Jay B. Lockenour was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of History. Temple's Awareness of Teaching and Teaching Improvement Center (ATTIC) also presented him with one of only two Distinguished Teaching Awards won by faculty in the College of Liberals Arts for the 2001-2 school year.

        Not content to rest on his laurels, Lockenour is contributing three articles to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Anti-Semitism, which is being compiled by Richard S. Levy for ABC-Clio. The articles are on Erich von Ludendorff, his second wife Mathilda, and the publishing company they founded to distributed anti-Semitic (and anti-Jesuit, anti-Vatican, and anti-Freemason) screeds. Lockenour had done some work as an undergraduate on Ludendoff's political activities during World War I, but had not really explored most of his life beyond Adolf Hitler's abortive Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. These articles provide him with a welcome opportunity to expand on his earlier interests.

        Lockenour is also revising an article titled "West German War Films of the 1950s and the Shaping of Public Memory," for the German journal Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift.

Dr. Jay B. Lockenour (second from left) with some admiring colleagues at the ATTIC Awards
Luncheon, April 25, 2002, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award.  The
significance of the bird puppet remains a mystery.  (Courtesy William W. Cutler III)

Gregory J. W. Urwin, professor of history, spent a good part of the first eight months of 2002 on the road. In January, he flew to Little Rock, Arkansas, to speak at the Battle of Poison Spring Seminar hosted by the Old State House Museum, the largest historical museum in the Razorback State. The day-long event was organized to showcase Urwin's research on Confederate war crimes against black Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the Trans-Mississippi theater during the American Civil War. The Old State House had recently acquired the letters of a Confederate soldier which vindicated Urwin's position. Urwin delivered a paper on "Poison Spring and Other Racial Incidents during the Camden Expedition." Urwin's paper will be published in a book of the seminar's proceedings edited by Mark Christ of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.

Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin lectures on Confederate war crimes against black Union soldiers
and runaway slaves at the Old State House Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, in
January 2002.  (Courtesy Old State House Museum)

        In March, the History Channel brought Urwin to New York to tape two episodes for its "Movies in Time" series. Urwin commented on two films about World War II - Merrill's Marauders (Warner Brothers, 1961), and Wake Island (Paramount, 1942). The latter was the first American combat film made during the war. These programs aired in May and June, respectively.

       At the beginning of April, Urwin attended the annual meeting of the Society for Military History in Madison, Wisconin, where he chaired a session titled "Calm between the Storms: Perspectives on the U.S. Army, 1919-1942." Later that same month, he participated in the Banastre Tarleton Symposium sponsored by the Historic Camden Revolutionary Site and the Kershaw County Historical Society. The symposium explored the career of the infamous British cavalryman who figured so prominently in the American Revolution in the South. Urwin delivered a paper titled "Cornwallis and the Slaves of Virginia: A New Look at the Yorktown Campaign." He presented a revised version of that same paper at the 28^th Congress of the International Commission on Military History in Norfolk, Virginia, in August.

        In June, Urwin flew to New Orleans to take part in a planning "charrette" to advise the National D-Day Museum as it undertakes an $80 million expansion.

        The following month, Urwin signed a contract with University Oklahoma Press to issue a paperback reprint of his second book, The United States Cavalry: An Illustrated History. Originally published in 1983, the book has been out of print for more than a decade. It is scheduled for release in spring 2003.

        On June 1, I boarded the plane for Moscow, having my portfolio full with plans and projects. This summer's weather turned out to be cataclysmic for many parts of Europe and Russia; floods ravaged the plains of Central Europe from Germany to the Czech Republic, and most of the fertile lands of Russia's South. In Moscow by August, the sky was overcast from the smoke of giant underbrush fires to the east of the capital. Sweltering heat battered Moscow and Muscovites, and unlike Americans on the East Coast, most of us there did not have the luxury of air-conditioned cars, offices, and homes. I was one of the unfortunate researchers who had to mop sweat from their brows toiling in the stuffy Moscow archives.

        Only the quality of archival materials could compensate for the intense discomfort, and several times I got lucky. In the Russian State Archive of the Social and Political History Institute [the former Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute], they gave me a few microfilm rolls with documents from Stalin's personal archive. What struck me while I looked through Stalin's papers was the amount of time he devoted to issues that were very far from the issues of state strategy. I fully agree with Norman Naimark (Stanford University) who recently wrote about Stalin's love for editing. Indeed, most of the draft articles, speeches, pieces from Pravda I have seen in Stalin's papers bore his markings and corrections. The world would have been so much better, especially for Russians, had Josif Jugashvili become a newspaper editor or a proof-reader in some publishing house!

        The single most gruesome document I saw at this time was the leading article of Pravda denouncing the alleged plot of Kremlin doctors to murder the leaders of the Soviet Union. Stalin's hand was everywhere in the draft. It is obvious that he did not trust his propagandists to write a really scary article. And this article meant to scare all! It is interesting that Stalin added several times an ominous phrase about the "scatter-brainedness" of Soviet officials and the Soviet people. He clearly believed that was the main danger facing the Soviet people; unlike Stalin, they could not see enemies in their ranks. This document, as I found out later, was already published in the excellent collection, The Politburo and the Council of Ministers of the USSR (Moscow, 2002). Still, it was worth looking at the copy of the original, with Stalin's handwriting as firm and clear as that of a schoolteacher or an editor. One gets the impression that Stalin slipped into paranoia, while remaining in full control of his other mental abilities - a maniac with a powerful and evil intellect.

        In another repository, the former Moscow Party Archive, they gave me the transcripts of discussions of Soviet writers just after Nikita Khrushchev pronounced his verdict on Stalin in February 1956. People who spent their lives in fear or ruthless careerism were completely shell-shocked, and many stood up and spoke what was on their mind. It was a weird moment of collective communist repentance. As it often happens, those with the loudest mouths had very little to say conceptually, and those who had something to say, sat in silence. Still, considering the power of literature in Russian and Soviet society, one regrets that those speeches were never published. And this moment of candor did not last; very soon most Soviet writers regained their composure and understood that the skies did not fall, and the game in town had not changed much. The transcripts of the Writers' Union for subsequent years were not nearly as interesting.

        In late June, I attended a historical conference commemorating the détente of 1968-72. Interest in this subject is experiencing a dramatic rise. Boxes of Henry Kissinger's papers have been released for research, and the U.S. State Department is preparing FRUS volumes devoted to this period. The most interesting documents, however, are still off limits in Moscow, such as all the documentation on the Kissinger-Dobrynin backchannel and the similar documents on the "secret channel" between the Kremlin and Willi Brandt. It is known that Kissinger in particular did not take an American interpreter or a note taker to his meetings with the Soviets. Ergo, the only available documents on these meetings are in Moscow. Tidbits from the "backchannel" documents have been published in the Cold War International History Project Bulletin (no. 1, 2) and they demonstrate the high quality of Soviet records. Dobrynin had perfect memory and wrote down everything almost verbatim after each meeting with his American counterpart. Thus, someday Russian researchers will open for all of us interesting new facts about détente and Kissinger's personality.

        There were many European scholars at the conference, representing France, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Sweden and Great Britain. Most interesting, however, was the discussion among the veterans: among them Christer Wahlbeck, Ambassador of Sweden in Russia; Georgi Kornienko, former First Deputy of Andrei Gromyko; Yuri Dubinin, former Soviet ambassador in the United States; and Yuri Smirnov, a designer of the most powerful thermonuclear bomb in human history. Not surprisingly, there was little agreement on the meaning of détente. Two panels addressed the "precedents" of détente, including the Grand Alliance and the period of Khrushchev's foreign policy. The last panel was on the lessons of détente and the end of the Cold War, and it was the moment when Russian speakers split among themselves. Most of them blamed Mikhail Gorbachev for failing to capitalize on strategic assets that the USSR still had before 1989, for his naivete and "harebrained schemes." I listened to this discussion and thought about Stalin and his warning about "scatter-braindedness" among Soviet elites. For all his paranoia, the dictator must have sensed that Gorbachev was already there!

        Academician Alexander Fursenko shared with us several learned impressions about the Cold War crises and Khrushchev's role in them. Fursenko is the only person who got privileged access to the Kremlin Archive's files on the Suez crisis, Berlin crisis, and Cuban missile crisis. He said that reading the transcripts of Khrushchev's conversations with Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the GDR, "depressed him." (At this remark, a Russian colleague whispered sarcastically into my ear: "I wish we could share his sensibility if he could share his documents with us!") Fursenko felt that Khrushchev treated Ulbricht like his lackey. At the same time, Fursenko could not find the smoking gun on the major controversy: who suggested the idea of the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev or Ulbricht? Contextually, it seems that it was Khrushchev. Whatever Fursenko saw in the Kremlin Archives will soon be published in his next book, which he is writing with Timothy Naftali, Director of the President Tapes Project at the University of Virginia. And the most comprehensive information on Ulbricht's role we will learn from a forthcoming book from Princeton University Press, Driving the Soviets up the Wall, by my colleague and friend, Hope Harrison.

