
2017 Save Texas History Symposium Speaker Spotlight: Dr. Geoffrey Wawro, Jim Hodgson, and Jeff Hunt
Want to know more about the Save Texas History Symposium? Check out these previews and biographies provided by the speakers who will be presenting this year.

Dr. Geoffrey Wawro — Fresh Perspectives on the 100th Anniversary of World War I
World War I began as a war of movement and then rapidly became a war of trenches and positions. All of the great powers sought for ways to break the stalemate. French casualties in the first three years were horrific, as the French army sought to liberate German-occupied France and cover for the small British army, which was nearly wiped out in 1914 and then needed two years to rebuild through volunteers and conscription.

Haig shattered the newly expanded British army on the Somme and Passchendaele in 1916–17. Nivelle shattered the already gasping French army on the Chemin des Dames in 1917. The Germans knocked out the Russians and effectively the Italians in 1917, and looked likely to win the war in 1918 with massed forces and new tactics on the Western Front. “Miraculously,” as Haig put it, the Allies not only survived the German spring and summer offensives of 1918, they won the war. It was no “miracle.” It was owed to the intervention of the U.S. Army in the Meuse-Argonne and the Second Battle of the Marne.

About Dr. Geoffrey Wawro
Educated at Brown and Yale, Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is Professor of History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. From 2000–2005 he was Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
Wawro is the author of five books, most recently of A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (Basic Books, 2014). Wawro is also the author of Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (Penguin Press, 2010), The Franco-Prussian War (Cambridge, 2003), Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792–1914 (Routledge, 2000), and The Austro-Prussian War (Cambridge, 1996). He is at work on his sixth book, forthcoming from Basic Books in 2018, titled: The Silent Slain: Allied Collapse and America’s Defeat of Germany in 1918.
Wawro is co-editor (with Oxford’s Hew Strachan) of the thirty volumes in the Cambridge Military Histories and is a member of the History Book Club Review Board.
Jim Hodgson — The Zimmerman Telegram: Two Months That Changed the World
The Zimmerman Telegram is often considered the event that brought the United States into The Great War. But was it? For over two years, Wilson’s resolve to stay out of the war was tested numerous times. However, the two months leading up to the April 6th, 1917 entry into the conflict were filled with activities and events that may offer a different conclusion.
Public opinion was split and numerous forces were at work fighting to keep us out of the war, and at the same time draw us into it. The choice of the United States to enter the war may not have been one simple event but the culmination of many. Ultimately the entry of the U.S. forces changed the outcome of the war and set the world on a path that continues today. This session will review the many fascinating factors that lead to the final decision of a nation to entry the war and will show how the months of February and March of 1917, not just the Zimmerman Telegram changed the world, the United States, and Texas forever.
About Jim Hodgson
Jim Hodgson is from Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1971. He earned his Naval Aviator Wings with the Marine Corps in 1972 and a Masters in Management in 1976. In 1978 he became a pilot with Continental Airlines. He retired in 2013 with over 28,000 flight hours.

In 1997 he helped found the OV-10 Bronco Association as a nonprofit corporation to establishing an aviation museum in Fort Worth. Today, the Bronco Association operates the Fort Worth Aviation Museum that tells the story of how aviation has changed lives, the economy, and culture of North Texas since 1911. It maintains a growing collection of 26 war birds.
Jim is the Executive Director and Chairman of the Bronco Association. He is a member of the Tarrant County Historical Commission and one of the original founders of the Texas WWI Centennial Commemoration group. He lives in Grapevine, Texas.
Jeff Hunt — Texas Doughboys Go to War: The 36th Infantry Division in the Great War
The first wartime mobilization for the National Guard came in 1917. Guard units from Texas and Oklahoma were merged together to create the 36th Infantry Division, which would go on to win enduring fame in two world wars and remains the backbone of today’s Texas Army National Guard.
The 36th Division would endure 24 days of brutal combat in October and November of 1918 and help win the war on the Western Front.
About Jeff Hunt
Jeff Hunt is Director of the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas and an Adjunct Professor of History at Austin Community College.

Previously he was curator of collections at the Admiral Nimitz National Museum of the Pacific.
Mr. Hunt is the author of numerous magazine articles as well as The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch, published by UT Press in 2002 and an upcoming book After Gettysburg, Before Grant due out this spring from Savas & Beatie.
He holds a Bachelors in Government and a Masters in History, both from the University of Texas at Austin.


For more information and to register online for the 2017 Save Texas History Symposium, Texas and the Great War, please check out the Save Texas History website.
Attendees at the Save Texas History Symposium will receive a complimentary copy of Dwight R. Messimer’s Escape from Villingen, 1918 and Hugh S. Thompson’s Trench Knives and Mustard Gas — With the 42nd Rainbow Division in France courtesy of the Texas A&M University Press.

Special thanks to our generous sponsors:
Diamond Sponsors


Gold Sponsors
Silver Sponsors
David A. Furlow, Historian
The Bryan Museum
The San Antonio Conservation Society
Exhibitors
The Portal to Texas History
Texas Department of Transportation
Texas Historical Commission
Austin History Center/ Waterloo Press
Texas Historical Foundation










