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The Austrian army played a crucial role in Napoleon's decisive defeat during the War of the Sixth Coalition. Often considered a staid, hidebound institution, the army showed considerable adaptation in a time that witnessed a revolution in the art of war. In particular, changes made after defeat in the War of the Fifth Coalition demonstrate the modernity of the army. It embraced the key features of the new revolutionary way of war, including mass mobilization, a strategy of annihilation, and tactics based on deep echelonment, mobility, and the flexible use of varied formations. While the Austrians did not achieve the compromise peace they desired in 1814, this represented a political failing rather than a military one. Nevertheless, the Austrian army was critical in securing the century of general European peace that lasted until the dawn of the Great War.

Many histories written by professional historians discuss the Battle of the Bulge; however, none of them incorporate the growing field of environmental history as a lens of analysis. This paper aims to address that hole in the scholarship by evaluating the impact that environmental factors exerted on the American army's ability to fight in and around Bastogne and St. Vith, Belgium during the first week of the battle. Had it not been for the environmental factors and the Americans' ability to make better use of the natural and manmade conditions than the Germans, the Allies would not have been able to achieve eventual victory. In the historiography of the battle, weather conditions are usually referenced only as the setting in which the fighting occurred. This paper goes further than simply using the environment and climate as a stage set. By looking at the way environmental conditions impacted strategic, operational, and tactical issues, a new perspective is opened up. The role that these environmental factors played is emphasized and shows that they had a greater effect on the outcome than scholars have previously credited. This paper uses first person accounts from participants, from the command level to the soldier in his foxhole, as well as unit histories, oral histories, and the vast amount of secondary sources to focus on and synthesize the effects that the environment had. Without exploiting the environmental factors that existed in the Ardennes, the American army would not have been able to hold off the German offensive.

This dissertation explores the development of America’s infantry forces between 1918-1945. While doing so, it challenges and complicates the traditional narrative that highlights the fierceness of the rivalry between the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. During the First World War, both commissioned and enlisted Marines attended U.S. Army schools and served within Army combat formations, which brought the two closer together than ever before. Both services became bonded by a common warfighting paradigm, or way of battle, that centered upon the infantry as the dominant combat arm. All other arms and services were subordinated to the needs and requirements of the infantry. Intelligent initiative, fire and maneuver by the smallest units, penetrating hostile defenses while bypassing strong points, and aggressive, not reckless, leadership were all salient characteristics of that shared infantry way of battle. After World War I, Army and Marine officers constructed similar intellectual proposals concerning the ways to fight the next war. Although there were differences in organizational culture, the two were more alike in their respective values systems than historians have realized. There was mutual admiration, and targeted attempts to replicate each other’s combat thinking and spirit. They prepared for battle by observing each other’s doctrine, and sharing each other’s conception of modern combat. When preparation turned to execution in World War II, they created solutions for battlefield problems that evolved from their near-identical way of battle. At the conclusion of the war, the common bonds between the Army and Marine Corps were all but forgotten. This, ultimately, led to increased friction during the Congressional defense unification battles in 1946. / History

Many historians of the American Revolution fail to accurately assess the impact British supporters in the Thirteen Colonies had on the military dimension of the war. The Crown's American allies, commonly referred to as Loyalists, were instrumental in British operations throughout the conflict, especially in the southern colonies. Reports from the royal governors of the southern colonies numbered the Loyalists in the thousands. British officials in London developed a plan to Americanize the war by utilizing Loyalists more comprehensively, lessening the burden for more British troops. The first steps toward Americanizing the war occurred when General Sir Henry Clinton and Lieutenant General Charles, Second Earl, Cornwallis incorporated southern Loyalists with their British troops to reconquer the southern colonies in 1780. After the British conquest of Charleston, South Carolina in June 1780, Lieutenant General Cornwallis was awarded the independent command of the British forces in the South and was additionally charged with rallying and protecting the Loyalists in North and South Carolina. Cornwallis consistently tried to organize the Loyalists into militia corps to combat Rebel partisans operating in the Carolina backcountry, The constant failure of the Loyalist militia persuaded Cornwallis of their inability to sustain themselves. As a result, Cornwallis abandoned the southern colonies, as well as the Crown's loyal subjects, in favor of offensive operations in Virginia. His aim was to prevent the Rebel southern army from receiving supplies and recruits. Many slaves joined Cornwallis' army in Virginia and persuaded him to utilize them to replace the services provided by southern white Loyalists. These failed decisions contributed to Cornwallis' humiliating defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, effectively ending the military dimension of the American Revolution. / History