        My biggest surprise was to find out that I was one of the few presenters at the conference who actually focused on détente and its protagonists. In my paper, "The Brezhnev Papers and Détente," I summarized all that came out in the last ten years about Leonid Brezhnev's personal involvement in the talks with West Germany and the United States. Brezhnev was a rather weak leader, in the shadow of Stalin and even Khrushchev, who turned out to be a surprisingly effective political lobbyist for détente inside the Kremlin leadership. Before Brezhnev's involvement, the majority of the Politburo and the vast majority of Soviet political and military elites were against a rapprochement with the United States and "Germans." They were victims of their own propaganda and shared fully the enemy image of Brandt, Nixon, and Kissinger. Initially, Brezhnev was no different from this mainstream. Why did he become a statesman of détente? It was combination of personal vanity, genuine and simplistic beliefs in the possibility of a global peace negotiated between the two superpowers, and also a realization that the Soviet economy and the military-industrial complex could never outperform the United States. Brezhnev's case demonstrated that even a mediocrity without much education and strategic vision can rise to the historical occasion. Without Brezhnev, there probably would not have been Nixon's trip to Moscow in May 1972 (especially in view of the bombing of North Vietnam) and the signing of the Moscow protocols with West Germany. Whether the world would have been better or worse as a result of all this is still the matter of heated dispute.

        Since 1999, I have been involved in running a small project "Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the Cold War." The idea is to explore the archives in the capitals of these three states in South Caucasus, the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union. Also, the project aims at identifying local scholars who did archival research and were interested in incorporating their results into the wider canvass of historiography of the Cold War. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Security Archive, and the Cold War International History Project provided financial assistance for this endeavor. After three years of preparation, negotiations, and preliminary trips and meetings, my colleagues and I went to the picturesque Kachety Valley at the foot of the Big Caucasus to take part in the first conference of the project. The conference lasted for two days, July 8-9, 2002, and attracted eighteen scholars from Baku, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Moscow, Paris, and Washington.

        The conference was a small political and scholarly achievement. Armenian and Azeri historians normally do not meet, since their countries maintain what can be most generously called an armed armistice after the bloody war of 1988-93. This war followed the sad trajectory of the Balkan wars, with pogroms, full-scale "ethnic cleansings" and war crimes. The bloody birth of the two "nation-states" turned historians into willing or unwilling contributors to the nation-building process. In a sharp break with this trend, four Azeri and three Armenian scholars sat at the same table and calmly discussed the new archival evidence in the broader geopolitical context. There are no illusions; the process of nation-building and the use/misuse of history by the both sides will continue. Nevertheless, when I saw the Armenians and Azeris exchange e-mail addresses and talk about sending each other new archival documents, I felt that I helped something momentous to come about.

        The value of the conference to the Cold War historiography is too early to tell. Still, for the first time the participants presented papers based on the evidence from the former party archives of the three former Soviet republics. In addition to papers, they brought hundreds of photocopies of archival documents (mostly in Russian) and passed them to the American organizers and sponsors. All these documents will be stored at the National Security Archive at George Washington University and, I hope, will be gradually translated into English.

        Most of the conference's papers revolved around Stalin and his plans for expansion at the expense of Iran and Turkey, two southern neighbors of the USSR. Armenians, incidentally, strongly objected to the use of the term "expansionist plans" in this case; they argued that Stalin simply planned to return to Armenians the lands that had belonged to them. Unfortunately, the documents say quite clearly that Stalin's expansionist schemes, not nationalist aspirations, were the driving force. Stalin and other Soviet leaders (some of them from South Caucasus) skillfully played with local "nationalisms" and used the enthusiastic support of local politicians and intellectuals to promote their designs. At the same time, it would be wrong to dismiss what we found out about local nationalist politics in 1945-47. After all, Stalin failed and his empire collapsed, while nationalist politics and local aspirations did not vanish.

        It is almost natural for a historian, when visiting the Caucasus, to think about history and strategy. For centuries, this was the disputed area among great empires and conquerors, including Ottoman Turkey, Iran and Russia. In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire waged one of the longest wars in its history to conquer ("pacify") the tribes of the Caucasus. Since 1991, the leaders of Russia have confronted the same problem with the Chechens. Interestingly, there is an informal alliance of the same elements in Europe that in the nineteenth century supported and even instigated the mountaineers' resistance against the Czars. This alliance includes some organizations and segments of public opinion in Turkey, Poland, Great Britain and France.

