In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.

The Soviet Union's last war was played out against the backdrop of dramatic change within the USSR. This is the first book to study the impact of the war on Russian politics and society. Based on extensive use of Soviet official and unofficial sources, as well as work with Afghan veterans, it illustrates the way the war fed into a wide range of other processes, from the rise of grassroots political activism to the retreat from globalism in foreign policy.

All variations on the 20mm FLAK anti-aircraft gun, including towed versions, and self-propelled as used by all arms of Wehrmacht.

V K Triandafillov was an outstanding young commander who shaped the military theory and doctrine of the Red Army as it came to grips with the problem of future war. A conscript soldier who rose through the ranks to become an officer in the Tsarist Army, he saw combat in both the First World War and the Russian Civil War. A student of some of the finest military specialists teaching the first generation of young Red commanders, he sought to link theory and practice by using past experience to comprehend future combat.

Covers the wide variety of vehicles used by the German police during World War II, as well as units and organization.

Incorporating research found in ancient literary, iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, this book explores the experiences of the soldiers who conducted battle on the small plains of ancient Greece.
The volume, which draws on the accumulated expertise of nine American and British scholars, emphasizes the actual techniques of fighting and practical concerns as the use of commands, music in warfare, the use of "dog-tags", and ritual on the battlefield.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203423631

This is the first study to analyze the content, training, and performance of a World War I draft division from its formation onward. The 82nd division consisted heavily of non-English speaking European immigrants and conscripts fresh from farming towns in Tennessee and North Carolina. Despite these apparent obstacles, it would evolve into an effective combat unit on the front lines of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. These All-Americans would prove that they could fight and accomplish several difficult missions in the Great War.

From its birth at Camp Gordon, Georgia, to the battlefields of the Western Front, the 82nd division became a highly successful combat unit through good leadership and hard work. After initial training in France by both British and French forces, the 82nd entered the trenches to face the Germans. Given a difficult mission during the St. Mihiel offensive, the diverse division performed well; and during the Meuse-Argonne battle, it achieved its objectives despite heavy casualties. Despite an early lack of preparation, this force would be a true American success story.

An in-depth illustrated study of the T-64 Battle Tank, the Soviet Union's most secret and controversial Cold War weapon. The T-64 tank was the most revolutionary design of the whole Cold War, designed to provide the firepower and armour protection of a heavy tank in a medium-weight design. It pioneered a host of new technologies including laminate armour, stereoscopic tank rangefinders, opposed-piston engines, smooth-bore tank guns with discarding sabot ammunition, and gun-fired guided projectiles. These impressive features meant that the Russians were loath to part with the secrets of the design, and the T-64 was the only Soviet tank type of the Cold War that was never exported. Written by an armour expert, this detailed technical history sheds light on the secrets behind the Cold War's most controversial tank, revealing how its highly advanced technologies proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

This book looks at the militaries of the late-Soviet and post-Soviet republics. Beginning with the end of the Soviet era, it recognises that the successor states did not spring from nowhere, but inherited a legacy that influenced all that followed. The book discusses how politicians control the instruments that are the manifestation of the state's monopoly on violence, and how society views and supports the military. By taking a bottom up empirical approach that examines the personnel, leaders, organisations and institutions, and their outlook and attitudes, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the armed forces, showing how the armed forces are very significantly shaped by the surrounding political and social environment. The book goes on to examine the armed forces in action, and highlights that to truly understand the militaries, studies need to go beyond looking at the static structures.

The war in the Persian Gulf marked the greatest "projection of power" in history, dwarfing in its scale and speed even the D-day landings of 1944. It dramatically demonstrated the revolution in military affairs which has followed the end of confrontation in Europe. Yet the Gulf War and its aftermath also demonstrated the vast complexities of the projection of power, even in the favorable conditions witnessed in the Gulf.
In this important and timely study, Richard Connaughton, who has visited a peace-keeping operation in Kurdistan and has worked in close collaboration with U.S. military authorities, makes a valuable contribution to the study of international affairs. "Military Intervention in the 1990s" provides the first comprehensive professional study of the problems of future interventions in the context of a complex of political and military issues at the operational level.

