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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence
Lauded for gallantry at Antietam and demoted for insubordination
after Fredericksburg, Major General William "Baldy" Smith remains a
controversial figure of the Civil War. His criticism of the Union
high command made him unpopular with both peers and superiors. Yet
his insight as an officer and an engineer enabled him to offer
effective solutions to challenges faced by fellow generals. In this
first comprehensive biography, Smith emerges as a field commander
with deep concern for his men and a fearless critic of the failures
of the Union generalship, who was recognized for a strategic
perspective that helped save Federal armies.
The accepted narrative of the interwar U.S. Navy is one of
transformation from a battle-centric force into a force that could
fight on the ""three planes"" of war: in the skies, on the water,
and under the waves. The political and cultural tumult that
accompanied this transformation is another story. Ryan D. Wadle's
Selling Sea Power explores this little-known but critically
important aspect of naval history. After World War I, the U.S. Navy
faced numerous challenges: a call for naval arms limitation, the
ascendancy of air power, and budgetary constraints exacerbated by
the Great Depression. Selling Sea Power tells the story of how the
navy met these challenges by engaging in protracted public
relations campaigns at a time when the means and methods of
reaching the American public were undergoing dramatic shifts. While
printed media continued to thrive, the rapidly growing film and
radio industries presented new means by which the navy could
connect with politicians and the public. Deftly capturing the
institutional nuances and the personalities in play, Wadle tracks
the U.S. Navy's at first awkward but ultimately successful
manipulation of mass media. At the same time, he analyzes what the
public could actually see of the service in the variety of media
available to them, including visual examples from progressively
more sophisticated - and effective - public relations campaigns.
Integrating military policy and strategy with the history of
American culture and politics, Selling Sea Power offers a unique
look at the complex links between the evolution of the art and
industry of persuasion and the growth of the modern U.S. Navy, as
well as the connections between the workings of communications and
public relations and the command of military and political power.
Now It Can Be Told comprises of Philip Gibbs recollections
regarding the First World War, in which he served as an officially
commissioned war reporter. Titled in reference to the relieving of
censorship laws following the conclusion of World War One in 1918,
this book is noticeably different from the censored or dumbed-down
accounts published under Gibbs' byline in popular newspapers as the
conflict wore on. In this book, the full scale of the horror
wrought in Europe is told unflinchingly with the aim of showing the
depravity of conflict and the destruction that results. Early in
the war, Gibbs' frank and accurate accounts of the carnage of
modern warfare unnerved the British government, who were concerned
his accounts would demoralize citizens and turn them against the
war effort. Gibbs was ordered home; on refusing to cease reporting,
he was arrested and forcibly brought back to Britain.
This innovative collection offers one of the first analyses of
criminologies of the military from an interdisciplinary
perspective. While some criminologists have examined the military
in relation to the area of war crimes, this collection considers a
range of other important but less explored aspects such as private
military actors, insurgents, paramilitary groups and the role of
military forces in tackling transnational crime. Drawing upon
insights from criminology, this book's editors also consider the
ways the military institution harbours criminal activity within its
ranks and deals with prisoners of war. The contributions, by
leading experts in the field, have a broad reach and take a truly
global approach to the subject.
Early in 1945 the British Liberation Army (BLA), who had battled
their way from the Normandy beaches to the borders of Germany,
embarked on Operation Eclipse. This was the 'end-game' of the
Second World War, the unique military campaign to invade and
conquer Hitler's Third Reich and liberate 20 million enslaved
nationals from Holland, Denmark and Norway; to free multitudes of
displaced persons (DPs) or slaves; and inter alia to free the
survivors of twenty concentration camps and many Allied POW camps.
The Allied Military Government (AMG) brought law and order to 23
million German nationals in the allocated British zone of
occupation (BAOR) and appropriate retribution too. A thrilling race
with Stalin's Red Army ensued to reach the Baltic. A matter of a
few hours and Denmark and Norway would have been swept into the
evil Soviet empire. The author fought vigorously as a junior RHA
officer in the five great river battles - Rhine, Dortmund-Ems,
Weser, Aller and the Elbe. Soon after VE Day he was the junior
officer in War Crimes Tribunals in Hamburg and Oldenburg and
witnessed Mr Alfred Pierrepoint administering the hanging of prison
camp guards.
'The epic story of an iconic aircraft and the breathtaking courage
of those who flew her' Andy McNab, bestselling author of Bravo Two
Zero 'Compelling, thrilling and rooted in quite extraordinary human
drama' James Holland, author of Normandy 44 From John Nichol, the
Sunday Times bestselling author of Spitfire, comes a passionate and
profoundly moving tribute to the Lancaster bomber, its heroic crews
and the men and women who kept her airborne during the country's
greatest hour of need. 'The Avro Lancaster is an aviation icon;
revered, romanticised, loved. Without her, and the bravery of those
who flew her, the freedom we enjoy today would not exist.' Sir
Arthur Harris, the controversial chief of Royal Air Force Bomber
Command, described the Lancaster as his 'shining sword' and the
'greatest single factor in winning the war'. RAF bomber squadrons
carried out offensive operations from the first day of the Second
World War until the very last, more than five and a half years
later. They flew nearly 300,000 sorties and dropped around a
million tons of explosives, as well as life-saving supplies. Over
10,000 of their aircraft never returned. Of the 7,377 Lancasters
built during the conflict, more than half were lost to enemy action
or training accidents. The human cost was staggering. Of the
125,000 men who served in Bomber Command, over 55,000 were killed
and another 8,400 were wounded. Some 10,000 survived being shot
down, only to become prisoners of war. In simple, brutal terms,
Harris's aircrew had only a 40 per cent chance of surviving the war
unscathed. Former RAF Tornado Navigator, Gulf War veteran and
bestselling author John Nichol now tells the inspiring and moving
story of this legendary aircraft that took the fight deep into the
heart of Nazi Germany.
This book critically conceptualises positive security and explores
multiple areas in global politics where positive security can be
studied as an alternative to the existing understandings and
practices of security. Structured through a framework on the
practice and ethics of everyday security, the book defines positive
security as a focal point of contextual and spatiotemporal moments
that emerge through encounters with 'the other' in everyday
politics. In these moments, an actor can show attentiveness and
humility towards 'the other'. In this book, the authors present
their own understandings of positive security, offering an in-depth
discussion and analysis of the Global North and South divides,
delving into many aspects such as human security, migration,
gender, Indigenous issues and perceptions of security in the
Arctic, and challenges and tensions for and within NATO. The book
concludes by reflecting on the significance of positive security,
looking at its application for other current issues, including how
to understand and manage new (in)security challenges including
hybrid threats and warfare. This book will be of interest to
students and scholars of international relations, critical
security, and peace studies.
The Bosnian war of 1992-1995 was one of the most brutal conflicts
to have erupted since the end of the Second World War. But although
the war occurred in 'Europe's backyard' and received significant
media coverage in the West, relatively little scholarly attention
has been devoted to cultural representations of the conflict.
Stephen Harper analyses how the war has been depicted in global
cinema and television over the past quarter of a century. Focusing
on the representation of some of the war's major themes, including
humanitarian intervention, the roles of NATO and the UN, genocide,
rape and ethnic cleansing, Harper explores the role of popular
media culture in reflecting, reinforcing -- and sometimes
contesting -- nationalist ideologies.
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