Tag: world war II

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

Early 20th Century naval history – Learning War – Trent Hone interview

Trent Hone was written frequently on US Naval history. I interviewed him about his upcoming book Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the US Navy, 1898-1945 to be published by the Naval Institute Press.

1:45 – Mr. Hone discusses some of his earlier naval doctrine writing. He’s written about night combat in the US Navy in early WWII. He also wrote on how naval doctrine changed over WII. He’s collaborated on different navy history projects. He helped with the WWI navy book To Crown the Waves.

4:45 – Mr. Hone discusses his current book. From the 1890s to the 1940s, the Navy became a learning organization.

8:28 – The Spanish American war is where the US Navy realizes it needs a new institutional structure. This leads to the creation of the General Board in the Navy. Also, there’s a conflict between engineering officers versus line officers. Line officers were then required to be engineering officers and the Naval Academy changed its focus to engineering too.

10:59 – After the Spanish-American war, the US becomes a global empire. The new territories are across the oceans. The General Board thinks seriously about what the Navy should look like with these new overseas commitments.

13:40 – The board is made up of navigation, intelligence, the head of the Navy, and the others. Some leaders in the Navy didn’t trust the Board since it put civilian control over the Navy. The board leads the creation of the Chief of Naval Operations.

16:42 – Surface tactics change before WWI. The Atlantic Fleet was established and the Navy learns how to fight as a fleet rather than as squadrons. They also learn how to use torpedoes in combat. New communications are developed for tactical exercises and new ideas created for independent action.

20:30 – The US Navy went into WWI ready for a big fleet action. But Germany instead uses U-boats to win the war. The US Navy then rushed to built ships good for fighting U-boats.

22:45 – In 1916, the Navy starts to realize that there are many different ways wars can be fought. The Navy begins to grapple with how aviation can be used in the fleet. Submarines are also an uncertainty as far as what their role will be in war.

25:42 – The idea that the Navy was focused on battleships for the next war is a pervasive belief. This idea is tied with the Gun Club, which were admirals focused on big gun battles. There was more diversity in thinking about how the next war would be fought.

29:00 – WWII leaders were adept at using all their available technologies. The Navy generally did promote the best rather than those who were connected politically. Performance mattered. The Navy also created good ways to exchange feedback about important issues. There was also a great deal of creativity during tactical exercises.

32:52 – Mr. Hone looked at exercise reports and doctrinal manuals. But they lacked context about how these ideas were created. He looked at various primary and secondary sources in the National Archives and the Navy War College archives.

37:21 – PBYs were used at night during WWII. There was a large pre-WWII effort to get patrol planes and ships to work together at night. The Navy was also working on destroyer night combat before WWI.

42:00 – Mr. Hone was surprised at how far back some Navy innovations went. He would like to do more research on how the large the spheres of influence of some officers were.

44:22 – Mr. Hone focused on one action on November 13, 1942 at Guadalcanal. History has said that Officer Callahan was confused and overwhelmed at Iron Bottom. However, Navy documents suggest that he used his force the way they were expected to be used against a Japanese battleship.

48:06 – The US Navy learned quicker than the Japanese Navy in WWII and this came from the organizational structure.

53:00 – Guadalcanal has many wrecks that provide information on how the Naval campaign was waged.

53:47 – The book will be on USNI.org and Amazon. His personal website is trenthone.com.

55:00 – The Navy planned for a campaign against the Japan in WWII but they didn’t have an idea of how they would end the campaign. The Japanese focus was on one big battle and they pursued that idea throughout. Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Leyte Gulf were Japanese big battle concepts.

Links

https://www.usni.org/store/books/ebook-editions/crown-waves

https://www.usni.org/

https://trenthone.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: Trent Hone

Host: Cris Alvarez

 

WWII history book – “The General Who Wore Six Stars” (Potomac Books, 2018) – Hank Cox interview

 

Hank Cox has been writing in various capacities for many years. He’s written a book on the Sioux Uprising of 1862 and now on General JCH Lee of WWII.

1:39 – Hank Cox discusses how he got into writing history. He first wrote “Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising of 1862”. There hadn’t been much written on the subject in many decades.

3:27 – He’s also a big WWII fan and wanted to write about Lt. Gen. John C.H. Lee. Many of his colleagues didn’t like him though he was very successful being in charge of Army supplies in Europe.

5:03 – Lee did have unusual characteristics. He was very military and something of a martinet.

6:24 – The book goes into Lee’s pre WWII life. He fought in WWI and then joined the Corps of Engineers. He worked on the great Vicksburg flood of 1927. He developed many contacts that helped dictate what he ended up doing during WWII.

9:38 – Lee was put in charge of the great buildup of supplies in Great Britain for the invasion of Europe. One of the big issues was the train Lee wanted.

12:09 – Lee was also criticized heavily for being very religious and going to church often and his staff had to attend with him. He also didn’t have drinking buddies.

14:28 – He was also a strong advocate of African-American soldiers and thought they should be put to better use.

15:19 – Many of the US Generals in Europe also refused to be part of a centralized supply effort controlled by Lee.

16:42 – By the time of the Battle of the Bulge, the US was running out of troops and Lee changed the rules to allow black soldiers into combat. This bothered a lot of US Army leaders but Lee didn’t back down. White troops in the field accepted them at the time of combat.

18:38 – When Patton raced across Europe, the US supply lines weren’t in place to properly support him with fuel, food and ammo. Lee created the Red Ball Express – trucks driven mostly by black drivers racing across Europe to supply Patton.

20:26 – Lee moved his command into Paris when it was liberated. But Eisenhower had said Paris should only be for soldiers on leave. Lee argued that Paris was the central communications point across Europe and he had to put his headquarters there. Troops resented the great accommodations Lee and his staff had in Paris.

24:22 – Near the end of the war. Bradley and others refused to report how many supplies they had to Lee. The Germans also tried to attack US supply depots around Europe and Lee worked on removing all these supplies and out of the hands of the Germans.

26:33 – When Lee allowed black soldiers into combat, they had to lose rank to do that but thousands went into combat roles anyway.

27:40 – After the war, Lee was put in charge of Italy despite all the negative comments made about him.

31:18 – Lee has been unfairly criticized by historians as well. After the war he joined the Episcopalian group the Brotherhood of Saint Andrew.

33:08 – Benjamin Davis was sent over to allay fears of black soldiers and he became good friends with Lee.

34:30 – Lee had a large staff to run his operations. Twenty-five percent of US forces were in Lee’s command. But many of the combat forces refused to let supply people inventory their supplies.

37:03 – US generals were constantly stabbing each other in the back politically speaking.

38:49 – Lee was in charge of building air bases and supplying them but air force supply control was held by others. Lee requisitioned many air force personnel at times.

40:47 – Hank went to Carlisle for some historical records and also used Lee’s memoirs.

44:10 – Keeping track of and sourcing all the information in the book was the hardest part of writing it.

47:47 – Learning about the hardships the soldiers went through was the hardest thing to study while writing the book. Lee tried his hardest to get winter clothing to the soldiers in Bastogne and other areas. There was a lot of chaos in supplying soldiers.

51:03 – Omar Bradley was much more petty than Hank had expected and that bothered him. Omar Bradley has always been known as the GI’s General.

54:43 – Hank’s website is http://www.hankhcox.com/

 

Links

http://www.hankhcox.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: Hank Cox

Host: Cris Alvarez