European Theater Of Operations Research Articles

ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ ДЕМИЛИТАРИЗАЦИИ РУССКОГО ФРОНТА ПЕРВОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЫ

The article presents the main approaches to understanding the environmental consequences of the demilitarization of the Russian front during the First World War. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the key aspects of the demilitarization of the military landscapes of the front during the demobilization of the Russian army from October 1917 to March 1918, and to identify the long-term consequences of the impact of this process on the environment. The geographical scope of the study is mainly limited to the South-Western Front, which until October 1917 was the longest in the European theatre of operations and the demobilization of which has hardly been studied. The study is based on archival material from the Russian State Archive of Military History, the Russian State Military Archive and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as published sources. The paper contains the analysis of the threats posed to the front and the frontline territory by the collapse of the Russian army, unauthorized chaotic demobilization and loss of control over military property, the practices of remilitarization of the front space, as well as the long-term consequences of the unfinished demobilization of the army and the demilitarization of the front. The author concludes that during the demobilization and subsequent remilitarization of the former Russian front, the basic environmental practices, no longer controlled by responsible civilian institutions such as zemstvos, became even more predatory. The loss of control over military property by the military command in October-November 1917 was accompanied by the loss of control over order in the districts of the frontline provinces by the local civilian authorities. If during the war years demilitarization (cleaning trenches and their surroundings from the effects of suffocating gases, sanitation, land reclamation, collecting weapons from battlefields) was practiced as a means of preserving the combat effectiveness of the army, then chaotic demobilization overshadowed these environmental issues with trivial problems of transporting and preserving military property. In the environmental field, these effects become particularly clear when we examine the economic processes of the inter-war period.

Project Eagle: Polscy wywiadowcy w raportach i dokumentach wojennych amerykańskiego Biura Służb Strategicznych [Project Eagle: Polish Agents in the Reports and Wartime Documents of the American Office of Strategic Services

<i>Project Eagle: Polscy wywiadowcy w raportach i dokumentach wojennych amerykańskiego Biura Służb Strategicznych</i> [Project Eagle: Polish Agents in the Reports and Wartime Documents of the American Office of Strategic Services

D-Day to December 1944: The odyssey of the third auxiliary surgical group in World War II.

As a Major in the US Army Medical Corps, Darrell A. Campbell, MD, led Team 13 of the Third Auxiliary Surgical Group in Europe in World War II. The team began work on June 7, 1944, in a clearing station tent near the beach at Normandy. Subsequently, over the next 7 months, it was assigned to mobile hospitals in 15 different locations in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Major Campbell kept the log books used to record all of the operations done by his team during this time and brought them home where three were discovered more than 70 years later. These log books contain descriptions of more than 500 consecutive operations done by Team 13. They provide a unique insight into the activities of the surgeons who worked to save lives on the front lines of battle in the European Theater of Operations between June and December 1944 and form the basis for this historical perspective.This is an article on the history of surgery.

The First World war in Mozambique: public discourses and representations of identity

ABSTRACT The defence of the Portuguese colonial empire’s integrity has often been signalled by historians as one of the factors which justified the declaration of war against Germany, in March 1916, and Portugal’s participation in the European theatre of operations, alongside its ally, Great Britain, from early 1917 onwards. This article seeks to analyse the ways in which the outbreak of the First World War was perceived by Portugal as an opportunity to regain the country’s lost international role as an imperial power, it will also examine how the conflict was experienced in Mozambique, in order to explore Portugal’s role in wartime Africa. The article will conclude if the military intervention contributed, or not, to sustain the narrative of the country’s imperial mission.

Faith and Killing in the US Army in the Second World War: Some Perspectives from the European Theatre of Operations

Faith and Killing in the US Army in the Second World War: Some Perspectives from the European Theatre of Operations

Faith and Killing in the US Army in the Second World War: Some Perspectives from the European Theatre of Operations

Faith and Killing in the US Army in the Second World War: Some Perspectives from the European Theatre of Operations

Evident Bias in Thomas J. Kehoe and E. James Kehoe, “Crimes Committed by U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1945–1946”

The horrifying record of rape by Soviet troops in postwar Germany has long been a matter of record. What is new is the argument that the behavior of American GIs in the European Theater of Operations was little better than that of the Russians. Inspired by a new study alleging that some 190,000 German girls and women were raped by U.S. servicemen, the Kehoes maintain that official military statistics from 1945-46 confirm such high levels of sexual predation. It can now be said with confidence, they assert, that “U.S. soldiers raped and assaulted civilians with frightening abandon.” Yet this generalization and others like it are not supported by the authors’ own data, which instead repeatedly display low rape figures. The Kehoes’ reliance on theorizing to overcome this deficiency is clearly unconvincing.

