Participation In World War Research Articles

Major Problems in the History of World War II: Documents and Essays (review)

Reviewed by: Major Problems in the History of World War II: Documents and Essays Ronald L. Spiller Major Problems in the History of World War II: Documents and Essays. Edited by Mark A. Stoler and Melanie S. Gustafson. New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 2003. ISBN 0-618-06132-0. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Appendix. Pp. xvi, 472. $43.56. America's "good war" is difficult to teach. Is it world history, American history, or equal measures of European and Asian history with the United States as a major actor? Should the emphasis primarily be on the military aspects of the war—or the individual conflicts—or should equal time be given to social, intellectual, and economic issues? This volume in Houghton Mifflin's Major Problems in American History series does not answer these questions. It is, however, a particularly useful collection of documents and essays focusing on specifically American elements of the most important war of the twentieth century. [End Page 1301] The editors have selected twelve topics, providing brief collections of documents followed by essays that take opposing positions on the particular subject. In the first chapter, "U.S. Entry into World War II," Bruce M. Russett argues that American participation in World War II was not necessary and that "the United States was no more secure at the end [of the war] than it could have been had it stayed out" (p. 23). Gerhard Weinberg, on the other hand, writes that the conflict was "A Necessary and Unavoidable War" (p. 33). This discussion of American entry into the war is followed by discussions of mobilization, the development of an Allied global strategy, separate chapters on the war with Germany and with Japan, the Home Front, the effects of the war on American culture, the impact of science and intelligence, the Holocaust, Franklin Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief, and the use of the atom bomb. The final chapter presents a collection of six essays that deal with the legacy of World War II in American history and memory. This work is designed specifically as a supplementary reading for a college-level course on World War II. Collections such as this generally have limited appeal outside the classroom and often little appeal in the classroom. This particular effort, however, is a refreshing change in this particular genre. The editors have provided a series of balanced and interesting discussions on aspects of American participation in the war. This work can easily be used to effectively augment a broader global treatment of World War II. It also may be of interest to the general reader who wants to look beyond the purely military aspects of American participation in a conflict that gave birth to modern American society and culture. Ronald L. Spiller Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Edinboro, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

From Private Story to Public History: Irene Rathbone Revises the War in the Thirties

This essay examines Irene Rathbone's wartime diary and her overlooked novel We That Were Young (1932) as key texts for our understanding of women's participation in World War I and of their contribution to that conflict's literary canon. Rathbone's novel is a feminist revision of war narratives foregrounding an ambivalent attitude toward the war and the changes it brought within English society. Rathbone both rewrites a typically male war history by featuring a marginal heroine in a liminal position between safety and danger at work near the front, and she also revises her personal wartime writings into a public work of testimony. My essay ultimately argues that Rathbone's formally traditional texts complicate and expand limited definitions of modernism as aesthetic experimentation and convey modern thematic concerns such as changing gender roles and the relativity of time during and after the war.

Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor

Some controversies never die. Ever since 1944, when the journalist John T. Flynn wrote a pamphlet The Truth about Pearl Harbor, the accusation remains that prominent officials, possessing foreknowledge of the Japanese attack, willingly sacrificed the American fleet in order to guarantee full-scale United States participation in World War II. In the latest of many accounts, Robert B. Stinnett argues that fresh documents, previously classified, prove conclusively that ample warning of the attack lay on the president's desk. Stinnett himself served in the United States Navy during World War II, after which he was a photographer and journalist for the Oakland Tribune. His book, he claims, is the product of seventeen years of archival research plus personal interviews with retired naval cryptographers. Unlike most Pearl Harbor revisionists, Stin-nett sees a “need to arouse America from its isolationist position.” To Stinnett, the “systematic plan” begins with a memorandum dated October 8, 1940, drafted by Lt. Comdr. Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far Eastern desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memo was addressed to Rear Adm. Walter S. Anderson, director of naval intelligence, and Dudley W. Knox, chief of the library of the Office of Naval Intelligence. It suggested eight steps that, if executed, would prompt a Japanese attack on American, British, and Dutch outposts in the Pacific. Among McCollum's proposals was retaining the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, a move that would obviously “keep the fleet in harm's way.” The crux of Stinnett's account, however, lies in his claim that intercepted Japanese messages show that Adm. Isoroku Yama-moto's attack force broke radio silence, that crucial intercepts were forwarded to Washington, and that Franklin D. Roosevelt's top entourage willingly sent over two thousand Americans to their graves.

