New Books in Military History
Episodes
Elizabeth N. Saunders, "The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace" (Princeton UP, 2024)
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most widely held views of democratic leaders is that they are cautious about using military force because voters can hold them accountable,...
Charles J Esdaile, "The Spanish Civil War: A Military History" (Routledge, 2019)
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish Civil War: A Military History takes a new, military approach to the conflict that tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939. In many histories,...
Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosi...
James Graham Wilson, "America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security from Roosevelt to Reagan" (Cornell UP, 2024)
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In America's Cold Warrior, James Graham Wilson traces Paul Nitze's career path in national security after World War II, a time when many of his mento...
Roger Chickering, "The German Empire, 1871–1918" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history o...
Joshua Howe and Alexander Lemons "Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A friendship between an environmental historian and a chronically ill US Marine yields a powerful exploration into the toxic effects of war on the hum...
Michael D. Gambone, "The New Praetorians: American Veterans, Society, and Service from Vietnam to the Forever War" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary veterans belong to an exclusive American group. Celebrated by most of the country, they are nevertheless often poorly understood by the s...
Antonio J. Muñoz, "Hitler's War Against the Partisans During Operation Barbarossa: June 1941 to the Spring of 1942" (Frontline, 2025)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A detailed history of Nazi anti-partisan warfare on the Eastern Front during Operation Barbarossa. From the start of the war on the Eastern Front, Hi...
Greta Lynn Uehling, "Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025), anthropologist Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling...
Joseph Darda, "How White Men Won the Culture Wars" (U California Press, 2021)
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Domestic politics during the US war in Vietnam are often noted for the extreme divisions between Right and Left, between doves and hawks, and between ...
Frank X Walker, "Load in Nine Times: Poems" (Liveright, 2024)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reim...
William F. Owen, "Euclid's Army: Preparing Land Forces for Warfare Today" (Howgate Publishing, 2024)
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rejecting much of the conventional wisdom to what makes up a modern Army, William F. Owen's Euclid's Army: Preparing Land Forces for Warfare Today (...
Stephen R. Platt, "The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II" (Knopf, 2025)
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The extraordinary life of forgotten World War II hero Evans Carlson, commander of America’s first special forces, secret confidant of FDR, and one o...
Jennifer Lynn Gross, "Sisterhood of the Lost Cause: Confederate Widows in the New South" (LSU Press, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have thoroughly documented the vast devastation of the Civil War. In the attention they have paid to aspects of that destruction, however, ...
Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, "The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal" (Oxford UP, 2023)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, ...
Brian VanDeMark, "Kent State: An American Tragedy" (Norton, 2024)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty-five years after the terrible shooting at Kent State University, I spoke with Brian VanDeMark, a Professor of History at the US Naval Academy, a...
David de Jong, "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties" (Mariner Books, 2022)
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nazi Billionnaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties (Mariner Books, 2022), journalist David de Jong presents a groundbreaking ...
Victoria Khiterer, "Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration" (Purdue UP, 2025)
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration (Purdue UP, 2025) discusses the Holocaust in Kyiv and the efforts to memo...
Becky Aikman, "Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger during World War II" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
11 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses-all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they we...
Mark Fallon, "Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture" (Regan Arts, 2017)
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From busting drug lords to leading the Pentagon task force charged with bringing the 9/11 terrorists to justice, Mark Fallon has spent his career on t...
Chris Webb and Artur Hojan, "The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance" (Ibidem Press, 2019)
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Chelmno Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance (Ibidem Press, 2019) is a comprehensive account of the Chelmno death camp. Chelmno was not ...
David Resnick, "Empowered or Abused: The Bible's Plan to Stop Battlefield Rape and Reduce Sexual Abuse" (BfoT, 2025)
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What to do when a victorious soldier lusts for the beautiful woman he’s just taken captive in an overseas war. In fact, her body already belongs to ...
Cynthia Enloe, "Twelve Feminist Lessons of War" (U California Press, 2023)
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Women's wars are not men's wars. This is the first lesson of Cynthias Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (U California Press, 2023): the lack ...
Michael David-Fox, "Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule" (Harvard UP, 2025)
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael David Fox's Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule (Harvard UP, 2025) provides a local, close-up look at the everyday w...