Crimes Committed by U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1945–1946

Accounts from victims and observers, including new research in the U.S. National Archives and the Bavarian National Archives, suggest that American soldiers committed crimes against persons—especially rape and various forms of assault—and against property in Europe after World War II more often than statistics about charges and prosecutions at the time indicated. More importantly, previously unexamined statistical summaries of crimes committed by American troops, as recorded by the U.S. Provost Marshal, provide unprecedented quantitative information about these crimes in the European Theater of Operations (eto) during the first postwar year, May 1945 to June 1946. The absolute number of crimes decreased as the number of troops declined, but the rate of crime (number per 10,000 troops) increased during the same period.

Vascular Surgery in World War II: The Shift to Repairing Arteries.

Vascular surgery in World War II has long been defined by DeBakey and Simeone's classic 1946 article describing arterial repair as exceedingly rare. They argued ligation was and should be the standard surgical response to arterial trauma in war. We returned to and analyzed the original records of World War II military medical units housed in the National Archives and other repositories in addition to consulting published accounts to determine the American practice of vascular surgery in World War II. This research demonstrates a clear shift from ligation to arterial repair occurring among American military surgeons in the last 6 months of the war in the European Theater of Operations. These conclusions not only highlight the role of war as a catalyst for surgical change but also point to the dangers of inaccurate history in stymieing such advances.

"Standing humbly in the ante-chambers of Clio": the rise and fall of Union War Histories

The Second World War was a titanic struggle which involved the Dominions of the 'old' Commonwealth in the British and allied war effort from the war's very beginning. Each Dominion took a different role in the war - Australia alone was heavily involved in the Pacific war against the Japanese, for example, while Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans all fought in the European Theatre of Operations, and New Zealanders and South Africans fought in the Western desert as well - and the domestic reactions and pressures on national governments likewise differed in each case. Homogeneous Anglo-Celtic societies in Australia and New Zealand experienced few internal rifts over the fact of involvement in the war, while in both Canada and South Africa the politics of divergent linguistic communities restricted the options available to national governments when it came to decisions governing their national contributions to a 'British' war effort. In the war's aftermath the place which the war had occupied in national life was by turns, solidified, contested, appropriated by different groups in a manner similar to that which had occurred after the First World War, and with some of the same outcomes.

Preparing for the Long War: The United States Army and the Early Cold War Period 1945–1950

As American and British troops pushed into the heart of the Third Reich during the spring of 1945 (March–May 1945), the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began making preparations for a postwar force that supposedly would maintain the peace on the European continent and prevent the outbreak of a third, more devastating conflict. Unfortunately, as events turned out, the victorious U.S. Army of some 8 million men that had fought in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) rapidly demobilized once the surrender of Germany (and later Japan) had been achieved. This in turn left Germany and much of Western Europe, already devastated by the effects of the war on their soil vulnerable to exploitation and possible invasion by the Soviet Army. Maintaining the peace in Europe was a U.S. military that was but a remnant of the mighty U.S. and British military machine that had defeated the Wehrmacht, that had now been whittled down to a mere occupation or constabulary force.1 1 For an analysis of U.S. Army operations from January to May 1945 see MacDonald, C. B. (1973/2000). United States Army in World War II: The European theater of operations, the last offensive Washington, D.C.: for the occupation of Germany see Cameron, R. There and back again: Constabulary training and organization, 1946–1950. In Combat Studies Institute. (2004) Armed diplomacy: Two centuries of American campaigning, a conference at the Combat Studies Institute, 5–7 August 2003, Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, pp. 115–35; Ziemke, E. F. (1990). The U.S. Army in the occupation of Germany, 1944–1946. Washington, D.C. Center of Military History,; Frederiksen, O. J. (1955). The American military occupation of Germany, 1945–1953. Darmstadt, Germany: Historical Division, Headquarters, United States Army Europe, and Gott, K. D. (2005). Mobility, vigilance, and justice: The U.S. Army constabulary in Germany, 1946–1953. Fort Leavenworth, KS. Combat Studies Institute.

