Category: author

WWII history book – “No Forgotten Fronts” (Naval Institute Press, 2018) – Lisa Shapiro interview

 

Professor Lisa Shapiro holds masters degrees in literature and management and teaches at San Diego Mesa College. She has previously taught creative writing. She’s written a book based on thousands of archived letters sent by San Diego State students who were in WWII to their professor Dr. Post. I interviewed Professor Shapiro about the book titled “No Forgotten Fronts.”
1:54 – Professor Shapiro talks about her first historical project. It dealt with European medieval historical fiction. Her interest in WWII came out of her work with community college students in San Diego.
3:57 – She began studying war literature and got a second degree in that subject. In the school archives she found letters written to a professor during WWII.
5:46 – Professor Shapiro explains the basis and details of the book. It’s a collection of student letters written to their professor, Dr. Post. He turned the letters into a regular newsletter. He did this through the entire war.
10:16 – Several hundred students participated in writing to Dr. Post. This includes men and women and many wrote repeatedly. People also provided funds to support him. The original documents are in the San Diego State college archives.
12:16 – Professor Shapiro discusses how the US military censors worked with Dr. Post. He took care to keep out sensitive information out of his newsletters.
16:35 – Sometimes students wrote things only for Dr. Post and not the newsletter.
17:16 – Dr. Post was also able to connect two brothers, one of whom was a prisoner of war during the war. Dr. Post even visited their mother to provide reassurance about her sons. One student who was at Anzio wrote that he had lost his marbles and Dr. Post knew he needed some mental comfort. Dr. Post notified a nearby chaplain in Europe from San Diego State to visit this soldier and also gave comfort to the student’s father.
22:54 – Professor Shapiro explains how Dr. Post got information on killed or injured students and how he dealt with that information. Dr. Post would also update information he had published.
27:57 – Dr. Post didn’t have any children. Professor Shapiro discusses how Dr. Post met his wife in college. But both were active in the lives of their students. He also did trick roping and performed for his students. His wife was a singer. Dr. Post did have a nephew in the Marines who would write to Dr. Post.
30:36 – There don’t seem to have been any other people who collected letters from specific groups during WWII. Others have created letter collections after wars.
34:43 – The students loved getting the newsletters.
36:07 – Professor Shapiro focused on the letters that captivated her. The emotion of the letters touched her. She was able to track the stories of specific individuals.
40:28 – Professor Shapiro reads a letter from Herman Adelson who nicknamed himself Little Geronimo since he was a paratrooper. He and the others really believed in what they were fighting for. For good, freedom and democracy.
43:22 – A letter arrived for Dr. Post saying that Herman had died during D-Day and included a eulogy for him. San Diego State lost three members of their championship basketball team during the war. But the community found comfort in knowing what their loved ones had been doing.
48:29 – Professor Shapiro did a lot of reading to brush up on her knowledge of WWII and current events at the time the letters were written. She used Anthony Deevers’ history. She also read a lot of San Diego history. San Diego had a lot of women participate in the war. A lot of San Diego State students became pilots.
53:40 – Professor Shapiro had few problems getting the book published. She had to shorten the book since it was very long at first.
55:02 – Grif Williams was one of the students and was famous for being on the Doolittle Raid. He was taken prisoner eventually and he was eventually a cellmate with another San Diego State student who had been captured in Germany.
59:26 – The website for the book is NoForgottenFronts.com.

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: Lisa Shapiro
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: war, military, WWII, WWII history, san diego, san diego state, pacific war, d-day, north africa, europe, germany, doolittle raid, anzio

Cold War history book – “More Than A Doctrine” (Potomac Books, 2018) – Randall Fowler interview

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Randall Fowler has studied rhetoric at the graduate level and has written a new book on the Eisenhower Doctrine. I interviewed him about the book.

1:27 – Randall started in religious history and then spent time teaching in English. There he became more interested in the Middle East and writing history.

2:53 – The book started as a study into the Suez crisis. But then he began to dig into Eisenhower’s feelings about Middle East issues.

3:53 – The book focuses on the rhetoric of the Eisenhower doctrine and what it meant for the Middle East region.

6:59 – Eisenhower had several speechwriters who helped him write 17 drafts of the doctrine and speech.

