war

H-Diplo Essay No. 172
An H-Diplo Book Review Essay

Published on 21 May 2019

Review Editor:  Diane Labrosse
Web and Production Editor:  George Fujii

Thomas Brodie.  German Catholicism at War, 1939-1945.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 2018.  ISBN:  9780198827023 (hardcover, $85.00).

URL: http://tiny.cc/E172

Reviewed by James Chappel, Department of History, Duke University

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I think there is a persuasive argument here. Hemingway was certainly a collector of experiences that later showed up in his fiction. He was slightly desperate to get into the Great War, and his relatively brief (if violent) exposure to it was significant. Given that his fiction about the war was always about the dark side of it, and the experience of those wounded, it's easy to see him being influenced by Ellen La Motte, herself an admired friend of Hemingway's literary friend and mentor, Gertrude Stein.

It's probably just me, but I get the feeling that hairs are being split here. Simpleton that I probably am, I suspect war (and all suffixes to that word), well, isn't it something like that long ago Supreme Court justice who made no attempt to define pornography, but he "knew it when he saw it."

What I saw and experienced in Vietnam, long ago (in a galaxy far away) left no doubt in my mind that it was a war. Thankfully, the term "warfighter" hadn't been invented, or come into popular use. I was just an Air Force guy doing my tour of duty, & saw no need to overthink it.

You should also be cognizant of the use of "warfighter" and "warfighting." This seems to collapse the definitions of battles and campaigns. Our armed services once upon a time did know how to make war - we seem to have confused war making with "warfighting." At least this is what I observed in my own checkered career.
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Dear Colleague,

Ideology, Media and Audio-Visual Archives in Wartime Lebanon

28-29 June 2019

University of Cambridge

H-Diplo Roundtable Review
Volume XX, No. 35
29 April 2019

Roundtable Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse
Roundtable and Web Production Editor: George Fujii

David Stevenson.  1917:  War, Peace, and Revolution.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2017.  ISBN:  9780198702382 (hardcover, $39.95).

URL: http://www.tiny.cc/Roundtable-XX-35

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