Gorgeous Hussies and Parlor Politics

Joseph Yannielli*

One of the advantages of digital history is that it allows its practitioners to comment on public events in real time and achieve a potentially broader and more immediate impact. And what event could be more gripping than a big old scandal? Scandals tap into a seemingly universal appetite for tawdry drama. In times of great crisis or division, they serve an important cultural function. Brimming with prurient details, amplified by politicians and the media, public scandals are manufactured distractions. Really good scandals also have the capacity to shake revered institutions to their core—to disturb and expose powerful elements that are normally obscure or hidden.

Of all the endless varieties of public embarrassment, the sex scandal holds a special place for its ability to shed light on subterranean social anxieties. The latest example offers up a juicy blend of the military, politicians, the CIA, and the FBI (and the East Tuscaloosa Junior Marching Band, and Kevin Bacon, and your mom, and who knows how many others by the time the investigation is concluded). But the story is as old as America . . . or at least as old as Old Hickory.

The Petticoat Affair that almost derailed Andrew Jackson's first term as President was perhaps the first major American sex scandal. And like the still-unraveling Petraeus Affair, it disgorged fascinating information about the inner workings of power in what would become the world's mightiest military machine.

A 19th century cigar label depicting
the scandalous Peggy (O'Neal) Eaton

In her groundbreaking book Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government, historian Catherine Allgor points to the crucial role of elite women in the political culture of the federal government. Long before winning the right to vote powerful women, Allgor says, hosted influential social events, followed political debates, and conferred with their husbands. In doing so, they created the vibrant intellectual and social spaces necessary for democratic politics to function. Of course, plenty of ordinary women also made a political splash during this same period (check out marvelous new books by Stacey Robertson and Carol Faulkner, for example). These women tended to be less conservative, or from different religious backgrounds, or less economically privileged than the Washington elite. Among them may be counted Margaret "Peggy" Eaton.

Without delving into a complicated biography, it will suffice to say that Eaton was an intelligent and ambitious young women who attracted the attention of politicians and military officials in the nation's capital (Senator Andrew Jackson was an early admirer). When her first husband, a naval officer, died at sea, rumors circulated that he had killed himself as a result of his wife's alleged infidelities. Her marriage to Senator John Eaton shortly thereafter added further grist to the gossip mill, and when Jackson appointed Senator Eaton as his Secretary of War in 1829, Washington erupted. Floride Calhoun, wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, led a campaign to ostracize the Eatons from important social and political gatherings. The

President became involved and eventually his entire cabinet split into factions. After an excruciating media circus, Secretary Eaton and the rest of the cabinet resigned and the government persevered. And Peggy Eaton lived in infamy, later immortalized by Hollywood as The Gorgeous Hussy (oh, Hollywood).

The Petticoat Affair, as it came to be known, says a lot about class, gender, and sexuality in the Early Republic. But it also says a great deal about American political culture. Compared to other other sex scandals involving 19th-century politicians, it was unusually potent and destructive. The connection between the Jefferson and Hemings families, which rivals the Petticoat Affair for media-fueled speculation, did not significantly impair Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Indeed it took almost 200 years, Annette Gordon-Reed, and DNA evidence for historians to take the relationship seriously. Richard Mentor Johnson, a Jacksonian Democrat and Vice President under Martin Van Buren, made no secret of his relationship with the enslaved Julia Chinn. Although it damaged his career, and opponents published racist, sexually-charged cartoons, it did not have a lasting impact on the government. James Henry Hammond's omnivorous sexual appetite, which ranged from his college friends to his teenage nieces, resulted in a minor setback for his political ambitions, but it did not derail his career as a pro-slavery pamphleteer or his appointment to the Senate in 1857. And yet a dispute between Floride Calhoun and Peggy Eaton spiraled into a moral panic that almost brought the Jackson administration to its knees. Why did the coercive and brutal actions of slaveholders matter less than the hasty marriage of a widow?

James Akin, Newburyport, MA, c. 1804

The recent Petraeus scandal differs significantly from the original Petticoat Affair. For one thing, the sexual infidelities attributed to the Eatons were based on rumor and innuendo, while Petraeus's indiscretions have been amply and authoritatively confirmed by Google and the FBI. It may be more useful to compare Petraeus to his CIA predecessor, Allan Dulles, "a serial adulterer" whose rampant womanizing did nothing to impede his career. Although President Obama has been drawn into the controversy, making for an inauspicious start to his second term in office, it does not seem likely to destabilize his administration. At the same time, this latest scandal points to a hidden world of power and influence. Paula Broadwell, Petraeus's alleged paramour, is an ambitious scholar-soldier who earned unprecedented access to the General. Jill Kelley, the object of Broadwell's jealousy, is a wealthy volunteer ambassador with routine access to the highest ranking leaders of the United States military. Broadwell seems to have developed a relationship with Petraeus based on mutual respect and admiration. She followed him to Afghanistan, wrote his biography, and offered sympathy and companionship. She is a proud athlete and a public intellectual who performed 60 pushups on stage in front of a live studio audience. Kelley, in contrast, appears to be a classic parlor politician, operating behind the scenes, facilitating social events for the military elite, and building influential contacts. When confronted with allegedly harassing messages from Broadwell, she did not hesitate to mention the matter to a personal friend in the FBI, who then passed the information to Washington politicians, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

It may be too soon to attempt to draw conclusions from this unfolding drama. But a few things are evident, even at this early stage. The media, which eagerly pounced on the story, has presented a narrative that might be described as Gorgeous Hussies: The Sequel. Major news outlets are scrambling for any scrap of information about Broadwell and Kelley, despite their own painfully obvious desire to stay out of the spotlight. Like the public commentators who fretted over Peggy Eaton's polluting influence on the Jackson administration, there has been much hand-ringing about the "pillow talk" between Broadwell and Petraeus. Interestingly, according to Allgor, contemporaries depicted Peggy Eaton in similar terms, as a dangerously powerful "courtesan." The coverage of Kelley has been especially severe, if not voyeuristic. A feature article on CNN focuses on her "smart canary yellow dress" and "hot pink handbag," and quotes "a senior official" describing her as a "bored, rich socialite." There is a point in every scandal, perhaps, when the coverage passes from the real to the absurd. The Daily Show, mocking the media descent into tabloid gossip, has suggested that the military institute a ban on heterosexuals.

Even so, it might be worth asking why this scandal, like the Petticoat Affair, has caused so much consternation. Generals Petraeus and Allen, the establishment figures at the center of the controversy, have presided over a military-intelligence complex responsible for funneling over $1 trillion in tax revenue into wars that have cost countless lives. No senior military or intelligence official resigned over the disgrace of Abu Ghraib. Yet marital infidelity (admittedly sleezy and reprehensible) is career suicide. That could be the biggest scandal of them all.

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* Joseph Yannielli is a doctoral student in History and contributes to the blog Digital Histories at Yale.

Index for September Issue of Historically Speaking

Randall Stephens

It will be a little bit before readers have the latest issue of Historically Speaking in hand, but in the meantime have a look at what will be between the covers.  The September 2012 issue will feature conversations with historians James Banner, Ilya Grinberg, George H. Nash, and Andrew Lambert.  It also includes essays on race and religion, colonial Britain, and religion and politics as well as a two forums on war.

David Lowenthal's "The Past Made Present" is the lead essay.  He explores themes laid out in the 2nd edition of his forthcoming Cambridge University Press book The Past Is a Foreign Country. Writes Lowenthal:

Branson, Mo, theme park Silver Dollar City. Photo by Stephens, August 2012.

Two opposing attitudes dominate recent discourse on the use and misuse of history. Many take refuge in the past as an antidote to present disappointments and future fears. They hark back nostalgically or formulaically to the fancied benefits, even to the fearsome burdens, of times of lost purity and simplicity, lapsed immediacy and certitude, in some Golden Age of classical serenity, Christian faith, pastoral plenitude, or childhood innocence. Sojourning in the past seems preferable to living in the present.

And given the mounting surfeit of heritage sites and structures, more and more of the past is accessible. Critics find the collective legacy crushingly voluminous, backward looking, and crippling to present enterprise. Fifty years ago architectural historian Reyner Banham condemned “the load of obsolete buildings that Europe is humping along on its shoulders [as] a bigger drag on the live culture of our continent than obsolete nationalisms or obsolete moral codes.” The load is now heavier. In much of England one feels hardly ever out of sight of a listed building, a protected archaeological site, a museum-worthy work of art. The treasured past is said to overwhelm French culture and politics. “Everything is indiscriminately conserved and archived,” notes a historian of the patrimony. “We no longer make history,” charges Jean Baudrillard. “We protect it like an endangered masterpiece.” The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas calls preservation a dangerous epidemic. Noting that UNESCO and similar bodies sequester one-sixth of the Earth’s surface, with more to come, he terms heritage a metastasizing cancer.

