Sara B. Castro – författare

Brings together geographies and methodologies often kept apart by the difficulties of researching such a broad-ranging topic as the warShots in the Dark offers cutting-edge scholarship across different subfields in World War II history, revealing new insights into how this crucial conflict was planned, experienced, and fought. Twelve chapters demonstrate the broad scope of wartime innovation and how the war functioned as a global turning point, driving change at all levels of human society, from government institutions to individual identities.Contributors collaborated in a vibrant workshops series sponsored by the North American branch of the Second World War Research Group (SWWRGNA), an organization that emerged to nurture scholarship on the global war and unite scholars fragmented in narrower regional and methodological "stovepipes" to consider the war as a whole. The SWWRGNA and this volume showcase the work of diverse historians across subfields—operational, cultural, gender, social, intelligence, and diplomatic history. This approach exposes the Second World War as a catalyst for overlapping global changes that revolutionized the world after 1945. These scholars reveal continuities and parallels in wartime experiences that would remain invisible in narrowly focused projects.The volume establishes three frameworks for understanding and interpreting changes the war provoked: 1) institutional adaptation, 2) "totalization," or the militarization of civilians, and 3) cultural transformation. Each of the three frameworks is explored from four vantage points. Geographies are deliberately contrasted within each framework to examine the broad scope of that level of war-driven change.

Brings together geographies and methodologies often kept apart by the difficulties of researching such a broad-ranging topic as the warShots in the Dark offers cutting-edge scholarship across different subfields in World War II history, revealing new insights into how this crucial conflict was planned, experienced, and fought. Twelve chapters demonstrate the broad scope of wartime innovation and how the war functioned as a global turning point, driving change at all levels of human society, from government institutions to individual identities.Contributors collaborated in a vibrant workshops series sponsored by the North American branch of the Second World War Research Group (SWWRGNA), an organization that emerged to nurture scholarship on the global war and unite scholars fragmented in narrower regional and methodological "stovepipes" to consider the war as a whole. The SWWRGNA and this volume showcase the work of diverse historians across subfields - operational, cultural, gender, social, intelligence, and diplomatic history. This approach exposes the Second World War as a catalyst for overlapping global changes that revolutionized the world after 1945. These scholars reveal continuities and parallels in wartime experiences that would remain invisible in narrowly focused projects.The volume establishes three frameworks for understanding and interpreting changes the war provoked: 1) institutional adaptation, 2) "totalization," or the militarization of civilians, and 3) cultural transformation. Each of the three frameworks is explored from four vantage points. Geographies are deliberately contrasted within each framework to examine the broad scope of that level of war-driven change.

An innovative history of US intelligence officers on the ground and the first official contacts between the United States and the Chinese Communist PartyFrom 1944 to 1947, the United States planted a liaison mission in the headquarters of Chinese Communist forces behind the lines. Nicknamed the "Dixie Mission," for its location in "rebel" territory, it was an interagency delegation that included intelligence officers from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the US Army, and the State Department.Mission to Mao is a social history of the OSS officers in the field that reveals the weakness of US intelligence diplomacy in the 1940s. Drawing on over 14,000 unpublished records from five archives as well as white papers and memoirs from the participants, Sara B. Castro demonstrates how the US intelligence officers in China clashed with political appointees and Washington over the direction of the US relationship with the Chinese Communists. Interagency and political conflicts erupted over assessments of Communist capabilities and whether or not the mission would later involve operations with the Communists. Castro shows how potential benefits for the war effort were thwarted by politicization, rivalries, and the biases of US intelligence officials. Mission to Mao is a fresh look at US intelligence in WW II China and takes readers beyond the history of "China Hands" versus American anticommunists, introducing more nuance.

An innovative history of US intelligence officers on the ground and the first official contacts between the United States and the Chinese Communist PartyFrom 1944 to 1947, the United States planted a liaison mission in the headquarters of Chinese Communist forces behind the lines. Nicknamed the "Dixie Mission," for its location in "rebel" territory, it was an interagency delegation that included intelligence officers from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the US Army, and the State Department.Mission to Mao is a social history of the OSS officers in the field that reveals the weakness of US intelligence diplomacy in the 1940s. Drawing on over 14,000 unpublished records from five archives as well as white papers and memoirs from the participants, Sara B. Castro demonstrates how the US intelligence officers in China clashed with political appointees and Washington over the direction of the US relationship with the Chinese Communists. Interagency and political conflicts erupted over assessments of Communist capabilities and whether or not the mission would later involve operations with the Communists. Castro shows how potential benefits for the war effort were thwarted by politicization, rivalries, and the biases of US intelligence officials. Mission to Mao is a fresh look at US intelligence in WW II China and takes readers beyond the history of "China Hands" versus American anticommunists, introducing more nuance.