MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History Summer 2020

the 2020 thomas fleming award

Call for Entries MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History is pleased to invite submissions for the 2020 Thomas Fleming Award, named for an esteemed historian who was a valued contributor to MHQ in a writing career spanning more than 50 years. For the past three years MHQ has sought to honor Tom Fleming’s remarkable contributions to the field by inviting our readers—some of the world’s most knowledgeable amateur and professional military historians—to submit original articles on topics that relate to military history. The winner will receive $5,000, and MHQ will publish the winning article in a future issue. The Fine Print Articles submitted must be original and must not have been published elsewhere in whole or in part. Articles must be between 1,500 and 5,000 words. One submission per entrant. Entries must note…

opening round

For 292 days, beginning on June 15, 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, the overall commander of Union forces in what turned out to be the last big offensive campaign of the Civil War, sought to suffocate Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s army by taking control of the territory around Petersburg, Virginia, a critical supply and communications center 24 miles south of the Confederate capital. (See “Fort and Fortitude,” by Noah Andre Trudeau, page 44.) Both sides brought into battle mortars of all kinds, from “the Dictator,” which Union gun crews used to lob 200-pound shells at the Confederate lines around Petersburg, to the portable muzzle-loading Coehorn mortars used by both sides, which proved much more effective in siege operations. The Coehorn mortar, invented by Baron Menno van Coehoorn (1641–1704), a…

flashback

TENOCHTITLÁN (MEXICO CITY), 1520 Spanish conquistadores led by Hernán Cortés (with beard) flee Tenochtitlán, which they have occupied for nearly eight months, after a ferocious battle with Aztec warriors. TODAY: Archaeologists confirm that a large gold ingot found beneath a Mexico City street in 1981 was part of the plunder that Cortés tried to bring out of Tenochtitlán. MILLPORT, ISLE OF CUMBRAE, SCOTLAND, 1919 After Britain’s War Trophies Committee ships a pair of captured German 155mm howitzers to Cumbrae, they are moved to a park, where they will remain for two decades. TODAY: A Scottish journalist reveals that, after locals later objected to the “gun reminders of the Great War,” they were mysteriously removed and probably buried under a seawall. XI’AN, SHANGHAI PROVINCE, CHINA, 1974 Farmers digging a well near the Mausoleum of the First…

abilities and disabilities

Hammering Sickles I always like to read about interesting personalities from the Civil War, and certainly one of the most interesting is Union major general Daniel E. Sickles, the subject of Rick Britton’s article, “The Antihero of Gettysburg,” in the Winter 2020 issue of MHQ. Unfortunately, Mr. Britton falls prey to some old misinformation, starting with Sickles’s famous temporary insanity plea (it was one of the first, not the first). Next comes the use of the world “blunder” to characterize Sickles’s movement of his III Corps on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Only two months earlier Sickles had faced a similar tactical dilemma in the Battle of Chancellorsville. When he chose to follow bad orders there, giving up a favorable artillery platform to the enemy, Union troops paid…

at the front

HOMECOMING At the end of a five-day trip from England, nearly 15,000 cheering American GIs—mostly members of the Eighth Air Force—pack the decks of the RMS Queen Elizabeth as it pulls into New York Harbor on August 11, 1945. Called into service as a troop transport at the beginning of World War II, the world’s largest passenger liner would go on to carry more than 750,000 Allied troops. With a top speed of more than 32 knots, the ship could easily outrun German U-boats, allowing it to travel out of convoy and without escort.…

‘the cavalry of the future’

On February 11, 1933, Adolf Hitler strode into Berlin’s vast “Hall of Honor” to open the city’s International Motor Show. As he stood on a high, well-lit podium, dressed in a black suit, silence fell over the crowd inside. Hitler had become Germany’s chancellor only 12 days earlier. The Nazi Party had celebrated with a nighttime parade through the capital that André François-Poncet, the French ambassador, described as follows: “In massive columns, they emerged from the depths of the Tiergarten and passed under the triumphal arch of the Brandenburg Gate. The torches they brandished formed a river of fire.” The jackbooted brownshirts marched past the French embassy and then down Wilhelmstrasse, raising their voices as they passed by the winged palace of the Reichspräsident. In 1933 Hitler declared his his intention to…