Through the U.S. Lend-Lease program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to keep Joseph Stalin's Red Army fighting Adolf Hitler's forces to prevent a separate peace and Nazi Germany's colonization of Soviet territory and strategic resources during the Second World War. Yet after the Red Army's 1943 counterattacks, Roosevelt unnecessarily increased Soviet Lend-Lease aid, oversupplying Stalin's soldiers with more armament than they required for the Soviet Union's defense and enabling their subsequent conquest of East Central Europe and large parts of East Asia. Roosevelt's underestimation of the Red Army's capabilities, his tendency to readily rely on Soviet-influenced advisers, and his unquestioning acceptance of Stalin's implicit threats to forge a separate peace all contributed to his excessive arming of Moscow from 1943 forward. Expanding on the findings of other scholars, this work identifies and explains the impact of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on Roosevelt's reasoning, the key role of the Arctic convoys in delivering material to the Red Army, and how the unnecessary aid routes through Iran and Alaska resulted in the oversupplying of Stalin's troops. Had Roosevelt not opened these unnecessary routes, the Arctic convoys could have continued to sufficiently supply the Red Army's defensive efforts without empowering it to aggressively spread …

Far from the frontlines, the destiny of armies and generals has been considerably influenced by anonymous public servants working long hours behind a desk. On many occasions, these bureaucrats were the actual organizers of victory or the root cause of defeat. Count Pierre-Antoine Bruno Daru (1767-1829), Intendant Général de la Grande Armée, was one such man. The research concerns the critical nature of logistics and military administration in the performance of modern armies. It challenges the conventional view that the military commissariat was primarily responsible for the defeats of the armies of the First French Republic during the Revolutionary Wars. A professional bureaucracy was the response deployed by the French government to cope with the need to enlist, train, arm, equip, feed, shelter, pay, and control ever larger military forces. The solutions designed and applied by Pierre Daru and his colleagues, tested and improved by trial and error, became the foundation of modern military administration and, eventually, a model that was extended to contemporary, multinational corporations. Most accounts of the exploits of the late eighteenth-century French armies are devoted to describing their élan, maneuverability, and operational innovations. Yet, the fundamental distinction between the Revolutionary forces and their predecessors was scale. …

The entrance of the German Invasion of Poland and depiction thereof into modern historiographical conversations offers historians superior articulation of the creation of historical memory, mythos, and identity ‒ especially in wider terms of European Imperialism. By utilizing the current trends in gendering of empire, the use of auto-biography and life writing to understand felt realities and obfuscated truths, and the attempts by empire to queer and utilize labeled deviations to control and gain power over their colonized subjects, one is presented a better understanding of how the German Invasion of Poland fits into the story of empire and indigeneity. That story continues past the Third Reich however, as German propaganda in its various forms was accepted as truth after the Second World War, providing justification for and rationalizing post war political power structures of Western nations. As the threat of a cold war with the USSR loomed, many in the American military felt it necessary to accept and support German myths about their military prowess (and non-culpability for the Holocaust) and the inferiority of Slavic military forces. By analyzing not the myths themselves, but how they were created and propagated, historians can add to this historical conversation a case …

This dissertation aims to discover the hidden pattern and rationales behind China's South China Sea policies over the last one hundred years from the perspective of Chinese strategic culture. A historical-cultural approach is a powerful tool in uncovering deeper understandings of the Chinese way of policy making and strategy on issues such as the South China Sea. The key research questions include: first, is there any historical legitimacy in China's sovereignty claim over the South China Sea islands? Second, do Beijing's South China Sea policies in various periods have any regularity or pattern, and how did they serve China's grand strategies at the time? By utilizing extensive Chinese and English primary sources and other sources, this study conducts a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the South China Sea issue from the framework of Chinese strategic culture.

The American's battle of St. Mihiel in September 1918 has long been a marginalized battle in an almost forgotten war. In the historiography of American World War I involvement, the battle is relegated to a side-show that was little more than a distraction from the Meuse-Argonne. This stance needs to be re-evaluated as St. Mihiel proved an essential training ground for the US Army. The army rapidly expanded and participated in a major offensive, completed the complicated planning process, undertook a significant deception and intelligence-gathering campaign, and led coalition forces to reduce a salient that existed for years, in only a few short months. While not a perfect operation, the Americans overcame several obstacles to form the US First Army and achieve victory. St. Mihiel is a turning point in military training and doctrine as students studied the tactics after the war into the modern day. The memory of the battle was affixed in the minds of those who fought it and those on the home front who eagerly read the news stories coming from the Western Front. Modern audiences should also recognize the significance of the Battle of St. Mihiel.

