War Materiel Research Articles

"Professionals Talk Logistics": Why Resupplying Taiwan in a Future War Will Be Harder Than Resupplying Ukraine

executive summary: This article compares the logistical challenges associated with the West's military resupply of Ukraine and those of resupplying Taiwan in a potential future conflict. main argumentDespite facing critical munitions shortages and growing political divisiveness over the substantial financial burden of this policy, the West's resupply of the Ukrainian military during Ukraine's current war with Russia has—so far—been a success, keeping forces battle-worthy and able to continue fighting after nearly two years of high-intensity conventional warfare. Would the resupply of Taiwan against China in wartime be similarly feasible for the U.S. and its regional partners in the Pacific? Major obstacles distinguish the Taiwan scenario. In prioritizing planning for a Taiwan contingency, the U.S. government should consider five major logistical factors: geopolitical ambiguity, the tyranny of distance, the need to resupply by air and sea, the involvement of reliable regional partners, and China's tolerance for the supply of armament to Taiwan in wartime. policy implications• Pre-positioning war materiel forward on allied soil is crucial to enable a rapid response to any military aggression against Taiwan. Besides increasing stocks of arms and ammunition in Taiwan itself, materiel should be pre-positioned with short reach to Taiwan in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines and closely linked with depots in Guam, Hawaii, Australia, and the continental U.S. in a hub-and-spoke framework. • To assist Taiwan in establishing reserves of arms and munitions, the U.S. should increase technology transfer and joint production of critical war materiel with and in Taiwan. Boosting Taiwan's own defense industry base will help ensure the security of supply and an independent maintenance, repair, and overhaul capability in a conflict. Moreover, to ensure the materiel survives, hardening, decentralization, and the ability to disperse at least parts of the industrial production and maintenance, repair, and overhaul capability should be advanced. • In a war across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwanese ports and airports would come under attack early on, and even if they were not destroyed, the People's Liberation Army would try to block access to them, hindering resupply efforts. Strong emphasis should be placed on the development of robust amphibious and civilian roll-on/roll-off capabilities, buildup of temporary piers, and improvement of Taiwan's transportation infrastructure.

Gardens of conflict: the military role of Islamic and Byzantine gardens

Despite recent strides in the exploration of gardens within formal, functional, and symbolic dimensions, the link between gardens and warfare remains an overlooked facet in the realm of garden and landscape history. The present study aims to illuminate the role that gardens assumed during times of conflict. Drawing from primary historical accounts, this research delves into the gardens of both the Byzantine and Eastern Islamic realms through a military lens, conceiving gardens as encampments, battlefields, providers of sustenance, sources of war materiel, and means of defending cities. The findings of this study reveal that both Byzantine and Islamic gardens undertook multifaceted military functions by serving as strategic positioning grounds for the armed forces and meeting their edible needs, particularly during sieges. However, it appears that gardens in Greater Iran and Transoxiana were much more profoundly connected to wars.

Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the US-Mexico Borderlands

Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the US-Mexico Borderlands

Modeling of logistics of war reserve stockpiling for successful combat operations

