G. Kurt Piehler

G. Kurt Piehler, Director of the Institute of World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University, is author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), Remembering War the American Way (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, reprint ed., 2004) and World War II (Greenwood Press, 2007) in the American Soldiers’ Lives series. Piehler is the editor of Encyclopedia of Military Science (2013), The United States in World War II: A Documentary Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and also co-edited Reporting World War II (Fordham University Press, 2023), Oxford Handbook of World War II (Oxford University Press, 2023), The United States and the Second World War: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, War, and the Home Front (Fordham University Press, 2010), The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives (University of Tennessee Press, 2009) and Major Problems in American Military History (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). Piehler edits two book series: World War II: The Global, Human, Ethical Dimension (Fordham University Press) and Legacies of War (University of Tennessee Press).

He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Black Military Studies and the Service Newspapers of World War II digital publication (Adam Mathews). He is also a member of the advisory board of the National Endowment of Humanities (NEH) funded American Soldier Project at Virginia Tech University (americansoldierww2.org) and the Rutgers Oral History Archives. He was the lead curator for the exhibit, “Rendezvous with Destiny: Florida and World War II” at the Florida Historic Capitol Museum (December 7, 2021-March 20, 2022). In 2022-2023, Piehler co-directed the NEH Humanities Landmark in American Culture workshop for K-12 teachers, “The Quest for Freedom: The African Community and the Aftermath of Slavery, 1865-1954” sponsored by the Thomasville History Center (Georgia). Piehler was the lead author of the successful grant application that secured $189,952 from the NEH for this workshop that engaged over 60 teachers from across the United States to gain a better understanding of the distinctive history of Thomasville, Georgia.

Piehler has held academic positions at the City University of New York, Drew University, Rutgers University the University of Tennessee, and most recently as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of History (2024-2025) at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In 2008, he served as Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at Kobe University and Kyoto University. He served as National Historical Publications and Records Commission Fellow in Historical Editing at the Peale Family Papers, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1988-1989. As founding director (1994-1998) of the Rutgers Oral History Archives, he conducted more than 200 interviews with veterans of World War II. His televised lecture, “The War That Transformed a Generation,” which drew on the Rutgers Oral History Archives, appeared on the History Channel in 1997. In 2017, Piehler coordinated the 84^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History that brought over 600 military historians from forty-two states and twelve foreign countries to Jacksonville, Florida.

Born in Nyack, New York, Piehler attended public schools in the Fresh Meadows neighborhood of Queens, New York, and later Mount Arlington and Roxbury, New Jersey. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Drew University, he holds a master’s degree and doctorate in history from Rutgers University. He resides with his family in Tallahassee, Florida.