An Improbable Success Story
Official Military Histories in the Twentieth Century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11664471 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ronald Spector (corresponding author), Ronald H Spector |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 25-30 |
| Publication date | 1990-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Public Historian (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0272-3433 • E-ISSN: 1533-8576 |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3378320 |
| OpenAlex | W2036759709 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 4 |
IN CONSIDERING THE problems and promises of officially sponsored military histories, I cannot resist alluding to a session held at an annual meeting of the American Historical Association a little more than twenty years ago where Leonard Krieger, in a brilliant and insightful comment, observed that governmental (official) military is suspect on three counts. It is contemporary which is a doubtful dimension of it is official which is a suspect kind of history and it is collaborative which is a perilous method of history.' Krieger's reservations about official are weighty and real and are widely shared by historians. As long ago as 1919, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker warned against any project for an army-sponsored of World War I. Such a history, wrote Baker, would be incomplete unless it undertook to discuss economic, political, and diplomatical questions, and the discussion of such questions . .. would necessarily be controversial and . . . impolitic and indiscreet for treatment by the War Department.'2 At the conclusion of World War II, Douglas Southal Freeman strongly opposed plans for a similar of that conflict. Freeman predicted that no adequate unrestricted of America's participation in the Second World War can be written during the lifetime of the principal leaders in
Ancient history · History · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,06 |
| Citation span | 1992 - 1993 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |