As a museum-sponsored researcher, author and editor, Geoff also both knew and reflected the values of a set of academic constituencies-curators, educators, archivists and historians, of different seniorities-all in one place.

There he worked alongside senior officials, as well as public relations and development offices, allowing him to advance understanding of the Museum’s work worldwide. His personality and work profile made him this type of leader, for Geoff’s career was an uncommon one, a military historian researching and writing at a non-military history institution, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In all these, but especially the last, he understood the traits a mutually respectful, decorous group of scholarly professionals should maintain. During his second trustee term, he also served on the Society’s Conduct Committee. Commission of Military History, and twice served as a Society for Military History Trustee, between 20, and from 2018 to 2019. He chaired the Book Committee of the Arlington, Virginia-based Military Classics Seminar, was Treasurer of the U.S. In many ways, he represented the ideal bridge builder and developer of a shared sense of goals. Geoff worked hard to give back to his professional community. Finally, Geoff’s first book, Inside Hitler’s High Command earned the Society’s own Distinguished Book Award in 2001, presented at the annual meeting in Calgary, Alberta, and has subsequently appeared in Italian, Korean and German translations. When done, the encyclopedia will address the histories of a major portion of the more than 42,500 Holocaust sites in Europe, a daunting task Geoff will unfortunately not complete, but one he undertook with energy and true scholarly devotion. The fourth volume, for which he also served as a principal editor, about German and other Axis POW and other military prison camps, will be published in 2021. The exhaustive Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, for which he served as editor-in-chief, so far totals over 4,500 pages in three volumes and has been recipient of a National Jewish Book Award, Judaica Reference Award, Library Journal’s Best of Reference Award and Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic title. His vita lists no fewer than 16 contributions to the Society for Military History, whether conference papers, book or peer reviews, or evaluations of prize nominees. He was an author and editor whose work has been both widely and singularly recognized for over two decades. Geoff continued his sterling scholarship after gaining the Ph.D. Geoff’s work, which actively sought to contradict what German officers’ published memoirs said, also shed new light on the General Staff’s day-to-day functioning during the most intense period of the conflict. In the dissertation, he successfully took to task the then-prevalent notion of the Second World War German General Staff as constituting a smoothly-functioning organization, its members apolitical and not responsible for their own defeat. William Fulbright Fellowship to Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany. To support his research and writing, Geoff, received a J. in history from San Jose State University, studying with Professor Charles Burdick.įor his subsequent doctoral dissertation, completed in 1998 at the Ohio State University, Geoff wrote “Triumph of the Null: The War Within the German High Command 1933-1945,” with direction from Professors Williamson Murray, Alan Beyerchen and John F. Following a stint in the corporate world, Geoff earned his M.A. Army officer, and served as a field artilleryman at Fort Ord, California. Lawrence University (during which he joined ROTC and graduated from Ranger School), he became a U.S.

Army veteran of the campaign in northwest Europe, an experience which influenced both of Geoff’s interests and career paths. He grew up in Esopus, New York, the son of Ann (née Mohan) and Anthony S. He had been ill for nine months prior to his death. With great sadness, we must recognize the passing of our colleague and friend Geoffrey Preaut Megargee, in Arlington, Virginia, on 1 August 2020.

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