The ability to organize millions of people for political purposes is a potent and relatively recent weapon in the struggle for power. Political scientists have studied two types of mass organization, the political party and the interest group. In this book Gregory Kasza examines a third type, which he calls the administered mass organization. AMOs are mass civilian bodies created by authoritarian regimes to implement public policy. Officials use them to organize youths, workers, women, or members of other social sectors into bodies resembling the mass conscript army. A network of AMOs produces a conscription society, a major force in twentieth-century politics in over 45 countries. Using comparative history and organization theory, Kasza analyzes the politics of the conscription society in both military and single-party regimes. He discusses the origins of AMOs in Japan, the Soviet Union, and Fascist Italy and their subsequent spread to China, Egypt, Nazi Germany, Peru, Poland, and Yugoslavia. He focuses on the use of AMOs to curb political opposition, to mobilize for war, and to shift control over the means of production. Kasza shows how, in the hands of despotic rulers, AMOs have contributed to the extremes of political barbarism characteristic of the twentieth century.

" Following the Japanese invasion of the islands in 1942, North Luzon was the staging area for several Filipino-American guerrilla bands who sought to gather intelligence and to destroy enemy military installations or supplies. Bernard Norling focuses on the Cagayan-Apayao Forces, or CAF, commanded by Maj. Ralph Praeger. Their bravery was unquestionable, but by September 1943 all but one member of Troop C had been claimed by combat, enemy capture, or disease. The only survivor, Capt. Thomas S. Jones, remembered, ""Defeat is a terrible thing.... It brings down with it the whole structure about which a nation or an army has been built. It subjects men to the most severe of moral tests at a time when they are physically least able to meet them."" Based primarily upon unpublished sources, The Intrepid Guerrillas of North Luzon includes the diary of Praeger's executive officer, Jones, and draws on transcripts of radio communications between Praeger and General MacArthur's headquarters in Australia. The struggles of the men of the CAF tell a harrowing tale of valor, determination, and occasional successes mixed with the wildcat schemes, rivalries, mistrust, and betrayals that characterized the intramural relations of guerrilla forces all over the Pacific islands.

The history of the often-overlooked chewa Ethiopian warriors and their crucial role in defending their homeland against invasion, as well as their strong influence on political identity and the social infrastructure. Today best known for their role in defending Ethiopia from Italian invasion 1935-41, chewa warriors protected Ethiopia for centuries. Yet, depicted by some 19th-century Western observers as little more than "a horde" of warmongers, and later suppressed by Ethiopian monarchs who sought to create a centralized modern state, their contribution has been neglected. Drawing on oral and written sources, as well as the zeraf poetry through which theyexpressed themselves, this book explores for the first time in depth the history, practices and principles of warriorhood of the chewa, and their wider influence on society and state. Often self-trained individuals who began by defending their communities, by the end of the 19th century there were chewa warrior groups from almost all linguistic groups who fought together to resist foreign invaders. Some chewa enrolled in the service of the Ethiopian "kings of kings", who organized them as named corps that supplemented the formal defence of the state. Today, chewa political identity, which transcended social, familial, political and other groupings, remains deeply rooted in Ethiopian society.

In November 1950 The US 1st Marine Division was trapped in the Chosin Reservoir following the intervention of Red China in the Korean War. Fought during the worst blizzard in a century, the ensuing battle is considered by the United States Marine Corps to be 'the Corps' Finest Hour.' The soldiers who fought there would later become known as the `Frozen Chosen'. Published now in paperback, this incredible story is based on first hand interviews from surviving veterans, telling of heroism and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, as a handful of Marines fought desperately against wave after wave of Chinese forces. Sometimes forced into desperate hand to hand combat, the fighting retreat from Chosin marked one of the darkest moments for Western forces in Korea, but would go on to resonate with generations of Marines as a symbol of the Marine Corps' dogged determination, fighting skill, and never-say-die attitude on the battlefield.

