Society for Military History Records Accrual

The Society for Military History Records (1933-2006) consists primarily of administrative and journal-related correspondence, organizational planning memoranda, and internal officer level reports. The original general arrangement of the records has been retained wherever possible. The majority of the collection is related to the preparation for annual conferences and the publishing of the organization's quarterly journal. The collection is organized into seven series: 1) Historic Papers, 2) Administrative Records, 3) Subject Files, 4) Journal Publishing Records, 5) Financial Records, 6) Printed Material, 7) Photographs. More detailed summaries of each series follow the scope and content section.
Originating as collaboration between the army's publications/historical research office workers and several Washington, D.C. area archivists, the organization, originally called the American Military History Foundation, was formed in an attempt to supplement the military's primary resource-poor collection in preparation to fight future wars. In time, the organization gravitated towards the scholarly study of American war fighting capabilities and public policy. Eventually, the organization grew into a multi-facetted society of scholars, military personnel, archivists, and military history enthusiasts, encompassing a dual foreign and domestic orientation, which encouraged a veritable kaleidoscope of traditional and non-traditional subject fields. Hence, this collection spans the history of the organization's different incarnations chronologically and by subject. These periods of change are reflected in their changes in name. They are the American Military History Foundation (AMHF), 1933-1939, the American Military Institute (AMI), 1939-1990, and the Society for Military History (SMH), 1990-present, respectively.
Their main publication, frequently referred to as "the journal" in documentation, has also changed names several times. They are The Journal of the American Military History Foundation (1937-1939/1940), Military Affairs (1939/1940-1988), and The Journal of Military History (1988-present), respectively.
The records also reflect the organization's involvement with other scholarly organizations, most notably the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the United States Commission on Military History (USCMH), as well as their affiliation and later absorption of the veterans/historians association the Order of the Indian Wars (OIW).
Consequently, the strength of the collection lies with documentation concerning both the shifting needs of the general military, academic community, and the general public as well as the increased diversification of the military historiographic landscape due to the organization's non-profit efforts in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Historic Papers (1933-1972) series consists of (1) box of documentation, relating to the original goals of the organization, several early projects, certificates of incorporation, constitutions and by-laws, reports outlining the duties of officers, copyright information, taxes, early organizational correspondence between founding members, and agreements made with other organizations regarding membership and journal publishing, including the Order of the Indian Wars (OIW) and Kansas State University (KSU). Also found in the series are a few 1935 articles, published through Army Ordinance, which provided a mission statement, the creation of an organization beyond the Army History Division and served as the starting point for the organization's publishing arm.
The Administrative Records (1933-2007) series consists of (79) boxes of correspondence and reports circulated between the officers of presidential administrations, individual organizational members, the executive directors, and the boards of trustees. These files include such issues as membership drives, conference planning, journal publication evaluations, officer reports, and general correspondence. The papers covering the early years focus on daily administrative activities within a narrow scope of weeks and months. The papers covering the latter years of the organization span both daily material and long-range planning by the organization's officers. Many notable archivists and historians served as officers in the organization, including Trevor Dupuy, William Foote, B.F. Cooling, Russell Weigley, K. Jack Bauer, Alan Millett, Robert Berlin, Donald Bittner, Timothy Nenninger, Edward Coffman, and Edwin Simmons. Much of the correspondence and officer reports also shed light on several key events in the organization's history, including a 1940s attempted transformation of the journal towards a National Geographic-type format by Dallas Irving, the 1950s and 1960s performance of an all-volunteer editorial staff managed by Victor Gondos, Trevor Dupuy's late 1950 attempts to develop AMI into an increasingly scholarly organization, periodic evaluations of Kansas State University's journal publishing performance, the forces behind the creation of the Moncado Awards and the AMI/SMH Book Award, the search for a replacement publisher for the journal prior to the 1988 completion of KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY 's contract, and reports outlining the sequence of fiscal/membership crises which nearly dissolved the organization. Similarly, the SMH papers of Donald Bittner collected in this series outline the entire process of conference creation from thematic conception to methodological process and management to the post-conference publication of several papers in the Marine Corps University's "Perspectives on Warfighting." Correspondence pertaining to several other noted military historians can also be found in this series, including material by Martin Blumenson, Victor Gondos, Brian Linn, Forest Pogue, Craig Symonds, Dennis Showalter, Robin Higham, Robert Berlin, and Bruce Catton.
