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WORK TITLE: Spies, Lies, and Citizenship
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: MS
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
https://www.history.msstate.edu/people/mary-kathryn-barbier/; 662-325-3604
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2004002398
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2004002398
HEADING: Barbier, Mary
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400 1_ |a Barbier, Mary Kathryn
670 __ |a Barbier, Mary. The US Army, 2004: |b CIP t.p. (Mary Barbier) bk . t.p. (M.K. Barbier)
670 __ |a D-day deception, 2007: |b ECIP (Mary Kathryn Barbier)
670 __ |a Sergueiew, Lily. I worked alone, 2014: |b ECIP title page (Mary Kathryn Barbier) data view (Barbier, Mary Kathryn; born 07/23/1957; Dept of History, Mississippi State University, Mississippi)
PERSONAL
Born July 23, 1957.
EDUCATION:University of New Orleans, B.A., 1979; Louisiana State University, M.A., 1983; Loyola University, New Orleans, M.S., 1990; University of Southern Mississippi, Ph.D., 1998.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Yale University, New Haven, CT, lecturer, 2001-02; University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada, assistant professor, 2002-03; Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, assistant professor, 2003-09, associate professor of history, 2009–. Co-director, Second World War Research Group–North America.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Normandy 1944: Sixty Years On, Frank Cass Press (London, England), 2005; International Library of Essays in Military History: US 1865–Present, edited by Jeffery A. Charleston, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2006; Arms and the Man: Military History Essays in Honor of Dennis Showalter, edited by Michael S. Neiberg, Brill (Leiden, Netherlands), 2011; Oxford Bibliographies Online Military History Module, edited by Dennis Showalter, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2013; The Cambridge History of the Second World War: Tactics, Operation, Armed Forces, edited by Evan Mawdsley and John Ferris, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 2015. Contributor to periodicals, including Academic Questions, Defence Studies Journal, Everyone’s War, Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, and Louisiana History. Co-editor, War in History.
SIDELIGHTS
Mississippi State University history professor Mary Kathryn Barbier specializes in the study of modern military history. “Since accepting the position as an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, she has written a brief history of the US Army for fifth graders,” explained the contributor of a biographical blurb to the Mississippi State University faculty website. “In cooperation with the Center for Historical Studies and the Mississippi National Guard, Barbier has organized a Global War on Terror Oral History Project. The purpose of the project is to interview Mississippi National Guard Personnel who have served in the Global War on Terror.” She is the editor of Russian-born MI5 double agent Lily Sergueiew’s I Worked Alone: Diary of a Double Agent in World War II Europe and coeditor of America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation and Culture, Power, and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security. She is also the coauthor of the popular study Strategy and Tactics: Infantry Warfare and the sole author of Kursk: The Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought, 1943, The U.S. Army, D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion, and Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals.
D-Day Deception looks at the counterintelligence efforts launched by the Allies during World War II in order to disguise the site and timing of the June 1946 invasion of France that led to the end of the war. Operation Fortitude was the responsibility of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it proved successful in keeping Axis attention focused on territory farther east rather than at the actual landing site in Normandy. “For WW II buffs, who thrive on all of the details,” declared William Kercher online at The Kircher Collection, “D-Day Deception … spells out how the effort [led] to ultimate defeat of Germany. It is a very good read.”
Spies, Lies, and Citizenship examines one of the consequences of World War II and the Cold War that followed it. “The topic of Spies, Lies, and Citizenship,” wrote Monique Laney in Reading Religion, “is the US Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and its investigations of individuals who have resided in the United States since World War II for their alleged involvement in war crimes under the Nazi regime.” While the U.S. condemned Nazis for their role in perpetrating the Holocaust, they also sought the expertise of Axis scientists to gain advantages over the Soviet Union in the postwar world. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, well over half a million individuals from Europe applied for refugee status in the United States. “The sheer numbers overwhelmed consular bureaucracy,” said a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “yet there was upper-level leniency at play as well in turning a blind eye to the questionable pasts of some of these immigrants.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2017, review of Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals.
ONLINE
The Kircher Collection, https://www.williamkercherbooks.com/ (December 14, 2016), review of D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion.
Mississippi State University Website, https://www.history.msstate.edu/ (May 16, 2018), author profile.
Reading Religion, http://readingreligion.org/ (February 28, 2018), Monique Laney, review of Spies, Lies, and Citizenship.
Mary Kathryn Barbier
Mary Kathryn Barbier
Mary Kathryn Barbier
Associate Professor
Military History, American History, Europe 1870-Present, Latin America
662-325-3604
mkb99@history.msstate.edu
Bio
Mary Kathryn Barbier received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi in December 1998. After teaching as an adjunct professor for a year and a half, she received a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from International Security Studies at Yale University. While at Yale, she attended numerous lectures, conducted research, and taught two junior seminars. The titles of the courses were "Intelligence Gathering in the Twentieth Century" and "World War II and the Arts". Barbier also worked on two popular books. The first, "Kursk: the Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought 1943," has also been published in five other languages. The second, "Strategy and Tactics: Infantry Warfare: The Theory and Practice of Infantry Combat in the 20th Century," was a collaborative effort with Andrew Wiest. The fellowship ended in the summer of 2002. That summer she attended a three week seminar at West Point before starting an appointment at the University of Guelph, where she taught the US history survey and a War & Society course, revised an article, "George C. Marshall and the 1940 Louisiana Maneuvers," which was published in Louisiana History in 2003, presented papers at the Society for Military History and SHAFR conferences, and submitted brief articles for the Encyclopedia of Intelligence & Counterintelligence.
Since accepting the position as an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University, she has written a brief history of the US Army for fifth graders, which was published in 2005. She also had two articles published, as well as a chapter in Normandy 1944: Sixty Years On, which was published in June 2006. In December 2005, Barbier gave a lecture, "The United States and Asia," in a workshop for the Philadelphia-Newton County schools as part of the Mississippi Connections Program. In June 2006 she gave a series of lectures in a week-long World War II workshop for the Philadelphia-Newton County schools as part of the Mississippi Connections Program. In addition to continuing her work on Montgomery, Barbier has evaluated articles and books for several journals and presses. Barbier's book,"D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion" was published in November 2007. In cooperation with the Center for Historical Studies and the Mississippi National Guard, Barbier has organized a Global War on Terror Oral History Project. The purpose of the project is to interview Mississippi National Guard Personnel who have served in the Global War on Terror. In conjunction with the oral history project and the department's focus on International Security/Internal Safety (IS/IS), Barbier co-organized the first regional IS/IS conference that MSU hosted in March 2007. In addition, she offers a graduate student seminar on the History of Grand Strategy and International Security. In the fall of 2008 she offered the first International Security/Internal Safety graduate seminar. In addition to her regular undergraduate and graduate courses, in the spring of 2008, Barbier offered a study abroad course, which included ten days in Germany during May. Ten students (six undergraduate and four graduate) explored the Munich, Berchtesgaden, and the Obersalzberg of Adolf Hitler. During that summer, Barbier returned to Berchtesgaden where she gave a paper at the Obersalzberg Conference. She also co-edited a book with Professor Andrew Wiest and Associate Professor Glenn Robins. "America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation" was released in January 2010. For two summers, Barbier has had the honor of participating in International Security Studies' Ivy Scholars Program at Yale University, which attracts gifted high school students from around the country. As part of the program, she has given lectures, led seminars, and helped evaluate students' policy brief presentations. Barbier is currently engaged in several research projects.. She edited the memoir of a WWII female double agent. This book – I Worked Alone: Diary of a Double Agent in World War II Europe – was released in 2014. Her next book - "Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals in America and Abroad." – is a Potomac Books/University of Nebraska publication (2017). Barbier has also begun work on her next project – a book entitled A Candle in the Wind: The Life of World War II Double Agent Lily Sergueiew. In addition to her academic engagement, Barbier is involved in other professional endeavors. In January 2014, she assumed co-editor duties at War in History. She is also co-director of the recently established Second World War Research Group – North America (SWWRG-NA) and co-series editor of a six-volume cultural history of war.
Education
Ph.D. University of Southern Mississippi, (History).
Dissertation: "D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion." December 1998.
M.S.Loyola University, New Orleans, 1990 (Secondary Education).
M.A.Louisiana State University, 1983 (American History).
B.A.University of New Orleans, 1979 (History).
Academic Career
Associate Professor, Mississippi State University, 2009-present.
Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University, 2003-2009.
Assistant Professor, University of Guelph, 2002-2003.
Guest Lecturer, The University of Southern Mississippi, 20 March 2002.
Lecturer, Yale University, 2001-2002.
Research Interests
World War II; the Normandy Invasion, Intelligence Gathering;
Twentieth Century American and British Military History;
Military figures who influenced the development of military Professionalism.
Publications
Books
BarbierSpies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals in America and Abroad. Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2017.
LilyI Work Alone: Diary of a Double Agent in World War II Europe. By Lily Sergueiew. Edited. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2014.
cultureCulture, Power, and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security. Newcastle upon Tyne, Co-edited with Richard Damms.Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
vietnamAmerica and the Vietnam War. Routeledge. December, 2009.
D-DayD-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion. Wesport, CT: Praeger Security International. December, 2007. Paperback Ed. Stackpole Press, April 2009
ArmyAmerica's Armed Forces: Army. A history of the US Army for fifth grade students.
tankKursk: The Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought 1943. Part of the Campaigns in World War II Series. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2002. Also published as Die Schlacht im Kursk'er Bogen: Die Grosste Panzerschlacht der Geschichte. Slovenia: Zeitgeschichte, 2002.
Strategy and Tactics: Infantry Warfare: The Theory and Practice of Infantry Combat in the 20th Century. Co-written with Andrew Wiest. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2002.
Articles and Chapters of Books
"War in the West, 1943-1944. Chapter to be included in The Cambridge History of the Second World War: Tactics, Operation, Armed Forces. Edited by Professors Evan Mawdsley and John Ferris. Cambridge University Press. 2015.
"Cold War, 1945-1990." Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) Military History Module. Ed. Dennis Showalter. New York. Oxford University Press, 2013.
"Commemoration." Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) Military History Module. Ed. Dennis Showalter. New York. Oxford University Press, 2013.
"'Clash of the Titans': Law vs. Deception in World War II Britain. In Arms and the Man: Military History Essays in Honor of Dennis Showalter. Edited by Michael S. Neiberg. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.
Introduction: Vietnam in History and Memory. In America and the Vietnam War: Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation. Co-edited with Professor Andrew Wiest and Associate Professor Glenn Robins. New York: Routledge Press, 2010.
Deception and Planning of D-Day. Normandy 1944: Sixty Years On. Edited by John Buckley. London: Frank Cass Press, 2006. "Marshall and Montgomery: Promoters of Military Professionalism." Defence Studies Journal (8/3), September 2008: 369-380.
"George C. Marshall and the 1940 Louisiana Maneuvers," Reprinted in the International Library of Essays in Military History: US 1865-Present, ed. Jeffery A. Charleston. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Publication date November 2006.
"Deception and Planning of D-Day."Normandy 1944: Sixty Years On. London: Frank Cass Press, November 2005.
"D-Day: Planning, High Command, and Deception." Everyone's War. 9 (Spring/Summer 2004): 29-34.
"My Year Teaching at a Canadian University: A Clash of Academic Cultures." Academic Questions. 17:3 (Summer 2004): 63-76.
"George C. Marshall and the 1940 Louisiana Maneuvers." Louisiana History, XLIV (Fall 2003): 389-410.
"The 1940 Louisiana Maneuvers." Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South V (Fall & Winter 1994): 69-82 [Issued 1998].
Conference Presentations
“Quiet Neighbors, Secret Nazis: Exposing Nazi Collaborators in America.” Invited presentation. Second World War Research Group, Defence Studies Department, Joint Services Command and Staff College, Defence Academy, Shrivenham, England, 4 June 2015.
“She Worked Alone: One Double Agent’s Struggles to Make a Difference.” Invited presentation. National World War II Museum, 4-6 December 2014.
“Black Ops: Cloak, Dagger, and WWI Spy Films.” Presented at the Foreign Language Film Conference VII, University of Alabama, Birmingham, 30 October – 2 November 2014.
“The Price of Resistance: Coerced Cooperation or Coerced Collaboration?” Presented at “1944: Seventy Years On” Conference, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, 14-17 April 2014.
‘Are They For Real?’: Women Who Take a Proactive Approach to War.” Presented at the Society for Military History Annual Conference, Kansas City, 3-6 April 2014.
“The Two ‘Lilies’: Double Agent versus Resistance Fighter.” Presented at the Eighth Regional International Security/Internal Safety (IS/IS) Conference, New Orleans, 8-9 February 2014.
