No one survived in Custer's immediate command, but other soldiers fighting in the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25-26, 1876, were doomed to remember the nightmarish scene for decades after. Their true and terrible stories are included in "Troopers with Custer"." Some of the veterans who corresponded with E. A. Brininstool were still alive when his book first appeared in a shortened version in 1925. It has long been recognized as classic Custeriana.

More incisively than many later writers, Brininstool considers the causes of Custer's defeat and questions the alleged cowardice of Major Marcus A. Reno. His exciting reenactment of the Battle of the Little Big Horn sets up the reader for a series of turns by its stars and supporting and bit players. Besides the boy general with the golden locks, they include Captain Frederick W. Benteen, the scouts Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum and "Lonesome Charley" Reynolds, the trumpeter John Martin, officers and troopers in the ranks who miraculously escaped death, the only surviving surgeon and the captain of the steamboat that carried the wounded away, the newspaperman who spread the news to the world, and many others.

Germany's Tiger tank, whether in the form of the Tiger I or later Tiger II (King Tiger), was the most feared tank of WWII. Despite production totaling fewer than 2,000 units, its heavy armor, its power, and perhaps the even more powerful Nazi propaganda machine ensured that the Tiger remains well known over seven decades after last being on the battlefield. Through more than 175 photos, this volume chronicles the design, development, and deployment of this famed German tank. Full-color photographs of rare surviving examples from around the globe augment carefully selected war-era photos in bringing this tank back to life. Comprehensive tables reveal the details of performance and technical specifications of each variant. A concise, easy-to-read text and detailed photographic captions expose the secrets of this iconic tank. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.

Men of Bronze takes up one of the most important and fiercely debated subjects in ancient history and classics: how did archaic Greek hoplites fight, and what role, if any, did hoplite warfare play in shaping the Greek polis? In the nineteenth century, George Grote argued that the phalanx battle formation of the hoplite farmer citizen-soldier was the driving force behind a revolution in Greek social, political, and cultural institutions. Throughout the twentieth century scholars developed and refined this grand hoplite narrative with the help of archaeology. But over the past thirty years scholars have criticized nearly every major tenet of this orthodoxy. Indeed, the revisionists have persuaded many specialists that the evidence demands a new interpretation of the hoplite narrative and a rewriting of early Greek history. Men of Bronze gathers leading scholars to advance the current debate and bring it to a broader audience of ancient historians, classicists, archaeologists, and general readers. After explaining the historical context and significance of the hoplite question, the book assesses and pushes forward the debate over the traditional hoplite narrative and demonstrates why it is at a crucial turning point. Instead of reaching a consensus, the contributors have sharpened their differences, providing new evidence, explanations, and theories about the origin, nature, strategy, and tactics of the hoplite phalanx and its effect on Greek culture and the rise of the polis. The contributors include Paul Cartledge, Lin Foxhall, John Hale, Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Kagan, Peter Krentz, Kurt Raaflaub, Adam Schwartz, Anthony Snodgrass, Hans van Wees, and Gregory Viggiano.

A stunning look at World War II from the other side...

From the turret of a German tank, Colonel Hans von Luck commanded Rommel's 7th and then 21st Panzer Division. El Alamein, Kasserine Pass, Poland, Belgium, Normandy on D-Day, the disastrous Russian front--von Luck fought there with some of the best soldiers in the world. German soldiers.

Awarded the German Cross in Gold and the Knight's Cross, von Luck writes as an officer and a gentleman. Told with the vivid detail of an impassioned eyewitness, his rare and moving memoir has become a classic in the literature of World War II, a first-person chronicle of the glory--and the inevitable tragedy--of a superb soldier fighting Hitler's war.

