Called "the preeminent survey of American military history" by Russell F. Weigley, America's foremost military historian, "For the Common Defense "is an essential contribution to the field of military history. This carefully researched third edition provides the most complete and current history of United States defense policy and military institutions and the conduct of America's wars. Without diminishing the value of its earlier editions, authors Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis provide a fresh perspective on the continuing issues that characterize national security policy. They have updated the work with new material covering nearly twenty years of scholarship, including the history of the American military experience in the Balkans and Somalia, analyzing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2012, and providing two new chapters on the Vietnam War.
"For the Common Defense "examines the nation's pluralistic military institutions in both peace and war, the tangled civil-military relations that created the country's commitment to civilian control of the military, the armed forces' increasing nationalization and professionalization, and America's growing reliance on sophisticated technologies spawned by the Industrial Revolution and the Computer and Information Ages. This edition is also a timely reminder that vigilance is indeed the price of liberty but that vigilance has always been--and continues to be--a costly, complex, and contentious undertaking in a world that continually tests America's willingness and ability to provide for the common defense.

In the course of the twentieth century, no war looms as profoundly transformative or as destructive as World War II. Its global scope and human toll reveal the true face of modern, industrialized warfare. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive, single-volume account of how and why this global conflict evolved as it did. A War To Be Won is a unique and powerful operational history of the Second World War that tells the full story of battle on land, on sea, and in the air. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett analyze the operations and tactics that defined the conduct of the war in both the European and Pacific Theaters. Moving between the war room and the battlefield, we see how strategies were crafted and revised, and how the multitudes of combat troops struggled to discharge their orders. The authors present incisive portraits of the military leaders, on both sides of the struggle, demonstrating the ambiguities they faced, the opportunities they took, and those they missed. Throughout, we see the relationship between the actual operations of the war and their political and moral implications. A War To Be Won is the culmination of decades of research by two of America's premier military historians. It avoids a celebratory view of the war but preserves a profound respect for the problems the Allies faced and overcame as well as a realistic assessment of the Axis accomplishments and failures. It is the essential military history of World War II-from the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the surrender of Japan in 1945-for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

Existing literature maintains that the U.S. Marine Corps’ operational success in the Pacific War rested upon two dominant themes: committed theoretical preparation and courageous battlefield action. Put simply, the Marines wrestled with the conceptual challenges of the amphibious assault in the 1920s and 1930s and developed the tools and methods necessary to seize a hostile beach. When Japanese forces attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Corps sent its brave and spirited infantrymen to advance across the enemy-held islands of the South and Central Pacific. But the full story runs much deeper. Though this conventional narrative captures essential elements of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps' triumph, it fails to account for substantial interwar deficiencies in fire control and coordination, as well as the critical wartime development of those capabilities between 1942 and 1945. Delivering Destruction is the first detailed study of American triphibious (land, sea, and air) firepower coordination in the Pacific War. In describing the Amphibious Corps' development of fire coordination teams and tactics in the Central Pacific, Hemler underlines the importance of wartime adaptation, battlefield coordination, and the primacy of the human element in naval combat. He reveals the untold story of American fire control and coordination teams in the Central Pacific. Through “bottom-up” adaptation and innovation, American troops and officers worked out practical solutions in the field, learning to effectively apply and integrate air and naval support during a contested amphibious assault. The Americans' ability to mount tremendous, synchronized firepower at the beachhead–a capability established through three years of grueling wartime adaptation–allowed the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to seize any fortified Japanese island of its choice by 1945. ·Despite advancing technology and expanding “domains” of warfare, combat remains a deeply interactive, human endeavor.

In the spring and summer of 1951 the war in Korea took a different form, moving from the period of sweeping offensives and withdrawals to a bitter, slow, costly, and violent operational tempo. The fighting northeast of the Hwachon Reservoir-- known as the "Punchbowl"-was some of the fiercest the Marine Corps faced in its history. Not only did the Marine Corps have to fight North Korean and Chinese armies, it also had to overcome strained inter-Service relationships that affected everything from supply to close air support (CAS). The Battle of the Punchbowl, was one of the last battles of the movement phase of the Korean War. Following the breakdown of armistice negotiations in August 1951, the United Nations Command decided to launch a limited offensive in the late summer/early autumn to shorten and straighten sections of their lines, acquire better defensive terrain, and deny the enemy key vantage points from which they could observe and target UN positions. The Battle of Bloody Ridge took place west of the Punchbowl from August-September 1951 and this was followed by the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge northwest of the Punchbowl from September-October 1951. At the end of the UN offensive in October 1951, UN Forces controlled the line of hills north of the Punchbowl.

This official U.S. Marine Corps history provides unique information about important aspects of the Korean War.

Eight scholars - Alan R. Millett, Paul Kennedy, Earl F. Ziemke, Alvin D. Coox, Williamson Murray, Brian Sullivan, Steven Ross and Calvin L. Christman - examine the methods used by the major powers of World War II to evaluate their own and their enemies' military capacity.

