In a definitive new account of the Soviet Union at war, Alexander Hill charts the development, successes and failures of the Red Army from the industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s through to the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945. Setting military strategy and operations within a broader context that includes national mobilisation on a staggering scale, the book presents a comprehensive account of the origins and course of the war from the perspective of this key Allied power. Drawing on the latest archival research and a wealth of eyewitness testimony, Hill portrays the Red Army at war from the perspective of senior leaders and men and women at the front line to reveal how the Red Army triumphed over the forces of Nazi Germany and her allies on the Eastern Front, and why it did so at such great cost.

In a compact guide to essential sources, this bibliography covers the Soviet armed forces from the birth of the Red Army and the origins of the Soviet military system to the demise of the Soviet Union. The authors have selected over 1,400 titles that accommodate both wider interests and those of the specialist. Taking accessibility into account, they have provided a wealth of information on sources available in the West.

The bibliography opens with a section on reference sources and the imperial antecedents to the Soviet system. Part Two includes chapters on the Revolution and Civil War, the period from 1922-1940, and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. In the concluding section, the authors cover the postwar period. The final chapter, Breakthrough Books, includes those works that have radically influenced the perception and discussion of Soviet military affairs.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an extraordinary military leader and one of the most controversial figures in American history. An enormous amout of literature has accumulated about his career, which spanned most of the 20th century. General MacArthur is the subject of this first comprehensive assessment and survey of all of the writings by ad about him. Publication coincides and reflects the formal commemoration of the 50th anniversary of World War II. A short biographical essay and chronology set the stage for the historiographical critique, which is organized topically and into different time periods. This extensive historiographical narrative is cross-referenced to the annotated bibliography of 759 published and unpublished sources, both academic and popular, including film and fiction. Author and subject indexes complete the volume. This guide to the literature on MacArthur describes archival collections and research facilities; points to conflicting interpretations about the role of General MacArthur as Chief of Staff of the Army, in World War II, in the occupation of Japan, in the Korean War, and in the sensational recall from his position as Far Eastern Commander in 1951; and suggests areas for further research. The historiographical narrative and annotated bibliography cover the career of the general from his earliest years to his death in 1964. This easy-to-use research tool is designed for students, scholars, and readers at all levels; for use by all those concerned with recent U.S. and world history; and for special commemorations of World War II.

Kaufman examines the training and status of British military surgeons during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Their management of the sick and wounded during the wars with France leading up to and including the Peninsular War is also described. He concludes with an analysis of the medical problems associated with the Crimean War.

Using important contemporary texts, Kaufman describes the personalities who served in the British Army Medical Department during the late 18th and 19th centuries, when diseases caused a much higher mortality than injuries sustained in battle. Many military surgeons were only poorly trained, and the management of the sick and wounded only gradually improved over this period despite significant advances in medicine, surgery, and hygene. Government spending cuts after the Peninsular War greatly depleted the medical service of the army so that by the time of the Crimean War it was unable to cope with a European-style war. Deficiencies were recognized and, in the case of the medical services, this led to the establishment of the Army Medical School in 1860. This analysis should be of particular interest to serving military medical officers and to historians and other researchers interested in the management of 18th and 19th century armies in times of peace and war.

This illuminating study provides a unifying framework for understanding the daily lives of British soldiers past and present.How different were the men who fought at Blenheim and at Goose Green? Is there a human thread that connects the redcoat of 300 years ago with the British soldier today? What would they find in common if they found a shared foe?This book focuses on the people who make up the British Army and the very human interactions between them in their daily lives. It marries the academic disciplines of Social Anthropology and Military History to provide a novel way of looking at the anatomy of the army at unit level from an entirely human perspective. Concentrating on the attitudes, expectations and concerns expressed by the people involved, it sets out a social model of life at regimental duty that can be used to describe, analyze and explain their behaviours over the past 300 years.The book is grounded in what soldiers of all ranks have said, using the author's research interview material for the modern witnesses and memoirs, diaries and letters for earlier ones. These first-hand statements are analyzed using techniques from Social Anthropology and the emerging patterns are captured in the model."Birmingham War Studies" ("BWS") is a series of works of original historical research in the area of History and War Studies. The works will cover all aspects of war studies from the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the present day.