        While all the world's attention was and still is, from time to time, directed to Chechnya and Russian military actions there, the real pivot to the region is Georgia. The President of the Republic of Georgia is the famous Eduard Shevardnadze, and many influential Americans, especially in the Bush family and around it, consider him "a friend of the United States." For years, Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington have provided assistance to Shevardnadze, from financial to personal (Shevardnadze's personal security detail was drilled by the experts from the CIA). This friendship sometimes makes American commentators overlook facts that leap into the eye of any objective observer, particularly a historian, in Georgia. The economy of Georgia has been totally ruined by the disruption of economic and trade ties with Russia. After all, Georgia was the most southern and abundant part of the empire and enjoyed a very strong position in such lucrative fields as tourism, sub-tropical fruits, and wine-making. The collapse of the Soviet Union denied Georgia its former privileges. The economic revival of this small republic with a population of 4 million is unlikely. Among the negative factors are fantastic corruption that, according to rumors and independent reports, involve the family of the President. Sometimes it seems that only the President can feel safe in Georgia. Just a few days before I came to Tbilisi, two Western businessmen were kidnaped for ransom in plain daylight.

        The situation in Georgia is further complicated by the enmity of many leading Russian politicians towards Shevardnadze. In 1992-93, the Russian military helped separatist ethnic groups break away from Georgia; the breakaway areas include the most luxurious area of Abkhazia along the Black Sea. This recent history turned many Georgians into dedicated Russophobes. Many of them, including Shervardnadze, believe that their only hope lies with the United States and American assistance. And they have great expectations for the new pipeline that will go through Georgian territory from the Caspian Sea and down to the Turkish port Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

        One can suspect that this volatile situation is another case where the United States is being drawn, for a combination of reasons, into another faraway region. Most American experts and officials point out the strategic significance of South Caucasus and of the oil pipeline. The United States already plays the role of mediator, along with Russia and France, in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There is, however, more than mediation involved with American policy in the Caucasus. A visible group of American experts with Cold War reflexes believe that the United States should protect the region against Russian expansionist encroachments. And in Russia, there are many commentators who are vexed by the incursion of the United States into the region. With the new situation created by September 11, however, this mutual suspicion seem to have subsided considerably. President Putin even welcomes the presence of the American military in Georgia in the vicinity of the Pankyssi Gorge, the strategic route from Chechnya (and Russia) to Georgia. Still, there is a lingering danger that the United States may be drawn into conflict between Shevardnadze and his enemies. In July-August, I watched news stories on Russian television about another exacerbation of Russian-Georgian relations and the murky role that the Russian military played in it.

        Our conference in Georgia took place just thirty miles from the Pankyssi Gorge. Fortunately, we could talk about history without any trouble, untouched by current political passions. The highlight of the conference was the magnificent performance by a Georgian male polyphonic chorus. When the Georgians learned that I and my colleague, another coordinator living in the United States, had been born in Moscow, they sang a hymn to friendship between Georgian and Russian peoples. Upon a closer look, the leader of the chorus turned out to be Armenian who lived in Georgia with his family all his life. When I recall this little episode, it makes me keenly aware that strategic calculations are the product of oversimplification and distance - when details and contradictions sometimes get blurred or forgotten. When I, with my colleagues from several regional states, avidly shared new details about the early Cold War in South Caucasus, we moved in the opposite direction.

Ben Cassidy had his article, "Machiavelli and the Ideology of the Offensive Battle: Gunpowder Weapons in The Art of War," accepted for publication by the Journal of Military History, the quarterly journal of the Society for Military History. This is a landmark achievement for a graduate student, as the JMH prides itself on its selectivity.

Gregory N. Canellis, an M.A. student, had his essay, "Neglected Objectives: An Historiography of the Huertgen Forest Campaign 1944-1945," published in "Buck's War." a web site dedicated to a deceased World War II veteran who served in the 28^th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 8^th Infantry Division in the European Theater of Operations. The web site's URL is: (http://members.aeroinc.net/breners/buckswar/hist_toc.html).

        Canellis also had his undergraduate thesis, "'These Are My Credentials': An Oral History of the 13th Infantry Regiment in World War II," cited in the recently published, Fighting the Great Crusade: An 8^th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II by Gregory A. Daddis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002). Daddis is a major in the U.S. Army, a West Point graduate, and a Gulf War veteran. He also studied under Dr. Russell F. Weigley, who wrote the foreword forFighting the Great Crusade. Daddis arranged for Canellis' work to be placed on permanent loan in the Special Collections, Archives Division, U.S. Military Academy Library, West Point, New York

Ginger Davis received the Awareness of Teaching and Teaching Improvement Center's Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Teaching Assistant. Ginger taught her own course on the Vietnam War for Temple's History Department during the Spring 2002 semester.

