Bushnell General Military Hospital was an Army World War II hospital in Brigham City, Utah from August 1942 to June 1946. It specialized in treating amputations, maxillofacial surgery, neuropsychiatric conditions, and tropical diseases. It was also one of the first hospitals to experimentally use penicillin. Bushnell was a regional facility for wounded solders from the Mountain States that provided quality medical care to patients. The community of Brigham City and the citizens of other Northern Utah communities were an integral part of the success of Bushnell. Citizens donated time, supplies, and money to support the facility and to assist in the care and rehabilitation of injured GIs. Celebrities also visited Bushnell to promote morale, and some disabled Americans assisted injured patients. The hospital staff, along with Northern Utahns, played an important role in helping to rehabilitate and reintroduce injured soldiers into society. Brigham City was also effected by Bushnell Hospital. One major problem was a shortage of housing in Brigham City, which led citizens to rent to family members of patients in private homes. Another was infrastructure needed to support the hospital. However, the benefits mostly outweighed the problems. The city and surrounding communities benefited from the job growth at Bushnell and in Brigham. Downtown businesses received additional revenue from patrons. Because the hospital came to Brigham City, some citizens also met Japanese Americans and German and Italian POWs in addition to those connected to Bushnell. This led Brigham citizens to develop friendships with people they might have not met otherwise. When the war ended, the subsequent closure of Bushnell General Military Hospital brought these benefits to an end, and Brigham City and other Northern Utahn communities hastened to find a new occupant for the hospital facility to ensure jobs. In 1950, it became the Intermountain Indian School. The school closed in 1984, and now businesses and homes occupy the site.

“Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, and the Ostjuden during Occupation: 1915-1918" addresses the interethnic experience in Poland during the German occupation of 1915-1918. This dissertation demonstrates that the German design for 'modernization' of the East began with the First World War, which envisioned the Jews as a critically vital component, rather than an obstacle to their success. The German military made its connection to the peoples in the East via its own army rabbis and Jewish administrators. This work examines the role of the German Army rabbis, in 1915, in establishing a Jewish press and Jewish schools, along with Jewish relief agencies funded by German Jewish businessmen, in assisting the local Ostjuden communities. By the time the guns stopped firing in 1918, however, the German government had reneged on their promises of recognition and help, and the circumstances of many Ostjuden were as precarious as they had been before the war. Even worse, the experience of war in the East encouraged the rise of racist nationalism in Germany and Eastern Europe. The roots of Nazi policies toward Jews were planted firmly in Poland and Lithuania between 1915 and 1918. But for defeat in the war, it is highly unlikely that the Nazis would ever have risen to power, and in the absence of the German experience of war in the East, the later commitment to a Jewish genocide might never have been imagined. By examining the transnational relationship between the Germans and the Polish Jewish communities during the Great War, I contribute to a better understanding of the complexities leading to the crucial fracture that took place under the pressure of total war in 1917.

In the fall of 1859, John Brown launched a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and in so doing arguably fired the first salvo of the Civil War. That his raid occurred in the border area between North and South should come as no surprise because it was in that area where Americans were the most divided. Citizens across the border state region–that area that comprised the lower North and upper South–soon found themselves caught between two hostile sections. Based on an analysis of letters, journals, newspapers, and public documents, this dissertation is a study of one portion of that border region, the central Ohio River Valley, during the momentous years between Brown’s raid and the early weeks of 1862, when Indiana Senator Jesse Bright was expelled from the United States Senate for treasonous behavior. Citizens who lived in the river counties between Cincinnati and Louisville shared important economic, cultural, and socio-political views that united them and created a regional bond capable of withstanding the centrifugal pull of sectionalism despite the omnipresent influence of slavery. These trans-river bonds moderated their response to secession and reinforced their Unionist proclivities. Their fidelity to the Union strengthened Abraham Lincoln’s hand and helped to insure that the Union would endure.

The academic discipline of Sociology has rarely broached the subject of war and its recursive relationship with society. This paper addresses three major approaches in several disciplines that can be deemed ‘economically deterministic’: Marxist, Liberal, and Realist. These approaches can be useful for certain questions, but also leave out, or cloud other non-economic variables in understanding war – notably culture and military variables themselves. By using Karl Polanyi’s thesis regarding the “Myth of the Hundred Years’ Peace” (1815-1914) as a foil, the historical case of war in the nineteenth century is used to highlight the nature of war in European modernity and capitalism.

During the Korean War the White House and the Army publicized the Medal of Honor to achieve three outcomes. First, they hoped it would have a positive influence on public opinion. Truman committed to limited goals at the start of the war and chose not to create an official propaganda agency, which led to partisan criticism and realistic reporting. Medal of Honor publicity celebrated individual actions removed from their wider context in a familiar, heroic mold to alter memory of the past. Second, the Army publicized the Medal of Honor internally to inspire and reinforce desired soldier behavior. Early reports indicated a serious lack of discipline on the front lines and the Army hoped to build psychological resilience in the men by exposing them to the heroic actions of other soldiers. Finally, the Cold War spawned a great fear of communist subterfuge in the United States, which was exacerbated by the brainwashing of prisoners of war. The White House and the Army reached out to marginalized elements of American society through the Medal of Honor to counter communist propaganda. The Korean War remains an understudied era of American history, yet it was incredibly important to the United States and the world. The war influenced the United States to maintain a large standing military prepositioned around the world to protect its interests. Achieving the status quo antebellum validated the containment strategy against communism, which heavily influenced the decision to intervene in Vietnam. The United Nations, ostensibly in charge of allied forces in the Korean War, gained credibility from preventing the loss of South Korea. Despite these important effects of the war on world history, scholars continue to focus on World War II and Vietnam. This study seeks to build on the relative dearth of scholarly material on the Korean War by examining in historical context the manipulation of a symbol that intersected both the military and the home-front to influence behavior.

