This thesis examined Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick Dilling Stokes, an American anti-war writer of the 1930s who attempted to get rid of the possible threat of Communism from spreading to the United States. Outside of her written works, she knew that it was important to introduce herself to persons of great importance to receive praise from the far-right community. Without these types of personal connections, Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick Dilling Stokes might not have been an important figure among members of the far-right. It was through these intimate connections that her fan base began to grow. Her various books, articles, and pamphlets reached well over 100,000 people throughout the world. Today, her work is no longer in print but is found in many libraries. In this thesis, one will find the details of Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick Dilling Stokes' life in connection with the various personal encounters in relation to her speeches and writings.

Prevalent depictions of United States Naval Construction Battalions (Seabees) were engendered by John Wayne in The Fighting Seabees and the musical, South Pacific. While capturing the ingenious determination that birthed their motto '˜Can Do', these incomplete pictures don't portray the complexity of construction under combat conditions in a harshly unforgiving and demanding environment. The Seabee's first combat landing was New Georgia. In six months, these battalions built five airfields, granting Allied forces air superiority over the Solomon Islands and Rabaul. Battalion records stored at the Naval Facilities Command Archives, Port Heuneme, California, combined with documents from the National Archives, provided source materials. This thesis examines the construction operations undertaken at New Georgia that were the proving grounds from which future construction methodology stemmed. This campaign tempered the men, techniques, and equipment necessary for Pacific construction. The true heart of the Seabee's was forged by the lessons learned at New Georgia.

The relationship between history and memory is long and complex. While some theorists argue that they are at odds with one another, this thesis explores the necessary relationship between the two. Using Michael Frayn's 1998 play, Copenhagen, and the scrapbook of a Danish police officer and resistance fighter during World War II, the author posits the central role of uncertainty in the negotiation of individual memory and history. The position of the observer or witness to history affects the way the past is remembered and recorded. Individual witnesses, even and perhaps especially where they stray from the accepted historical narrative, testify to something that would otherwise be lost: the nature of the event. The observer therefore plays an important role in interpreting the testimony according to its place in the flow of time.

This thesis proposes to link certain consistent themes in the historiography of interwar and wartime Hungary. Hungary's inability to successfully resolve its minority problems led to the nation's dismemberment at Trianon in 1920 after World War I. This fostered a national Hungarian reaction against the Trianon settlement called the revisionist movement. This revisionist "Trianon syndrome" totally dominated Hungarian politics in the interwar period. As Hungary sought allies against the hated peace settlements of the Great War, Hungarian politics irrevocably tied the nation to the policies of Nazi Germany, and Hungary became nefariously assessed as "Hitler's last ally," which initially stained the nation's reputation after World War II. Although some historians have blamed the interwar Hungarian government for the calamity that followed Hungary's associations with Nazi Germany, this thesis proposes that there was little variation between what could have happened and what actually became the nation's fate in World War II. A new interpretation therefore becomes evident: the injustices of Trianon, Hungary's geopolitical position in the heart of Europe, and the nation's unfortunate orientation between the policies of Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia predestined the nation to its fate in World War II. There was no other choice for Hungarian policy in World War II but the Axis alliance. The historian of East Central Europe faces a formidable challenge in that the national histories of this region are often contradictory. Hungarian historiography is directly countered by the historical theories and propositions of its Czech, Serb, and Rumanian enemies. By historiographical analysis of the histories of Hungary, its enemies among the Successor States, and neutral sources, this thesis will demonstrate that many contemporary historians tend to support the primary theses of Hungarian historiography. Many of the arguments of the Hungarian interwar government are now generally supported by objective historians, while the historiographical suppositions of the Successor States at the Paris Peace Conference have become increasingly reduced to misinformation, falsification, exaggeration, and propaganda. The ignorance of the minority problems and ethnic history of East Central Europe led to an unjust settlement in 1919 and 1920, and by grossly favoring the victors over the vanquished, the Paris Peace Treaties greatly increased the probability of a second and even more terrible World War.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of research of the United States Office of Censorship from the birth of that office in 1941 to its timely death in 1945. Jim Heath, in his article, “Domestic America during World War II: Research Opportunities for Historians,” provided the impetus for the research that has resulted in this paper. Professor Heath states that most histories of World War II have relegated the American domestic scene to a secondary place in the process of reporting on the more exciting diplomatic and military aspects of the period. He suggests that historians analyze the various published histories of the many short-lived bureaucratic offices necessitated by the contingencies of World War II. One of these offices was the U.S. Office of Censorship.

This project explores the military and political mobilization of rural and urban working sectors of Puerto Rican society as the Island transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule. In particular, my research is interested in examining how this shift occurs via patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socio-economic and political enfranchisement. Analyzing the armed forces as a culture-homogenizing agent helps to explain the formation and evolution of Puerto Rican national identities from 1868 to 1952, and how these evolving identities affected the political choices of the Island. This phenomenon, I argue, led to the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952. The role played by the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan military in the final creation of a populist project taking place under colonial rule in the Island was threefold. Firstly, these soldiers served as political leverage during WWII to speed up the decolonization process. Secondly, they incarnated the commonwealth ideology by fighting and dying in the Korean War. Finally, the Puerto Rican soldiers filled the ranks of the army of technicians and technocrats attempting to fulfill the promises of a modern industrial Puerto Rico after the returned from the wars. In contrast to Puerto Rican popular national mythology and mainstream academic discourse that has marginalized the agency of subaltern groups; I argue that the Puerto Rican soldier was neither cannon fodder for the metropolis nor the pawn of the Creole political elites. Regaining their masculinity, upward mobility, and political enfranchisement were among some of the incentives enticing the Puerto Rican peasant into military service. The enfranchisement of subaltern sectors via military service ultimately created a very liberal, popular, and broad definition of Puerto Rico’s national identity. When the Puerto Rican peasant/soldier became the embodiment of the Commonwealth formula, the political leaders involved in its design were in fact responding to these soldiers’ complex identities, which among other things compelled them to defend the “American Nation” to show their Puertorriqueñidad.

