The Horse Soldiers is the true, dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who entered Afghanistan immediately following September 11, 2001 and, riding to war on horses, defeated the Taliban. Heavily outnumbered, they nonetheless succeed in capturing the strategic Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, where they are welcomed as liberators as they ride on horseback into the city, the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban have been kicked out. The soldiers rest easy, as they feel they have accomplished their mission. Then the action takes a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers are ambushed by the would-be P.O.W.s and, still dangerously outnumbered, they must fight for their lives in the city's ancient fortress known as Qala-I Janghi, or the House of War...

The classic by Sun Tzu. The definitive guide to strategy, tactics, and success.

This book, first published in 1988, represents a unique attempt to combine a discussion of an alternative British defence policy in terms of military strategy and new technology, with a consideration of how this policy might be secure in political terms. Written against a background of a possible future Labour government in the late 1980s with a radically different defence policy to the Conservative Government of the day, it considers questions such as: Would conventional deterrence really be effective? Just what is the Labour Party's defence policy? How precisely might Britain be transformed into a non-aligned, non-militarist state?

This book addresses issues of legal and moral governance arising in the development, deployment, and eventual uses of emerging technologies in military operations. Proverbial wisdom has it that law and morality always lag behind technological innovation. Hence, the book aims to identify, enumerate, and constructively address the problems of adequate governance for the development, deployment, and eventual uses of military technologies that have been newly introduced into military operations or which will be available in the near future. Proposals for modifications in governance, the book argues, closely track the anxieties of many critics of these technologies to the extent that they will proliferate, prove destructive in unanticipated ways, and partially or wholly escape regulation under current treaties and regulatory regimes. In addition to such concerns in domestic and especially in international law, the book addresses ethical norms in the professions involved in the design and eventual use of specific technologies, principally involving the professional norms of practice in engineering and the military (as well as biomedical and health care practice), which impose moral obligations on their members to avoid reckless endangerment or criminal negligence in the course of their activities. Thus, in addition to exploring the application of existing legal regimes and moral norms, the book examines how these professions might develop or improve the voluntary constraints on forms of malfeasance that are enshrined in their histories and codes of best practices. This book should prove of great interest to students of ethics, military studies, philosophy of war and peace, law, and international relations.

The Sunday Times Number 1 Bestseller 'A fabulous story, superbly told ... cannot be bettered' Max Hastings 'Some battles change nothing. Waterloo changed almost everything.' On the 18th June 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days the French army had beaten the British at Quatre-Bras and the Prussians at Ligny. The Allies were in retreat. The blood-soaked battle of Waterloo would become a landmark in European history, to be examined over and again, not least because until the evening of the 18th, the French army was close to prevailing on the battlefield. Now, brought to life by the celebrated novelist Bernard Cornwell, this is the chronicle of the four days leading up to the actual battle and a thrilling hour-by-hour account of that fateful day. In his first work of non-fiction, Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting account of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon's escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the battlefields. Through letters and diaries he also sheds new light on the private thoughts of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, as well as the ordinary officers and soldiers. Published to coincide with the bicentenary in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy - and of the final battle that determined the fate of Europe.

D-Day before dawn. Minute by minute, hour by hour the danger grows... In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defence forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account by acclaimed author Stephen E. Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality - the stuff of all great adventures.

When Erwin Rommel died--by forced suicide at Hitler's command--he left behind in various ingenious hiding places the papers that recorded the story of his dramatic career and the exact details of his masterly campaigns. It was his custom to dictate each evening a running narrative of the day's events and, after each battle, to summarize its course and the lessons to be learned from it. He wrote, almost daily, intimate and outspoken letters to his wife in which his private feelings and--after the tide had turned--forebodings found expression. To this is added by Rommel's son Manfred the story of the field marshall's last weeks and the final day when he was given the choice of an honorable suicide or an ignominious trial for treason. An engrossing human document and a rare look at the mind of the "Desert Fox," "The Rommel Papers" throws an interesting light on the Axis alliance and on the inner workings of Hitler's high command.