This paper formulates and solves a multivariate problem related to modeling the logistics of war reserve stockpiling for successful combat operations in the armed conflict area. The relevance of the study is related to a comprehensive solution to the problem of war reserve stockpiling to fulfill the objectives of a military operation, considering the capabilities of materiel suppliers, complex logistics of war materiel transportation to armed conflict areas, and military threats arising from the martial law in the country. The study creates a set of models that allow: prioritizing war materiel types for reserve stockpiling; formulating requirements for the size of reserves; selection of a rational structure of logistics supply chain, considering the risks of military threats; ensuring the success of combat operations in the armed conflict area. The article analyzes the existing problems of war reserve stockpiling under martial law, which arose due to: the variety of war materiel; small supply batches; different materiel manufacturers and suppliers located at a great distance from the armed conflict area; heterogeneous transport environment of supply; risks associated with military threats during war materiel reserve stockpiling. A method of presenting the importance of certain war materiel types for supply to the armed conflict area is proposed, considering the combat capability of individual weapons and assessments of military experts. The requirements for the amount of war materiel reserve in the interval representation, from the minimum to the maximum value of the inventory, have been formed. The minimum war materiel reserve to be used in the armed conflict area provides the necessary parity of military forces. Simultaneously, the nature of hostilities does not change, but the risks associated with the enemy's actions to destroy the war materiel reserve (war of reserves) may manifest themselves. The maximum war materiel reserve provides confidence in achieving the objectives of a military operation in the armed conflict area, but is difficult to implement due to the limited capabilities of weapons and materiel suppliers and existing military threats. An optimization model for the war reserve stockpiling was created, considering the limited capabilities of suppliers, permissible time for reserve stockpiling, and the risks that may arise from military threats and their impact on the logistics of war materiel supply (war of logistics). An optimization model for the war reserve stockpiling was developed, considering the combat capability of certain types of weapons, which makes it possible to create asymmetry in the military parity of forces due to the increased combat characteristics of modern weapons (quality over quantity). Due to the multitude of materiel manufacturers (possible suppliers) and various variants for the formation of supply chain, the task of enumeration of possible variants for the composition and structures of the logistics supply chain for war reserve stockpiling was formed and solved. The number of warehouse variants and logistics supply chain structures is estimated using the methods of enumeration theory, and a set of variants is formed for subsequent comparison and selection of a rational option. An optimization model for the formation of logistics links in the supply chain was created to form the necessary war reserve stocks in the armed conflict area. The example of HIMARS MLRS stockpiling illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach for successful combat operations in the armed conflict area, using both quantitative and qualitative assessments when comparing possible stockpiling variants. The scientific novelty of the study is related to the development of a set of original optimization models, models of the variant enumeration for the structures of the logistics supply chain, which allows scientifically sound formulation of requirements for the size of the war reserve stock for successful fulfillment of the objectives of a military operation in the armed conflict area, considering the capabilities of materiel suppliers, long supply chains in a heterogeneous transport environment, short delivery time, and the risks of military threats. It is advisable to use the results of the study for planning war reserve stock, for their effective use in the combat zone, justifying the composition of materiel manufacturers and suppliers, forming a logistics supply chain, which will ensure the success of combat operations in the armed conflict area.

Entwicklung und Diskussion des Kriegsmaterialrechts seit 1972

Despite Switzerland’s international commitment to disarmament and peacebuilding, war materiel worth hundreds of millions of Swiss francs is exported every year. These exports have repeatedly led to debates in Swiss politics ever since the creation of the War Materiel Act in 1972. After an analysis of the constitutional and international legal framework for arms exports, this paper examines which interests and norms have been negotiated in the national legislative process by focusing on parliamentary debates since 1972. Through its interdisciplinary approach, the paper demonstrates that legal concepts have hardly played a role in the political process and that the political arguments have barely changed.

“Bad Luck for the Chinese”: France and the Transit of War Materiel to China During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1939)

Abstract The attitude of France towards the Sino-Japanese War that started in 1937 has given rise to various judgments. Officially neutral, France is often presented as having taken, at least morally, a favorable attitude toward China. Yet the French government had officially prohibited the transit of war materiel en route to China across the Indochinese border. This issue became increasingly important as the Japanese blockade of China progressed and conditioned the capacity of Chiang Kai-shek’s government to continue the fight. The diplomatic archives of the United States, greatly concerned by the situation in China, shed more light on France’s policy in East Asia. By comparing historical accounts produced by contemporaries and historians with the diplomatic archives of the United States, this article intends to bring more evidence relating to the issue of French “neutrality” during the Sino-Japanese War.

Compromise and Defence: Great Britain and the Burma Road Crisis

Abstract China and Britain both found themselves in extremely precarious situations by the early summer of 1940, when Japan demanded that Britain close the Burma Road, a vital overland supply route for Chinese forces fighting against Japanese aggression. The British had just seen all of their continental European allies fall like dominoes to Hitler’s forces over the span of a few weeks, while China was fighting a losing defensive war against Japan with minimal outside support. China desperately needed to maintain its overland supply line to the British Empire, the Burma Road, but Britain feared that the very existence of this conduit of war materiel would provoke a Japanese attack on vulnerable British colonies in the Far East. American policy on Japanese aggression was ambiguous at this point and neither Britain nor China could realistically expect help from Washington in the short term. As a result, Britain signed a one-sided confidential memorandum to close the Burma Road to buy time and shore up its East Asian position to the extent that it was able. This deal, a lesser-studied counterpart to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in Europe, compromised the Chinese war effort against Japan, paved the way for the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia, and ultimately failed to prevent Britain’s defeat in East Asia. Recognizing that this temporary concession would not moderate Japanese behavior, Britain reopened the Burma Road three months later. This paper examines the vital role of the Burma Road in the Chinese war effort in 1940 and why Japan demanded that London close it, then explores the factors that led to Britain’s unavoidable capitulation on the issue and subsequent reversal three months later, along with the consequences for the Allied war effort in the Far East.

