The International Conference on World War II

Niall Barr, PhD, is Professor of Military History and Deputy Dean of Academic Studies (Education) in the Defense Studies Department, King's College, London.

Educated at the University of St. Andrews, he has previously taught at St. Andrews and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He joined the Staff College in 2000, where he teaches on a wide range of military courses, including the Higher Command and Staff Course, and conducts numerous battlefield tours and staff rides.

His main research interest concerns the Anglo-American alliance in World War II, but he also has an enduring interest in the Scottish military tradition. His current research project concerns the role and importance of food in war.

Barr has published numerous military histories including Amiens to the Armistice, Flodden 1513, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein, and The Lion and the Poppy.

Tami Davis Biddle, PhD, is Professor of History and National Security Strategy at the US Army War College (USAWC). She was chair of the the college’s Faculty Council from July 2014 to July 2016 and is currently the director of the “Theory of War and Strategy” course. She was also the college’s 2011-2013 Hoyt S. Vandenberg Chair of Aerospace Studies and its 2005-2007 George C. Marshall Professor of Military Studies, and she was the 2001-2002 Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History at the US Army’s Military History Institute.

Her research focus has been warfare in the 20th century, in particular the history of air warfare. She has published articles and book chapters on civil-military relations, grand strategy, the law of war, and US national security since World War II. Her book, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945, was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 and was added to the Chief of Air Staff’s Reading List, Royal Air Force (RAF). She is currently writing Taking Command: The United States at War, 1941-45 for Oxford University Press.

She is a recipient of the US Army’s Superior Civilian Service Award. She is a former trustee of the Society for Military History, and she is a member of the Organization of American Historians, the RAF Historical Society, and the RAF Club (London). She received her PhD in history from Yale and has held fellowships from Harvard, the Social Science Research Council, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

Günter Bischof, PhD, is a historian specializing in international history, focusing on American and European diplomatic history of the 20th century, especially Cold War international relations. He also harbors interest in the history of 20th century wars, especially World War II and the Vietnam War. He has written about POW treatment and memory of World War II. Other interests include biography, historical memory, and Austrian history, especially Austrian foreign policy. He is also a historian of—and a self-proclaimed admirer of—the Marshall Plan and its legacies. He is the author of Austria in the First Cold War: The Leverage of the Weak. He is co-editor of Contemporary Austrian Studies. He served as co-editor (with Stephen Ambrose) of the 10-volume Eisenhower Center Studies of War and Peace and also edited the series Studies in Austrian and Central European History and Culture.

Dr. Bischof also edits the series TRANSATLANTICA and has co-edited a dozen other books and some 100 scholarly articles. He is a regular reviewer for the Journal of Cold War Studies. He serves as a Presidential Counselor to The National World War II Museum, is a member of its Educational Committee, and is a board member of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies. At present he is researching the impact of Austrian immigrants to the United States and revising a book of essays on Austrian-American relations.

Dr. Bischof, who received his MA from the University of New Orleans, particularly enjoys teaching for UNO’s international summer schools in Innsbruck and Prague and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, the Economics University in Prague, and the State University for the Humanities in Moscow (RGGU). He also served as the Post-Katrina Visiting Professor in the LSU History Department.

Robert M. Citino, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at The National WWII Museum, as well as one of America’s most distinguished military historians. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he attended St. Ignatius Loyola High School on the city’s west side, received his BA in History from The Ohio State University and his MA and PhD from Indiana University. He joined the Museum in August 2016.

Dr. Citino is an award-winning military historian and scholar who has published ten books including The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943; Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942; and The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich and numerous articles covering World War II and 20th century military history. He speaks widely and contributes regularly to general readership magazines including World War II. Dr. Citino enjoys close ties with the US military establishment, and taught one year at the US Military Academy at West Point and two years at the US Army War College.

Conrad Crane, PhD, is currently Chief of Historical Services for the Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks. Prior to this, he was Director of the US Army Military History Institute and had served with the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) at the US Army War College. Crane joined SSI after 26 years of active military service, which concluded with 9 years as Professor of History at the US Military Academy.

He holds a BS from USMA and an MA and PhD from Stanford University, and he is also a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and the US Army War College. He has authored or edited books and monographs on conflicts from the Civil War through Vietnam. Before leaving SSI, Crane coauthored a prewar study on Reconstructing Iraq and was the lead author for the groundbreaking Army-USMC counterinsurgency manual, which was released in December 2006. He visited Iraq in November 2007 at General Petraeus’ request to evaluate the new doctrine in action.