The popular alternative to wallowing in the past is to dismiss it entirely. The past has ever-diminishing salience for lives driven by today’s feverish demands and delights. The sensory-laden penchant for computer gaming, coupled with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, betoken a here-and-now environment dominated by raw sensations, in which “we live perpetually in the present.” Being up-to-date now not only matters most, it is all that matters; knowing or understanding the past is an impediment in the present rat race. . . .

Historically Speaking (September 2012):

The Past Made Present

David Lowenthal

British Perspectives on the War of 1812

The War of 1812 in the Grand Sweep of Military History

Jeremy Black

“Faithful History”: British Representations of the War of 1812

Andrew D. Lambert

The Naval War of 1812: An Interview with Andrew Lambert

Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

From Light to White: The Place and Race of Jesus in Antebellum America

Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey

Freedom Betrayed: An Interview with George H. Nash about Herbert Hoover’s Magnum Opus

Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

Along the Hindu Kush: Warren Hastings, the Raj, and the Northwest Frontier

Kenneth W. Harl

The Soviet Air Force in World War II

Out of the Blue: The Forgotten Story of the Soviet Air Force in World War II

Von Hardesty

Red Phoenix Rising: An Interview with Ilya Grinberg

Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

In Search of the City on a Hill  

Richard Gamble

On Being a Historian: An Interview with James M. Banner, Jr.

Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

Was There a Schlieffen Plan?

Steven Cromack

In a 1999 journal article published in War in History, historian Terence Zuber dropped a bombshell on the academic community.  He argued that the Schlieffen Plan, or the German attack plan during World War I, was a post-war construction written by the generals to justify why the Germans lost the war.  He based his argument strictly on not only the primary sources that have been around since the War, but also new sources that became available with the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Zuber’s individual pieces of evidence are circumstantial. Take all of it into consideration, however, and he makes a compelling case.  A few years later, he published a book on the topic with Oxford University Press (Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914).

“The Schlieffen Plan” was the so-called German attack plan supposedly articulated by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff.  It was Germany’s roadmap to war—if all went according to “the Plan,” Germany would deliberately start World War I on their terms in 1916.  It called for rapid building of railroads across the country from West to East.  The attack would consist of the right wing invading Belgium and swing wide around Paris, striking the city from the West.  The left flank would remain stationary at Lorraine and hold off the likely French counterattack.  In the eyes of Schlieffen, France would surrender before they let anything happen to Paris.  Then, with France out of the war, the German army would utilize their new railroads, move its troops across the country to Eastern front, and knock out Russia.  As history “happened,” when entangling alliances ignited the so-called “powder keg,” and launched the War earlier than the Germans had hoped, the Schlieffen plan fell apart.  Schlieffen died, and his successor, Ludwig von Moltke not only inherited the Plan, but also altered it, or failed to understand it.  Von Moltke moved troops away from the West to bolster the Russian front.  “And the rest,” they say, “is history.”

Zuber challenged that history.  He wrote that there never was mention of a “Schlieffen Plan” before 1920.  Instead, he argued that when one historian wrote that Germany employed the wrong strategy, the generals and other members of the General staff, Kuhl, Ludendorff, Foerster and Groener, countered with the myth that Schlieffen had conveyed his master plan to Moltke, but that Moltke failed to understand it.  One should note that historians base their histories of the war on Ludendorff and others’ accounts.

According to Zuber, Schlieffen did have some contingency plans, although they remained in his possession until he died, and were not locked in the vault with the rest of the German war plans.  Zuber insisted that on its own, the Plan, or Denkschrift was a nightmare, poorly organized, and called for troop numbers that never existed.  Schlieffen’s war games, as evident in his writings and handwritten diagrams, did not resemble the master plan, or anything close to it.  Zuber based this argument on the newly discovered German staff memorandum, prepared by Major Wilhelm Dieckmann.  Dieckmann was a German officer whose task was to write a history of the war, and he therefore had access to many of Schlieffen’s notes, and war plans before Allied bombings during World War II destroyed them.  According to Zuber, Dieckmann’s manuscript revealed that Schlieffen’s “Plan” intended to keep the East strong and hold off the French by defeating their fortification line.  Schlieffen never envisioned swinging wide around the Paris and defeating the French army.  If this is true, then the Schlieffen Plan, as we know it, is wrong.

Zuber’s article and subsequent publications provoked a fifteen-year debate in War in History, especially between himself and historian Terence Holmes of Swansea University.  The debate over whether there was or whether there was not a Schlieffen Plan continues to this day.  The debate, however, has not reached high school history textbooks, or even undergraduate classes on European history.  It seems that historians are having trouble grappling with Zuber’s uncomfortable argument.  Why would they not?  He only insists that the academy has gotten World War I wrong for the last hundred years.  Such an assertion changes the interpretation and sequence of events.  Zuber writes that he seeks “establish German military history according to the standard of Leopold von Ranke: ‘as it actually was.’”  He, therefore, concluded his article, “There never was a ‘Schlieffen Plan.’”

For those interested in the heated debate in War in History thus far, here is the “Roundup” from Zuber’s website (http://www.terencezuber.com/):

T. Zuber, 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered' in: War in History, 1999; 3: pp. 262-
305.

T. Holmes, 'A Reluctant March on Paris', in: War in History, 2001; 2: pp. 208-32.

T. Zuber, 'Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan' in: War in History 2001; 4,
pp. 468-76.

T. Holmes, 'The Real Thing' in: War in History, 2002, 1, pp. 111-20.

T. Zuber, 'Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan - Again' in: War in History
2003; 1, pp. 92-101.

R. Foley, 'The Origins of the Schlieffen Plan' in: War in History, 2003; 2 pp. 222-32.

T. Holmes, 'Asking Schlieffen: A Further Reply to Terence Zuber' in: War in History
2003; 4, pp. 464-479.

T. Zuber, 'The Schlieffen Plan was an Orphan' in: War in History, 2004; 2 pp. 220-25.

R. Foley, ‘The Real Schlieffen Plan’ in: War in History, 2006; 1, pp. 91-115.

T. Zuber, ‘The ‘Schlieffen  Plan’ and German War Guilt’ in: War in History, 2007; 1,
pp. 96-108.

A. Mombauer, ‘Of War Plans and War Guilt: The Debate Surrounding the Schlieffen
Plan’ in: Journal of Strategic Studies XXVIII, 2005.

T. Zuber, ‘Everybody Knows There Was a ‘Schlieffen Plan”: A Reply to Annika
Mombauer’ in War in History, 2008; 1. pp. 92-101.

G. Gross, ‘There Was a Schlieffen Plan: New Sources on the History of German War
Planning’ in: War in History, 2008; 4, pp. 389-431.

T. Zuber, ‘There Never was a “Schlieffen Plan” (in preparation)

T. Holmes, ‘All Present and Correct: The Verifiable Army of the Schlieffen Plan’, in:
War in History, 2009, 16 (1) 98-115.

T. Zuber, ‘The Schlieffen Plan’s “Ghost Divisions” March Again:  A Reply to Terence
Holmes’ (in preparation)

The Battle of Olustee, February 20, 1864

Heather Cox Richardson

Monday was the anniversary of the Battle of Olustee, the largest Civil War battle fought in Florida. Although few people today have even heard of it, Olustee was crucial in convincing Civil War era Americans to accept black freedom.

On February 7, 1864, Federal troops landed in Jacksonville. Carving Florida off from the rest of the Confederacy had several obvious advantages. First, the Confederacy was hurting for food, especially cattle. When the Union took the Mississippi River, it cut off the Texas herds from the rest of the South. The cattle herds in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina could not fill the gap. If the Union could cut the lines for moving the Florida cattle that still fed the South in 1864, it would be closer to starving the South into submission. One general estimated in 1864 that 20,000 head of cattle and 10,000 hogs a year went from Florida to feed the Southern armies.

President Lincoln also wanted to reorganize Florida out from under the Confederacy as a free state much as he was trying to do in Louisiana. Opponents carped that he was trying to get Florida back into Congress so he could count on more electoral votes in the 1864 election, although there were obvious reasons to want Florida back on the Union side even without the president’s reelection fight looming on the horizon.

Finally, an excursion into Florida promised to attract black recruits to fight for the Union. And in 1864, new soldiers would be quite welcome to the battle-thinned Union ranks.

