these bipolar contemporary interpretations is accurate and they ought to be replaced by a model that puts soldiers' religious responses on a spectrum ranging from an absolute faith in God to atheism. After demonstrating the utility of the spectrum model through three case studies, the article concludes that British Great War soldiers were more religious than previous writings would indicate.

Bill Rawling

'Taking Care of Tar: Royal Canadian Navy Medical Practitioners of the Second World War'

In wartime, the need for medical practitioners is self-evident, but such is not the case when armed forces experience periods of peace. A possible result is that, when war breaks out, a service's medical infrastructure must be built up essentially from scratch. This article examines how naval doctors, nurses, and sick berth attendants coped with fifty-fold expansion in the navy's numbers. It also studies to what extent civilian practices were adapted to fit the needs of the wartime RCN.

Lynette Finch

'Knowing the Enemy: Australian Psychological Warfare and the Business of Influencing Minds in the Second World War'

Mass destruction and the everyday are new terms associated with twentieth century combat and so, too, is psychological warfare. Although the techniques of influencing the morale of the population and of soldiers are older than this century, the scale of their use and the central role they have come to play, position them as characteristics of this century. This paper analyses the public response to the first multi-media national morale-boosting campaign organised by the Australian Department of Information in the Second World War. The infamous 'hate' campaign of 1942 was a public relations disaster. Widespread protest signalled its failure to steel the determination of the people to support their nation's involvement in the war; general condemnation indicated that its architects had completely misread their public. But how did the team of professional commercial psychologists who put together the project, get it so wrong? This paper outlines their failure and analyses the debate which it engendered over the business of influencing opinion in Australia.

Dennis E. Showalter

'Dien Bien Phu in Three Cultures'

Even before the last shots were fired, the siege of Dien Bien Phu has taken on mythic stature for the French and the Vietminh alike. In the succeeding half-century the myth of Dien Bien Phu has grown more protean and complex, contributing to the folklore and the history of all the major participants in the Indochina Wars: France, Vietnam and the United States. This article presents and compares the roles of Dien Bien Phu in structuring the public memory of three different cultures, each with its own matrix for transforming

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Volume 17: 1, May 1999

John Moses

'Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Conspirator Against the Hitler Regime: The Motivation of a German Protestant Revolutionary'

The name of the Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoef fer, is widely known to be connected with the conspiracy of German Wehrmacht off icers which led to the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. Bonhoeffer ’s motivation for his participation in this plot was, however, very differe nt in principle from that of the military men. They wanted to remove the Nazi re gime in order to be able to negotiate "honourable" peace terms with th e Allies. For this they wanted the assurance from the British government that th e Churchillian war aim of "unconditional surrender" would be abandoned.

Bonhoeffer in his negotiations held in Stockholm with the Eng lish Bishop George Bell of Chichester, really wanted that the Allies conquer Ger many as a punishment for the crimes perpetrated by Germany against humanity. The German people should show remorse and do penance for tolerating the Nazi regime . This motivation was, of course, grounded solely in Bonhoeffer’s theology which represented a radical departure from that of his German mentors.

They, led by Adolf von Harnack, had always taught that unques tioning service to the State was the highest expression of Christian duty. Bonho effer saw the catastrophic consequences of such a theology when confronted with such an evil 'authority' as Adolf Hitler.

Bob Moore

'The Last Phase of the Gentleman's War: British Handling of German Prisoners of War on Board HMT Pasteur, March 1942.

In March 1942, the HMT Pasteur set sail from P ort Suez with nearly 2,000 German POWs bound for Durban. The treatment of these prisoners engendered strong protests from Berlin and some admissions from London that mistakes had been made. Ostensibly, there were assumptions on both sides t hat the terms of the Geneva Convention would be upheld. However, within months, both sides had engaged in tit-for-tat retaliation against prisoners in their han ds. The Pasteur incident provides an interesting case study of the changing pri orities adopted by the British authorities in their treatment of POWs during the Second World War and their reaction to charges that they had breached the terms of the Convention.

Wayne Reynolds

'Atomic Weapons and the Problem of Australian Security, 1946—1957'

This article is a revisionist account of the security crisis that faced the Chifley Government in 1948. It traces the problem of Aust ralian security from 1946 to 1957, the period in which Australia cooperated clos ely with Britain in the development and testing of nuclear deterrent weapons. Th is - not the problem of Soviet espionage - was the problem. The US was opposed t o the sharing of US nuclear technology and used the issue of security accordingl y.

Phillip Deery

'Science, Security and the Cold War: An Australian Dimen sion'

In the early Cold War period, an Australian nuclear p hysicist based in Britain, Dr Thomas Kaiser, engaged in a political protest agai nst his government. His dismissal and subsequent blacklisting were interpreted b y his supporters as another instance of Cold War paranoia fuelled, in this insta nce, by concerns over the loyalty of atomic scientists. This article seeks to lo cate the ‘Kaiser Case’ in an international context. It argues that Kai ser’s fate became entwined not nly with the politics of the Cold War but a lso with the tripartite defence relationship between the United States, Great Br itain and Australia in which a key issue was the flow of classified military inf ormation.

Orly Shachar

'The Womb of a Woman Belongs to the Motherland': Press Images of Israeli Women in Wartime, 1967—1973'

This article examines public images of Jewish women, as found in the Israeli press, during two wars in the Middle East–the 1967 War and the 1973 War. The analysis ascertains the power of the popular media to direct social dynamics within a society by propagating certain gender roles. Fi ndings indicate that during wartime, Israeli women were portrayed as either the submissive mates of soldiers or as being solely concerned with home-care respons ibilities. With its emphasis on femininity, the mainstream Israeli media assign ed women traditional roles as their nation’s nurturers.

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Volume 17: 2, October 1999

Ken Hendrickson

Victorian Military Politics of Establishment and Religious Liberty: William H. Rule and the Introduction of Wesleyan Methodism into the British Army, 1856–1882

Histories of English Nonconformity and the Victorian British army have stressed deep divisions between chapel and barracks. An important exception, however, Wesleyan Methodists increasingly demonstrated affinities for empire. Empire could promote worldwide evangelism. Some British politicians were sensitive to these trends. Lord Palmerston cultivated issues important to Nonconformist voters. He considered the Wesleyans pivotal. Increasingly, Wesleyans entered politics. Such transitions were not simple. Mid-century elites usually regarded Wesleyans with disdain. Wesleyans harboured suspicions of state power. With other Nonconformists, they shared an aversion to the British army. The story of creating a permanent Wesleyan mission to the army is the story of bridging that gap.