How to Select a 'Proper' Official Historian

When researching the life of Senator Joseph Silver Collings (1865-1955), Minister for the Interior in the wartime Curtin administration, the diaries of Gavin Long, Bean's successor as Official Historian of Australia at War, and the minutes of the Australian War Memorial (AWM) Committee for which Collings, as Minister, was responsible, were examined. They reveal an odd episode which throws light on patronage, conservative assumptions and power. The travails of Dr Gregory Pemberton and Ms Ann-Mari Jordens over the Official History of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war (for which no State-sponsored domestic social history yet exists), the acerbic yet penetrating work of Denis Winter, as well as the whole problem of researching, writing and producing 'official history' are well known to scholars. Yet often these issues are frequently ignored by those seeking and granting official largesse and approval.1 Even less well known is the selection process whereby editors and authors are placed on the public payroll. In Long's case, he had C.E.W. Bean, an insuperable mentor to guide and emulate. Nevertheless, it should be noted that his predecessor's monumental history of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) gathered dust in libraries and Returned Services League (RSL) clubs until the late 1960s.2 Two days before Pearl Harbour, the War Cabinet considered proposals for an Official History of Australia's role in World War II. The submission of 14 November 1941 was completed by a Committee chaired by Collings, and included the Navy Minister, Drakeford, the Minister for the Army, Forde, the Postmaster-General, Ashley and the 'about to retire' Charles Bean. After consultation with General Blarney, the committee recommended that materials should immediately be collected, that there should only be one series, that collectors and historians might confer, and that Bean be replaced as soon as possible.3 The Japanese onslaught naturally delayed matters. History was all very well but others rather than White Australians might well have written it. Yet, on 4 August 1942, after the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, but before Buna and Kokoda, Cabinet approved the proposition that the Australian War Memorial, not the Departments of Defence or the Prime Minister, should be the home of the 'new history', that the Committee could nominate the editor of the series, prepare the scheme and spend up to ?2,000 per annum.4 On 25 November 1942, the Committee unanimously recommended the appointment of war correspondent and journalist, Gavin Long, son of the Bishop of Newcastle, who had close family and religious ties to Charles Bean. Long became General Editor on 30 January 1943 at a salary of ?1,500 per annum.5 Considering the somewhat chaotic and difficult chronicling of Australia's participation in World War II, and with Australian service personnel spread from Murmansk to Moresby, from Hobart to Melville Island, Long did his job well.6

Data on Polish-American Participation in World War II

Data on Polish-American Participation in World War II

Democracy and business cycles: Evidence from Portuguese economic history

The Portuguese Republic of 1910–1926 was characterised by extreme instability in the political and economic spheres. The authoritarian regime that succeeded the Republic claimed legitimacy asserting that democracy naturally implied fiscal and monetary instability. In this article we study the Republican period and the Monarchy that immediately preceded it, in order to test three hypotheses as to the roots of instability during the Republic: exceptionally high public expenditure made necessary by participation in World War I, the Fiscal Hypothesis; expansion of the money supply and increase in its variability, the Monetary Hypothesis; social and political unrest, facilitated by greater freedom in expressing grievances, the Democracy Hypothesis. Using standard econometric techniques we find strong evidence in favour of the Monetary and the Democracy Hypotheses but not in favour of the Fiscal Hypothesis. Moreover, our results support the view that political and monetary instability were mutually reinforcing phenomena. The examination of the two periods, Monarchy and Republic, reveals a strong positive association between political and economic cycles in the later, more democratic period.

Looking for the Forrest

Each generation meanders through time, expecting to find meaning and relevance. Some of our fathers and mothers learned the value of employment during the Great Depression, and on both the battlefield and the homefront they discovered the frailty of existence through their participation in World War II. Lately it has become politically correct to salute this generation as a singular group unmatched in our history. Their achievements and sacrifice seem unprecedented—unless, of course, we consider those who gave their lives in the battle for American independence or in the Civil War that brought us the bloodiest days on American soil. We dishonor the World War II generation, however, unless we also remember that it stood by while blacks were lynched in the South. This generation also witnessed the power and strength of women during the war but did little to welcome women into the workforce or to grant them the rights they should have been given at birth. This generation was not perfect—but it was admirable and, most likely, nothing short of extraordinary. My generation saw the weaknesses in our predecessors and appreciated few of their strengths. We thought of ourselves as blessed with the answers and a visionary insight, and indeed we did have many worthwhile dreams and a yearning for a better world. The Age of Aquarius, however, never dawned. Self-interest overtook …