Brigadier General Truman Seymour, the head of the expedition, had strict orders not to move far from Jacksonville. Instead, Union troops under Colonel Guy V. Henry of the Fortieth Massachusetts mounted quick raids that destroyed supplies and reconnoitered the Confederate army. Their operations among the poor and dispirited people were successful and relatively painless: they suffered few losses.

It was perhaps the ease of the raiding to that date that made General Seymour decide on February 17 to march his 5,500 men 100 miles west to destroy the railroad bridge over the Suwanee River. Seymour did not know that Confederate officers had surmised the danger to Florida and had moved troops quickly to prevent Union troops from gaining a foothold in the interior. Five thousand Confederates under Brigadier General Joseph Finegan were encamped on the road Seymour’s men would take, near the railroad station at Olustee, about fifty miles from Jacksonville.

When the two armies came together in mid-afternoon on February 20, Seymour threw his men in without much forethought, apparently believing he was up against the same ragtag fighters Henry had been smashing for weeks. But Finegan’s men were experienced troops. They trained their cannons and held their ground. The Union lost more than 1800 men to the Confederacy’s 950. Most of the surviving Union soldiers ran from the field to hightail it down the road back to Jacksonville.[1]

The Union rout did not turn into a panic solely because the remnants of the Massachusetts 54th and the 35th U. S. Colored Troops held the Confederates back to cover the retreat. The soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th had earned their reputation for bravery in the assault at Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina the previous July. At Olustee, the black soldiers from the 54th and the 35th held their ground until past dark, enabling the white troops to get safely out of range, before they received their orders to move back toward Jacksonville.

Few people now remember Florida’s major Civil War battle, but it made a searing impression on President Lincoln. “There have been men who have proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson & Olustee to their masters to conciliate the South,” he told visitors in August 1864. “I should be damned in time & in eternity for so doing.” (AL to Alexander W. Randall and Joseph T. Mills, August 19, 1864, in Roy P. Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, volume 7, pp. 507.)
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[1] The New York Times noted that the Colonel Henry had three horses shot out from under him during the battle, but was himself unhurt. His luck would not hold. Henry continued to serve in the army until 1892. He fought in the Apache campaign before joining the Sioux Wars. He was shot in the face in the Battle of the Rosebud, losing part of his cheek and one eye. He later led the Ninth Cavalry in the events surrounding the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee Massacre.

The Guns Will Be Silent

Philip White

This past week we had a date anomaly – the day, week and month all mirroring each other. But for a small, and ever-dwindling, group of men, the past seven days were significant for a reason far more profound than calendar alignment. They gathered at sites across Europe and America commemorate the moment when, on the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month of 1918, the roaring guns of World War I finally fell silent.

It soon became known as the “Great War,” yet that is ill-fitting in all respects save one – the great sacrifices made by soldiers and their families on both sides. More than 8.5 million died (and a further 21 million were wounded), and their number has been dubbed “The Lost Generation,” to signify the enormous loss of life and potential on the fields of Flanders and beyond.

After the war, the leaders of the Western Allies idealistically hoped for permanent peace, though the League of Nations that was set up to foster togetherness and prevent future hostility quickly proved to be a paper tiger. Nonetheless, the sentiment of “never again” was on most lips among the “victors.” Meanwhile, the defeated Germans smarted, not just at their losses of men and material, but also at the overly-punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which punished the “Fatherland” by imposing harsh sanctions on an already ravaged economy, and confiscated territories far and wide. It was the resulting frustration and the promise of restoring national pride that enabled Hitler to take power so swiftly and terribly in the mid to late 1930s. Even with his rise, the majority outside of Germany still hoped for peace, not seeing that no number of Munich Agreements could slake the Fuhrer’s lust for revenge and land.

Though it is easy with hindsight to slam those who, like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, signed such treaties and they must certainly be held accountable for inaction and, in some cases, capitulation, it is just as easy to forget how horrendous the trench-based battles of World War I were, and the impact they had on the collective psyches of both the victors and the vanquished.

Trench foot, rat bites, and typhoid were rampant, as the soldiers literally rotted in their water-logged holes, to say nothing of the mustard gas. There was no sanitation, no clean facilities to treat the wounded, no place to bury the dead. Then, when they were sent over the top, the weak, despairing bunch were greeted by machine gun fire that toppled their ranks like contorted dominoes and, if they advanced to the enemy lines, were ensnared as if they were game in barbed wire, or run through by enemy bayonets. Those who did not capture their foes’ positions yet could not make it back to their own trenches were sometimes so stunned by the clamor, the fear and the firework flashes of barking muzzles that they wandered around in “No Man’s Land” until captured, finished off or, for a lucky few, retrieved by their comrades. Some opposing trenches gained or lost a total of mere inches over the course of the war.

And so, can we blame Chamberlain and his ilk for wanting to never repeat such brutality? Even Winston Churchill, his most outspoken critic and the man whose vision highlighted his predecessor’s short-sighted foreign policy, could not condemn Chamberlain, saying at his funeral, “It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? . . . They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart—the love of peace.”

60 years after Chamberlain’s doomed attempt to save Europe from repeating the carnage of The Great War, I journeyed to Belgium for what was, I soon realized, one of the most moving experiences of my life. Along with 20 A-Level history classmates and our two teachers, we toured some of the pivotal World War I battlefield sites and watched the surviving veterans gather at the Menin Gate, tears streaming down their wrinkled faces as they hunched over in wheelchairs or leaned against stout sticks. They lit candles to commemorate their fallen brethren’s sacrifice.

Though going into the claustrophobic trenches was terrifying and viewing the seemingly infinite list of names at the Allied cemeteries depressing, I was most affected by a little country graveyard on the top of a Belgian hill. There, rows of white Portland stone headstones stood in neat rows on newly-trimmed, almost impossibly green grass, arrayed in a manner far more dignified than the inglorious ends of the lives they commemorated. My father owns a monumental mason’s business in England, so I am used to seeing well-kept cemeteries with finely-worded inscriptions on stone. But the sadness and, in some cases, disbelief of the families who had lost their boys on foreign fields was so starkly recorded that it was almost too much to take. And boys most were—19, 17, some even 16 years old—from a cluster of English villages. Communities’ entire young male populations finished. Dead. Never coming back. We learned from our instructors that some 14- and 15-year-olds had even faked birth certificates so they could go to the front with their pals. Knowing I would not have been so brave, I left with tears burning hot on my cheeks. No, I could not cry the same way that those old men in Ypres wept, for what do I know of war, of seeing my closest friends cut down like they are nothing? Yet, as I scribbled some heartfelt lines in my notebook later, I knew that any illusions I had of war being glorious were forever gone.

A Thank You to Our Troops—All of Them—on this Memorial Day

Heather Cox Richardson

Memorial Day came out of the Decoration Days held after the Civil War. This seems like a logical thing for me, a scholar of nineteenth century America, to write about today.

Instead, though, I’d like to talk about a group of soldiers that often gets forgotten when we remember our troops. I mean the WACs, the more than 150,000 women who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

The army had an existing Army Nurse Corps, but in 1941, Massachusetts Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers introduced a bill to establish an Army women’s corps, distinct from the Nurse Corps. During WWI, women had worked with the Army overseas, but because they were contract employees they got no housing, food, protection, or benefits. Rogers wanted to be sure that the same did not happen again.

Army leaders objected to permitting women to join the army directly, so officials hammered out a bill that created the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (the WAAC). This group was to work with the Army and receive some of the benefits of military service, but not all. The Army would provide up to 150,000 women with food, housing, uniforms, and pay—although at a lower scale than men. Women could serve overseas, but they would not get overseas pay, life insurance, or veterans medical and death benefits.

Even with these limits in place, the bill went nowhere until Pearl Harbor. Then Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall threw his weight behind it, recognizing that using women to type and run switchboards would free men to fight. “Who will then do the cooking, the washing, the mending, the humble homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself; who will nurture the children?” wailed one congressman. The need to mobilize for war outweighed the strong cultural objections to the new plan. On May 15, 1942, President Roosevelt signed it into law.

The Army Air Force was especially eager for WAACs to work in weather operations, as cryptographers, radio operators, parachute riggers, and to keep track of personnel records (on the statistical control tabulating machines that led to modern-day computers). Some also flew planes for the AAF.

WAACs also worked for the ground Army, processing men, issuing weapons, tracking supplies, analyzing maps, dispatching boats, servicing equipment, calculating bullet velocity, and operating radios.