The Rainbow Division (42nd Infantry Division) was the premier National Guard division to fight on the Western Front in the Great War. Made up of units from 26 states and the District of Columbia, the Rainbow was a unique attempt to combine units from every section of the nation and to get them to France as quickly as possible. The Rainbow arrived in France in December 1917, and served in every major battle the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) participated in. After the end of the war in November 1918, the Rainbow was selected to serve in the Army of Occupation, remaining in Germany until the spring of 1919. The division counted in its leadership Douglas MacArthur, William J. Wild Bill Donovan (later known for his service as the head of the OSS in World War II and for founding the CIA), soldier-poet Joyce Kilmer, Father Francis P. Duffy, plus future secretaries of the Army and the Air Force and two who would become Army Chiefs of Staff. George S. Patton's tanks supported The Rainbow Division during the St. Mihiel operations, the first time the legendary Patton planned for the use of tanks on the battlefield.

When the United States entered the Great War in April of 1917, there were few officers with any staff training, and none had actually served on large, complex staffs in combat. This work traces the development of the staff of the AEF and describes how Pershing found the generals to command those divisions that fought on the Western Front in World War I. Many of Pershing's generals had been colonels only a few months prior to assuming command of divisions. John J. Pershing's task was to mold a diverse group of men into effective staff officers and into general officers to face the rigors of modern combat. How he accomplished this task, and how well the AEF did, is the focus of this work on the AEF's command and staff structure.

Since the Revolution, Americans have debated what action the military should take toward civilians suspected of espionage, treason, or revolutionary activity. This important book-the first to present a comprehensive history of military surveillance in the United States-traces the evolution of America's internal security policy during the past two hundred years. Joan M. Jensen discusses how the federal government has used the army to intervene in domestic crises and how Americans have protested the violation of civil liberties and applied political pressure to limit military intervention in civil disputes. Although movements to expand and to constrain the military have each dominated during different periods in American history, says Jensen, the involvement of the army in internal security has increased steadily. Jensen describes a wide range of events and individuals connected to this process. These include Benedict Arnold's betrayal of West Point; the colonial wars in Cuba, where Lt. Andrew Rowan, the nation's first officer spy, won a medal for carrying a "Message for Garcia"; the development of "War Plans White" in the 1920s to guide the army's response in the event of domestic rebellion; the activities of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s; the use of the National Guard in the South at the height of the civil rights movement; and the surveillance of and violence against protesters during the Vietnam War. Scrutinizing the historic workings of the American government at closer range than has ever been done before, Jensen creates a vivid picture of the growing invisible intelligence empire within the United States government and of the men who created it.

In April 1861, Dick and Tally Simpson, sons of South Carolina Congressman Richard F. Simpson, enlisted in Company A of the Third South Carolina Volunteers of the Confederate army. Their letters home--published here for the first time--read like a historical novel, complete with plot, romance, character, suspense, and tragedy. In their last year of college when the war broke out, Dick and Tally were hastily handed their diplomas so they could volunteer for military duty. Dick was twenty; Tally was twenty-two.
Well educated, intelligent, and thoughtful young men, Dick and Tally cared deeply for their country, their family, and their comrades-in-arms and wrote frequently to their loved ones in Pendleton, South Carolina, offering firsthand accounts of dramatic events from the battle of First Manassas in July 1861 to the battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Their letters provide a picture of war as it was actually experienced at the time, not as it was remembered some twenty or thirty years later. It is a picture that neither glorifies war nor condemns it, but simply "tells it like it is." Written to a number of different people, the boys' letters home dealt with a number of different subjects. Letters to "Pa" went into great detail about military matters in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia--troop movements, casualties, and how well particular units had fought; letters to "Ma" and sisters Anna and Mary were about camp life and family friends in the army and usually included requests for much-needed food and clothing; letters to Aunt Caroline and her daughter Carrie usually concerned affairs of the heart, for Aunt Caroline continued to be Dick and Tally's trusted confidante, even when they were "far, far from home."
The value of these letters lies not so much in the detailed information they provide as in the overall picture they convey--a picture of how one Southern family, for better or for worse, at home and at the front--coped with the experience of war. These are not wartime reminiscences, but wartime letters, written from the camp, the battlefield, the hospital bed, the picket line--wherever the boys happened to be when they found time to write home. It is a poignant picture of war as it was actually experienced in the South as the Civil War unfolded.

This reference book by a well-known historian is the very first to give a short history of the development of the field artillery from the Middle Ages to the present, along with biographical profiles of leading figures, and bibliographical essays about the most important writings on the subject. Dastrup defines the evolution of this combat force and weapons system in terms of technology, organization, tactics, and doctrine. This volume is designed for academic and professional library reference sections and for use in courses in military history and military technology. This guide is suitable for reference and text purposes, and made accessible for varied uses through internal cross-referencing, appendices, and a well-framed general index.

