Plagued by unreliable vehicles and poorly thought-out doctrine, the early years of World War II were years of struggle for Britain's tank corps. Relying on tanks built in the late 1930s, and those designed and built with limited resources in the opening years of the war, they battled valiantly against an opponent well versed in the arts of armoured warfare. This book is the second of a multi-volume history of British tanks by renowned British armour expert David Fletcher MBE. It covers the development and use of the Matilda, Crusader, and Valentine tanks that pushed back the Axis in North Africa, the much-improved Churchill that fought with distinction from North Africa to Normandy, and the excellent Cromwell tank of 1944-45. It also looks at Britain's super-heavy tank projects, the TOG1 and TOG2, and the Tortoise heavy assault tank, designed to smash through the toughest of battlefield conditions, but never put into production.

""Revolution"" is a word that causes fear in some, exhilaration in others, and confusion in most. Originally used to describe a restoration, it eventually came to mean a sweeping, sudden attack on an existing order. Human history has borne witness to a variety of national and social revolutions population revolution, revolution of ideas, technological revolution, and revolution in education. Simultaneously, there has been a proliferation of literature on revolution, armed struggle, and violence aimed at unseating policies and leadership of governments and societies.

Revolutionary struggles are more than simply armed internal conflict; they involve the essence of the political system. The desire to make such phenomena understandable often leads to oversimplification. Attempts to encompass their multi-dimensional nature, on the other hand, can become immersed in complexities, ambiguities, and misinterpretations. The perspective of this classic volume, available in paperback for the first time, is that revolution is here to stay. Guerrilla warfare, according to Sarkesian, is a particularly useful strategy for the weak, the frustrated, the alienated, and seekers of power against existing regimes. The collected works in this volume examine thei1/2social roots of revolution, development of strategy and tactics, practice in city and countryside, dilemmas of attackers and defenders. The actors and thinkers collected and analyzed here range from leading political analysts, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and officials as well as practitioners of guerrilla warfare. This core text with primary sources in the area of war, revolution, and insurgence develops an understanding of revolution, traces the growth of guerilla doctrine, and studies the specifics of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary guerilla warfare.

If not a field marshals baton, what did Napoleons soldiers really carry in their backpacks? Napoleons Infantry Handbook is an essential reference guide, filled with fascinating detail on the training, tactics, equipment, service and administration of Napoleons infantry regiments. Based on contemporary training manuals, regulations and orders, Napoleons Infantry Handbook details the everyday routines and practises which governed the imperial army up to the Battle of Waterloo and made it one of historys most formidable military machines. Through years of research, Terry Crowdy has amassed a huge wealth of information on every aspect of the infantrymans existence, from weapons drill and maintenance, uniform regulations, pay, diet, cooking regulations, hygiene and latrine digging, medical care, burial of the dead, how to apply for leave and so on. This remarkable book fills in the gaps left by campaign histories and even eyewitness memoirs, which often omit such details. This book doesnt merely recount what Napoleons armies did, it explains how they did it. The result is a unique guide to the everyday life of Napoleons infantry soldiers.

The Vietnamese hilltribes made him a demi-god. The CIA wanted to kill him. This is the remarkable true story of Australian war hero Barry Petersen. In 1963, 28-year-old Australian Captain Barry Petersen was sent to Vietnam as part of the 30-man Australian Training Team, two years before the first official Australian troops arrived. Seconded to the CIA, he was sent to the remote Central Highlands to build an anti-communist guerrilla force among the indigenous Montagnard people. He was sent off with bagloads of cash and a vague instruction to 'get to know the natives'. Petersen took over the running of the paramilitary force that had been started by the local police chief and started to earn the Montagnards respect. He lived drank and ate with the Montagnards, learned their language and respected their skills. The Vietcong dubbed Petersen's force 'Tiger Men'. When Petersen he heard this, he had special badges made for their berets and supplied tiger print uniforms. The Montagnards loved Petersen and flocked to join his force but the CIA were worried. They thought he was out of control and too close to the Montagnard people...

Covers the use of various trucks and cars during WWII by Germany.