So successful were they that five days after the invasion of North Africa, Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower requested five WAAC officers—including two that spoke French—be dispatched to Allied headquarters to become executive secretaries. The ship carrying the women was hit by a torpedo. Pulled out of the water by British destroyers, the women survived and served on Eisenhower’s staff for the rest of the war.

The WAACs had proved so useful that it was a crisis for the Army when recruiting fell off dramatically in 1943. As much as Army officers liked WAACs for freeing men to fight, the men fighting—and their female relatives—resented the women whose service took the men from typewriters and put them on the front lines. Popular images of the WAACs were that they were loose women who cast off traditional roles and joined the service to get men. Suddenly, “nice” girls did not join the WAAC.

Here the Army stepped in to convert the WAAC into part of the regular Army: the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). This would not only undercut the tarnishing of the women who wanted to serve their country, it would enable the Army to offer the same protections to women serving overseas as it did to men. In July, Congress created the WAC. The War Department quickly stepped up recruiting.

Immediately, WACs went to the overseas theaters. 300 WACs with the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) translated reports from the French underground and compiled files on the German officers. They kept the situation maps current. Other WACs followed the Army to Normandy and took over the switchboards abandoned by the Germans. In the Southwest Pacific Theater, WACs arrived with standard-issue clothing, including ski pants and heavy coveralls. They developed skin diseases from the heavy clothing—the dreaded “jungle rot”—and malaria because they shed their heavy clothes in desperation, leaving themselves vulnerable to mosquitoes. Women in this theater had to be locked in a barbed wire compound at all times to protect them from the male troops.

Like the men, women demobbed after the war ended. By the end of 1946, only 10,000 women were still in the Army, and they hoped to stay. Earlier that year, Army officials asked Congress to make the WAC permanent. Congress did so in 1948, and the WAC remained part of the Army until 1978, when women were integrated into the regular Army in all branches except combat.

The tens of thousands of women who had served in the Army during WWII braved social ostracism to serve their country. In the process, they proved that women could perform every bit as well as men, even in that bastion of males: the Army.

Those women went back to their homes across America. When they married and had children, they made sure their daughters knew that they could grow up to be anything they wanted.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Memorial Day.

The National Park Service Takes an Expansive Look at the Civil War

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Today's timely guest post comes from Todd Arrington, a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His dissertation looks at Civil War-era Republicans.

Todd Arrington

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War began on April 12 with a ceremony at Fort Sumter National Monument in South Carolina. Fort Sumter was, of course, the site of the war’s first military engagement. Today, the National Park Service (NPS) administers Fort Sumter, along with more than 75 other Civil War-related sites. These locations will all be very busy over the next four years as America commemorates the sesquicentennial of its most traumatic event.

When the nation celebrated the Civil War’s 100th anniversary in 1961-65, visitors to NPS sites like Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and others learned a great deal about Civil War strategy and tactics. Park Rangers regaled them with tales of forced marches, frontal assaults, and unbelievable acts of valor. However, because “Lost Cause” ideology still dominated popular interpretation of the war, visitors did not learn why Northerners and Southerners had taken up arms in the first place. Difficult conversations about race, slavery, emancipation, and civil rights were taking place in academic circles (and increasingly on the evening news), but the National Park Service did not engage the public on these issues at Civil War battlefields and historic sites.

Over the past decade or so, the NPS has drastically changed how it interprets the Civil War. In 1999, Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., initiated a movement to require the Service to “interpret the unique role that slavery played in the cause of the conflict” at all Civil War sites. Not long after, David W. Blight published his brilliant and influential 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). This volume examines how and why the slavery issue was pushed to the background by postwar Northerners and Southerners alike and makes it clear that a narrative of “soldierly valor” that completely ignored slavery’s role in causing the war dominated Civil War history for decades. This at least partially explains why Rangers at NPS sites were so good at interpreting army maneuvers but completely ignored the issues that led to those very maneuvers ever being necessary.

Congressman Jackson’s initiative and Professor Blight’s book caused a fundamental re-thinking of how the NPS presents the Civil War era’s history to visitors. Today, the agency seems determined to avoid the mistakes of 1961-65. Those interested in the military history of the war still find much to excite them at NPS Civil War sites. However, Park Ranger interpretive programs also now deal with the issues that led to war. In other words, today slavery is openly examined, discussed, and debated at NPS sites. Understanding why the nation went to war with itself—and what the war’s stakes truly were—can only increase visitor appreciation of these sites and, ultimately, the sacrifices made upon those fields.

The NPS has just published a new official commemorative handbook for the 150th anniversary. Titled The Civil War Remembered, the book’s contents page makes it clear that this is not your father’s (or grandfather’s) Civil War history. Noted historians have contributed essays on nearly every aspect of the war itself as well as the pre- and post-war periods. James McPherson provides the Introduction; James Oliver Horton writes on “Confronting Slavery and Revealing the ‘Lost Cause.’” Ira Berlin tackles “Race in the Civil War Era,” while Allen C. Guelzo looks at “Emancipation and the Quest for Freedom.” Essays on the experiences of women, civilians, and the Border States appear. The war’s impact of westward expansion, industry, and economy are explained. Eric Foner contributes on “Reconstruction,” Drew Gilpin Faust on “Death and Dying,” and David W. Blight examines “The Civil War in American Memory.” Those still fascinated by the war’s military history will enjoy “The Military Experience” by Carol Reardon.

By publishing such an eclectic set of essays by noted scholars of the Civil War era, the NPS has demonstrated its commitment to a better understanding of the full scope of the era. This has not been done at the expense of interpreting military history; rather, the agency’s willingness to examine not only how the North and South conducted the war but also its causes only adds to a better public understanding of the war and its complicated legacy.

Jack Miller Center Essay Prize Competition for the best essays published in Historically Speaking

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Announcing . . .

The Jack Miller Center Essay Prize Competition for the best essays published in Historically Speaking during 2011 in the following areas:

Intellectual History or the History of Political Thought

Military or Diplomatic History

The prizes are $1000 each and will be awarded in January 2012. Essay submission guidelines for Historically Speaking can be found at www.bu.edu/historic/hs/ guide.html. Direct all submissions and questions about the prize competition to: Donald Yerxa at historic@bu.edu.

The Jack Miller Center is a nonprofit, nonsectarian, nonpartisan, educational organization dedicated to strengthening the teaching of America’s founding principles and history.

Jack Miller Center-Historically Speaking Prize Essay Competition

Randall Stephens

We are happy to report the inaugural winners of the Jack Miller Center-Historically Speaking Prize Essay Competition. At a recent Jack Miller Center reception held in conjunction with American Historical Association’s annual meeting in Boston, Pamela Edwards, the Miller Center's director of academic initiatives, and Donald Yerxa, senior editor of Historically Speaking, announced the winners of the 2010 Miller Center Prizes (of $1000 each) for the best essays published in Historically Speaking in the areas of (1) intellectual history and the history of political thought and (2) military-diplomatic history.

Christopher Shannon, associate professor of history at Christendom College, won the intellectual history prize for his essay: "From Histories to Traditions: A New Paradigm of Pluralism in the Study of the Past" (January 2011). Peter Paret of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton won the military-diplomatic prize for his essay "Two Historians on Defeat and War and Its Causes" (June 2010). The Society thanks the Miller Center for its support of historical scholarship in the service of improved public understanding. We are delighted with the partnership being forged between the Historical Society and the Jack Miller Center. It promises to be a very congenial and mutually beneficial collaboration.

Mr. Jefferson’s Army in the 21st Century?

Tom Army

Today's guest post comes from Tom Army, who received his B.A. from Wesleyan University (1976) and M.A.L.S. from Wesleyan University (1982). Army is doing graduate work at UMass Amherst on the "correlation between the North and South's different market economies and educational systems prior to the Civil War and the effectiveness of Union and Confederate engineering during the war."

On November 10, 2010 the New York Times ran an Op-Ed arguing that as the American military debates the role of the armed forces in future conflicts, planners should look to Thomas Jefferson and his “Army of Nation-Builders” as a compelling model. The author of the article, Dominic Tierney, an assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore College, cited the establishment of the military academy in 1802 by President Jefferson, and the role of West Point-trained engineers and topographical engineers in forging a new nation, Tierney pointed out correctly that these “West Point graduates left their scientific and engineering mark on America.” For the 21st century, Tierney continued, we need a “multipurpose army” to fight conventional and irregular wars and to develop the skills necessary to become effective nation-builders. Tierney wrote that American soldiers “who are helping Afghans build greenhouses, grow crops and better feed cattle are not losing their identity as warriors—they’re following in the footsteps of our earliest soldiers.”

