First prototypes of German tank destroyer Sturmgeschutz III (StuG III) were built in 1937 and based on PzKpfw III Ausf. B tank. Vehicles were armed with short-barelled 75mm gun. From spring, 1942, StuG IIIs were equipped with StuK 40 75mm gun. Self propelled guns StuG III served in separated assault artillery units, and later in self propelled guns brigades. They were also used in support units of armoured divisions.

Sure to be found controversial by some, compelling by all, this is the only available book-length examination of the way the U.S. Army and Department of Defense have tried to create the capabilities promised by the high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Of more immediate concern, it is also the only in-depth account of the effect RMA and transformation concepts had on the American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Adams argues, arose from the DoD's implacable desire to implement RMA-driven transformation concepts-whether they were appropriate or not. What we need to do, he maintains, is to fight the war we have, not the war we want. Over the last several decades, military theorists and others began to believe that new technologies were generating a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA), capabilities so revolutionary that they would redefine warfare. Spurred by these beliefs, and led by President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense (DoD) set out to transform the U.S. armed forces by adopting RMA concepts-and spending billions to make the hypothetical capabilities real. The entire structure of the armed forces changed as a result. This vision, however, was totally dependent on a set of unproven suppositions and often nonexistent capabilities, especially a network of information technologies. Moreover, the services, the media, Congress, and industry each had its own agenda, all of which continue to come into play in the development of RMA strategies. The interplay of politics, technology and military reality offers a fascinating narrative.

This concise history of Germany's panzers and panzerkorps features a generous selection of period photos showing the variety of German tank types used during World War II - from Panzer 1 to Maus. Included is analysis of the technical and operational use of German armor on a variety of war fronts.

Take a detailed look into the brutal anti-partisan warfare in Yugoslavia during the Second World War. The SS war against the partisans, dubbed Bandenkampf (literally "fight against bandits") at the time, differed greatly from the conventional war at the front. The 24. Waffen-Gebirgs [Karstjager]-Division der SS anti-partisan unit was mostly comprised of ethnic Germans from Romania and operated in the Karst border area of Austria, Yugoslavia, and Italy from 1943 to 1945. This is not only a history of this SS division-including details of formation, training, commanders, and operations-but also an examination of the German Anti-Partisan War Badge in Gold and its recipients from the unit. Very rare examples of actual badges, award documents and soldbuchs, and never before seen war era images are presented.

For over 20 years France was the dominating, controlling and conquering power of the western world, a result not only of Napoleon's inspired leadership, but of the efforts of almost an entire generation of Frenchmen under arms. The French Revolution heralded both social change and a seismic shift in how armies were organized, trained and deployed.
This book provides an analysis of the preparation of French troops from manual regulations to the training ground, studying the changing quality of command and control within the army, which initially ensured that the French infantry were virtually unstoppable. Paddy Griffith not only explores the role of the French infantry at the apex of their powers and their actions in key battles, but also provides a detailed explanation of their eventual decline leading to defeat at Waterloo, providing a critical overview of French Napoleonic infantry tactics.

Part history book and part travel guide, D-Day Gunners is aimed at anyone interested in the artillery on the D-Day beaches and landing grounds. While the heritage of the D-Day beaches and landing sites is well documented, this rarely includes the Gunner story. The author of this book aims to correct this by providing a visitors' guide to the gunner stories associated with the battlefield heritage, which remains on the D-Day Beaches, and usefully mapping the fire-plan for D-Day, against the known German locations and looked at what happened at these places. There is relatively little explanation about the role of the artillery in general or the deeds of artillerymen, in particular those of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. This book tells of the significance of artillery on D-Day and the part it played in the outcome. Initial reports published stressed that the coastal defences were effectively neutralized by the bombing and that no significant counter attacks developed on D-Day, however, post-war accounts increasingly attributed allied success to allied fire power.The book largely documents the stories of the men who served the guns on the D-Day beaches, mostly British, but with the occasional view of the Kannoniers. The main sources for this are the accounts by veterans and contemporary accounts. The medal cards within The National Archives contain some information about the actions, which resulted in awards. The last part of the book has been written as a guide to the D-Day Beaches, telling the gunner stories that are not always commemorated on memorials, interpretation boards, or recorded in more general guides. These poignant stories include war poets and heroes decorated for bravery or just the tales of some of the men buried on the war cemeteries or commemorated on the memorials.