Joanna Siekiera, "Evolution on Demand: The Changing Roles of the U.S. Marine Corps in 21st Century Conflicts and Beyond" (Marine Corps UP, 2025)
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The future battlespace promises to be complex, unpredictable, and multifaceted. To answer its challenges, military professionals must think deeply and...
Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)
04 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of em...
Simon Mayall, "The House of War: The Struggle Between Christendom and the Caliphate" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
03 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A powerful new history detailing the most significant military clashes between Islam and Christendom over the 1,300 years of the Muslim caliphate. ...
Benjamin Schrader, "Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War" (SUNY Press, 2019)
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While veterans are often talked about, in Fight to Live, Live to Fight Veteran Activism after War: Veteran Activism after War (SUNY Press, 2019), Dr...
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering...
Shaun Walker, "The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West" (Knopf, 2025)
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shaun Walker, The Illegals (Knopf, 2025) is the definitive history of Russia’s most secret spy program, from the earliest days of the Soviet Unio...
William Kiser, "The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America" (Yale UP, 2025)
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Cormac McCarthy's 1985 Western, Blood Meridian, the story follows infamous scalp hunter John Joel Glanton through the Mexican borderlands in the ...
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Doug...
Tim Grady, "Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars" (Yale UP, 2025)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars (Yale University Press, 2025), Tim Grady recounts here a detaile...
Alexandra Birch, "Hitler’s Twilight of the Gods: Music and the Orchestration of War and Genocide in Europe" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
26 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Music was an integral part of statecraft and identity formation in the Third Reich. Structured thematically and semiotically around the Wagnerian tetr...
John Lechner, "Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare" (Bloombury, 2025)
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia's first attempt to claim the country as its own. Upon cease...
Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-...
Brian Masaru Hayashi, "Asian American Spies: How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory" (Oxford UP, 2021)
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Spies deep behind enemy lines; double agents; a Chinese American James Bond; black propaganda radio broadcasters; guerrilla fighters; pirates; smuggle...
Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018)
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing abo...
Paul M. McGarr, "Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2024) is the first comprehensive history of India's sec...
Sasha Colby, "The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story of Ukrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance" (ECW Press, 2023)
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Irina Nikifortchuk was 19 years old and a Ukrainian schoolteacher when she was abducted to be a forced laborer in the Leica camera factory in Nazi Ger...
Richard Overy, "Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan" (Norton, 2025)
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
September 2 will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS. Missouri, ending the Second World War. T...
Serhiy Kudelia, "Seize the City, Undo the State: The Inception of Russia's War on Ukraine" (Oxford UP, 2015)
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do separatist conflicts arise and spread? When does separatism become a cover for a foreign aggression? How do local communities respond when stat...
Georgina Banks, "Back to Bangka: Searching for the Truth about a Wartime Massacre" (Viking Australia, 2023)
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Georgina Banks searches for the truth of what happened to her Great Aunt ‘Bud’, killed in the Second World War. Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Al...
David G. Williamson, "Poland Betrayed: The Nazi-Soviet Invasions of 1939" (Pen & Sword, 2011)
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After staging a mock attack at Gleiwitz, Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939. Two week later, Soviet forces streamed into ...
Margaret Urwin, "A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries" (Mercier Press, 2016)
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A State in Denial: British Collaboration with Loyalist Paramilitaries (Mercier Press, 2016) uses previously secret official documents to explore the...
Lesley J. Gordon, "Dread Danger: Cowardice and Combat in the American Civil War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Those who fought in the Civil War were expected to overcome their fear of injury or death as they charged into a hail of bullets. Soldiers could expec...
Paddy Walker, "War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield" (Howgate, 2025)
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that ...
Eric Min, "Words of War: Negotiation as a Tool of Conflict" (Cornell UP, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Of all interstate conflicts across the last two centuries, two-thirds have ended through negotiated agreement. Wartime diplomacy is thus commonly seen...
Frances Yaping Wang, "The Art of State Persuasion: China's Strategic Use of Media in Interstate Disputes" (Oxford UP, 2024)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do nations actively publicize previously overlooked disputes? And why does this domestic mobilization sometimes fail to result in aggressive polic...
David Dean Barrett, "140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon" (Diversion Books, 2020)
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the closing months of World War II, two military giants locked in a death embrace of cultural differences and diplomatic intransigence. While d...
