Dr. Mark T. Calhoun is a former Senior Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Calhoun earned his PhD in History from the University of Kansas in 2012. He is the author of General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army (University Press of Kansas, 2015), the first comprehensive military life of General Lesley J. McNair. The book reveals previously unpublished details of McNair's forty-year career and assesses the impact of McNair’s views and actions on America's mobilization for and involvement in World War II. Dr. Calhoun's current research interests center on General William H. Simpson, commander of Ninth US Army, and Ninth Army’s operations during the campaign in Northwest Europe from 1944 to 1945. A career US Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilot and war planner, Dr. Calhoun retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2008, after which he served for fourteen years as an associate professor on the faculty of the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies.
Dr. Mark T. Calhoun
Former Senior Historian

More from the Contributor
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Planning for D-Day: Preparing Operation Overlord
Despite their early agreement on a strategy focused on defeating “Germany First,” the US and British Allies engaged in a lengthy and divisive debate over how exactly to conduct this strategy before they finally settled on a plan for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
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Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches on D-Day
The British landing area lay between Port-en-Bessin and Ouistreham where they would link up with 6th British Airborne Division along the Orne River, after their landing to protect the eastern flank of the Allied lodgment.
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The Battle Beyond the Normandy Beaches
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower knew that success on the beaches would require support beyond the beaches to prevent the arrival of German reinforcements.
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The Cairo and Tehran Conferences
In a series of high-stakes strategic conferences in late 1943, the Allies made several key decisions that shaped wartime strategy, while reflecting the changing balance of power between the Allied nations and foreshadowing the postwar emergence of the bipolar world.
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Operation Clipper: The Fight for Geilenkirchen
Operation Clipper, an offensive to reduce the Geilenkirchen salient in Germany, highlighted the value of specialized tanks in a combined US-British operation.
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XIX Corps Breaks through the Siegfried Line
In a lesser-known operation that presaged the horrors of the deadly Battle of Hürtgen Forest, the XIX Corps broke through the Siegfried Line north of Aachen, Germany, in October 1944.
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General William H. Simpson’s Ninth US Army and the Liberation of Brest
Historians have debated the logic of fighting to liberate Brest, with some arguing that it would have made more sense to simply bypass the city and isolate the garrison.
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The Liberation of Paris
Despite the impending defeat of the Wehrmacht in France, the victory over Germany would not be complete until the capital of France was liberated, and the Vichy government replaced.
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General William H. Simpson and the Endgame in China
Operation Rashness, a major fall offensive intended to seize a port on China’s southeast coast, would open sea lines of communication into China for the first time in several years while providing a base of operations for the invasion of southern Japan.
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A Costly Failure: Patton’s Raid to Liberate Hammelburg
Allied intelligence believed that most captured American officers were being held at the Hammelburg prisoner of war camp, Oflag XIII-B. This population likely included Patton’s son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel John Waters, but there was no way to be sure.