Public History and Research in Military History: What Difference Has It Made?

Abstract

WRITING IN 1969 Professor Allen R. Millett observed writing on American participation in World War II and Korea is dominated by the armed forces historical agencies [who] have produced, in the last twenty years, a staggering amount of scholarly writing for public consumption.... One sometimes feels that the rest of us are the historical division's country cousins.' Millett's observation reflected the unprecedented success and influence which the public history activities of the armed forces had had on American historical writing about World War II. At the time ofMillett's article the Army's office of the Chief Military History had already produced over fifty volumes of its massive U.S. Army in World War II, the largest collaborative historical work in English ever attempted. The Navy's unofficial official history, U.S. Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison had been completed and become a perennial best-seller and the Air Force and Marine Corps had completed their own multi-volume histories.