The Scientists and the Shrub

During World War II, Japanese American scientists and engineers imprisoned at the Manzanar War Relocation camp were engaged in an experimental project to grow guayule and process it into latex, a needed war materiel. In this way, they contributed to the American war effort, despite their race-based incarceration. The guayule research project undermines the rationale for the wartime confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans. The laboratory at Manzanar partnered with universities, private industry, and government bureaucracy as an early instance of the military-industrial complex.

Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory by Robert E. May

Reviewed by: Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory by Robert E. May Eric Herschthal (bio) Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory. By Robert E. May. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019. Pp. 352. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $27.95.) One of the many stories white southerners liked to tell themselves about slavery—and that some still tell themselves—was that Christmas was the one time of year beloved by all, especially enslaved black Americans. Enslaved people, white southerners claimed, were given a full week off and feted with pot roast, biscuits, rum, and whiskey. Field-workers were invited into the “Big House,” showered with gifts, and given permission to travel to nearby plantations. Writing in 1878, the former South Carolina slave owner Celina E. Means described enslaved people dancing to “the sound of the fiddle and the shouts of laughter” during Christmastime as proof of slavery’s decency—as evidence of the “real condition” of enslaved people (202; italics in original). It is this myth that Robert E. May thoroughly debunks in Yuletide in Dixie, the most exhaustive study to date of enslaved people’s experiences during Christmastime in the Civil War–era South. On the surface, the subject might not seem to demand a book-length study, but May makes a persuasive case for the subject’s significance: white southerners routinely published stories about slaveholders’ Yuletide generosity—before, during, and after the Civil War—in order to justify slavery and postwar segregation. Even today, plantation Christmas tours remain a major moneymaker, offering visitors a sanitized version of the past. These Christmastime mythologies had, and continue to have, real consequences. Stories of Christmastime benevolence made white southerners particularly defensive against abolitionist attacks, May argues, ultimately hastening their decision to secede from the Union. In addition, during the Civil War, the inability of slaveholders to even modestly provide for their enslaved workforce during Christmastime influenced enslaved people’s decisions to abandon their plantations, contributing to the Confederacy’s defeat. And, finally, scenes of enslaved people’s contentment during Christmastime, a fixture of post-Reconstruction literature, secured the Lost Cause narrative, helping to underwrite white supremacy. [End Page 122] May provides ample evidence to back up these core arguments. Yuletide in Dixie draws heavily on the unpublished journals and letters of slave-holders, as well as slave narratives and the Federal Writers’ Project interviews of formerly enslaved people, to challenge several common claims slaveholders made about Christmas. The practice of giving enslaved workers a week off was the exception, not the rule, May shows, arguing that the average holiday break—never fully “off ”—was probably closer to three days. Whippings and slave sales continued unabated. Slaveholders certainly gave their enslaved workers gifts, but these were, he argues, more often necessities—basic clothing, their monthly food ration, and maybe a little candy, if they were lucky. Ultimately, he interprets Christmas gift-giving as a form of “social control” (57), not planter benevolence, with enslaved people having little choice but to feign gratitude. He also devotes a superb chapter to the ways in which enslaved people used a gift-giving game, called “Christmas Gif ’!,” to subtly pressure owners into giving them a bit more of their basic needs. May’s most provocative arguments come in the book’s final two chapters. One, devoted to the Civil War, shows how the failure of planters to provide even the smallest “gifts” during Christmastime made enslaved people even “more resentful of their bondage” (178), strengthening their resolve to slow down, escape, or otherwise undermine the plantation economy. Knowing the pride southerners took in their Christmas traditions, Union soldiers occasionally burned down cities during the holiday season. And far from a moment of reprieve, wartime Christmases were times of high anxiety. Planters so feared slave revolts that Confederate generals diverted war materiel to cities where revolts were rumored, contributing, May argues, to Confederate battlefield defeats. The final chapter, on Christmastime stories published after the war, takes its inspiration from David Blight’s now-classic study of Civil War memory, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001). After the war, May shows that white southerners and northerners published untold numbers of romanticized...

