For those with a vivid memory of the Vietnam war, there is consolation in knowing that the impact of that war altered and shaped politics and warfare for the next generations. But in that altering we must take the lessons and apply them to new situations, new challenges and new policy dilemmas. To fail to do so would mean that the warriors at Khe Sanh and all of Vietnam were truly expendable, The battle of Khe Sanh was won and the Vietnam war was lost at the same time. Expendable Warriors describes at multiple levels the soldiers and marines who were expendable in the American political chaos of Vietnam, 1968. On January 21, 1968, nine days before the Tet offensive, tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars began the attacks on the Khe Sanh plateau, which led to the siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. Gen. Westmoreland was fully aware that the North Vietnamese would attack but he declined to alert or warn the small unit of American soldiers and marines serving at Khe Sanh in an advisory capacity, considering them expendable in the greater strategy. Not just an analysis of the battle, Expendable Warriors also ponders the question of how to win an unpopular war on foreign soil, linking battlefield events to political reality.

It was Christmas 1942 when eleven young women boarded the troopship Strathaird and braved the attentions of U-Boats in the deep Atlantic. Borrowing a cricketing phrase, they called themselves the First Eleven. But they were not the first to arrive at the Special Operations Executive's secret North African base near Algiers. Code-named Massingham, it was formed by SOE to spearhead subversion and sabotage in what Winston Churchill called 'the soft underbelly' of Europe. Massingham was hidden away at the Club des Pins, a former luxury resort nestling among pines next to a Mediterranean beach. By the time SOE had got to work, there was little luxury left. Setting the Med Ablaze tells the true stories of the men and women of Churchill's secret base. Its life was short. Less than two years after its formation, its job was done. But Massingham played a key role in the Allied offensive in the Mediterranean islands, Italy and France. If you enjoy historical nonfiction, this book is for you.

November 1944. The British government finally agrees to send a brigade of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine to Europe to fight the German army. But when the war ends and the soldiers witness firsthand the horrors their people have suffered in the concentration camps, the men launch a brutal and calculating campaign of vengeance, forming secret squads to identify, locate, and kill Nazi officers in hiding. Their own ferocity threatens to overwhelm them until a fortuitous encounter with an orphaned girl sets the men on a course of action -- rescuing Jewish war orphans and transporting them to Palestine -- that will not only change their lives but also help create a nation and forever alter the course of world history.

A fascinating and informative analysis by a distinguished military historian of the 100 most influential battles in American history, presented in an accessible, ready-reference format. The Battle of Okinawa (April-June 1945) resulted in more U.S. Navy casualties than all of the navy's previous wars combined; these heavy casualties influenced the decision to employ the atomic bomb against Japan that August. This is just one of many instances in American military history when the outcome of a battle helped to establish the course of history-the focus of this latest encyclopedia from esteemed historian Spencer C. Tucker. The 100 battles spotlighted in this work-which include defeats as well as victories-are deemed to have had the greatest impact on American history. Spanning more than 500 years of military events, the book begins its coverage with the Battle of Mabila in 1540 during the Age of Discovery and ends with the Second Battle of Falluja during the Iraq War/Insurgency in 2004. Expertly written, informative, and thoughtful, this analysis will be insightful and interesting for all high school, undergraduate, and general readers. Introductory overview essay helps create a conceptual framework for readers A list of "further reading" selections with each entry and a full bibliography identify avenues to further study Fact boxes throughout the text provide quick, essential information for each battle

After the Soviets trapped the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and his Army Group Don orchestrated a dramatic reversal of fortune between November 1942 and March 1943, enabling Germany to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front and continue fighting for two more years. Sadarananda relies on an in-depth analysis of war diaries to piece together the course of this pivotal campaign and shows how Manstein brilliantly anticipated Soviet moves and effectively handled an indecisive Hitler.