Combat surgeons before, during, and after war: the legacy of Loyal Davis

By 1942, Loyal Davis had firmly established himself as a preeminent civilian neurosurgeon. With military operations rapidly escalating, he was recruited to serve in the European Theater of Operations as a consultant to the Surgeon General. Davis brought tremendous experience, insight, and leadership to this position; however, he found the military system in which he was suddenly immersed inefficient and impassive. His requests for even basic equipment became mired in endless bureaucracy even as his communiqués to the Chief Surgeon in the European Theater and to the Surgeon General's staff in Washington seemed to fall short of their intended recipients. Then, when he attempted to vent his frustrations to his academic colleagues, he was nearly court-martialed. Notwithstanding, Davis became the first to formally recognize high-altitude frostbite and also developed protective headgear for airmen, and later in his service, he joined a contingent of senior medical leaders who visited the Soviet Union to study their system of combat casualty care. Subsequent to his service on active duty, Davis returned to his academic practice at Northwestern where he used his position as editor of Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics to advocate for change within the military medical corps. Others like Davis have contributed greatly to the advancement of combat casualty care both during active service and long after their time in uniform. This paper examines the lessons from Davis's experiences as a military neurosurgeon and his continued advocacy for change in the medical corps along with additional recent examples of change effected by former military surgeons. For those currently serving, these lessons illustrate the value of contributing wherever a need is recognized, and for those who have served in the past, they demonstrate the importance of having a continued voice with junior combat surgeons and the military leadership.

Military Medical History: The American Civil War

War and medicine are two of society's more powerful forces and their impact on each other is a significant part of his tory (i). In American history the two greatest examples are the Second World War and the Civil War. However, the impact of war on medicine, on the one hand, and medicine on war, on the other, is multifaceted. The Second World War can serve as a brief example. That war brought antibiotics, led by penicillin, to public awareness as one of the several contributions of science that encouraged American society to invest in scientific re search in the postwar years. Penicillin had a dramatic impact on the care of soldiers and was partially responsible for the reduction in the number of troops who died of wounds in the European Theater of Operations, from 4 percent of casualties to about 2.5 percent by war's end. There were similar reciprocal ef fects in non-scientific innovations, the best example being the im pact on specialization. At the beginning of the Second World War the Army Medical Depart ment requested the cooperation of new spe cialty boards in selecting qualified physicians for the expanding military hospital system. The re suit was that board certified specialists received jobs in general hospitals, while non-boarded practitioners were given lower ranking operational medical jobs closer to the hostile action. Sick and wounded troops in all branches of the armed services were cared for by specialists, and doctors perceived that society valued specialists more highly than generalists. After the war, physicians pursued specialty training in unprecedented numbers and patients began to look to specialists for treatment. The va riety of social changes needed to facilitate this shift from generalist to specialist care?including expanded health insurance, more hospitals, and more specialty training slots?were all encouraged by wartime deci sions and experiences. The Civil War is in some ways more difficult to study than World War II because the medicine is less clear and familiar; the medical ideas of the mid-nineteenth century were in transition from the ancient to the modern. The Civil War, however, had a profound impact on medi cine in late nineteenth century America and in many ways facilitated the shift to recogniz ably modern medical practices (2). To begin with, medicine in the United States in i860 was exceeding diverse. The monolithic profes sion of the twentieth century can be seen in embryonic form, but it hardly dominated early industrial culture. The formal profession as recognized by the U.S. Army, however, was the ancient medical tradi tion called regular or allopathic, recognized by the M.D. degree and based in a rationalistic reductionism of experi mental science. The chief advantage of the federal recognition of their regular profes sion was that other forms of practitioners could not claim the heritage of service to the nation in its hour of great need. In retrospect, it was not so much that the physicians were obviously effective as it was that they were there and their competitors were not. The first major battle?at Bull Run in northern Virginia?was a medical as well as a military disaster. The walking wounded some ^^^^^B^^^^^^^H^fKBI^B?^BPi?l^^B^^BH?^^

