THS Prize Recipient Announcement—Best First Book Prize and Best Article Prize

Z — THS Prize Recipient Announcement— Best First Book Prize andBestArticle Prize Lhe '.he HistoricalSociety ispleasedto announce the Best First Book andBestArticle Prizespublishedin theyear 2000. There were many distinguishedsubmissionsfor thisyear's awards, and we are happy to announce thefoUowingaward recipients. As the chairs ofthe committees note below, these awards werefor recognition ofoutstanding historicalschohrship. In addition to the chairs, THS wants to thank thefollowing committee membersfor their service:from the Best First Book Committee, Seymour Drescher, Elizabeth A. Meyer, Stanley Payne, andPatricia Romero; andfrom the BestArticle Committee, Norman Ravitch, John C Rule, andNan Elizabeth Woodruff. Best First Book, THS Member Committee Chair, Douglas Ambrose David Stone's Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization ofthe Soviet Union, 19261933 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000) is the inaugural recipient ofThe Society's prize for the best first book. David Stone is assistant professor of history at Kansas State University. An extraordinary piece of Soviet archival investigation, Stone's book answers questions that historians of the early Soviet Union have asked for years regarding the role of military concerns in everything from the Stalin/Bukharin struggle to the nature of the First Five-Year Plan. His examination of the "military-industrial revolution" in the late 1920s and early 1930s reveals a transformation of not only the Soviet economy but also of "the Red Army itself and the political sttuctures that governed the Soviet state." Stone proves himself an adept economic and political as well as military historian as he charts the ways in which military concerns, especially the Manchurian crisis of 1931-1932, led to profound changes in Soviet economic policy and accelerated the concentration of political power in the hands ofJosefStalin. Yet Stone also persuasively demonstrates how the militarization of the Soviet Union cteated serious problems both in the medium and long term. The concentration on military spending in the 1930s not only diverted investment away from other sectors of the Soviet economy ; it also emphasized military production over technological and design improvements . That policy thus left the USSR with stockpiles of obsolete weaponry when World War II broke out. As Stone puts it, "the Soviet Union rearmed for World War II six or seven years too early," and, as a consequence, it suffered enormous setbacks early in the war. In the long term, the "rigid and inflexible economy" that the "militaryindustrial revolution bequeathed to the Soviet people ultimately undermined the Soviet state itself, destroying that which it was meant to defend." This lucid, impressively documented, and important study reflects Stone's mastery of historical research, analysis, and writing. Best Article, THS Member Committee Chair, Deborah Symonds MacGregor Knox has been awarded the Best Article Prize for his work "1 October 1942: Adolf Hitler, Wehrmacht Officer Policy and Social Revolution," The HistoricalJournal 43 (2000): 801-25. MacGregor Knox is the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. According to the Prize committee, Knox "writes persuasively and with the authority of a scholar clearly in command of his sources." In describing the transition ofthe "Ptussian-Getman officer corps from a closed corporation, rank conscious and elitist," into a cadre of Nazis, loyal directly to Hitler, Knox argues that Hitler, not the exigencies ofwar, dictated the change. Exceedingly well written, Knox's essay describes the perverse erosion ofa traditional elite by forces claiming to be socialist, nationalist, and hence modern. As Knox writes, "it was National Socialism's very modernity that endowed it with demonic force." 12 ...