Pathological Counterinsurgency critically examines the relationship between elections and counterinsurgency success in third party campaigns supported by the United States. From Vietnam to El Salvador to Iraq and Afghanistan, many policymakers and academics believed that democratization would drive increased legitimacy and improved performance in governments waging a counterinsurgency campaign. Elections were expected to help overcome existing deficiencies, thus allowing governments supported by the United States to win the "hearts and minds" of its populace, undermining the appeal of insurgency. However, in each of these cases, campaigning in and winning elections did not increase the legitimacy of the counterinsurgent government or alter conditions of entrenched rent seeking and weak institutions that made states allied to the United States vulnerable to insurgency. Ultimately, elections played a limited role in creating the conditions needed for counterinsurgency success. Instead, decisions of key actors in government and elites to prioritize either short term personal and political advantage or respect for political institutions held a central role in counterinsurgency success or failure. In each of the four cases in this study, elected governments pursued policies that benefited members of the government and elites at the expense of boarder legitimacy and improved performance. Expectations that democratization could serve as a key instrument of change led to unwarranted optimism about the likely of success and ultimately to flawed strategy. The United States continued to support regimes that continued to lack the legitimacy and government performance needed for victory in counterinsurgency.

Extensively illustrated with 52 detailed campaign and battle maps and diagrams, this book, originally published in 1990, surveys the evolution of warfare in Europe from Napoleon to the end of the twentieth century and in Asia from the Middle Ages. It considers the interaction of technology and warfare. With wide-ranging examples, the book includes two in depth case studies, one on the Soviet Operational Manoeuvre Group and its predecessors in the Russian Imperial Army, the other on the history of land warfare, including guerilla warfare, in Asia. In this book the author demonstrates that military history can be of immense practical help to the modern military analyst and professional. Now updated with a new introduction to take into account changes since 1990, this book remains of essential value to students, teachers & professionals in political & social history, international relations, defence, war & peace studies.

The U.S. Army evolved into a truly modern fighting force during World War I. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, the infantry was its primary offensive arm. Training focused mainly on target practice, bayonet charges and marching drills. Antiquated tactics emphasized massive attack waves relying on ferocity to achieve battlefield objectives. Heavy casualties resulted when inexperienced American troops encountered entrenched German veterans trained in the use of modern artillery and machine guns. By war's end the American Expeditionary Force had progressed along a bloody learning curve, developing sophisticated techniques-small flexible formations, fire-and-maneuver and infiltration-for breaking the trench warfare stalemate. Eventually, the AEF integrated new weapons like poison gas, tanks and aircraft into its offensive tactics and pioneered the mechanized combined arms warfare still practiced by the U.S. Army. The exploits of the Fifth ""Red Diamond"" Division exemplify this critical period of development.

Updated and revised from the popular 2011 edition, with full-colour maps and new images throughout, this is a concise study of the American Revolutionary War. The American Revolution, or the American War of Independence, has been characterized politically as a united political uprising of the American colonies and militarily as a guerrilla campaign of colonists against the inflexible British military establishment. In this book, Daniel Marston argues that this belief, though widespread, is a misconception. He contends that the American Revolution, in reality, created deep political divisions in the population of the Thirteen Colonies, while militarily pitting veterans of the Seven Years' War against one another, in a conflict that combined guerrilla tactics and classic 18th-century campaign techniques on both sides. The peace treaty of 1783 that brought an end to the war marked the formal beginning of the United States of America as an independent political entity. With revisions from the author and 50 new images, this illustrated overview of the American Revolution provides an important reference resource for the academic or student reader as well as those with a general interest in the period.

'The way I look at it is this...When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.' Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head. At the helm of his 26-foot whaleboat, the Bastard, McLaren sailed brazenly into enemy-held harbours, wreaking havoc with his mortar and machine guns before heading back out to sea. In early 1945 he joined Australia's secretive Z Special Unit, parachuting into Borneo to carry out reconnaissance and organise anti-Japanese resistance ahead of Allied landings. He cheated death on numerous occasions and saved his own life by removing his appendix without anaesthetic, using 'two large dessert spoons' and a razor blade. Drawing on Allied and Japanese wartime documents, Bastard Behind the Lines brings the story of a courageous digger vividly to life and throws light on a rarely explored aspect of Australia's Pacific war.