Here is the first social history devoted to the common soldier in the Russian army during the first half of the 19th-century--an examination of soldiers as a social class and the army as a social institution. By providing a comprehensive view of one of the most important groups in Russian society on the eve of the great reforms of the mid-1800s, Elise Wirtschafter contributes greatly to our understanding of Russia's complex social structure. Based on extensive research in previously unused Soviet archives, this work covers a wide array of topics relating to daily life in the army, including conscription, promotion and social mobility, family status, training, the regimental economy, military justice, and relations between soldiers and officers. The author emphasizes social relations and norms of behavior in the army, but she also addresses the larger issue of society's relationship to the autocracy, including the persistent tension between the tsarist state's need for military efficiency and its countervailing need to uphold the traditional norms of unlimited paternalistic authority. By examining military life in terms of its impact on soldiers, she analyzes two major concerns of tsarist social policy: how to mobilize society's resources to meet state needs and how to promote modernization (in this case military efficiency) without disturbing social arrangements founded on serfdom. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Formed in 1939 SS-Polizei Division were not considered initially as an SS fighting force, and this status was reflected in the quality of the equipment they were issued. Following operations in France, Greece and then Russia, it was not until 1942 the division was transferred to the Waffen-SS, and eventually upgraded to a Panzergrenadier division, the 4th SS-Polizei-Panzergrenadier Division. The book describes how the SS-Polizei Division fought across the Low Countries, the Eastern Front, before deploying to the Balkans and Greece where it committed numerous atrocities. During the last days of the War it was assigned to Army Detachment Steiner defending Berlin where many soldiers fought to the death. This book is a unique glimpse into one of the most infamous fighting machines in World War Two and a great addition to any reader interested Waffen-SS history.

The M4 Medium Tank - the Sherman - was one of the most famous tanks of the Second World War. It was produced in greater numbers than any other Allied tank, it fought on every front - in Western Europe, on the Eastern Front, in North Africa, Burma, the Pacific - and it continued to serve effectively as a front-line fighting vehicle in the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Indo-Pakistani wars. Pat Ware's new history of this remarkable tank covers in detail its design and development, its technical specifications and the many variants that were produced, and he reviews its operational role in conflicts across the world. While the Sherman outclassed the older German tanks it encountered when it was first put into combat in 1942, it was vulnerable to the later German medium and heavy tanks, the Panther and the Tiger I and Tiger II. Yet, as Pat Ware shows, the Sherman was more effective than these superior German tanks because it was cheaper to build, reliable, easy to maintain and produced in such large numbers. It was also adaptable - it was converted into a tank-destroyer, an amphibious tank, a recovery vehicle, a mine-flail, a personnel carrier - and, after the Second World War, the soundness of its original design was proved as it was developed to confront more modern tanks in combat. Pat Ware's expert account of this remarkable fighting vehicle is accompanied by a series of colour plates showing the main variants of the design and the common ancillary equipment and unit markings. His book is an essential work of reference for enthusiasts.

Dedicated German anti-tank vehicles made their first major appearance in the Second World War as combatants developed effective armoured vehicles and tactics. Some were little more than stopgap solutions, mounting an anti-tank gun on a tracked vehicle to give mobility, while others were more sophisticated designs. The book covers the development and technology throughout the war that led to tank destroyers like the Panzerjger I, Sturmgeschtz, Marders, Nashorn. Hetzer, Jagdpanzer, Elefant, Jagdtiger IV and Jagdpanther vehicles being developed. As the war progressed the tank destroyers fire power became more lethal to meet the ever increasing threat against Soviet armour. Larger and more powerful variants entered the battlefield, but due the overwhelming enemy opposition they were compelled not only to attack armour, but to support ground troops too. This comprehensive account covers all the Nazis mobile anti-tank vehicles in words and images.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War rewrote the textbook on the tactics of modern armored warfare. Unlike the previous major Arab-Israeli war of 1967, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) faced an enemy that had invested heavily in modern Soviet weapon systems and tactics.

Using detailed colour artwork and insightful analysis, this book explains how the effective use of the Soviet-supplied AT-3 Sagger (9M14 Malyutka) anti-tank missile allowed small Arab tank-killing teams to destroy Israeli armor at an astonishing rate. It also analyses the tank that opposed it, the US-built M60A1, which had to fight for survival against the Arab Saggers, and shows how in both the Sinai and the Golan Heights, the IDF quickly learned that firepower and infantry/artillery cooperation were the keys to their survival.

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman domination. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalised old ones - from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia or the modernizing Ataturk, and destroyed others. And it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, including Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia - all of them (with the exception of Turkey) under the 'protection' of the victor powers, Britain and France. For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most commonly accepted assertions about the First World War in the Middle East are more often stated than they are truly tested. Rob Johnson, military historian and former soldier, now seeks to put this right by examining in detail the strategic and operational course of the war in the Middle East. Johnson argues that, far from being a sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial domination and prestige. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers in any straightforward sense. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict - and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East that we know today.