Besides whether or not it is appropriate for the United States to be involved in the nation-building business, the problem with the Tierney thesis is that his use of the Jefferson model does not stand up to historical scrutiny. As army engineers of the 19th century built canals and dredged harbors, the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and supply branches were poorly trained and unprepared to meet the initial challenges of the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I. Focusing on nation building undermined the army’s ability to fight.

Throughout the 19th century the regular army was hard pressed to meet the changing nature of warfare. For example, in April 1861 there was not an officer in either army who had led anything more than a regiment. After the war the military’s unpreparedness was a theme army reformers such as Emory Upton and Frederic Louis Huidekoper attempted to address. In 1915, Huidekoper, founder of the Army League of the United States, published The Military Unpreparedness of the United States: A History of American Land Forces from Colonial Times until June 1, 1915. After hostilities erupted between Mexican and American forces along our southern border, Huidekoper noted, “The attempts made to assemble one paltry division of Regular troops . . . afforded to the world the edifying spectacle of a great nation composed of one hundred million people virtually destitute of the means to make the few soldiers whom it could muster efficient as a fighting force.”

An important reason why the Regular Army was ill prepared to fight our 19th century wars was twofold. First, military engineers eventually became civilian engineers such as George McClellan, and they contributed technical skills to our burgeoning economy. To train these men at the public’s expense was justifiable. Second, we abandoned infantry and cavalry officers to western outposts guarding the frontier and fighting Native Americans because they were judged to have less value than the engineers. Americans celebrated the citizen-soldier and this military ideology dated back to Lexington and Concord. Standing armies were European and aristocratic by nature. Volunteers and militia who fought to defend freedom, liberty, and democratic virtue could defeat regulars.

Lawmakers and citizens throughout the 19th century expressed this cultural attitude. John A. Logan, a former Union Army general, wrote about his faith in an army of volunteers. Published one year after his death, The Volunteer Soldier of America (1887) attacked professional armies as, “undemocratic, un-American, and almost unnecessary; caste-ridden, cliquish, hidebound.” It was not until 1881 that Congress established the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1901 the Army War College was created and in 1903 a modern General Staff was organized.

The world today is very different from the 19th century and so is the army. Warfare has changed so dramatically that our armed forces must continue to plan for a multitude of contingencies, and planners need to debate, anticipate, and train for future conflicts. The military does not want to find itself in the same situation it found itself in Iraq and Afghanistan. It took us six years of fighting and dying before we figured out how to fight an insurgency. Finally, if we do consider nation building we can draw from the extensive civilian resources at our disposal. If nation building becomes part of our foreign policy and war aim, we need to teach others how to do it. Doing it for them is counterproductive. The lessons of the Vietnam War clearly speak to this issue. But that is a story for another time.

Myths of World War II: A Lecture

Donald Yerxa

Although some have questioned the health of the field of military history in today’s academy, there is no doubt that outstanding work is being done in military and naval history these days. A number of forums, essays, and interviews appearing in Historically Speaking over the past couple of years attest to this. And there has been outstanding work done especially on World War II.

I would like to alert readers of the blog to a major event in academic military history that will occur next month at the American Historical Association meeting in Boston. Gerhard L. Weinberg will give the Annual George C. Marshall Lecture on Military History (sponsored by the George C. Marshall Foundation and the Society for Military History) on Saturday, January 8, 2011, 5:00 PM-6:30 PM in Marriott Boston Copley Place’s Grand Ballroom Salon F. A reception will follow in nearby Grand Ballroom Salon E.

Weinberg, an emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina, is an internationally recognized authority on Nazi Germany and the origins and course of World War II. His lecture, “Some Myths of World War II,” will examine some widely shared myths of the war—ones pertaining to the war as a whole as well as some about individual leaders and groups of individuals. Included among the latter will be Adolf Hitler and his generals, Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Yamamoto Isoroku. Weinberg’s talk will also touch on such issues as the Yalta Conference and the Morgenthau Plan. As the war recedes in time, much new information has become available, but certain myths enjoy a long life.

Brian Linn, the president of the Society for Military History and a frequent contributor to Historically Speaking, invites interested historians to attend the lecture and reception. It is a great opportunity to meet new people, talk about military history, and learn about what is going on in the field.

November Issue of Historically Speaking

Randall Stephens

The November issue of Historically Speaking should be arriving in mailboxes soon. Not long after that it will appear on Project Muse. The issue features essays on race and culture, "modernist" economics, the Viking Age, Byzantium, Arabs and Jews in Israel, and the philosophy of history. It also includes a forum on comparative ways of war and interviews with Donald Kagan and Richard Reinsch.

Nancy Marie Brown has an essay here, too, about an intriguing figure from the Dark Ages that I knew absolutely nothing about: "In Search of the Scientist Pope, Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 950-1003)." (Brown also supplied us with the striking photo of the statue for the cover.) This piece on a monk who would become Pope Sylvester II made me wonder how many other historical characters, perhaps lost to the ages, might make us rethink what we know about a given period. Brown writes:

Born a peasant in the mountainous Cantal region of France in the mid-900s, Gerbert entered the monastery of Saint-Gerald’s of Aurillac as a child. There he learned to read and write in Latin. He studied Cicero, Virgil, and other classics. He impressed his teacher with his skill in debating. He was a fine writer, too, with a sophisticated style full of rhetorical flourishes.

To further his education, his abbot sent him south with the count of Barcelona in 967 to the border of al-Andalus. Islamic Spain was an extraordinarily tolerant culture in which learning was prized. The library of the caliph of Cordoba held 40,000 books (some said 400,000); by comparison, Gerbert’s French monastery owned less than 400. Many of the caliph’s books came fromBaghdad, known for its House of Wisdom, where for 200 years works of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and medicine were translated from Greek and other languages and further developed by Islamic scholars. Arabic was then the language of science. It was from al-Andalus that the essence of modern mathematics, astronomy, physics, medicine, philosophy—even computer science—would seep northward into Christian Europe over the next 300 years. While Gerbert lived in Spain the first of many science books were translated from Arabic into Latin through the combined efforts of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars. Many of the translators were churchmen; some became Gerbert’s lifelong friends and correspondents.

Gerbert’s role in bringing these ideas from Cordoba to Rome is unclear. Writers in the 11th and 12th centuries made him the instigator. Gerbertus Latio numeros abacique figuras runs a verse on two mathematical manuscripts, meaning—as the illustrations clearly show—the Arabic numerals 1 to 9. Seven manuscripts (out of eighty) give him credit for the first Latin explanation of the astrolabe. Even William of Malmesbury, whose 12th-century history of Gerbert’s stay in Spain reads like The Arabian Nights, says he “surpassed Ptolemy in knowledge of the astrolabe” and “was the first to seize the abacus from the Saracens.” . . .

Gerbert also took an experimental approach in his study of music. He made a pipe organ and wrote a treatise explaining how to compute the length of organ pipes for a span of two octaves. He was searching for a mathematical truth: a law for computing the dimensions of an organ pipe that would sound the same note as the string of a certain length on the monochord. He came up with an equation, using what physicists call “opportune constants” (or “fudge factors”), that allowed him to switch, mathematically, from the monochord to organ pipes and back. His treatise shows an extraordinarily modern perspective. He did not simply theorize—or search out authorities. He collected data and made practical acoustic corrections. His solution is ingenious, though labor intensive, and stands up to the scrutiny of modern acoustics theory. (Read more in the print or the on-line version when it's posted next week.)

Historically Speaking (November 2010)

Modernist Economics
Wyatt Wells

Winning All the Battles
Robert L. O’Connell

The Waspish Hetero-Patriarchy: Locating Power in Recent American History
Kevin M. Schultz

Empathy and the Etiology of the Viking Age
Robert Ferguson

Whittaker Chambers the Counterrevolutionary: An Interview with Richard Reinsch
Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

Byzantine Exceptionalism and Some Recent Books on Byzantium
Warren Treadgold

Comparative Ways of War: A Roundtable

The German Way of War Revisited
Robert M. Citino

The American Way of War Debate: An Overview
Brian McAllister Linn

The Many Ways of Chinese Warfare
Peter Lorge

Wending Through the Way of War
James Jay Carafano

Thucydides and the Lessons of Ancient History: An Interview with Donald Kagan
Conducted by Randall J. Stephens

On the Liberation from the Tyranny of the Past: Arabs and Jews in Israel
Alon Confino

History’s a Mystery
Bruce Kuklick

In Search of the Scientist Pope, Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 950-1003)
Nancy Marie Brown

Honor and the War in Afghanistan

Bertram Wyatt-Brown

"Honor has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage."
- Rupert Brooke (1914)

Does the venerable ethic of honor apply in any way to our ongoing Middle Eastern wars? In dealing with Afghanistan, it seems that President Barack Obama feels obliged to preserve America’s honor despite his personal skepticism regarding the outcome. General David H. Petraeus, the Afghanistan commander, proposes that the U.S. Army’s honor is at stake as well. But if the latest offensive does not achieve realistic results, should we order the troops to soldier on for honor’s sake indefinitely? Are there better alternatives for a cause with few positive advantages? Those are some of the big questions that will face us next summer when the American mission is scheduled to draw down.