9:23 – US was most interested in the region for its oil and how that oil supported European security.

12:59 – The Soviet perspective was to resist the US and promote communism in the region.

16:14 – When the Egyptians made a major arms deal with the Soviets, Eisenhower became worried about the inroads they were making in the Middle East. He pushed religion though Arab nationalism at the time was somewhat secular.

19:53 – As a policy, the Eisenhower Doctrine failed. Arabs didn’t support it.

23:38 – Woodrow Wilson is the first President to really talk about the Middle East at all.

28:23 – Iran was the anchor for US defense of the Middle East during the Cold War until 1979. Arabian oil reserves weren’t exploited until the 60s and on and made Arabia more influential.

32:12 – Eisenhower understood that popular opinion mattered. But US maintained influence through the leaders and not so much the people.

39:59 – During this period, the US had nuclear missiles in Turkey which contributed to the Cuban Crisis. Domino theory also made the US worry about the Soviets taking Middle Eastern countries.

45:53 – Eisenhower tried to work to keep the US from having a large standing army. He saw it as wasteful and a threat to democracy.

51:51 – Randall was surprised at the number of foreigners he found in Middle Eastern countries.

 

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: Randall Fowler

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, Middle east, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Eisenhower, Suez canal, UK, Soviet Union

19th C Naval Warfare book – “Progressives in Navy Blue” (Naval Institute Press, 2018) – Scott Mobley interview

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Dr. Scott Mobley studied history at the US Naval Academy and stayed in the Navy until retirement. He then went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn a PhD in history. The work for his PhD led to the publication of his book “Progressives in Navy Blue.”

1:23 – Scott talks about how he got into writing and history. He majored in history at the US Naval Academy. He stayed in the Navy until retirement and then got a PhD in history afterwards at the University of Wisconsin. He became interested in the book’s subject matter while pursuing his PhD. The book comes from his dissertation.

3:55 – The main themes of the book are maritime strategy, American Empire and the transformation of US Navy professional culture from 1873 to 1898.

5:35 – The modern Navy was born at the end of the 19th century from a Navy of mariner-warriors to warrior-engineers.

7:05 – The backdrop of an American empire changes much of what the Navy is about. The role and missions of the Navy changes.

9:46 – During the US Civil War, the US Navy went from a commercial mission to a whole new War Navy but it returns to the commercial mission after the war. But the commercial mission eventually moves to second place in the 1880s and becomes more of a war fighting Navy.

13:26 – Two groups of Navy thinkers emerged after the Civil War. One was based on technology. They were dissatisfied with the direction the Navy went during the 1870s.

17:18 – The other group of thinkers were strategic in focus. They worried more about planning for wars. They focused on policy and strategy rather than technology. Mechanism was the term used in the 19th century for technology.

19:07 – Bradley Fiske was on both sides of this debate. But in the 1890s these factions were fighting for limited resources.

26:06 – Torpedo technology is the one technology Congress supported right after the US Civil War. Technical subjects were taught to Navy officers at the new Torpedo School in Newport, Rhode Island.

30:26 – Fears of international turmoil and advancing technology abroad got Navy officers worried about future war involving the US.

32:05 – The Endicott Board was a joint board between the Army and Navy to discuss coastal fortifications. They discussed how to defend the US against modern mechanized threats.

36:43 – Navy officers embraced progressive methods and ideas quicker than other professionals in the 1880s and 1890s.

38:19 – Peacetime war planning efforts, contingency planning, began at this time for the first time in the US. There was no Naval plan for the US Civil War until the war started.

40:25 – Scott possibly found the first strategic peacetime war plan in the papers of a junior Naval officer. The plan was focused on a possible war with Canada. The plan was read by Mahan and possibly incorporated into Naval War College classes.

45:25 – Scott was surprised to learn that the building of modern warships was not motivated by empire as many scholars have claimed. Naval growth was spurred by a desire to defend the US. Some wanted empire but the majority wanted to protect US shores.

51:46 – The US did not have an empire-focused Navy until after 1898. The US had to quickly acquire gunboats, logistics ships, and other vessels to control its new empire.

 

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. Scott Mobley

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, navy, empire, mahan, civil war