This is the story of the early struggles of an ill-equipped ragtag French force, among the first to pledge its loyalty to General de Gaulle. It fought a lonely, almost secret war against the numerically superior Italian troops deep in the wildest parts of the Sahara, hundreds of miles from the main campaigns along the African coast. These daring Free French raids with their long thirsty treks and small-scale oasis battles have been nearly forgotten, although their path is marked by the graves of many hundreds of French, Italian, and native soldiers. Bimberg details the exotic units that participated in this struggle, including the "Tirailleurs Senegalaise du T'chad" (African Infantry), the "Compagnies Sahariennes" (Saharan Camel Companies), and "the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti" (a tribal militia recruited in the Tibesti Mountain region of the great desert).

Despite antiquated equipment and some of the world's worst terrain, the Free French were among the most dedicated soldiers in the Allied camp. The backdrop to their fierce fighting includes the barely surveyed Tibesti Mountains with their 10,000 foot volcanic peaks, interspersed with treacherous shifting sands--terrain which would prove to be an enormous challenge to the worn out, patched-together motor vehicles of the Free French. Much of the action takes place in the most remote areas of Italian Libya, the desert province of Fezzan with its fortified oases of Mourzouk and Koufra, each strongly defended by the Italians. While these skirmishes were a sideshow to the epic battles of North Africa, they were immortalized by heroic acts by the French and African troops alike, efforts that ultimately led to success in this far corner of the world.

Friedrich Beck was the single most important figure in the transformation of the inept Habsburg military into the modern military state that would wage World War I. He correctly perceived that only an elite body of officers responsible for war planning and preparation could provide lasting security for the Austro-Hungarian empire. After firmly establishing the general staff as an institution, Beck led war planning to counter threats from Russia, Italy, and the Balkans; and spearheaded a vast rebuilding of the rail network. While his rise to power marked a return to the favorite system of military administration of the early Franz Joseph period, Beck proved himself a man with real military ability that revolutionized an army.

In spite of the outcome of the Cold War, English argues persuasively here that the nuclear defensive posture adopted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was inherently flawed. Victory in the Cold War, moreover, seems to have increased the attractiveness of this potentially dangerous model. In fact, NATO's attempts to replace conventional armies with nuclear technology represented a misreading of history inasmuch as war has always been more of a social than technological phenomenon. From his succinct survey of the growth and operations of field armies from medieval times to the Gulf War, English concludes that the legitimately constituted conventional army of the nation-state still remains the best instrument for bringing some semblance of order to the destructive chaos of war.

The development of field armies has involved much more sophistication than generally supposed. In both practice and theory, army operations have been as knowledge-based and intellectually rigorous as any academic discipline, ensuring them an enduring place as a practical means of applying massive force. Fortunately, the NATO attempt to replace conventional armies with nuclear technology was never tested in a real war. But English suggests that the likelihood of deterrence continuing in war, because of its transmutability, also offers hope that it can be controlled in the future, as it was in the past, by social forces. This book offers a longer, more realistic view of war than that normally embraced by technocrats in search of better weapons and peacemakers in search of utopia.

This book also addresses in detail the questions of why armies became so large and why war itself transmutated. The technological transformation of war that occurred after 1815 is discussed, in turn, for the effect it exerted upon the future operations of armies. A novel perspective on the tactical and operational progression of warfighting up to the end of World War II is also provided through an examination of modern defensive theory. On a more elevated plane, the book critically assesses the ways in which nuclear deterrence ultimately affected NATO's defensive posture in central Europe. Also subjected to detailed scrutiny are the theoretical and practical dimensions of ground force concepts for the defense of the NATO central front. Finally, English evaluates ground force operations in the Gulf War with a view to drawing relevant conclusions and lessons for the future.

With an Introduction by Angus Calder. As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no Boys Own Paper tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and Joyce.

A compelling and in-depth history of one of the world's greatest armoured warfare commanders, Hermann Balck (1897-1982). During World War II, Balck commanded panzer troops from the front line and led by example, putting himself in extreme danger when rallying his soldiers to surge forward. He fought battles that were masterpieces of tactical operations, utilizing speed, surprise and a remarkable ability to motivate his men to achieve what they considered to be impossible. We follow his journey through the fields of France, mountains of Greece and steppes of Russia. In Greece, through flair and innovative leadership, his soldiers overcame every obstacle to defeat determined Australian and New Zealand soldiers defending the narrow mountain passes. Balck personally led his men to victory in battles at Platamon Ridge on the Aegean coast and in the Vale of Tempe, before entering Athens. This is also the story of a cultured and complex man with a great love of antiquity and classical literature, who nevertheless willingly fought for Hitler's Third Reich while remaining strangely detached from the horrors around him. The book is the result of extensive research of primary and secondary sources, including Balck's battle reports and first-hand accounts written by Allied soldiers who opposed him, panzer division war diaries and campaign assessments, and declassified Pentagon documents.