At 21:00 on 9 May 1940 Codeword Danzig was issued alerting Adolf Hitler's airborne troops that they were about to spearhead an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands. The following day his blitzkrieg rolled forward striking the British Expeditionary Force and the French armies in Belgium and in northern France at Sedan. The desperate attempts of the allied armies to stem the Nazi tide proved futile and, once their reserves had been exhausted and the remaining forces cut off, Paris lay open. By early June, it was all over - trapped British, Belgian and French troops were forced to evacuate Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne and the defeated French army agreed to an armistice leaving the country divided in two. This dramatic story is shown in a sequence of over 150 historic photographs that Anthony Tucker-Jones he has selected for this memorable book. The images he has chosen cover every aspect of this extraordinary campaign, but his main focus is on the vital role played by the armoured fighting vehicles of both sides. The book is a graphic record of the destruction wrought by the Wehrmacht's lightning offensive through the Low Countries and France.

This is a comprehensive new history of the French Army's critical contribution to the Great War. Ranging across all fronts, Elizabeth Greenhalgh examines the French Army's achievements and failures and sets these in the context of the difficulties of coalition warfare and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the enemy forces it faced. Drawing from new archival sources, she reveals the challenges of dealing with and replenishing a mass conscript army in the face of slaughter on an unprecedented scale, and shows how, through trials and defeats, French generals and their troops learned to adapt and develop techniques which eventually led to victory. In a unique account of the largest Allied army on the Western Front, she revises our understanding not only of wartime strategy and combat, but also of other crucial aspects of France's war, from mutinies and mail censorship to medical services, railways and weapons development.

"Tank War," the new supplement for Bolt Action, gives players the option to expand their games to a whole new level - armored warfare. Recreate such great engagements as the battle of Kursk with the scenarios, army options and special rules found in this book. Whether you want to add more armour to your existing armies or build an entirely armoured force, Tank War has you covered.

'What a brilliant book this is... a terrific narrative of Hitler's Ardennes offensive of December 1944 - superb storytelling that achieves a skilful balance between drama and detail.' - James Holland The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive in the West. Launched in the depths of winter to neutralize the overwhelming Allied air superiority, three German armies attacked through the Ardennes, the weakest part of the American lines, with the aim of splitting the Allied armies and seizing the vital port of Antwerp within a week. It was a tall order, as the Panzers had to get across the Our, Ambleve, Ourthe and Meuse rivers, and the desperate battle became a race against time and the elements, which the Germans would eventually lose. But Hitler's dramatic counterattack did succeed in catching the Allies off guard in what became the largest and bloodiest battle fought by US forces during the war. In this book, Anthony Tucker-Jones tells the story of the battle from the German point of view, from the experiences of the infantrymen and panzer crewmen fighting on the ground in the Ardennes to the operational decisions of senior commanders such as SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer Josef 'Sepp' Dietrich and General Hasso von Manteuffel that did so much to decide the fate of the offensive. Drawing on new research, Hitler's Winter provides a fresh perspective on one of the most famous battles of World War II.

By 1944, the overwhelming majority of the German Army had participated in the German war of annihilation in the Soviet Union and historians continue to debate the motivations behind the violence unleashed in the east. Jeff Rutherford offers an important new contribution to this debate through a study of combat and the occupation policies of three frontline infantry divisions. He shows that while Nazi racial ideology provided a legitimizing context in which violence was not only accepted but encouraged, it was the Wehrmacht's adherence to a doctrine of military necessity which is critical in explaining why German soldiers fought as they did. This meant that the German Army would do whatever was necessary to emerge victorious on the battlefield. Periods of brutality were intermixed with conciliation as the army's view and treatment of the civilian population evolved based on its appreciation of the larger context of war in the east.

This is a major new account of the role and performance of the Italian army during the First World War. Drawing from original, archival research, it tells the story of the army's bitter three-year struggle in the mountains of Northern Italy, including the eleven bloody battles of the Isonzo, the near-catastrophic defeat at Caporetto in 1917 and the successful, but still controversial defeat of the Austro-Hungarian army at Vittorio Veneto on the eve of the Armistice. Setting military events within a broader context, the book explores pre-war Italian military culture and the interactions between domestic politics, economics and society. In a unique study of an unjustly neglected facet of the war, John Gooch illustrates how General Luigi Cadorna, a brutal disciplinarian, drove the army to the edge of collapse, and how his successor, general Armando Diaz, rebuilt it and led the Italians to their greatest victory in modern times.