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Geoffrey Jensen

Moral Strength Through Material Defeat? The Consequences of 1898 for Spanish Military Culture

Spain's military defeat in 1898 had an important but oft-ignored cultural and 'spiritual' effect on the Spanish officer corps. After 1898 many officers increasingly eschewed study of the concrete political, tactical, and strategic lessons of military history and analysis, instead focusing on the roles ostensibly played by philosophical, spiritual, and other more intangible developments in Spain's defeat by the United States and colonial insurgents. The corresponding decline of liberal, rationalist thought in Spanish military culture would in turn have a lasting effect on twentieth-century Spain.

Jackson Hughes

The Battle for the Hindenburg Line

The Allied offensive of 1918 has been the subject of intense debate since the last shots were fired some 80 years ago. Yet the question remains: what was the nature of the Allied victory? This article examines just one of the massive sequence of attacks launched by the Allies in September of 1918, that by the Fourth Army on the Siegfried Stellung, the strongest section of the Hindenburg Line—the heavily fortified defensive line to which the Germans had retired early in 1917. The article draws attention to the key role in the success of that attack played by the Royal Artillery, which by 1918 had surpassed its German counterparts in tactical and technological sophistication.

Steven L. Wright

Alfred Bettman: The Making of a Civil Libertarian, 1917–1929

Primarily known worldwide as a leader in urban planning, Alfred Bettman's work during the First World War in the War Emergency Division of the US Department of Justice has gone unnoticed. Bettman was charged with upholding the provisions of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917–1918, which required him to reconcile protecting his fellow citizens against a powerful and potentially abusive government while upholding the laws of the land against those who would compromise American morale. After the war, when the government continued to suppress civil liberties, Bettman slowly became convinced that the government's power to restrict individual free speech jeopardised a fundamental principle of American democracy. From 1929 until his death, Bettman worked to ensure that freedom only existed in America when those with whom society disagreed were guaranteed the same freedoms.

David J. Ulbrich

Clarifying the Origins and Strategic Mission of the US Marine Corps Defense Battalion, 1898–1941

According to the established historical view, the US Marine Corps Defense Battalion is seldom given full recognition for its significant role in America's Pacific strategy before Pearl Harbor. This article clarifies, if not corrects, the established view by showing that advanced base theory and the defense battalion (its application as of 1939) consistently occupied a high priority for the Corps dating back to the turn of the century. While the Corps' highest priority gradually shifted from base defence toward amphibious assault, such a shift did not marginalise the defense battalion in theory or reality. On the contrary, these units complemented amphibious assault units to form what could be considered the Corps' dual strategic mission—supporting the US Fleet by both the seizure and defence of advanced island bases.

Beatrice Trefalt

A Straggler Returns: Onoda Hiro\ and Japanese Memories of the War

Former Lieutenant Onoda Hirô was one of the very last Japanese Second World War soldiers to surrender: he did so in 1974. This article analyses postwar Japan’s media response to the return of this ‘living relic’, in order to illuminate the state of war memory almost 30 years after the defeat. It shows that responses to Onoda were ambiguous: he was admirable yet repulsive, he was a hero, but also a victim, of the war. The variety of discourses provoked by Onoda’s much-delayed surrender thus provides us with a lens through which to the development of collective, supra-individual memories of the war can be observed.

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Volume 18: 1, May 2000

Martin Horn

The Concept of Total War: National Effort and Taxation in Britain and Fran ce During the First World War

The concept of Total War has recently been assessed, and found wanting, by histo rians. This article examines two aspects of the British and French involvement in the First World War compared to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War. First, the size of the national effort, and secondly, taxation levels. It concludes that while the British and French made their gre atest effort in the First World War, they paid for it with markedly lower levels of taxation. This suggests that historians would be better served by consideri ng a typology of Total War in which the different wartime experiences of states are recognised.

Roy MacLeod

Sight and Sound on the Western front: Surveyors, Scientists and the 'Battl efield Laboratory', 1915—1918

Recent years have seen an increasing int erest in the usages of science and technology during the Great War. Moving away from what was once viewed as a straightforward story of urgently applied researc h and application, has come a growing appreciation of the complex processes invo lved in the mobilisation of knowledge, as between different disciplines, and as among the belligerent powers. A significant example of this phenomenon lies in th e history of 'Survey', the application of principles of topography, cartography, geography, meteorology, geology, physics, mathematics and engineering to milita ry cartography and the use of artillery. In drawing upon many disciplines, and c ertain unique skills, 'Survey' proved a vital weapon of war. But in a wider sens e, in the extenuated 'laboratory conditions' of the Western Front, its accelerat ed evolution reveals important differences in the science-military relationship among the Allies and in Germany. This article reflects on these developments and differences, in what became a struggle as much of minds as of materiel.

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Tim Cook

'Against God-Inspired Conscience': The Perception of Gas Warfare as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, 1915—193

This article examines the perception of gas warfare as a weapon of mass destruction from 1915—1939. Poison gas in t he First World War has subsequently been portrayed in most military historiograp hy, as an insignificant nuisance to the trench soldier. That is an inaccurate an d superficial depiction. In reality, gas was a feared and debilitating weapon th at gained in importance as the war progressed, culminating in 1918 with its full integration into every battle fought on the Western Front. As poison gas was en countered more often by soldiers, however, the perception of it changed from tha t of dread to wary acceptance. Not so for civilians on the homefront who saw poi son gas as another atrocity of the new mechanised warfare. The interwar years sa w gas warfare revert to an apparition that epitomised the worst of the me chanical slaughter associated with the Western Front; the perception of gas was fed by crippled veterans and science-fiction, fearmongering and active imaginati ons, new technologies and old fears.

Melanie Oppenheimer

Control of Wartime Patriotic Funds in Australia: The National Security (Pa triotic Funds) Regulations, 1940—1953

Patriotic funds, the term used to descri be voluntary wartime organisations or wartime charities, were an important featu re of the Australian homefront, and provided amelioration and assistance to sold iers, their dependants, and allied victims of war overseas. Over 8000 patriotic funds were established during the Second World War and they raised over £28 mill ion. This article examines a hitherto neglected aspect of the Australian wartime experience during the Second World War: the role of patriotic funds and governm ent attempts to regulate and control them through the establishment of the Natio nal Security (Patriotic Funds) Regulations. The federal government came under st rong pressure from the various state governments who saw the regulations as an e ncroachment on state rights and a battle for control developed. Themes of federa lism and of control fought out over who controlled and administered the patrioti c funds can be traced through the war years, and are the principal focus of this article.