Fifty years after the Korean conflict, what is a forgotten war for some Americans is an aching memory for China. With over a million casualties out of the three million soldiers sent into battle, that war looms as large for the People's Republic of China (PRC)-barely a year old when North Korea invaded the South-as World War II does for most other countries. It was the first international war fought by the Chinese Communist regime to halt counterrevolution; it was also a war that the Chinese fully expected to win, by virtue of not only superiority of numbers but also their soldiers' superior "political quality."

This book presents a mosaic of memoirs by key Chinese military commanders from that war, drawing not only on their personal papers but also on still-classified archives and on Chinese-language sources unavailable in English. It offers an uncensored, behind-the-scenes story of the Communist campaign, from the decision to intervene through the truce negotiations, that discloses new information on such facets of the war as strategy and tactics, use of propaganda, and mobilization of the Chinese population. It also reveals the generals' concerns about the possible use of nuclear force and the alleged use of biological and chemical weapons by the United States.

The book contains a wealth of new materials on the Chinese intervention, including combat operations, logistics, political control, field command, and communications. Among those whose recollections are recorded, then-acting Chief of Staff Nie Rongzhen reveals how party leadership decided on intervention, Commander in Chief Peng Dehuai provides personal accounts of major battles and communications with Mao, and General Yang Dezhi shares secrets of Chinese military strategy and tactics, discussing how the army orchestrated each battle to contend with the better equipped UN forces. The volume also features an updated short history of the PRC's conduct of the war based on Chinese sources, plus rare photos from Chinese archives that put readers behind the lines from the Chinese side.

"Mao's Generals Remember Korea" demonstrates that the PRC continues to draw military, diplomatic, and strategic lessons from the war it fought fifty years ago with the world's most powerful military force. It offers valuable insight into the Chinese way of war and the military mind of Mao that will be a rich resource for Asian and military scholars.

Harry S. Truman Book Award In The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning, one of our most distinguished military historians argued that the conflict on the Korean peninsula in the middle of the twentieth century was first and foremost a war between Koreans that began in 1948. In the second volume of a monumental trilogy, Allan R. Millett now shifts his focus to the twelve-month period from North Korea's invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950, through the end of June 1951-the most active phase of the internationalized "Korean War." Moving deftly between the battlefield and the halls of power, Millett weaves together military operations and tactics without losing sight of Cold War geopolitics, strategy, and civil-military relations. Filled with new insights on the conflict, his book is the first to give combined arms its due, looking at the contributions and challenges of integrating naval and air power with the ground forces of United Nations Command and showing the importance of Korean support services. He also provides the most complete, and sympathetic, account of the role of South Korea's armed forces, drawing heavily on ROK and Korea Military Advisory Group sources. Millett integrates non-American perspectives into the narrative-especially those of Mao Zedong, Chinese military commander Peng Dehuai, Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung, and Syngman Rhee. And he portrays Walton Walker and Matthew Ridgway as the heroes of Korea, both of whom had a more profound understanding of the situation than Douglas MacArthur, whose greatest flaw was not his politics but his strategic and operational incompetence. Researched in South Korean, Chinese, and Soviet as well as American and UN sources, Millett has exploited previously ignored or neglected oral history collections-including interviews with American and South Korean officers-and has made extensive use of reports based on interrogations of North Korean and Chinese POWs. The end result is masterful work that provides both a gripping narrative and a greater understanding of this key conflict in international and American history.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental re-examination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 1 covers World War I. Volumes 2 and 3 address the interwar period and World War II, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental reexamination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 2 covers the interwar period. The other two volumes address World War I and World War II, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental re-examination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 3 covers World War II. Volumes 1 and 2 address address World War I and the interwar period, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental re-examination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 1 covers World War I. Volumes 2 and 3 address the interwar period and World War II, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental reexamination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 2 covers the interwar period. The other two volumes address World War I and World War II, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

This three-volume study examines the questions raised by the performance of the military institutions of France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy in the period from 1914 to 1945. Leading military historians deal with the different national approaches to war and military power at the tactical, operational, strategic, and political levels. They form the basis for a fundamental re-examination of how military organizations have performed in the first half of the twentieth century. Volume 3 covers World War II. Volumes 1 and 2 address address World War I and the interwar period, respectively. Now in a new edition, with a new introduction by the editors, these classic volumes will remain invaluable for military historians and social scientists in their examination of national security and military issues. They will also be essential reading for future military leaders at Staff and War Colleges.

Although many books about the Civil War have been written by veterans, few provide an accurate and entertaining portrayal of the daily life of a soldier, as does "Corporal Si Klegg and His "Pard."""" The book, first published in 1887, gives an inside look at the transformation from citizen to soldier and the diverse and constantly changing experiences on the march, on the battlefield, in camp, and in the hospital. Although the main characters, Si Klegg and his partner "Shorty," are fictional, as is their company, Wilbur F. Hinman himself was a four-year veteran of the war. He speaks with the authority of a soldier who participated in several battles with the Sixty-fifth Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which lost 25 percent of its strength to battlefield deaths and disease. He gives a true voice to the individual soldier, presents a realistic picture of army life, and provides an accurate feel for how Civil War soldiers lived and died. The life of a Civil War soldier is so realistically portrayed, both in the text and through the illustrations, that this book has become an indispensable reference for Civil War reenactors attempting to perfectly reconstruct the experiences of the common soldier during the war. Allan R. Millett provides an introduction to this Bison Books edition.