'In 1894 a French Foreign Legion General said, Legionnaires, vous etes faits pour mourir, je vous envoie la ou on meurt. Legionnaires, you are made for dying, I will send you where you can die. When I was in my mid-teens and first read those words they were powerful and confronting. I read them as a challenge and an invitation. The words, and the feelings they evoked, remained with me until I was ready. On 20 May 1988, I enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.'Based on his diaries, this is a frank account of how Mason came first in basic training, trained other Legionnaires, went to Africa, did sniper, commando and medic s training and took part in two operations, both in the Republic of Djibouti where a civil war nearly crippled the nation. It tells of his daily life in the Legion, in the training regiment, in Africa and with the Legion s Parachute Regiment. But more than this: David s gripping account reveals his disillusionment, frustration and disappointments, and how the Legion today is not what it seems.

This collection of essays examines the evolution of the British Army during the century-long Pax Britannica, from the time Wellington considered its soldiers 'the scum of the earth' to the height of the imperial epoch, when they were highly-respected 'soldiers of the Queen'. The British Army during this period was a microcosm and reflection of the larger British society. As a result, this study of the British Army focuses on its character and composition, its officers and men, efforts to improve its efficiency and effectiveness and its role and performance on active service while an instrument of British Government policy.

From Afghanistan and Sierra Leone to East Timor, the aftermath of any armed conflict presents a complex set of challenges. Whatever political agreements may have been reached, conflicts are often at risk of reigniting, and the fates of their former participants remain uncertain. Armed groups may not be easily dissuaded from pursuing belligerent activities which they see as both profitable and understandable behaviour. In the face of these difficulties, the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) attempts to convince combatants to relinquish their weapons and return to civilian life. It is a crucial first step towards lasting peace."Demobilizing Militias" is the first comprehensive introduction to DDR in the contemporary world. Examining regions as varied as Africa, Asia and Central America, it guides readers through the different stages of the DDR process as well as assessing competing perspectives surrounding its implementation. Attentive to the problems faced by practitioners, Eric Shibuya argues against a 'one size fits all' approach, emphasizing the importance of social and psychological contexts in fostering the trust that is necessary for DDR to succeed. Accessible and incisive, it will be an ideal resource for students of politics, security and conflict studies, as well as anyone interested in the dynamics of peacebuilding today.

The jagged edges of South American societies attest to innumerable wars, relentless poverty, and a host of illicit activity that make the region a tumultuous brew of politics and military aggression. Peru in particular suffered one of the bloodiest civil wars in contemporary Latin American history during the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Sendero Luminoso, or “ Shining Path, ” launched an assault to overthrow the national government. Lewis Taylor focuses here on an under-examined yet crucially important aspect of this pivotal conflict, the Northern Front in the northern highlands of Peru. 
"Shining Path "opens with a historical overview of Sendero Luminoso, moving from its origins to how it grew  to sufficient size and strength to attempt revolt. Taylor then probes the development and progress of the Sendero Luminoso’ s revolutionary campaign from 1982 through 1992, analyzing the factors that catalyzed and sustained a war in which nearly 70,000 lives were lost. The nature of rural revolt and revolution is a central issue to this study, and Taylor investigates particular conflicts in the mountainous northern highlands as a vital case study for guerrilla warfare in harsh rural landscapes. 
The wars of the twenty-first century have been marked by the increasingly successful use of guerrilla warfare. Thus "Shining Path "is a timely analysis of the political and structural nature of such warfare and how it will transform the notion and actuality of war in years to come.

A prevalent view among historians is that both horsed cavalry and the cavalry charge became obviously obsolete in the second half of the nineteenth century in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower, and that officers of the cavalry clung to both for reasons of prestige and stupidity. It is this view, commonly held but rarely supported by sustained research, that this book challenges. It shows that the achievements of British and Empire cavalry in the First World War, although controversial, are sufficient to contradict the argument that belief in the cavalry was evidence of military incompetence. It offers a case study of how in reality a practical military doctrine for the cavalry was developed and modified over several decades, influenced by wider defence plans and spending, by the experience of combat, by Army politics, and by the rivalries of senior officers. Debate as to how the cavalry was to adjust its tactics in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower began in the mid nineteenth century, when the increasing size of armies meant a greater need for mobile troops. The cavalry problem was how to deal with a gap in the evolution of warfare between the mass armies of the later nineteenth century and the motorised firepower of the mid twentieth century, an issue that is closely connected with the origins of the deadlock on the Western Front. Tracing this debate, this book shows how, despite serious attempts to 'learn from history', both European-style wars and colonial wars produced ambiguous or disputed evidence as to the future of cavalry, and doctrine was largely a matter of what appeared practical at the time.