Craig Bickell

Operation Fortitude South: An Analysis of its Influence upon German Dispos itions and Conduct of Operations in 1944

It has long been assumed that the allied plan that aimed to deceive t he Germans as to the true invasion site in 1944 was both successful and signific ant in that it kept the German Army's attention fixed on the Pas de Calais, leav ing the Allies greater freedom of action in Normandy. This article argues that s uch an interpretation accords too much influence to the deception plan. After a brief description of the plan and its influence on German thinking prior to D-D ay, the article goes on to consider what dispositions the German actually made t o meet the invasion threat, by plotting the movements of German units in the Wes tern theatre, and to assess the combat quality of the available troops. Finally, the question of whether those troops could physically have been transported to Normandy is discussed, and the German logistics problems delineated.

Lyn Gorman

Australian and American Media: From Korea to Vietnam

Australian Cold War historiography has s uffered from relative neglect of the role of the media. Moreover, earlier studie s have tended to occur within an American-dominated paradigm, which has prevente d Australian coverage of Cold War conflicts from receiving the scrutiny it deser ves in its own right.. This article draws not only on newspapers but also on fil m and broadcasting archives to concentrate on Australian media and the Korean an d Vietnam wars. Media coverage of the Korean War was more extensive than has bee n assumed in the past and reflected distinctively Australian concerns not only about Korea but more generally about Australian foreign policy, Australian relati ons with Asia and Australia's place in the world in the 1950s. Similarly, with respect to Vietnam, earlier conclusions about the Australian media demand revision with respect to critical coverage and distinctive Australian perceptions in th e 1960s. It is suggested that questions other than those dominant in the America n historiography should be asked: particularly how the media both reflected and helped to shape distinctive Australian perceptions of Cold War events and of for eign policy. Finally, the role of Australia's public service broadcasting instit utions, both radio and television, is considered in relation to the expression o f dissent about involvement in Cold War conflicts during these decades.

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Volume 18: 2, October 2000

Joanna Waley-Cohen

Introduction to a set of articles on Civil—Military Relations in Imperial China.

David Graff

The Sword and the Brush: Military Specialisation and Career Patterns in Tang China, 618—907

It is often observed that in the early years of China's Tang dynasty military leadership was provided by an aristocratic elite capable of performing with equal aplomb in both civil and military positions, while in the middle and late Tang command came to be exercised by military specialists from heterogeneous and often humble origins. Though not entirely incorrect, this picture is a considerable oversimplification. Even in the early years of the dynasty civil and military career tracks were usually quite distinct, and in the second half of the Tang period parvenu specialists did not enjoy a monopoly over military command. Civilian scholar-officials responded to the increased autonomy of the soldiers by redefining military leadership as an intellectual exercise and asserting their own fitness for high-level command.

Jonathan Karam Skaff

Barbarism at the Gates? The Tang Frontier Military and the An Lushan Rebellion

Some scholars have argued that the cause of the mid-eighth century An Lushan rebellion, which nearly brought down China's Tang dynasty, was a sharp division between Chinese civilians and a "barbarized" frontier military. However, this paper shows that the Tang army's social composition was more complex. Soldiers came from Chinese and non-Chinese backgrounds, and the latter were assimilated to varying degrees into Chinese culture. When the rebellion broke out, both loyalist and rebel forces included Chinese and non-Chinese troops. Lacking evidence of a sharp division between Chinese and non-Chinese, the paper argues that institutional problems, most importantly a failure to control An lushan, caused the rebellion.

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Peter Lorge

The Northern Song Military Aristocracy and the Royal Family

This article examines the relationship between military families and the emperor during the Northern Song dynasty. Starting from the seldom discussed but not unknown fact that a majority of empresses were chosen from families with military backgrounds, I will demonstrate that a select group of families defined by their military contributions to the dynasty maintained a highly privileged position of power and prestige during the Northern Song. While the literati worried about maintaining the status and privilege of lineage over several generations, this small group of military families kept their status and power without studying and passing competitive examinations or navigating the treacherous political waters of the bureaucracy. The existence and behaviour of this aristocracy make it clear that the scholar-officials' views on the questions of who should wield power, what the attainment of high bureaucratic rank meant, and how the dynasty was formed and maintained were not universally accepted outside their ranks. While the literati debated the substance of 'This Culture of Ours' the military aristocracy more practically held their grip on 'This Dynasty of Ours'.

Kenneth Swope

Civil-Military Coordination in the Bozhou Campaign of the Wanli Era

The long reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573-1620) is generally perceived as the last hurrah of Ming rule in China. During his tenure as monarch the Ming experienced a brief revival of fiscal solvency and military strength. Thus the Ming state was able to not only maintain the political status quo in East Asia, but also to expand its frontiers and pursue military goals to a degree largely unseen since the early fifteenth century. The most famous military actions of the early Wanli period were the so-called Three Great Punitive Expeditions (San Da Zheng), conducted from 1592 to 1600. Ming success in these endeavours was due to their use of talented civil and military officials in tandem. The final campaign, and the subject of this paper, was the conquest of the Bozhou native chieftainship of Wang Yinglong.

Li Hualong, a jinshi degree holder, embodied the perfect balance of wen and wu as he served first in the Korean campaign and later as supreme commander of Sichuan, Huguang, and Guizhou in charge of suppressing the revolt of Wang Yinglong. Li made use of spies, local tribespeople and the talents of his military subordinates to wipe out the rebels and formally incorporate their territories into the regular Ming administrative structure. This article examines civil-military coordination in the Bozhou campaign in order to move beyond mere numbers and generalisations and see how the Ming military and its support personnel operated in the field. This approach can be illuminating both for students of the late Ming and military history in general.

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Yingcong Dai

To Nourish a Strong Military: Kangxi's Preferential Treatment of his Military Officials

Having built their empire upon the ruins of the Ming dynasty, the founders of the Qing dynasty spared no efforts to avoid the pitfalls which led to the collapse of the Ming. For them, one of the most important and direct causes of the downfall of the Ming was its failure to maintain an efficient military system. Therefore, the Qing rulers endeavoured to construct a different mechanism to keep their military forces in form. As one of the chief architects of the early Qing policies, the Kangxi emperor played a critical role in establishing this new system. This article explores the origins and development of Kangxi's philosophy which underlay his different treatment of military officials and civil officials, and discusses his implementation of this philosophy during his long reign. Kangxi gave a high priority to guaranteeing the morale and fighting capacity of his military forces. He chose to be more lenient towards his military officials than his civilian officials, and was especially flexible towards his frontier military commanders. The selection and appointment of military officials did not follow the regular appointment procedure, and military officials were allowed or even encouraged to seek extra incomes other than their regular salaries through involvement in commerce and other unconventional activities. By examining Kangxi's philosophy and practice in this area, this paper suggests that the successes of the early Qing empire had a great deal to do with its efficient military system, and that a strong military owed much to the special treatment it received from the Kangxi emperor, whose policies were producing a de facto military aristocracy.

