Date
9-17-2026
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Chair
Charles William Carter
Keywords
Military Review, Viet Nam, Vietnam, U.S. Army, military, Officers, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, Command Group and Staff College, CGSC, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, news media, news weeklies, Korean War, World War II, Earle Wheeler, censorship, Bernard Fall, Matthew Ridgway, President John F. Kennedy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ngo Dinh Diem, Nguyen Van Thieu, anti-war demonstrations, Americanization, nationbuilding, pacification, William Westmoreland
Disciplines
History | Sociology
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Kimball E., "Field Grade War: Military Review & Vietnam - 1965-1968: A Case Study" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8949.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8949
Abstract
Military Review (MR) is the longest published professional military journal in the U.S. Beginning in 1922, it initially reprinted articles from foreign military journals to be used as an adjunct to classroom instruction for officers at the Army’s Command Group and Staff College (CGSC) located at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Prior to World War II it began publishing original articles discussing U.S. military strategy and tactics written by CGSC students. Following the Korean War, it became a forum for U.S. Army field grade officers to share ideas and opinions about South Vietnam and the Communist incursion there. As America’s involvement in Vietnam began to increase throughout the 1960s, Army officers who were fighting in Vietnam contributed to the journal, more often than not expressing opposing views to official policies directing the War. It is therefore surprising that, as a primary source, this journal has remained virtually untouched by historians writing about the War and, by overlooking it, they have been unable to provide as complete a picture of what was occurring in Vietnam as they might have with the help of its actual leadership in the field. As a measure of its importance, similarities, and quality, articles from Military Review, published between 1965-1968, are presented in comparison to what was being written in three of the most popular news weeklies of the Vietnam era, namely Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, thereby revealing a heretofore unsuspected sympathy in tone and outlook on the War shared by the civilian news media and the editors and contributors to one of the U.S. Army’s official publications.