Woodrow Wilson's Fight for the League of Nations: A Reexamination

Woodrow Wilson's Fight for the League of Nations: A Reexamination Leroy G. Dorsey One of the most dramatic political events of the twentieth century involved Woodrow Wilson's crusade for American participation in the League of Nations. In July 1919, Wilson pledged to establish an organization of free nations working in concert to "maintain the peaceful understandings of the world" through diplomacy and democracy, and not necessarily through military might.1 When Congress balked at American participation in the peace organization, one of the first of the modern rhetorical presidents embarked on his famous "whistle-stop" tour, stumping across the middle and western United States to preach directly to the public about the issue. Wilson's tour, however, played out as a Greek tragedy. His sermons about America's moral responsibility failed to generate the much-anticipated support in any substantive way. Wilson collapsed from exhaustion before he had finished his speaking tour, suffered a stroke days later, and was rendered incapacitated for several months.2 Without a demonstrative show of public support and with Wilson refusing to compromise on the issue during the Senate vote, Congress denied America's involvement with the League. Perhaps Thomas Bailey summarized this episode best: "elevated to a pinnacle hitherto unattained by mortal man, glimpsing the promised land of perpetual peace, [Wilson] suffered physical collapse, mental aimlessness, political defeat—and lived out the rest of his days in querulous impotence ."3 Trying to explain the reasons behind Wilson's disastrous tour has been a point of contention among scholars for decades. In assessing Wilson's rhetoric on his ill-fated tour, some scholars have critiqued it positively. His most famous biographer, Arthur Link, maintained that the president 's speeches on the League represent one of the "most notable forensic accomplishments in American history." August Heckscher likewise wrote that some of the speeches were "remarkable for their cogency and force," while Arthur Walworth noted that this "force," this "power to work magic with his words," not only brought Leroy G. Dorsey is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He wishes to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments. He wishes also to thank Vanessa Beasley and Alicia Marshall for their suggestions. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 2, No. 1, 1999, pp. 107-135 ISSN 1094-8392 108 Rhetoric & Public Affairs tears to the eyes of journalists but converted some of Wilson's most determined critics . More guarded with his praise but nonetheless impressed, Kendrick Clements observed that Wilson's speeches were "seldom great," but that they did answer his opponent's objections to America's participation in the League. Clair Henderlider utilized a neo-Aristotelian framework to examine Wilson's speech texts. He concluded , among other things, that Wilson constructed "powerful arguments," buttressed with "some originality" of language, and a "pleasant" speaking voice.4 Other scholars provided a more negative critique of Wilson's speeches, concluding that the discourse lacked the eloquence and power of his earlier rhetoric. Jan Schulte Nordholt observed that the president's speeches were not all "polished and inspired pieces." William White echoed this sentiment, writing that Wilson "could not make magic with his words" to turn America's responsibility into an "adventure in idealism" as the president had concerning the nation's participation in World War One. Similarly, Sean Cashman noted that the president's "forlorn attempt" to educate the public made "little headway against popular isolationism" following the war. J. Michael Hogan and James Andrews negatively critiqued Wilson's last speech on the tour. They argued that the president "degraded the public" by giving a speech that "heaped invective on his political opponents, dismissed rather than refuted their arguments, and culminated in a combative refusal to compromise and maudlin emotionalism."5 Accounts of Wilson's tour, whether positive or negative in their conclusions, still fail to explain the president's inability to generate enough real support during his travels. Historical scholarship runs the gamut from dismissing the efficacy of the tour and laying blame on Wilson's uncompromising behavior during the Senate vote on the issue, or casting Wilson's speeches as noninspirational without offering much analysis as to why.6 Rhetorical scholarship...

Ciné-Documents: Les Films “Perdus” De La Guerre Oubliée

This article provides a brief history and description of films depicting Canadian participation in World War I and a report on their current status as archival documents. Noting plans to sell some of this irreplaceable footage as stock shots, the author makes a strong plea for the preservation and thorough cataloguing of all documentary footage from that extremely significant period in the history of Canada and Québec.

