Despite the vast material that has been written about the Second World War, most literature mentions battleships in passing, giving little attention to a role that battleships filled- that of naval gunfire support for amphibious landings. The literature regarding the Navy’s older, obsolescent battleships such as the Texas is scarce. Using primary sources regarding the Texas and the evolution of naval gunfire doctrine from the pre-war and wartime periods, this study looks at the involvement of the Texas in the Second World War and how the Navy employed its oldest battleships. The amphibious landings of the war provided a role in which a ship’s speed and range became irrelevant when firing on fixed targets on an enemy beach. This work provides a look at a little discussed, though widely used aspect of the Second World War and helps further discussion regarding the evolution of the US navy.

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The demands of WWII mobilization led to the creation of the first standing women's army in the US known as the Women's Army Corps (WAC). An unintended consequence of this was that the WAC provided queer women with an environment with which to explore their gender and sexuality while also giving them the cover of respectability and service that protected them from harsh societal repercussions. They could eschew family for their military careers. They could wear masculine clothing, exhibit a masculine demeanor, and engage in a homosocial environment without being seen as subversive to the American way of life. Quite the contrary: the outside world saw them as helping to protect their country. This paper looks at the life of one such queer soldier, Dorothee Gore. Dorothee's letters, journals, and memorabilia demonstrate that for many lesbians of her generation, service in the WACS during WWII was a time of relatively open camaraderie and acceptance by straight society.

Second Lieutenant Charles Scheffel, B Company Platoon Leader, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division modified existing methods of venereal disease control in Algeria, North Africa during Operation Torch after being ordered to reduce the venereal disease rate by his regimental commander, Colonel William Ritter. Tasked with defeating the Germans first, Scheffel learned other enemies lurked as well, and he instituted an illegal policy to solve the problem as fast and as effectively as possible. Official United States policy on the eve of World War Two prohibited the establishment and operation of a brothel. Scheffel operated this brothel as the United States Army occupied Arab lands for the first time in its history and improved the combat effectiveness of his regiment.

This study reveals how the Pacific war changed at Coral Sea and Midway due to a little known but important cadre of sailors on USS Yorktown (CV5). Those US victories resulted from not only clever code breakers and courageous airmen but equally from the determined Damage Control (DC) crews aboard Yorktown. DC crews were the ship’s first responders. They fought fires, kept power and propulsion operable, controlled the ship’s stability, and patched her flight deck to keep aircraft flying. DC teams saved Yorktown multiple times, and their story is memorable for their contributions at Coral Sea and Midway. Without DC efforts, CV5 would not have participated in the battle of Midway. Without Yorktown, the commitment of only two American carriers (with one being virtually inexperienced) against four Japanese carriers with their skilled airmen would have yielded disaster for the United States at Midway instead of victory.

This dissertation fundamentally re-interprets King Frederick the Great of Prussia as military commander and military thinker, and uses Frederick to cast new perspectives on the warfare of ‘his time’: that is, of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It uses the methodology of cultural history, which focuses on the meanings given to human activities, to examine Frederick and the warfare of his time on three levels: cultural, temporal, and intellectual. It shows that Frederick’s warfare (at least in his youth) was culturally French, and reflected the towering influence of King Louis XIV, with Frederick following the flamboyant masculinity of the French baroque court. Frederick was a backward-looking military thinker, who situated his war-making in two temporal envelopes: broadly in the long eighteenth century (1648-1789), which was dominated by the search for order after the chaos of religious and civil wars, but more specifically in the ‘Century of Louis XIV’: the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Frederick embraced French military methods, taking inspiration from generals like Turenne and Luxembourg, employing aggressive French battle tactics, and learning his concept of ‘total war for limited objectives’ from French writers like the Marquis de Feuquières. Frederick also sought to surpass the ‘personal rule’ of the Sun King by commanding his army personally. This work shows the early eighteenth century as a liminal period, which saw the Louisquatorzean paradigm interact with the beginnings of the Enlightenment, developments in scientific methods, and the growth of the administrative capacity of states, all of which would exercise an increasing influence as the century progressed. The combination of older traditions and newer ideas placed enormous pressure on the monarchs of this period, and this was seen in Frederick’s strained relations with his generals. Finally, this work examines how ideas are created. It shows military knowledge in the early eighteenth century as the product of power structures (and often an element within them). Military command was itself an element in the assertion of political power, and Frederick depended on ‘the power of (military) knowledge’ to maintain his authority with his generals. Power, however, is negotiated, and knowledge is typically produced collectively. In the early part of Frederick’s reign, the Prussian war effort was a collective effort by several actors within the Prussian military hierarchy, and ‘Frederick’s military ideas’ were not necessarily his own.