This is a comprehensive study of the life of Zebulon Butler, a participant in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the intercolonial confrontations known as the Yankee-Pennamite Wars. Butler migrated to Pennsylvania in 1769 and soon became the military and civil leader of the Connecticut settlers in the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern Pennsylvania. During the Revolutionary War, he served in one of the most dangerous theatres of the war--the isolated Susquehanna frontier of Pennsylvania--where the struggling settlers were subject to Indian-Tory attacks and the hostility of the Pennsylvania government. After the war, Butler sought peace with the Pennsylvania authorities and exercised a steadying influence on the Wyoming community. When the longstanding land controversy between Connecticut and Pennsylvania again erupted in civil war and sparked a separate state movement encouraged by Ethan Allen, Butler counseled peace and assisted Timothy Pickering in the establishment of Luzerne County.

A man of extraordinary inner strength and patriotic devotion, General Harold K. Johnson was a soldier's officer, loved by his men and admired by his peers for his leadership, courage, and moral convictions. Lewis Sorley's biography provides a fitting testament to this remarkable man and his dramatic rise from obscurity to become LBJ's Army Chief of Staff during the Vietnam War.

A native of North Dakota, Johnson survived more than three grueling years as a POW under the Japanese during World War II before serving brilliantly as a field commander in the Korean War, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for "extraordinary heroism." The latter experiences led to a series of high-level positions that culminated in his appointment as Army chief in 1964 and a cover story in Time magazine.

What followed should have been the most rewarding period of Johnson's military career. Instead, it proved to be a nightmare, as he quickly became mired in the politics and ordeal of a very misguided war.

Johnson fundamentally disagreed with the three men--LBJ, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and General William Westmoreland--running our war in Vietnam. He was sharply critical of LBJ's piecemeal policy of gradual escalation and his failure to mobilize the national will or call up the reserves. He was equally despondent over Westmoreland's now infamous search-and-destroy tactics and reliance on body counts to measure success in Vietnam.

By contrast, he advocated greater emphasis on cutting the North's supply lines, helping the South Vietnamese provide for their own internal defenses, and sustaining a truly legitimate government in the South. Unheeded, he nevertheless continued to work behind the scenes to correct the nation's flawed approach to the war.

Sorley's study adds immeasurably to our understanding of the Vietnam War. It also provides an inspiring account of principled leadership at a time when the American military is seeking to recover the very kinds of moral values exemplified by Harold K. Johnson. As such, it presents a profound morality tale for our own era.

A meticulously documented challenge to previous views about the extent and effectiveness of Confederate manpower in the last year of the Civil War.

For more than one hundred twenty-five years virtually every history book in print has contended that no white man survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Custer made his famous "last stand." This book provides compelling proof that at least one member of the Seventh Cavalry, a man named William Heath, did indeed escape. In this intriguing analysis of hitherto neglected historical documents, Vincent J. Genovese provides verifiable evidence that dispels the long-held myth that none of Custer's soldiers survived the massacre that took place in Montana on June 25, 1876.
Genovese chronicles the life of this "Lazarus of the Little Bighorn," who joined the army at age 27 after fleeing from Pennsylvania under threats on his life. Documents show that Billy Heath lived in a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania and that he enlisted in the Seventh Cavalry in 1875, not long before the fateful battle. Further, U.S. Army records verify that he was one of the soldiers at the Little Bighorn. His name also appears on a list of those killed in action and is inscribed on the official monument that stands at the battle site.
What makes Genovese's contribution to the history of this famous event so interesting are public records that he here introduces, which show indisputably that William Heath lived on for fourteen more years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Birth records from his hometown in Schuylkill County, PA, indicate that he fathered seven children before dying in obscurity. His gravestone still exists in the local cemetery.
This is a unique and fascinating re-evaluation of a storied event in American history, which will surely provoke controversy.

Horace 'Jim' Greasley was twenty years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just thirty rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940 and forced to endure a ten week march across France and Belgium en-route to Holland.

Horace survived...barely...food was scarce; he took nourishment from dandelion leaves, small insects and occasionally a secret food package from a sympathetic villager, and drank rain water from ditches. Many of his fellow comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through sheer exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot. After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland. It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors.