Theologians of a New World Order: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Realists, 1920-1948

This book shows how a group of Protestant theologians forged a theology of international engagement for America in the 1930s and 40s. In doing so they informed the public rationale for the United States' participation in World War II and stimulated American leadership in establishing both secular and international organizations for the promotion of world order. This remarkable group included Henry P. Van Dusen, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Bennett, Francis P. Miller, Georgia Harkness, and Samuel McCrea Cavert. In creating a coherent, theologically-derived position and bringing it to bear on contemporary international issues, shows Heather Warren, this group combined ideas with public action in a way that set the standard for American theologians' social activism in the years to come.

The Diversionary Thesis and the Dialectic of Imperialism: Charles A. Beard's Theory of American Foreign Policy Revisited

In 1916, Charles A. Beard was denouncing Germany as “a danger to civilization” and calling for American participation in World War I on the side of the Entente Allies. Like John Dewey and other social-democrats, Beard saw the Great War as an opportunity to advance the interests of the European working class by breaking “the union of the Hohenzollern military caste and the German masses whose radical leaders are Social Democrats”. Even after the Versailles Treaty, Beard continued to embrace the Wilsonian theme that the Great War had been fought to make the world safe for democracy. However, by the mid–1980s, he was staunchly opposed to war with Germany and Japan, had come to embrace the revisionist history of World War I, and even testified before Congress against the Lend-Lease Act. Thus, intellectual historians agree that somewhere between the end of World War I and the 1930s, Beard shifted from internationalism to isolationism and, indeed, a few critics have referred to him as a pacifist in his later years. Within the umbrella of this consensus, debates among biographers, intellectual and diplomatic historians, have come to center largely on identifying the timing and the reasons for Beard's “conversion” to isolationism. Not coincidentally, during the 1960s and 1970s, Beard's writings on foreign policy and diplomatic history enjoyed a resurgence among many on the New Left who were constructing their own revisionist history critical of America's political and military involvement in various Third World countries. Today, Beard's views are still cited in international relations and history textbooks as an example of isolationist theory in American foreign policy.

Nobel Peace Laureates, Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch: Two Women of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Nobel Peace Laureates, Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch: Two Women of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Harriet Hyman Alonso In November, 1895, Alfred Nobel, wealthy inventor and entrepreneur, signed his last will and testament. In it, he stipulated that the major part of his estate be converted into a fund and invested, the interest to be used for prizes in five areas he wished to promote, one of which was peace.1 Nobel's interest in the peace cause centered around his passionate friendship with Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the founder of the Austrian Peace Society.2 Nobel envisioned the prize as a tribute to the woman or man who did the most for obtaining peace in Europe. Little did he imagine that it would become one of the most pretigious and lucrative awards in the world.3 In the spring of 1992, eighteen peace historians gathered at the Nobel Institute in Norway to probe the question, "How has the Nobel Peace Prize been accepted in the laureates' own nations?" My assignment was to enlighten the group on the two women from the United States who won the prize: Jane Addams (1931) and Emily Greene Balch (1946).4 Each received the honor for her work with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Addams was already a well-known Progressive Era reformer when she was named a Nobel laureate and is well placed in U.S. history. Emily Greene Balch, however, was and still is virtually unknown in the land of her birth. Why, I wondered, was this so? Both women came from similar backgrounds, lived through the same eras, and embraced many of the same causes. They worked together in WILPF and other organizations to ward off U.S. participation in World War I, faced similar harassment during the Red Scare of the 1920s, and worked together in the international search for world peace during the interwar years. After Addams died in 1935, Balch continued working with WILPF until her death in 1961. Three factors may explain the inconsistency in the two women's reputations: 1) Addams is best known for her work in the settlement house movement, an extension of the domestic sphere and traditionally occupied by women, whereas Balch chose peace activism as a career, thereby entering the world of international affairs, a sphere traditionally closed to women. Addams's social work, in other words, did not generally threaten © 1995 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 7 No. 2 (Summer) 1995 Harriet Hyman Alonso 7 the status quo, whereas Batch's peace work did. 2) Addams did not criticize the nation's capitalist ideology while Balch openly declared herself a socialist, allying with political groups which U.S. policy makers disfavored. Throughout her career, Balch challenged the basic economic principles of capitalism. 3) Addams received the prize during a time of relative peace while Balch received it during the early Cold War years. The public's view at the time was that Addams's work mirrored government policy, whereas Balch's reflected clearcut opposition. A comparison of these women's lives and careers offers more insight into the matter. The Early Years Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch had much in common during their early years. Their upbringing and education led to a similar desire to end poverty and war. The two women were born just six years apart to upper middle-class parents—Addams on September 6,1860, and Balch on January 8,1867.5 Both women had industrious, politically Uberal fathers and traditional Victorian-era mothers. Addams's father, John Huy Addams, a prosperous Illinois miller and banker, was heavily involved in community affairs. An opponent of slavery, he met and befriended many influential figures, among them, Abraham Lincoln. Balch's father, Francis Vergnies Balch, a graduate of Harvard University, volunteered to fight in the Civil War, and served as secretary to the abolitionist U.S. senator, Charles Sumner. Returning to Boston, he devoted the remainder of his life to practicing law. Addams's mother, Sarah Weber Addams, concentrated on her role as wife and mother, and died when Jane was only two years old. Five years...

