Although a small number of landmines were introduced into modern warfare during World War I, the tactics of landmine use, both in the deployment and removal, did not become clear until World War II. By 1939, the German and Italian armies had developed both antitank and antipersonnel landmines, which were used effectively against the Allied forces. Naturally, the Allies developed techniques for ...

Throughout the early 1950s, as the Korean War raged, a single contentious question consumed political debate in the United States: Who lost China? Political opponents tossed this question back and forth hoping that the tar baby would stick to someone on the other side and let them affix blame both for the Korean War and, more importantly, for allowing communists to seize control of the most pop...

The rise and decline of free trade in the 19th century and the attendant economic and political consequences of these trends have always intrigued historians and economists. In the difficult times following World War I, when international trade relations had to be rebuilt, the free trade episode among European countries in the second half of the 19th century was perceived as a golden age. Durin...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184832.].

The revolutionary transformation in Russian science toward the Soviet model of research started even before the revolution of 1917. It was triggered by the crisis of World War I, in response to which Russian academics proposed radical changes in the goals and infrastructure of the country's scientific effort. Their drafts envisioned the recognition of science as a profession separate from teach...

Through the past 60 years, forests, now of various age classes, have been established in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula through nationwide efforts to reestablish forests since the Korean War (1950-53), during which more than 65% of the nation's forest was destroyed. Careful evaluation of long-term changes in vegetation growth after reforestation is one of the essential steps to ensur...

Note: This draft chapter was first written almost twenty years ago for a textbook that never got finished. (Or, to be more precise, my chapters were pretty much finished; my co-authors’ chapter wasn’t. Too bad, because we had a contract for the textbook with Oxford University Press.) One co-author, Richmond Thomason, also contributed to this chapter, though it was mainly written by me. The pres...

We examined late-1990s trends in enlisted recruitment, retention, and reenlistment and officer retention in the Air Force compared with the other services to determine whether the Air Force faces personnel issues that differ in type and magnitude from those of the other services. We focused on the late 1990s because it is the period after the defense drawdown was completed and the end of Operat...

There are 9.4 million military veterans receiving Social Security benefits, which means that almost one out of every four adult Social Security beneficiaries has served in the United States military. In addition, veterans and their families make up almost 40 percent of the adult Social Security beneficiary population. Policymakers are particularly interested in military veterans and their famil...

World War I catapulted the United States from traditional isolationism to international involvement in a major European conflict. Woodrow Wilson envisaged a permanent American imprint on democracy in world affairs through participation in the League of Nations. Amid these defining events, Wilson suffered a major ischemic stroke on October 2, 1919, which left him incapacitated. What was probably...