UPDATE: On August 3, I received a call from Tara at the Admissions Office informing me that I have been ACCEPTED to the program! I am now officially enrolled in a masters program!!!!
As part of the admissions process I was requested to answer on of four questions, each of which required a signifcant amount of research, writing, and analytical reasoning…in five pages. Double spaced. Rigggghhhhhhht. Such are the vagrancies of a highly competitive admissions process; well, I hope it is highly competitve, as I would hate to being going through all of this trauma for no reason.
The question I chose to answer is this one:
The cover of the June 6, 1994 issue of Time magazine features the picture of General Dwight D. Eisenhower with the caption: “The man who beat Hitler.” What were the most important elements that led to the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945? Should Eisenhower be given most of the credit for the Allied victory?
Easy enough.
I used the following resources to do this:
- Bruce W. Nelan's article in Time, "The Man Who Beat Hitler"
- Richard Overy's book, Why the Allies Won
- John Keegan's standard, The Second World War
- Essays from The Collected What If? book
- James C. Humes book, Eisenhower and Churchill
- John S.D. Eisenhower's book, General Ike, A Personal Reminiscence
- Cornelius Ryan's classic The Longest Day
- Stephen E. Ambrose's Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 1890-1952
- The WW II Desk Reference, ed. by Michael E. Haskew.
- Historical Maps of WWII Europe, Swift and Sharp (yes, really, that is their names)
For minor mind-jogging on dates and events, I accessed (what else?) Wikipedia.
Here is a blow by blow blog of how I scoped, developed, and eventually wrote this essay: Notes
Essay outline (work in progress): Outline
Notes on Dates I need to remember: WWII Dates
Bibliography and Notes format cheat sheet: CMS.doc
I had my final essay posted here but by request of the faculty I took it down; there was concern that future applicants might try to to plagarize it. You may not be able to read it, but I assure you, it is a BRILLIANT essay! Hah!