Strained Neutrality: Irish-American Catholics, Woodrow Wilson, and the Lusitania

STRAINED NEUTRALITY: IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA THOMAS J. ROWLAND the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 caught Irish-American Catholics at a pivotal point of transition in their assimilation into American society. Great Britain’s participation in World War I fueled conXicting sentiments towards Irish freedom among many Irish Americans. For some, the war revived hopes for the complete separation of Ireland from British dominion . For others, the majority, it renewed aspirations for dialogue with the British government aimed at achieving expanded Irish autonomy within the British Empire. More importantly, however, the outbreak of war heightened tensions within the community itself. Irish Americans found that the war revived, more explicitly than ever before, suspicions about their loyalty as Roman Catholics to the United States. Their adherence to Catholicism had long been the source of their exclusion from mainstream American society, and the war, with all its conXicting pulls on their loyalties , forced Irish Americans to declare their allegiances. The fervor that had marked Fenianism in the years following the American Civil War had lain dormant since the turn of the century. It had for many years no longer suited the needs of the Irish-American Catholic community, as energies had been directed to pursuing an equal footing in American society to the neglect of Irish nationalism. “Twisting the Lion’s tail,” the sport of Irish America in the years following the Civil War, had lost the American government’s toleration. Since the waning years of the nineteenth century, political leaders of the United States had been nurturing a rapprochement with the British Empire that enabled each government to fulWll its imperial dreams without serious objection by the other.1 IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA 58 1 For a full discussion of the emerging Anglo-American cooperation at the turn of the century, see Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement (New York: Atheneum Press, 1968). The Clan-na-Gael inherited the mantle of Fenianism in the late nineteenth century. It languished in the years leading up to World War I. Parnell ’s Land League program had lent a conservative bent to the course of Irish nationalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the image of Irish-American nationalists as violence-prone had undermined widespread support among the majority of the community, and the Roman Catholic church’s condemnation of secret societies further tarnished the appeal of the Clan-na-Gael. Consequently, ardent nationalists vainly railed against any and all attempts by the American government to concede to British policy. Despite their rhetoric, either shrill or eloquent, the dreaded rapprochement of American and British interests moved inexorably forward and augured poorly for the advancement of Irish liberation.2 Clan fortunes continued to decline when John Redmond’s Home Rule initiative moved toward passage in the English Parliament on the eve of World War I. In many ways, the eruption of hostilities rescued the cause of Irish nationalism from the brink of obsolescence. Moderate and conservative Irish-American Catholics sought conciliatory and compromising solutions to the nationalist issue and were more apt to support Redmond’s Home Rule program as the most promising step in Ireland’s freedom. Moreover, Irish-American concerns for promoting an image of respectability within their adopted homeland forced a restructuring of Irish-American nationalist goals. The career of Patrick Ford, founder of the Irish World, underscores this concern. Formerly a supporter of both Fenianism and radical social policies in the United States, Ford came to reject this course of action, and directed his own life and energies in the Irish World to generate a “sense of dignity and self respect . . . [and] encourage the poor Irishmen’s identiWcation with America.” For Ford, the editor of the most popular Irish-American newspaper, the ideal Irishman was “respectable, well-to-do, cultured and devoutly religious.” The best Irish-Americans, according to Ford, “were notably patriotic, democratic and intensely loyal to American institutions.”3 IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLICS, WOODROW WILSON, AND THE LUSITANIA 59 2 Numerous examples of Irish-American discontent with the rapproachement between London and Washington can be found in Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations , 1899–1921...

