Sublime

Eisenhower’s moderation in the crisis has often been misunderstood. He was determined to enforce the court order, but with as little bluster as possible. Like Theodore Roosevelt, Ike preferred to walk softly and carry a big stick. Rather than emphasize integration, Eisenhower preferred to stress the rule of law. His deployment of the 101st Airborne

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A full defense of the Pacific would require arming the populations of Hawai‘i, American Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, and Alaska. Yet war planners hesitated to do that; they seemed as concerned with defending the United States against those colonized peoples as defending it with them. The early plans for Hawai‘i envisioned deporting or interning th

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS THE RAIDERS There are a great many Marines, active and retired—in and out of uniform—who feel that “Marine” and “special” are synonymous. Candidly, a great many of us who served, but not in the Marine Corps, feel the same way. With this in mind, the Corps can trace their special-operations history back t

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Six months earlier, Conner had been on mundane duty as an inspector. The combination of Palmer’s misfortune and Conner’s own perseverance placed Fox Conner in position to direct the development and deployment of an army that would number in the millions and play a decisive role in the deadliest war humankind had fought to that time. In James G. Har

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Conner also interacted with his men on a daily basis as he made his rounds through the post on a horse named Old Bill. As Eisenhower put it, Conner “never abandoned the position—and no senior officer ever should—of being an instructor.” Once, Conner encountered some Puerto Rican soldiers on a work detail who did not know how to use a scythe to cut

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McKinley, meanwhile, called for 125,000 volunteers to carry the war to the Caribbean. The army was swamped with applicants. And bouncing up and down enthusiastically at the head of the line was one Theodore Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt’s eagerness to leave his post and join the army baffled his friends. “Is his wife dead? H

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In the end, Paris was saved by the actions of five men: Model, who ignored Hitler’s order to defend the city and moved Army Group B north to the Marne and the Somme; von Choltitz, who reached out to the Resistance and disobeyed the Führer’s instruction to demolish the city; Leclerc, who moved more than a hundred miles in two days and provided a mas

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