Ginger Davis (right) and Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin at the ATTIC Awards Luncheon
on April 25, 2002, where Ginger received ATTIC's Award for Distinguished
Teaching by a Teaching Assistant.  (Courtesy William W. Cutler III)

Christian De John and Joseph Seymour, both M.A. students and also members of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, the oldest unit in the American military, have been deployed for service in the Balkans with Apache Troop, 1/104th Cavalry, 28^th Infantry Division of the National Guard.

Richard Grippaldi began his summer break by attending a three-day Chautauqua on the Korean and Vietnam Wars.Other Temple graduate students in attendance included Ginger Davis and Bobby Wintermute.

Matthew Muehlbauer received a one-month summer research fellowship from the New-York Historical Society to pursue work on a project titled "A Reconsideration of American Indian Warfare in the Colonial Era."He also received a $500 travel grant from the Temple Graduate School to defray his expenses when he presented a paper on his research topic at the 28^thCongress of the International Commission on Military History in Norfolk, Virginia, in August.

David J. Ulbrich reviewed Mary A. Renda's Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940 in the April 2002 issue of the Journal of Military History. He reviewed Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man in the Winter 2002 issue of Journal of Men's Studies. Ulbrich delivered a paper titled "Henry S. Aurand. 'Logistics' Planning, and the U.S. Army, 1919-1941" at the 2002 Society for Military History Conference at Madison, Wisconsin. He also received a student grant from the society to defray his costs in attending the meeting.

        Ulbrich received the Felix Hirsch Graduate Student Travel Award from the Historical Society to help defray his costs in attending that organization's national conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in May. During the conference, Ulbrich attended the meeting of the Historical Society's Board of Governors. As part of the Student Affairs Committee, David ran the conference's "Mock Interview Sessions."

        Ulbrich has agreed to serve as a referee for the U. S. Department of Education's "Teaching American History Program." The program, proposed by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, distributes up to $1 million to promote partnerships between institutions of higher education and secondary school districts to enhance the teaching of American history at the secondary school level. Ironically, David, who entered the Ph.D. program in 2001, was unaware that the Temple University History Department, in partnership with the Philadelphia School District, received a Teach American History grant last year.

        Bobby Wintermute enjoyed a productive summer with a fellowship at the Wood Institute at the College of Physicians. He has also been awarded a residency grant from the Rockefeller Archive for this fall. These two grants will greatly facilitate his dissertation research.

Todd Davis, who received his Ph.D. in January 2002, has had an article, "The West Wing and American Culture," accepted for publication in the fourth edition of Signs of Life in the USA: Readers on Popular Culture for Writers, edited by Sonia Maaskik and Jack Solomon (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's).

Eric Freiwald (Ph.D. 2001), is an intelligence analyst for the Pentagon. He recently completed the Army Command and General Staff Officer's Course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is one of only a handful of civilians to complete the course, and probably the first civilian to graduate with distinction.

Marc Frey, who defended his dissertation in April 2002, has been appointed a research analysts at the Strategic Assessment Center in Washington, D.C. The SAC is dedicated to producing studies and analyses on issues vital to the security of the United States. Its work focuses on long-term trends, major challenges, and potential future competitors. Analysts like Marc must integrate political, military, economic, and technology assessments for top-level decision makers in America's security establishment.

Mary E. Glantz, one of the History Department's freshly minted Ph.D.s, passed the U.S. government's Foreign Service Test with high marks and has been has been assigned by the State Department to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, which puts her close to the front line in America's current war against terrorism.

Peter Kindsvatter (Ph.D., 1996) had his revised dissertation, "Doughboys, GI's and Grunts" accepted for publication by University Press of Kansas. The outstanding quality of Kindsvatter's work was recognized by Temple University with the Bernard Watson Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences.

Jennifer L. Speelman has assumed her duties as an assistant professor at the Citadel by teaching two sections of World Civilization and two sections of a military history survey course, the United States and the Patterns of War. She is also the new History Club advisor and writes that she is drawing on all her Barnes Club experience in guiding that student organization. She promises to send Strategic Visions a photograph of herself in uniform.

Patrick Speelman is teaching two sections of Western Civilization and two sections of World Civilization this fall at the College of Charleston. There is a chance that he will be teaching military history in the spring semester. His book, Henry Lloyd and the Military Inheritance of 18th Century Europe, will be released from Greenwood Press in November. Dr. Dennis Showalter wrote a complimentary foreword for the book.

Michael E. Weaver landed a job at the U.S. Air Force's Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama within a week of receiving his Ph.D. in May.

