Browsing by Subject "World War II"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Open Access
Beyond the burn: Studies on the physiological effects of flamethrowers during World War II.
(Military Medical Research, 2020-02) Van Wyck, David W
Flamethrowers are widely considered one of warfare's most controversial weapons and are capable of inflicting gruesome physical injuries and intense psychological trauma. Despite being the last of the major combatants in World War II (WWII) to develop them, the United States military quickly became the most frequent and adept operator of portable flamethrowers. This gave the U.S. military ample opportunity to observe the effects of flamethrowers on enemy soldiers. However, while most people in modern times would consider immolation by flamethrower to be an unnecessarily painful and inhumane way to inflict casualties, immolation was, at one point during World War II (WWII), referred to as "mercy killing" by the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service (CWS). This mischaracterization arose from a series of first-hand accounts describing what were believed to be quick, painless, and unmarred deaths, as well as from a poor and incomplete understanding of flamethrower lethality. As a result, indirect mechanisms such as hypoxia and carbon monoxide poisoning were generally absent from accounts of the flamethrower's fatal effects. It was not until several years after flamethrowers were introduced to the frontlines that the CWS and National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) conducted a series of tests to better understand the physiological and toxicological effects of flamethrowers. This article examines how the initial absence of scientific data on the physiologic effects of flamethrowers led to an inaccurate understanding of their lethality, and bizarre claims that one of history's most horrific instruments of war was considered one of the more "humane" weapons on the battlefield.
Open Access
British Double Agents and Operation Fortitude: A New Perspective
(2016-06-07) Maxmin, Reid
On June 6th, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy as a part of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France. While they experienced pockets of stiff resistance, Allied troops sustained far fewer casualties than they had expected. The reason for this was due to Operation Fortitude, a deception mission that intended to fool Hitler about the time and location of the Allied invasion mission. The use of double agents by British Intelligence services was essential for the effective execution of Fortitude. The story of the double agents goes beyond their success during Fortitude. Double agents were initially recruited as German agents, but key agents immediately turned themselves in to British authorities upon reaching the nation. These agents decided to become involved with British Intelligence due to broader circumstances that were happening in Europe. The emergence of Fascist regimes disrupted the political landscape of Europe and led to widespread condemnation from political and social spheres. Their development as double agents became crucial to their effectiveness during Operation Fortitude. Their successful infiltration of German Intelligence allowed them to convince Hitler and German High Command that the main Allied invasion force would come at the Pas de Calais instead of Normandy. The result was that the Allies met an unprepared German defense force on D-Day and were able to advance past the beaches. The work of the double agents during Fortitude saved thousands of Allied lives and was vital to the success of Operation Overlord.
Open Access
Duke University Medical Center Honors the 65th General Hospital World War II
(2010-11-05) Duke University Medical Center
Dedication ceremony for the sculpture honoring the 65th General Hospital reserve unit; held October 26, 2002
Open Access
Filling the Emptiness of a Stunned Inner Silence: Survivors' Memoirs of Japanese Internment Camps in Indonesia during World War II
(2010-05-21T20:17:52Z) Emery, Lindsay
War stories are so often reported with the number of victims. Statistics break down the logistics into birthplace, military versus nonmilitary, or even men versus women. With constant exposure, readers are numb to the significance of these numbers; one cannot fully grasp the fear, pain, suffering, or sadness that accompanied the over 15,000 Allied prisoners of war that died building the Burma Railroad or the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. This desensitization results in indifference or ignorance. Perhaps what may be more impactful and memorable is to read war stories from the view and experience of the survivors. The surviving prisoners of war have memories and stories that provide insight and force the reader to feel and experience the memory; an understanding that is impossible to gain from war victim statistics. This thesis analyzes written narratives of Dutch women and children survivors of the Japanese internment camps in Indonesia during World War II in an attempt to give coherence and presence to the fragmentary existence of their experience. The fragments of these individuals exemplify the tragedy, disappointment, emotional anxiety, difficulty in articulating their story and isolation from the outside world felt by each survivor in their distinct experiences. These stories reevaluate how this experience has shaped the survivors as individuals despite the unaware, unwelcoming, and unperturbed observers of the outside world. By assembling these various memoirs we can construct an image of the larger, collective experience of the internees and fill the void that each story individually cannot fill.
Open Access
Flashbulb memories and posttraumatic stress reactions across the life span: age-related effects of the German occupation of Denmark during World War II.
(Psychol Aging, 2006-03) Berntsen, Dorthe; Rubin, David C
A representative sample of older Danes were interviewed about experiences from the German occupation of Denmark in World War II. The number of participants with flashbulb memories for the German invasion (1940) and capitulation (1945) increased with participants' age at the time of the events up to age 8. Among participants under 8 years at the time of their most traumatic event, age at the time correlated positively with the current level of posttraumatic stress reactions and the vividness of stressful memories and their centrality to life story and identity. These findings were replicated in Study 2 for self-nominated stressful events sampled from the entire life span using a representative sample of Danes born after 1945. The results are discussed in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder and childhood amnesia.