"La Chatte, aka Victoire: The Mata Hari of World War II." Presented at the Seventh Annual Regional IS/IS (international Security/Internal Safety) Conference, 22-23 March 2013.
"Code Name Victoire: Willing Collaborator or Coerced Resistance Fighter." Presented at the Society for Military History annual meeting. New Orleans, 14-17 March 2013.
"War in the Shadows: Spies, Special Operations, and Intelligence in the Second World War." Organized panel accepted for inclusion in the 2013 Society for Military History program. New Orleans, 14-17 March 2013.
"Soaring to New Heights, Plunging to New Depths: Operation Backfire and V-2 Rocket Scientists" Presented at the Southern Conference on British Studies, November 2012.
"Arthur Rudolph: NASA Hero or Nazi Criminal?" Presented at the Sixth Regional International Security/Internal Safety (IS/IS) Conference, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, Natchitoches, LA, 23-24 March 2012.
"'Clash of the Titans': Law vs. Deception in World War II Britain." Presented at the Society for Military History annual meeting, June 2011.
"Operation Foxley: Is the Forceful Removal of a Political Leader during Wartime Legal?" Presented at the Southern Conference on British Studies, Charlotte, North Carolina, November 4-7, 2010.
Commented on panel, "Science and Policy Making in Twentieth Century Britain," North American Conference on British Studies, Louisville, Kentucky, November 5-8, 2009.
"Leadership and Grand Strategy." Presented at the Yale-Olin Reunion Conference, Yale University, October 2009.
"Was She a Treasure? Lily Sergueiew, British Intelligence, and a Relationship Failure." Presented at the Society for Military History Annual Meeting. Murfreesboro, Tennessee. April 2-5, 2009.
"Writing in the Humanities." Office of Research and Economic Development, Mississippi State University, Research Seminar Series, November 2008.
"Operation Foxley: Can Reality Imitate Fiction?" Paper presented at the Obersalzberg Conference, July 29 – August 1, 2008.
“From ‘The Quiet American’ to ‘Full Metal Jacket’: Vietnam in Film.” Paper presented at the Society for Military History Annual Meeting, Ogden, Utah, April 17-20, 2008.
“‘Why Did We Fight?’: Propaganda and Motivation through Film.” Invited talk. Real to Reel: World War II in Film, Documentaries Newsreels Conference hosted by the National World War II Museum, New Orleans, April 10-12, 2008.
"Spies, Lies, and Deception: British Intelligence and the Use of Double Agents during World War II." To be presented at the Southern Conference on British Studies annual meeting, November 2007.
"Trouble in Paradise?: Anglo-American World War II Intelligence Cooperation." Presented at the Transatlantic Studies Association annual meeting, July 2007.
"Playing in the Civilian s Backyard: War Games in Louisiana, May 1940," Presented at the Society for Military History annual meeting, April 2007.
"Marshall and Montgomery: Promoters of Military Professionalism." presented at the American Historical Association annual meeting, January 2007. Chaired panel entitled, POW Narratives as Military History, Society for Military History Conference, May 2006.
"When Is the Use of Military Force Acceptable Internationally?" Invited talk. Public policy conference organized by the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs. August 2005.
"George Catlett Marshall and Bernard Law Montgomery: Contributions to the Establishment of a Professional Military." Presented at the Society for Military History Conference, February 2005.
"Deception and the Planning of D-Day." Presented at the Normandy 1944: Sixty Years On conference, University of Wolverhampton, England, July 2004.
"Job Market Challenges." Presented at the Society for Military History Conference, May 2004.
"British Double Agents and the Normandy Invasion." Presented at the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations conference, June 2003.
"British Intelligence and the Use of Double Agents During World War II." Presented at the Society for Military History Conference, May 2003.
"The D-Day Deception: A Reassessment of Operation Fortitude." Presented at the International Security Studies Colloquium, Yale University, April 2002.
"George C. Marshall and the 1940 Louisiana Maneuvers." Presented at the Louisiana Historical Association Conference, March 2002.
"Operation Fortitude and Normandy Reassessed." Presented at the New York Military Affairs Symposium, February 2001.
"Allied Deception and the Invasion of Normandy." Presented at the "Recent Works in International History" conference, International Security Studies, Yale University, December 2000.
"George C. Marshall and the Development of GHQ Maneuvers." Presented at the "World War II - a 60 Year Perspective" conference, Siena College, June 1999.