J.Y. Wong

The Limits of Naval Power: British Gunboat Diplomacy in China from the Nemesis to the Amethyst, 1839—1949

Gunboat diplomacy is a world-wide phenomenon. Britain's 110-year bullying of China is used here as a case study to explore the nature of the beast. Key events are selected for examination but the focus is on the limits of what naval power could do. It finds that for gunboat diplomacy to be successful, a clear and achievable goal must be defined before force is applied. Generally bullying behaviour could be counter productive and positively dangerous because it might easily lead to an unwanted war. Public opinion both at home and abroad could also set limits to the application of such power.

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Stephen G. Fritz

'This is the Way Wars End, With a Bang not a Whimper': Middle Franconia in April 1945

The spectre of an Alpine Fortress exerted an extraordinary influence on American thinking, so much so that, fearing the Germans would consolidate as many as 300,000 troops in an Alpine redoubt and from there conduct a protracted guerrilla war, General Dwight Eisenhower on 28 March 1945 turned the US Third and Seventh Armies to the southeast, ordering them to cut off and destroying German units before they could reach the Alps. As a result, powerful American forces struck south into the heart of Middle Franconia, an area of early and extensive support for the Nazi Party. The key German defence line, and the chief obstacle to US forces moving to block their retreat, centered on the forested ridges of the Steigerwald and the Frankenhšhe west of Nuremberg.

Opposing this advance was a conglomeration of German units gathered under the overall direction of the 13th SS Army Corps, headed by SS-GruppenfŸhrer Max Simon. A convinced National Socialist, Simon staunchly advocated merciless opposition, both against the American invaders as well as any war-weary members of the German civilian population inclined to avoid pointless resistance. In all, perhaps 3500 men and 100 tanks, under the direction of capable and resolute officers schooled in harsh combat in Russia, aimed to defend a 60 mile section of the front in rural Middle Franconia, if necessary by turning every town into a Òbastion.Ó. The first three weeks of April 1945 thus saw fighting of a disconcerting intensity at such a late stage in the war, as the hastily improvised German defence line brought the rapid advance of the US Seventh Army to an abrupt halt.

Caught in the middle were the people of Middle Franconia, an agricultural region of rolling farm land and heavily wooded ridges. Historians have accorded this slugfest little mention, but it provides insight into the fierce fighting that accompanied the end of the war, while emphasizing an important point: even in supposedly "uneventful" areas actions took place that affected the fate of numerous individuals, both soldiers and civilians. In resurrecting their histories, one can draw out the larger historical pattern woven into these grass-roots events, as well as impart something of the nature of life in the crumbling Nazi regime. With terror directed at them by Nazi Party functionaries and SS commanders, the local population endured frightful material destruction and loss of life before the war finally ground to a halt. Still, with their freedom of action constrained, the German civilian population did not simply consist of passive victims caught between two fronts, as throughout the region people pressured local authorities to end the senseless resistance. This article thus examines the predicament, mentality, and outlook of American GIs, German soldiers and officials, and the civilian population caught in the arduous fighting during the waning days of World War II.

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Volume 19: 1, May 2001

Kevin Linch

'A Geography of Loyalism? The Local Military Forces of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1794-1814'

The article examines the history of the local military forces of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the administration of government policy. The West Riding’s populace has been depicted as disaffected, which is supported by the superficial evidence of the lacklustre proportion of its population that offered to volunteer. But a detailed examination shows that the subject is much more complex. The volunteers became increasingly militarised, and were raised under the threat of compulsion, which removes the political overtones of the force. The evidence from the West Riding shows that membership of local military forces did not automatically create patriots, and that a geography of loyalism based on the numbers of local military forces is flawed.

Philip Charrier

'The Evolution of a Stereotype: The Royal Navy and the Japanese 'Martial Type', 1900—1945'

Stereotyping played an important part in the Royal Navy's evaluation of the Imperial Japanese Navy between 1900 and 1945. This article analyses a variety of British naval records to show how the racially-based stereotype of the Japanese 'martial type' evolved during this period, culminating in the Second World War image of the Japanese naval air pilot as almost indistinguishable from his aircraft. The article concludes that the Royal Navy's reliance upon stereotypes both damaged its ability to assess objectively the strengths and weaknesses of an important rival navy, and bred prejudice against the Japanese and their technology.

Roy A. Prete

'Imbroglio par Excellence: Mounting the Salonika Campaign, September—October 1915'

The Anglo-French attempt to mount an expedition through Salonika, Greece in aid of Serbia in September—October 1915 ran foul of competing objectives between the two governments and the resistance of the field commanders on the Western Front to give up more than a minimum number of troops. The tangled web of competing agendas between and within the two governments and the foot-dragging of the military chiefs paralysed action, while a frantic series of high-level political military conferences–six in as many weeks–failed to produce an effective plan, with the result that Allied military forces arrived–‘too little, too late’–to save the shattered Serb Army. The article, based on French and British archival sources, details the intricacies of this fiasco in Allied cooperation, suggesting not only the inadequacy of traditional diplomacy for wartime cooperation, but the grave difficulty of weak and divided governments in arriving at any firm and lasting mutual decisions.

Dale James Blair

''Those Miserable Tommies': Anti-British Sentiment in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915—1918'

This article examines the anti-British sentiment that was inherent in the war experience of Australian soldiers in the First World War. Using the 1 Battalion as a window into the broader experience of the Australian Imperial Force, Blair contends that an anti-British sentiment was cultivated by the Australians to carve out and promote their own soldier identity. The 'diggers' entered into subjective comparisons with the British, especially the English, to establ;ish in their own minds a definite superiority complex. By denigrating English performance and applauding their own they indulged in a narcissistic appreciation of their ultimate worth. This inflated view was carried through to the postwar period in both private and public remembrances, and remains firmnly embedded in the national psyche today.

Christopher Waters

'Australia, the British Empire and the Second World War'

This article is a study of the impact of the Second World War on Australia's place in the British empire. It uses the observations of contemporary observers and diplomats from the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada to explore how the war changed Australia's imperial relationship with the United Kingdom. The article uses these reports and observations to argue that the war fractured both Australia's place in the empire and the place of the British empire in Australian society and politics. It then suggests that this argument can form the basis for providing common ground between the competing schools of thought on this important subject.