Militias have proven to be a consistent and enduring challenge to achieving peace in war zones around the world. Whether armed by embattled governments in defence of their territory or fostered by external actors in the interests of greed or grievance, these groups occupy an uncertain and deeply controversial position in the changing landscape of conflict. Linked variously to atrocities against civilians or international criminal elements, part of what distinguishes them from more traditional combatants is their willingness to engage in violent tactics that defy international norms as well as a proclivity to embrace expediency in alliance-making. As such, their diversity of form, unorthodox nature and sheer numbers make achieving short-term stability and an enduring peace a consistently difficult proposition. Bringing together the lessons learned from four intensively researched case studies - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and Sudan - the book argues that the overly rigid 'cookie-cutter' approach to demilitaristation, developed and commonly implemented presently by the international community, is ineffective at meeting the myriad of challenges involving militias. In doing so, the authors propose a radical new framework for demilitarization that questions conventional models and takes into account on-the-ground realities.

This book provides a pictorial overview of the progress of American military airplane design from approximately the end of World War I to the present time. It covers all types including attack, pursuit or fighter, cargo, trainer, and other models via a series of type sections. There are introductions to each section followed by photographic coverage along with extensive photo captioning providing highlights of characteristics and service use. Thus over three quarters of a century of Army and Air Force airplanes are displayed. Primary sections include production airplanes and variants, and a following photo gallery section covers experimental models. A few important export military types are also included. The illustrations and text portray in quite dramatic fashion the advances in U.S. military plane design over the period, including progress from stick and wire craft to the latest sleek turbine powered types.

This book, originally published in 1977 examines in detail the organisation, training, and personnel of the British Army during the eighteenth century, and explains how the government policies of containing the enemy and colonial conquest were achieved. It also illustrates how the Army survived the constant nervousness of Parliament in reducing its strength after each emergency had passed. There are specific chapters devoted to the strategies of Marlborough, Amherst and Howe and to tactics as displayed at the battles of Ramillies, Fontenoy, Camden and Guildford Court House.

Photo history of one of the most elite fighting units in WWII by one of its former members. Includes listing of Knight's Cross Winners.

The military is supposed to stand aside from British society. This book illustrates that from the earliest times the British have relied on the military for the preservation of law and order. The creation of the professional police force in Britain habitually met with the stiffest opposition, and even after it came into existence in the 19th century, the military were still called in to suppress civilian disorders, often admidst the confusion and clumsiness tht led to incidents such as the notorious 'Peterloo massacre'. In the 20th century, the unarmed police had to become more used to dealing with riots, several of which are here discussed in meticulously researched detail.

Cinematic representations of unconventional warfare have received sporadic attention to date. However, this pattern has now begun to change with the rise of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing importance of jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. This ground-breaking study provides a much-needed examination of global unconventional warfare in 20th-century filmmaking, with case studies from the United States, Britain, Ireland, France, Italy and Israel. Paul B. Rich examines Hollywood's treatment of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in the United States; British post-colonial insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya and British special operations in the Second World War; the Irish conflict before and during the Troubles; French filmmaking and the reluctance to deal with the bitter war in Algeria in the 1950s; Italian neorealism and its impact on films dealing with urban insurgency by Roberto Rossellini, Nanni Loy and Gillo Pontecorvo, and Israel and the upsurge of Palestinian terrorism. Whilst only a small number of films on these conflicts have been able to rise above stereotyping insurgents and terrorists - in some cases due to a pattern of screen orientalism - Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century stresses the positive political gains to be derived from humanizing terrorists and terrorists movements, especially in the context of modern jihadist terrorism. This is essential reading for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in 20th-century military history, politics and international relations, and film studies.