Obedience to the Fuhrer. Obedience to the death.Hitler's elite SS bodyguards prided themselves on doing whatever it took, even if death was the price. They called themselves the "old hares", and they left a trail of terror as they butchered their way across Europe. Of the 30,000 soldiers who signed up, only thirty would survive the war. Some perished in the abortive push on Normandy in 1944, directed by the Fuhrer. Others suffered gruesome deaths at the hands of the Russians. In a chilling day-by-day account of the final year of this crack squad, bestseller Charles Whiting chronicles their bloody demise, which culminated in humiliation at the Battle of the Bulge. This is a gripping brutal history, taking us deep into one of the most terrifying and cult-like units of the Second World War. It shows just how far the Nazi's were willing to go; and the great efforts needed to vanquish them.

Social media applications can be weaponized with very little skill. Social media warfare has become a burden that nation states, government agencies, and corporations need to face. To address the social media warfare threat in a reasonable manner that reduces uncertainty requires dedication and attention over a very long-term. To stay secure, they need to develop the capability to defend against social media warfare attacks. Addressing unconventional warfare strategies and tactics takes time and experience, plus planning and dedication. This book will help managers develop a sound understanding of how social media warfare can impact their nation or their organization.

For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and, along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.Long argues that the formative experiences of these three organizations as they professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation for success or failure.

When Italy surrendered in 1943, it sparked a resistance movement of anti-German, anti-fascist partisans. This book explores the tactics, organizational structure and equipment of the brave Italian resistance fighters. Beginning with low-level sabotage and assassinations, the groups continued to grow until spring 1944 when a remarkable, unified partisan command structure was created. Working in close co-ordination with the Allies, they received British SOE and American OSS liaison teams as well as supplies of weapons. The German response was ferocious, and in autumn 1944, as the Allied advance stalled, the SS and Italian RSI looked to eradicate the partisans once and for all. But when the Allies made their final breakthrough in the last weeks of the war the partisans rose again to exact their revenge on the retreating Wehrmacht. From an expert on Italian military history in World War II, this work provides a comprehensive guide to the men and women who fought a desperate struggle against occupation, as well as the German and Italian fascist security forces unleashed against them.

With expert analysis and lively narrative, this engaging study of the Oswego raid casts light on a daring feat of arms at the height of the French and Indian War.
The year 1755 saw the rivalry between Britain and France in North America escalate along the Great Lakes into open warfare as both sides sought to overcome the other's forts and trading posts. Lord Loudoun and the Marquis de Montcalm were sent from the mother countries to take charge, but the French lost no time in seizing the initiative, adopting Canadian-style "wilderness" tactics and planning a series of raids to keep the enemy on their toes.
Amid the snows of March 1756, a 360-man French, Canadian, and Indian force stormed an Anglo-American outpost named Fort Bull in a surprise attack that left few survivors and the fort reduced to charred remains. Fort Bull's fall meant that the Mohawk River, the communication route between British-held Albany and the large and important Anglo-American post at Oswego, could now be cut off. Oswego, on the shore of Lake Ontario, had a formidable garrison based in three forts, named Pepperrell, George, and Ontario. The newly arrived Montcalm was tasked with the job of taking Oswego from the Anglo-Americans.
In July and August 1756, Montcalm's 3,000-strong force - including a full train of artillery, 80 pieces strong - was transported in hundreds of sailing ships and craft. The Anglo-Americans failed to spot the approaching French forces until they had landed and secured their positions. Having surrounded and invested the forts, the French soon knocked out of action a number of British guns. The British evacuated Fort Ontario and then, at 9am on August 14th, a French cannonball killed the British commander, Colonel James Mercer. His successor, Colonel John Littlehales, did not have the stuff of a hero; an hour later, the white flag went up and Oswego surrendered just in time to avert a major onslaught.
The Oswego raid was an outstanding French success; it denied the British a presence on Lake Ontario for the next two years, and relieved British pressure on Fort Frontenac. It demonstrated that the use of traditional European siege tactics in an American setting could reap great rewards, and had a great influence on the French's Indian allies too.