World War II was the greatest single catastrophe humankind has inflicted upon itself. Few people alive at the time escaped its impact; its consequences still visit those unborn at war's end in 1945 and will continue to shape our future. This readable analysis and ready-reference guide is designed to help students and interested readers to understand the causes, interrelated events, and implications of the war, and to provide a wealth of material for student research. A detailed timeline of events traces the history of the war. An introductory overview essay puts it in historical, political, and social context. Based on the most recent scholarship about World War II, Lee, a nationally known expert historian of the war, provides four topical essays on key aspects of the war and a concluding essay on its continuing significance. The text of 17 primary documents, lengthy biographical sketches of important figures in the war, a glossary, and an annotated bibliography of books suitable for high school and college students provide ready-reference value. The four topical essays examine: the relations among the Allied powers and how their decisions affected the shape of the postwar world; how emerging technology changed the nature of war; the effect of the war on the homefront of the warring nations; and the importance of resistance movements in Europe. A concluding essay examines the impact of the war on the fifty years that followed. Primary documents include the text of speeches, telegrams, official declarations, and treaties. Biographical sketches include some highly placed participants about whom little has been written. A section of photographs complements the text. Because it is based onthe most recent scholarship and written for the high school and college student researcher, it is the ideal companion to a study of World War II.

The American drive towards victory on the Western Front
This unique Leonaur book brings together 'The Turn of the Tide by Jennings Wise, ' an excellent history of some of the decisive battles fought by American forces on the Western Front in 1918, and the separately published portfolio of first-rate illustrations of the American Expeditionary Force in action during that period by Jean Berne-Bellecour. By the end of 1914 the die was cast in Europe for a war of stalemate on the Western Front. Inevitably generals on both sides sought battlefield solutions, but the lines remained almost static, with the armies grappling over entrenched positions of barbed-wire fringed mud. Inevitably the realisation came that this was a true war of attrition. There would be no decisive manoeuvre and the outcome would be determined by which nations would run out of men, materials and food first. Germany could see how the allies depended upon supplies from the United States of America and deployed its U-Boat wolf-packs to the Atlantic Ocean to disrupt shipping. By 1917 this strategy was close to success and the allied cause was in jeopardy. There can be little doubt that American entry into the war was the key to Allied victory. Both men and materials arrived, crossing the ocean protected by the might of a naval presence that only the USA could now muster. After three years of neutrality, the Americans-it has to be said-came not to fight the war, but to win it. This was an industrial war as no previous war had been, and this book traces the fiercely contested battles that became iconic for the Americans who served in Europe. Here are the battles of the summer of 1918 including the taking of Cantigny, the battles of Chateau Thierry and the famous Belleau Wood, Hill 204 and the counter-offensive which was the Second Battle of the Marne. This book includes many battlefield maps to assist the modern reader.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

This book deals with an aspect of the Great War that has been largely overlooked: the war reportage written based on British and American authors' experiences at the Western Front. It focuses on how the liminal experience of the First World War was portrayed in a series of works of literary journalism at different stages of the conflict, from the summer of 1914 to the Armistice in November 1918. Sara Prieto explores a number of representative texts written by a series of civilian eyewitness who have been passed over in earlier studies of literature and journalism in the Great War. The texts under discussion are situated in the 'liminal zone', as they were written in the middle of a transitional period, half-way between two radically different literary styles: the romantic and idealising ante bellum tradition, and the cynical and disillusioned modernist school of writing. They are also the product of the various stages of a physical and moral journey which took several authors into the fantastic albeit nightmarish world of the Western Front, where their understanding of reality was transformed beyond anything they could have anticipated.

Routledge Library Editions: Germans in Australia comprises three previously out-of-print books by Jurgen Tampke and examines the experiences of Germans in Australia, as explorers, migrants and enemies. Germans made up the second-largest immigrant group in Australia, and these books look at their roles in exploring the country, helping develop the economy and society, and as the enemy in the First World War.