From the American perspective, honor, it could be argued, prompts our continuing war in Afghanistan. We don’t use that rather antiquated term except in the ceremony that confers the Medal of Honor for outstanding, self-sacrificing bravery in battle. Since the dawn of human history, however, armies have universally required: respect and obedience to higher authorities; self-denying discipline; and loyalty toward and willingness to defend others in the ranks. These make up the essence of a code. To fail to meet such imperatives can mean shame and disgrace. That stigma must be averted at all costs.

In Afghanistan, the American government obviously sought retribution for the brutal assault of Al Qaeda. We went after the Taliban who were harboring the Arab terrorists. The result was a swift overthrow of the Taliban government. Despite the mistakes of the Bush administration in subsequently ignoring the Afghan situation, even his Democratic and peace-minded successor could not withstand the thrust of American cultural and military history—never admit defeat.

At the same time, according to Bob Woodward’s new exposé, Obama’s Wars, the president has opposed a full-scale escalation, as strenuously promoted by General Petraeus, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and other military leaders. In an interview about his book, Woodward mentions an exchange of the President with General Petraeus. Obama told him, “You have to recognize also that I don't think you [will] win this war.” The commander replied, “I think you keep fighting . . . This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.” Woodward observes that the President knows “how dreary it [the war] is.” Moreover, “he realizes he’s been dealt a bad hand, but he can’t walk away, and so he’s committed but it’s not the George Bush kind of ‘bring it on’ commitment.” To go down that path means the expenditure of trillions more, absorbing heavier casualties, and still without prospect of “mission accomplished.”

While setting a relatively early date for reducing the national commitment there, the president could not brush aside the military enthusiasm for fighting on. As a result, a minor escalation of 30,000 additional troops was granted to carry out a new war strategy. Yet, this compromise was also designed to satisfy the army’s need for reassurance of its honor in the eyes of the nation. The fear is that not to do so would create disrespect both at home, politically, and abroad. We must be esteemed for our American determination, guts, and willingness to see things through.

In order to understand better the Afghan issue, let’s look at the role of honor in the Middle East. There, its ancient principles have their deepest roots. Knowing little of the cultural setting in which we find ourselves engaged, the American public must be appalled, for instance, by what are known as “honor killings.” As of 2000 a UN report estimated that 5,000 women are murdered every year at the hands of relatives. In 2003 a sub-cabinet official in the Pakistani government guessed that at least 1,261 Pakistani women were killed for sexual misconduct, as the community and family perceived it. Often enough such deaths are authorized by the jirgas, or councils of patriarchs. The Middle East is largely dominated by male authority. In that region, familial, clan, and tribal ties are in the hands of men, notably so in Afghanistan. In a rigidly structured hierarchy, all adult males regardless of social status, bear the prime responsibility for defending and projecting the honor of their relations, clan, and tribe. The honor code makes deadly revenge a paramount duty. That is especially so when the Afghans believe that they, their way of life, and Islamic faith have been grossly insulted by outside and dangerous forces.

In dealing with a never-conquered mountain warrior people, General Petraeus offers an innovative approach to warfare. It may prove more successful than the tradition of “search and destroy.” The formula is to show respect for the whole culture, its leaders and civilians. The Afghans can be most welcoming when the guest’s deep respect is manifest. That, Petraeus believes, is the key for winning over reluctant tribesmen. He orders subordinates to follow some well-planned instructions. To that end, he prescribes that all officers and men should conform to the revered principles of agreeable conversations over tea and offered hospitality; make skillful gestures to suggest the agreed upon equality of all parties; and engage in the exchange of gifts. They are what we might consider bribes. In Afghan eyes, however, the reception of largesse is an honorable transaction. The exchange serves as a pledge for solidifying the mutual loyalty and respect of the parties involved. Money or favors seal the oral contract. At the same time, the general pursues with as much force as possible military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

This subtle, nuanced, and yet aggressive approach may still be insufficient. Thousands of decades of nearly constant warfare of family against family, clan against clan, and tribe against tribe are not to be overcome in even a few years. We may have a modern approach to martial ways. Nonetheless, the Afghans, especially Pashtuns, know how to fight small actions and how to wear down their foes by unappeasable resistance. The country continues to live up to its reputation as “the graveyard of empires.” Do we have the patience to see this war through to its perhaps endless denouement, as Petraeus predicts?

Without a military draft commensurate with the alleged seriousness of the conflict, the American military establishment relies on a relatively small number of increasingly battle-worn troops, who are recycled sometimes as often as a dozen times. The public is blessedly indifferent to their plight. We can hope, however, that General Petraeus and the President can prove the indisputable worthiness of the mission. Our own sense of honor in warfare has already exacted a high price. With reference to the ironic epigraph by the English war poet Rupert Brooke, should honor continue to be worshiped as a “king?” The poet had in mind the number of monarchs whose armies were engaged in the Great War—King George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire. Their honor was deemed at stake in the desperate struggle. Yet, even if that primordial code offers a “royal wage” in the form of blood and treasure, as Brooke implies, are our nation’s current aims and sacrifices worthwhile?

The answer will not be easy to fathom at this juncture in our national history.

But is it History?

Heather Cox Richardson

James Bridle has just constructed a twelve-volume history of the Iraq War. But this is no common history. It is a record of every edit made to the Wikipedia entry on the war from December 2004 to November 2009. The 12,000 changes take up 7,000 pages.

Bridle, a British writer and editor, is best known for his observations about books and technology. He produced these volumes to illustrate that history is not fact, but rather a process. History, he claims, is less important than “historiography,” which he redefines as the process by which humans come to understand an event. According to Bridle, culture is argument, dissent, and gradual codification of a narrative that may or may not be correct.

By illuminating every single voice in the history of a particular moment, Bridle wants readers to see how that process works. His goal, he concludes, is “to challenge absolutist narratives of the past, and thus, those of the present and our future.”

This set of volumes strikes me as a fascinating document for future scholars of the Iraq War, who will be able to watch ideas about the war change over time.

But it can not replace scholarly history.

Bridle’s claim that the process of cultural construction of understanding is more important than what actually happens illustrates a dangerous trend in our interpretation of human society. It forces the insights of deconstruction to carry far more weight than they are strong enough to bear.

The deconstruction movement was invaluable for historians, teaching us to question the biases inherent in narratives. But the fact that all narratives are biased is no reason to discard the idea that it is possible to come close to a factual account of historical events.

To argue otherwise is to claim that the comment of one Wikipedia user—“Saddam Hussein was a dickhead”—is as important as Colin Powell’s February 2003 speech before the United Nations Security Council advocating military force against the Iraq regime.

If these two voices are equally valuable in the history of the war, it’s hard not to argue that each lone voice is equally valuable in current affairs. This is the ultimate in deconstructionism—that a lifetime spent studying the Middle East is no more valuable for devising foreign policy than a gut sense; that an understanding of the rules of Congress is less important than a knee-jerk demonization of a political opponent; that actual facts can be discarded in favor of comfortable fiction.

The work of constructing fictional worlds belongs to novelists, and it is a rich world where each facet of human relations can be probed and prodded all the way to the extremes of behavior. But historians study the way real human societies work. To do that, while we must always try to look at all the different voices we can discern in the muddle that is our evidence, we must also try our best to find the actual facts that drive historical change.

September issue of Historically Speaking

Randall Stephens

The September issue of Historically Speaking will be posted on Project Muse around the 15th. Before then, I thought readers might like to have a heads up on the content. This issue contains a forum on the neglected field of naval history; interviews with historians on psychology, military, and political topics; reviews essays; and articles on the South in recent history, Australian hucksters in the 19th century, and more.

I will be posting some excerpts from the September issue in the coming weeks. (Links to the full essays will be provided.)