Working as an underground force, the French Resistance was initially formed spontaneously from scattered groups of men and women, inspired by the leadership of men like Charles de Gaulle.
As the war progressed the Resistance developed into a secret army, terrorizing the forces of occupation and would-be collaborators alike, despite being excluded from the protection of the Geneva Convention, which left them facing torture and execution if captured.
Striking photographs, coupled with first-hand accounts of capture and its terrible consequences, depict an engaging and human history of the French Resistance fighter. Terry Crowdy details the military achievements, tactics, backgrounds, and motivations of the men and women of the Resistance, whose actions helped to ensure the success of the D-Day landings and the liberation of France.

Insurgency has been the most prevalent form of conflict in the modern world since the end of the Second World War. Accordingly, it has posed a major challenge to conventional armed forces, all of whom have had to evolve counter-insurgency methods in response. The volume brings together classic articles on the counter-insurgency experience since 1945.

Village people in the Punjab have lived with the terror of the conflict between Sikh militants and Indian security forces since the attack on the Sikh Golden Temple in 1984. In this remarkable book, a courageous anthropologist who knows the region intimately presents a very human portrait of the struggle. She argues that, despite its apparent defeat, it can only be in abeyance while the root causes, which have prompted so many young Sikhs to take up arms and fight for an independent Khalistan, remain unaddressed. Through the skilful use of interviews, Dr Pettigrew takes us into the worlds of Punjabi farmers, Sikh militants, and the police commanders responsible for containing a vicious conflict whose ramifications have spilled beyond the Punjab into wider Indian politics.

Unlawful Combatants brings the study of irregular warfare back into the centre of war studies. The experience of recent and current wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria showed that the status and the treatment of irregular fighters is one of the most central and intricate practical problems of contemporary warfare. Yet, the current literature in strategic studies and international relations more broadly does not problematize the dichotomy between the regular and the irregular. Rather, it tends to take it for granted and even reproduces it by depicting irregular warfare as a deviation from the norm of conventional, inter-state warfare. In this context, irregular warfare is often referred to as the 'new wars' and is associated with the erosion of statehood and sovereignty more generally. This obscures the fact that irregulars such as rebels, guerrillas, insurgents and terrorist groups have a far more ambiguous relationship to the state than the dichotomy between the state and 'non-state' actors implies. They often originate from states, are supported by states and/or aspire to statehood themselves. The ambiguous relationship between irregular fighters and the state is the focus of the book. It explores how the category of the irregular fighter evolved as the conceptual opposite of the regular armed forces, and how this emergence was tied to the evolution of the nation state and its conscripted mass armies at the end of the eighteenth century. It traces the development of the dichotomy of the irregular and the regular, which found its foremost expression in the modern law of armed conflict, into the twenty-first century and provides a critique of the concept of the 'unlawful combatant' as it emerged in the framework of the 'war on terror'. This book is a project of Changing Character of War programme at the University of Oxford.

"Morning was always a welcome sight to us.  It meant two things. The first was that we were still alive. . . ."

In 1967, death was the constant companion of the Marines of Hotel Company, 2/5, as they patrolled the paddy dikes, mud, and mountains of the Arizona Territory southwest of Da Nang. But John Culbertson and most of the rest of Hotel Company were the same lean, fighting Marines who had survived the carnage of Operation Tuscaloosa. Hotel's grunts walked over the enemy, not around him.

In graphic terms, John Culbertson describes the daily, dangerous life of a soldier fighting in a country where the enemy was frequently indistinguishable from the allies, fought tenaciously, and thought nothing of using civilians as a shield. Though he was one of the top marksmen in 1st Marine Division Sniper School in Da Nang in March 1967--a class of just eighteen, chosen from the division's twenty thousand Marines--Culbertson knew that against the VC and the NVA, good training and experience could carry you just so far. But his company's mission was to find and engage the enemy, whatever the price. This riveting, bloody first-person account offers a stark testimony to the stuff U.S. Marines are made of.

Vietnam, 1968. All of Sergeant John Burford's missions with F Company, 58th Infantry were deep in hostile territory. As leader of a six-man LRRP team, he found the enemy, staged ambushes, called in precision strikes, and rescued downed pilots. The lives of the entire team depended on his leadership and their combined skill and guts. A single mistake--a moment of panic--could mean death for everyone.