In this paper I looked at the actions that were taken by Jose P. Laurel and Jorge Vargas during the occupation of the Philippines country by Japanese Imperial forces during World War II. I was mostly interested in the idea of loyalties that occurred in places that were occupied throughout history and what constituted the lines that would be drawn when the leaders of those countries decided to do what was best for their people. I started by researching the many of the Occupied countries of Japan and determined one in which there was a more controversial and grayed line of collaboration that occurred. I chose the Philippines mostly because of their relationship with the United States and to see how that factor affected the ideas of collaboration and loyalty. I mostly found that these men got most of their influences from their previous experiences in life but mostly form the last instructions that were given to them by Gen. MacArthur and their President. Ultimately they did not claim loyalty to the Japanese even though they collaborated with the Japanese. This is important in giving a good view into what needs to be done in order t preserve the nation state when being occupied by an invading force. It also explores the lines and interpretations of the definition of loyalty in these situations.

This paper examines how the development of the railway-telegraph technological complex impacted the tenuous relationship between the rulers and those they ruled; the British and the Indians. Through the experience of building and operating the railway, Indians came to understand the railway and telegraph as their own technologies well before the eventual handover of control over the networks from the British. The reasons behind the British desire to retain their grasp over the networks included profit, power, and orientalist notions of socially advancing Indians, all at the expense of Indian taxpayers. This arrangement was problematic and ultimately facilitated the Raj's undoing, while revealing certain realities of British imperial rule.

The academic discipline of Sociology has rarely broached the subject of war and its recursive relationship with society. This paper addresses three major approaches in several disciplines that can be deemed ‘economically deterministic’: Marxist, Liberal, and Realist. These approaches can be useful for certain questions, but also leave out, or cloud other non-economic variables in understanding war – notably culture and military variables themselves. By using Karl Polanyi’s thesis regarding the “Myth of the Hundred Years’ Peace” (1815-1914) as a foil, the historical case of war in the nineteenth century is used to highlight the nature of war in European modernity and capitalism.

Among the most important choices made by groups fighting a civil war -- governments and rebels alike -- is how to allocate available military and pecuniary resources across the contested areas of a conflict-ridden territory. Combatants use military force to coerce and money to persuade and co-opt. A vast body of literature in political science and security studies examines how and where combatants in civil wars apply violence. Scholars, however, have devoted less attention to combatants' use of material inducements to attain their objectives. This dissertation proposes a logic that guides combatants' use of material benefits alongside military force in pursuit of valuable support from communities in the midst of civil war. Focused on the interaction between the military and the local population, the theory envisions a bargaining process between a commander and a community whose support he seeks. The outcome of the bargaining process is a fiscal strategy defined by the extent to which material benefits are distributed diffusely or targeted narrowly. That outcome follows from key characteristics of the community in question that include its sociopolitical solidarity (or fragmentation) and its economic resilience (or vulnerability). I evaluate the theory of fiscal strategies through a series of case studies from the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. As a further test of external validity, I consider the theory's applicability to key events from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. / Government

This dissertation examines the engagement of civilian designers in United States Army post architecture and planning between 1917 and 1948. During those years, the built environment of the Army was fundamentally transformed, as troops relocated from frontier posts and coastal fortifications to large permanent military bases. First conceived of as “soldier cities,” by the end of World War II these posts had come to resemble garden suburbs. At the same time, the architecture and planning of civilian communities also changed. Turn-of-the-century affection for the industrial city had, by 1920, given way to a preference for suburban living among the upper classes. After World War II, suburbia would become ubiquitous, as federally- supported tract-house developments sprung up around the nation. These changes in civilian and military architecture and planning were, I argue, tightly connected, in part through the movement of civilian designers back and forth between civilian and military commissions. For architects and planners, the Army post was a kind of laboratory in which to experiment with design concepts outside the constraints of the real estate market. For Army officials, meanwhile, the involvement of outside experts in post design helped to convince potential recruits and the public alike that military life was not so different from civilian life. As the built environments of military and civilian America mutually influenced one another, the distinction between the two narrowed, and the Army effectively hid itself in plain sight. I track the exchange between civilian and military design ideals in five chronological chapters, each highlighting a particular episode in Army post design, and each connecting to broader themes in American urban and suburban history. The first two chapters take place during World War I and look at the planning of the Army’s training camps, and the architecture of the YMCA and YWCA buildings therein. The third chapter focuses on the permanent post- building program of the 1920s and 1930s. The fourth chapter recounts the Army’s pre-World War II experiments in prefabrication, and the final chapter examines the re-planning of the atomic town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1948.