The Subject Files (1908-1993) series consists of (11) boxes, containing a wide assortment of document-types from the organization's holdings according to topic and chronology. These files, originally retained separately from the general collection, were frequently utilized by different administrations as reference material for numerous policy initiatives described in other series. The set of records relating to the Order of Indian Wars contain both historic oral histories of the Plaines Wars and membership lists as a recruitment resource, which were incorporated into the organization when the Order of the Indian Wars merged with AMHF/AMI between 1938 and 1947. Other files contain biographical summaries of influential early members and journal contributors. Several files concern the drafts, correspondence, and memoranda on the reorganization of organization. Another collects the correspondence, submitted entries and judges description's for AMI's 1939 "Historical Fire Arms Contest." Still others include the efforts of several public relations to increase membership, membership paraphernalia, contractual agreements with other organizations, reports concerning the location and disposition of the AMI Library and Archives, federal tax-related forms, the history behind the Moncado Award, and one of the only successful 1960s Civil War commemorative events, the AMI Civil War Centennial Celebration.
The Journal Publishing Records (1933-1980) series consists of (13) boxes of correspondence, memoranda, reports, and papers submitted for publication by the journal. It covers the publication's many changes in name, editorial direction and format from The Journal of the American Military History Foundation (1937-1939) to The Journal of the American Military Institute (1939-1941) to Military Affairs (1941-1988), and, most recently, to The Journal of Military History (1989-present). The contents range from submitted manuscripts, such as "The United States Army Troops in China, 1912-1937" by Charles W. Thomas III (circa 1933), to editorial board-level material. Although originating in 1937 as the Journal of the American Military History Foundation, the majority of this collection was gathered together in the 1950s by Victor Gondos and served as the staff's institutional memory during his tenure as editor of Military Affairs. Researchers interested in business history and publishing will find the editor's daily correspondence particularly valuable, detailing the journal's on-going relationship with printers, advertisers, readers, reviewers, and prospective contributors. Another valuable resource includes the Cold War era's editorial board reports, which recorded membership/subscriber growth as well as managed printing venues, advertisers, subscribing institutions, and book reviewers. Other interesting subjects covered by the files include editor Dallas Irving's attempt to widen the journal's readership, the near dissolution of the journal in the late 1940s upon the resignation of the volunteer editor, the brief period in which the publication was maintained by the United States Army Office of the Chief of Military History, the 1949 attempt to rescue the publication by then-Columbia University President Dwight Eisenhower, the 1968 transition of publishing operations from a volunteer staff in the Washington, D.C. area to a paid professional publishing staff comprising Kansas State University's History and English departments and headed by Robin Higham, and a 1998 joint project with the United States Commission on Military History to publish an issue of Reveue Internationale D'Histoire Militair on the relationship between the United States Constitution and America's armed forces.
The Financial Records (1934-1999) series consists of (17) boxes of accounting records, receipts, officer reports, trustees meeting minutes, membership lists, and correspondence by subject and chronology. The first section of the records includes membership lists spanning the early years of the organization and the Cold War era AMI, detailing the status of active members, dues accrued, patrons, and honorary members as well as groupings of members by geographic region. Some individuals listed as members include George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Charles Summerall, Samuel Bemis, William D. Campell, Hoffman Nickerson, Hilario Moncado, Walter Lippmann, Milton Skelly, Bernard Brodie, Stephen Ambrose, and Harold Deutsch. The second section covers the accounting records of the early organization to the onset of the Second World War in the form of bank statements, bound ledgers, deposit slips, paid bills, and check books. The remainder of the collection covers the Treasurer and the Treasurer-Secretary's reports to the organization's officers, meeting minutes with the Board of Trustees, correspondence concerning member's status, investments, and bills to be paid. The financial arrangements made for joint conferences/seminars with other organizations are also interesting, including the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, arrangements made for the organization's own annual conferences, and the early AMI Treasurer's financial reports concerning membership shortfalls after World War II and the Korean War.
