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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations
The fall of 2016 saw the release of the widely popular First World
War video game Battlefield 1. Upon the game's initial announcement
and following its subsequent release, Battlefield 1 became the
target of an online racist backlash that targeted the game's
inclusion of soldiers of color. Across social media and online
communities, players loudly proclaimed the historical inaccuracy of
black soldiers in the game and called for changes to be made that
correct what they considered to be a mistake that was influenced by
a supposed political agenda. Through the introduction of the
theoretical framework of the 'White Mythic Space', this book seeks
to investigate the reasons behind the racist rejection of soldiers
of color by Battlefield 1 players in order to answer the question:
Why do individuals reject the presence of people of African descent
in popular representations of history?
Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies
around the world. Today, there are over three dozen violent
insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These insurgencies have
been led by a range of groups, from the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, most warfare today
occurs in the form of insurgencies. If we are to understand modern
warfare, we need to understand insurgencies. While numerous books
have been written on the subject of insurgencies, there is no book
that brings together all of what we know into one accessible volume
that policymakers can understand and use. Waging Insurgent Warfare
is that book. Seth G. Jones, who has been deeply involved in the
Afghanistan war over the last decade, aims to help policymakers,
scholars, and general readers better understand how groups start,
wage, and end insurgencies. He weaves together examples from today
and from recent history into an analytic synthesis that focuses on
several sets of questions. First, what factors contribute to the
rise of an insurgency? Second, what are the key components involved
in conducting an insurgency? As he explains, insurgent groups need
to decide on a strategy, employ a range of tactics, select an
organizational structure, secure outside aid from state and
non-state actors, and conduct information campaigns. They then have
to routinely re-assess these decisions over the course of an
insurgency. Third, what factors contribute to the end of
insurgencies? Finally, what do the answers to these questions mean
for the conduct of counterinsurgency warfare? Waging Insurgent
Warfare is not only a practical handbook for understanding
insurgent warfare, but it also has implications for waging
counterinsurgent warfare. Highly readable, empirically
sophisticated, and historically informed, Waging Insurgent Warfare
will become a standard work on the topic.
The true story of a woman's incredible journey into the heart of
the Third Reich to find the man she loves. When the Gestapo seize
20-year-old Olga Czepf's fiance she is determined to find him and
sets off on an extraordinary 2,000-mile search across Nazi-occupied
Europe risking betrayal, arrest and death. As the Second World War
heads towards its bloody climax, she refuses to give up - even when
her mission leads her to the gates of Dachau and Buchenwald
concentration camps...Now 88 and living in London, Olga tells with
remarkable clarity of the courage and determination that drove her
across war-torn Europe, to find the man she loved. The greatest
untold true love story of World War Two.
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