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Ang Cheng Guan

'The Domino Theory Revisited: The Southeast Asia Perspective'

The article reviews the domino theory from the perspectives of the non-communist southeast Asian governments, as derived from two kinds of source materials: public statements and memoirs of southeast Asian leaders and documents from the southeast Asian volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The article begins with a brief survey of the literature on the domino theory and then moves on to a discussion of each of the southeast Asian countries from the 1950s to 1975. The author found that before 1967, the non-communist governments believed strongly in the logic of the domino theory, but that after 1967, or thereabouts, belief in the theory gradually weakened.

Nicola Piper

'War and Memory: Victim Identity and the Struggle for Compensation in Japan'

Japan has been subject to much criticism for its dominating memory of its own wartime victimisation, failing to acknowledge non-Japanese victims of Japanese aggression in Pacific-Asia. However, by concentrating on the former 'aggressor's' own identity and ways of commemorating the Pacific War, social commentators have ignored the dynamics between selective memory and collective forgetting by both Japan and the invaded countries.

This article attempts, therefore, a socio-political analysis of the elements involved in shaping, and re-shaping, collective memory among non-Japanese war victims in the postwar era. The specific case study of activism on behalf of the so-called former military 'comfort women' and their successful formation of a collective identity that has been translated into political activism to gain justice and compensation illustrate these dynamics.  

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Volume 19: 2, October 2001

Matthew Trundle

'The Spartan Revolution: Hoplite Warfare in the Late Archai c Period'

This article explores the way in which Sparta became the most powerfu l state in the Greek world in the classical period. It argues that the foundatio ns of the Spartan system and Spartan military superiority were laid by a hoplite revolution in which the Spartans adopted hoplite equipment, tactics and ment alité en masse in the late archaic age. It is suggested that this rev olution occurred much later than Greek traditions maintain and therefore explain s the development of the Peloponnesian alliance system in the mid-sixth century that has come to be known as the Peloponnesian League.

Lorraine White

'Spain's Early Modern Soldiers: Origins, Motivation and Loyalty'

Using primary and secondary sources, this article examines the social composition of military forces in peninsular Spain and the disincentives and in centives to serve. Besides presenting evidence about the age, marital status and geographical origins of recruits, it identifies similarities and differences in the social origins of the officers and ordinary soldiers in the armies and loca l militias, and notes certain changes over time. It looks at inducements to serv e: pay, bounty payments, privileges, exemptions, and booty, as well as crude for ms of social security. Finally, it explores the issue of loyalty.

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John M. Gates

'James Belich and the Modern Maori Pa: Revisionist History Revised'

James Belich, New Zealand's most well known historian of the New Zeal and Wars, stressed the significant military achievements of the Maori in their f ight against the British, attributing much of their success to the excellence of Maori fortified works or 'pa'. This article challenges Belich's claims regardin g the originality of Maori pa construction, the capabilities of nineteenth-centu ry artillery, and the degree to which the British gave the Maori the credit they deserved for their 1864 victory at the Battle of Gate Pa. The article also coun ters Belich's assertion that the battle represented the British military doing ' its very best'.

Naoko Shimazu

'The Myth of the 'Patriotic Soldier': Japanese Attitudes Towards Death in t he Russo–Japanese War'

This article looks at the construction of the national myth of 'the patriotic so ldier' by the Japanese state during the Russo-Japanese War and how the myth was perceived by the lower-ranking soldiers. The myth dictated that Japanese soldier s express absolute loyalty to the emperor to the point of death. In examining pe rsonal materials of the lower-ranking soldiers\222, this study will argue that t hese soldiers did not generally identify with such a notion of loyalty because i t was based on the status-specific values of the former samurai class to which t he majority of soldiers did not belong.

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Edgar Jones and Simon Wessely

'The Origins of British Military Psychiatry Before the First World War'

Important foundations were laid for the embryonic discipline of milit ary psychiatry in Britain before the outbreak of the First World War. An increas ing number of unexplained somatic syndromes, including Disordered Action of the Heart, psychogenic rheumatism and general debility, forced physicians to explore new ideas about causation and treatment. Although most remained committed to th e search for organic explanations, a small number drew on hypotheses introduced to understand civilian cases of neurasthenia and railway spine. Fears of heredit ary degeneration also clouded investigations that looked at the quality of recru its and their susceptibility to functional heart disorders. So-called evacuation syndromes were identified in the Russo–Japanese War, while the Balkan conf lict of 1912–13 provided evidence of the epidemic of shell shock that was s o soon to follow.

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Ashley Jackson

'Bechuanaland, the Caprivi Strip, and the First World War'

This is the first analysis of the effects of the First World War upon the British Southern African territory of Bechuanaland since the official histo ry of the war, published in 1924, presented the Protectorate’s role as one of cheerful and loyal participation. The huge, sparsely populated land not only sent men and money to support the war effort in Europe, but took part in the con quest of German South West Africa, gaining in size with the addition of the Capr ivi Strip in 1914. The move against the Caprivi Strip provided an opportunity fo r the political powers of the region—Britain, South Africa, the British Sou th Africa Company, and African chiefdoms—to continue their long-standing co mpetition for land and resources. The Bechuanaland Administration was reliant on African collaboration in preparing for possible German or Boer invasion, and ye t was still extremely alarmed by the prospect of African uprising.

Robert Cribb

'Military Strategy in the Indonesian Revolution: Nasution's Concept of 'Tot al People's War' in Theory and Practice'

General A.H. Nasution was the architect of the Indonesian army's doct rine of 'total people's defence', which is often interpreted as evidence of deep -seated populism and engagement with the public on the part of the Indonesian ar med forces. A closer examination of Nasution's writings and his actions during t he national revolution (1945—49) indicates, however, that he was deeply dis trustful of 'the people' and that his central aim was to create a professional a rmy and to keep it isolated from the public.

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Volume 20, No.1, May 2002

Thomas Cardoza

'Exceeding the Needs of the Service’: the French Army and the Suppression of Female Auxiliaries'

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women served with French combat units as official auxiliaries, or cantinières. They wore regimental uniforms, entered combat routinely, and provided soldiers with supplementary food, alcohol and laundry service. Following the Franco—Prussian War, reforms aimed at efficiency and uniformity in the army seriously undermined this female institution, and after the Dreyfus Affair, politically motivated Republican military reforms further weakened its position. Though many soldiers viewed them as a traditional part of the army, cantinières faced increasingly hostile regulations starting in 1875 that culminated in their final suppression in 1906 and the creation of an all-male French army.

