Theodore Ropp’s Makers of Modern Strategy Revisited and the Course of Military History, 1945-1981

Abstract

This article examines an attempt by the historian Theodore Ropp (1911–2000) to remake Edward Mead Earle’s Makers of Modern Strategy (1943). It considers Ropp’s motivation for embarking on this project against the backdrop of his career and the development of academic military history in the United States. It then focuses on the Makers project, examining the scope and parameters within which Ropp conceived of his future volume and the ways in which he attempted to realize it. Although Ropp’s project ultimately failed, his Makers underlines some of the ways in which military history developed since the Second World War.