Category: author

World War I history book – “German Submarine Warfare in World War I” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) – Lawrence Sondhaus interview

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Dr. Lawrence Sondhaus is Professor of History at the University of Indianapolis. He has written numerous books about Naval warfare and about WWI with a focus on the Central Powers. I was able to interview him about his most recent book on German submarine warfare in WWI.

1:27 – Dr. Sondhaus talks about how he got into history writing about it. He was a child of the 60s. He had a particular interest in the Central Powers in WWI since he has a Croatian heritage.

3:39 – Dr. Sondhaus was asked to write a book on the Eastern Front in WWI but he suggested a book on German submarine warfare. He tends to study WWI from the perspective of the Central Powers which is uncommon among English writers on WWI.

5:20 – The Central Powers tended to take the lead in WWI with the Allies reacting and so WWI histories should focus on the Central Powers. He also focused on the German politics behind the war.

8:00 – Germans felt the U-boat blockade of Britain was equivalent to the British surface blockade of Germany. The Americans and the UK didn’t accept this. Also, German U-boat warfare in WWI was not as cruel as that of WWII. German U-boats applied cruiser rules.

11:20 – One German U-boat captain captured a number of merchantmen who became POWs for the duration of the war. However, submarines could not generally hold prisoners or tow them to land.

14:10 – Many German U-boat commanders felt they needed to be chivalrous. It was difficult for them to engage in unrestricted warfare because they were unable to be cruel. This was different from WWII.

16:13 – The Lusitania was not the main reason the US entered the war. It was shocking because of the number of people that died but the US took a long time afterwards to enter the war. It took many decades afterwards for the British to admit that the Lusitania was carrying munitions.

20:45 – When measuring cost to gain, the German WWI submarine was the most effective among the three great submarine warfare campaigns.

25:20 – Both sides used gas, submarines, bombed civilians, and other cruel methods, but the Germans are always the first ones to raise the stakes. This makes their image worse after they lose the war.

28:30 – Germans could not believe that their army did some of the cruel things they were accused of but it turned out they had. Germans were unified in support of the war once the Russians mobilized for war. Dr. Sondhaus highlights the feelings of one German politician, Erzberger, who worried that unrestricted submarine warfare would bring the US into the war. German opinion began to drift towards a negotiated peace during the war.

37:00 – Germany came close to winning the war but the Allied convoy system helped stop German success. The US and UK then used the convoy system in WWII.

41:05 – Dr. Sondhaus used British wreck divers maps to help do his research.

48:46 – The Germans suddenly lost their advantage in sinking ships in August 1918. Up until then they were doing well in this regard. But unrestricted warfare alone was not going to win the war for Germany.

49:57 – Dr. Sondhaus came across amazing stories of survival during submarine accidents and mishaps. There were sad stories about U-boat commanders trying to save enemy sailors.

55:02 – A lot of British historians don’t value US involvement in the war as important as other British efforts. This book adds weight to the importance of American involvement in the war.

1:00:25 – German WWI U-boat commanders went on to very interesting and different things after the war.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Dr. Lawrence Sondhaus

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, Germany, WWI, world war one, submarine, Britain, UK, U-boats, Italy

Modern warfare history book – “Building Militaries in Fragile States” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) – Mara Karlin interview

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Dr. Mara Karlin started her career working in the Middle East. She then went to graduate school and interned in the Pentagon on strategic issues. Eventually she served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy & force development in the Department of Defense. She is now a professor at Johns Hopkins University where she teaches in the field of Strategic Studies. This is her first book.

1:54 – Dr. Karlin was a policymaker in the Pentagon in the aughts and she worked on building militaries in Pakistan and Lebanon. She had an early interest in Middle East issues and ended up getting an internship in the Pentagon while studying at Johns Hopkins.

3:55 – The book tries to answer the question of how the US can be successful when it builds militaries in fragile states. The US is adverse to sending in its own military into fragile states. The US tries to work with the militaries in these fragile states. Dr. Karlin looked at various case studies from history.

5:19 – She looked at Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The big failure example is the South Vietnam in the 1950s. If the US had succeeded in building the South Vietnam military then the war could have been avoided.

7:15 – Two other failures are Lebanon in the 1980s and in Iraq in recent years. The closest thing to success is US efforts in Greece after WWII.

9:06 – The US got deeply into Greece’s military affairs. That transformed the Greek military and enabled them to beat guerillas and the US didn’t have to send in troops.

15:13 – There were different levels of cooperation. Institutional and strategic versus operational and tactical. People think that the US only started developing foreign militaries after 9/11.

17:28 – More desperation in a government makes foreign countries more willing to listen to what the US has to say.

21:23 – The US goes through stages of increased and decreased support for foreign militaries. However, the US shows consistency in security goals since WWII. Only recently have security issues been inconsistent.

25:25 – Bipartisan agreement on security affairs has recently begun to diminish.

29:38 – The document she found that hit heard the hardest was finding a declassified CIA agency study of a gap in Beirut where attackers were sneaking through to attack their enemies. She also found information on a US official who wanted to stage a coup in Lebanon.

33:31 – She really enjoyed studying the development of the Lebanese military work she had done years before.

36:35 – Body count ideas developed in the Vietnam War has affected how the US has approached building foreign militaries. Recently, the US is shifting away from this quantitative approach to this issue.

39:00 – Dr. Karlin had to apply a paradigm shift to her initial hypothesis.

42:30 – Dr. Karlin discusses Reagan’s decision to have the USS New Jersey launch strikes in Lebanon.

45:35 – Dr. Karlin discusses why Lebanon and its military development is important to the US.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Dr. Mara Karlin

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, United States, France, Lebanon, Vietnam, Greece, Iraq, Syria, stabilization, strategic studies

Modern warfare history book – “Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) – Chiara Ruffa interview

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Dr. Chiara Ruffa has recently published a book about military culture. It’s based on her research with French and Italian military units that had deployed to Lebanon and Afghanistan. I spoke to her about the book.

2:20 – In 2006, Chiara was working for the UN in the Central African Republic in support of the peacekeeping mission. This inspired her interest in the topic this book is about and in her graduate studies.

4:04 – While the book focuses on current events, it traces the military cultures of France and Italy from the 19th century. These cultures affects how militaries carry out their mandates.

8:00 – Peacekeeping operations are a very particular type of operation in that there is much more latitude in interpreting the mission and how to carry it out.   This is important because of the high volume of peacekeeping operations being carried out.

13:53 –Chiara would like multi-national forces to be more open in talking about cultural characteristics of units that are deployed.

17:00 – Military culture is most important at the service level.

25:00 – NATO has standardized much of the ways in which peacekeeping is done however cultures create variations.

26:05 – French military culture has revolved around assertiveness since the Revolution. But this was modified when de Gaulle in 1962 reaffirmed the idea of civilian control over the military.

30:18 – Italy had a shift in military culture that was affected by WWII and by the Cold War. Italian officers push for using the Italian military for peacekeeping. Italy has a change in the culture in the 1990s.

34:13 – Chiara’s first problem in the research was how she would collect data on these militaries. She didn’t have much access to begin with. She started by going to Lebanon and working with French and Italian troops.

46:50 – Chiara had to learn about military organizations from scratch when she started her research.

48:30 – Chiara still wonders how cultures shape Standard Operating Procedures.

1:01:00 – The book will hopefully cross the gap between security studies and peace studies in Europe.

1:05:45 – She’s on twitter at Ruffa.Chiara.

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Chiara Ruffa

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, France, Italy, Afghanistan, Lebanon, peacekeeping, stability, operations