Hundreds of photos, including many never published before with riveting accounts of armored warfare in World War II Compares the Sherman to other tanks, including the Panther and Tiger Author is a world-renowned expert on the Sherman tank and American armor

Some tank crews referred to the American M4 Sherman tank as a "death trap." Others, like Gen. George Patton, believed that the Sherman helped win World War II. So which was it: death trap or war winner? Armor expert Steven Zaloga answers that question by recounting the Sherman's combat history. Focusing on Northwest Europe (but also including a chapter on the Pacific), Zaloga follows the Sherman into action on D-Day, among the Normandy hedgerows, during Patton's race across France, in the great tank battle at Arracourt in September 1944, at the Battle of the Bulge, across the Rhine, and in the Ruhr pocket in 1945.

The United States, being at peace, had not foreseen the need for a specialized tank recovery vehicle, despite the ramping-up of tank production in 1940-41. However, observation of the new world war quickly pointed to the need for such a vehicle. Armored vehicles, immobilized for any reason, were easily destroyed by opposing troops, denying the possibility for recovery and repair or even the salvaging of parts after the battle. This book chronicles the development and use of the US and British military's Sherman tank-based armored recovery vehicles.

This book is a rare first-hand account by a ruthlessly efficient German sniper of life and death during the bitter conflict that followed the Nazi invasion of Russia. Josef 'Sepp' Allerberger was an Austrian conscript who qualified as a Wehrmacht machine-gunner and was drafted to the Southern sector of the Front in July 1942.After being wounded at Voroshilovsk, he experimented successfully with a captured Russian sniper-rifle whileconvalescing and returned to his unit as his regiment's only sniper specialist. In the gruelling months that followed, as the German Army was forced to withdraw under almost constant pressure from the Russians, Allerberger became the second most successful German sniper and one of the very few private soldiers to be awarded the coveted Knights Cross.This harrowing and graphic memoir provides a vivid insight to the atrocious conditions and brutal cruelty of this campaign. There was, we learn, no place for chivalry and few prisoners survived long after capture. Allerberger relates the cunning, discipline and fieldcraft that not only saw him survive during the near constant action but made him such a relentless assassin.

In many ways, the M26 Pershing was the most advanced and most powerful tank fielded by the US military during the Second World War. The prototype T26 "heavy" tank design was developed to answer the threat of the German Panther and Tiger tanks. Unfortunately for US Army tankers, the T26 tank wasn't ready for field use until 1945. The T26, specifically the E3 variant, was adopted and standardized as the M26 "Pershing" in March 1945. While seeing only limited combat during WWII, the M26 would be extensively used by the Army and Marines in Korea. This pictorial history of the Pershing includes the M26/T26E3, T26E1, T26E4, and T26E2/M45. The book includes almost 300 vintage and recent photographs, color profiles, and detailed line drawings.

Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian engineer born in 1875. In the interwar period, Ferdinand founded an automotive consultation firm, which gradually grew into today's Porsche AG automotive company. Porsche's firm was responsible for the design of the "Volkswagen," a simple model known today as the Beetle. During the Second World War, Porsche's firm played an important role in designing military vehicles for the Wehrmacht. This work follows up on author Michael Froehlich's book on Porsche's massive "Maus" tank and describes the firm's other armored-vehicle designs, with special emphasis on the VK 4501 (P) Tiger prototype and the "Ferdinand" tank destroyer. VK 4501 was the designation for the prototypes competing to be what would become the Panzer VI "Tiger." Porsche's concept used a novel gasoline/electric hybrid power plant, but the Tiger contract eventually went to Henschel. Through details on the Tiger trials at the Verskraft proving ground, readers will gain insight into the armament procurement process in the Third Reich. The hull/chassis design from VK 4501 (P) was later repurposed for a large tank destroyer named for the designer, "Ferdinand." These imposing vehicles saw combat on multiple fronts and were later renamed "Elefant." Froehlich's study, available in English for the first time, is grounded in original reports, manuals, and technical drawings.

The greatest conquest in historyGenghis Khan left an empire more than twice the size of Alexander's: his successors went on to conquer and govern an area stretching from Korea to the River Danube. How did a band of nomadic herdsmen achieve so much, so fast? Despite these stunning achievements, many writers dismiss the Mongols as just ferocious barbarians. This bestselling book sets the record straight. The epic starts in 1206 - when Genghis became master of 'all the people with felt tents' and an unknown tribe took the first steps towards world domination - and ends with the empire's decline and fall, after Khubilai Khan's triumphant unification with China. Robert Marshall describes their devastating invasions, including that of feudal Europe and Christendom's clumsy attempts to understand and fend off these legendary warriors. Full of extraordinary events, painted on a vast and colourful canvas, Storm from the East brings to life a time when East and West finally came face to face and the contours of modern Asia were set. 'Storm from the East does not seek to excuse Mongol excesses - yet Robert Marshall appears to speak for the Mongols... A fascinating voyage through time and space' Thomas Nivison Haining in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

