When France entered World War 2 the number of men available for military service was far fewer that it had been in 1914. Also, the height, weight, and general physical health of enlistees was less than it had been 25 years earlier. The great bloodbath of 1914-18 had taken its toll. The best and brightest […]
Final arrangements were recently concluded for the disposition of the statue Silent Sam, a memorial to the thousands of North Carolinians who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Silent Sam had been ripped from his pedestal on the University of North Carolina campus during a demonstration in 2018. Recently, many other Confederate monuments […]
On this Veteran’s Day it would be well to remember some brave Americans. Almost 90,000 American airmen died in World War II, either in military action or by other cause (usually accident). Approximately 40,000 of these men went down in flames during the air war over Europe. Thousands more were lost in the Pacific. […]
In the years leading up to World War I, French military thinkers had wavered back and forth over the best strategy and tactics to employ in the forthcoming struggle with Germany. Most of them were not pushing for conflct, but there was a general feeling that war was inevitable. In 1870-71 France had lost a […]
From time to time scholars question President Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb in 1945. How easy it is to look backwards and see things so clearly. There are those who maintain that Japan would have surrendered, without invasion and without the atomic bomb, prior to the end of 1945 — and probably […]
Paths of Glory was a powerful anti-war motion picture made in 1957. It depicts the horrors of trench warfare in World War I, and it illustrates the dehumanizing effects of warfare. The story describes the travails of members of a French battalion on the front line during the third year of the Great War. The […]
Jordans-Journey 