Hospital at War: The 95th Evacuation Hospital in World War II (review)

Reviewed by: Hospital at War: The 95th Evacuation Hospital in World War II Joseph W. Sokolowski Jr. Hospital at War: The 95th Evacuation Hospital in World War II. By Zachary B. Friedenberg. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-379-4. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Index. Pp. x, 158. $32.50. Zachary Friedenberg, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a memoir of his experiences as a general surgeon with the 95th Evacuation Hospital in the European Theater of Operations during the Second World War. He describes his colleagues as " civilians in uniform" with limited instruction in the customs of military life at the time of their entry into military service. Over time they demonstrated adaptability to professional military life without losing sight of their goal of providing quality care to the sick and injured regardless of national origin, military or civilian status, friend or foe. The initial chapter describes the organizational structure of an evacuation hospital and its personnel. The staff is composed of surgical teams, who operate simultaneously on a rotational basis. Staff is also assigned to provide care for medical problems, such as malaria, trenchfoot, and respiratory infections, etc. Support functions are provided in the areas of administration, logistics, technology, and personnel by nonmedical officers, and enlisted personnel. The campaign experiences of the author are interspersed with those of nurses and enlisted personnel. They provide a personal perspective to a hostile environment where death is a daily occurrence to those who are non-combatants. This is poignantly brought home when a hospital ship, HMS Newfoundland, is bombed, resulting in a significant loss of injured and killed off the Salerno landing beaches. At Anzio, the 95th Evacuation Hospital was [End Page 877] bombed by a German fighter, resulting in a major death toll among the staff and patients. We have learned that the Red Cross emblem on the uniform does not guarantee the safety of medical personnel. As the war progresses, reorganization of the hospital occurs, resulting in a greater efficiency in delivery of surgical and medical care. Emphasis is placed on proper positioning of the facility in relation to the battle front, described as within the sound of cannon fire. Following the invasion of southern France in August of 1944, French surgeons joined the surgical teams and French civilians served as litter bearers. The rapport that the author experienced with the French people remains a life-long, cherished memory for him. Hospital at War provides limited information for the scholarly military historian. However, it will interest anyone who has served in a military medical unit. The major thrust of the book is that, as the author so aptly points out, the military medical profession needs to relearn the lessons of prior conflicts., e.g., the necessity of leaving soft tissue wounds of the extremities open after debridement of devitalized tissue in the initial surgical management. Joseph W. Sokolowski Jr. Medford Lakes, New Jersey Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

