In the tradition of 'Agent Zigzag' comes a breathtaking biography of WWII's 'Scarlet Pimpernel' as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the best spy thrillers. This celebrates unsung hero Robert de La Rochefoucauld, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur, and his exploits as a British Special Operations Executive-trained resistant When the Nazis invaded France during the Second World War and imprisoned his father, Robert de La Rochefoucauld - a scion of one of the oldest aristocratic families in France - escaped to England and trained in the dark arts of anarchy and combat. Under the guidance of SOE spies, he learned to crack safes, plant bombs and kill enemies with his bare hands. Then, back in France, he organised Resistance cells, killed Nazi officers and interfered with German missions. He survived unbearable torture and escaped Nazi confinement on not one but two occasions, to live well into his eighties. The adventures of de La Rochefoucauld offer rare insight into a unique moment in history, revealing brand new information about a network of commandos who battled evil and bravely worked together to change the course of history.

On 9 May 1912 the first airplane take-off from a ship was made from the deck of the HMS Hibernia. In July 1918, seven Sopwith Camels launched from the converted battlecruiser HMS Furious damaged the German airbase at Tonder and destroyed two zeppelins. The age of the carrier was born. In the interwar years the Lexington, Akagi and Courageous-class carriers were developed, but it was only during World War II that the aircraft carrier finally came into its own. Fleet carriers carrying 30-40 aircraft allowed the Japanese and US navies to project air power across the vast Pacific Ocean, with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor presaging a new kind of warfare. With the sinking of hundreds of ships during World War II, including the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, by the end of the war carriers ruled the waves and the era of the battleship had passed. Aircraft Carriers features 52 of the most significant flat tops and amphibious assault ships built since the 1920s until the present day, from the USS Yorktown, which survived direct hits during the battle of Midway (1942), through the Falklands War veteran HMS Invincible, to the mighty Nimitz class, the core of the US Navy's carrier battle groups today. Also included are significant amphibious assault ships, such as the USS Tarawa and French Mistral. Each entry includes a brief description of the ship's development and history, a colour profile view or cutaway, key features and specifications. Packed with more than 200 artworks and photographs, Aircraft Carriers is a colourful guide for the naval warfare enthusiast.

In 1095 the First Crusade was launched, establishing a great military endeavour which was a central preoccupation of Europeans until the end of the thirteenth century. In Western warfare in the age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 John France offers a wide-ranging and challenging survey of war and warfare and its place in the development of European Society, culture and economy in the period of the Crusades. Placing the crusades in a wider context, this book brings together the wealth of recent scholarly research on such issues as knighthood, siege warfare, chivalry and fortifications into an accessible form. Western warfare in the age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 examines the nature of war in the period 1000-1300 and argues that it was primarily shaped by the people who conducted war - the landowners. John France illuminates the role of property concerns in producing the characteristic instruments of war: the castle and the knight. This authoritative study details the way in which war was fought and the reasons for it as well as reflecting on the society which produced the crusades.

The Soviet Air Force had just started to re-equip with modern fighters when the Germans opened Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of fighters were destroyed in the first few days, but many of these were obsolete biplanes and monoplanes. The remaining fighters, including more modern types such as the MiG-3 and LaGG-3, tried to stem the Nazi advance. This book details the development of the Red Air Force fighters, from the dark days of Operation Barbarossa, to eventual triumph over the ruins of Berlin. Starting with obsolete aircraft such as the Polikarpov biplane and monoplane fighters, the Soviets then settled on two main lines of development; the inline-engined LaGG-3 and its radial-engined derivatives, the La-5 and La-7, and the inline-engined Yakovlev fighters, which were produced in greater numbers than any other series of fighters. Not only are these aircraft described in great detail, but experimental fighters are also dealt with. In addition to the descriptions, accurate colour profiles are provided illustrating the evolution of these aircraft in terms of design, camouflage, and markings. From the fixed undercarriage I-15bis biplane of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, to the superb La-7 and Yak-3 fighters of the last year of the war, the fighters of the Red Air Force are all covered in this comprehensive book.