Alois Dwenger, writing from the front in May of 1942, complained that people forgot "the actions of simple soldiers.I believe that true heroism lies in bearing this dreadful everyday life." In exploring the reality of the Landser, the average German soldier in World War II, through letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral histories, Stephen G. Fritz provides the definitive account of the everyday war of the German front soldier. The personal documents of these soldiers, most from the Russian front, where the majority of German infantrymen saw service, paint a richly textured portrait of the Landser that illustrates the complexity and paradox of his daily life. Although clinging to a self-image as a decent fellow, the German soldier nonetheless committed terrible crimes in the name of National Socialism. When the war was finally over, and his country lay in ruins, the Landser faced a bitter truth: all his exertions and sacrifices had been in the name of a deplorable regime that had committed unprecedented crimes. With chapters on training, images of combat, living conditions, combat stress, the personal sensations of war, the bonds of comradeship, and ideology and motivation, Fritz offers a sense of immediacy and intimacy, revealing war through the eyes of these self-styled "little men." A fascinating look at the day-to-day life of German soldiers, this is a book not about war but about men. It will be vitally important for anyone interested in World War II, German history, or the experiences of common soldiers throughout the world. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1287/thumbnail.jpg

At the end of World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, fearing that retreating Germans would consolidate large numbers of troops in an Alpine stronghold and from there conduct a protracted guerilla war, turned U.S. forces toward the heart of Franconia, ordering them to cut off and destroy German units before they could reach the Alps. Opposing this advance was a conglomeration of German forces headed by SS-Gruppenführer Max Simon, a committed National Socialist who advocated merciless resistance. Under the direction of officers schooled in harsh combat in Russia, the Germans succeeded in bringing the American advance to a grinding halt. Caught in the middle were the people of Franconia. Historians have accorded little mention to this period of violence and terror, but it provides insight into the chaotic nature of life while the Nazi regime was crumbling. Neither German civilians nor foreign refugees acted simply as passive victims caught between two fronts. Throughout the region people pressured local authorities to end the senseless resistance and sought revenge for their tribulations in the "liberation" that followed. Stephen G. Fritz examines the predicament and outlook of American GI's, German soldiers and officials, and the civilian population caught in the arduous fighting during the waning days of World War II. Endkampf is a gripping portrait of the collapse of a society and how it affected those involved, whether they were soldiers or civilians, victors or vanquished, perpetrators or victims. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1288/thumbnail.jpg

This thesis examines the history of the Office of Special Investigations' campaign to identify, denaturalize, and deport Nazis and Nazi collaborators. By analyzing documents from the work of the Office's predecessor, the Special Litigations Unit, in 1977, up to and including the case of George Lindert in 1995, this research aims to provide an understanding of the Office's origins, methods, and motivations. This work was done through the consultation of court records, internal memos, letters, an official government report on the Office's activities, other literature written on this topic, and interviews conducted by the author with two former members of the Office of Special Investigations. This paper finds that while the Office did manage to bring numerous persecutors to justice, and greatly contributed to the broader understanding of the inner-workings of the Holocaust, the long delay before the United States undertook these proceedings, the lack of clarity in the law regarding the subject, and the highly political nature of this public effort all resulted in inconsistent and sometimes questionable outcomes. Going forward, proactive investigations and clear legislation could aid in avoiding such difficulties in the future.

The vast literature of World War II in France contains a major gap. There is little on the daily life of civilians prior to France's defeat during the Battle of France or civilian life after the liberation of France from the German occupier. Most literature on France during the war focuses on the Vichy years from 1940-1944. This dissertation extends the timeline to encapsulate the whole war from 1939-1945. By doing so, historians can uncover other themes central to the French civilian experience besides the German presence. This dissertation shows the benefits of this chronological extension through its investigation of the southern French city of Montélimar. This dissertation argues that from the time France entered World War II until the end of the war France was occupied. To consider this, one must look at the central theme of requisitions. For the entirety of the war, people all over France had to adapt because of the imposition of requisition policies. French government policy required the sacrifice of civilian possessions in a time of war. These policies continued across different governments: the French Third Republic, Vichy France, the Italian occupation, the German occupation, and during the Free French provisional government. Montélimar's civilians understood that requisitions were necessary. There was, however, a limit to their understanding. When civilians felt they were excessively burden with requisitions or unfairly treated, they appealed in a number of ways. They engaged with the state in what this dissertation calls the "politics of requisitioning." It provided a figurative space where civilians challenged their responsibilities to the state. Though civilian appeals usually failed, they provided an opportunity where civilians contested the meaning of their civic responsibilities and the state explored the limits of its obligations to the inhabitants of the city. These experiences, in addition to the Axis occupation, capture daily life in wartime Montélimar.