The Printed Material series collects in (3) boxes maps, posters, and illustrations as well as copies of conference programs, newsletters, and some newspaper clippings. The first section of the series contains several black and white illustrations, printed in England, outlining the evolution of weaponry from edged weapons and armor to firearms, graphics describing officer ranks, two World War II era posters ("Careless Talk" and "5th War Loan"), maps of the United States, the world, and a handful of World War I battlefield actions. The second section holds several programs for SMH Annual Meeting events, membership directories for both the AMI and SMH for the years 1981, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2002, respectively, and an eighteen year run of the Headquarters Gazette (1990-2008). The final section of the series includes newspaper clippings, featuring the obituaries of notable organizational members. A complete collection of Journal of Military History issues from 1994-2006 has been separated from the papers, catalogued, and shelved in the University Archives.
The Photographs (1940-2008) series collects in (1) box the miscellaneous printed images and portraits of the organization's members. Included in the series are portraits of several early organizational presidents and officers, black and white pictures of the 1968 Victor Gondos Testimonial Dinner, a photo of Victor Gondos at his desk, an assortment of images depicting naval vessels, aircraft, military personnel, and combat actions collected for potential supplements to issues of Military Affairs, as well as amateur pictures taken of SMH awards recipients and panel discussions held at miscellaneous annual conferences.

These documents span nearly a century of service to the study of military history from post-First World War army historical interest to twenty-first century scholarship. The records arranged to reflect the daily use of the collection as an administrative resource for the SMH, are now organized in the following series: 1) Historic Papers, 2) Administrative Records, 3) AMI Subject Files 4) Journal Publishing Records, 5) Financial Records, 6) Print Material, and 7) Photographs.
Series I: Historic Papers, 1933-1972 (Box 1): While the Society for Military History (SMH) has periodically changed in name, management, and direction to reflect changes in membership goals several times in its history, these documents have been identified for their inherent historic value and as representative of many near-century-long organizational trends. Some of these items include the 1933 Infantry Journal and Ordinance articles (which proposed the creation of the American Military History Foundation [AMHF]), a copy of the organization's mission statement and publishing goals, lists of military history-related documents from other repositories, the American Military Institute (AMI) Certificate of Incorporation, and copy right information. Other files include memoranda outlining the organization's structure, officer duties, proposed changes to the constitution and by-laws and agreements with outside parties (notably the Order of the Indian Wars [OIW] and Kansas State University [KSU]).
Series II: Administrative Records, 1933-2006 (Box 2-81): By far the largest section of the SMH collection, Administrative Records contains the day-to-day business records of the organization from its origins as a 1930s think-tank for archivists and army historians to a national scholarly organization in the twenty-first century. It contains secretarial-level files, officer reports, presidential administration material, and Board of Trustees meeting minutes. While largely dealing with individuals and businesses through correspondence, the contents also shed light on several key organizational matters, including the original intent of the AMHF, the creation of the AMI, the organization's work with the Order of the Indian Wars (OIW), American Historical Association (AHA) and Organization of American Historians (OAH), the proposed creation of a National Military Museum, the transformation of MA into a scholarly publication, the accounting of administration expenses, MA subscription issues, planning for direct mailing campaigns, the creation of regional outlets for AMI, and collected membership biographical queries. The amassed AMI era documentation in this series also provides a venue for the comparisons between various organization presidencies and executive directors, including Colonel William Foote, Charles (Reg) Schrader, Russell Weigley, B.F. Cooling, Edward Simmons, Robert Berlin, and Edward Coffman. Another section includes officer level-papers, which cover a wide range of chronologically arranged and alphabetized correspondence, membership drive material, Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes, membership survey responses as well as several officer-level special projects and seasonal reports. A considerable segment of this series also includes the officer papers of Donald Bittner, documenting the preparations made for the 1992 Annual Meeting and the subsequent creation of the third volume of Marine Corps University's "Perspectives on Warfighting" journal. This material includes conference management paperwork, submitted conference papers, editorial critiques, and promotional activities. Finally, in the form of printed emails, formal correspondence, and officer reports, the SMH era material also contains documents relating to the organization's handling of numerous crises, including the battlefield preservation of Manassas, the proposed creation of a national military history museum, the protests over the potential closure of the Center for Military History at Carlyle Barracks, the effects of OAH activities on the 2000 SMH George Marshall Lecture, personnel and intellectual property rights, disagreements between the officers and the editorial staff of the Journal of Military History, and the controversy over the creation of the SMH website.