Reynolds , David Pechatnov , Vladimir The Kremlin Letters: Stalin's Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt (review)

REVIEWS 183 Portukalian, put the point precisely. His fate was to witness ‘The reign of the absurd — which flourishes today in the question of the Middle East’. Despite all, he remained an optimist. This moment, he wrote on 22 May 1922, ‘will not last forever. Stability, the logic of things, will again take the upper hand’ (p. 204). How sadly mistaken he was, and how similar to today’s Middle East is the story told in this commemorative memoir. Department of History Jay Winter Yale University Reynolds, David and Pechatnov, Vladimir (eds). The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s WartimeCorrespondencewithChurchillandRoosevelt.Withtheassistance of Iskander Magadeyev and Olga Kucherenko. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2018. xx + 660 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. £25.00. The correspondence of the World War Two leaders of the ‘Grand Alliance’, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill, has long been of interest to historians. A first version was published in Moscow in 1957 in Russian and English editions. The Moscow edition was accurate and prepared as part of a Soviet reply to ongoing Western efforts to delegitimize and render invisible the preponderant contribution of the Red Army to the destruction of the Nazi Wehrmacht. Stalin himself worked on the project, but it was only published after his death. As the editors David Reynolds and Vladimir Pechatnov point out, the Soviet government also wanted to counter the selective use of Stalin’s letters by Churchill and other Western memoirwriters . The first edition of the big three correspondence was without much contextual material which Reynolds and Pechatnov have provided in this new edition. An earlier two-volume Russian version of the correspondence was published by Pechatnov and his colleague at MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations), Iskander Magadayev (Perepiska Stalina s Ruzvel´tom i Cherchillem v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 2 vols, Moscow, 2015). The correspondence begins after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and ends with Roosevelt’s death on 12 April 1945. It covers all the major issues of the war-time alliance, most importantly, the opening of a second front in France, the direct route into the heart of Germany, and the delivery of war materiel to the Soviet Union via Arctic convoys. Stalin and his diplomats pressed from the very beginning of the war for a second front to relieve pressure on the Red Army which faced 80 per cent of SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 184 Axis forces in 1942. Churchill stalled on the second front for as long as he could. This was well known in Britain where cartoonists David Low and Leslie Illingworth often drew images of Churchill dragging his feet, conniving to delay a landing in France. British public opinion was keener on the second front than was the British prime minister who was more interested in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. When he felt pressure from Moscow or British opinion, Churchill lashed out that Stalin had only himself to blame for his difficulties because of signing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. This argument was disingenuous, as Churchill must have known, since it was the Soviet government which had pressed for a broad anti-Nazi entente from late 1933 onward and the British and French who demurred and sought their own deals with Hitler. The conduct of the British and French governments in their last chance negotiations with Moscow during the spring-summer of 1939 was particularly scandalous. After the tide of battle turned against Nazi Germany — marked by the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in early 1943 — Stalin still pressed hard for the second front, though he appeared to believe that the Red Army could finish off the Wehrmacht without the Western allies (April 1944). ‘Our allies are in a hurry’, Stalin remarked: ‘They are afraid we will rout Nazi Germany without them’ (p. 409). In February 1942 this was in fact a topic of discussion in the Foreign Office. Better late to the party than never was, nonetheless, Stalin’s view. It was only when Roosevelt came down on Stalin’s side at the first Big Three conference in Teheran in November 1943, that operation ‘Overlord’ was finally...

Spitfires Sprouting in the Burmese Spring: The Real-life Quest for Historic Fantasy Aircraft in Contemporary Myanmar

AbstractIn 2013, a group of British aviation archaeologists began excavating in Myanmar in search of some 140 mint-condition crated Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfire Mk XIV aircraft. According to their story, at the end of the Second World War, Allied forces in Burma were left with these unassembled aircraft. Without the funds to send them home, but unwilling to let the planes fall into enemy hands, they buried the crated planes in Mingaladon, Meiktila and Myitkyina. Like legends of pirate treasure, the story of these buried Spitfires carries with it fantastic aura and intrigue. For aviation fans, the pirate's gold is an iconic aircraft, meaningful in patriotic narratives for its role in the Battle of Britain. This paper will discuss this story as a form of military history folklore which is stoked by the orientalist perception that Burma/Myanmar's decades of military regimes and purported isolation indirectly ‘“preserved” the crated aircraft in time. As this paper will demonstrate, Burmese and others in Southeast Asia have their own legends of buried war materiel and treasure. This point, though largely lost on British aviation enthusiasts in their quest for their Spitfire ‘holy grail’, nevertheless crucially enabled their quest to manifest itself.