Although it has long been portrayed as the nation’s ‘moat defensive’, recent examinations of Anglo-French rivalry during the long eighteenth century have revealed that the English Channel was, in reality, a highly permeable and vulnerable maritime border territory. Within this context, the Channel Islands assumed a strategic and tactical significance which was vastly disproportionate to their physical size, population or resources; emerging as what Morieux terms ‘a lynchpin of control' over local shipping and trade. Although a great deal of research has been already undertaken – particularly in relation to the Channel Islands’ role as a base for commerce-raiding and intelligence gathering – much of this has covered the entire long eighteenth century. However, it was only during the Great French War that the British government embraced the military potential of the Channel Islands to the fullest; not only exploiting the inhabitants’ knowledge of the seas and intimacy with her ‘enemies’, but also transforming the archipelago into a chain of offshore fortresses. In addition, prior scholarship has often focused on individual aspects of the Channel Islands’ involvement in the Great French War; while local historians have tended to embrace the ‘Great Man’ approach, examining the period through the lens of the careers of local commanders. Consequently, this thesis seeks to provide a more complete picture of the Channel Islands’ role within Britain’s military and naval strategy; integrating an examination of local defence and security with several of already well-covered topics. Moreover, in light of the fact that existent scholarship has often centred upon ‘Great Men’, it is hoped that the thesis shall serve to better demonstrate the extent to which the celebrated achievements of Don, Doyle and D’Auvergne rested upon the efforts of a number of ‘unsung heroes’.

Between 1898 and 1913, the limited manpower and resources of the United States Army forced it to employ thousands of Cubans and inhabitants of the Philippines to fight the Spanish and Philippine-American and Moro Wars and conduct civil administration in Cuba and the Philippines. The colonial military labor of Cubans and Philippine islanders both affirmed and challenged the claims of American political and military leaders that the United States practiced a liberal and benevolent form of colonial and neo-colonial rule. In the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, the U.S. army's exploitation of ordinary colonial subjects breathed new life into often coercive colonial institutions, such as Chinese migrant contract labor, forced labor for public works such as roads, and the impressment of interpreters and guides and other intermediaries for military operations. The impact of American military labor relations in war and occupation endured well into periods of civilian rule in these countries, shaping the politics of race and immigration, infrastructure development and public obligation, and the civil apparatus of colonial and neo-colonial states.

For much of history, multinational wars have been the norm rather than the exception. Yet the study of these wars has been largely ignored. Existing scholarship on wartime alliances focuses almost exclusively on the causes of alignment or the onset of conflict ignoring the conduct and consequences of these arrangements. Wartime partnerships exhibit enormous variation in their structure, however. What accounts for the varied multinational security arrangements states adopt in wartime? I argue that the choices states make in constructing these wartime partnerships have important consequences for both the conduct and outcome of conflicts. Following the institutional design literature, I argue that these differences are purposeful and originate from the rational calculations and strategic interactions among the actors creating them. I focus on one design feature of multinational military structures in particular, that of command and control (C2). The enormous variation visible in multinational command and control structures in wartime begs two questions: First, why do states adopt different command and control structures? Second, what drives actors to abandon one structure in favor of another? To answer these questions, I develop a theory of failure-driven change. Because conventional wisdom suggests that greater cooperation is beneficial, yielding gains for all, the puzzle naturally arises as to why all wartime partnerships don’t start out in the tightest configuration possible, that of unified command. After all, the benefits of greater wartime integration are seemingly vast; from the reduction of uncertainty and transaction costs to the conferral of legitimacy, tightly integrated arrangements confer distinct advantages. Despite the many benefits wartime integration confers, however, I argue states are reluctant to adopt unified command for fear of having to surrender operational control over their military forces. Yet even a cursory examination of wartime multinational partnerships reveals that states do sometimes enter into more integrated command relationships, leading to the (second) question of what motivates them to do so. Here, I argue that one factor in particular, that of battlefield performance, leads states to abandon their intrinsic reluctance toward unity of command. Specifically, I argue that when faced with military defeat on the battlefield, states often respond by experimenting with new command and control arrangements. The learning process is often tentative and slow yet over time leads to greater integration. Additionally, I argue that greater integration in multinational command and control structures is correlated with improved military performance. In short, failure leads to adaptation which then leads to success. To test my theory of institutional learning, I employ comparative historical analysis, specifically process tracing and the congruence method. The universe of cases consisted of all multinational wars since 1816, some 38 conflicts. However, because a number of these cases featured multinational parties on both sides, this yielded a total of 43 cases. Three cases were chosen on the basis of representativeness and variation on the dimensions of theoretical interest. The cases examined were the Entente and Central Powers in World War I and the UN coalition in the Korean War. Overall, the cases provide strong support for my theory of wartime learning. The findings suggest that failure is a key determinant of wartime integration.

This thesis crafts a narrative about how Confederate soldiers during the siege of Petersburg experienced an intensified war that caused them to refine soldierly coping mechanisms in order to endure. They faced increasing deprivations, new forms of death, fewer restrictions on killing, dwindling fortunes, and increased racial acrimony by facing African American soldiers. In order to adjust, they relied on soldierly camaraderie, Southern notions of honor, letter writing, and an increasingly firm reliance on Protestant Christianity to cope with their situation. Postwar, these veterans repurposed soldierly coping mechanisms and eventually used institutional support from their states. Camaraderie, honor, literary endeavors, and Christianity remained prevalent postwar, such as through the various emerging veterans’ organizations. However, institutional support took considerable time to appear, such as disability, pension, and soldiers’ home benefits. This required the veterans to fall back onto earlier learned mechanisms, illustrating that the status of veteran began during the conflict.