Historically Speaking 11:4 (September 2006)

A Swindler’s Guide to the British Empire
Kirsten McKenzie

The Necessary South
James Cobb

The Neglected Field of Naval History? A Forum

Naval History: Division or Dialogue?
Andrew D. Lambert

The State of Naval History
John Beeler

Response to Andrew Lambert
Barry Strauss

The State of American Naval History in 2010
John B. Hattendorf

Reflections
Andrew D. Lambert

Remembering Nelson: A Review Essay
Donald A. Yerxa

Montesquieu, the Modern West, and Democracy’s Drift: An Interview with Paul A. Rahe
Conducted by Joseph S. Lucas

A Review of Paul A. Rahe’s Against Throne and Altar
John Dunn

Revisiting World War I: The Last Day of the Somme
William Philpott

Bloody Victory at the Somme: An Interview with William Philpott
Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa

The Myths of Gallipoli
Robin Prior

The Fall of 1941: A Meditation on History
Manfred Weidhorn

Erich Fromm and the Public Intellectual in Recent American History: An Interview with Larry Friedman
Conducted by Randall Stephens

From Custer’s Last Stand to Wounded Knee: A Review Essay
Paul Harvey

Dispatches from the Historical Society Conference, Day 2: Notes on Friday Sessions

Donald Yerxa and Randall Stephens

On Friday morning, Allan Kulikoff (University of Georgia) was offering a provocative proposal to solve the crisis in the history profession that included wholesale changes in the way graduate school programs are structured. (Listen to audio from the session):



And two rooms down the hall, sociologist Ricardo Duchesne (University of New Brunswick) suggested that "restlessness" was at the heart of Western uniqueness. Duchesne's presentation couldn't have been more different from Peter Coclanis's (UNC-Chapel Hill) plenary address the night before (which should appear soon on C-Span). And it is perhaps indicative of the culture of open conversation that the Historical Society works hard to foster that Coclanis, a past Society president, engaged Duchesne rather than dismiss him.

In the afternoon, there was a terrific session on the "Comparative Ways of War," featuring Brian McAllister Linn (Texas A&M and current president of the Society for Military History), Robert Citino (University of North Texas), and Peter Lorge (Vanderbilt). They combined formidable expertise in (respectively) American, German, and Chinese military history with healthy doses of caffeine-enhanced humor.

In the evening's Christopher Lasch Lecture, “How History Looks Different Over Time: The Case of the First World War," Adam Hochschild traced the development of two views of World War I in Great Britain that continue to confront each other today. One considers the war as noble and necessary. (Listen to the audio file here.)



It was the dominant view during the war and throughout most of the 1920s. But there was a minority view of the war during the same period that saw it as senseless slaughter inflicted by an incompetent military leadership. In the 1930s this second view gained ascendancy. World War II took center stage in the 1940s and 1950s, but since the 1960s the senseless slaughter view is almost universally held in Great Britain--save among academic military historians who have been influenced by Fritz Fischer's findings of Germany's bellicose intentions prior to 1914 and who have a greater appreciation for British generalship. As we approach centennial commemorations of WWI, Hochschild predicts that the competition between these two views will be on full display.

“Machte Alle Kaput”: The Malmedy Massacre, December 17, 1944

The following is an excerpt from World’s Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left on Civilization by Joseph Cummins (by permission, Fair Winds Press ©2009). Cummins is the author of a variety of books, including War Chronicles: From Chariots to Flintlocks; War Chronicles: From Flintlocks to Machine Guns; History’s Great Untold Stories; and Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. He has also edited two anthologies for Lyon’s Press: Cannibals: Shocking True Stories of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea and The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told, and written a novel, The Snow Train. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

The Belgian farmer, whose name was Henri Lejoly, was surprised at the nonchalance of the U.S. troops. Standing in the barren field outside of the town of Malmedy on that cold early afternoon in the winter of 1944, they smoked and joked with each other. Some of them had placed their hands on their helmets in a casual token of surrender to the Waffen-SS troops of Kampfgruppe Peiper—the mechanized task force commanded by the brilliant young German Colonel Jochen Peiper—as it passed by, but beyond that they seemed remarkably unconcerned.

The offhand behavior of the roughly 115 U.S. prisoners may have been because the men came from Battery B of the 285th Field Observation Battery. This was an outfit whose job was to spot enemy artillery emplacements and transmit their location to other U.S. units. It had seen relatively little frontline duty and was filled with numerous green replacements.

Most of the SS troops, including Jochen Peiper, had seen extensive duty in the grim killing fields of the Eastern Front. As Kampfgruppe Peiper passed by these Americans, an SS soldier suddenly stood up in the back of his halftrack, aimed his pistol, and fired it twice into a group of U.S. prisoners. One of them crumpled to the ground. Terrified U.S. soldiers in the field suddenly began to run. Then a German machine gun at the back of another halftrack opened up and U.S. prisoners fell screaming to the ground. Within a matter of a few minutes, the field was covered with quickly coagulating pools of blood and writhing bodies. Then the SS men began to walk among the injured and the dead, pistols out.

“A Greater Risk”
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest battle ever fought in the history of the U.S. infantry and one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, which was the most costly war in human history. The U.S. troops suffered 81,000 casualties, which included 18,000 dead, while their German opponents were hit with 70,000 casualties, including 20,000 dead. The battle lasted forty days in December and January of 1944–45, in atrocious winter weather that was the worst seen in the Ardennes region of Belgium in twenty years, and could easily have resulted in a devastating loss for Allied forces, one that might have stalemated a war that they seemed well on their way to winning.

With all of these matters of great importance, why has so much attention been paid to the killing of eighty-four U.S. soldiers in a small field on December 17, 1944? The Germans of Kampfgruppe Peiper, seventy of whom were convicted in a war crimes tribunal after the war, were surprised—executing prisoners was standard fare on the Eastern Front. So, too, were many U.S. soldiers who had done battle in the Pacific, where the Japanese treated U.S. POWs with casual brutality. Perhaps one reason for the attention paid to the Malmedy Massacre is that many Americans at the time, including, possibly, those of Battery B standing in the field that day, thought that, against the Germans at least, they were fighting a “civilized” war with adversaries who shared the same racial heritage as thousands of GIs.

Another reason for the focus on Malmedy is that, as word spread like wildfire through the U.S. frontline ranks in the immediate aftermath of the killings, U.S. soldiers vowed to take no prisoners. Within a few weeks of Malmedy, one U.S. unit had machine-gunned sixty German prisoners to death in a small Belgian village called Chenogne. As even the official U.S. military history of the Battle of the Bulge states: “It is probable the Germans attempting to surrender in the days immediately following [the killings at Malmedy] ran a greater risk.”

“The Ghost Front”
In a sense, the Allied war against the Germans since the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, had gone almost too well. After a fierce fight in Normandy, the Americans and British had broken out of their beachheads at the end of July and sent the Wehrmacht reeling backwards, ceding vast areas of France and Belgium to the U.S. armored divisions of the First and Third Armies and the British Twenty-fifth Army Group. But such was the speed of the Allied advance that outfits began to outrun their supply lines. By late fall, the sixty-five Allied divisions operating in northeastern Europe were facing vital supplies shortages, especially of fuel, and their offensive had sputtered to a halt.

Digging in for the winter, the Americans and British sought to consolidate their gains and build up fuel supplies for a massive push into Germany in the early spring. The Allied lines were weakest along a 100-mile stretch from southern Belgium into Luxembourg, a place where U.S. commander Omar Bradley took what he called a “calculated risk” by placing only six U.S. divisions—about 60,000 men—three of which were untried in battle and three of which were exhausted from months of heavy combat.

This area covered the rugged and desolate Ardennes Forest and was mountainous and remote. As December 1944 began, the Ardennes fell prey to the worst winter weather it had experienced in a generation, with temperatures hovering below 0°F/−17°C for days at a time. Snow blanketed the little towns, vacation chateaus, and deep forests of the area. The area was so thinly held by GIs billeted (if they were lucky) in Belgian inns and private homes that it was called “the Ghost Front.” The GIs knew that their German enemies were out there in the snow and fog, but believed that they would never attempt a serious attack in such conditions.

But that is exactly what the Germans did, in a massive counteroffensive personally planned by Adolf Hitler. His goal was to punch through this weakly held part of the Allied line and send his armored divisions streaking toward Antwerp. Once he had captured this vital port, he could force the Allies to sue for peace. With the greatest of secrecy, aided by winter weather that kept Allied planes on the ground, he assembled a huge force of 250,000 men, 1,400 tanks, and 2,000 artillery guns on the eastern edge of the Ardennes. And, at 5:30 a.m. on December 16, this blitzkrieg struck the unsuspecting Americans.

