My name is Spence Hill.  Until retiring in Summer 2022, I taught History at Immaculata University.  My teaching covered the American Revolutionary War, the First World War, the Holocaust and other genocides, the Wars of the Middle East, and War Movies.  My own research focuses chiefly on aspects of the Second World War.  I have book projects in various stages of completion.  One is “The Wolf of German Paris: How a Russian Refugee Helped Wreck the French Resistance in Occupied France.”  A second is “The Secret Deterrent: The American Effort to Reinforce the Philippines, September 1941-May 1942.”

I have always had an undisciplined curiosity.  That’s not what it takes to be a successful university professor, so I never became one.  This blog began as an attempt to record my thoughts on and interest in the many faces of war.   Some of them are about the origins and consequences of war.  Some them are about the use of military force at the tactical, operational, or strategic levels.  Some of them are about the use of violence outside the borders of what we usually call war.  Some of them are about attempts to convey the nature of war to those who have never been to war.  Most of the posts have moved away from war toward other subjects that arouse my sense of the comic or the outrageous.  In all my posts I hope to cut through myth, and illusion, and idealism, and “uplift.”

And No, I have never been a soldier.  I do not regret that.  Nor am I proud of it.  I am aware of some of the limitations that places on the value of my observations.  I am blind to other limitations.

John S. Hill

I receive e-mail at jhill@immaculata.edu