Legacies of War

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard G. Wilshire ◽  
Richard W. Hazlett ◽  
Jane E. Nielson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Military Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Foreign Wars ◽  
The U.S

Since 1900, United States troops have fought in more foreign conflicts than any other nation on Earth. Most Americans supported those actions, believing that they would keep the scourge of war far from our homes. But the strategy seems to have failed—it certainly did not prevent terror attacks against the U.S. mainland. The savage Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the 11 September 2001 (9/11) attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. were not the first to inflict war damage in America’s 48 contiguous states, however—nor were they the first warlike actions to harm innocent citizens since the Civil War. Paradoxically, making war abroad has always required practicing warfare in our own back yards. Today’s large, mechanized military training exercises have degraded U.S. soils, water supplies, and wildlife habitats in the same ways that the real wars affected war-torn lands far away. The saddest fact of all is that the deadly components of some weapons in the U.S. arsenal never found use in foreign wars but have attacked U.S. citizens in their own homes and communities. The relatively egalitarian universal service of World War II left a whole generation of Americans with nostalgia and reverence for military service. Many of us, perhaps the majority, might argue that human and environmental sacrifices are the price we must be willing to pay to protect our interests and future security. A current political philosophy proposes that the United States must even start foreign wars to protect Americans and their homes. But Americans are not fully aware of all the past sacrifices—and what we don’t know can hurt us. Even decades-old impacts from military training still degrade land and contaminate air and water, particularly in the arid western states, and will continue to do so far into the future. Exploded and unexploded bombs, mines, and shells (“ordnance,” in military terms) and haphazard disposal sites still litter former training lands in western states. And large portions of the western United States remain playgrounds for war games, subject to large-scale, highly mechanized military operations for maintaining combat readiness and projecting American power abroad.

An Interview with Harris Gaylord Warren: From the Borderlands to Paraguay

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-460
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United States Army ◽  
North American ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of

Harris Gaylord Warren was, by common consent, the father of Paraguayan studies in the United States. His broad-ranging activities —from diplomatic undertakings in South America to military service in Italy to administrative and scholarly work at various North American universities—marked him as an historian of rare depth and insight. Not commonly known is that Dr. Warren began his career as a historian in the 1930s as a borderlands specialist. The Sword was their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1943) is yet recognized as the definitive work on North American adventurers in that turbulent era. As an officer in the United States Army in World War II he was selected for various military history projects. After the war Dr. Warren returned to teaching and then administration. At that time his publications ranged from texts to Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, (New York, 1959).

West Africa and US Foreign Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark W. Deets
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transnational Terrorism ◽  
The U.S

Since the founding of the United States of America, coinciding with the height of the Atlantic slave trade, U.S. officials have based their relations with West Africa primarily on economic interests. Initially, these interests were established on the backs of slaves, as the Southern plantation economy quickly vaulted the United States to prominence in the Atlantic world. After the U.S. abolition of the slave trade in 1808, however, American relations with West Africa focused on the establishment of the American colony of Liberia as a place of “return” for formerly enslaved persons. Following the turn to “legitimate commerce” in the Atlantic and the U.S. Civil War, the United States largely withdrew from large-scale interaction with West Africa. Liberia remained the notable exception, where prominent Pan-African leaders like Edward Blyden, W. E. B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey helped foster cultural and intellectual ties between West Africa and the Diaspora in the early 1900s. These ties to Liberia were deepened in the 1920s when Firestone Rubber Corporation of Akron, Ohio established a long-term lease to harvest rubber. World War II marked a significant increase in American presence and influence in West Africa. Still focused on Liberia, the war years saw the construction of infrastructure that would prove essential to Allied war efforts and to American security interests during the Cold War. After 1945, the United States competed with the Soviet Union in West Africa for influence and access to important economic and national security resources as African nations ejected colonial regimes across most of the continent. West African independence quickly demonstrated a turn from nationalism to ethnic nationalism, as civil wars engulfed several countries in the postcolonial, and particularly the post-Cold War, era. After a decade of withdrawal, American interest in West Africa revived with the need for alternative sources of petroleum and concerns about transnational terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 463-478
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Settlement Agreements ◽  
The U.S

The United States entered World War II on the side of the Allied forces in 1941. While no immovable property located in the United States was confiscated during the war, the United States was involved with armistice agreements and the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties, which included clauses requiring the protection, return, and/or compensation of property. The United States was also involved in bilateral claims settlement agreements with several European countries, to address compensation for confiscated or nationalized property during and after the war. In the 1990s, the United States was a facilitator in large-scale Holocaust restitution. Several lawsuits against sovereigns and private parties involving stolen Jewish property were filed in American courts and continue today. The political branches of the U.S. government were involved in the settlement of Holocaust restitution lawsuits. The United States endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

