Allan R. Millett

"They Came From the North: The War for Korea, 1950-51"

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Noon
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201

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Allan R. Millett is director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Stephen E. Ambrose Professor of History at the University of New Orleans since 2006, and the Raymond E. Mason Jr. Professor Emeritus of Military History at The Ohio State University. He specializes in the history of American military policy and 20th century wars and military institutions.

In the past decade, Millett has become a specialist of international stature on the history of the Korean War.  He began his work on the war as a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at Korean National Defense University in 1991, and a fellow of the Korea Foundation in 1996. 

The first volume of The War for Korea, entitled A House Burning: The War for Korea 1945-1950, was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2005. He will speak at the Mershon Center about the book's second volume, forthcoming from University Press of Kansas, which covers 1950-51.

Millett has also published 27 essays, articles, encyclopedia entries, and commentaries on the Korean War, and he was instrumental in the Department of Defense's revision of American death statistics in the war from 54,246 to 36,574. 

In addition to his own work, Millett served as an editorial consultant for the Ministry of Defense, Republic of Korea, for the revised and translated Korean official history, The Korean War, 3 vols. (1998-99) for which he arranged an American edition (2000-01).  He then served as co-editor of Mao’s Generals Remember Korea (2001) in collaboration with Yi Xiaoping and Yu Bin. 

Millett is also author of:

• The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909 (1968)
• The General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in the United States Army, 1881-1925 (1975)
• Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (1980, revised edition, 1991)
• In Many a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the United Stated Marine Corps, 1917-1956 (1993)
• Their War for Korea (2002)
• The Korean War (Historiography & Bibliography) (2007)

He co-authored with Williamson Murray A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (2000) which has won international acclaim and translation in Spanish, Chinese, and Hebrew.  In collaboration with a former student, Peter Maslowski, he also wrote For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States, 1607-1983 (1984, rev. ed. 1994). 

He was co-editor (with Williamson Murray) and a contributor to Military Effectiveness (1988), an acclaimed three-volume history of military affairs from 1900 to 1945.  Again working with Murray, he was co-editor of Calculations: Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (1992) and Military Innovation (1996), to which he contributed two essays.  As co-editor and contributor, Millett organized Commandants of the Marine Corps (2004), an anthology of 28 essays.

In December 2005, Millett became professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, where he directed 64 doctoral dissertations to completion since 1969, a national record in his specialty.  In January 2006, he began an appointment in history at the University of New Orleans and directorship of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies.  He has also become the senior military advisor at The National World War II Museum.

Millett has garnered many honors and awards during his career, including the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing (2008), U.S. Secretary of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Civilian (2007), and Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History for lifetime contributions to the study of military history (2004).

Allan R. Millett
Raymond E. Mason Jr. Professor Emeritus of Military History
The Ohio State University

Stephen Ambrose Professor of Military History
Director, Eisenhower Center for American Studies
University of New Orleans