This dissertation explores the development of an American D-Day tale. D-Day, the Allied invasion of northwestern France in June 1944, stood out to Americans because it seemed to promise a quick end to the Second World War in Europe. This lasting conception of the amphibious assault as a critical juncture has placed it in the forefront of American memories of the war's European phase. More than a turning point, however, American conceptions of the event have come to constitute a veritable morality tale. According to its narrative, D-Day demonstrated the military competence of a free republic that put its faith in citizen-soldiers. This tale has romanticized warfare by depicting it as an event populated by democratic heroes engaging clearly evil foes in decisive clashes fought for liberty, national redemption, and world salvation. The redemptive power of violence displayed on Norman beaches enjoyed divine blessing, and even, as sometimes claimed, outright assistance. Veterans and their family members, politicians, military leaders, honorific organizations, news media personalities, filmmakers, scholars and authors all have offered entries into a staggering field of American D-Day-related material. Their messages, largely similar in tone, transmitted to American audiences through museums, monuments, news stories, books, speeches, games, documentary films and Hollywood spectaculars. This dissertation will also evaluate the impact of their memory work on America. D-Day allegedly reaffirmed cherished American notions of democracy, fair play, moral order, and the militant (yet non-militaristic) use of power for divinely sanctioned and altruistic purposes. Such interpretations of clashing arms have exerted a powerful influence on American conceptions of patriotism, civic duty, and the efficacious use of military power. Feeding the militarization of American culture in the Cold War and beyond, the D-Day tale has pushed Americans to see war as a bloody yet noble clash, a veritable crusade used by the righteous for just purpose and decisive results. This story has cemented into place popular conceptions of the battle and an ideal-type of expectations for "good" wars. / History

This dissertations studies the problem of military shelter and its impact on the Continental Army’s conduct during the War of American Independence. It examines ideas and practices about military housing during the eighteenth century; how Continental officers sought and obtained lodging for themselves and their men, refinements in military camp administration; how military decisions regarding shelter affected strategy, logistics, and social relationships within the army; as well as how quartering practices structured relations between civilians and the military. This dissertation maintains a geographic focus on Northwestern New Jersey, a region it defines as the Highlands, because this area witnessed a Continental Army presence of greater size and duration than anywhere else in the rebelling Thirteen Colonies. Using official military correspondence, orderly books, diaries, memoirs, civilian damage claims, and archaeological studies, this dissertation reveals that developments in military shelter formed a crucial yet overlooked component of Continental strategy. Patriot soldiers began the war with inadequate housing for operations in the field as well as winter quarters, and their health and morale suffered accordingly. In the second half of the war, Continental officers devised a new method of accommodating their men, the log-hut city. This complex of hastily-built timber huts provided cover for Patriot troops from the winter of 1777-1778 through the end of the war. This method, unknown in Europe, represented an innovation in the art of war. By providing accommodations secure from enemy attack for thousands of soldiers at little cost to the government and little inconvenience to civilians, the log-hut city made a decisive contribution to the success of the Continental Army’s war effort. / History

This dissertation explores the influence of late eighteenth-century British imperial and global paradigms of thought on the formation of British policy and strategy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that British imperial interests exerted a consistent influence on British strategic decision making through the personal advocacy of political leaders, institutional memory within the British government, and in the form of a traditional strain of a widely-embraced British imperial-maritime ideology that became more vehement as the conflict progressed. The work can be broken into two basic sections. The first section focuses on the formation of strategy within the British government of William Pitt the Younger during the French Revolutionary Wars from the declaration of war in February 1793 until early 1801. During this phase of the Anglo-French conflict, British ministers struggled to come to terms with the nature of the threat posed by revolutionary ideology in France, and lacked strategic consistency due to acute cabinet-level debates over continental versus imperial strategies. The latter half of the work assesses Britain’s response to the challenges presented by Napoleonic France. Beginning with the debates surrounding Anglo-French peace negotiations in late 1801, the British increasingly came to define Napoleonic France as a regime harboring imperial aspirations that represented an explicit threat to British imperial interests. By defining the Napoleonic regime as an aspirational imperial power, British opponents of the Peace of Amiens provided the intellectual framework for the hegemonic struggle between land and sea powers that would define the Anglo-French struggle until its conclusion in June 1815. While Britain ultimately proved successful in defeating France in Europe, the expanse of the conflict also exposed the strengths and weaknesses of British force projection outside of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. / History

The legacy of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the forerunner of the post-war Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is well chronicled. However, the professional path of those involved in covert American Intelligence special operations has been almost completely neglected. Popular writers have focused on OSS heroics while CIA-insiders have meticulously detailed the bureaucratic struggles fought by the OSS in Washington, D.C. The special skills and organization developed by the OSS were unlike any ever before utilized by an American institution. The OSS built an organizational and operational capability that sought to take advantage of resistance in German-occupied territory through the collection of secret intelligence and special operations supporting resistance groups. To accomplish this, the OSS established and utilized inventive new methods of recruitment, training, and operations to lay the groundwork for the new professional path of the American Intelligence officer. An analysis of OSS field operations in the Mediterranean Theater during the Second World War yields the best insight into this nascent professionalism as it grew from ideas into reality. The OSS developed its own definition of intelligence while grappling with incorporating old and new standards of professional behavior into the organization and among its members. Covert training and recruitment materials generously provided by British agents such as William Stephenson gave the OSS the jump start it needed to begin to forge a new path in subversive operations. British covert intelligence embodied traditional field craft, but OSS members would be the missionaries of a new uniquely American specialized covert operations working for American interests in conjunction with partisans in enemy-controlled territory. OSS members hailed from a wide-variety of American business, military, academic, and civilian backgrounds, bringing with them new ideas and old conceptions of what it meant to be a professional. While ultimately unsuccessful in maintaining its existence after the war, the OSS established a new path forward for American Intelligence which recognized the groundbreaking work done by the OSS and incorporated many facets of that into the new CIA. / History