In 1914, the armies and navies that faced each other were alike, right down to the strengths of their companies and battalions and the designs of their battleships and cruisers. Differences were of degree rather than essence. During the interwar period, however, the armed forces grew increasingly asymmetrical, developing different approaches to the same problems. This study of major military innovations in the 1920s and 1930s explores differences in exploitation by the seven major military powers. The comparative essays investigate how and why innovation occurred or did not occur, and explain much of the strategic and operative performance of the Axis and Allies in World War II. The essays focus on several instances of how military services developed new technology and weapons and incorporated them into their doctrine, organization and styles of operations.

When the major powers sent troops to the Korean peninsula in June of 1950, it supposedly marked the start of one of the last century's bloodiest conflicts. Allan Millett, however, reveals that the Korean War actually began with partisan clashes two years earlier and had roots in the political history of Korea under Japanese rule, 1910-1945. The first in a new two-volume history of the Korean War, Millett's study offers the most comprehensive account of its causes and early military operations. Millett traces the war's origins to the post-liberation conflict between two revolutionary movements, the Marxist-Leninists and the Nationalist-capitalists. With the U.S.-Soviet partition of Korea following World War II, each movement, now with foreign patrons, asserted its right to govern the peninsula, leading directly to the guerrilla warfare and terrorism in which more than 30,000 Koreans died. Millett argues that this civil strife, fought mostly in the South, was not so much the cause of the Korean War as its actual beginning. Millett describes two revolutions locked in irreconcilable conflict, offering an even-handed treatment of both Communists and capitalists-nationalists. Neither movement was a model of democracy. He includes Korean, Chinese, and Russian perspectives on this era, provides the most complete account of the formation of the South Korean army, and offers new interpretations of the U.S. occupation of Korea, 1945-1948. Millett's history redefines the initial phase of the war in Asian terms. His book shows how both internal forces and international pressures converged to create the Korean War, a conflict that still shapes the politics of Asia.

This study of major military innovations in the 1920s and 1930s explores differences in innovating exploitation by the seven major military powers. This volume of comparative essays investigates how and why innovation occurred or did not occur, and explains much of the strategic and operative performance of the Axis and Allies in World War II.

A veteran of both world wars and the Korean War, Gen. Gerald C. Thomas helped change the Marine Corps in the twentieth century. Though not as well-known as John Lejeune, Chesty Puller, and A. A. Vandegrift, he was, as this book clearly demonstrates, responsible for the transformation of the Marines into a highly effective amphibious assault force and Cold War force in readiness.In this volume, the well-known military historian Allan R. Millett provides not only an assessment of General Thomas's career but an objective analysis of the creation of the modern Marine Corps. At the same time, he offers an expert interpretation of the "inside" leadership of the Corps. Millett has based the book on documentary research in private and official papers, including the general's own oral memoir and draft autobiography.

In 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African-Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant--who tried to avoid combat--to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant.

Then Washington's politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat inside a lightless tunnel. As his mid-summer date to return home approached, Gillam became fiercely determined to come home alive. The ultimate test of that determination came during the Cambodian invasion. On his last night in Cambodia, the enemy got inside the wire of the firebase, and the killing became close range and brutal.

Gillam left the Army in June 1970, and within two weeks of his last encounter with death, he was once again a college student and destined to become a university professor. The nightmares and guilt about killing are gone, and so is the callous on his soul. "Life and Death in the Central Highlands" is a gripping, personal account of one soldier's war in the Vietnam War.

"Number 5 in the North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series"

"Jim Gillam experienced real combat in his Vietnam tour. His stunning accounts of killing and avoiding being killed ring true. Although wounded several times, Jim did not leave the field for treatment in a field hospital, so he never generated the paperwork for a Purple Heart or two or three. Although he would be appalled at the thought, his attention to duty was 'lifer' behavior, a concern for the well-being of his squad that represents the best of NCO leadership in any army."--Allan R. Millett, author of "Semper Fidelis" and coauthor of "A War to Be Won"

" Gillam] looks back on his experiences of Vietnam not solely as a participant in the war, but also with the critical eye of a trained historian. . . . He] uses an impressive array of after action reports, duty officer logs, battlefield reports, and other primary source material, to back up and reinforce his recollections."--" Journal of Military History "review by James H. Willbanks, author of "The Tet Offensive"

"Gillam, a 'shake and bake' sergeant, presents a good account of small unit infantry action during the war. He is very good at explaining the weaponry, tactics, and living conditions in the field."--James E. Westheider, author of "The African-American Experience in Vietnam"