Liberation: the view from France1

Liberation: the view from France1

S. L. A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire: New Evidence Regarding Fire Ratios

The findings of journalist-soldier S. L. A. Marshall about combat fire ratios--particularly that in World War II less than 25 percent of American combat infantrymen in battle fired their weapons--have been controversial since Marshall published them in his 1947 book, Men Against Fire. (1) He continued to apply his methodology--the after-action, group interview with enlisted men--during the Korean War, where he concluded that more than half the front-line soldiers were firing their weapons. In the past 20 years, Marshall's controversial figures have come under more intensive attack, in part because, after his death in 1977, his papers did not include statistical analyses or more than a couple of the field notebooks produced during group interviews. (2) Yet Marshall continues to have supporters as well as detractors, and the controversy rages on, fueled by emotional beliefs, individual vested interests, missing documents, and absent statistics. (3) One of the key questions concerns where Marshall obtained his figures about the ratio of fire, the proportion of a rifle unit firing its weapons in battle. Marshall claimed it was derived from his group after-action interviews, a method he developed as a field historian in World War II and which as a civilian journalist, Reserve officer, and military consultant, he employed and advocated for use by the US Army and later by the Israeli Defense Force. Although the ratio-of-fire figure was his most famous product, Marshall was proudest of his methodology--informal, open-ended, group interviews of enlisted personnel, as soon as possible after a particular combat action, to learn about the actual behavior of the soldiers in battle. Timing was sometimes but not always on his side. In the Pacific in November 1943, he was with G.I.'s when a forward unit at Makin Island in the Gilberts sustained a Japanese counterattack at night, and Marshall could interview American survivors the next day. But in the European Theater of Operations the following year, he was not able to interview the combat troops involved in the Normandy Invasion in June 1944 until several weeks afterward. (4) In each case, however, he would interview the men and, he said, take contemporaneous notes and later write up his report on the action. The following oral history provides some fresh insights into Marshall's methodology and findings. It also raises troubling questions about the reliability of Marshall's statistics on fire ratios. The oral history comes from a citizen-soldier, Frank J. Brennan, Jr., now a retired high school and community college history instructor and administrator. As a young junior officer in Korea in 1953, Brennan accompanied S. L. A. Marshall on some of the journalist's after-action group interviews along the Main Line of Resistance, including the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. A native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Brennan graduated from Rutgers in the spring of 1951 with a B.A. in journalism. Having completed ROTC, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry. After additional training, including Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia (where Marshall's Men Against Fire was among the required reading), and in Japan, he arrived in Korea in May 1952, assigned to the 7th Infantry Division, a Regular Army division that had been fighting in Korea since September 1950. Lieutenant Brennan was sent to the front line with the 32d Infantry Regiment in the 7th Infantry Division's central sector near the 38th Parallel. For six weeks on the line, he served as a rifle platoon leader. His unit was engaged in patrols and in repelling attacks on its position along the Main Line of Resistance. Perhaps partly because of his journalism degree, Brennan was assigned to G-3 (Operations) at Headquarters, 7th Infantry Division, in late July 1952. He was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant. At G-3, Brennan's main responsibility was to prepare the monthly reports of the division's activity and send them directly to Washington, D. …

The American Society of Anesthesiologist's efforts in developing guidelines for sedation and analgesia for nonanesthesiologists: the 40th Rovenstine Lecture.

I am honored to have been selected to deliver the 40th Annual Emery A. Rovenstine Memorial Lecture. At previous Rovenstine lectures, I learned about his pioneering efforts as the Director of the Anesthesia Service at Bellevue Hospital (New York City, New York) where he served from 1935 to 1960; his Presidency of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), 1943–1944; and as the recipient of the ASA’s Distinguished Service Award in 1957. In the past year, however, two outstanding articles have been written that present material I was unaware of. Lucien Morris, M.D. (Professor Emeritus, Medical College of Ohio, Toledo, Ohio) authored the fascinating article “Ralph M. Waters’ Legacy: The Establishment of Academic Anesthesia Centers by the ‘Aqualumni’.” The ’aqualumni,’ is defined as Waters’ own trainees. The article was written to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Waters accepting an academic appointment to the medical faculty of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wisconsin). I found particularly interesting the section describing Professor Waters’ concern that when Dr. Rovenstine, one of his aqualumni, went to Bellevue Hospital, New York University (NYU, New York City, New York), he might not have sufficient staff to establish a new academic training center for anesthesia. As a result, Waters split his Wisconsin group, sending both staff and residents to New York City to ensure the success of Dr. Rovenstine at NYU. Waters had enough confidence in Dr. Rovenstine to predict that he would succeed. He would not disappoint Dr. Waters. David Waisel, M.D. (Department of Anesthesia, Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts) provided a comprehensive review of “The Role of World War II and The European Theater of Operations in the Development of Anesthesiology as a Physician Specialty in the USA.” In 1942, Waters and Rovenstine and others teamed up to train “90-day wonders” in 12-week courses “to prepare medical officers to take charge of the anesthesia sections of the various types of hospitals of the U.S. Army.” Courses were given at several institutions, including Bellevue, and were developed by the Subcommittee on Anesthesia of the National Research Council. The latter was chaired by Dr. Waters. Dr. Rovenstine was the Secretary. Many future anesthesiologists were attracted to the specialty as a result of their initial exposure to the field in World War II and the influence of role models such as Dr. Rovenstine. Although I did not know Dr. Rovenstine personally, I was trained by another aqualumnus of Dr. Waters, Robert D. Dripps, M.D. (Professor and Chair, Department of Anesthesiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Dr. Dripps was interested in attracting medical students into the field of Anesthesiology. One of his efforts led to the establishment of the ASA Preceptorship Program and the Committee on which I first served the ASA. In the 36 yr in which I have been involved in the activities of the ASA, 20 yr have been spent on developing guidelines for sedation for nonanesthesiologists. It has been the most challenging, frustrating, and contentious issue I have had to address. Even though ASA’s efforts have been exemplary, the results have been misunderstood by not only the groups we have attempted to educate but also by our own members. I have decided to set the record straight by discussing the history of “ASA’s Efforts in Developing Guidelines for Sedation and Analgesia for Nonanesthesiologists.” Some of the comments that follow are my own thoughts and interpretations; however, most of the statements are documented in the literature or are part of my own collection of documents. The latter will be donated to the Wood Library Museum (Park Ridge, Illinois) together with the script of this lecture. The formal process of ASA’s evidence-based guideline development for members did not begin until 1990, and for nonanesthesiologists, in 1993. Other specialty groups began setting guidelines earlier and their efforts must be acknowledged before proceeding with ASA’s efforts. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive or complete review of these accomplishments but rather to attempt Professor Emeritus in Pediatrics and Anesthesiology. Received from the Department of Pediatrics and Anesthesiology, The George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, District of Columbia.