Kornel Chang, "A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under U.S. Occupation" (Harvard UP, 2025)
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Four decades of Japanese colonialism in Korea ended abruptly in August 1945. It took three weeks for U.S. troops to arrive, which started almost three...
Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering" (Anthem Press, 2025)
30 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U...
Oleksandr Melnyk, "World War II as an Identity Project: Historicism, Legitimacy Contests, and the (Re-) Construction of Political Communities in Ukraine, 1939–1946" (Ibidem, 2022)
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
World War II as an Identity Project (Ibidem, 2022) explores the relationship between history, legitimacy, and violence in the building and breaking ...
David Burke, "Kitson's Irish War: Mastermind of the Dirty War in Ireland" (Mercier Press, 2021)
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The British government has taken steps to halt the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths of civilians in Northern Ireland, most of whom h...
Jim Storr, "War and Warfare in the Twentieth Century" (Howgate Publishing, 2025)
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn from war, and warfare, in the twentieth century? What observations and deductions can we make, and what lessons can we draw? ‘War ...
Michael Vorenberg, "Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War" (Knopf, 2025)
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One historian’s journey to find the end of the Civil War—and, along the way, to expand our understanding of the nature of war itself and how socie...
Andrew Long, "BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War: Intelligence Collecting Operations Behind Enemy Lines in East Germany" (Pen and Sword, 2024)
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was the frontline in the Cold War, packed with hundreds of thousands of Soviet and East German troops...
Peter Whitewood, "The Soviet-Polish War and its Legacy: Lenin’s Defeat and the Rise of Stalinism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
22 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This detailed study traces the history of the Soviet-Polish War (1919-20), the first major international clash between the forces of communism and ant...
Andrew Clapham, "War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This book poses the question: How relevant is the concept of war today? Professor Andrew Clapham of the Graduate Institute of International and Develo...
Ashis Ray, "The Trial That Shook Britain: How a Court Martial Hastened Acceptance of Indian Independence" (Routledge India, 2024)
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1945 to 1946, postwar India was enthralled by the treason trial of three officers—formerly of the Indian National Army, who fought against the Br...
Daniela Richterova, "Watching the Jackals: Prague's Covert Liaisons with Cold War Terrorists and Revolutionaries" (Georgetown UP, 2025)
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The untold history of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the closing decades of the Cold War...
Tycho van der Hoog, "Comrades Beyond the Cold War: North Korea and the Liberation of Southern Africa" (Hurst, 2025)
16 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
North Korea was an important player in the decolonisation of Africa. Freedom fighters across the continent received vital assistance from Pyongyang, a...
Matthew Fuhrmann, "Influence without Arms: The New Logic of Nuclear Deterrence" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How does nuclear technology influence international relations? While many books focus on countries armed with nuclear weapons, this volume puts the sp...
Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup confl...
Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)
08 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army...
Christian Gerlach, "Conditions of Violence" (de Gruyter, 2024)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mass violence comes not only from states, but also from people. By analyzing mass violence as social interaction through survivor accounts and other s...
Janam Mukherjee, "Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire" (Oxford UP, 2015)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The years leading up to the independence and accompanying partition of India mark a tumultuous period in the history of Bengal. Representing both a ma...
Jack Dempsey, "Warriors for Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan's Civil War African Americans" (Michigan Civil War Association, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michigan's African Americans played critical roles in winning the Civil War and setting millions of fellow Americans forever free. The 1st Michigan Co...
John Coakley ed et al., "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerba...
Victoria Khiterer, "Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War, 1918-1920" (Edwin Mellen, 2015)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish Pogroms in Kiev During the Russian Civil War discusses how anti-Jewish violence began during the revolution and civil war 1917-1920 raising qu...
Matthew Hughes, "Britain's Pacification of Palestine" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Britain's Pacification of Palestine (Cambridge UP, 2019...
Daniel Silverman, "Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Factual misinformation is spread in conflict zones around the world, often with dire consequences. But when is this misinformation actually believed, ...
Philip A. Martin, "Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War" (Cornell UP, 2025)
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Strong Commanders, Weak States: How Rebel Governance Shapes Military Integration after Civil War (Cornell University Press, 2025), Dr. Philip A. ...
