In history guerrilla warfare always played an important role whether it was of a large scale or of a limited character fighting. Grenkevich traces its impact on military history in the 18th and 19th century in Europe and North America. He carefully analyses the Russian partisan movement from the first bloody encounters in the 1870s, taking into account the social, economic and political configurations of Russia. The work details how the Communist Party studied the Red guerrillas' fighting experience at the end of 1918 and included in the Red Army's Field Manual a special chapter named 'Partisan Operations'. During the Second World War the most significant partisan war took place. The relationship between the Party, the Red Army and the Partisan Movements is covered in the main body of Grenkevich's historical research. This study is a response to the lack of a comprehensive bibliography and reliable books on the Partisan Movement. In preparing this research the author conducted interviews with surviving partisans; in addition, a significant amount of new Russian information on the activity of the Soviet partisans has become available in recent years.

Few of the major campaigns of World War II aroused as much controversy as the War in North Africa, 1940-1943. Figures such as Rommel, Montgomery, and Eisenhower would become world famous because of the fighting in North Africa. This book opens with seven historiographical essays that evaluate and critically assess the major contributions to the literature on the War in North Africa. It then includes an alphabetically arranged bibliography of the 504 entries cited in the essays. The material is easily accessible, with cross-references between the text and the bibliography and a full index.

The volume includes chapters on the Desert War, 1940-42; the Axis Powers in North Africa; Montgomery, Alam Halfa and El Alamein; TORCH: the Landings in French North Africa, and the Tunisian Campaign. Full attention is given to questions and issues historians have raised on such controversies as the Auchinleck-Montgomery dispute, the debate over Operation TORCH, and the Darlan affair. Emphasis is on English-language works, but the most significant Italian, German, and French works are cited and assessed. The book has been written for use in public, college, university, and institutional libraries, and to serve general readers and military historians.

The relationship of the United States and Great Britain has been the subject of numerous studies with a particular emphasis on the idea of a "special relationship" based on traditional common ties of language, history, and political affinity. Although certainly special, Anglo-American cooperation arose from mutual necessity. Soybel examines the "special relationship" through a new lens--that of the most intimate of wartime collaborations, the naval intelligence relationship. Rather than looking at the uses of intelligence and espionage, Soybel explores how the cooperation was established and maintained, particularly through the creation of administrative bureaucracies, as well as how World War I and pre-war efforts helped pave the way towards wartime cooperation. The development of the wartime cooperation in naval intelligence between 1939 and 1943 highlights the best and worst of the alliance and shows both its advantages and its limitations. It demonstrates that the Anglo-American partnership during World War II was a necessary one, and its intimacy demanded by the exigencies of the total war then being fought. Its problems were the result of traditional conflicts based on economics, imperial concerns, and national interests. Its successes found their bases in individual partnerships formed during the war, not in the overall one given mythical status by men like Winston Churchill. While still giving credit to the unique alliance that has survived in the last fifty years, this study shows that the close ties were necessary, not special.

While it lasted, the Second World War dominated the life of the nations that were involved and most of those that were not. Since Britain was in at both the start and the finish her people experienced the impact of total ar in full measure. The experience was a test of the most comprehensive kind: of the institutions, of the resources, and the very cohesion of the nation. The Test of War by Robert Mackay examines how the nation responded to this test. For a generation after the ending of the war this response was represented as largely unproblematical: faced with mortal threat to their survival the people rallied around their leaders, sank their differences and bore the burdens and sacrifices that were necessary to victory. More recently, demurring voices have challeged this cosy picture by emphasizing negative features of the war as official muddle, low industrial productivity and strikes, the black market, looting and the persistence of hostile class relations. Robert Mackay re-examines these debates, arguing that, for all its imperfections, British society under threat remained vital, cohesive and optimistically creative about its future.

This first volume explores Cunningham's strategy and operations from June 1940 to March 1942. Included here are the clash with the Italian Fleet off Calabria in July 1940 and the victory at Matapan in March 1941, together with the Fleet Air Arm attack on Taranto in November 1940.