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Tim Stapleton

'Views of the First World War in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 1914—1918'

Looking at views of the First World War in Southern Rhodesia can illustrate some important facets of that early colonial society. Contrary to popular perception among historians, the movement towards responsible government on the part of the white settler minority was not suspended during the war but picked up considerable popular momentum. Many English-speaking settlers believed that their participation in the war would speed up the process of Southern Rhodesia becoming a new nation in the sense of British Dominions like Canada and Australia with appropriate powers of self-government. The small Afrikaner communities in Southern Rhodesia were initially enthusiastic about the war effort until an Afrikaner rebellion in South Africa led to anti-Afrikaner agitation among the other white settlers. Southern Rhodesia’s Afrikaners responded with many official declarations of loyalty but their interest in the war declined after this point.

The African majority saw the war in a variety of ways. Previous historians have mostly seen the war as a distant and unimportant event for rural Africans until the recruitment of African soldiers in 1916. However, Native Department spies reported that the conflict, right from its onset, was an anxious subject of discussion at gatherings of rural people. A few resistance minded African leaders saw the war as an opportunity to renew their failed efforts to throw off British rule but were prevented from doing so by a experienced Native Department officials. The few mission educated Africans copied the wartime activities of the settlers by collecting war funds and forming patriotic organisations. Of course, just like the settlers, some of them also saw the war as an opportunity to pursue other agendas such as preventing the spread of syphilis and imposing western morality on urban African communities.

Kent Fedorowich

'Ex-Servicemen and the Politics of Soldier Settlement in Canada and Australia, 1915—1925'

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Jenny Macleod

'The Fall and Rise of Anzac Day: 1965 and 1990 Compared'

This article traces the shifting level of public interest in Anzac Day in Australia by comparing two milestones, its 50th and 75th anniversaries, through the Gallipoli pilgrimages staged to mark these events. In 1965 Anzac Day belonged to the veterans and it appeared that it might fade away with them. By 1990, however, it had become the key date for the nation as a whole. The article goes on to suggest some reasons for the changes observed, including the shift towards a more inclusive rhetoric, the renewed influence of Charles Bean, the work of Ken Inglis and Bill Gammage, Peter Weir's 1981 film, and efforts to engage school children.

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Paul Collier

'The Capture of Tripoli in 1941: Open Seame or Tactical Folly?

The decision not to continue Operation Compass beyond its culmination in the victory at Beda Fomm in February 1941, with the capture of Tripoli as an ultimate objective, has been the source of an often rancorous controversy in the years following the end of the Second World War. Resolute and emotional assertions lamenting the abandonment of the advance by both historians and former officers have argued that the operational capacity of XIII Corps was sufficient to fulfil the tactical objective. The judgment has even been described as 'the most gratuitous and incomprehensible error of omission of the whole Second World War'.

The North African campaign during the Second World War offers a unique opportunity to study the effect that logistics can have upon a modern, fast moving campaign. The Axis and British Armies were largely motorised and for the first time the conduct of battles was dominated by the internal combustion engine. From the outset the availability of fuel and sufficient transport vehicles were the critical factors that governed all other issues. The extremely barren and inhospitable nature of the environment further elevated the importance of logistics. However, despite the confident judgements of many historians, logistic considerations, although frequently mentioned as a prime factor, have not been fully examined in the literature on the North African Campaign.

Furthermore, the opinions of the supply and transport officers, who were responsible for maintaining XIII Corps and would have been tasked with ensuring the maintenance for the advance to Tripoli, have been ignored and remain unknown. A thorough scrutiny of the logistical situation and the administrative evidence of XIII Corps' capacity for further action is essential in order to make a proper judgement of the likely success or failure of any advance towards Tripoli.

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Richard Lock-Pullan

'Civilian Ideas and Military Innovation: Manoeuvre Warfare and Organisational Change in the US Army'

The period between the Vietnam and Gulf wars saw a profound change in the US Army's thinking on the nature of warfare and how to prosecute it. This article examines the role of civilian critics in highlighting the 'manoeuvre warfare' ideas that the Army then adapted. The article's emphasis is on the nature of organisational change, how ideational reform is managed and how the ideas were adapted to meet the Army's internal and external requirements. The final outcome owed more to the civilians than the official accounts say, and highlights the process by which civilian ideas can be part of the military innovation process.

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Volume 20: 2, October 2002

Gervase Phillips

'"Of Nimble Service": Technology, Equestrianism and the Cavalry Arm of Early-Modern Western European Armies

This article examines the development of the cavalry arm of western European armies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It argues that a tradition of versatility allowed troopers to experiment with new weapon technologies and new tactics to meet the battlefield challenge posed by resolute infantry. However, there was no clear progression of new methods displacing old; traditional 'shock' tactics were, of necessity, re-discovered and weapons once abandoned, re-adopted. Significantly, changes in equestrianism and horse breeding had a greater impact on the mounted arm than the proliferation of firearms. Drawing on both the evidence of contemporary theorists and modern historians, this article seeks to demonstrate the continued vitality of the mounted arm in this contentious era.

David Lockwood

'Rival Napoleons?': Stalinism and Bonapartism

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Patrick Porter

The Sacred Service: Australian Chaplains and the Great War

How did Australian military chaplains regard the Great War? Joanna Bourke has recently claimed that chaplains supported enthusiastically the business of killing out of envious, violent desires. Their memoirs, letters and published meditations suggest otherwise. As army officers, they did have a duty to legitimise killing and to ease the moral burden of soldiers. Yet as Christians and as individuals, they were profoundly disturbed by the ordeal of wartime ministry. Their experience challenged their attitudes to God, divine agency in the world, the Church, and the home front. It transformed their war theologies. This article traces their theological journeys, against the theoretical backdrop of the debate between modernist and traditionalist interpretations of the war.

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William Mulligan

Restoring Trust within the Reichswehr: The Case of the Vertauensleute

The establishment of a disciplinary system was one of the fudamental problems facing the officer corps after 1918. Their authority was challenged by the soldiers' councils and the Freikorps units while they also had to take account of the new political situation of the Weimar Republic. They managed to protect their right of command by using the concept of trust and the institutions of the Vertrauensleute to undermine the demands of the soldiers' councils. However the policy was also motivated by the principles of military efficiency, characteristic of the Reichswehr. A good relationship between officers and men contributed to a good fighting unit. Yet the actual practice of the policy differed from unit to unit. In the end the Vertrauensleute became a transient feature of the Reichswehr, as political circumstances and the composition of the Reichswehr itself changed.

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John Steinbach

Nuclear Threats and Civil Defence in Australia 1951-1957

In aligning with the Western powers after the Second World War, Australian political leaders and security planners saw the Soviet bloc as the major source of threats. While the conventional dimension of those threats featured prominently in the security rhetoric, the nuclear dimension did not. Although there was a real perception that membership of the Western alliance made it a nuclear target, Australia was actually strategically irrelevant. Nonetheless, whatever the perceptions of a nuclear threat might be, including a preoccupation with surreptitiously introduced nuclear weapons, Australian governments did not want to divert funds away from the armed forces in order to establish a nuclear civil defence capability.