A gripping account of the Second World War, from the perspective of a young tank commander. In 1944, David Render was a nineteen-year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank commanders became casualties, his ability to emerge unscathed from countless combat engagements earned him the nickname of the 'Inevitable Mr Render'. In Tank Action Render tells his remarkable story, spanning every major episode of the last year of the Second World War from the invasion of Normandy to the fall of Germany. Ultimately it is a story of survival, comradeship and the ability to stand up and be counted as a leader in combat.

The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles; the battle whose aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death; the battleground whose once fertile terrain even now resembles a haunted wilderness, battered and crumbling.

This book is more than a chronicle of the facts of battle. It is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the men who fought there, and show that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War - a key to the minds of those who waged it, to the traditions that bound them, and to the world that gave them the opportunity. Continuously in print for over thirty years, this unabridged edition contains a new preface and additional photographs.

"The most important work on Alexander the Great to appear in a long time. Neither scholarship nor semi-fictional biography will ever be the same again. . . .Engels at last uses all the archaeological work done in Asia in the past generation and makes it accessible. . . . Careful analyses of terrain, climate, and supply requirements are throughout combined in a masterly fashion to help account for Alexander's strategic decision in the light of the options open to him...The chief merit of this splendid book is perhaps the way in which it brings an ancient army to life, as it really was and moved: the hours it took for simple operations of washing and cooking and feeding animals; the train of noncombatants moving with the army. . . . this is a book that will set the reader thinking. There are not many books on Alexander the Great that do."--"New York Review of Books"

As the Allies attempted to break out of Normandy, it quickly became apparent that there would be no easy victory over the Germans, and that every scrap of territory on the way to Berlin would have to be earned through hard fighting. This study concentrates on, the ferocious battles between the German Panzer IV and US Sherman that were at the heart of this decisive phase of World War II. The two types were among the most-produced tanks in US and German service and were old enemies, having clashed repeatedly in the Mediterranean theater. Throughout their long service careers, both had seen a succession of technical developments and modifications, as well as an evolution in their intended roles - but both remained at the forefront of the fighting on the Western Front. Written by an expert on tank warfare, this book invites the reader into the cramped confines of these armoured workhorses, employing vivid technical illustrations alongside archive and contemporary photography to depict the conditions for the crewmen within.

This guide which, for years, has prepared military, emergency, and first responders to face psychological, social, and physical challenges of leading in dangerous contexts has been updated. The author team, which includes scholars and practitioners, has integrated current research findings, incorporated topics not covered in the prior edition and has created a reference work relevant to leaders at all levels (entry, mid, and senior) in organizations that operate in dangerous contexts   Leadership in Dangerous Situations, Second Edition includes nine new chapters that address character development, ethical decision-making and action, leading in uncertain times, empowering initiative, leading task forces and cross-functional teams, operating in complex social and political environments, tactical and operational decision-making and planning, red teaming, and incident command. The authors wrote their chapters as acts of service to enhance the professions that serve their countries and societies.

During the First World War, the French army deployed more than 500,000 colonial subjects to European battlefields. The struggle against a common enemy associated these soldiers with the French nation, but racial and cultural differences left them on the outside. This study investigates French conceptions of race and national identity at the time as reflected in the attitudes and policies directed toward these soldiers.

How far did French egalitarianism extend in welcoming and disciplining nonwhite troops? Using the experiences of African and Asian colonial soldiers, Richard S. Fogarty examines how tensions between racial prejudices and strong traditions of republican universalism and egalitarianism resulted in often contradictory and paradoxical policies. Employing a socially and culturally integrated approach to the history of warfare that connects military and political policies with the society and culture in which they developed, Fogarty presents a fresh picture of how the French came to deal with race relations, religious differences, and French identity itself.

This book is the first comprehensive manual on the law of armed conflict prepared by a team of expert scholars and practitioners working for, and with, the UK Ministry of Defence. It covers all aspects of the law of armed conflict as applied today, including means and methods of warfare, the treatment of civilians and other non-combattants - including prisoners of war - and the conduct of operations in all three environments: land, sea, and air. It also includes discussion of some of the key elements of relevance in the modern strategic environment, not least the legal aspects of internal armed conflict and the application of the law during peace support operations.