The Partition of British India in 1947 resulted in the establishment of the independent states of India and Pakistan and the end of the British Raj. The decision to divide British India along religious lines led to widespread upheaval and communal violence in the period leading up to and following the official day of independence, 15 August 1947. In this book, Daniel Marston provides a unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India. He draws upon extensive research into primary source documents and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the vital part that the Indian Army played in preserving law and order in the region. This rigorous book fills a significant gap in the historiography of the British in India and will be invaluable to those studying the British Empire and South Asia more generally.

The book is a world-wide survey of the terms and conditions under which the United States has stationed her forces in independent sovereign states since 1945. The book analyses the constraints of the 'Pax Americana' country by country and contrasts this with the rights of conquest enjoyed by traditional colonial empires.

The fifteen essays in this volume offer a comprehensive look at the role of American military forces in Germany. The American military forces in the Federal Republic of Germany after WWII played an important role not just in the NATO military alliance but also in German-American relations as a whole. Around twenty-two-million US servicemen and their dependants have been stationed in Germany since WWII, and their presence has contributed to one of the few successful American attempts at democratic nation building in the twentieth century. In the social and cultural realm the GIs helped to Americanize Germany, and their own German experiences influenced the US civil rights movement and soldier radicalism. The US military presence also served as a bellwether for overall relations between the two countries.

In the wake of the T-72 tank's poor performance in the 1991 Gulf War, the Kremlin instructed the Russian tank industry to drop the discredited T-72 designation in favour of the T-90 Vladimir. The T-90 was in fact a further evolution of the T-72 family, but the name change represented an important break in Russian/Soviet tank design history. The T-90 has become the principal export tank of Russia, and is in service in large numbers in many countries including Algeria, India, and many of the former Soviet republics. Using detailed illustrations and full colour artwork, this book will also describe the evolution of the T-90s many failed successors including the little known Bokser, Molot, and T-95, as well as its likely successor, the new T-14 Armata, and the wide range of specialized vehicles based on the T-90 chassis such as the formidable Terminator tank support vehicle.

In January 1863, a long-anticipated military order arrived on the desk of Massachusetts Governor John Andrew. President Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, had granted the governor authority to raise regiments of black soldiers. Two units-the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry-were soon mustered and Andrew was eager to recruit a black cavalry regiment. In December, he issued General Order No. 44, announcing ""a Regiment of Cavalry Volunteers, to be composed of men of color...is now in the process of recruitment in the Commonwealth."" Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs and official reports, this book provides the first full-length regimental history of the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, chronicling the unit's organization, participation in the Petersburg campaign, guarding of prisoners at Point Lookout, Maryland, and its triumphant ride into Richmond. The postwar lives and contributions of many of the men are included.

This volume contributes to the comparative study of military conscription. Issues discussed include: a conceptual clarification of conscription as distinguished from volunteerism and militia service; the emergence of the citizen soldier model; patterns of anti-militarism before World War I; conscription in third world armies; gender-issues in relation to military service; the present phenomenon of child soldiers in Africa; the decline of conscript armies in Western Europe. A review section discusses the contribution of rational choice theory to the analysis of conscription into military forces.

He was one of the most intriguing characters of the Civil War era. As famous for his courage as for his ornate uniforms and flamboyant style, he won intrepid victories on the peninsula of Virginia and successfully defended Texas during the long war's waning days. Now, in the first full-length biography of Major General John Bankhead Magruder, acclaimed historian Paul D. Casdorph has created a brilliant portrait of the Confederate general dubbed "Prince John."

Born in Virginia in 1807, Magruder attended the University of Virginia, where he dined with Thomas Jefferson and his classmates included a young writer named Edgar Allan Poe. These were the first in a long line of famous acquaintances. While at West Point, Magruder met the future Confederate leaders with whom he would ultimately join forces: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Joseph E. Johnston.

Graduating from West Point in 1830, Magruder embarked upon three action-packed decades of service in the U.S. Army, taking him from Florida during the Seminole wars to the frontiers of Maine, New York, and Texas. In 1847, his pivotal leadership of General Winfield Scott's forces was instrumental in defeating Santa Anna at the gates of Mexico City. It was in that conflict that Magruder introduced a young lieutenant named Thomas Jackson to the strategic value of deploying rapidly maneuverable artillery. Fourteen years later, at Bull Run, Jackson would earn a colorful nickname of his own: Stonewall.

