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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence
On 2 September 1944, a German Wehrmacht Liaison Officer was
captured by the Russians in Bucharest. His name was
Lieutenant-Colonel Heinz-Helmut von Hinckeldey and he was to remain
a "war convict" of the Soviets until 1955. For 11 years,
Heinz-Helmut von Hinckeldey had to endure the deprivation - both
physical and psychological - of imprisonment; the filth and squalor
of the cells, in which he was kept; the agony of isolation and
repeated self-examination; and the pain of ignorance, of not
knowing if his motherland (Germany) still existed or whether those
he loved, ever realized that he was alive. The personal Story that,
like countless others, would never have been told, had it not been
for the admiration and fascination built up over time by the
Author, Charles Wood
a Call Them the Happy Yearsa recounts at first hand the first 40
years of the life of Barbara Everard in her own words, augmented,
now in this second edition, with her elder son, Martina s boyhood
memories of some of those years. From a privileged early childhood
as a daughter of a wealthy Sussex farming family, Barbara grew up
through the depression desperate to become an artist, an ambition
that she achieved with award-winning success as one of the worlda s
foremost botanical artists. But this followed some years of
colonial life in Malaya and the horrors of war both in Singapore
and England, described in graphic detail as is her husband, Raya s
story as a Japanese PoW on the infamous Siam railway.
Michael Oppenheimer's Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures is both
a synthesis of our knowledge on scenario planning and a practical
guide for policymakers. One of America's leading scenario planners,
Oppenheimer has advised the Department of State, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President's
Science Advisor, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the
Brookings Institution. In this book, he develops a sophisticated
and coherent method for foreign policy specialists who necessarily
deal with rapidly changing situations involving high levels of
uncertainty. As he explains, figuring out possible outcomes and
designing and appropriate policy requires an ability to identify
the drivers of change, the potential wild card events, and the
central policy questions in any given situation. Once policymakers
determine these, they must plan a scenario. To do that, planners
need to know how to build the best team of experts possible, run a
session, and create credible narratives for different scenario
alternatives. To illustrate how it all works, Oppenheimer draws
from a range of real-life planning scenarios, including China,
Syria, and the Iran nuclear crisis. To be sure, new crises will
arise that supplant these current ones, but his basic method will
aid policymakers in almost every future situation. While nothing
ever goes completely to plan-least of all international
conflict-preparing with multiple scenarios in mind will always be
the least worst approach to global and regional crises.
Methodologically rigorous and comprehensive, Pivotal Countries,
Alternate Futures will be essential reading for policymakers and
policy students trying to determine the best path forward in any
given crisis.
In late November 1864, the last Southern army east of the
Mississippi that was still free to maneuver started out from
northern Alabama on the Confederacy's last offensive. John Bell
Hood and his Army of Tennessee had dreams of capturing Nashville
and marching on to the Ohio River, but a small Union force under
Hood's old West Point roommate stood between him and the state
capital. In a desperate attempt to smash John Schofield's line at
Franklin, Hood threw most of his men against the Union works,
centered on the house of a family named Carter, and lost 30 percent
of his attacking force in one afternoon, crippling his army and
setting it up for a knockout blow at Nashville two weeks later.
With firsthand accounts, letters and diary entries from the Carter
House Archives, local historian James R. Knight paints a vivid
picture of this gruesome conflict.
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A riveting account of
a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand
Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the
Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining
moment of the twentieth century. 'Exhaustive, clearly written,
deeply researched' - The Times 'A meticulous, original and deeply
affecting historical account' - Philippe Sands, author of East West
Street Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were
murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed
the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of
separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors
with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah
scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely
forgotten today, these pogroms - ethnic riots - dominated headlines
and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that
six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty
years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon
long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly
discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders,
acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how
this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the
Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers,
and governmental officials, he explains how so many different
groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was
an acceptable response to their various problems.
Leadership Strategy and Tactics is the essential and practical guide to leadership and how to excel at it from Jocko Willink, the co-author of the number one New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership.
Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavours. It is often misunderstood. It can bewilder, mystify and frustrate even the most dedicated practitioners. Leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
There are principles that can be applied and tenets that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and manoeuvres that can be practised and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield, in business and in life.
Retired Navy SEAL Officer Jocko Willink delivers his powerful and pragmatic leadership methodology that teaches how to lead any team in any situation to victory. Here, you will learn how to:
- Deal with egos and the problems they cause
- Earn and build trust with both your subordinates and superiors
- Instil pride in your team, without creating arrogance
- Overcome challenges presented by a micromanaging, indecisive or weak boss
- Create a disciplined team that regulates itself
- Use leadership as a tool to teach, mentor, train and correct behaviour of team members
- Operate at a maximum level of efficiency – and reap the rewards
This book is step one towards becoming the commander of your own life. The rest is up to you.
The fifteen new essays collected in this volume address questions
concerning the ethics of self-defense, most centrally when and to
what extent the use of defensive force, especially lethal force,
can be justified. Scholarly interest in this topic reflects public
concern stemming from controversial cases of the use of force by
police, and military force exercised in the name of defending
against transnational terrorism. The contributors pay special
attention to determining when a threat is liable to defensive harm,
though doubts about this emphasis are also raised. The legitimacy
of so-called "stand your ground" policies and laws is also
addressed. This volume will be of great interest to readers in
moral, political, and legal philosophy.
Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars has fundamentally changed the way
both scholars and policy-makers understand contemporary war and
conflict. In the context of globalization, this path-breaking book
has shown that what we think of as war - that is to say, war
between states in which the aim is to inflict maximum violence - is
becoming an anachronism. In its place is a new type of organized
violence or 'new wars', which could be described as a mixture of
war, organized crime and massive violations of human rights. The
actors are both global and local, public and private. The wars are
fought for particularistic political goals using tactics of terror
and destabilization that are theoretically outlawed by the rules of
modern warfare. Kaldor's analysis offers a basis for a cosmopolitan
political response to these wars, in which the monopoly of
legitimate organized violence is reconstructed on a transnational
basis and international peacekeeping is reconceptualized as
cosmopolitan law enforcement. This approach also has implications
for the reconstruction of civil society, political institutions,
and economic and social relations. This third edition has been
fully revised and updated. Kaldor has added an afterword answering
the critics of the New Wars argument and, in a new chapter, Kaldor
shows how old war thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly
exacerbated what turned out to be, in many ways, archetypal new
wars - characterised by identity politics, a criminalised war
economy and civilians as the main victims. Like its predecessors,
the third edition of New and Old Wars will be essential reading for
students of international relations, politics and conflict studies
as well as to all those interested in the changing nature and
prospect of warfare.
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