American Revolution for me.
I am fascinated as to how they fought a war on so grand a scale with such limited technology, communication, weaponry, and transportation.
Also, my own definition of ‘hero’ begins and ends with General Washington.
What say y’all?
mmm
I voted Vietnam War. Due to my age, we weren’t taught anything about it in school, and I was born after it started and way too young to remember when it ended. So basically, all I know about it is what I’ve read on my own or heard from other people. Or seen on TV. I have a LONG way to go!!!
I suppose WW2 if we are limited to American history.
However the Napoleonic wars are interesting to read about.
Also I like reading about genuine wars of liberation, even if they were not motivated by a desire to liberate people from a tyrant just so long as that was the result. Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978, Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda in 1978. I suppose the Non-Soviet Allies invasion of land held in Europe and the pacific counts too.
Also what was the first truly ‘modern war’? Was it WW1? Modern war means automobiles, trains, planes, machine guns, military machines, communication devices, repeating rifles, etc.
Civil War for me. I live in a civil war historic area. My brother is a musician who plays exclusively at reenactors events. I have family ties to the confederacy.
World War I. Yes, American influence wasn’t that great during that awful European war. But, World War I was such a turning point in history.
Civil War, for me, because I live in an area that is drenched in Civil War history, so it’s right in my face every day.
I’m very interested in history and have little interest in reading about wars.
WW1 and 2 and Vietnam and Korea…but I forgot to click Korea. Forgotten war indeed.
Civil War. A trip to Gettysburg started up my interest in history and I continue to be fascinated by it.
I’m also interested in WWI, but that’s more European history than US history.
World War One, for sure. The amount of change that took place was astounding, just look at a typical French infantryman before and after. It wasn’t just technology, but everything from tactics to society to the creation of completely new countries (or countries that hadn’t existed for centuries).
There were also so many strange things that happened in that war, like an army of Czechoslovakians fighting Eastward through Siberia and the battle of Lake Tanganyika.
Definitely World War I. Mostly because it was all but passed over in school. So much changed during that time.
I went with the Gulf War. It was such a quick and decisive war there wasn’t a lot of room for any historically interesting issues to occur. It was pretty much “We came. We saw. We kicked its ass.”
I see I somehow misread the question. I thought it was asking what is my least favorite war to study or read about.
Maybe I need to stop posting and go to bed.
Civil War, but mostly because it takes place around a time period I’m otherwise interested in, not so much for the details of the war itself.
The Boer War is considered the first modern war and WWI was the war where all the lessons from the Boer War were learned and remembered for the first time.
The war in which I am most ashamed of America is the one to quell Philippine self-government movements after the US inherited it as a colonial spoil of the Spanish American War.
It was tough to choose between the Civil War (all that close-to-home geography) and the Vietnam War (all those political and other mistakes/lessons, and interconnections with cultural evolutions on the home front). I went with the Civil War. Feels more “real” than, say, the American Revolution, partly because photography had been invented.
I’m for some reason fascinated by hearing the details of Pacific sea battles during WWII.
WWII by far.
All the men of age in my parents’ generation served. My father enlisted a couple weeks after Pearl Harbor and was discharged in Aug. 1945. They’re all gone now.
An uncle was shot down over Austria, kept in a POW camp and sent on a two month winter death march near the end. He was on foot in Germany as it all went down. So I’m particularly interested in books about the last months of the war.
It affected everybody. E.g., my mother had a semi-boyfriend that served. He proposed by mail. She accepted because that’s what you did. His sister arranged an engagement ring. He was killed. She still has the ring.
Also, as a kid I worked for a nice Japanese-American couple. I could do the math. They spent some of their early adulthoods in an concentration camp.
And on and on.
WWI, although it’s really not the American part I’m interested in. That’s more kind of an afterthought to something that started in 1914 and which you can see the beginnings of rumbling through Europe for decades before that.