Open Access
GIs and 'Jeep Girls': Sex and American Soldiers in Wartime China
(Journal of Modern Chinese History, 2019) Fredman, Zach
This article examines how sex affected the larger politics of the Sino–US alliance during World War II. By early 1945, Chinese from across the social spectrum resented the US military presence, but just one issue sparked a violent backlash: sexual relations between American soldiers (GIs) and Chinese women. Two interrelated, patriarchal narratives about sex emerged that spring. Starting in March, government-backed newspapers began criticizing “Jeep girls,” an epithet coined to describe the Chinese women who consorted with American servicemen. Rumors also circulated that GIs were using Jeeps to kidnap “respectable” women and rape them. Each narrative portrayed women’s bodies as territory to be recovered and inextricable from national sovereignty. These narratives resonated widely, turning Jeep girls into the catalyst through which all variables causing resentment against the US military presence intersected and converged. With Japan on the ropes, China’s allied friends now stood in the way of irreversibly consigning foreign imperialism to the past. Sexual relations were not the Sino–US alliance’s seedy underside, but the core site of its tensions.
Open Access
Inventing the Endless Frontier: The Effects of the World War II Research Effort on Post-War Innovation
(Harvard Business School Strategy Unit Working Paper, 2020-06-02) Gross, Daniel P; Sampat, Bhaven N
Open Access
Loss, Perseverance, and Triumph: The Story of Gerd and the von Halle Family
(2011-05-17) von Halle, Jeremy Sanford
The following narrative details the life of Gerd von Halle. Gerd was a German Jew who moved to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution in 1933. The von Halle family was a prominent German Jewish family with origins dating back to the 17th century. Shortly after the invasion of Holland, Gerd and his family were torn apart by the Nazis. With the help of the Dutch Underground, Gerd and his mother Henriette survived the war. The narrative recounts the deaths of both his father and brother through recovered letters and personal testimony. The paper also contains correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles. Both Roosevelt and Welles tried to help the von Halle family escape Europe. Gerd’s story provides an opportunity to look into the paranoia, fear, and resolution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. After living in hiding for nearly three years, Gerd and his mother were liberated in Amsterdam in May 1945. Gerd immigrated to the United States in 1946. The paper is joined with a visual guide containing letters, false identity papers, falsified affidavits, and a multitude of photographs. The narrative is a testament to perseverance, loss, and triumph. You may contact the author via email at jvonhalle@gmail.com.
Open Access
Necessary Heroes and Ethos, from Fighting Nazis to COVID-19.
(Anesthesiology, 2020-12) Berger, Miles; Ghadimi, Kamrouz
Open Access
Organizing Crisis Innovation: Lessons from World War II
(2020-10-08) Gross, Daniel P; Sampat, Bhaven N
Open Access
The Economics of Crisis Innovation Policy: A Historical Perspective
(AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2021-05-01) Gross, Daniel P; Sampat, Bhaven N
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers, researchers, and journalists have made comparisons to World War II. In 1940, a group of top US science administrators organized a major coordinated research effort to support the Allied war effort, including significant investments in medical research that yielded innovations like mass-produced penicillin, antimalarials, and a flu vaccine. We draw on this episode to discuss the economics of crisis innovation. Since the objectives of crisis R&D are different than ordinary R&D, we argue that appropriate R&D policy in a crisis requires going beyond the standard Nelson-Arrow framework for research policy.
Open Access
Threading the needle: when embroidery was used to treat shell-shock.
(Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, 2018-09) Davidson, Jonathan
Open Access
Une Biographie Critique de Marie-Thérèse Eyquem : Pionnière du Sport, du Féminisme, et de la Politique
(2017-05-12) Morris, Hannah
This thesis explores in the form of a critical biography the life trajectory of Marie-Thérèse Eyquem (1913-1978). As sports administrator under the Vichy regime, author, feminist, and Socialist activist under Pres. François Mitterrand, Eyquem worked in a variety of social, political spaces where she exerted considerable influence. In this thesis, I argue over the course of five chapters that Eyquem claims a model of women’s liberation distinguished from the dominant model of the female intellectual and writer: that of the sportswoman and the institution builder. In her political work, her personal life, and her writing Eyquem embodies this alternate way of thinking about the autonomous woman. Eyquem played a little known and crucial role in the fight for legalizing women’s reproductive rights. Further, in each chapter save the first I compare Eyquem to her better-known contemporaries in the rhetorical form of a diptych. This technique allows me to nuance her life through comparison and understand her decisions as part of a network of larger social relations. In this biographical thesis I aim to contribute to the only existing work on Eyquem’s life (Florys Castan Vicente, 2009). My structure and focus on Eyquem’s feminist model provides a more complete portrait of Eyquem’s influential life and contributions while it adds to ongoing debates in feminist thought.
Open Access
World War II Memorial Dedication Program
(2010-11-05) Duke University
Dedication program for WWII memorial on the wall of the Chapel courtyard; held September 17, 1993