Jochen Peiper
Spearheading the German attack was a remarkable twenty-nine-year-old SS colonel named Jochen Peiper. Peiper was the commander of Kampfgruppe Peiper, the leading battle formation of the First Panzer Division—he had been personally picked by Adolf Hitler to be the point person on the Sixth Panzer Army’s drive to seize the bridges of the Meuse River and capture Antwerp. Holder of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Germany’s highest military decoration; an ardent Nazi; and a hardened veteran of fighting in France, Italy, and on the Eastern Front; Peiper was admired by his soldiers, but known as a brutal fighter. He had probably ordered an attack by his unit, which caused the deaths of forty-three Italian civilians in the village of Boves, Italy, in 1943, and in numerous actions against partisans in Russia, his unit deliberately burned villages and killed Russian civilians.

And on the morning of December 17, the second day of the German attack, he was a frustrated man. Because of a heroic and determined resistance by elements of the U.S. 99th Infantry Division, his task force, which consisted of 117 tanks, 149 halftracks, and 24 artillery pieces, was already 12 hours behind schedule. Time is always important in military operations, but in the Ardennes in December 1944, it was the most crucial factor that Peiper, and by extension the entire Wehrmacht, faced. They must reach the bridges on the Meuse River before the sky cleared and the Allied planes, which enjoyed almost total air superiority, could turn their tanks into smoldering wrecks blocking the narrow roads and halting Germany’s last chance at saving itself from total defeat.

“You Know what to Do with the Prisoners”
At around 8 a.m. on December 17, a convoy carrying Battery B, 285th Field Observation Battery, set out from Schevenutte, on the border of Germany and Belgium, on its way to St. Vith, Belgium, which was about to become a focal point of one of the great clashes in the Battle of the Bulge. The convoy consisted of about 130 men, thirty jeeps, weapons carriers, and trucks and was led by Captain Roger Mills, and Lieutenants Virgil Lary and Perry Reardon.

The day was clear and cold, with temperatures well below freezing, and a light dusting of snow on the ground. Battery B reached the Belgian town of Malmedy around noon. After passing through the town, the convoy was stopped on its eastern edge by Lt. Colonel David Pergrin, in charge of a company of combat engineers who were all that were left to defend Malmedy. Pergrin warned Mills and Lary that a German armored column had been seen approaching from the southeast. He advised them to go to St. Vith by another route, but Mills and Lary refused, perhaps because ahead of them were several members of Battery B who had been laying down road markers, and they did not wish to abandon them, or perhaps simply because the route they were to take was stated in their orders.

For whatever reason, Battery B proceeded along its designated route until it came to a crossroads about 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Malmedy, which the Belgians called Baugnetz but the Americans referred to as Five Points, because five roads intersected here. Shortly after it passed this crossroads, the column began to receive fire from two German tanks that were 1,000 yards (0.9 km) down the road. These tanks were the spearhead of Kampfgruffe Peiper, led by Lieutenant Werner Sternebeck, and their 88-mm guns and machine guns easily tore up the U.S. column. Sternebeck and his tanks proceeded down the road, pushing burning and wrecked U.S. jeeps and trucks out of the way and firing their machine guns at U.S. soldiers who cowered in ditches—something Sternebeck later told historian Michael Reynolds that he did to get the Americans to surrender.

Sternebeck then sent the Americans, numbering about 115 in all, marching with their hands held high back to the crossroads at Five Points. He assembled the prisoners in a field there and waited with his tanks and halftracks for further orders. The delay upset Peiper. Racing to the front of the German column, he upbraided Sternebeck for engaging Battery B—because the noise might alert more powerful U.S. combat units nearby—and told him to keep moving. Sternebeck moved out, followed closely by Peiper, and the long line of Kampfgruffe Peiper began to pass the Americans standing in the field, some of whom had begun to relax, put their hands down, and light cigarettes.

After an hour or so, Peiper left an SS major named Werner Poetschke in charge of the prisoners. However, at around 4 o’clock that afternoon, soldiers from the SS 3rd Pioneer company were detailed to permanently guard the prisoners. According to testimony at the war crimes trial, Major Poetschke was heard by a U.S. soldier who understood German telling a Sergeant Beutner: “You know what to do with the prisoners.”

“The Germans Killed Everybody!”
Sergeant Beutner then stopped a halftrack that held a 75-mm cannon and attempted to depress its barrel low enough to aim at the prisoners in the field. When the gun crew was unable to do this, Beutner gave up in disgust and waved the halftrack on, much to the relief of the now edgy and nervous Americans in the field. But then another German unit came by and those Americans who could speak German heard a lieutenant in this unit give the order: “Machte alle Kaput!” Kill the Americans. At first, the Germans present merely stared at the officer, but then Pfc. George Fleps, an ethnic German from Romania, stood up in his halftrack and fired twice at the crowd of Americans.

The Americans in the rear of the group began to run away, even as an officer yelled “Stand fast!” thinking that the Germans would shoot them if they saw them escaping. In fact, this is what happened. Seeing Americans fleeing, a machine gun on the back of a halftrack opened up, cutting down those who stood in the field and those trying to escape.

To this day it is uncertain if the Germans would have shot the Americans had they not tried to run—many German soldiers present later claimed they were merely killing escaping prisoners. However, surviving Americans distinctly remember the German order to kill coming before any of the POWs tried to escape. However, what the Germans did next reinforces the belief that they intended to kill the Americans from the beginning. As the GIs lay moaning on the ground, SS men walked among them, kicking men in the testicles or in the head. If they moved, the SS men would casually lean over and shoot them in the head. Some survivors later testified that the Germans were laughing as they did this.

Lejoly, who was a German sympathizer, nevertheless could not believe his eyes as he watched one SS man allow a U.S. medic to bandage a wounded soldier, after which the German shot both men dead. Eleven Americans fled to the café nearby, but the Germans set it on fire and then gunned down the men as they ran out. As this killing was going on, the German column continued to pass through Five Points, and soldiers on halftracks chatted and pointed. Some fired into already dead Americans, as if to practice their aim.

Amazingly enough, some sixty Americans were still alive in the field after the machine-gunning. As the SS massacred the survivors, they realized they had no choice to but to try to escape, and they rose and ran as fast as they could to the back of the field, heading for a nearby woods. The Germans swept them with rifle and machine gun fire, but made little attempt to chase after them. Perhaps forty made good their escape into the deepening dusk. Most of them attempted to make their way back to Malmedy, some wandering for days before they returned. However, early that evening, three escapees did encounter a patrol led by Colonel Pergrin, who had heard the shooting and was coming to investigate. The men, covered with blood, were hysterical.

“The Germans killed everybody!” they shouted at Pergrin.

Aftermath of the Massacre
That evening, Pergrin sent back word to 1st Army Headquarters that there had been a massacre of some type at Malmedy. The area around Five Points was so hotly contested that it was not until nearly a month after the massacre, on January 14, that the U.S. Army was able to recover the bodies of the 84 men who had been killed in that field. Autopsies conducted on the frozen corpses showed that forty-one men had been shot in the head at close range and another ten had had their heads bashed in with rifle butts. Nine still had their arms raised above their heads.

By the time the war ended, the U.S. public knew all about the Malmedy massacre and clamored for revenge. On May 16, 1946, a year after the end of hostilities in Europe, Peiper and seventy of his men were placed on trial for war crimes connected with the massacre. The trials were deliberately held on the site of the Dachau concentration camp, to garner maximum symbolism from the event.

Not all of the presumed guilty could be punished—both Major Poetschke and Sergeant Beutner died in action during the war. But at the end of the proceedings, all seventy of the SS men, as well as Peiper, had been convicted of war crimes by a six-man panel of U.S. officers. Forty-three of them, including Peiper, were sentenced to die by hanging, twenty-two to life imprisonment, and the rest to ten- to twenty-year sentences.

However, the trials were tainted by later testimony that the SS men had been tortured by U.S. interrogators before their trials. All of the death sentences were commuted to imprisonment and, in 1956, Jochen Peiper became the last member of the group to walk out of jail. Peiper, who was murdered in France in 1976 by a shadow group of anti-Nazi terrorists who called themselves “the Avengers,” always claimed that he did not give express orders to kill the prisoners at Malmedy, and he probably did not.

Though we may never completely know the truth surrounding the Malmedy massacre, there is no doubt that, in the end, the deaths there stiffened U.S. resolve to destroy the Nazis, and the hated SS, wherever they found them.