The strange case of the Richard Montgomery: on the evolution of intractable risk

In August 1944, the American Liberty Ship SS Richard Montgomery ran aground and wrecked in the Medway Channel, near Sheerness, Kent (England). She carried a cargo of 6225 tonnes of bombs and other explosive war materiel. Only part of the cargo was salvaged and the rest, amounting to 14,571 bombs weighing 3105 tonnes, remains in situ to this day. This paper offers an account of the shipwreck, its aftermath and the debate over managing the risk, which has continued for three quarters of a century. The narrative builds up a picture of the numerous uncertainties in the characterisation of risks associated with the wreck. This makes it very difficult to define the most appropriate strategy for dealing with the problem. Both official and unofficial accounts have been marred by inaccuracy and exaggeration. The conclusion of this investigation is that the data needed for a rigorous assessment of risk using standard procedures do not exist and probably cannot be collected. However, there is no doubt that a clear and present danger exists. The case of the Richard Montgomery is thus a relatively rare example of ungovernable risk for which there are no easy solutions.

The 1942 Santa Anita Detainment Center Labor Strike and Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

This article studies a brief strike by Nikkei incarcerees at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in 1942. Employed in the industrial production of camouflage nets, the imprisoned Japanese Americans staged a strike over pay, worker safety, and rights. Without previous guidelines, the center’s administrators had to devise a resolution to this halt in the production of war materiel. The Santa Anita netmakers' strike and its resolution provided a foundation for handling labor disputes at the permanent WRA camps later. The author identifies the administration, division of labor, pay, and unsafe work conditions, along with the strike leadership, management’s response, and the outcome of the strike.

“A Commodity So Closely Aligned to Armageddon”: The Sudbury Region in Wartime and Aftermath

The Northern Review 44 (2017): 371–414War wrought great change in the Provincial Norths, not least the Sudbury area in Northeastern Ontario. Despite nationalist southern voices calling for “Canadian nickel,” the war confirmed the duopoly of INCO and Mond—nickel reinforced war materiel ranging from bullet casings to battleships. Corporate strategies differed: at first hesitant, the United States based INCO maximized production and profit while British Mond Nickel began with patriotic bluster but ultimately maintained a steadier course. Variant tactics notwithstanding, nickel production increasingly dominated the local economy—even a provincial government keen to “settle” New Ontario favoured the firms over farmers angry about sulphur-damaged crops. Farmers less directly “downwind” took advantage of improved infrastructures, new farming methods, and strong markets to bring local agriculture to commercial levels. Even forestry was vibrant. War, it seemed, was good for this part of the provincial north, or at least its purse. Mixed economies were parallelled by social maturation, or, was it the decline of “northern-ness”? “Southern” voluntary associations made major strides, and the war brought a surge of patriotic societies. Patriotism cut various ways—local Franco-Ontariens, angered by Regulation 17, reacted strongly against conscription. Immigrants volunteered to fight (whether for Canada or homeland) even as their peers collectively challenged the social and economic order. Wartime passions thus reshaped the human landscape even as resource exploitation wrought physical and economic change. Southern pressures, economic and environmental consequences, a struggle for permanence—the Nickel Belt provides a valuable look into the Provincial Norths during the “war to end all wars.” This article is part of a special collection of papers originally presented at a conference on “The North and the First World War,” held May 2016 in Whitehorse, Yukon. https://doi.org/10.22584/nr44.2017.017

Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River by Thomas W. Cutrer

Reviewed by: Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River by Thomas W. Cutrer James M. Bartek (bio) Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River. By Thomas W. Cutrer. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xi, 608. $40.00 cloth) Thomas W. Cutrer, emeritus professor of history at the University of Arizona, has at last completed his magnum opus, a military history of the trans-Mississippi theater of the U.S. Civil War. His stated purpose is to "establish the foundation and build the framework" on which future historians might build more detailed studies exploring the economic, political, and social aspects of the war in the region(p. xii). The potential of the trans-Mississippi region to contribute to Confederate victory was vast. Grain, livestock, and additional recruits for the army promised to add substantially to the cause. These recruits notably also included the Native Americans of the Indian Territory, many of whom legitimately supported the Confederate cause, and others who were pressured to do so by dint of proximity. Texas offered the only international border and a potential alliance via the French puppet emperor Maximilian in Mexico, while a brisk trade in cotton was conducted across the Rio Grande. Beyond Texas and seemingly ripe for the taking, New Mexico and California offered the prospect of precious metals and an outlet to the Pacific trade. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, the potential of the trans-Mississippi [End Page 264] region went unrealized. The southern dream of creating a transcontinental empire was snuffed out early on with the Union victory over General Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico, and the region as a whole was beset by a host of problems. A shortage of war materiel left Confederate forces destitute, poor infrastructure hindered military operations for both sides, and the Mississippi proved an almost impassable barrier for Confederates. For most Confederate soldiers in the trans-Mississippi region, this was perfectly agreeable as they were adamantly opposed to fighting in the far-flung reaches of Virginia. With the fall of Vicksburg, timely communication with Richmond ceased. The region became, as the title of the book suggests, a theater of a separate war. Edmund Kirby Smith assumed the role of de facto dictator, forced to act as magistrate and general, and more successful in the former role than the latter. Smith in fact was par for the course in the theater. It was, as Cutrer asserts, too often a dumping ground for the less talented and incompetent who, for various political or familial reasons, could not be outright dismissed. Political infighting between commanders hampered operations, as did the lack of a clear strategic vision for the territory on either side. General Ulysses S. Grant thought operations in the region a waste of manpower, particularly the disastrous Red River Campaign in Louisiana, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis saw it mostly as a resource to be exploited for operations in the east. In the end, Confederates held the territory by forfeit, and even won the last battle of the war in Texas. The modest scale of military operations in the theater belied the brutality that attended them, as a pronounced viciousness defined this separate war. Endemic guerrilla warfare, especially in Missouri, resulted in a scale of civilian suffering that had no counterpart in the east, while the strong presence of African American Union troops guaranteed racial atrocities on the part of Confederates. Nor did the ongoing clash between whites and Native Americans cease, as the great Dakota uprising of 1862 in Minnesota and continuing hostilities [End Page 265] with the Native peoples in the Southwest attested. For all Indians, the consequences of the war in the West would prove disastrous. Cutrer set out to write a comprehensive military history of the trans-Mississippi theatre, and in this he has succeeded admirably. His work is the first general treatment since Alvin Josephy's excellent The Civil War in the American West more than twenty-five years ago, and joins an increasing number of studies on this heretofore neglected but important facet of the conflict. James M. Bartek JAMES M. BARTEK teaches...

Seeds of Change — Polemobotany in the Study of War and Culture

Throughout history, plants and plant science have been intimately associated with military activities, forging inexorable connections to sociocultural evolution. However, this is frequently neglected in war and culture research, despite a pivotal relationship existing both during conflicts and peacetime. This network of botanical connections spans physical and psychological realms — from war materiel to strategies for coping with conflict traumas. Wars have accelerated scientific research, frequently leading to post-war societal benefit. A cyclical process exists whereby military activities shape landscapes and floras, which in turn impact upon the perceptions and activities of those who live and fight within them. Botanic gardens and natural history museums are widely perceived as unconnected to war, yet there resides within these organizations an ‘alternative’ legacy of war. Future research should include polemobotany for a truly multidisciplinary approach, permitting deeper understanding of the relationships among plants, war and culture, as well as facilitating novel mechanisms for public engagement.

The Trophy Tableau Monument in Rome: from Marius to Caecilia Metella

The trophy tableau is a ubiquitous, but often neglected, motif in Roman art consisting of a mannequin of arms and armor with prisoners of war bound at its feet. Surviving examples of such tableaux are seen first on coins, then on the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, and thereafter routinely in imperial sculpture: for example, the trophy-with-captives motif appears on a well-executed relief of a Severan triumphal procession dating to the later second century CE (Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Altemps, Inv. no. 8640); and again on the Arch of Constantine, dating to 315 CE. This article offers a cultural history of the tableau monument type, which I believe to be a Marian innovation connected with his Gallic campaigns. In constructing the history of the tableau I explore a diverse array of evidence including texts, sculpture, and coinage. Particularly, I present a new reading of a remarkable series of Republican coins that reveal the nuances of the monument type’s development. Moreover, I use the history of the tableau as a lens for reexamining the triumphal relief on the monumental Tomb of Caecilia Metella (ca. 25 BCE) on the Via Appia, an artwork that I believe directly impacted the use of the tableau in later monumental sculpture. The traditional reading of the tomb associates the relief with the achievements of the Licinii Crassi, the family of Caecilia Metella’s husband, who was probably a son of the triumvir M. Licinius Crassus. I suggest instead that the relief emphasized the military achievements of Caecilia’s father’s ancient plebian family, the Caecilii Metelli. If this reading is accurate, then it was the Metelli who instituted the increasingly popular trend of using Gallic-looking war materiel to indicate generically “barbarian” foes, an important shift in not only trophy iconography but in the iconography of Roman warfare and conquest in general.

