Ft. Leavenworth Series

From 1942 to 1945, Frank “Pinkie” Dorn, a Chinese linguist and country expert, served in the China-Burma-India theater. Geoff Babb shares the story of Dorn, a colorful and talented officer, writer, mapmaker and artist who had previously served in China as a language student and army attaché. These duties would prepare him for his long […]

Convention says that Napoleon’s downfall came as a result of his misadventures in Spain, starting in 1808, and his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. While both undoubtedly contributed to his ultimate defeat, the War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809 was Napoleon’s turning point. It saw his first undisputed battlefield defeat at Aspern-Essling and […]

With guest speaker Gates Brown. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a dramatic turning point for both the U.S. and the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. Each had their assumptions shattered in the offensive. The North Vietnamese hoped to prove the validity of their revolutionary ideology. The success of the counterattack of the U.S.-led […]

Although the turning points of the American Civil War and World War II occurred in the middle of those conflicts, the outcome of the Great War was not decided until the last months of the war. The Ludendorff Offensives had pushed both sides into a deadly race against time that pitted German tactical successes against […]

Dr. Kuehn’s talk will dispute the claim that the Battle of Midway is the turning point of the Pacific War and offer an argument that the campaign on Guadalcanal from August 1942 to early February 1943 constitutes the actual turning point in the war. This presentation examines the campaign from this vantage point and emphasizes […]

Few years in modern history have been as eventful as 1941. For most Americans, the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor resonates as the year’s signal event, an action that thrust the United States into World War II. For the Soviet Union and its clients, Operation Barbarossa, the sudden Nazi attack of June 22, […]

In an effort to thwart the ambitions of his political rivals, the Hohenstaufen ruler Frederick Barbarossa invaded Italy in 1167 with the goal of driving all the way to Sicily. Following successful sieges in northern Italy, he took his army to Rome: he captured the city on July 24 and then stirred its citizens into […]

Civil War fans often point to Antietam or Gettysburg as the turning point of the war, but overlooked is the night of April 6, 1862, when Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee was teetering on the edge of annihilation on the banks of the Tennessee River. The day had begun with a surprise attack […]

President Carter had a visceral dislike of the CIA and its use of covert missions. However, he overcame his initial perception when he saw an opportunity to use the CIA and its covert action as a means to increase the pressure on the political and social systems of the Soviet Union. Using the tenets of […]

The British demands in mid-1814 were fierce and would have reduced the United States in size and limited its potential for expansion. The United States had declared war on Great Britain in 1812 because the British were seizing American merchant ships and cargoes, taking crewmen into the Royal Navy involuntarily, and providing arms to Native […]

In the spring of 1944, the conflict in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI) began to turn in favor of the Allies. The Japanese, in two offensives: ICHIGO (Operation Number 1) in China; and, U-GO (Operation C) in India, endeavored to take China out of the war and drive the British from India. General William Slim’s 14th […]

The Battle of Ramadi in 2006-07 is one of the lesser-known but arguably one of the fiercest and the most decisive battle of the Iraq War. This battle marked a change in the US understanding of the war in Iraq and the adoption of highly controversial and effective tactics that reflected that changed understanding. The […]