Lost Battalions
The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A work of stunning density and penetrating analysis . . . Lost Battalions deploys a narrative symmetry of gratifying complexity."—David Levering Lewis, The Nation
During the bloodiest days of World War I, no soldiers served more valiantly than the African American troops of the 369th Infantry—the fabled Harlem Hellfighters—and the legendary 77th "lost battalion" composed of New York City immigrants. Though these men had lived up to their side of the bargain as loyal American soldiers, the country to which they returned solidified laws and patterns of social behavior that had stigmatized them as second-class citizens.
Richard Slotkin takes the pulse of a nation struggling with social inequality during a decisive historical moment, juxtaposing social commentary with battle scenes that display the bravery and solidarity of these men. Enduring grueling maneuvers, and the loss of so many of their brethren, the soldiers in the lost battalions were forever bound by their wartime experience.
Both a riveting combat narrative and a brilliant social history, Lost Battalions delivers a richly detailed account of the fierce fight for equality in the shadow of a foreign war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Slotkin (a National Book Award finalist for Gunfighter Nation) examines the relationship between war and citizenship in this trenchant, gracefully written military and social history of the African-American 369th Infantry, known as the "Harlem Hellfighters," and the 77th Division, dubbed the "Melting Pot" for its ranks of Italians, Jews and other eastern Europeans. At the time of America's entrance into WWI, blacks and immigrants were deemed racially inferior less than full members of the commonwealth. But total war necessitated national mobilization of these excluded minorities, so the government advanced an unwritten (and uncertain) bargain: acceptance and equality in return for loyal service. In an outstanding synthesis of operational analysis and unit dynamics, Slotkin shows the dilemmas of the elite, Anglo-Saxon officers leading the 77th and the 369th, and that the soldiers' performance in battle paid in full the blood price of their bargain. At an extraordinarily high cost, the 369th Infantry captured the French town of Sechault from the Germans, and the 77th Division fought in the Argonne, an ordeal that earned it the name the Lost Battalion. Slotkin smoothly telescopes from the trenches to the political and social implications for decades to come in this insightful, valuable account.
