Good War Research Articles

Review Essay: The American Civil Rights Movement as a Military Campaign

Thomas E. Ricks, Waging a Good War. A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2022. Ricks’s book has been labelled a “tour de force” by “interpreting one of America’s most consequential social movements as a classic military operation” (Nightingale). Ricks “examines the struggle for racial equality through the analytical framework of military history” (Grenier), focusing on the Movement, the people who shaped it, its long-term goals, its strategies, its actions, and its consequences.

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968 by Thomas E. Ricks (review)

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968 by Thomas E. Ricks (review)

“All Hell Let Loose” on the Post-war Homefront: Postmemorial Engagement of Returning Combatants of World War II

This article examines a sub-genre of postmemoirs which have been published since the mid1980s, written by children and grandchildren of veteran combatants of the Allied Forces. These British and American generational texts both preserve and unveil hidden historical memory of these men’s participation in what is often referred to as the deadliest war in human history. The silent suffering of these veterans and their families had not been widely disclosed until Stephen Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan opened a Pandora’s box. And yet, it remains an enigmatic memory in the collective consciousness of the post-war period. These writers recount the experiences not only of their fathers’ wars, but of homecoming and the subsequent psychological impact of the war on family life, whilst also attempting to understand and come to terms with their own traumatic resonances rooted in these veterans’ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I discuss some examples of these texts, which include writers such as Germaine Greer, Lucinda Franks, Leila Levinson, Cole Moreton, or Carol Schultz Vento, who have written within this postmemoir sub-genre. I discuss some common approaches to these postmemorial narratives, which interweave tropes of archival romance, confessional literature, and historiographic metafiction. These family postmemoirs challenge the oft mythologized cultural memory of the ‘Good War’, question the meaning of heroism, and reveal the unspoken traumas of post-war familial life, and ultimately contribute not only to disclosing an unknown history but to broadening the thematic horizons of postmemory to the post-generations of Allied ex-servicemen.

Was it a Good War? Film, Memoir, and the Memory of the American Strategic Bombing Campaign

Cet article examine comment les bombardements stratégiques américains durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale ont été décrits dans la propagande de guerre, dans les films d’après-guerre et dans les mémoires d’anciens combattants. Il identifie d’abord comment la campagne de bombardements – généralement considérée comme l’élément le plus controversé de la guerre menée par les Alliés en Europe – a été décrite pendant la guerre par les producteurs culturels (y compris les réalisateurs hollywoodiens) recrutés par les autorités de l’Armée de l’air, soucieux de cultiver une image positive de la guerre aérienne. Il attire ensuite l’attention sur la façon dont cette représentation a évolué dans le cinéma d’après-guerre et, plus tard, a été aussi réévaluée dans les mémoires écrits par des anciens combattants. Ce faisant, cette étude s’intéresse à un recueil de mémoires de vétérans rédigés dans les années 1980, 1990 et au début des années 2000, époque à laquelle l’idée de la Seconde Guerre mondiale comme « guerre juste » s’est fermement ancrée dans la culture américaine. L’article conclut que pour certains de ces vétérans, le discours commémoratif dominant était problématique, car sans rapport avec les tensions, ambiguïtés et, au fond, avec l’ambivalence traversant l’ensemble de leurs souvenirs. En devenant auteurs de récits autobiographiques, ces anciens combattants apportent ainsi une perspective importante sur les origines, les contours et les limites de la « guerre juste » américaine.

Confronting the “Good War”: The Policies of the Radical Left in the United States

Dans cet article, nous nous proposons de montrer que parmi les différents facteurs qui ont contribué aux représentations de la Seconde Guerre mondiale comme une « guerre juste », il faut prendre en compte la faiblesse de l’opposition politique à ce conflit. Nous voulons nous concentrer en particulier sur le rôle joué par la gauche marxiste étatsunienne. La politique du Parti communiste, rallié à l’effort de guerre, a été analysée par Maurice Isserman, mais la persistance d’une opposition à gauche, considérée comme marginale, a été moins documentée. Nous proposons de comprendre dans quelle mesure les petites organisations trotskistes ont pu profiter d’un espace politique laissé vacant par le CPUSA, en se faisant les porte-paroles du mécontentement des travailleurs et des revendications noires.

