Showalter, Dennis 1942-
(Dennis Edwin Showalter)

PERSONAL:

Born February 12, 1942, in Delano, MN; son of Edwin Thomas (in sales) and Ann Frances Showalter; married Clara Anne McKenna (a writer), November 27, 1965; children: Clara Kathleen, John. Education: St. John's University, Collegeville, MN, B.A., 1963; University of Minnesota, M.A., 1965, Ph.D., 1969. Hobbies and other interests: War-gaming.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Colorado College, 14 Cache La Poudre St., Colorado Springs, CO 80903-3243. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, Minneapolis, instructor in history, 1968-69; Colorado College, Colorado Springs, assistant professor, 1969-77, associate professor, beginning 1977, currently professor of history. Guest lecturer at National War College and Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 1976; distinguished visiting professor at U.S. Air Force Academy, 1991-93, and U.S. Military Academy, 1992-98, 2001-02; speaker at professional meetings.

MEMBER:

Society for Military History (trustee and vice president, 1981-89, 1991; president, 1997-2000), German Studies Association, American Historical Association, American Military Institute, Western Association for German Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Woodrow Wilson fellow, 1963-64; Fulbright fellow at University of Freiburg, 1966-67; Ford Foundation grants, 1970, 1971, 1972; National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1973; Alexander von Humboldt fellow, 1979-80; Burlington Northern Faculty Award, 1986; Paul Birdsall Prize, American Historical Association, 1992; Clio Award, US Air Force Academy Department of History, 2000; Victor Gondos Memorial Service Award, Society for Military History, 2002; Samuel Eliot Morison Achievement Award, Society for Military History, 2005; Gresham Riley Achievement Award, Colorado College, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany, Shoe String (Hamden, CT), 1975.

(Editor and author of afterword) Arthur G. Pettit, Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1980.

Little Man, What Now?: Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1982.

German Military History, 1648-1982: A Critical Bibliography, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Johannes Steinhoff and Peter Pechel) Voices from the Third Reich: An Oral History, Regnery Gateway (Washington, DC), 1989.

(Editor, with Johannes Steinhoff and Peter Pechel) Deutsche im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Zeitzeugen sprechen, Schneekluth (Munich, Germany), 1989.

Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1991.

(Editor, with John G. Albert) An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964-1973, Imprint Publications (Chicago, IL), 1993.

The Wars of Frederick the Great, Longman (New York, NY), 1996.

Military Elites in War and Peace, Praeger Publishers (Westport, CT), 1996.

(Editor, with Harold C. Deutsch) What If?: Strategic Alternatives of WWII, cartography by David L. McElhannon, Emperor's Press (Chicago, IL), 1997.

(Editor) History in Dispute, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), Volume 4: World War II: 1939-1942, 1999, Volume 5: World War II: 1942-1945, 2000, Volume 6 (with Paul DuQuenoy): The Cold War: Second Series, 2000, Volume 8: World War I, First Series, 2002, Volume 9: World War I, Second Series, 2002.

(Editor, with Robin Higham) Researching World War I: A Handbook, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2003.

The Wars of German Unification, Arnold (London, England), 2004.

(With William Astore) Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism, Potomac Books (Dulles, VA), 2005.

Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the 20th Century, Berkeley (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Sieg Heil! War Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1937-1941, edited by Horst Fuchs Richardson, Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1987, published as Your Loyal and Loving Son: The Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1937-41, Brassey's (Washington, DC), 2003 and Scribner's Encyclopedia of Europe 1789-1914, Scribner's, 2006. Associate editor of "Doctoral Dissertations in Military Affairs," a series in Military Affairs, beginning 1977. Contributor of about forty articles and reviews to history and military journals, including German Studies Review, German History, War and Society, and Journal of Military History. Member of editorial advisory board, Military Affairs, 1975-78, 1979-80.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dennis Showalter once wrote: "My first book was a revision of my doctoral dissertation. I began Little Man, What Now? Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic when I realized that Streicher's Der Stürmer was discussed or mentioned in a wide variety of works on Nazi Germany, but the newspaper itself was so noxious that few scholars seemed to have been able to stomach more than samples of it. I decided that a journal of that type would be an excellent focal point for a study of popular antisemitism, Nazi politics, and the problems of press freedom in the Weimar Republic. I wrote Patton and Rommel because I wanted to contribute to a wider community of readers. My articles are a similarly mixed bag, ranging from a study of patterns of authority in the medieval Dominican order to one on Archie Bunker, Lenny Bruce, Ben Cartwright, and taboo-breaking and character identification in ‘All in the Family.’

"I regard versatility as extremely important for the academic writer. Too often professors limit themselves to such limited fields that their own students have difficulty reading the results of their research. As for the often-mentioned dichotomy between research and teaching, this is nothing but an intellectual red herring. Ten years of teaching in a liberal arts college stressing classroom interaction have convinced me that the professor who hopes to remain an effective instructor must also maintain himself as a productive scholar. Otherwise he risks finding himself in the position of either repeating the same ideas year after year, or far worse, of becoming a local ‘expert,’ garnering cheap triumphs in an environment which is too accustomed to his presence, or just too polite, to subject his work to rigorous intellectual criticism. Particularly with the virtual end of job mobility in the academic community, writing for publication keeps the professor in contact with the intellectual world beyond his own campus. And I know of nothing like a stack of rejection slips to contribute to a sense of identity with the freshman struggling with his first college term paper! My favorite book is the one I am working on and I hope my readers come away with a fresh perspective and a sense that they've shared a good story."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1983, review of Little Man, What Now?: Der Stürmer in the Weimar Republic, p. 706; December, 1991, review of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, p. 1525.

American Reference Books Annual, 1985, review of German Military History, 1648-1982: A Critical Bibliography, p. 163; 2001, review of History in Dispute, Volume 5: World War II, 1942-1945, p. 228.

Bookwatch, April, 1991, review of Tannenberg, p. 3.

Choice, April, 1983, review of Little Man, What Now?, p. 1191; April, 1984, review of German Military History, 1648-1982, p. 1112; July, 1991, review of Tannenberg, p. 1832.

English Historical Review, February, 1998, review of The Wars of Frederick the Great, p. 196.

Historian, February, 1985, review of Little Man, What Now?, p. 273; spring, 1992, review of Tannenberg, p. 526.

History: Reviews of New Books, fall, 1996, review of The Wars of Frederick the Great, p. 27.

History Today, March, 1983, review of Little Man, What Now?, p. 55; October, 1995, review of The Wars of Frederick the Great, p. 49.

Journal of American History, June, 1995, review of An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964-1973, p. 366.

Journal of Asian Studies, November, 1994, review of An American Dilemma, p. 1331.

Journal of Military History, January, 1995, review of An American Dilemma, p. 178; January, 1997, review of The Wars of Frederick the Great, p. 157.

Journal of Modern History, June, 1993, review of Tannenberg, p. 381.

Library Journal, August, 1982, review of Little Man, What Now?, p. 1460; February 1, 1984, review of German Military History, 1648-1982, p. 174; October 1, 1990, review of Tannenberg, p. 102.

Marine Corps Gazette, December, 1994, review of Tannenberg, p. 81; May, 1995, review of An American Dilemma, p. 88.

Military Review, October, 1994, review of An American Dilemma, p. 102.

Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, summer, 1996, review of Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany, p. 146.

Publishers Weekly, October 26, 1990, review of Tannenberg, p. 59.

Reference and Research Book News, June, 1991, review of Tannenberg, p. 4.