2022 Tomlinson Prize Awards for WWI Books

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The World War One Historical Association (WW1HA) annual Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr., prize for 2022 for the best work of history in English on World War One (1914–1918) has been awarded to three exceptional historical works.

****All of these works can be ordered from Amazon by clicking on the links below.

Plotting for Peace: American Peacemakers, British Codebreakers, and Britain at War, 1914–1917

By Daniel Larsen

Cambridge University Press

Capt. Reginald (Blinker) Hall, R.N.

With Britain by late 1916 facing the prospect of an economic crisis and increasingly dependent on the US, rival factions in Asquith's government battled over whether or not to seek a negotiated end to the First World War. In this riveting new account, Daniel Larsen tells the full story for the first time of how Asquith and his supporters secretly sought to end the war. He shows how they supported President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to convene a peace conference and how British intelligence, clandestinely breaking American codes, aimed to sabotage these peace efforts and aided Asquith's rivals. With Britain reading and decrypting all US diplomatic telegrams between Europe and Washington, these decrypts were used in a battle between the Treasury, which was terrified of looming financial catastrophe, and Lloyd George and the generals. This book's findings transform our understanding of British strategy and international diplomacy during the war.

 

Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Cryptology

By Betsy Rohaly Smoot

University Press of Kentucky

Col. Parker Hitt, USA, Infantry

Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Cryptology is more than a biography; it also tells the story of the development and growth of the cryptology field, largely at the nurturing of Hitt and his peers. It is also the story of a small, tight-knit military family as they lived their lives immersed in the Army culture of the first half of the 20th century. Colonel Hitt's manual, cipher devices, and proactive mentorship of Army cryptology during World War I laid the groundwork for the modern American cryptologic system. Though he considered himself an infantryman, Hitt is best known as the "father of American military cryptology. career progressed in tandem with the evolution of military cryptology. 

 

Million Dollar Barrage: American Field Artillery in the Great War 

by Justin G. Prince 

University of Oklahoma Press

Recruiting Poster

The U.S. Army's field artillery entered the Great War as a relatively new branch. It separated from the Coast Artillery in 1907 and established a dedicated training school, the School of Fire at Fort Sill, in 1911. Prince describes the challenges this presented as issues of doctrine, technology, weapons development, and combat training intersected with the problems of a peacetime army with no good industrial base. His account, which draws on a wealth of sources, ranges from debates about U.S. artillery practices relative to those of Europe, to discussions of the training, equipping, and performance of the field artillery branch during the war. Prince follows the field artillery from its plunge into combat in April 1917 as an unprepared organization to its emergence that November as an effective fighting force, with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive proving the pivotal point in the branch’s fortunes. 

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Sources: Air University Review;  Amazon.com; University of Kentucky Press