Crane published two books in 2016, American Airpower Strategy in World War II: Bombs, Cities, Civilians, and Oil and Cassandra in Oz: Counterinsurgency and Future War. In 2016, he was selected to receive the Society for Military History’s Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime contributions to the field of military history. Crane currently serves on the Museum’s Presidential Counselors advisory board.

Saul David, PhD, is an award-winning military historian and broadcaster. His many critically-acclaimed history books include: The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature), Zulu (a Waterstone’s Military History Book of the Year), Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport (an Amazon History Book of the Year, also later made into the motion picture Seven Days in Entebbe), and The Force: The Legendary Special Ops Unit and World War II’s Mission Impossible. His latest book, Crucible of Hell: Okinawa—The Last Great Battle of World War II, was described by international bestselling historian Antony Beevor as, “Excellent… Saul David’s gripping narrative is admirably clear.” It was also praised by Stephen Talty, author of Saving Bravo, who wrote: “Vivid and deeply moving, Crucible of Hell paints a rich portrait of one of the most horrific battles in modern memory. David masterfully evokes the desperation and courage of soldiers, civilians, and commanders on both sides, constantly switching perspectives to capture the deep story of Okinawa's horror. Hard to put down, harder to forget." Saul has presented and appeared in history programs for TV channels in the UK and US and is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham in the UK, where he is Program Director of the Master’s in Military History by Research.

Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at The National World War II Museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, where he writes narratives of American servicemembers from World War II. A native of Columbia, Mississippi, Jason received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Beyond his research on World War II, his interests include the history of the European Left, debates about the impact of technology on modern life, and the history of Holocaust awareness. He co-edited (with Guenter Bischof and Bernhard Fetz) The Life and Work of Gunther Anders: Émigré, Iconoclast, Philosopher, Man of Letters and is the author of "After Hiroshima: Gunther Anders and the History of Anti-Nuclear Critique," in Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought, and Nuclear Conflict, 1945-1990 (edited by Benjamin Ziemann and Matthew Grant). He also is a frequent contributor to the Museum’s website and its “Service on Celluloid” podcast series.

Todd DePastino, PhD, is founding director of the Veterans Breakfast Club. Todd’s interest in veterans’ stories first grew out of his work as a historian. He is author and editor of seven books, including the award-winning Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, a biography of the famed WWII cartoonist, and most recently Drawing Fire: The Editorial Cartoons of Bill Mauldin, published in September 2020 by Pritzker Military Museum & Library.

He has a Ph.D. in American History from Yale University and has taught at Penn State Beaver and Waynesburg University, where he received the Lucas-Hathaway Award for Teaching Excellence.

Richard Frank is an internationally renowned expert on the Pacific War. After graduating from the University of Missouri, he was commissioned in the US Army, in which he served for nearly four years, including a tour of duty in the Republic of Vietnam as an aero rifle platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division.

Frank completed studies at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. Soon afterwards he began research on his first book, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of Landmark Campaign, which was published in 1990 and won the United States Marine Corps’ General Wallace M. Greene Award. His latest book, Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Vol 1: July 1939-May 1942, was released in March 2020.

Adam Givens, PhD, joined the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy in 2020 as the Special Projects Historian and Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) Historian in Residence at The National WWII Museum. He earned his PhD from Ohio University and specializes in military history and the history of technology. As a Summer Associate and adjunct at the RAND Corporation, he worked on history-based research projects for the US Army. Adam received dissertation research support from multiple sources, including the US Army Center of Military History, US Army Military History Institute, Army Heritage Center Foundation, and Hagley Museum and Library.

Dave Gutierrez is a professional researcher, historical presenter, writer, and author of the book Patriots from the Barrio: The Story of Company E, 141st Infantry: The Only All Mexican American Army Unit in World War II. His articles have appeared in publications including American Legion and War History Online. Recognized by both the Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin and The National WWII Museum in New Orleans for his groundbreaking work on Company E 141st Infantry, he also specializes in genealogical research, Mexican American history, and World War II studies. He is the current President of the Nuevo Mundo Historical and Genealogical Society of Silicon Valley.