Conflict, Cultural Heritage, and Peace offers a series of conceptual and applied frameworks to help understand the role cultural heritage plays within conflict and the potential it has to contribute to positive peacebuilding and sustainable development in post-conflict societies. Designed as a resource guide, this general volume introduces the multiple roles cultural heritage plays through the conflict cycle from its onset, subsequent escalation and through to resolution and recovery. In its broadest sense it questions what role cultural heritage plays within conflict, how cultural heritage is used in the construction and justification of conflict narratives and how are these narratives framed and often manipulated to support particular perspectives, and how we can develop better understandings of cultural heritage and work towards the better protection of cultural heritage resources during conflict. It moves beyond the protection paradigm and recognises that cultural heritage can contribute to building peace and reconciliation in post-conflict environments. The study offers a conceptual and operational framework to understand the roles cultural heritage plays within conflict cycles, how it can be targeted during war, and the potential cultural heritage has in positive peacebuilding across the conflict lifecycle. Conflict, Cultural Heritage, and Peace offers an invaluable introduction to cultural heritage at all stages in conflict scenarios which will benefit students, researchers and practitioners in the field of heritage, environment, peace and conflict studies.

From an acclaimed military historian, the interlocking lives of three of the most important and consequential generals in World War II Born in the two decades prior to World War I, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Erwin Rommel became among the most recognized and successful military leaders of the 20th century. However, as acclaimed military historian Lloyd Clark reveals in his penetrating and insightful braided chronicle of their lives, they charted very different, often interrupted, paths to their ultimate leadership positions commanding hundreds of thousands of troops during World War II and celebrated as heroes in the United States, Britain, and Germany.Patton was born into a military family and from an early age felt he was destined for glory; following a disjointed childhood, Montgomery found purpose and direction in a military academy; Rommel's father was a former officer, so his pursuit of a military career was logical. Having ascended to the middle ranks, each faced battle for the first time in World War I, a searing experience that greatly influenced their future approach to war and leadership. When war broke out again in 1939, Montgomery and Rommel were immediately engaged, while Patton chafed until the U.S. joined the Allies in 1942 and the three men, by then generals, collided in North Africa in 1943, and then again, climactically, in France after D-Day in 1944.Weaving letters, diary extracts, official reports, and other documents into his original narrative, recounting dramatic battles as they developed on the ground and at headquarters, Clark also explores the controversies that swirled around Patton, Montgomery, and Rommel throughout their careers, sometimes threatening to derail them. Ultimately, however, their unique abilities to bridge the space between leader and led cemented their legendary reputations.

An astonishing tale of romance, resistance and bravery 'A sad and beautiful book, shining a light on quiet heroism in dark times.' Lucy Adlington, New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz Sabine's War is the previously untold story of a remarkable resistance fighter and her incredible story of survival against the odds. When Germany invaded Holland in May 1940, Sabine Zuur joined the resistance movement without a moment's hesitation aged just 22. Helping to hide those avoiding the German authorities, she was soon betrayed and subjected to repeated violent interrogations. Many of her friends were executed but Sabine was instead sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, via the Amersfoort and Ravensbruck camps. Enduring gruelling conditions and backbreaking forced manual labour, she survived through a combination of guile and good fortune. But it was only after Sabine's death that her daughter Eva discovered an archive of letters detailing her extraordinary life, revealing a rich inner world and a past she had discussed little. Amongst them were declarations of love from pilot Taro, shot down in his Spitfire over northern France aged just 26; notes from Sabine's second love Gerard, executed by the Germans; letters to her mother smuggled out in her prison laundry; and passionate, creepy missives from a German professional criminal named Gebele who would ultimately save Sabine's life. She emerges from this correspondence as a woman with an indefinable aura, somehow in control of her own destiny even when to all intents and purposes she was not. A transfixing story of survival, Sabine's War captures a remarkable life in the words of the young woman who lived it.

Pham Xuan An was a Communist agent whose espionage adventures - under the cover story of a celebrated war correspondent in the Western Media -- were as brilliant for Hanoi as they were shattering for Washington during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War. He has been dubbed "the perfect spy" and affectionately referred to by some as "the spy who loved us". Not quite. Journalist and Southeast Asian specialist Luke Hunt prises this story open. He knew and interviewed An for many years, along with many friends and colleagues in journalism who knew him best in war, on the journalistic beat and amid the collapse of South Vietnam.