Series III: AMI Subject Files, 1925-1999 (Box 82-93): Originally utilized by AMI Librarians/Archivists and officers as reference material for the crafting of organizational policy, this series covers important components of the organization's history only tangentially mentioned in other records. Some sections of this series contain bureaucratic material, including legal agreements concerning publishing rights, AMI ephemera, AMI membership drives, and the formal incorporation of AMI, and AMI President Trevor Dupuy's proposal to restructure the organization and federal tax material. Other files contain subject-specific documentation acquired in the pursuit of special projects, including the personal narratives of veterans of the Plaines Wars originally collected by the Order of the Indian Wars, early primary document collection and bibliographical matter of the American Military History Foundation, an assortment of documentation concerning negotiations to bring Military Affairs to Kansas State University, and the history behind the Moncado Award. Still other files contain event-oriented material, including Victor Gondos's plans for AMI's Civil War Centennial events, membership entry paperwork for a 1939 "Historic Fire Arms Contest," and book sales at the organization's annual conferences. The final segment of the series contains the correspondence and reports filed by the AMI Librarian/Archivist, noting the changing locations and dispositions of AMI's library holdings, which were scattered across many states, repositories and basements of private houses, while the officers searched for a permanent site to house the records.
Series IV: Journal Publishing Records, 1933-1989 (Box 94-107): Spanning the first issues of The Journal of the American Military History Foundation in the 1930s in Washington, D.C through the Military Affairs years at Kansas State University (KSU) to the postmodern Journal of Military History published at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), this series collects the operating and editorial-related documentation for the organization's quarterly published magazine/journal. It includes manuscript copies of articles reviewed and/or published by the journal, format changes made to the periodical over the years, reports detailing changes in editorial policy, editorial board meeting minutes, and editor's correspondence with writers, advertisers, and printers as well as query letters, book review discussions, subscription drives, and accounting records. The most complete records cover editorial operations handled by Robert DeT. Lawrence and William Ross, Michael Skelly, Victor Gondos, and Robin Higham. Several of the records also provide a window to the journal's symbiotic relationship with the greater organization, including the publication's defined mission, its pivotal role in the development of membership and direction for the organization during the Cold War, and periodic discussions about shifting publications format and content criteria from a secular magazine to a scholarly journal. Other items of note include reports and meeting minutes regarding the 1949-1952 near-dissolution of the publication, the management of the organization's newsletter, The Headquarters Gazette, and the publication's evolution from a volunteer-based staff in the Great Depression and Second World War to a professional model under KSU History Professor Robin Higham in the late 1960s to the relocation and transition of operations to desktop publishing at VMI in 1988.
Series V: Financial Records 1933-1975, (Box 108-125): This series contains the first forty-two years of AMHF/AMI financial records (1933-1975), covering the transition of the organization from a Washington, D.C. beltway seminar group (AMHF) to a more academically-oriented organization for military historians (AMI) and, eventually, to an all-inclusive scholastic organization (SMH). Most of this series is comprised of budgetary ledgers, bank statements, membership dues lists, and check books, concerning the underwriting of organization's early membership participation. A thorough search of the records, however, will also reveal details behind the organization's publication efforts (most notably The Journal of the American Military History Foundation/Military Affairs), and numerous events, including one-day events, guest joint-sessions at other venues, such as the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, and the group's own annual meetings. Similarly, whereas a large portion of the series chronicles the accounting practices of the group, special attention should also be paid to the Treasurer's reports and officer correspondence as well as the meeting minutes of several Boards of Trustees and early membership demographics by region. Taken together, these files reveal a consistent triage-oriented fiscal policy, which permeated the organization's early struggles to gain self-sufficiency. Consequently, officers attempted to mitigate shortfalls through membership recruitment campaigns, the application of funds to more immediately beneficial group projects, and the constant monitoring of their financial investments as a direct result of the series of budgetary crises in the 1950s, which nearly caused the dissolution of Military Affairs (MA) and the AMI.