Scabbing the Palouse: agricultural labor replacement and union busting in southeast Washington, 1917–1919

The radical ideologies and socialist overtones of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) made them an easy target for industrialists as nationalistic and patriotic propaganda flooded the pages of American newspapers during World War I. The war in Europe marked the beginning of the end for the rapid growth and labor organizing power of the IWW, especially in the northwestern United States where WWI was used as a means for state governments and regional industrialists to devise methods meant to damage the union beyond repair. After America’s declaration of war, the Washington State Council of Defense was formed in response to the nation’s demand for mobilization of its citizens for increased production of war materiel and to operate the state’s wartime propaganda machine. With an abundance of natural resources, Washington had a profound impact on national war production output. Although it possessed several important extractive industries, it was Washington’s quality grain, especially in the southeast portion of the state known as the Palouse, which made it a boon for agricultural industrialists. With wheat prices fixed at the highest in the nation’s history, Palouse farmers became wealthy as a result of WWI, while the area’s thousands of migrant laborers suffered from low wages and pitiful job conditions. A general strike issued during the 1917 harvest by the IWW’s most influential branch – the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (AWIU) frightened area farmers, prompting the Defense Council to begin a systematic replacement of AWIU harvest hands via the organization of thousands of women, children, and retirees. Through appeals to patriotism and anti-labor rhetoric, the Defense Council and local reactionaries effectively circumvented union labor with its labor replacement campaign throughout the remainder of WWI, and without the use of violence so common to labor conflicts in Washington State. The IWW/AWIU in the Palouse never fully recovered from the onslaught, thus adding to the union’s near collapse in the aftermath of WWI.

Author’s Response: The United States Needs a New Policy toward Pakistan

First, I would like to extend my appreciation for all the thoughtful constructive criticism offered by my colleagues in this roundtable. This is truly an opportunity for learning from some of the finest thinkers on this complex subject, and I hope to incorporate these suggestions and challenges in future work on this topic. In this essay, I would like to address a few suggestions that deserve special attention or response.John Gill is most certainly spot on when he suggests that scholars need to better understand how the Pakistan Army manages its image and how its obsession with this influences the army's domestic and international behavior. As Gill noted, I made some efforts to contend with this complex puzzle. However, obtaining relevant data is extremely challenging. Given that I am blacklisted by Pakistan's intelligence agency, I have little expectation of ever being able to return to the country to take on this puzzle more robustly. Hopefully, other scholars who are better positioned to do so may answer Gill's important call.Marvin Weinbaum, in his review, is absolutely correct to note that none of our books cast much light on the interactions between the military and extremist groups. He finds missing discussion about how those values and beliefs associated with Islamic groups may have contributed to forming the military's thinking, including policies toward India, Afghanistan, and the West. I do spend considerable space discussing aspects of this complex set of relations, but the data sources that I used for the book do not illuminate this issue to his or my satisfaction. My current work in progress, which focuses on the writings of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), will in some measure elucidate the vast similarities between official army publications and those of this proscribed terrorist organization. However, LeT is only one of numerous militant groups employed by Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies to prosecute Pakistan's policies at home and abroad. Weinbaum and I will likely not be able to resolve our differences in opinion regarding the degree to which the Pakistan Army's thinking has evolved either about the need for or about the utility of the zoo of militants that the army and intelligence agencies have cultivated. Weinbaum is much more optimistic than I am, and only time will tell which view is more accurate. I would argue that it is less injurious to U.S. interests to err on the side of skepticism. In the past, the United States' cupidity and propensity to see the best in Pakistani intentions only rewarded Islamabad for its perfidy while undermining Washington's interests at the expense of the American taxpayer.Hasan Askari Rizvi, like Weinbaum, is also skeptical about the durability of strategic depth in the army's thinking. He specifically argues that the introduction of nuclear weapons obviates such a requirement. However, the facts belie this claim. As I note in my book, we now know that Pakistan had a crude nuclear device from about 1980. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, there is wide scholarly consensus that Pakistan continued to view Afghanistan through this lens of depth. Moreover, only one general-Mirza Aslam Beg-understood as affording Pakistan with a physical space. As chief of the Pakistan Army between 1988 and 1991, Beg was a fierce proponent of in the physical sense, and his tenure was marked by considerable nuclear proliferation. More generally, the cultivation of in Afghanistan has not been viewed as a strategy for developing a physical sanctuary for Pakistan's forces and war materiel; rather, it has been understood in zero-sum terms as opening up a political space in which Pakistan can compete with India for access. I see no evidence that suggests that Pakistan has abandoned this view of Afghanistan as a space to be politically cultivated.Aqil Shah is correct in his assessment that I discount the role of political learning on elite attitudes and behavior. …