Cambrai was the last battle fought by the British on the Western Front in 1917. With Russia out of the war, Italy on the brink of collapse, and the French still reeling from the effects of widespread mutiny, Britain was the only member of the Western Allies still capable of holding the mighty German Army at bay. They did so by taking the fight to the Germans in one of the greatest turning point battles of twentieth-century warfare. At dawn on 20 November 1917, the British attacked the German lines with almost 400 tanks - the first ever mass use of this brand new weapon of war. The Germans were taken completely by surprise and crumpled beneath the blow. For a brief moment it looked as though a stunning breakthrough had been achieved, and church bells rang out across England in celebration. But the Germans were not defeated. Indeed, they used their counterattack as an opportunity to pioneer their own new 'stormtroop' tactics, and suddenly the British were in disarray. In a series of bloody and terrifying reverses the British were driven right back to their start lines. Over the decades many myths have grown up about this iconic battle. For one thing, it was not the tanks that most shocked the Germans at Cambrai at all, but brilliant British innovations in artillery techniques. But such was the potency of the tank myth that after the war it seduced generals and historians on both sides, until the myth was finally brought to reality in the mobile battles that engulfed Europe just thirty years later. In this new look at one of the century's most important battles, Bryn Hammond tells the story of what exactly happened at the end of 1917, and how the myths that were created in those tragic two weeks were to change the face of warfare forever.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) plays a key role in Israeli society, and has traditionally been perceived not only as the guardian of national survival, but also as a 'people's army' responsible for the custody of national values. This volume analyses the circumstances currently undermining these perceptions, and explores both the changes occurring in Israel's military framework, and their potential implications. The book highlights the influence exerted by massive shifts in both Israel's external strategic landscape and in the country's domestic and cultural environments, which have compelled the IDF to undertake major programmes of structural reform, technological adaptation and doctrinal revision. This book argues that these changes have lead the public to subject the armed forces and their conduct to unprecedented critical scrutiny. The way in which Israelis and their army resolve these tensions is of crucial importance not only for Israel, but for the Middle East as a whole.

During the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Huguenot soldiers were at the forefront of William of Orange's army. Their role was an important one and they are, with justification, best remembered for this act among British historians and the public alike. Yet Huguenot soldiering existed long before this event, and French Protestants and their descendants featured prominently in European armies long afterwards. This volume is the first attempt to bring together in a scholarly study essays treating the Huguenots as soldiers in Europe and globally. Their story is often fascinating and sometimes poignant as they aided international Protestantism against Catholic foes across Europe and in the New World, while remaining 'under the cross' in their homeland of France. The book is divided into three sections, the first analysing the period prior to the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes which sealed their fate in France. Their role as mercenaries and freedom fighters receives attention, as does the complex political motivation that underscored their involvements abroad in the pre-Revocation era. Chapters examine the Huguenot rationale for foreign service and the dynamics of the Protestant international of which they were such a prominent part. Their role in European armies after that date is covered in the second section of the volume with a number of expert studies of Huguenot refugees in the armies of Britain, the Netherlands and Russia. A third section treats the Huguenot legacy, focusing on the aging generation of refugees and their descendants' contributions to the countries of their adoption. This book contains studies of the Huguenots serving in armies in various countries, and examines the lives and actions of a number of individual French refugee commanders who led armies consisting of their compatriots. By combining biographical studies of eminent figures with broader considerations of group experience, the volume presents a wide-ranging and thought provoking collection of material, making this the first study of its kind to consistently treat the military contribution made by the Huguenots to Europe at the high point of their importance as a historical group.