Routledge Readings on Security and Governance in Northeastern India: Resource Conflicts, Militarisation and Development Challenges presents some of the finest essays on a region that stretches across the Northeastern Himalaya, eight Indian States and many tribal and non-tribal peoples. With a lucid Introduction, this and its companion volume, Routledge Readings on Colonial to Contemporary Northeastern India offer a compelling look into the society, polity, contemporary security and developmental issues in northeast India. It covers several critical themes and unravels complexities fraught by the unique biogeography and socio-political history of the region. The fifteen chapters in this multidisciplinary volume, divided into three sections, examine land laws, conflict and resource management and local governance. It discusses the political interplay of ethnicities and resource appropriation in a modernizing, globalizing economy as well as instances of conflicts and violence in highly militarized spaces in the region. It offers an engaged and insightful look into the rural and urban human development contexts in the region from authors who have contributed significantly to the academic and/or policy discourse on the subject. This book will serve as essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, practitioners of South Asian studies, Northeast India studies, history, development studies, labour studies, sociology, public administration, environmental studies, law and human rights, regional literature, cultural studies, geography, and economics.

This book is a concise and accessible introduction to the problem of war crimes in modern history, emphasizing the development of laws aimed at regulating the conduct of armed conflict developed from the 19th Century to the present. Bringing together multiple strands of recent research in history, political science, and law the book starts with an overview of the attempts across the pre-modern world to regulate the initiation, conduct, and outcomes of war. It them moves on to present a survey of the legal revolution of the 19th Century when, amidst a global welter of colonial wars, the first body of formal codes and laws relating to distinguishing legal from criminal conduct in war was developed. Further chapters investigate failed but influential attempts to develop the laws of war in the post-World War I period, summarize the major landmarks in international law related to war crimes, such as the Hague conventions and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, as well as hundreds of lesser-known post-World War II trials in Europe and Asia. It also looks at the origins and debated significance of the Genocide Convention of 1948 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions accounts for the acceleration worldwide of war crimes investigations and trials from the 1970s into the 2000s and summarizes current thinking about international law and the rapidly changing nature of warfare worldwide as well as the memorialization of war crimes. Including images, documents, a bibliography highlighting the most recent scholarship, a chronology, who's who, and a glossary, this is the perfect introduction for those wishing to understand the complex field or war crimes history and its politics.

Bringing together established and emerging voices in Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), this book offers fresh and dynamic reflections on CTS and envisages possible lines of future research and ways forward. The volume is structured in three sections. The first opens a space for intellectual engagement with other disciplines such as Sociology, Peace Studies, Critical Pedagogy, and Indigenous Studies. The second looks at topics that have not received much attention within CTS, such as silences in discourses, the politics of counting dead bodies, temporality or anarchism. The third presents ways of 'performing' CTS through research-based artistic performances and productions. Overall, the volume opens up a space for broadening and pushing CTS forward in new and imaginative ways. This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, sociology and International Relations in general.

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.

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.

A comprehensive overview of warfare in Vietnamese history from the early efforts to free themselves from Chinese control, through the Indo-China and Vietnam Wars, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, up to the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. Concentrating on the Vietnam War, the author explores the conflict from the Vietnamese perspective, demonstrating how for many Vietnamese the war was merely one of a long series of struggles against foreign domination. Encompassing socio-political, economic, diplomatic and cultural issues, this text provides an introduction to Vietnam's military history and will be of interest to students of 20th century American and Asian history.