Food Fights for Freedom: A Critical Reading of Food Advertisements from Ladies’ Home Journal during the Second World War

Food Fights for Freedom: A Critical Reading of Food Advertisements from Ladies’ Home Journal during the Second World War George Royer (bio), Melissa G. Ocepek (bio), and William Aspray (bio) Food plays a major role in American culture. Its purpose goes far beyond providing the human body with the nutrients that it needs. It is part of each individual’s personal experiences: the birthday cake on your fifth birthday, the food fights at school, your first successful solo cooking experience, the cake recipe that your mom taught you, the romantic dinner with that special someone, the broccoli that dad made you eat before you could leave the table, the food at grandma’s funeral. It is also part of the collective American experience: soup kitchens, bread lines, war rations, TV dinners, backyard barbecues, fast-food, Tang. This article examines the role of food in American culture during one poignant era in American history, the Second World War. The title of this article does not refer to the food fights you might have had in elementary school, but to a government badge found on a number of the advertisements—telling consumers that food was a war materiel. This article examines food advertisements in the most popular middle-class women’s magazine of the time, Ladies’ Home Journal. This magazine is replete with advertisements, and advertisements for food and kitchen appliances are more numerous than any other kind. Examining three of 12 issues for each year from 1941 to 1945, the authors found more than 600 food advertisements to study. The authors carefully examined 101 of the advertisements they believe to best represent major cultural themes of the time and herein provide both full images and discussions of 36 of these ads. Each of the ads shown here (Figures 1 through 36) illustrates a different theme about the relationship between food and American culture during this wartime period. Many express multiple themes, but they are used here as an iconic example of a single theme. Advertisements are, of course, a tool of persuasion. The company that places the ad has a goal in mind: introduce a product, sell a product, exclaim the quality of the company’s product offerings, explain away some problem (e.g., a shortage of their product on the grocer’s shelves), encourage you to be a loyal customer, or show that the company is a good corporate citizen. In order to engage readers, an ad must resonate with the interests or concerns of a large portion of the magazine’s readership. This means that ads are particularly useful in identifying the perceived concerns and mindsets of a particular readership—in this case middle-class women—at a particular point in time of world war when many family members were away in unknown and often dangerous circumstances, and when life at home was radically changed by food rationing, labor shortages, and tumult in the gendered division of labor. To capture the reader’s attention, headlines, banner lines, and images had to distill the message that would attract readers, and to use humor, fear, or other emotions to draw the reader into the text of the ad (especially in those days, when ads were text heavy). The headlines and images thus often distilled the cultural message of the times, if read with a critical eye by today’s scholar. This essay is organized around nine themes that emerged from a critical reading of these advertisements: prewar sentiments, shortages and economies, changing gender and family roles, nutrition, patriotism and the American way of life, militarization of the kitchen, industrialization and the food industry, lessons Americans learned from the war, and deferred gratification. In almost all of these sections, there are several subsections—each one represented by one featured advertisement, while other ads that express the same or similar themes are identified in an endnote. For example, the section on patriotism and the American way of life includes subsections on coping in adverse times, reassurance, the virtue of sacrifice, sense of community, food and the American way, and racial stereotypes. PREWAR SENTIMENTS The U.S. entered the Second World War in December 1941, after the bombing at Pearl Harbor. Thus, all of...