Series VI: Printed Material, 1939-2004 (Box 126-128): In over seventy years of operation, AMHF/AMI/SMH staff and members collected numerous journal inserts, graphics, maps, hand-drawn/painted illustrations, and posters. Some of these items, such as graphics and maps, were utilized in journal publications. Other items include members printed obituaries, membership directories, Annual Meeting Programs and issues of the Headquarters Gazette.
Series VII: Photographs, 1930s-1999 (Box 129): This series contains photographic portraits of several organizational presidents, pictures of testimonial dinner attendees and conference presenters, and miscellaneous photographs related to Military Affairs that were kept for the sake of posterity. Still other items found in this series were collected by various members in their world travels and sent to sitting officers as gifts.

In 2007 the Society for Military History and Richard L.D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections of the Kansas State University Libraries entered into an agreement to collect, organize, preserve, and make available for scholarly research the records of the organization. It is an honor for the Department of Special Collections to serve as the official repository for the SMH records, an organization established in 1933 to advance the study of military history. Its more than 2300 members include many of the nation's most prominent scholars, soldiers, and citizens involved in the field. This descriptive guide to the records represents the completion of the processing of the material transferred to University Archives and Manuscripts as of December 31, 2008. Military history is designated as a major collecting area of the Morse Department of Special Collections. This is primarily due to the Department of History's internationally recognized military history program that offers both the masters and doctorial degree in the discipline. Collections, such as the SMH Records, are acquired to support this program and scholarly research.
There are a number of individuals responsible for designating K-State as the location for the SMH records: the board and officers of the SMH, including Dr. Robert Berlin who first approached Kansas State University with this possibility; Dr. Mark Parillo, director of the Institute for Military History, Department of History, Kansas State University, who connected the SMH with the University Archives and Manuscripts at K-State, and encouraged the partnership; Anthony R. Crawford of the Department of Special Collections who coordinated the agreement between the participants and the transfer of records to K-State, and Lori Goetsch, Dean of Libraries for her support of the agreement.
The processing of the SMH records and the creation of this finding aid were made possible through the financial support of the Society. This funding enabled Special Collections to employ Paul Thomsen, a graduate student in the military history program at K-State, to process the records that were shipped to Manhattan. We are grateful to the Institute for Military History and Dr. Parillo for providing additional funds to support the completion of the project.
The SMH Records described herein are open and available to students, faculty, scholars, independent researchers, and, of course, to the members of the SMH. Individuals interested in the records are encouraged to contact the University Archives and Manuscripts, Morse Department of Special Collections, Hale Library, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506 (785-532-7456 or archives@k-state.edu). Anthony R. Crawford, CA Associate Professor University Archivist/Curator of Manuscripts
Introduction In 2007, Kansas State University Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections at Hale Library, Kansas State University, became the official repository for the historical records of the Society for Military History (SMH). Since the Depression Era founding of the organization's first incarnation as the American Military History Foundation (AMHF) in June, 1933, the records were cared for by a series of archives, including the Department of the Army's history and publications offices, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, Carlyle Barracks, and the National Defense University and individual members, including Robert Berlin and Harold Langley, before finally finding a permanent home at Kansas State University. These documents span nearly a century of service to the study of military history from post-First World War army historical interest to twenty-first century scholarship. The records arranged to reflect the daily use of the collection as an administrative resource for the SMH, are now organized in the following series: 1) Historic Papers, 2) Administrative Records, 3) AMI Subject Files 4) Journal Publishing Records, 5) Financial Records, 6) Print Material, and 7) Photographs. Whereas most organizations retain their records to provide a sense of institutional memory and legal support, the SMH Records also provides a broad, wide, and deep perspective on the study of history. These documents and graphics serve both as an administrative organizational record of events and as a means for scholars and students to understand the shifting tides of historic events, military historiographers, and the discipline of history, itself, in both a thematic and personal way. For example, the records indicate that