        The Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy will sponsor special symposium, "IT and IS: The Influence of Information Technology on International Security" at 2:45 P.M. on Monday, November 4, 2002. Participants will include Jeffrey Bower of the Defense Logistics Agency and Dr. Daniel Kuehl of the School of Information Warfare & Strategy, National Defense University. As this issue of Strategic Visions goes to press, the site of the symposium has yet to be arranged. That and other details will be announced on the CENFAD web page (http://www.temple.edu/cenfad) and via e-mail.

Todd J. Davis. "Dwight D. Eisenhower and the American Way of Life: Good Citizenship, Moral Politics, and Public Leadership in the 1950s."

Eric W. Freiwald, "Building and Training the 4^th Armored Division."

Marc Frey, "Challenging the World's Conscience: The Soviet Jewry Movement, American Political Culture and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1952-1967."

Mary E. Glantz, "'Good Neighbors and Sincere Friends': United States Policy toward the Soviet Union under Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Craig A. Livingston, "From Above and Below: The Mormon Embrace of Revolution, 1849-1940."

Christopher Preble, "The Political Economy of National Security in the Nuclear Age."

Angelo Repousis, "Greek-American Foreign Relations from Monroe to Truman, 1823-1947."

Jennifer Speelman, "Nautical Schools and the Development of United States Maritime Professions, 1897-1941."

Michael E. Weaver, "The Pennsylvania National Guard's Transition from Peace to War, 1939-1944."

        On March 20, 2002, Dr. Alexander M. Bielakowski of the University of Findlay presented the second lecture in the CENFAD series commemorating the 60^th anniversary of America's involvement in World War II. Bielakowski's topic was "Major General John K. Herr: The Last Chief of Cavalry," and he spoke in Gladfelter Hall.

        During the period between the two world wars, officers of the U.S. Cavalry debated whether the future of their branch lay with the horse or the tank. Major General John K. Herr ranked among the most prominent of the horse cavalry's adherents, and he consistently opposed mechanization. Although Herr tried to offer military reasons for his traditionalist position, his devotion to the horse rested on nothing more than personal and emotional attachments. As the U.S. Army implemented mechanization, Herr's obstructionism would hamper the efforts of other officers to modernize both cavalry technology and doctrine.

        To Herr, the horse was a symbol of social prestige, a noble beast that lifted its rider above infantrymen and artillerymen both physically and morally. He viewed "progressive" officers advocating mechanization as a threat to the cavalry's elite status, as well as its proper place in military operations. Despite the stunning victories scored by German mechanized forces in the opening phases of World War II, not to mention the dominant role mechanized columns played in the U.S. Army's two massive prewar maneuvers in Louisiana and the Carolinas, Herr refused to concede that the horse cavalry was obsolete. Following the formation of the Armored Force, Herr made a belated attempt to preserve his combat branch by redefining it as a "mobile force," but he failed to keep the horse an integral part of the American military.

        Herr's inability to save the horse cavalry left him a bitter man. He remained convinced that proponents of mechanization were not concerned with strengthening the Army, but with destroying its most elegant combat branch. Even after American involvement in World War II demonstrated the utility of the tank, Herr refused to revise his earlier opinions. In fact, he would go on agitating for the restoration of the horse cavalry until after the Korean War. Though one of the most traditional, anachronistic, shortsighted, and stubborn officers within the U.S. Cavalry, Herr remains a major historical figure who exercised a powerful influence in retarding the process of mechanization during the interwar period.

        Alexander M. Bielakowski is an assistant professor at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in 2001 at Kansas State University, where he wrote a dissertation titled "U.S. Army Cavalry Officers and the Issue of Mechanization, 1920-1942." He has published articles in Army History, On Point, and the Quarterly Journal of Ideology. He also helped make "Horses in Warfare," a documentary that will air on the History Channel in April.

        CENFAD hopes to continue its World War II lecture series with presentations by outside speakers as well as History Department faculty and graduate students.

        CENFAD raised its visibility during the 2002 Spring Semester by sponsoring or co-sponsoring several special programs.

        The Honorable Peter A. Rafaeli, the consul general of the Czech Republic in Philadelphia, visited the Temple campus on March 29 to introduce a showing of In the Shadow of Memory: The Legacies of Lidice. This award-winning documentary covers the ongoing struggles of the children and grandchildren of both victims and survivors of the Nazi murder or deportation of the entire population of the village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. This incident was one of the most famous atrocities of World War II. After the film, Rafaeli fielded questions from the audience.