The Most Glorified Day: Memory and Narratives on the Normandy Landings in the Italian Daily Press

The article focuses on the memory of the Normandy landings in post-war Italy, as a case study for investigating the wider subject of the memory of World War II in the country. It is based on two main assumptions: that memories of World War II were by no means limited to the national level (i.e. to the aspects of the conflict that directly involved Italy) and necessarily included a representation of the global features of the war and that memories often have a transnational nature and undergo a continuous process of importation and exportation beyond national boundaries. In order to investigate the issue, a corpus of sources has been collected, made up of articles published on five Italian newspapers of different political allegiance, roughly in the first two decades after the war, from 1945 to 1968. The results of the analysis show how the memory of the landings was paid very different attention, depending on the cultural and political stance of the daily: while the right- and left-wing press seldom focused on it, the moderate and pro-governmental newspapers showed a greater interest. Two other key elements emerge from the analysis: the transnational character of the memories and their strongly celebratory nature. In fact, many articles on the D-Day drew upon foreign sources (of Anglo-American, but also of German origin) in different ways, and almost all of them depicted the landings as the turning point of the war, the moment when Europe was freed and the final triumph of the good against the evil. In conclusion, it is outlined how the memory of the landings played a key role in making the global war known, in importing to Italy the (western) idea of the ‘good war’ and in spreading in Italy the ‘western’ set of values, thus strengthening the bonds of the country with its Cold War allies.

Terrifying Memory: An Interview with Carey Perloff

Terrifying Memory: An Interview with Carey Perloff

A Good War for Economic Growth?

ABSTRACT With the implementation of the UN’s System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008), an unusual impact of wars on economic growth emerged. The SNA 2008 enables nations to include the depreciation of military hardware in their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculations. Economic growth can be furthered not only by making extensive military investments in force modernization but donations of weapons and ammunition can also be factored into a nation’s national accounts. This research note presents how the SNA has affected the Czech Republic, a member of both the EU and NATO, which is a small-sized country that since 2022 has donated an extraordinary volume of second-hand hardware to Ukraine, which has contributed to the economic growth of Ukraine.

War in Ukraine: peace-talking versus peace-making

As the Russo-Ukrainian war, initially predicted to last only a few days, drags into its second year, various calls for peace and negotiation proposals are coming from different corners – among the latest being the 12-point peace plan endorsed by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the symbolic date of February 24th, the first anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion. Some of these calls might, as most Ukrainians believe, be mere smokescreens – tricks to discourage them from fighting and to give Moscow a much-needed break to regroup its forces, replenish resources and resume its military advance. But in most cases peacemakers are probably driven by a sincere desire to stop human suffering, bloodshed and the cruel destruction of an entire country. No piece of land, they believe, is worth human lives and terrible sacrifices. A bad peace is definitely better than a good war, and a “win-win” situation is always preferable to a zero-sum game.

Waging a good war: a military history of the civil rights movement, 1954–1968

On 7 March 1965, a young activist named Willie Emma Scott noted that approximately 600 unarmed Black protesters were organizing ‘into companies and squads, with company commanders and squad leaders’ and preparing to walk the 54 miles (87 kilometres) from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (p. 267). Their aim was to draw attention to their quest for voting rights. Standing in their path, at the eastern edge of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, were hundreds of enemy troops, mostly state police officers, who attacked the marchers with steel pipes, clubs, whips, tear gas and pieces of hard rubber wrapped in barbed wire. The demonstrators were forced to retreat after suffering horrific casualties. Their leader, future Congressman John Lewis, suffered a fractured skull and 140 others were injured, 70 of whom required hospitalization. Fay Powell, an organizer listening to events unfold on the telephone, stated: ‘We could hear people screaming and sirens blaring; it sounded like the soundtrack from a war movie’ (p. 269).

