17 May 2017 - Professor Brian McAllister Linn

By the late 1950s, the Cold War threatened every American with world-ending thermonuclear annihilation. To help stem the bone-chilling fear gripping the country in the wake of fears over Soviet aggression, the U.S. Army pushed a radically new method of warfare into the public consciousness. The Army claimed it could, and would, limit the atomic warfare to the battlefield by revolutionizing its equipment, organization, and training practices. The Army accented its effort by recruiting none other than Elvis Presley, demonstrating that even this icon of youth culture was not too cool to wear the Army’s uniform. Dr. Brian Linn traces the origins, evolution, and ultimate failure of the Army’s attempt to transform itself for atomic warfare, revealing its vital role in the making of Cold War America.

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Elvis's Army - Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series

Military History Lectures and Events held at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, brought to you in podcast form.  Our lecturers are scholars, soldiers, and authors who are speaking to a U.S. Army audience about military history and the history of war.

History

Society & Culture

While research has shown Latinos are highly patriotic, political rhetoric often questions their patriotism and residence in the United States. In his lecture, Dr. McGlynn will examine how Latina/Latino aspirations to demonstrate patriotism and belonging influences their experiences with military recruitment and service.

Connecting Latino: Military Service and Belonging in the United States

Supply and logistics are an integral component of military operations, which influences every aspect of military planning, operational art, and strategy. Among the many challenges faced by the fledgling Continental Army was establishing secure sources of supplies. That challenge came on top of developing effective and efficient lines of communication, creating functional and reliable transportation systems, finding reliable and secure logistical bases, and successfully managing what was often an ad-hoc and improvised supply and logistical system.  In his most recent book “Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778”, U.S. Army War College professor Dr. Ricardo Herrera outlines how this system catastrophically failed at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778. Dr. Herrera discusses the causes of this failure; and how Washington and his logisticians overcame it to enable the Continental Army to fight the British army to a standstill at Monmouth that spring.

Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778

Although he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the first shots were fired at Gettysburg, Union general George G. Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. In this lecture historian, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory.

Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command

Military expert Dr. Michael O’Hanlon examines America’s major conflicts since the mid-1800s: the Civil War, the two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. O’Hanlon addresses profound questions. How successful has the United States been when it waged these wars? Were the wars avoidable? Did America’s leaders know what they were getting into when they committed to war? And what lessons does history offer for future leaders contemplating war? —including the prospects for avoiding war in the first place.

Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861

America's World War II military was a force of good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that is the story the U.S. Army put forward through wartime propaganda during WW2, and remains popular today.In this talk, historian and George Washington University associate professor Thomas Guglielmo offers a decidedly different view. This new perspective draws from more than a decade of extensive research and stitches together stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; of African Americans, white Americans, Japanese Americans, and more, stories which have long been told separately. Guglielmo underscores not national unities, but racist divisions as a defining feature of America’s World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion.

Elvis's Army - Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series

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