Marion Laurence, "Intrusive Impartiality: Learning, Contestation, and Practice Change in United Nations Peace Operations" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Impartiality is a guiding principle in United Nations peace operations that has helped legitimize multilateral intervention in dozens of armed conflic...
Thanasis S. Fotiou, "Hitler’s Hunting Squad in Southern Europe: The Bloody Path of Fritz Schubert through Occupied Crete and Macedonia" (Pen and Sword, 2024)
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hitler’s Hunting Squad in Southern Europe: The Bloody Path of Fritz Schubert through Occupied Crete and Macedonia (Pen and Sword, 2024) traces the ...
Shay A. Pilnik, "The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War" (Purdue UP, 2025)
22 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Nazis and their collaborators buried over 100,000 victims at Babyn Yar, a ravine in modern-day Ukraine. Most of the individuals were Jewish, makin...
Susan Tate Ankeny, "American Flygirl" (Citadel Press, 2024)
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1931, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend’s flight lesson. It changed her life. In le...
Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfu...
Samar Al-Bulushi, "War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror" (Stanford UP, 2024)
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since Kenya's invasion of Somalia in 2011, the Kenyan state has been engaged in direct combat with the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, conducting ai...
Saulius Suziedelis, "Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania is the first scholarly English-language study of Lithuania during World War II which utilizes previously ...
Rebecca Davis Gibbons, "The Hegemon's Tool Kit: US Leadership and the Politics of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime" (Cornell UP, 2022)
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system ...
Bruce Robbins, "Atrocity: A Literary History" (Stanford UP, 2025)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, atrocity was not always seen as violating a moral norm or inviting indignation. Could the con...
Peter Whitewood, "The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military" (UP of Kansas, 2015)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union's most talented and experienced army officers, includin...
Jonathan Haslam, "Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War against Ukraine" (Harvard UP, 2025)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 should not have taken the world by surprise. The attack escalated a war that began in 2014 wi...
Hal Brands, "The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World" (Norton, 2025)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we’re living in a long, violent Eurasian century. That giant, resource-ri...
Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the We...
Angela Wanhalla et al., "Te Hau Kainga: The Maori Home Front during the Second World War" (Auckland UP, 2024)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Taking readers to the farms and factories, the marae and churches where Māori lived, worked and raised their families, Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori Ho...
Karel Margry, "Nordhausen Concentration Camp" (After the Battle, 2024)
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the history of Nazi concentration camps, and particularly labor camps, there is probably no place that bears the same stigma of wretchedness as 'Do...
Tolkien, Philosopher of War: A Conversation with Graham McAleer
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore the profound philosophical and theological dimensions of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, particularly his views on war. In his book...
Edward Westermann, "Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest" (U Oklahoma Press, 2016)
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or...
Benjamin Carter Hett, "The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War" (Henry Holt, 2020)
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in eastern Eu...
Viktoriya Fedorchak, "The Russia-Ukraine War: Towards Resilient Fighting Power" (Routledge, 2024)
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Viktoriya Fedorchak's The Russia-Ukraine War: Towards Resilient Fighting Power (Routledge, 2024) provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukra...
Peter Harmsen, "Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II" (Casemate, 2024)
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Peter Harmsen about his book Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II (Casemate, 2024). The wartime...
Susan C. I. Grunewald, "From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union" (Cornell UP, 2024)
26 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With From Incarceration to Repatriation: German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union (Cornell UP, 2024), Susan Grunewald significantly enhances unde...
Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
19 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia...
Mark Celinscak, "Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp" (U Toronto Press, 2015)
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 were faced with scenes of horror and privation. With brea...
Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War" (Cornell UP, 2023)
11 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg r...
Gervase Phillips, "Persecution and Genocide: A History" (Routledge, 2024)
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gervase Phillips' book Persecution and Genocide: A History (Routledge, 2024) offers an unparalleled range of comparative studies considering both pe...
Jonathan R. Beloff, "The Strategy to End the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda" (Lexington Books, 2025)
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Utilizing Strategic Theory as a framework for warfare and incorporating the testimonies and experiences of eight genocide survivors as well as militar...
Fionna S. Cunningham, "Under the Nuclear Shadow: China's Information-Age Weapons in International Security" (Princeton UP, 2024)
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? Among the states facing this dilemma ...