Heaven, Hell or Hoboken: 11-Part Lecture Series

August 21, 2016 – December 10, 2017 • 4pm

Location: Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson St., (201) 656-2240

In the summer of 1914, nationalist fervor drove European nations into war. Although the United States did not enter the Great War until the spring of 1917, the conflict that would later be known as World War I had an enormous impact on Hoboken, a small city with large immigrant communities and a busy port.

As early as July 1916, the war intruded on Hudson County with the explosion of a munitions depot on Black Tom Island, just off the coast of Jersey City. The explosion shattered glass for miles around, yet the incident was initially downplayed, to avoid ramping up public support for America’s entry into World War I.

When America formally entered the war on April 6, 1917, Hoboken’s waterfront became central to the war effort as the government seized the German ships docked there and commandeered the piers, which became the army’s port of embarkation for American troops. Some 2 million soldiers passed through Hoboken on their way to or from Europe.

Near the end of the war, General John Pershing rallied the troops for a swift conclusion to the war with the rallying cry, “Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken.”

Learn more about the “war to end all wars” through a series of lectures by visiting authors, scholars and professors, from August 21, 2016 through December 10, 2017. Topics ranged from the rhetoric that characterized the role of women during WWI to a critical view of the wartime leadership of Woodrow Wilson. See below for videos from the series.

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The series is supported by a Special Project Grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, and the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, Thomas A. DeGise County Executive and the Board of Chosen Freeholders, along with the Tom Kennedy American Legion Post #107, Hoboken, NJ.

Additional support comes from “World War I and America,” a two-year national initiative of Library of America presented in partnership with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the National World War I Museum and Memorial, and other organizations, with generous support from The National Endowment for the Humanities.

• August 21, 4 pm: “The 100th Anniversary of the Black Tom Explosion,” by Chad Millman, author of The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice (Little, Brown & Co., 2006)
   
• September 11, 4 pm: “The First Attack on the Homeland,” by Howard Blum, author of Dark Invasion, 1915: Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America (HarperCollins, 2014)
   
• October 16, 4 pm: “Illusions and Realities of World War I,” by Thomas Fleming, Jersey City native and author of The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (Basic Books, 2004)
   
• November 6, 4 pm: “Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: From Hoboken to the Rhine and Back,” by Jeffrey Sammons, PhD, Professor of History at NYU and co-author of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality (University Press of Kansas, 2014)
   
• November 27, 1 pm: “A City on the Eve of War, Hoboken in 1916-1917: Some Recent Research,” by Christina Ziegler-McPherson, PhD, author of Immigrants in Hoboken: One-Way Ticket to America, 1845-1985 (History Press, 2011)
   
• December 11, 4 pm: “Woodrow Wilson’s Failure of Wartime Leadership,” by Richard Striner, PhD, Professor of History, Washington College, and author of Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Burden Too Great to Bear (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014)

2017

• February 12, 4 pm: “The Women of Peace and Preparedness: The Use of Motherhood and Maternalism in World War I,” by Lisa Mastrangelo, PhD, Assistant Professor of English, Centenary College, and author of forthcoming paper, The Rhetoric of Maternalism: The Use of Motherhood as a Trope in World War I
   
• March 12, 4 pm: “Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen,” by Christopher Capozzola, PhD, Associate Professor of History at MIT, and author of Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford University Press, 2008)
   
• April 23, 4 pm: “A Seaport at War with Itself: Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians and African Americans in Wartime Greater New York,” by Steven H. Jaffe, author of New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham (Basic Books, 2012)
   
• May 7, 4 pm: “Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken: The U.S. Army Port of Embarkation in Hoboken During World War I,” by Mark Van Ellis, PhD, Professor of History, Queensborough Community College, and author of America and World War I: A Traveler’s Guide (Interlink Books, 2014)
• August 27, 4 pm: “The WWI Legacy of Fort Dix, New Jersey,” by Jamien Parks, veteran and historian for the United States Air Force
• September 10, 1 pm: “Legacy of Remembrance, Part 1,” a bus tour of WWI monuments of Hudson and Bergen County. Led by New Jersey historian Erik Burro
• September 17, 4 pm: Collections Manager Rand Hoppe shows and discusses newsreel footage of the American Expeditionary Forces in Hoboken.
• October 1, 4 pm: “Sabotage at Black Tom,” by Jules Witcover, jouralist and author of “Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War on America” (Algonquin Books, 1989)
• October 8, 4 pm: “The Patriot Farmerette: Women’s Land Army in New Jersey” by author Elaine Weiss (Fruits of Victory: The Women’s Land Army in the Great War, (Potomac Books, 2008) 
• October 15, 1 pm: “Doughboy Monuments of Hudson County, Part 2”, a bus tour of WWI monuments led by New Jersey historian Erik Burro. 
• November 5, 4 pm: “Camp Merritt, An American Portal to the Great War” by Harold Bartholf, author of “Camp Merritt,” (Images of America, 2017)
• November 19, 4 pm: “Who Was Major General David C. Shanks?” by Museum Director Robert Foster
• December 3, 4 pm: “Jungle of Weeds” to War,” by Melissa Ziobro, author and Professor of Public History at Monmouth University
• December 10, 4 pm: “Music Wins the War” led by Museum Programming Coordinator Eileen Lynch, and musicologist Lois Dilivio