Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer, Associate Professor of History, is spending the 2016-17 academic year on an Ohio University Faculty Fellowship Leave.
His main focus will be on researching for his current manuscript on Maxwell Taylor, civil-military relations, and U.S. Cold War strategy. The book project is tentatively titled “Cold Warrior: Maxwell Taylor and the Sinews of Power.” Trauschweizer also plans to revise some of his current courses and perhaps design a new one as well.
Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer
Taylor—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kennedy White House insider, and one of the architects of America’s war in Vietnam—was one of the most influential American soldiers, strategists, and diplomats in the 20th century. Trauschweizer’s Cold Warrior will address Taylor’s role in the making of national strategy as well as his thoughts on nuclear and conventional war and deterrence, on limited war, and on counterinsurgency from 1945 to the 1980s. It promises to yield a new perspective on policy history of the Cold War and the Vietnam War era that combines military, strategic, institutional, intellectual, and international and diplomatic history. Above all, it assesses the importance of individual actors in the process by which strategy and policy are defined and implemented.
Since Taylor served several administrations in different functions, and because he had a knack for showing up in crises and wars (Berlin, Korea, Berlin again, Cuba, and Vietnam), this study depends on a wide range of sources. Trauschweizer has just returned from a research trip to a college library in Indiana that holds the papers of one of President Eisenhower’s defense secretaries. This past spring, he spent some time in South Carolina reading the papers of William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces in South Vietnam while Taylor served there as ambassador (1964-65).
This fall, Trauschweizer plans on conducting research at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (Carlisle, PA), the Virginia Military Institute (Lexington), the U.S. Military Academy (West Point, NY), and several archives, libraries, and repositories in the Washington, D.C., area. In winter and spring, he will travel to Abilene, KS (Eisenhower Library), Boston, MA (Kennedy Library), Austin, TX (Lyndon Johnson Library), Stanford, CA (Hoover Institution), and back to Washington. He may also fit in a trip to Alabama (Air University), the library of the University of Georgia, and that of The Citadel (Charleston, SC) to read the papers of several politicians, diplomats, and military officers who worked (or clashed) with Taylor in the decades after World War II.
According to Trauschweizer, “A full year’s leave should allow me to complete my research, and I intend to keep on writing while I investigate new records and pursue old and new questions. I hope that Cold Warrior will appeal to audiences interested in American strategy and policy in the Cold War era, the changing nature of war and warfare, and civil-military relations. I think that it addresses questions of contemporary as well as historical significance.”
For more in Trauschweizer’s research and teaching, visit his History Department profile.
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