Norman's war: Norman B. Kornfield, M.D., World War II physician-anesthetist.

Norman's war: Norman B. Kornfield, M.D., World War II physician-anesthetist.

Calling All Anesthetists to Service in World War II

Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. david.waisel@tch.harvard.eduIn Reply:—I thank Dr. Diaz for taking the time to add to our knowledge of anesthesia during World War II, and particularly for bringing to light some of the experiences of the 24th General Hospital. Because I was focusing on the European Theater of Operations, I did not fully comment on operations in North Africa, Italy, and southern France, which the military considered to be in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Diaz is particularly correct to honor the extensive contributions of Beecher, who was Consultant in Anesthesia and Resuscitation, Mediterranean Theater of Operations. From those experiences, Beecher authored such seminal works as “Pain in Men Wounded in Battle,” which was originally published in the Medical Bulletin of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and subsequently published in the Annals of Surgery . 1Dr. Kopp focuses on an interesting and valid question worthy of its own series of articles: to what extent did anesthetic agents used influence the progression of the profession of anesthesiology? He is right, of course, in that different factors affected the growth of medical and nonmedical practice of anesthesia. However, I think to characterize the ether–chloroform element of this discussion as “pharmacologic determinism” unfairly overstates the purported argument to the point of creating a straw man. Although it was far from the sole factor, the pharmacologic agents used were a considerable cause in the substantial rejection of careers in anesthesia by physicians in the United States. The ease of administering ether anesthesia coupled with a more dramatic response in the United States to the reports of chloroform deaths in the late 1800s led to a predominantly ether-based inhalation practice, which was wholly amenable to having the least-skilled individual provide it. This practice, in concert with other factors, encouraged physicians to scorn careers in anesthesia and permitted other professions, such as nursing and dentistry, to fill the void. I thank Dr. Kopp for his insightful letter and I look forward to continuing this most important discussion with him and other interested parties.

The role of World War II and the European theater of operations in the development of anesthesiology as a physician specialty in the USA.

World War II was a time of growth and development of anesthesia as a physician specialty. Wartime training exposed neophyte physician-anesthetists to role models who showed the potential of anesthesiology and to the richness of practicing anesthesia. Wartime anesthesia required dexterity, imagination, and pluck, and surgeons and other physicians were suitably impressed. Drawing historical conclusions about cause and effect is hazardous. Recognized and unrecognized biases, preconceived notions, and the quality and type of resources available affect writers. With this in mind, consider how the effects of World War II on the growth of physician anesthesia loosely parallel the growth of anesthesia in Great Britain during the 19th century. Anesthesia became a medical profession in Great Britain because of the interest and support of physicians and the complexity of administering chloroform anesthesia. Similarly, World War II physician-anesthetists showed they could provide complex anesthesia care, such as pentothal administration, regional anesthesia, and tracheal intubation, with aplomb and gained the support of surgical colleagues who facilitated their growth within a medical profession. They returned to a medium ready to support their growth and helped to establish the medical profession of anesthesiology in the United States.