A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America's longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban's recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public's understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains "fast-paced and vivid" (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government's strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn't know the name of his Afghanistan war commander-and didn't want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had "no visibility into who the bad guys are." His successor, Robert Gates, said: "We didn't know jack shit about al-Qaeda." The Afghanistan Papers is a "searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials" (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

This up-to-date analysis of the development and organization of the Soviet Armed Forces provides a profound insight into the military thinking that has determined the course of Soviet military history from the birth of the first Communist armed forces organization to the present. The eminent authors of this book have drawn on thousands of Soviet Ministry of Defense publications-only a very few of which have been translated into English-and four years of research in the USSR to portray the fundamentals of Soviet military doctrine and strategy. They cover fully the postwar development of the Soviet military, looking at the High Command, each of the five services, combat formations, and supporting agencies, and give a comprehensive account of the Soviet military-industrial complex, military training of Soviet youth, military manpower, mobilization, and the Soviet officer corps. Their discussion of the relationship between the Party and the Armed Forces, based on Soviet data, includes an examination of popular Western myths about internal Soviet military-Party splits. The wealth of detailed information contained in this book includes numerous notes, tables, and figures and a broad range of other data-all based exclusively on primary sources-as well as an extensive bibliography.

America's Arab Nationalists focuses in on the relationship between Arab nationalists and Americans in the struggle for independence in an era when idealistic Americans could see the Arab nationalist struggle as an expression of their own values. In the first three decades of the twentieth century (from the 1908 Ottoman revolution to the rise of Hitler), important and influential Americans, including members of the small Arab-American community, intellectually, politically and financially participated in the construction of Arab nationalism. This book tells the story of a diverse group of people whose contributions are largely unknown to the American public. The role Americans played in the development of Arab nationalism has been largely unexplored by historians, making this an important and original contribution to scholarship. This volume is of great interest to students and academics in the field, though the narrative style is accessible to anoyone interested in Arab nationalism, the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians, and the United States' relationship with the Arab world.

Military Industry and Regional Defense Policy re-examines military industrialization in the developing world, focusing on policy-making in producer states and the impact of security perceptions on such policy-making. Timothy D. Hoyt reassesses the role of regional state sub-systems in international relations, and recent historical studies of international technology and arms transfers. Looking at Israel, Iraq and India, the three most powerful regional powers in the Cold War era, he presesnts an expert analysis of the three-sided phenomena of the regional hegemony, the regional competitor and the small over-achiever. This new book breaks away from existing literature on military industries in the developing world, which has focused on their economic and development costs and benefits. These past studies have used primitive methodologies that focus on the production of complete weapons systems - a misleading gauge in a world of growing international defense cooperation. They have also ignored empirical evidence of the impact of local military industrial production on Cold War regional conflict, and of the defence planning and concerns that drove development of indigenous military industries in key regional powers. This new text delivers an incisive new perspective.

An acclaimed expert on violence and seasoned peacebuilder explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms into war, and how to interrupt that deadly process. It's easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It's also easy to forget that war shouldn't happen-and most of the time it doesn't. Around the world there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a tiny fraction erupt into violence. Too many accounts of conflict forget this. With a counterintuitive approach, Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. That's because war is too costly to fight. Enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it or struggle over thin slices. So, in those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: what kept rivals from compromise? Why We Fight draws on decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation. From warring states to street gangs, ethnic groups and religious sects to political factions, there are common dynamics to heed and lessons to learn. Along the way, we meet vainglorious European monarchs, African dictators, Indian mobs, Nazi pilots, British football hooligans, ancient Greeks, and fanatical Americans. What of remedies that shift incentives away from violence and get parties back to deal-making? Societies are surprisingly good at interrupting and ending violence when they want to-even the gangs of Medellin, Columbia do it. Realistic and optimistic, this is book that lends new meaning to the old adage, "Give peace a chance."

Released in 1969, the film _Battle of Britain_ went on to become one of the most iconic war movies ever produced. The film drew many respected British actors to accept roles as key figures of the battle, including Sir Laurence Olivier as Hugh Dowding and Trevor Howard as Keith Park. It also starred Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw as squadron leaders. As well as its large all-star international cast, the film was notable for its spectacular flying sequences which were on a far grander scale than anything that had been seen on film before. At the time of its release, Battle of Britain was singled out for its efforts to portray the events of the summer of 1940 in great accuracy. To achieve this, Battle of Britain veterans such as Group Captain Tom Gleave, Wing Commander Robert Stanford Tuck, Wing Commander Douglas Bader, Squadron Leader Boles?aw Drobi?ski and Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland were all involved as consultants. This detailed description of the making of the film is supported by a mouth-watering selection of pictures that were taken during the production stages. The images cover not only the many vintage aircraft used in the film, but also the airfields, the actors, and even the merchandise which accompanied the film's release in 1969 - plus a whole lot more. There are numerous air-to-air shots of the Spitfires, Messerschmitts, Hurricanes and Heinkels that were brought together for the film. There are also images that capture the moment that Battle of Britain veterans, some of whom were acting as consultants, visited the sets. Interviews with people who worked on the film, such as Hamish Mahaddie, John Blake and Ron Goodwin, among others, bring the story to life.