TheOssewabrandwagas a mass movement, 1939–1941

In the first years of its existence the Ossewabrandwag (OB) was an Afrikaner nationalist mass movement comprising nearly all social strata of the Afrikaner population. Its heterogeneous mass basis was made possible only by the lack of a clear‐cut political programme or a definite ideology. Instead, the OB drew mainly on Afrikaans popular culture which drew its stimulus from the Symbolic Ox wagon Trek of 1938. The OB, emphasising its republican and nationalist outlook without committing itself to any definite goals, contained in its ranks very divergent interest groups. By emphasising volkseenheid (national unity) and by rejecting South Africa's participation in World War II as Great Britain's ally, it was able to integrate a multitude of different nationalist organisations for the very reason that it lacked a clear ideological profile. Only when its new leadership started to define its ideology and developed its own policy from the middle of 1941 onwards did the OB's membership decline. Abandoning its ear...

Rehearsal for Cold War: United States anti-interventionists and the Soviet Union, 1939–1941

To most Americans World War II was, in the words of columnist Studs Terkel, "the good war," fundamentally a positive experience in American life in which a united people triumphed magnificently over the forces of oppression and barbarism. It is hardly recalled that in the two years before the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor, the debates over the degree and nature of American participation were embittered, arousing passions seldom equaled until the Vietnam War. A sizable minority of the population saw no national interest in the survival of such powers as Great Britain and China. Indeed, even after the United States entered the war, some people always maintained that intervention was at best a tragic mis? take, at worst a criminal blunder. And in the light of the vast expansion of Soviet power in the immediate wake of the conflict, and the later vic? tories of communism in China and Cuba, this minority continued to argue that the United States should have stayed out of the war. To these Ameri? cans, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needlessly provoked Germany and Japan, making inevitable the undeclared naval war in the Atlantic and Admiral Yamamoto Isokoru's strike at Hawaii.1 Many critics of American participation in World War II had vehe? mently opposed Roosevelt's policies at the time?in particular the president's efforts to aid the Allies by such measures as cash-and-carry, lend-lease, and convoying of these measures to Britain.2 The foes of the president represented a variety of elements in American society: conserva? tive members of Congress, isolationist and pacifist organizations, Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders, the Socialist party, urban newspapers and journals, fascist sympathizers, and independent intellectuals. The anti-interventionists of 1939-1941 made their arguments on sev? eral grounds: the impregnability of a thoroughly armed hemisphere; the

Records Relating to Personal Participation in World War II: American Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees: Reference Information Paper 80.

Records Relating to Personal Participation in World War II: American Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees: Reference Information Paper 80.

Empowering the World War II Native American Veteran: Postwar Civil Rights

during and after World War II, the franchise assumed great significance for Native Americans, a significance which stemmed from two historical precedents. First, as sovereign nations, Native Americans possessed a rich democratic heritage. Prior to and during white contact, the majority of tribes conducted operations by consensus rather than coercion, and most Native American groups obtained this consensus through the medium of general councils. Afterwards the group would then initiate appropriate action. The Iroquois furnish a prime example of government by consensus through the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Six Nations, in colonial America. At the height of its power, the Iroquois forced European to deal with their Confederacy on terms which more closely resembled equity than subordination. Both in the period of Dutch rule at New Amsterdam and at Albany following the colony's conquest by the Duke of York in 1664 the Iroquois Confederacy possessed the requisite power and political organization to command respect from all interested European governments, wrote historian Wilcomb Washburn.1 As the military power of Indian tribes waned and their status within the newly-formed United States became more questionable, the Cherokee transformed consensus based on military power into a consensus based on a legal power which their white neighbors had long utilized and respected. On July 26, 1827, the Cherokee adopted a written constitution and declared itself to be a sovereign, independent nation. This constitution marked the first effort by Indians in North America to establish a complete, political structure providing for the self-government of their people under written laws enacted entirely by democratic processes, asserted historian Ronald Satz.2 In the 1830s Chief Justice John Marshall's dual pronouncements in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia served to reinforce these tribal conceptions of their independent status although this status had somewhat degenerated. Marshall's decision that tribes were domestic, nations and that only the federal government could make treaties with tribes clearly vindicated their sovereign identity and ensured a continuation of the internal democratic processes. Tribes seized upon the term nation to uphold tribal sovereignty while recognizing that the term dependent implied a loss of power.3 Just how seriously that bargaining power had disintegrated became pivotal when the government abandoned the treaty method in the late nineteenth century for a policy of unilateral decision-making as enunciated in the Executive Order of 1872. The second historical precedent, relating to Native American franchise, stemmed from the aegis of citizenship which operated in this realm of unilateral decision-making. While citizenship was promised in the Dawes Act of 1887, the act postponed the actual bestowing of citizenship for twenty-five years on the assumption that by the next generation most Indians would be assimilated, independent farmers.4 Forty years later, it became clear that the goal of assimilation was far from being achieved, and Congress passed the Snyder Act of 1924 granting citizenship to all Native Americans. In analyzing the passage of the 1924 Snyder Act, historian Gary Stein rejects the argument of Vine Deloria, Jr., argument revived recently by Alison Bernstein, that Congress passed this legislation as a reward for Native American military participation in World War I. Furthermore, he contests the assertion that the act was passed for political reasons, despite the fact that six states possessed a sufficient Indian population to determine the consequences of the election in 1924 once they received the franchise. Pointing to the fact that this legislation was not an act to