This book deals with two significant issues: the peculiar and paradoxical question of why regular armies, better suited to fighting conventional high-intensity wars, adopt inappropriate measures when fighting guerilla wars; and the evolution of the Indian army's counterinsurgency doctrine over the last decade. In addition, the book also includes the first detailed analysis of the trajectory of the army's counterinsurgency doctrine, arguing that while it was consolidated only over the last decade, the essential elements of the doctrine may in fact be traced back to the army's first confrontation with the Naga guerillas in the 1950s. It outlines the three essential elements that make up the Indian army's counterinsurgency doctrine: that there are no military solutions to an insurgency; that military force can only help to reduce levels of violence to enable political solutions; and that there should be limited use of military force. Rajagopalan argues that international circumstances - particularly the need to counter conventional military threats from Pakistan and China - led to a counterinsurgency doctrine that had a strong conventional war bias. This bias also conditioned the organisational culture of the Indian army.

Finally a single volume detailing the SS officers that served in the largest and most infamous of Hitler's concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau. This volume begins with a brief history of this concentration camp and then details briefly the different departments that made up the command structure of this camp. The book goes on to describe the evacuation and liberation of Auschwitz and some of the major trials are described before the author gives brief descriptions of what Auschwitz-Birkenau is like today. The second part of the book is a biographical study of the SS officers in alphabetical order. The SS officers described inside this book were the commanders of the camp, the men with power, some with power over life and death. Inside you will meet the commandants, LagerfA"hrers, doctors, dentists, Gestapo officials, adjutants, administration officers, and sentry commanders. Some went on to fight at the front and won awards for bravery, others helped to save the lives of the inmates, and of course others were there to help with the administration of the Holocaust. The biographical details of the SS officers have been set out in the following way. Under the name is the last rank held by the officer, with his most important position obtained at Auschwitz. Next is the officers SS number and Nazi Party number where known, followed by his promotions, which in some cases included both the Allgemeine-SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The biographical detail of this book alone adds vast clarity to the gaps in biographical information in other books on Auschwitz. Inside this book are the details of 162 SS officers who served at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Along with over 140 rare black and white photographs, some never published before, is a detailed appendix and index.

The dramatic story of the men who fought a new and terrifying kind of war amidst the carnage of the trenches in World War One: the British pioneer volunteers who were the first tank-men into battle. Inspired by a visit to northeast France to witness the excavation of a remarkably intact First World War tank from beneath a suburban vegetable plot near the town of Cambrai, Christy Campbell -- then defence correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph -- began to piece together the little-known story of the young men who formed the British Tank Corps. Very few of them had been professional soldiers; they were motoring enthusiasts and mechanics, plumbers, motorcyclists, circus performers and polar explorers. One officer declared: 'I have never seen such a band of brigands in my life.' They had trained in conditions of great secrecy in the grounds of a mock-oriental stately home in East Anglia and were originally known as the 'Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps'. The word 'tank' itself was deliberately chosen to mislead. Men in tanks saw the face of battle at its most brutal.Their task was to crush and burn the enemy out of his fortifications, and to carve a path for the infantry so they could finish the job with bayonet and grenade. Captured tank crews were beaten up or sometimes shot out of hand by the Germans. They fought in their stifling armoured boxes packed with petrol and explosives, aware that at any moment a shell-hit might incinerate them all. Christy Campbell has combed contemporary diaries and letters and later recollections to tell properly for the first time the robust yet harrowing story of how the first men in tanks went to war. The time frame is 1916-18, with a coda on how German blitzkrieg ideas developed from an English root.

The battle of Kursk, fought in the summer of 1943, involved six thousand German and Soviet armored vehicles, making it the biggest tank battle of all time and possibly the largest battle of any kind. Students of military history have long recognized the importance of Kursk, also known as "Operation Citadel," and there have been several serious studies of the battle. Yet, the German view of the battle has been largely ignored.After the war, U.S. Army Intelligence officers gathered German commanders' post-war reports of the battle. Due, in part, to poor translations done after the war, these important documents have been overlooked by World War II historians. Steven H. Newton has collected, translated, and edited these accounts, including reports made by the Chiefs of Staff of Army Group South and the Fourth Panzer Army, and by the Army Group Center Operations Officer. As a result, a new and unprecedented picture of German strategy and operations is made available. The translated staff reports are supplemented by Newton's commentary and original research, which challenges a number of widely accepted ideas about this pivotal battle.

This work details the state of British counterinsurgency knowledge by 1945, and shows how wartime special forces and unconventional warfare affected many postwar counterinsurgencies. The vital role of the Special Air Service (SAS) is revealed here for the first time.