Jamie Holmes is a writer living in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in print or online in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, the New Republic, the Atlantic, Foreign Policy, USA Today, and the Daily Beast . Jamie is also a Future Tense Fellow at New America. His first book, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, explored the psychology of confusion and uncertainty. Published by Penguin Random House in 2015, it was translated into five languages.

He holds an M.I.A from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs (SIPA). After SIPA, Jamie worked at New America as a Policy Analyst in international development. Previously, he was a Research Coordinator at Harvard’s Department of Economics, where he focused on behavioral economics. His latest book, 12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in August 2020.

Robert F. Jefferson, Jr., PhD, is an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Jefferson holds a PhD in American History from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Fighting for Hope: African Americans and the Ninety-third Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Brothers in Valor: The Battlefield Stories of the 89 African Americans Awarded the Medal of Honor (Lyons Press, 2018); and Black Veterans, Politics, and Civil Rights in Twentieth Century America: Closing Ranks (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).

Dr. Jefferson is currently working on two books: When Jim Crow Faced a New Army: World War II and the Non-Segregation of the US Army and The Color of Disability: The Many Lives of Vasco Hale in 20th Century America. His articles on the relationship between African American GIs and their communities during World War II have appeared in Representations dans le monde anglophone (2018), The Routledge Handbook of the History of Race in the American Military (Routledge, 2016), Oral History and Public Memories (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), the Journal of Family History, the Annals of Iowa, Quaderni Storici (Bologna), Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora, and the Historian. Dr. Jefferson is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Most recently, he has served as the Danish Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark during the 2019-2020 academic year.

Samuel Kleiner is a lawyer based in New York City. He was raised in Tucson, Arizona and holds a BA from Northwestern University, a doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), and a JD from Yale Law School. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic. He is the author of The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan, which was published in 2018.

Kate Clarke Lemay, PhD, is a historian at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. She earned a dual PhD in art history and American studies from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her book, Triumph of the Dead: American WWII Cemeteries, Monuments and Diplomacy in France received the 2018 Terra Foundation in American Art Publication Award. Its research was supported by an IIE Fulbright Award to France, a Smithsonian American Art Predoctoral Grant, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s scholarly center. Dr. Lemay edited the 2018 special issue of the International Journal of Military History and Historiography on the topic of war cemeteries, and she has published essays with The Journal of War and Culture Studies, the University of North Texas Press and the Marine Corps History Division. She is the curator of “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” and the editor and of its scholarly catalog. She was the founding director of PORTAL, the Portrait Gallery’s scholarly center, and the founding co-coordinating curator of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. Currently she is researching her next exhibition on the topic of American imperialism, focusing on the Spanish-American War and the contexts of 1898.

Allan Millett, PhD, is a retired Colonel of the Marine Corps Reserve and a specialist in the history of American military policy. He is the author of many books, including A War to be Won, which he co-authored with Williamson Murray; For the Common Defense: A Military History of United States from 1607-2012; Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps; and The Second World War in 100 Objects

Millett was the 2008 recipient of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. He taught military history at The Ohio State University for 37 years, where he served as a mentor to generations of scholars in the field, and currently serves as the Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Ambrose Professor of History at the University of New Orleans. Millett is the Senior Military Advisor to the President of The National WWII Museum and sits on the Museum’s Presidential Counselors advisory board.

Rana Mitter, PhD, is a Professor of History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on the emergence of nationalism in China during the early twentieth century through the present. He is the director of the University of Oxford’s China Centre, a research center that conducts various research projects and hosts multiple events related to China. He is the author of several books, including Modern China: A Very Short Introduction and A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World. His Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 was named as a 2013 Book of the Year in the Financial Times and The Economist, was named a 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, and won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature. His most recent book, China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism was released in September 2020.

John H. Morrow, PhD, is the author or co-author of eight publications. His works include The Great War: An Imperial History, The Great War in the Air, and German Airpower in World War I, among others. He has gained recognition for his ability to demonstrate how the past and the present intertwine inextricably.

Morrow is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania and a recipient of the US Department of the Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. He serves as the Franklin Professor and Chair of the History Department at University of Georgia, where he teaches courses on the history of Modern Europe and warfare and society. Morrow was previously head of the history department at the University of Tennessee.

Following his successful teaching career, the university named in his honor a lecture series and an award for excellence in military history. He has chaired the History Advisory Committee to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Research Advisory Committee of the National Museum of American History. He has most recently served on the History Advisory Committee of the Department of the Army, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s Legacy Committee, and the First Flight Centennial Federal Advisory Board.

