On May 1, 2015, the conference "War and Geography" took place at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where conveners Sarah K. Danielsson and Frank Jacob welcomed researchers hailing from three continents. In their talks, they explored the manifold connections of warfare and geography. The presentations ranged chronologically from Ottoman naval operations in the late 15th century to modern-day refugees of war and spatially from the bitter cold of the Arctic to the dusty heat of Iran as well as from the woods of North America to the mountains of Korea.

In the first panel on the interconnectedness of war, geography, and strategy, JEFFREY SHAW (Newport) examined the doctrine and armaments of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean troops in the Imjin War (1592-98). Despite the similar geographies of their respective mother countries, past war experiences resulted in differing doctrines and armaments of the three combatant powers. The second presenter, OLIVER KANN (Erfurt), elaborated the role of school geography in World War I Germany. The skills of geography teachers such as map-reading and -making, frequently underestimated before the war, became important both on the battle front as a means of war as well as on the home front for educational and propaganda purposes. JAMES HORNCASTLE (Burnaby) explored how the Yugoslav and Greek communist resistance movements of World War II succeeded and failed, respectively. By showing that rugged geography conducive to guerilla warfare does not automatically equal success, he made a convincing case to take political and cultural geography, in addition to physical geography, into consideration. MARTIN G. CLEMIS (Philadelphia) presented the different approaches taken by the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War to represent friendly and enemy territory via computerized calculations. Rather than a conflict without a front, the U.S. war in Indochina was a war of multiple overlapping and ever-changing fronts that was less about winning "hearts and minds" than area control.

In panel number 2 on war, geography, and the periphery, MURAT CEM MENGUC (New Jersey) presented his reading of an Ottoman apologetic account of a naval campaign (1499/1500) in the Venetian Peloponnese. Here, warfare was equally about maritime battles above salt water and about the constant lack of — and quest for — fresh water. LINDA PARKER (Birmingham) showed the importance of peacetime civilian arctic expeditions for the conduct of war. Both British and German scientists had explored the Svalbard islands in the 1930s, only to clash over the archipelago because of its major strategic importance for weather forecasting during World War II. ELIZABETH BISHOP (San Marcos) elaborated on the role of the Zagros Mountains in the Cold War. A defensive line for the United States in a possible Third World War during the time of "massive retaliation," the signing of the Baghdad Pact caused political turmoil in the Middle East where political borders where often quite permeable to the exchange of peoples and ideas.

Panel 3 on war, geography, and reception began with BENEDICT VON BREMEN’s (Tübingen) introduction to the role of geography in Ambrose Bierce's American Civil War writings. Former topographical engineer Bierce's texts depicting different types of engagements from small skirmishes to big battles mirror how geography and tactics affected each other in 1860s warfare. TIMOTHY DEMY (Newport) showed the impact of World War I in British painter, veteran, and official war artist Paul Nash's oeuvre. His surrealist landscape paintings reflect upon the unfathomable destruction of landscapes on the Western Front. Turning to the Eastern Front, PETRA SVOLJŠAK (Ljubljana) explored the experience of Slovenian soldiers fighting for the Habsburg monarchy against Czarist Russia. Especially remarkable was to these soldiers, next to the ordeals of warfare, the otherness of the Russian landscape in comparison with that of their home country. National identity and remembrance was the topic of KAREN SHELBY's (New York) talk on Flemish World War I museums. Home defense against German invaders made the case for Flemish nationalism vis-à-vis Walloons only stronger, as attested by various memorials and their depictions of the war for Flandres and not for Belgium as a whole.

The fourth panel on the impact of war on geography was started off by NINA JANZ (Hamburg) and her talk on German military cemeteries in World War II. These burial grounds, modeled after officially sanctioned designs, were to be lasting monuments to German soldiers’ heroism and also functioned as markers for conquered Lebensraum. Following this presentation, SWEN STEINBERG (Dresden) gave an introduction to his current transnational study on U.S. American and German forestry and mining sciences in the era of the world wars. On both sides of the Atlantic, natural resources were seen as important assets in military confrontations, necessitating the study not only of domestic but also of foreign countries’ resources. WOLFGANG FORM (Marburg) and FRANZISKA SERAPHIM (Boston) presented their ongoing project on war crimes trials after World War II. Their work tries to geographically locate Allied trials against Axis war criminals and promises to open new avenues in the study of global justice. Likewise, RICHARD P. TUCKER (Ann Arbor) hopes to shed light on the interconnection between conflicts, refugee movements, and the role of and impact on the environment by attracting scholars from different disciplines to come together.

The "War and Geography" conference gathered military historians whose perspectives range from the tower tops of war memorials to flattened and forgotten soldiers’s graves. Geography plays a role in war from beginning to end and beyond, starting with preparing (both materially and mentally) for battle to experience on the actual fighting grounds to the aftermath (and remembrance) of war. War is influenced by landscapes and war changes landscapes, but not only in a physical, but also in a cultural way, as the several panels of the conference were able to show. The interrelationship of war and geography is expressed in the arts such as painting, architecture, and (literary) writing. And the role of geography in warfare is not limited to tactics and strategies — or the role that physical geography plays: other geographies of mind play equally important roles.

Conference Overview:

War, Geography, and Strategy

Jeffrey Shaw (Naval War College), The Imjin War

Oliver Kann (Universität Erfurt), The "Rise" of German School Geography in World War I

James Horncastle (Simon Fraser University), Mapping a Term: Geography and its Role in the Success and Failures of the Yugoslav and Greek Resistance Movements

Martin G. Clemis (Temple University), The Geography of the Second Indochina War: Irregular War, the Environment, and the Struggle for South Vietnam

War, Geography, and the Periphery

Murat Cem Menguc (Seton Hall University), The Experience of War in the Sea: Ottoman Eyewitness Accounts of the 1499-1500 Expedition to the Peloponnese

Linda Parker (Birmingham, UK), From Ice Stations to Action Stations – The Importance of the Spitsbergen Archipelago in the Second World War

Elizabeth Bishop (Texas State University), Lofty and Preciptious Chains – The Baghdad Pact in the Zagros Mountains

War, Geography, and Reception

Benedict von Bremen (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen), Battlefield Topography: Geography in Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Texts

Timothy Demy (Naval War College), Landscapes of Destruction: Art and the Geography of the Western Front (1914-1918)

Petra Svoljšak (Milko Kos Historical Insitute), War Memory and Geography: The Geographical Perception of the Slovenes in World War I

Karen Shelby (Baruch College, City University of New York), The Geography of Place: Exhibition Practice at the Centennial of the Great War

War, Geography, and Impact

Nina Janz (Universität Hamburg), From Battlegrounds to Burial Grounds – The Cemetery Landscapes of the German Army, 1939-1945

Swen Steinberg (Technische Universität Dresden), Military Utilization and the Development of a Global Knowledge on Resources (1914-1918/ 1939-1945)

Wolfgang Form (Philipps-Universität Marburg) / Franziska Seraphim (Boston College), Geographies of Justice: The Allied War Crimes Trial Program as the First "Global Justice Network"

Richard P. Tucker (University of Michigan), Mass Conflict, Refugee Movements, and Environmental Dislocations