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Justin Wilson

Conflicting Interests: Australia and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1968

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which was opened for signature on 1 July 1968, has been one of the most successful arms control ventures of the twentieth century. However, as recently declassified government files have revealed, the question of signature was not a straightforward issue for the Australian government. This article traces the inter-departmental conflict amongst the Australian civil service on the issue of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and more generally examines Australian nuclear weapons policy in the 1960s. Caught between the desire to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent to ensure AustraliaÕs security, and international pressure, especially from Britain and the United States, to subscribe to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Gorton government was uncertain about what to do for the best.

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Volume 21, Number 1, May 2003

John E. Grenier

'Of Great Utility': The Public Identity of Early American Rangers and Its Impact on American Society Students of the United States'

military past lack an 'identity study' of the AngloÐAmerican rangers who played an important role in the development of American traditions. This article attempts to elucidate a malleable 'public identity' of the archetypal ranger/Indian-fighting frontiersman and to show how successive generations used it to define what it meant to be an 'American'.

J.Y. Wong

Historical Memory and Political Culture: The Ballad about Commissioner Yeh in Modern Chinese History

A well-known ballad about the Second Opium War (1856Ð60) in China attributes China's defeat and the sack of Beijing to Commissioner Yeh, the Imperial Commissioner for Imperial Affairs in Canton. This article examines the origins of the ballad and the various stages through it passed, and sets those developments within the context of nineteenth-century Chinese political culture and what we know about Yeh himself. This examination reveals not only the crude and misleading nature of the ballad account of Yeh's actions, but also (and more importantly) the reasons for the ballad's longevity and the continuing use of Yeh as a scapegoat for China's defeat. Much work remains to be done on the interaction of nineteenth-century China and the West. Commissioner Yeh and other officials like him may provide a means of revising and deepening our understanding of that interaction.

Timothy K. Blauvelt

Military Mobilisation and National Identity in the Soviet Union

dering the role of warfare in the political development of states, two central views emerge: the garrison state school holds that states facing threat develop autocratic institutions to ensure security, and military mobilisation results in centralisation, restrictions and suppression of minority identity; the resource extraction school argues instead that regimes must extend rights in exchange for the mobilisation of resources needed to deal with threats. This article examines their relative strengths through a case study of the role of war and mobilisation of national minorities for major war in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.

Caroline Miller and Michael Roche

New Zealand's 'New Order': Towen Planning and Soldier Settlement Aftyer the First World War Town

planning provided some creative solutions to the problems of resettling discharged soldiers after World War I. Drawing on Australian developments the New Zealand Town planning conference of 1919 sought to demonstrate how town planning principles could be applied to the development of soldier settlements. Although the proposals were never followed through to fruition the debate over town planning and soldier settlement provides insights the early connection of town planning with a housing problem as well as into competing notions of a 'new order' for the 1920s.

Judith A. Bennett

Local Resource Use in the Pacific War with Japan: Logging in Western Melanesia

When the Second World War reached Papua, New Guinea and the British Solomons Islands Protectorate the military forces utilised the little-studied indigenous timber resource for a variety of construction, thus saving shipping space and relieving demand on the home front. With postwar responsibilities in mind, the Australian military administration was more systematic in recording the volume of timber milled from Melanesian forests, though in both areas the US forces kept production records. When it came to postwar compensation of the Melanesians for their timber it was only the Australian government in Papua and New Guinea that paid it. In both jurisdictions, the war heightened indigenous awareness of the value of their timber trees and extended knowledge of this resource overseas.

Ang Chen Guan

United States-Indonesia Relations: The 1865 Coupo and After

This essay offers an account of US-Indonesia relations from just before the 1965 coup to the start of the New Order under Suharto. The narrative is constructed from the documents in the recently published Volume XXVI of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)1964-1968 pertaining to maritime Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia-Singapore and the Philippines. The documents reveal that Washington was taken by surprised by the 30 September 1965 Gestapu and that it was not till after mid-1967 before Washington gave Suharto its full support. The documents also provide glimpses of some of the major Indonesian actors during this period such as Nasution, Adam Malik and Subandrio. This account further describes and contextualises Washington's (indirect) role in the mass killings following the coup. The essay also includes a brief historiography of the events of this period.

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Volume 21, Number 2, October 2003

William Allison

War For Sale: The Black Market, Currency Manipulation and Corruption in the A merican War in Vietnam

The complex web of the black market, currency manipulation, and corruption is i ndicative of the American experience in Vietnam, and the failed attempts to brea k this web are symbolic of the fundamental challenges the United States faced in a land peopled with a truly foreign set of cultural mores that matched poorly w ith American liberal democratic values. In the broad sense, the black market, c urrency manipulation, and corruption violated the principles of legal free enter prise and respect for the rule of law in a capitalist society. As a political o bjective, fighting the black market and curbing corruption was not only meant to help the United States save money, it was also part of the nation building proc ess designed to instill democratic and capitalist values in Vietnamese society a nd thus dissuade the Vietnamese from the communist insurgency movement. To do t his, the United States turned to the military justice system, government program s, and intra-governmental cooperative efforts, none of which ultimately solved w hat was in the end an unsolvable problem.

James Bennett

'Massey's Sunday School Party': 'The Other Anzacs' or Honorary Australians?

This article has as a central concern the unpacking of New Zealand Anzac identit ies at war by reference to other British army formations during World War I, not ably the English and the Australians both of whom were an important benchmark in the construction of New Zealand identities. By juxtaposing the traditional top down view with bottom up representations of New Zealanders at war two contradict ory narratives are laid bare. It is argued that bottom up representations have s ome significant resonances with Australian Anzac narratives of the war. The aim of the article is to bridge separate national Anzac traditions through an histor iographical synthesis that focuses on encounters at war as well as distinctive h ome front factors influencing understandings of the wartime experience.

Jason Crouthamel

Nervous Nazis: War Neurosis, National Socialsim and th e Memory of the First World War

This article investigates the treatment of mentally disabled veterans from 1914- 1918 under the National Socialist regime. Historians have noted the central im portance of the 'myth of the war experience' in Nazi front ideology, which portr ayed Germans as psychologically strengthened by combat. I argue that some ment ally disabled veterans, who were denounced as unmanly, disloyal malingerers, suc cessfully contested the Nazi regime's official version of traumatic neurosis, ma sculinity, and the memory of the war. These conflicts over the legitimacy of m ental illness in loyal followers of the Nazi movement reveal an interesting laye r of dissent and ideological inconsistency as the regime in some cases granted s upport to 'neurotic' men.