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse's critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of Marcuse's thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in Technology, War and Facism provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality.
Technology, War and Fascism is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203208315

Peacekeeping in the late 1990s is a complex and diverse task, in which civilian and military personnel are working together to a greater degree than ever before. However, when an international body such as the UN takes strategic decisions, it does so with inadequate input from the military; in the field, there are clashes of culture, confusion over command and control arrangements and insufficient operational coordination. These issues also affect regional organisations such as NATO. The awkward management of operations and their uneven level of achievement have contributed to a decline in the number of UN peacekeeping operations since 1994. This paper argues that the balance between civilian and military expertise and advice at all levels of a peacekeeping mission - strategic, tactical and operational - needs to be reappraised. At the strategic level: * mandates must be clear, and must respond both to the needs of the situation and to the resources available * there must be regular dialogue between all the principal players, military and civilian; the military-staff capacity at UN headquarters should be made more effective, and should be responsible to the Security Council * major troop-contributing countries should be systematically involved in determining mandates, as well as in reviewing operational plans * senior military officers from all large troop-contributing countries should be based at a mission's field headquarters. At the operational level: * the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General - the head of a UN peacekeeping mission - should be strengthened. In non-UN operations, the authority of the High Representative needs to be increased * a cadre of civilian officials with peacekeeping experience needs to be developed; standard operating procedures for the civilian head of a mission to follow when dealing with the military need to be developed * greater emphasis should be placed on the 'softer' aspects of military science - managing resources, civilian control and human rights * the reluctance of civilians and non-governmental organisations to engage with the military should be addressed. Much experience has been gained from the peacekeeping operations of the 1990s, but both military and civilian participants must make considerably more progress before they can be said to have forged a partnership that makes them an effective intervention force

The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a collection of vignettes written by Soviet junior officers describing their experiences fighting the Mujahideen guerrillas. The material was originally collected and published by the Frunze Combined Arms Staff College to serve as a text on combat against a guerrilla force in mountain-desert terrain. It was originally intended for internal use only and as such provides examples of both good and bad military practice. The hard lessons learned are not specifically 'Russian' in nature and many of the same mistakes and successes would apply equally to the American Army in Vietnam. Indeed, the knowledge gained from these reports should also apply to future conflicts involving civil war, guerrilla forces and rugged terrain.
This is not a history of the Soviet-Afghan War, but rather a series of snapshots of combat as seen by young platoon leaders, company commanders, battalion commanders and military advisers. It is an intimate look at the boring, brutal business of counterinsurgency punctuated by moments of heady excitement and terror.
Colonel Grau, the editor and translator, has added his own commentary to produce a useful guide for commanders to meet the challenges of this kind of war and to help keep his fellow soldiers alive. This book will also be of interest to the historian and general reader, who will discover that advances in technology have had little impact on this kind of war, and that many of the same tactics the British Army used on the Northwest Frontier still apply today.

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.

A collection of essays charting the developments in military practice and warfare across the world in the early modern and modern periods.

In Our Veterans, Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, and Jasper Craven explore the physical, emotional, social, economic, and psychological impact of military service and the problems that veterans face when they return to civilian life. The authors critically examine the role of advocacy organizations, philanthropies, corporations, and politicians who purport to be "pro-veteran." They describe the ongoing debate about the cost, quality, and effectiveness of healthcare provided or outsourced by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). They also examine generational divisions and political tensions among veterans, as revealed in the tumultuous events of 2020, from Black Lives Matter protests to the Trump-Biden presidential contest. Frank and revealing, Our Veterans proposes a new agenda for veterans affairs linking service provision to veterans to the quest for broader social programs benefiting all Americans.

Covering the important WW1 Battles of Ypres, including the notorious Passchendaele, this guidebook takes readers on a historic trip through some of the well-known and most important sites of the area. This book, part of a new series of guides, is designed conveniently in a small size, for those who have only limited time to visit, or who are simply interested in as an introduction to the historic battlefields, whether on the ground or from an armchair. They contain selections from the Holts' more detailed guides of the most popular and accessible sites plus hand tourist information, capturing the essential features of the Battles. The book contains many full colour maps and photographs and detailed instructions on what to see and where to visit.