Morrow is one of the founding members of the Presidential Counselors at The National WWII Museum, where he is the incoming Convener of the advisory board. In 2019 Morrow became the 13th recipient of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.

Michael Neiberg, PhD, is the Professor of History and Chair of War Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College. His published work specializes on World War I and World War II in global context. The Wall Street Journal named his Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I one of the five best books ever written about World War I. He is also the author of The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944 and Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe, both published by Basic Books.

In October 2016, Oxford University Press published his Path to War, a history of American responses to the Great War, 1914-1917, and in July 2017 Oxford published his Concise History of the Treaty of Versailles. He is now at work on a history of US involvement in the Middle East from 1942 to 1950.

Jonathan Parshall saw his interest in the Imperial Japanese Navy develop early in his childhood. As an adult, that passion led him to create the foremost website devoted to the Imperial Navy: combinedfleet.com, which he founded in 1995. Parshall’s book Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, which he co-authored with Anthony Tully, is seen as the definitive account of that pivotal battle in the Pacific. He has written for the Naval War College Review, the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings and Naval History magazines, World War II magazine, Wartime (the journal of the Australian War Memorial), Flypast magazine, the Sankei Shimbun, and several overseas aviation publications. He has also illustrated numerous books on the Pacific War (including his friend Richard Frank’s MacArthur). Parshall is an adjunct lecturer for the US Naval War College and has appeared on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and the BBC. A graduate of Carleton College and the Carlson School of Management, he is currently working on a history of the year 1942, focusing on how the Allies transformed themselves to meet their respective challenges during that year.

Alexandra Richie, DPhil, is an historian of Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, with a specialization in defense and security issues. She completed her BA (Hons) in Political Science at the University of Victoria and went on to study at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, where she wrote her doctoral thesis, “The Political Manipulation of History in East and West Germany.”

Richie is also the author of Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin, which was named one of the top ten books of the year by American Publisher’s Weekly, and Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising, which won the Newsweek Teresa Torańska Prize for best non-fiction book of 2014 and the Kazimierz Moczarski Prize for Best History Book 2015.

She has contributed to many articles, documentaries, radio programs, and television programs, and she is the current Convener of the Presidential Counselors at The National WWII Museum. She is also a member of the Senate at the Collegium Civitas University in Warsaw, Poland, and the Władysław Bartoszewski co-chair of History and International Studies at the Collegium Civitas.

James M. Scott, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the author of Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, The Christian Science Monitor, and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan and The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a US Spy Ship, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Scott’s fourth book, Rampage, was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the editors at Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, and Military Times.

Paul Sparrow is the Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum which is part of the National Archives. Before moving to the FDR Library he was the Deputy Director and Senior Vice President for Broadcasting and New Media at the Newseum in Washington, DC. He was a founding partner in the University of Maryland’s Future of Information Alliance, and a pioneer in interactive digital media. Prior to his work at the Newseum, Sparrow was an Emmy-Award winning television producer. He began his television career at KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco.

Gerhard Weinberg, PhD, an internationally recognized authority on Nazi Germany and the origins and course of World War II, is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on 20th-century European and world history. His books include A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II; Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders; Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf; Hitler’s Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II; and Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History.

He received the 2009 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing and The National WWII Museum 2019 American Spirit Medallion. Weinberg currently sits on the Museum’s Presidential Counselors advisory board.

Chad Williams, PhD, is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. Chad earned a BA with honors in History and African American Studies from UCLA and received both his MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. He specializes in African American and modern US History, African American military history, the World War I era, and African American intellectual history. His first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, was published in 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Widely praised as a landmark study, Torchbearers of Democracy won the 2011 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians, the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History, and designation as a 2011 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. He is co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016) and Major Problems in African American History, Second Edition (Cengage Learning, 2016). Chad has published articles and book reviews in numerous leading academic journals and collections, as well as op-eds and essays in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, and The Conversation. He has earned fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Ford Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. His next book, The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and World War I, is under contract with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Steven J. Zaloga received his BA in History from Union College and his MA from Columbia University. He has worked as an analyst in the aerospace industry for over two decades, covering missile systems and the international arms trade, and he has served with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federal think tank. He is the author of numerous books on military technology and military history, with an accent on the US Army in World War II as well as Russia and the former Soviet Union.