"I will always be somebody." This assertion, a startling one from a nineteenth-century woman, drove the life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only American woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. President Andrew Johnson issued the award in 1865 in recognition of the incomparable medical service Walker rendered during the Civil War. Yet few people today know anything about the woman so well-known--even notorious--in her own lifetime. Theresa Kaminski shares a different way of looking at the Civil War, through the eyes of a woman confident she could make a contribution equal to that of any man. She takes readers into the political cauldron of the nation's capital in wartime, where Walker was a familiar if notorious figure. Mary Walker's relentless pursuit of gender and racial equality is key to understanding her commitment to a Union victory in the Civil War. Her role in the women's suffrage movement became controversial and the US Army stripped Walker of her medal, only to have the medal reinstated posthumously in 1977.

This fourth volume concludes the series on the 'Uniforms of the Armies at Waterloo'. After the previous volumes presented the Allied side, this fourth part deals with its opponents, the French Armee du Nord under the command of Napoleon I. This Northern Army, despite its short existence after Napoleon's return to France's imperial throne, consisted of numerous, experienced soldiers from his earlier campaigns, with the caveat that its uniforms did not always comply with regulations due to the army's rapid mobilization. As in the three previous volumes, the two editors Markus Gartner and Markus Stein take the opportunity to evaluate Charles Lyall's uniform plates by using the current knowledge of how the French troops actually appeared in 1815. Due to the special status attributed to the French Imperial Guard, especially in England, numerous Lyall plates deal with Guard units. However, some of the units depicted had already been disbanded before 1815 but the editors decided to publish them in this volume as well, along with a short commentary. As in the other volumes, to complete the visual images in the plates, this one provides the order of battle as well as supplementary descriptions of the organization and uniforms of the Northern Army's units deployed in the Netherlands. Finally, the description of the Battle of Waterloo, begun in the first volume and continued in the following volumes, is taken up again and continued until the end with the French retreat from the battlefield. This description is accompanied by two more maps from William Siborne's Atlas to History of the Waterloo Campaign.

The postcards in It'll All Be Over By Christmas paint a picture of the First World War as experienced by those at home, at the front, in training, in hospital and in convalescence. These personal messages were sent from fathers to their wives and children, sons to family, friends and loved ones - sharing their thoughts, hopes and worries as well as the lighter side of life. There are cards from those at sea, in prisoner-of-war camps and those of the Central Powers. Featuring over 150 illustrations, including some rare examples, the book also demonstrates how the postcard was ulitised to enlist volunteers and boost morale through humour, sentimentality and propaganda. Postcards encouraged support of the war effort through fundraising, sending 'comforts' to those on the front line and promoting practical roles for women. This fascinating book offers a profound insight into the experiences of war through postcards, as well the part that they played in promoting it.

This volume offers a comprehensive and original analysis and reconceptualisation of the compendium of struggles that wracked the collapsing Tsarist empire and the emergent USSR, profoundly affecting the history of the twentieth century. Indeed, the reverberations of those decade-long wars echo to the present day -- not despite, but because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which re-opened many old wounds, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Contemporary memorialising and 'de-memorialising' of these wars, therefore form part of the book's focus, but at its heart lie the struggles between various Russian political and military forces which sought to inherit and preserve, or even expand, the territory of the tsars, overlain with examinations of the attempts of many non- Russian national and religious groups to divide the former empire. The reasons why some of the latter were successful (Poland and Finland, for example), while others (Ukraine, Georgia and the Muslim Basmachi) were not, are as much the author's concern as are explanations as to why the chief victors of the 'Russian' Civil Wars were the Bolsheviks.Tellingly, the work begins and ends with battles in Central Asia - a theatre of the 'Russian' Civil Wars that was closer to Mumbai than it was to Moscow.