The Evolution of Public Funding of Science in the United States From World War II to the Present

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kei Koizumi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Support ◽  
World War ◽  
Experimental Development ◽  
Vannevar Bush ◽  
The U.S

Large-scale U.S. government support of scientific research began in World War II with physics, and rapidly expanded in the postwar era to contribute strongly to the United States’ emergence as the world’s leading scientific and economic superpower in the latter half of the 20th century. Vannevar Bush, who directed President Franklin Roosevelt’s World War II science efforts, in the closing days of the War advocated forcefully for U.S. government funding of scientific research to continue even in peacetime to support three important government missions of national security, health, and the economy. He also argued forcefully for the importance of basic research supported by the federal government but steered and guided by the scientific community. This vision guided an expanding role for the U.S. government in supporting research not only at government laboratories but also in non-government institutions, especially universities. Although internationally comparable data are difficult to obtain, the U.S. government appears to be the single largest national funder of physics research. The U.S. government support of physics research comes from many different federal departments and agencies. Federal agencies also invest in experimental development based on research discoveries of physics. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science is by far the dominant supporter of physics research in the United States, and DOE’s national laboratories are the dominant performers of U.S. government-supported physics research. Since the 1970s, U.S. government support of physics research has been stagnant with the greatest growth in U.S. government research support having shifted since the 1990s to the life sciences and computer sciences.

scholarly journals Lviv in the U.S. Polish Emigrants’ Press after World War II

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (28) ◽  
pp. 151-161
Author(s):  
Jolanta Chwastyk-Kowalczyk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
World War ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
The City ◽  
The U.S

The article discusses occurrences of topics related to Lviv in Polish opinion-forming newspapers in exile in the United States after World War II. The author followed the New Diaryin the years 1971–1999, together with its appendices, Polish Week (1971–1981) and Polish Review (1981–1999), published in New York. These titles had a wide scope of influence. The analysis of the newspapers’ contents revealed that a small, dispersed community from Lviv, who emigrated to the United States and centered around the Lviv Circle, made their works public regularly in the pages of the New Diary. However, compared with the incidence of the same themes in the Polish emigrants’ press in Western Europe during the same period, it was a marginal phenomenon about accidental topics. The texts mainly focused on unmasking the Soviet authorities’ actions to eliminate traces of Polish culture from Lviv, the devastation of the Lviv Eaglets Cemetery. Additionally, they posted pictures of the Poltva, poems devoted to the city, and anniversary reminiscences of the Lviv defense of 1918. Topics related to Lviv abroad were mostly the domain of its former citizens, who had been forced to leave the city without possibility of return (thanks to the provisions of the Yalta Conference)—journalists, academics, and activists in exile, regularly associated with magazines from the British Isles (the White Eagle, News, Polish Diary, and Soldier’s Diary) as well as Culture from Paris.

Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Higgs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal in which the well-being of consumers deteriorated. After the war genuine prosperity returned for the first time since 1929.

scholarly journals Politicizing Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”

scholarly journals A Transition of Internationalisms: Britain, the United States, and the Formation of the United Nations Information Organization during World War II

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Giles Scott-Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Public Information ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Nations

The United Nations Information Office (UNIO), dating from 1942, holds the distinction of being both the first international agency of the embryonic UN network and the first to hold the United Nations label. Run from 1942 to 1945 from two offices in New York and London, these two were merged at the end of World War II to form the UN Information Organisation, and subsequently transformed into the Department of Public Information run from UN headquarters in New York. This article adds to the history of the UN by exploring the origins and development of the UNIO during 1940–41, when it was a British-led propaganda operation to gather US support for the allied war effort. It also examines the UNIO from the viewpoint of the power transition from Britain to the United States that took place during the war, and how this reflected a transition of internationalisms: from the British view of world order through benevolent imperialism to the American view of a progressive campaign for global development and human rights.

Africa in the Shuffle

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
Immanuel Wallerstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
The U.S

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the study of Africa in the United States was a very rare and obscure practice, engaged in almost exclusively by African-American (then called Negro) intellectuals. They published scholarly articles primarily in quite specialized journals, notably Phylon, and their books were never reviewed in the New York Times. As a matter of fact, at this time (that is, before 1945) there weren't even very many books written about African-Americans in the U.S., although the library acquisitions were not quite as rare as those for books about Africa.

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