Surviving Hitler and Mussolini examines how far everyday life was possible in a situation of total war and brutal occupation. Its theme is the social experience of occupation in German- and Italian-occupied Europe, and in particular the strategies ordinary people developed in order to survive. Survival included meeting the challenges of shortage and hunger, of having to work for the enemy, of women entering into intimate relations with soldiers, of the preservation of culture in a fascist universe, of whether and how to resist, and the reaction of local communities to measures of reprisal taken in response to resistance. What emerges is that ordinary people were less heroes, villains or victims than inventive and resourceful individuals able to maintain courage and dignity despite the conditions they faced.The book adopts a comparative approach from Denmark and the Netherlands to Poland and Greece, and offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War.

This history of the 10th Mountain Division during World War II focuses on the personal experiences of the mountain troops who served in Alaska and Italy. Feuer conveys the opinions expressed by the veterans about the conduct of the campaigns--both the good and the bad, with no holds barred. Senator Bob Dole, who was seriously wounded during the campaign, provides a foreword. This fascinating account also reveals the differences in training and strategy from those employed by German ski troops of the same era. A selection of personal photographs, useful maps, and a timeline allow the reader to follow the progress of the 10th in Italy. In addition to combat accounts, readers will find reference to the harsh realities of war, including friendly fire, dead American soldiers used for target practice, and the vengeful shooting of German prisoners.

Originally published in 1939, this is a pre-war assesment of the political collapse of Europe into fascism. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: Line Up - The Bloody 15th of July - "The Cardinal Without Mercy" - Fascism Sows The Wind - "Millimetternich" - The Brown Flood Rises - War on Two Fronts - Dollfuss Chooses Suicide - Dollfuss Destroys Austria - Aftermath of Destruction - Germany Destroys Dollfuss - Kurt Von Schuschnigg - Conspirators and Two Concentration Camps - Revolutionaries At Play - Exit The Prince - Death Warrant - Secret History - Slipping Downhill - The Betrayal of Schuschnigg - The Agony In Berchtesgaden - The Last Four Weeks - The Provinces Lost - Death Bed Repentance And Last Rally - Interlude At Westminster - Finis Austriae - Terror Unchained - "Back, Or I Shoot!" - Abrupt Exit of The Author - Austria, What Now? - Bastion Czechoslovakia - Holding The Bastion - Konrad Henlein - "Mechant Animal" - Enter Lord Runciman - The Henleinist Rebellion - Bastion Betrayed - "Aux Armes, Citoyens!" - Second Betrayal - Closing Down

The book starts out picturing a young man who foolishly wants to go to war where he in vision's himself receiving all these high class medals for heroism but never once taking into account what it is going to take physically and mentally to get those medals. He's constantly playing a head game within himself and those that surround him. He like so many other young men of past eras are trying to be something that they're not and that small initial lie grows into a tremendous reputation that he has to live with and soon regrets that he's known by such. Come walk with the author and his brothers of the sword through the dark, humid, unforgiving jungles of Vietnam and experience the death, destruction, and mental sacrificial anguish they had to endure. Come see why you fear being alone in the denseness of a jungle or a forest that you have never entered before. Feel the heat of the Asian jungle floor intermixed with the leaches, ants, mosquitoes, snakes and humans searching you out only to destroy you at any cost. You see our author starts out innocently enough but soon finds out that war is not only a physical hardship demanding its pounds of flesh, but also is a horrendous mental agonizing hazard from which there is only one means of escape and/or retreat. That means to an end is death. Yes the author and his brothers of the sword will take their heroic missions and sacrificial allegiances to the grave with them. But, the real tragedy of it all is no one really cares about them in the first place. For they were and still are the "Secret Soldiers of the Second Army" willing to go anywhere, any time, to do the impossible for the ungrateful.

A Battle for Neutral Europe describes and analyses the forgotten story of the British government's cultural propaganda organization, the British Council, in its campaign to win the hearts and minds of people in neutral Europe during the Second World War. The book draws on a range of previously unused material from archives from across Europe and private memoirs to provide a unique insight into the work of the leading British artists, scientists, musicians and other cultural figures who travelled to Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey at great personal risk to promote British life and thought in a time of war. Edward Corse shows how the British Council played a subtle but crucial role in Britain's war effort and draws together the lessons of the British Council experience to produce a new model of cultural propaganda.