This dissertation examines the history and importance of Oklahoma City's Black Ethnic Enclave. It focuses on how this community developed over generations and the role of its leaders in shaping its identity, despite facing segregation. The settlement in this region began in 1889 when unassigned lands in central Indian Territory were opened for homesteaders by the US government. As a result, Oklahoma City became one of the major towns and eventually the state's capital. Most historical accounts primarily focus on the viewpoint of the white founders of the city, ignoring the experiences of minority residents and the urban aspects of the city. This study takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining historical analysis, urban studies, and sociocultural perspectives. It aims to understand the complex relationship between racial dynamics, urban development, and identity formation. By thoroughly examining primary and secondary sources like archival records, oral histories, and scholarly literature, the research uncovers the struggles, achievements, and cultural contributions of the community builders who overcame systemic barriers to create a thriving enclave within Oklahoma City. By highlighting their stories, this research enriches our understanding of the city's history and the diverse urban experiences it encompasses.

The growth of the pecan industry in San Saba offers a microcosm into the evolution of the industry as a whole. Individual ingenuity in agriculture, business, and technology carved a path for success for the native nut in San Saba. Thanks in part to the efforts by founding families of the area and their descendants, the pecan has become a widely-used ingredient in holiday sweets of the American South and a symbol of Texas identity. Yet, the industry's development and the lives of the people who have cultivated it are stories that have remained largely untold. Through oral histories with family pecan growers, descendants of migrant farm laborers, and others working in the industry as well as primary sources such as those from early pecan sales catalogs, United States Department of Agriculture and other government documents, this project will trace the history of the pecan in San Saba – including how it has shaped the natural landscape and the individual and collective identities of San Saba and its residents.

Thomas E. Dewey and Charles "Lucky" Luciano became household names during a 1936 vice trial in which Dewey successfully prosecuted Luciano, a prominent Mafioso, who received a thirty-to-fifty-year prison sentence. Later, Dewey became the Governor of New York and a perennial Republican presidential candidate while Luciano, still in prison, took part in a joint Navy-Mafia intelligence operation in World War II. In 1946, Governor Dewey commuted Luciano's sentence on the condition that he be deported to his native Italy. The commutation led to years of controversy fomented by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), which downplayed Luciano's wartime services, spread rumors that he had bribed his way out of prison, and claimed that he was smuggling drugs into America from Italy. The FBN's narrative was echoed by muckraking journalists and Dewey's political opponents, finally prompting Dewey in 1954 to order an investigation that thoroughly debunked FBN assertions. However, the records of that investigation were quarantined until the mid-1970s. Since then, most scholars have used those records to explore the Navy-Mafia wartime alliance, but this dissertation exhaustively mines them and other documents in Dewey's papers, along with federal records, to disprove the FBN's narrative that there was something untoward about Dewey's …

Margaret Bayard Harrison Smith was a prominent member of early Washington City society from the time she and her husband, Samuel Harrison Smith, moved to the blossoming capital in 1800 until her death in 1844. As a longtime resident of Washington, Margaret spent most of her adult life navigating the unique socio-political waters of the capital and developing friendships with many of the most prominent politicians of her time. Mrs. Smith's writings provide firsthand accounts of several important political events including Congress' role in the election of 1800, Jefferson's first inauguration, Madison's first inauguration, and the destruction left by the British after the siege of Washington. Her writings also provide a picture of early undeveloped Washington City, where grand public buildings were largely surrounded by wilderness and connected by muddy roads. While this work looks at the social and political environment that Margaret Smith experienced, it also examines many of the personal concerns that frequented Mrs. Smith's writings. Margaret's views on educating her children, interacting with servants, interacting with the enslaved population of Washington, and dealing with feelings of isolation, due to the distance from her family, are frequently addressed in her letters. Focusing on these aspects of Mrs. Smith's …