T.E. Lawrence is one of the most enigmatic characters in British history. At the outbreak of the First World War he was working as an archaeologist in the Middle East. He had no military training at all, and a strong distrust of politicians and senior officers alike. And yet he succeeded in a task where all these people had failed: not only did he unite the Arab nation - a nation at perpetual war with itself - but he also led them to victory against the Ottoman Empire. How he managed to achieve these incredible feats has fascinated and confounded historians ever since. The myths that have grown up around this remarkable man have been enhanced by the untruths Lawrence himself propagated. He was never captured and tortured by the Turks as he claimed, neither was he the first to target Ottoman troops by dynamiting their trains. And yet the truth is every bit as compelling as the fiction. He was far more ruthless than he portrayed himself, and the battles he fought were every bit as barbarous as those fought by his Ottoman enemies. He was also strangely determined not to take credit for his achievements: when offered the VC at Buckingham Palace he refused it, leaving the king holding the box. This brand new biography by the author of RORKE'S DRIFT uses primary sources to uncover the truth from all the fictions that surround this legendary man. It covers the actualities of the war Lawrence fought in greater detail than ever before, and also describes what happened to Lawrence after the war.

The fifth volume of trucks and cars used by Germany during WWII.

This book examines the origins and development of the Polish 'Winged' Hussars. Using many years' painstaking research drawn from unpublished Polish sources, the author provides a rounded view of the training, tactics, appearance and experiences of these legendary and fascinating warriors. Most dramatic of all Hussar characteristics were the 'wings' worn on the back or on the saddle, although not all Hussars wore them, and their purpose has been fiercely debated. The Hussars terrified the Turks, Tatars, Muscovite boyars, Ukrainian Cossacks and Swedes, who did everything to avoid facing them directly in battle.

This is a Syriac text written, in all probability, by an inhabitant of Edessa almost immediately after the conclusion of the war between Rome and Persia in 502-506 AD. Although that conflict is treated in other ancient texts, none of them can match "Joshua" in his wealth of detail, his familiarity with the region where the hostilities occurred, and his proximity in time to the events. The Chronicle also vividly describes the famine and plague that swept through Edessa in the years immediately before the war. The work is a document of great importance for both the social and military history of late antiquity, remarkable for the information it provides on Roman and Persian empires alike.

Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army in August 1914 as a war volunteer. Fanatically devoted to the German cause between 1914 and 1918 Hitler served with distinction and sometimes reckless bravery, winning both classes of Iron Cross. Using memoirs, military records, regimental, divisional and official war histories as well as (wherever possible) Hitler's own words, this book seeks to reconstruct a period in his life that has been neglected in the literature. It is also the story of a German regiment (16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, or List Regiment), which fought in all the main battles on the Western Front. As a frontline soldier Hitler began his 'study' of the black art of propaganda; and, as he himself maintained, the List Regiment provided him with his 'university of life'.
This is not only an account of the fighting, however. Some of the most profound influences on Hitler occurred on home leave or as a result of official wartime propaganda, which he devoured uncritically. His conversion from passive pathological anti-Semitism began while invalided in Germany in 1916-17. The language of anti-Bolshevik 'Jewish virus' propaganda became Hitler's language, confirmed, as he saw it, by the 'infected' recruits to the List Regiment in 1918.
Hitler is here presented less as the product of high-cultural forces than as an avid reader and gullible consumer of state propaganda, which fed his prejudices. He was a 'good soldier' but also a 'true believer' in fact and practice. It is no exaggeration to say that every military decision made by Hitler between 1939 and 1945 was in some way influenced or colored by his experiences with the List Regiment between 1914 and 1918.

Carlos Fuentes writes, "John Womack has an uncanny feeling for the infinitely complex strains of Mexico." Here, Woack examines the conflict in Chiapas in light of 500 years of struggle and uneasy accomodation between the region's Maya population and the Spanish conquerors and ladino landowners. Rebellion in Chiapas opens with a major new essay examining the Zapatista revolt and chronicling the attempts at a negotiated peace. It goes on to reveal the roots of the rebellion through a range of primary source materials and other key documents from the time of the conquest through the present.