13th Military History Carnival

Welcome to the 13th Military History Carnival, a collection of blog posts on military history from then to (nearly) now and from here to there. There are a growing number of military history bloggers out there and a lot of fantastic material being posted. This post contains just a brief view of some of that material from the past month.

As if to prove the point about the military history blogosphere or historioblogosphere, Brett Holman at Airminded posted his analysis of "that portion of the blogosphere devoted to military history" using the Cliopatria blogroll and Technorati stats. Some very interesting data and analyses - and congrats to the top five military history bloggers.

As in military history carnivals past, I've attempted to divide the following roughly into themes. Many thanks to those who've submitted their posts for the carnival.

American Civil War

Civil War Books and Authors' Andrew Wagenhoffer has written a review of Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf, 2008) an addition, in my mind, to the growing field of memory studies (thanks to Brett Schulte for submitting this post).

Likewise, Brett Schulte at TOCWOC: The Order of Civil War Obsessively Compulsed has provided an interesting review of Mark Grimsley's The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Meanwhile Rea Andrew Redd at Civil War Librarian brings to our attention the latest from Eric J. Wittenberg, J. David Petruzzi and Michael F. Nugent, One Continuous Fight: The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863 (Savas Beattie Publishing, 2008). Although not a review, the post does contain a lengthy publisher's description of the book.

With Sword and Pen's Paul Taylor writes, not so much a review, but rather a discussion, of Dale Cox's The Battle of Natural Bridge, Florida: The Confederate Defense of Tallahassee (self-published, 2007), including links to Cox's website on the battle and his blogs on Florida during the Civil War.

Alright, something about the American Civil War that's not a book review. At behind AotW, Brian Downey tells the fascinating story of one Union soldier's experience - a member of the Fourth Regiment, New York State Volunteers - of Civil War (and beyond) medicine and his subsequent life with a hole in his skull.

First World War

Alexander Clark at Military History and Warfare provides a lengthy look at how Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Imperial Germany's successful commander in East Africa, wasn't really a master of guerrilla warfare but, instead, truly a product of the traditional German military system.

Mel Hunt, at the Australian War Memorial blog, has posted a fascinating honour roll from the memorial's collection. The document itself is approximately six feet by three feet and contains signatures, unit information and illustrations from more than 1,100 Australian soldiers, sailors and nurses.

Meanwhile, Sceopellen exposes the variations between a draft version and the final poem "Mental Cases" from Wilfred Owen, a very dark, disturbing, and truly sad piece of poetry.

Second World War

Schuylkill County Pennsylvania Military History, penned by J. Stuart Richards, contains some very moving stories from the local wartime press on members of the United States Army Air Corps.

Sticking with the air war, Barbara-Marie Drezhlo over at Voices from Russia has posted a piece on Lilya Litvyak, "The White Rose of Stalingrad", one of the Soviet Union's wartime female fighter aces.

Melisende at Women of History, meanwhile, writes about the release by the National Archives in the United Kingdom of the wartime records of Special Operations Executive member Pearl Cornioley (Witherington), and also links to an earlier post providing more details about this British spy.

Over at the Military History Blog, Daniel Sauerwein has written about Woodrow W. Keeble - his life and career and the recent awarding of the Medal of Honor to this long-deceased soldier for his bravery during the Korean War.

Strange Maps reproduces a Japanese map from 1938 (originally posted on Airminded) graphically depicting the nation's fear of aerial bombardment - what a shock they were in for over the course of the next decade.

Finally, Jason at ExecutedToday recounts the grim details one of the many Nazi reprisal mass executions of the Second World War - that carried out on 24 March 1944 against 335 Italian citizens in retaliation for the killing of 33 German soldiers by Italian partisans.

Canadian military history

As a blogger of Canadian military history (historiography, really), I had hoped to introduce the audience to more than the usual amount of Canadian topics. No dice. I only found one item, further proof that Canadians have a long way to go to catch up with our friends south of the border.

What I did find, however, was very interesting. Dorothy Thompson at The Writer's Life has posted an interview with Canadian military historical fiction novelist William Hay discussing his published and future projects in the genre.

American Presidents

John Phillips at The Word on Employment Law with John Phillips: A blog about legal issues affecting the workplace asks whether the presence or absence of military service experience matters when looking at the ability of an American President to serve as Commander in Chief of the nation's military forces.

And Jennie Weber at American Presidents Blog focuses on one of the more militarily experienced presidents, Andrew Jackson, and his seemingly innate ability to survive assassination attempts.

Miscellaneous

Over at Historiann: History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present, there is an historical and historiographical discussion of the tragic story of the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Mark Grimsley at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age has unveiled the new Ohio State University military history home page (still under construction), including a core reading list of "100 essentials in military history" and a supplemental list of "additional works of value".

And now, for something completely different, Lafayette C. Curtis, at I, Clausewitz, has scientifically, methodically, and with great precision taken the "breast" out of breastplates.

Well, that's it. I hoped you've enjoyed this military history carnival. I would like to thank Gavin Robinson for his additional list of submissions and all-around excellence guidance on the carnival process.

The next edition of the military history carnival will be going home to Investigations of a Dog on 15th May. This will be a special edition with a theme of Contested Boundaries. As well as territorial disputes, Gavin would like to see posts about how war complicates boundaries of race, class, gender, sexuality, species etc. Above all he wants to question the boundary between peace and war. Submissions don't have to be on these themes - you can still submit posts about any aspect of military history and armed forces. The usual limits apply: wars that happened after 1 January 2001 are not eligible.

E-mail submissions to fallon.young@4-lom.com or use the submission form.