AMHF was created by the efforts of Washington, D.C area archivists and army personnel as an ad hoc civilian think-tank, supplementing the Depression Era research of the Historical Section of the United States Army with outside resources, documents, ideas, and a structured openness to discussions. Consequently, the collection holds several publishable papers and conference material, which pertain to the ways different nations conducted wars prior to the First World War. Simultaneously, this organizational direction also led to the creation of both a traveling library (named the Lull Library after a founder and early president) and the archived records from which this collection grew. While the library component of the organization was eventually absorbed by Carlyle Barracks and the United States Army Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the documents and photographs of several presidents were retained by the organization and continued to be cared for by individual officers until a suitable venue could be found at Kansas State University. This collection's true strength, however, is derived from the organization's defining activities in the Second World War and Cold War. By 1937, early journal records indicate that interest in AMHF activities and articles published in Army Ordinance prompted the creation of The Journal of the American Military History Foundation. Similarly, the administrative records of the organization during the Second World War will provide scholars access to material on public lectures to supplement current events issues, including lectures on the "Total Science of War" and "The Atomic Bomb and Its Implications" (which discussed the military application of atomic weaponry with General Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project). Other sections of the collection, most notably the meeting minutes of officers and the Boards of Trustees, also illustrate the absorption of the Order of the Indian Wars members by the renamed American Military Institute (AMI) and the assistance of the American Historical Society (AHA) as significant roles in keeping the organization functional in the lean postwar years. Likewise, the officer-level papers reveal the influence of key members in advancing the goals and functions of the group over several generations, including Dallas Irvine, Milton Skelly, Hilario Moncado, William Foot, Victor Gondos, Dwight Eisenhower, Trevor Dupuy, B. F. Cooling, Edward Coffman, Robin Higham, Russell Weigley, Dennis Showalter, Alan Millett, Harold Langley, Tim Nenninger, and Robert Berlin. Finally, the secretary level files detail how the AMI was able to weather periodic economic and publishing crises plaguing the organization as well as their emergence as an internationally renowned institution of learned scholarship affiliated with the Organization of American Historians (OAH), Civil War Roundtable, and the George C. Marshall Foundation. Similarly, the documents covering the organization's most recent incarnation, the Society for Military History, also provides readers with ample examples of the organization's breadth and depth of reach over the past two decades. Presidential correspondence, treasurer reports, and secretary files stress the rapid development of regional and local chapters beyond the Atlantic Coast. Other sections serve as a model for the mechanics of conference planning and publication. Researchers interested in business history and publishing will find the editor's daily correspondence particularly valuable, detailing the journal's on-going relationship with printers, advertisers, readers, reviewers, and prospective contributors. Another section of the collection, for example, relates Donald Bittner's focus on the planning, preparation, and execution of the 1996 Annual Conference as well as the subsequent development of select conference papers for publication in Marine Corps University's Perspectives on Warfighting. Still other areas of the collection related to the journal showcase the different stages in the development of the flagship publication from the Department of the Army to an all-volunteer civilian Washington staff to Robin Higham's tenure as journal editor at Kansas State University and, most recently, the Virginia Military Institute. A preliminary arrangement of the collection was made by the SMH Librarian Harold Langely. Paul A. Thomsen, the SMH Archives Assistant, processed the collection and prepared this finding aid. The collection was assigned Accession Number P2008.03 Through the cooperation of the Society of Military History's officers and board, and the Institute for Military History and Twentieth Century Studies and Morse Department of Special Collections at K-State, the SMH records are now permanently housed at K-State and open for scholarly research. The arrangement and description of the records have been made possible through significant funding from the SMH, as well as financial assistance from the Institute for Military History. Paul A. Thomsen Archives Assistant Morse Department of Special Collections

Finding Aid Author: Paul A. Thomsen
Processing Info: A preliminary arrangement of the collection was made by the SMH Librarian Harold Langely. Paul A. Thomsen, the SMH Archives Assistant, processed the collection and prepared this finding aid.  Archon migration by Edward Nagurny, graduate research assistant, October 2015.
Publication Date: 2015-10-16