Arabic and English War Poetry: A Comparative Study of Wilfred Owen and Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahid's Selected War Poems

Over the ages, and in all nations, war has been a significant topic of analysis. The successive outbreak of wars throughout history make the subject of war part of human life. There is no good war, as well as there is no winner; every side at war has something to lose, and this is a universal truth everywhere. War is war; it is the same ugly war everywhere and every time. However, what makes war different is the pen of the writers and the language that is used to describe this serious subject. Each writer or poet presents war differently according to his or her views, attitudes, or experiences. This study aims to make a comparison between two poets who wrote about war. The Arab poet Abdul Razzaq Abdul Wahid (1930-2015) and the English poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). This comparative study explores the similarities and differences between these two poets and their ways of dealing with the subject of war. The study will discuss two poems; "Dulce et Decorum Est" from Owen and "You Terrified the Death" ((روعتم الموت by Abdul Wahid. The paper focuses on using language for both poets and with reference to some theories about structure, content, form, and technique of literary language and poetics.

China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism, written by Rana Mitter

China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism, written by Rana Mitter

Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness by Elizabeth D. Samet

Nations, like the individuals who make them up, define themselves largely through their memories. And, as countless psychological studies have shown, our memories are malleable, as often as not shaped to fit the identities we have already chosen.

Un-doing the Vietnam War Legacy: Monumentalizing Second World War Veterans to Legitimize Contemporary US Military Interventions

Arthur C. Danto’s distinction between monuments and memorials proposes a differentiation between two ideologically-determined modes of commemoration, encompassing not just architectural symbols of the past but also all other forms of cultural ‘remembering’, including documentary, literary, and cinematic forms of representation. My discussion will focus on a photographic album significantly entitled The Last Good War and the transhistorical depictions of the war veteran in the film Memorial Day. The purpose of this paper is to underscore the ideological ambivalences at the heart of the American Second World War veteran ‘craze’, which not only paved the way for overriding the post-Vietnam War cultural legacy, but also served to ethically and ideologically legitimize contemporary US military interventions in national (collective) memory.

Lessons of the Cold War

Lessons of the Cold War

Poetry and the Camp: Epiphanic Witness and Ecstatic Cry in the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1895–98

Poetry and the Camp: Epiphanic Witness and Ecstatic Cry in the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1895–98

Book Review: China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism by Rana Mitter

Book Review: <i>China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism</i> by Rana Mitter

Rana Mitter, China’s Good War. How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. London, Harvard University Press 2020

Article Rana Mitter, China’s Good War. How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. London, Harvard University Press 2020 was published on October 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 313, issue 2).

China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. By Rana Mitter

<i>China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism</i>. By Rana Mitter

There is no good war for talent: a critical review of the literature on talent management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on talent management (TM) and highlight the potential downsides of exclusive TM approaches and workforce differentiation.Design/methodology/approachA literature review of 32 theoretical and empirical studies published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals in the field of TM was conducted.FindingsThe review resulted in four overarching themes that highlight the dysfunctional aspects of exclusive TM approaches and workforce differentiation: (a) organizational justice, (b) ethics, (c) internal competition and (d) workplace diversity. Based on the four themes, the authors present a conceptual model that includes a feedback loop for reevaluating and improving on existing TM processes. Several research questions and propositions are also presented for consideration in future TM research.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper highlights the need for more empirical studies and statistically rigorous evidence to demonstrate and justify the effectiveness of TM.Practical implicationsThe authors suggest that the locus of TM practices should be shifted from managing individual job competencies to managing organizational capabilities.Originality/valueThis review illuminates the need to reevaluate existing TM approaches and minimize TM's potential downsides for long-term organizational health and competitiveness.