The Cambridge Spies continue to fascinate - but one of them, John Cairncross, has always been more of an enigma than the others. He worked alone and was driven by his hostility to Fascism rather than to the promotion of Communism. During his war-time work at Bletchley Park, he passed documents to the Soviets which went on to influence the Battle of Kursk. Geoff Andrews gained exclusive access to the Cairncross papers and secrets, and has spoken to friends, relatives and former colleagues. In his portrait, a complex individual emerges – a scholar as well as a spy – whose motivations have often been misunderstood. After his resignation from the Civil Service, Cairncross moved to Italy and there he rebuilt his life as a foreign correspondent, editor and university professor. This gave him new circles and friendships – which included the writer Graham Greene – while he always lived with the fear that his earlier espionage would come to light. The full account of Cairncross's spying, his confession and his dramatic public exposure as the ‘fifth man’ is told here for the first time, unveiling the story of his post-espionage life.

In this book, U.S. Army officer and military historian Gregory Walden provides the most detailed look at the actions of a single German battalion in the Battle of the Bulge to date. Tigers in the Ardennes is the product of years of research in archives, conversations with German and American veterans, and detailed examination of terrain in the Ardennes battlefields. The author s experience as a tank unit commander provides unique insight into the tactical difficulties of armor movements through the Ardennes, especially considering the technical aspects of the Tiger II tanks. The book includes over 100 images, many of them photographs of the Tiger II tanks never before published, plus detailed maps showing the routes used by the 501st Heavy SS Tank Battalion during the battle."

In 1943, Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government at Los Alamos, a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands of men, women, and children spent the war years sequestered in this top-secret military facility. They lied to friends and family about where they were going and what they were doing and then disappeared into the desert. The women came despite the Army's initial objections, as Oppenheimer insisted that would be the only way to recruit the world-class physicists and keep them reasonably sane and content during the years it would take to create this revolutionary new weapon. Conant shows how the stringent security, lack of privacy, spartan living conditions, and loneliness of the isolated mountain hideaway drove some residents to the brink of despair. Yet only a handful gave up and left. Through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of Oppenheimer's first recruits, we see how, for all his flaws, he developed into an inspiring leader and motivated all those involved in the Los Alamos project to make a supreme effort and achieve the unthinkable.

This work contends that nations embroiled in Continental wars have historically had poor maritime strategies. After an analysis of existing literature on this subject and a discussion of case studies, Rear Admiral Menon develops the argument that those navies that have been involved in such wars have made poor contributions to the overall political objectives. Government neglect, inadequate funding and structures that are more appropriate to purely maritime wars are symptomatic of a universal strategic dilemma that arises from inadequate strategic theory.

Menon argues that current technological trends are likely to lead to fleets re-exerting their lost superiority against land-based means of conducting warfare, so long as the navies involved rebuild their structures to speed up the battle, since faster battle is the current strategic trend. Littoral superiority then becomes a naval objective on which to construct joint warfare.

From 1918 to 1939 one issue dominated French foreign and defence policy: the German problem. This work outlines France's strategies for protection and appeasement during this period and places inter-war relations in a larger European context. With contributions from scholars in the field, it examines: relationships with key countries such as Italy and Russia; the significance of inter-war France to 20th-century European integration; the historical context of the policies; and the setbacks and defeats of the period and how they should be evaluated.

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.

The author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind looks at covert operations and assassination plots in the medieval period, matching anything to be found in our own era. Alongside the familiar pitched battles, regular sieges, and large-scale manoeuvres, medieval and early modern wars also involved assassination, abduction, treason and sabotage. These undercover operations were aimed chiefly against key individuals, mostly royalty or the leaders of the opposing army, and against key fortified places, including bridges, mills and dams. However, because of their clandestine nature, these deeds of "derring-do" have not been studied in any detail, a major gap which this book fills. It surveys a wide variety of special operations, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. It then analyzes in greater depth six select and exciting operations: the betrayal of Antioch in 1098; the attempt to rescue King Baldwin II from the dungeon of Khartpert in 1123; the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat in 1192; the attempt to storm Calais in 1350; the "dirty war" waged by the rulers of France and Burgundy in the 1460s and 1470s; and the demolition of the flour mill of Auriol in 1536. "A portrait of espionage, covert operations, assassination squads, and the deep penetration of seemingly invulnerable fortresses or security systems matching anything to be found in the war stories of the modern era." MATTHEW BENNETT, SANDHURST. Professor YUVAL NOAH HARARI teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.