With the 50th Anniversary of Victory in World War II comes PROTECT & AVENGE: The 49th Fighter Group in World War II.\nAfter six years of research, author and illustrator S.W. Ferguson, Along with 49ERS Association historian William K. Pascalis, have recreated the war-years odyssey of the famous 49ERS, the most successful fighter group in the war against Japan. Flyers Paul Wrutsmith, Bob Morrissey, Ernie Harris, Gerry Johnson, Bob DeHaven and leading American ace Dick Bong, are but a few of the men who contribute to the 49ERS legend. \nFrom their desert air strips of Northwest Territory, Australia, through their jungle camps of New Guinea and the Philippines, to the final moment of victory on the Japanese homeland, all are detailed in this new volume. Derived from the diaries and logs of 49ERS veterans, the groups official USAF history and the U.S. National Archives, the story chronicles more than thirty aces and their crews who achieved over 600 aerial kills in three years of continuous combat.\nThe text is highlighted by more than 600 black and white photos, six compaign maps, and twenty-four color profiles of select P-40s, P-57s, and P-38s.\nS.W. Ferguson lives in Colorado Springs where he has pursued his teaching, writing and art career for the last ten years. His interests are American writers and history of the 20th century, and swift waters that yield trout. \nBill Pascalis is a veteran aircraft mechanic of the 49ERS Selfridge AFB cadre and served through the New Guinea campaign of mid-1943. After the war, he established a long career with Tranworld Airlines. He now lives with his wife in retirement in Florida, enjoying golf, his grandchildren and research in the 5th Air Force archives.

This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the `fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands immediately south of Japan. Meticulously researched and fully referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Pacific War. This book also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

Challenging the views of Benito Mussolini's Italian biographer, Renzo De Felice, this book argues that the Duce's aggressive war against the predominant Mediterranean powers, Britain and France, was the only means whereby Italy might secure access to the world's oceans. Following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Mussolini actively pursued the Italo-German alliance which he believed would enable him to conquer a Fascist empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. By the eve of Italy's entry in the world war II, the Fascist administration had commissioned substantial new capital-ship programmes, and created a major surface and underwater fleet that seemed to post a serious challenge to the strategic position of Great Britain in the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
The study covers: the effects of Mussolini's pro-German policy on the policy-making and strategic planning of the Regia Marina; the major political, strategic and economic factors that shaped Italy's naval policy under Mussolini; the effectiveness of naval operational planning in the light of the various international crises that dominated the period before the war; and the part played by the Italian naval high command in Mussolini's quest for empire.

The Curtiss P-40 had a production run of 13,738 aircraft, making it the third most produced US fighter of WWII. Famous as the "shark-mouthed" aircraft of the legendary American Volunteer Group-"Flying Tigers"-the P-40 was first flown in 1938, and was used by the United States and many of its Allies throughout the war. This volume tells the story of this iconic aircraft-from design and construction to combat use to detailed images of existing examples-through carefully researched photos, some of which have never before been published, and which are reproduced in remarkable clarity. These stunning photos, coupled with descriptive and informative captions, put the reader in the skies with this historic aircraft.

France's liberation was expected to trigger a decisive break both with the Vichy regime and with the pre-war Third Republic. What happened, over three crucial years (1944-47), was an untidy patchwork of unplanned continuities and false starts - along with fresh departures that defined France's future for the next half-century. Prepared by an international team of specialists, "The Uncertain Foundation" analyses a complex process of regime change, economic renewal, social transformation, and adjustment to a fast-evolving world.

Adolf Eichmann was head of Gestapo Division IV-B4, the Third Reich's notorious Security Service, and he was responsible for implementing the "Final Solution" of the European Jews in the Greater German Reich. Though arrested at the end of the war by the U.S. army, Eichmann succeeded in escaping from U.S. custody in 1946 and lived unnoticed in Germany and Austria until 1950, when he travelled to Argentina. While living in Buenos Aires, Eichmann produced a series of tape recordings, and hand written notes, giving a very open and incriminating account of his role in the Final Solution, and Eichmann declares that this is indeed the only testimony that he wishes to be considered as genuine and not dictated under duress. In 1960 the Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad, succeeded in tracing Eichmann to Argentina. They captured him, and on May 21 he was flown to Israel, where he was tried by the Israeli Court in 1961, found guilty and hanged on May 31, 1962. After his courtroom testimony in Israel, in August 1961, Eichmann wrote an additional testimony that he called "False Gods." The English translation of "False Gods," is also published by Black House Publishing, and is a companion to this volume. This book provides an incriminating account of Eichmann's role in the wholesale murder of the Jews in Europe, and establishes the scope of the anti-Jewish measures undertaken in the Third Reich and the gradual development of these measures from emigration to concentration to large-scale murder. The reader of Eichmann's memoirs will thus obtain not only a vivid impression of the extensive police operations of the Third Reich but also a glimpse into the ideological and political motivations of these actions, motivations that were perhaps not fully shared by Eichmann himself.