        CENFAD joined Temple's Intellectual Heritage Program on April 25 in staging a symposium on an always timely subject, "Legitimacy and the Use of Force: From Ancient to Contemporary Times." Dr. Vladislav Zubok of the History Department presided over this event as moderator. Dr. Daniel Tompkins, associate professor of Classics and the director of the Intellectual Heritage Program, presented "A Hedonistic Calculus? War-Making and Reality-Testing in Ancient Greece." Dr. Jay B. Lockenour, then an assistant professor of history, discussed "A Satire of Circumstance: Means and Ends in Modern Warfare." The event's featured speaker was Dr. Sergei Y. Shenin, a professor of history at Saratov State University in Russia who was in the United States as a research fellow at the George Kennan Institute for Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. Shenin spoke on "Russia's War in Chechnya: State Policies and Public Opinion."

        Dr. Hans Seidt, the cultural attache at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., closed out the semester for CENFAD on May 6 with a talk titled "Carl von Clausewitz: History, Ideas, and Contemporary Problems." Seidt explored the writings of the Prussian officer who fought Napoleon and then became the most important military theorist in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Editor: Gregory J. W. Urwin

Assistant Editor:  Britton MacDonald

Co-Editor of Internet Edition: David Rezelman

Contributors: Richard H. Immerman, Vladislav Zubok

Strategic Visions is published twice a year by the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Department of History, Temple University. CENFAD was founded in 1992 by Drs. Russell F. Weigley and Richard H. Immerman. The Center promotes research and sponsors programs designed to construct new theories of statecraft and illuminate the process whereby force and diplomacy are orchestrated to produce peace and security. Address all comments, news, and other correspondence to the editor, Gregory J. W. Urwin, Department of History, Temple University, Gladfelter Hall (025-24), 1115 W. Berks Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122. Phone: 215- 204-3809.

E-Mail: gurwin@temple.edu

        Dr. Jay B. Lockenour's first book, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945-1955, has been in print for less than a year, but it has already attracted favorable notice from academic reviewers.

        Writing for H-Net Reviews, Robert G. Moeller of the Department of History, University of California, Irvine, called Soldiers as Citizens "a significant contribution to a growing literature that explores how postwar West German society 'came to terms with the past.'" Moeller added approvingly: "Lockenour's study documents the remarkably rapid move of (West) Germany from fascism to democracy. This successful transition that took place within the context of the Cold War and on the basis of a fundamental anti-Communism that unified virtually all West Germans also included the social and political integration of the leaders of Hitler's army. This was something that Weimar could not accomplish."

        Douglas C. Peifer of the Air Command Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, reviewed Soldiers as Citizens for the Journal of Military History. "Historiographically," Peifer observed, "Lockenour's study builds on the work of James Diehl and others on veteran groups within West German society. . . . One of the strengths of this study is Lockenour's description of the types, purpose, and organizational ideology of veteran groups, ranging from associations for the disabled to regimental tradition societies to large national organizations." Peifer concluded his review by saying: "Lockenour's research on veteran groups at the periphery of German policy making provides excellent insights into their attitudes on the critical issues of the day. The plans, policies, and relationships of 'insider' veterans within the Blank Office and Bundeswehr fall outside the scope of Lockenour's study. In moving beyond the material concerns of Wehrmacht veterans to analyze their broader social and political aspirations, Lockenour makes a valuable contribution to the field."

        In the spring of 2002, University of Oklahoma Press released Michael V. Leggiere's Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 -- the first book published in the Campaigns and Commanders Series edited by Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin of Temple's History Department.

       Almost immediately, Napoleon and Berlin attracted favorable reviews heralding its significance. Fritz Heinzen of KrADeG Book Review Services labeled Napoleon and Berlin "a major contribution in the field." Pointing out that the Napoleonic literature in English tends is colored by the interests and biases of British writers, Heinzen declared: "Leggiere has mined the German archives to provide an insightful view of the fateful 183 campaign in German that is solidly based on primary sources. One cannot underestimate the significance of Leggiere's book for Napoleonic history, especially amongst those who have not read the German literature."

            Heinzen summarized Leggiere's major achievements in these terms: "(1.) He has clearly explained Napoleon's preoccupation with Berlin in his strategy, and how this became an obsession that undermined his generalship and led to utter defeat at Leipzig. (2.) He has detailed the Prussian preparations for their 1813 effort to take on Napoleon. (3.) Leggiere also chronicles the Army of North Germany's operations against Napoleon and his marshals, which he shows to be a Prussian-driven effort, accomplished primarily through Prussian force of arms on the battlefield. . . . (4.) Leggiere shows the convergence of Allies armies (as mapped out in the Trachenberg Plan) forcing Napoleon back into Leipzig where his army is destroyed." Heinzen closed his review by saying: "It is a marvelous study, an original piece of scholarship, and a required read for understanding the Napoleonic Wars. . . . It is a great debut for the series and historians will now have high expectations for following volumes."