Chris Madsen

Limits of generosity and Trust: The Naval Side of the Comb ined Munitions Assignment Board, 1940-1945

The presumed 'special relationship' has become standard fare in studies of warti me collaboration between Great Britain and the United States. While much has bee n written about relations at higher political and strategic levels, less is know n about actual implementation of Lend-Lease and related aid, particularly betwee n the navies. This article explores the personalities and process behind assignm ent of war materials for the Royal Navy through the Combined Munitions Assignmen t Board and its subordinate committees in the bureaucratic and naval milieu of W ashington, DC. Although the British Admiralty benefited from direct access to Am erican supply through the US Navy, Lend-Lease never represented a blank cheque.

Kumar Ramakrishna

Anatomy of a Collapse: Explaining the Malayan Communi st Mass Surrenders of 1958

The mass surrenders of Communist guerrillas in 1958, that all but ended the deca de-long insurrection of the Malayan Communist Party, were only partially the res ult of the professional skill of the Police Special Branch. Government Psycholog ical Warfare alone did not precipitate the Communist collapse either. Rather, th e MCP's demise was caused by the strategic confluence of three disparate element s: the enhanced political credibility of the Federal Government in Kuala Lumpur in the eyes of the guerrillas; the inclement operational and political context w ithin which the guerrillas operated; and the attractive content of Government surrender terms, in this case the Merdeka Amnesty.

Kenneth M. Swope

Turning the Tide: The Strategic and Psychological Significanace of the Liberation of Pyongyang in 1593

This article focuses on the battle that marked the turning point in the Japanese invasion of Korea, which lasted from 1592-1598. Up to this point the outgunned Korean defenders had suffered defeat after defeat and been forced to abandon al l of Korea\222s major cities and fortresses and seek refuge along the Chinese bo rder. They requested help from Ming China, Korea\222s tributary overlords and e ven though a small Ming expeditionary force was defeated in the summer of 1592, the Ming promised to send more aid. This arrived in early 1593 and together wit h Korean troops and volunteers, the Ming overwhelmed the Japanese with superior firepower and recovered the city of Pyongyang, Korea\222s auxiliary capital. Wi thin months Seoul was also recovered and the Japanese never regained their early momentum.

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Vol 22:1

Kees Boterbloem

The Eternal Ensign: Andrei Zhdanov and the Survival of Tsarist Military Culture in the Soviet Union

This article investigates how a combination of the pre-revolutionary Russian military heritage, the Marxist–Leninist bellicist mindset, and the violent context engulfing the (former) tsarist empire during the first two decades of the twentieth century determined the political thought, leadership style, and language of one of Stalin's key political lieutenants in the 1930s and 1940s, Central Committee Secretary and Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov (1896–1948) and Soviet political culture in general. It explores in particular Zhdanov's role in the creation of Courts of Honour in 1947 in this respect.

Scott Worthy

'Light and Shade': The New Zealand Written Remembrance of the Great War, 1915–1939

This article investigates Great War written remembrance as a site of memory and contestation in interwar New Zealand. It considers in detail the official and regimental histories of the war as well as personal narratives and then examines the effect of two key overseas texts, All Quiet on the Western Front and Journey's End, in order to chart their influence on a new type of indigenous literature emerging in mid-1930s New Zealand. The article argues that New Zealand's war remembrance conformed neither to the modernist nor traditionalist tropes suggested by overseas historiography; nor was there a distinct soldier and civilian memory of the war. New Zealandís written remembrance of the war was thus nuanced, sophisticated and unpredictable.

Peter Brock

'Excellent in Battle': British Conscientious Objectors as Medical Paratroopers, 1943–1946

Little has been written about the conscientious objectors who served as medical paratroopers in the Second World War. The Non-Combatant Corps was formed to accommodate these men as an alternative to active service. Initially offered unsatisfactory, routine tasks and work in bomb disposal the men were later given the opportunity to volunteer as air-borne medical aidmen. After rigorous physical training followed by parachute courses, they were flown behind enemy lines, where they treated both enemy and ally casualties alike. This article looks closely at the issues involved for pacifists, and acknowledges the courage and dedication of these 'conchie' paratroopers.

Robin Gerster

Hiroshima No More: Forgetting 'the Bomb'

The events of 11 September 2001 were shocking in several obvious respects; but it was the blithe hijacking of the nuclear term 'Ground Zero' to denote the downtown New York devastation that some found especially disconcerting. This article contemplates the erasure of 'Hiroshima' and 'Nagasaki' from the popular and critical consciousness. Nowhere is this amnesia more apparent than in Japan itself, which has embraced nuclear energy with a heedlessness that belies its self-image as the historical martyr to atomic weapons. The rich and powerful testimony of the survivors of August 1945 goes unread in Japan, and elsewhere—at a time when the nuclear threat, now menacingly dispersed, remains as deadly as ever.

Joan Beaumont

Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian–American Memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea

One of the most prominent landmarks in the Australian national capital. Canberra, is the memorial to the alliance between Australia and the United States during the Second World War. Given unqualified backing by the Australian state at the time of its construction, the memorial failed in subsequent decades to become an active site of memory. While another memory of the wartime alliance, the Battle of the Coral Sea, was integrated into national commemoration, and to some degree into popular memory, the Australian–American 'memorial' did not provide a public or sacred place at which private and public memories of war intersected. This article explores the history of the memorial, and concludes that it is a testament to the failure of commemorative practices that are exclusively the products of official orchestration and which do not engage with private memories of war, grief and mourning.

Simon Wessely and Edgar Jones

Psychiatry and the 'Lessons of Vietnam': What Were They, and Are They Still Relevant?

The Vietnam conflict is regarded conventionally as a watershed in our understanding of the psychological effects of trauma. In particular, it led to the introduction of a new diagnosis in psychiatry, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and also to a new epidemic of disturbed, violent and neglected service personnel. In this article we reconsider this period, and argue that much of the conventional wisdom about the 'lessons of Vietnam' is misplaced. In particular, the stereotype of the traumatised 'Vietnam Veteran' owes less to events in theatre, and more to the politics of post-Vietnam America. The sequence of events that followed the Vietnam War which determined its psychological consequences should not be generalised to, for example, the war in Iraq.

We regret that abstracts are not available for vols 22:2, 23:1, 24:2, 25:1, 25:2. Note that, because of a numbering error, Vols 23:2 and 24:1 were NOT published.

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Volume 26, Number 1, May 2007