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

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.

The Fbi, Mowm, and Core, 1941-1946

Recent scholarship has traced the origin of federal political surveillance of citizens by what was then called the Bureau of Investigation to the period of the Red Scare immediately after World War I (Williams, 1981, pp. 560-579). This type of spying went beyond the bureau's statutory authority, which includes only the of persons in violation of federal laws. In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover stated that theoretically the bureau could not get involved in noncriminal activities, but as American participation in World War II neared, Hoover, using recently issued presidential directives as authority, began claiming a much wider scope for the bureau's activities. By 1940, he believed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had jurisdiction over activities and other movements detrimental to the national security (Lowenthal, 1950, p. 444). Actually, as one scholar and critic of the FBI points out, the presidential directives, issued in 1936 and 1939, authorized investigative work only involving communism and fascism, not and related matters, as Hoover and the bureau later claimed. Armed with the directives, however, Hoover began planning an elaborate program of surveillance that would focus on domestic political or trade union deemed subversive by FBI personnel (Theoharis, 1976, pp. 649-659; Theoharis, 1978, p. 67). It was also during the World War II period that the FBI began the illegal use of wiretaps under authority from the president, who distrusted some of his associates and wanted information about critics of his foreign policy (Bernstein, 1976, p. 63).

From elite to mass politics: Italian socialism in the Giolittian Era, 1900-1914

In this study James Miller argues that in their pursuit of gradual change the dominant reformist faction of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) deliberately built a party structure that limited mass participation in the movement and handed control to middle-class parliamentary deputies. Mistrusting the peasant and urban masses, the reformists built a small organization with a membership drawn overwhelmingly from an elite of better paid, better educated, and well organized farm and industrial labourers while they actively sought the votes of reform-minded members of Italy's middle class. Major reforms took place in Italy between 1900 and 1912. However, Giovanni Giolitti, Italy's shrewd Prime Minister, authored and exploited them to tame both the Socialist Party and the workers' movement. Giolitti offered concessions designed to cement the support of individual Socialist deputies, weaken party discipline, and eventually entice the deputies - and through them, the PSI - into his coalition government as a minority partner. The success of Giolitti's strategy, particularly his ability to set the agenda and control the pace of reform, sparked a series of internal revolts against Reformist leadership. An initial challenge by middle class radicals, although successful in securing control of the PSI in 1904, proved incapable of providing a credible organizational or policy alternative to Reformism. By 1908, the reformists again controlled the PSI. However, they once again proved incapable of achieving the sort of major reforms that could justify their continued dominance. Reformism began to disolve into contending factions. In the wake of the Libyan war (1911-12), a coalition of lower middle-class and working-class Revolutionaries, championing a strategy of confrontation with the Italian state, ousted the party's traditional leadership. The Revolutionaries' confrontation with the Italian state and attacks from Italy's growing extreme right undermined Giolitti's experiment in social and political reform. One faction of the PSI's left-wing, majority, led by Benito Mussolini, pushed the party toward a new type of political organization, one that sought to utilize the latent power of Italy's peasant and urban masses to overthrow the state. Mussolini's dual bid for leadership of the PSI and a revolution climaxed with the unsuccessful Red Week uprisings of June 1914. Within a few months he split with his fellow socialists over Italian participation in World War I. Mussolini applied the lessons that he learned in 1912-14, particularly his vision of mass political mobilization, with great success in promoting Italian intervention in the war, crushing the workers' movement in the postwar era, and ultimately in overthrowing the Italian state.