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Throughout the Second Reich’s short life, military affairs were synonymous with those of the state. Indeed, it was the zeal and blood of Prussian soldiers that allowed the creation of a unified German empire. After solidifying itself as a major power, things grew more complicated as the Reich found itself increasingly surrounded by hostile rivals. To the west, French humiliation over their catastrophic defeat in 1870-71 continued to fester while, in the east, Russian sympathies for the new empire waned. The finalization of a Franco-Russian alliance in 1894 meant Germany faced formidable adversaries along her eastern and western borders. That unsettling realization dictated the empire’s military policy until its downfall in 1918. Drawing from the writings and speeches of Wilhelmine Germany’s military and political leaders, this work seeks to examine and analyze the Second Reich’s military policies and decision-making processes over the three decades preceding the First World War.

During the 1930s, the Republic of Czechoslovakia endeavored to construct a system of modern fortifications along its frontiers to protect the Republic from German and Hungarian aggression and from external Versailles revisionism. Czechoslovakia's fortifications have been greatly misrepresented through comparison with the Maginot Line. By utilizing extant German military reports, this thesis demonstrates that Czechoslovakia's fortifications were incomplete and were much weaker than the Maginot Line at the time of the Munich Crisis in 1938. The German threat of war against Czechoslovakia was very real in 1938 and Germany would have penetrated most of the fortifications and defeated Czechoslovakia quickly had a German-Czech war occurred in 1938.

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World War II was the most devastating war in human history in terms of loss of life. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, plunged the United States into war. Less than seven thousand military nurses were on active duty at the time of the attack. By the end of the war, there were over fifty-thousand active-duty nurses. The army nurses performed under fire in field and evacuation hospitals, on hospital trains and ships, and as flight nurses on medical evacuation transport aircraft. The skill and dedication of the Army Nurses Corps insured a 95% survival rate for the wounded soldiers who received medical care in a field or evacuation hospital. Two hundred and one nurses lost their lives during World War II and sixty-seven nurses were captured and held as prisoners of war. Sixteen hundred medals, citations and commendations attest to the nurses’ courage and dedication.

March 1971 was tough for President Richard Nixon. The American people were tired of the Vietnam War, with many still recovering from the violent anti-war protests of 1970. Congress had just passed an amendment prohibiting U.S. ground troops from operating outside of the borders of South Vietnam. Both the public and secret negotiations with Hanoi were stalled. Confidential channels with Beijing and Moscow about diplomatic initiatives had gone cold. Moreover, Lam Son 719, the joint U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Laos that began in February, was turning out to be a failure. The operation, Nixon’s military gamble to prove the success of Vietnamization, would show the opposite—that the South Vietnamese were not ready to take over the fighting from the Americans. Yet, on 7 April 1971, Nixon announced in a television address that “Vietnamization has succeeded,” and that he would accelerate the withdrawal of American troops “because of the achievements of the South Vietnamese operation in Laos.” Many expected Nixon to increase the rate of troop withdrawals no matter the outcome of Lam Son 719. However, instead of being punished at the polls for his lack of credibility, as some in the press were predicting, in 1972, Nixon transfixed the nation with trips to Beijing and Moscow and won re-election by 49 out of 50 states. This thesis mines archival documents from the Nixon Presidential Library, the U.S. media, and television transcripts to explain how and why Nixon re-shaped the story of Lam Son 719 and his Vietnamization policy to persuade a dispirited American people to accept withdrawal from Vietnam. This political comeback, often overshadowed by Watergate, provides unique perspectives on presidential communications.

Au travers de l’étude du renseignement aérien en France de 1945 à 1994, il s’agit de replacer l’emploi de cet outil décisionnel sur une échelle de temps longue afin d’en comprendre sa perception chez les décideurs français. Pour analyser les évolutions du renseignement aérien, nous avons comparé les expériences opérationnelles avec les corpus doctrinaux et les innovations technologiques du système de collecte. Notre étude s’est appesantie sur les implications tactiques, stratégiques et politiques de notre objet d’étude pour expliciter les différentes dimensions de ses perceptions d’emploi. Afin de mieux comprendre ces facteurs évolutifs dans le contexte français, nous avons également introduit des points comparatifs avec les Etats-Unis et la Grande-Bretagne. C’est également un moyen d’entrevoir l’influence de facteurs étrangers sur les évolutions d’emploi et de perceptions du renseignement aériens français, tout en précisant les spécificités françaises. Entre la mission de collecte, défini comme la reconnaissance et l’ensemble du renseignement aérien, la question qui se pose est de savoir ce qui doit être compris comme objet focalisant la perception du décideur militaire ou politique. Le renseignement aérien peut-il être compris, en France, comme un service de renseignement à part entière ou juste comme un système de collecte au service d’un acteur décisionnel ? L’autre question est de savoir comment les différentes évolutions qui ont touché notre objet d’étude ont influencé ses perceptions d’emploi. Au-delà de ces problématiques, celle du rapport entre l’image et le décideur, spécifique au renseignement aérien, influence t-elle également sa perspective d’utilisation ? / Through the study of the Aerial Intelligence in France from 1945 to 1994, is to replace the use of this decision making tool on a long time scale to understand his perception among French policymakers. To analyze the evolution of Aerial Intelligence, we compared operational experiences with the doctrinal corpus and technological innovations of the collection system. We worked on tactical, strategic and political implications of our object of study to clarify the various aspects of his job perceptions. To better understand these evolutionary factors in the French context, we also introduced comparative points with the United States and Britain. It's also a way to perceive the influence of foreign factors on the using developments and perceptions of French aerial intelligence, but while specifying the French specificities. Between the collecting mission, defined as the reconnaissance and the entire Aerial Intelligence, the question arises is to know what is understood like the object to the perception of military or political decision maker. The Aerial Intelligence can it be understood in France as a separate intelligence service or just as a collection system at the service of decision-actor? The other question is how the various developments that have affected our object of study have influenced his using perceptions. Beyond these issues, the relationship between the image and the decision maker, specific to Aerial Intelligence, influences also its perspective of use?

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While Scotland was politically unified before the First Scottish War of Independence (1296-1328), it was only nominally so. Scotland shared a rich cultural unity amongst the clans, and it was only through the invasion from England, and the war that followed, that Scotland found a true political unity under King Robert the Bruce. This thesis argues that Scotland had a shared cultural identity, including the way it waged war, and how it came to be united under one king who brought a sense of nationalism to Scotland.

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