Reviews in the following
Journal of Military History
Military History of the West
Military and Naval History Journal
Southern Historian
"No Simple Victory : A New Interpretation of World War II in Europe." A Review Essay, History: Reviews of New Books 37:2 (Winter 2009): 49-52.
Honors & Awards
Co-editor, War in History.
HARP Research Fellow, Mississippi State University, January-December 2013.
Editorial Board, War in History
Standing Editorial Board, Oxford Bibliographies Online. Military History module.
Dean's Eminent Scholar, Mississippi State University, Fall 2010
HARP Research Fellow, Mississippi State University, July 1, 2008 – June 30, 2009.
Center for International Security and Strategic Studies (CISS) Fellow, 2007 – present.
William E. Parrish Outstanding History Faculty Award, Spring 2004.
Smith Richardson Fellowship, International Security Studies, Yale University, Summer 2001.
John M. Olin Postoctoral Fellowship, International Security Studies, Yale University, 2000-2002.
William David McCain Fellowship, University of Southern Mississippi, 1997- 1998 (Dissertation fellowship).
Courses Taught
World Civilization I & II; American Military History; American History I & II; Intelligence Gathering in the Twentieth Century; World War II and the Arts; The Impact of World War II on Women; War and Society; US History, 1917-1945; America's Viet Nam War; Twentieth Century American Military History.
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Barbier , Mary Kathryn: SPIES, LIES,
AND CITIZENSHIP
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Barbier , Mary Kathryn SPIES, LIES, AND CITIZENSHIP Potomac Books (Adult Nonfiction) $32.95 10,
1 ISBN: 978-1-61234-727-1
Barbier (History/Mississippi State Univ.; D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy
Invasion, 2007, etc.) builds on mounting research into the lack of persecution of Nazi war criminals who
were granted entrance into the United States after World War II.The Immigration and Nationality Act of
1952 specifically blocked the immigration of Nazi criminals into the U.S., while between 1948 and 1953, a
whopping 600,000 European refugees had already entered under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The
sheer numbers overwhelmed consular bureaucracy, yet there was upper-level leniency at play as well in
turning a blind eye to the questionable pasts of some of these immigrants. Among many others, these
included Otto von Bolschwing, a chief SS officer stationed in Romania whose collaboration with postwar
American military intelligence allowed him entrance into the U.S. in 1954; Andrija Artukovic, "Butcher of
the Balkans," who managed to get a visa to the U.S. and a job in California; and Karl Linnas, who "ran a
concentration camp in Estonia" yet squeaked by authorities to arrive with his family in New York state in
1951. Barbier traces how the important Office of Special Investigations, established in 1979 within the U.S.
Department of Justice--thanks to public outcry in the 1970s over the denaturalization and extradition of
Hermine Braunsteiner, a German-born New York City housewife who lied about her work at a Nazi death
camp--finally was able to pursue these criminals ensconced comfortably in the U.S. Besides delineating
other high-profile cases, such as those of Klaus Barbie, Josef Mengele, and Kurt Waldheim, the author
chronicles the scandalous mission of Operation Paperclip, which allowed top German scientists and
technicians--who had perfected their talents trying to destroy the Allies with the V-1 and V-2 projects and
the use of chemical weapons--were lured to the U.S. to keep them from sharing their knowledge with the
Soviets. Well-researched state secrets forced into the light of truth.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Barbier , Mary Kathryn: SPIES, LIES, AND CITIZENSHIP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500364919/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2487bed5. Accessed 26 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500364919
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Spies, Lies, and Citizenship
The Hunt for Nazi Criminals
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Mary Kathryn Barbier
Chapel Hill, NC: University of Nebraska Press , October 2016. 352 pages.
$32.95. Hardcover. ISBN 9781612347271. For other formats: Link to Publisher's Website.
Review
As the title suggests, Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals tackles a controversial topic that has attracted the attention of serious scholars, investigative journalists, as well as tabloid journalists for several decades. Regrettably, the author situates herself among the latter by applying mediocre scholarship, perplexing sympathies, and sensationalist language to highly complex issues.
The topic of Spies, Lies, and Citizenship is the US Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and its investigations of individuals who have resided in the United States since World War II for their alleged involvement in war crimes under the Nazi regime. This is by no means a new topic, but one that has received renewed attention with the release of a six hundred-page report from 2008 that chronicles the activities of the OSI, which Barbier is responding to as well.