By the spring of 1861, Prince John Magruder had risen to the estimable position of commander of the Washington garrison. Although he knew Abraham Lincoln and several cabinet members personally, when secession and war became imminent, Magruder resigned his duties as the president's bodyguard to race home to Virginia to answer the Confederate call to arms.

In the opening engagements of the Civil War, Prince John's initiative and audacity earned him both admiration and acclaim. His often outrageous behavior, spurred by heavy drinking, also brought notoriety. Magruder's larger-than-life style was in sharp contrast to the rigid standards demanded by the Confederate leadership, and Prince John was transferred to the district of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Once out from under the eyes of his stern taskmasters in Virginia, the eccentric—yet unquestionably courageous—officer rallied his command. His heroic defense of the Texas coast culminated in a great victory at the Battle of Galveston on New Year's Day, 1863.

When the war ended, he headed for Mexico, and yet another great adventure. Serving in the government of Emperor Maximilian, Magruder, once more, added his own unique flourish to a historic upheaval. With enemy forces closing in, he attempted to arrange an escape plot for the doomed ruler. When the plan failed, Magruder fled to Cuba. Prince John eventually returned to the United States, where he died in 1871.

As befits its bold and brassy subject, Prince John Magruder is a riveting—and overdue—portrait of one of the nineteenth century's most charismatic military figures. It reveals new insights into the inner workings of the Confederacy, and sheds new light on lesser-known engagements in Texas and the American West. Daring military adventure and dazzling biography come together in this compelling chronicle of a dynamic individual who managed to create a few ripples of his own within the swirling tides of history.

Critical acclaim for Paul D. Casdorph

"Terrifically compelling." — Atlanta Journal & Constitution on Lee and Jackson

"Engrossing . . . a superb narrative of the pair's dazzling victories. . . . An excellent account of the war." —Kirkus Reviews on Lee and Jackson

"To read [this] lively run-through of the events of a cataclysmic time is to be caught up again in the enormous vitality it engendered." — Washington Post on Let the Good Times Roll

A History Book Club Selection

This is a long-awaited translation of a definitive account of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Michael Alpert examines the origins, formation and performance of the Republican Army and sets the Spanish Civil War in its broader military context. He explores the conflicts between communists and Spanish anarchists about how the war should be fought, as well as the experience of individual conscripts, problems of food, clothing and arms, and the role of women in the new army. The book contains extensive discussion of international aspects, particularly the role of the International Brigades and of the Soviet Russian advisers. Finally, it discusses the final uprising of professional Republican officers against the Government and the almost unconditional surrender to Franco. Professor Alpert also provides detailed statistics for the military forces available to Franco and to the Republic and biographies of the key figures on both sides.

This highly illustrated title details the history of the Panzer III throughout World War II, from its early development in the pre-war years, through its pivotal role in the Blitzkrieg campaigns in Poland and Western Europe, to its eventual obsolescence on the Eastern Front. The Panzer III was the mainstay of the German armoured forces in the early years of World War II and spearheaded the victories in Poland, Western Europe and the Balkans. Designed and developed in the mid-1930s, it was originally equipped with a 3.7cm gun and with 30mm-thick armour. Early combat in Poland and France saw the need for this to be upgraded, and later models were armed with a 5cm KwK L/42 gun and had the frontal armour reinforced to 60mm by adding extra plating. This later version proved to be particularly effective during the campaigns in the Balkans and against British armour in the North African desert campaign. However, in the first months of Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the Soviet Union - it became obvious to battlefield commanders that the Panzer III had become obsolete as a main battle tank and it began to be replaced by the Panzer IV as the main front-line battle tank. The Panzer III was relegated to a secondary role, but its chassis proved the basis for the Sturmgeschutz III, which became the most widespread German armoured vehicle of World War II.

An American general in Wellington's army? At the age of fourteen, Frederick Robinson fought for the Loyalists in the War of Independence. With their defeat, his now impoverished family took refuge in England. After serving against the French in the West Indies, he worked in army recruitment in London. In 1813 he joined the Peninsular campaign as a Brigade Major General. His journals and letters shed light on the local topography and the personalities he encounters - the British grandees of Oporto, landed gentry, priests and peasants, Wellington and his generals and the common soldier. He also describes the marches across country and the battles of Vitoria, San Sebastian, the Nime and Toulouse. Subsequently, he commanded a division in America during the War of 1812. After colonial governorships in Upper Canada and Tobago, he continued to contribute as a Regimental Colonel. At his death in 1852, he was the longest-serving soldier in the British Army.