        The Journal of Military History rushed a review of Napoleon and Berlin by Gunther E. Rothenberg into its July 2002 series. Rothenberg, a professor emeritus at Purdue University who is currently teaching at the Australian Defense Force Academy, is considered one of the top authorities on the Napoleonic Wars. He opened his review of Napoleon and Berlin with these kudos: "This book is the first by the author and the first volume in a new series, Campaigns and Commanders, by the University of Oklahoma Press. It is a most promising beginning. I know of no other book in English that discusses the two campaigns conducted by Napoleon in North Germany, the area east of the Elbe and north of Dresden, in 1813 in as much scope."

        Rothenberg praised Leggiere for covering "the problems encountered during the Prussian mobilization." "In short," he concluded, "this book is a most worthwhile contribution to the literature on the campaigns of 1813 and deserves close reading."

        The conspicuous success of Napoleon and Berlin has brought Urwin an avalanche of queries and book proposals from other military historians. Campaigns and Commanders already has eight other books under contract and several more under consideration. Michael Leggiere has agreed to write a sequel to Napoleon and Berlin about the 1814 campaign, as well as a biography of the French emperor's unrelenting Prussian nemesis, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher.

NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

Richard H. Immerman 
 

        For many of us who inhabit the academic world, "relevancy" as both a concept and an objective can be something of a slippery slope. This may be a bit more true for scholars in the humanities than those in the social sciences, but it poses a potential problem for all of us associated with the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy. We select research projects to pursue because the questions they address engage our intellectual interests. We are trained to be curious. Yet because of our special expertise, and because CENFAD has an educational mission that envelopes constituencies beyond the university -- the public and the policymaking community in particular -- we must be "relevant." Our audience demands it, so our viability and vitality require it.

        Should CENFAD then allow its assessment of what is relevant to drive its research agenda? The consequences of this strategy are often devastating. No scholar wants to commit large amounts of time, energy, and money to explore a topic that for whatever reason she/he does not find exciting. The quality of the product will suffer commensurately. It is much better, then, to trust our collective judgment that what we believe is exciting will prove exciting to our constituents as well. And using as a frame of reference CENFAD's core concern -- the interaction of force and diplomacy on an international scale -- we should trust our collective judgment that our constituents will understand the relevancy of the subject areas that engage our curiosity.

        I don't mean to sound smug, but the evidence is overwhelming that CENFAD has good reason to be confident about its collective judgment. I'll explain. In October 1999, to pay tribute to the distinguished career of one of our co-founders, Russell Weigley, CENFAD, along with the History Department and College of Liberal Arts, hosted "Military History in the United States in the Postwar Era: A Symposium Honoring Russell F. Weigley." Many of America's leading military historians attended, including those who had been or still were Russ' students. Their synergy produced the kind of vigorous discussion one rarely if ever has the opportunity to witness. During the course of one of these exchanges, the question arose as to whether contemporary attitudes toward avoiding casualties and civilian deaths during times of war had held constant throughout history or changed over time. Opinions differed -- dramatically.

        I vividly remember meeting for lunch with my CENFAD associates shortly thereafter. The discussion turned to the Center's future, and, as if on cue, we all mentioned the debate that had occurred about casualty aversion and civilian immunity at the colloquium. Then, again as if on cue, we all stated matter-of-factly that inherent in this subject were questions that warranted examination. At what point in history did state and military leaders determine on principle that an effort should be made to save the lives of both citizens and soldiers? When did this principle become an international norm, and for what reasons? When has this principle been compromised, or disregarded altogether? What were the motives? Were they legitimate? How can this principle be maintained in contemporary and future times? Might there be costs as well as benefits? A project was born over that lunch.

        Fast forward to today. There was no way to tell in 1999 what would dominate the headlines in 2002. The recently concluded war in Kosovo suggested that the questions we were asking were "policy relevant," but how long would be their shelf life? Policymakers and the public have notoriously short memories. Who could have predicted the disaster of 9/11 and the attendant "War on Terrorism?" Who could have predicted Palestinian suicide bombings would reach epidemic proportions, and the Israelis would retaliate with deadly force in densely populated neighborhoods? And who would have predicted that almost each day we would read in the papers about a new military strategy to achieve "regime change" in Iraq? In such an environment, some have suggested, notions such as casualty aversion and non-combatant immunity are luxuries that can no longer be afforded. An op ed piece in this summer'sWall Street Journal called them "outdated conventions."

        Are they? CENFAD seeks to answer that question. Our judgment was correct in 1999. We are relevant. Ironically, from the perspective of the real as opposed to academic world, it is our collective misfortune that we are so relevant.