This work, based on archival research, contests the assumptions that Romania remained pro-Western in the late 1930s and only joined the Axis as a result of Western negligence and German pressure. Instead, Germany was drawn by Romanian politicians into political and economic cooperation with Bucharest. In the event, this proved Romania's undoing. Let down by her German protector, she was forced to cede territory to the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria. Subsequently, Romania was allowed into the alliance she sought with Germany.

This work uses Russian archival and previously classified secondary sources to document the experience of the Red Army in conflict with Finland. Van Dyke examines the diplomatic, organizational and social aspects of the Soviet strategic culture by first exploring the Leninist interpretation of violence in international relations, and how this legacy influenced Stalin in his use of diplomacy and threat of force to enhance the Soviet Union's forward defence and to address the Baltic problem in 1939. He documents the Red Army's poor battlefield performances and looks at how it relearned the techniques lost during Stalin's purge in the late 1930s. The book examines the Soviet high command's post-war evaluation of the lessons learned, the debates of the re-professionalization of the officer corps and the effectiveness of the unified military doctrine.

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which Churchill denied. Undaunted, Alexander defied British officials and persevered with his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads - a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive - who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.

This volume begins with an investigation of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It draws upon eye-witness German accounts of what occurred, and supplements these with German archival and detailed Soviet materials. The Soviet government has released extensive amounts of formerly classified archival materials from the period. This material has been incorporated into the maps and text.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

Tracing the development of the fortifications in Europe from the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to the twentieth century, this is the first comprehensive book in English on the forts of the Maginot Line, German espionage, and the German sieges during the 1940 campaign. It analyzes the reasons why the French opted for this type of defensive system, and explains how the Maginot Line presented the French Army with opportunities (mostly wasted) to regroup and mount an effective defense. Shrouded in media myth for 40 years, this study demonstrates both how the media created the myth and the truth behind the myth of the Maginot Line. At the time reporters wildly speculated about these fortifications, German intelligence agents were busy collecting data. Finally, this book relates the heroic battles waged by the forts, large and small: the tragic fall of La Ferte, the surrender of other DEGREESIpetits ouvrages DEGREESR after prolonged and fierce fighting, the triumphant resistance of the larger forts even in the face of the most savage artillery pounding, and the unqualified victory of the Little Maginot Line over invading Italian forces.

To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.

In June 1941 the Ark Royal won one of Britain's most famous naval victories. The German destroyer, Bismarck, had been ravaging the British fleet in the Atlantic. Sailing through a ferocious storm the Ark Royal tracked the Bismarck. A dozen swordfish bombers took off from her deck and pounded shell after shell into the German battleship, sending her to the ocean floor. It was a signal victory that resonated around the world. Hitler, furious at the loss of the German fleet's flagship, demanded that the Ark Royal be destroyed at whatever cost. HMS Ark Royal is one of the Royal Navy's most iconic ships. When she was launched in 1938 she was one of the most sophisticated weapons at the disposal of British military command. The aircraft carrier was the latest, and soon to be one of the most feared, developments in naval warfare. In her first two years of operation the Ark Royal survived countless attacks, and was considered one of the luckiest ships in the Navy. But her air of invincibility was to prove wishful thinking. Within one month of sinking the Bismarck, the Ark Royal too was destroyed while sailing off the coast of Gibraltar. And there she has rested, one kilometre below the surface of the Mediterranean, until her wreck was discovered by Mike Rossiter in 2004. In gripping detail, and using the testimony of survivors of the sinking and men who lived, flew and fought on the Ark Royal, Mike Rossiter tells the remarkable story of the life and legend of this most iconic of ships. Also, and for the first time, he reveals the story of the quest to discover the wreck of this naval legend.

Strategic plans invariably differ from the reality of war. The American experience in the Second World War was no exception. This volume offers an understanding of the gap between American plans and what actually happened. A variety of factors including coalition politics, inter-service disputes, disagreements between field commanders and Washington headquarters, logistical constraints, and the initiatives and reactions of the enemy combined in myriad forms to produce a conflict that was very different from original strategic expectations.