He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time, sometimes two, three times every week. Horace broke out of the camp then crept back in again under the cover of darkness after his natural urges were fulfilled. He brought food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meagre rations. He broke out of the camp over two hundred times and towards the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in. The BBC news would be delivered daily to over 3,000 prisoners. This is an incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance of the German nation.

This translation of Johann Ewald's classic essay, Abhandlung Uber den kleinen Krieg, published in 1785, describes light infantry tactics in an era of heavy infantry formations. Robert Selig and David Skaggs comment on Ewald's treatise on partisan warfare and its relevance to current military doctrine. They also provide extensive scholarly notations with the text, explaining people, places, and events during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, where Ewald had extensive experience as a company commander in the Hessian Field Jaeger Corps. This first English translation should be of real interest to historians of American Revolution and pre-Napoleonic warfare and of special use to military professionals today in the Army and Marine Corps. Captain Ewald, eventually a Major General in the Danish Army, describes the recruiting and training of light infantry troops, and discusses their use both in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution at length. He provides illuminating insights into light infantry tactics and doctrine.

From the American Civil War and the introduction of the metal cartridge in the 1860s up to the present day, The Encyclopedia of Weapons is an accessible reference guide to the most important small arms, armoured vehicles, aircraft and ships from all around the world. The book ranges from the first Gatling guns to favourites such as the Lee Enfield rifle and the AK-47; in terms of aircraft the book includes World War I biplanes, World War II’s Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter and on to modern stealth aircraft; in naval weaponry the book features early ironclad submarines, classic ships such as Bismarck and the nuclear subs of today; from the first tanks on the Western Front in World War I, such as the Mark V Male, the book covers the development of armoured fighting vehicles, featuring such classics as the Soviet T-34 and modern tanks like the M1 Abrams. With an entry per page, each weapon is illustrated with two colour artworks – some of them cutaways – a colour or black-&-white photograph, an authoritative history on its development, production and service history and a box of essential specifications. Featuring more than 400 entries, The Encyclopedia of Weapons is a fascinating reference work on the most important tanks, guns, military ships and aircraft over the past 150 years.

At 17, Curtis "Kojo" Morrow enlisted in the United States Army and joined the 24th Infantry Regiment Combat Team, originally known as the Buffalo Soldiers. Seven months later he found himself fighting a bloody war in a place he had never heard of: Korea. During nine months of fierce combat, Morrow developed not only a soldier's mentality but a political consciousness as well. Hearing older men discussing racial discrimination in both civilian and military life, he began to question the role of his all-black unit in the Korean action. Supposedly they were protecting freedom, justice, and the American way of life, but what was that way of life for blacks in the United States? Where was the freedom? Why were the Buffalo Soldiers laying their lives on the line for a country in which African-American citizens were sometimes denied even the right to vote? Morrow's story of his service in the United States Army is a revealing portrait of life in the army's last all-black unit, a factual summary of that unit's actions in a bloody "police action", and a personal memoir of a boy becoming a man in a time of war.

"The Specht Journal" is one of the major diaries written by Braunschweig military personnel during the Burgoyne campaign of the American Revolutionary War. From the departure from Wolfenbuttel on February 22, 1776 to the end on Winter Hill near Boston on November 9, 1777, the narrator faithfully accounts for each day of the ill-fated campaign. He describes the astonishing affair at Ticonderoga, the short battle at Hubbardton, and the toilsome march south to Fort Miller via Forts Ann and Edward. The campaign ends after two indecisive battles at Saratoga, where Burgoyne, without supplies and badly outnumbered, has to sign a Convention with the victorious American commander Horatio Gates.

Hitler's tank divisions were some of his most feared troops and most lethal weapons in the taking and securing of territory during World War II. From success to failure, in victory and in defeat, each division played a role in Hitler's campaign against the Allies. This is the first guide to chronicle the history of each division from its inception to its destruction. With painstaking research and attention to detail, Mitcham describes the formation and organization of each, then discusses its overall combat history. He also includes a career sketch of every panzer divisional commander.

While this reference will serve as a valuable research tool, it contains more than facts and figures. Mitcham assesses the performance and quality of each division, including how and why it changed over time. He evaluates strengths and weaknesses during different phases of the conflict in terms of manpower, vehicles, and armor quality. He also analyzes commander performance and its impact on overall efforts. The story follows the panzer legions until their ultimate disposition-destruction or disbanding. Includes a comprehensive index of individuals, units, battles and campaigns.