Critiquing the OSI’s work is highly political and indeed a worthy endeavor that requires thorough research, finely tuned analysis, and a well-balanced moral compass to weigh the evidence and arguments put forth in the past. Barbier offers very little of these, however, and what makes her approach especially startling is her sympathetic portrayal of some of those accused of having committed war crimes (including the notorious Klaus Barbie and Josef Mengele) juxtaposed with much less elaborate and sympathetic biographies of “Nazi hunters,” along with insinuations and innuendo against OSI investigators that suggests a miscarriage of justice in some cases. In the process, Barbier aims to show the “dire consequences” some of the presumably false allegations had on the investigated individuals (2). Yet her narrative is not consistent, and her stated goal is at times undermined in her effort to contextualize details from the 2008 report. This may be due to the fact that she takes accounts of the individuals she portrays at face value, even though they really require more scrutiny. For example, in the case of Arthur Rudolph (Operation Paperclip), with which I am most familiar, her narrative relies primarily on works written by investigative reporters and sympathizers instead of academic scholars and a more critical analysis of those sources. In general, her biographies of the alleged war criminals come across as clumsy attempts to humanize them by including seemingly random details and unsubstantiated rumors, reaching as far back as their childhoods. Meanwhile, the author repeatedly uses language that seems to minimize the severity of the atrocities committed under the Nazi regime.
In the book’s acknowledgements, Barbier claims that this work lies “on the periphery of my normal research” (xi). While that may be the case, it does not excuse her reliance on a minimal number of sources, of which some are inappropriate for academic work (she cites www.bibliography.com to relate Simon Wiesenthal’s biography and www.history.com to explain Josef Mengele’s intellectual heritage), her skewed portrayal of facts, or her sophomoric writing style that lacks nuance and precision. Even though this book was written for a general audience, we should expect more from an author who, according to her profile on Mississippi State University’s website, is a history professor focused on Military History, American History, Europe 1870-Present, and Latin America.
About the Reviewer(s):
Monique Laney is Assistant Professor of History at Auburn University.
Date of Review:
February 28, 2018
About the Author(s)/Editor(s)/Translator(s):
Mary Kathryn Barbier is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University. She is the author of several books, including Kursk 1943: The Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought and D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion.
Categories: history law politics 20th century violence Europe United States and Canada Judaism
Keywords: Nazi, justice, Holocaust, Klaus Barbie, Arthur Rudolph, Josef Mengele, Andrija Artuckovič
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Book Review: D-Day Deception Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion
December 14, 2016
|
Mary Kathryn Barbier
WW ll, D-Day. The beaches of Normandy.
Germany had the home field for this battle. They had constructed an almost impregnable line of shore defenses, stretching from the southern tip of Spain up to northern Norway. They were prepared for an Allied invasion, no matter where it occurred. With all of that going for them, how did the allies manage to cross the English Channel and land an entire army on French soil? And, all of that happening with Germany watching them.
How did the allies manage to pull off an invasion against such overwhelming odds?
A large part of the D-Day victory was the result of an extensive and a well-organized deception. The Allies tricked Hitler into thinking the invasion was going to occur in a location and time, different from Normandy and June 6th. Actually, the invasion was set for June 5th, but bad weather forced the Allies to put if off for one day.
There were many aspects to the deception, but the focus deception before D-Day was a plan code named Operation Fortitude. Operation Fortitude was multiple faceted, with Fortitude North, designed to make Hitler fear an invasion might come through Norway. Fortitude South was intended to make Hitler think the invasion would occur at the Pas de Calais. Both North and South were designed to have Hitler looking anywhere other than Normandy. Fortitude South was based around a fictitious army being commanded by Gen. George S. Patton.
There is a great deal of debate about how effective Operation Fortitude actually was. D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion spells out in great detail how the total operation worked.
Operation Fortitude was amazing in its scope and performance; however, it was only part of an intricate plan to fool Hitler. D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion covers only one phase of that total deception. The author, Mary Kathryn Barbier covers the details of Fortitude very well. For WW ll buffs, who thrive on all of the details, D-Day Deception:
Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion spells out how the effort lead to ultimate defeat of Germany. It is a very good read.
-- Review by William K.
Tags:
WWII
literature
Normandy
D Day
Allied Invasion