Bøger i Modern War Studies serien

November 1917. The American troops were poorly trained, deficient in military equipment and doctrine, not remotely ready for armed conflict on a large scaleand they'd arrived on the Western front to help the French push back the Germans. The story of what happened nextthe American Expeditionary Force's trial by fire on the brutal battlefields of Franceis told in full for the first time in Thunder and Flames.Where history has given us some perspective on the individual battles of the periodat Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood, the Marne River, Soissons, and little-known Fismettethey appear here as part of a larger series of interconnected operations, all conducted by Americans new to the lethal killing fields of World War I and guided by the battle-tested French. Following the AEF from their initial landing to their emergence as an independent army in late September 1918, this book presents a complex picture of how, learning warfare on the fly, sometimes with devastating consequences, the American force played a critical role in blunting and then rolling back the German army's drive toward Paris. The picture that emerges is at once sweeping in scope and rich in detail, with firsthand testimony conjuring the real mud and blood of the combat that Edward Lengel so vividly describes. Official reports and documents provide the strategic and historical context for these ground-level accounts, from the perspective of the Germans as well as the Americans and French. Battle by battle, Thunder and Flames reveals the cost of the inadequacies in U.S. training, equipment, logistics, intelligence, and command, along with the rifts in the Franco-American military marriage. But it also shows how, by trial and error, through luck and ingenuity, the AEF swiftly became the independent fighting force of General John "e;Blackjack"e; Pershing's long-held dreamits divisions ultimately among the most combat-effective military forces to see the war through.

This is the biography of Benjamin O. Davis Sr., one of just six black officers in the line of the Regular Army in the 86 years from the Civil War to World War II. He became the only one to make the rank of brigadier general.

This title chronicles the struggles leading to the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces as well as its subsequent efforts to fulfill a difficult and sometimes controversial mission. The work provides a perspective on the uneasy relations between civil and military authority.

"An outstanding and welcome examination of a city of immense importance." - Civil War Book Review "A great read for local Civil War buffs and all of us enchanted by the city's past. Gerteis fills his narrative with vignettes that vividly capture the tone, mood, and values of the time." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch "The bloody divisions created by the Civil War were deeper and higher in the Union slave states, where Americans were divided from the beginning and where there were numerous civil wars within the Civil War. Nowhere is this more true than in St. Louis. And no one has told the story of St. Louis' civil wars better than Louis Gerteis.... A triumph." - Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America "The book is replete with gripping and unforgettable images, from the hobnailed boots of the amateur soldiers in the gunpowder room of the arsenal to the appalling refugee camps of the African Americans escaping slavery and war and the prisons for southern sympathizers." - Mark E. Neely, Jr., author of Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties"

Movingly chronicles the lives, deaths, and memory of nine Marines from the mining community of Morenci, Arizona, who were transformed from happy-go-lucky high schoolers to soldiers in Vietnam. Only three of them survived the war. Their story encompasses pride, loss, grief, and the devastating impact of war on a small town.

Thomas Taylor was a junior officer who fought under Sherman at Vicksburg and Chattanooga and on the march through Georgia. His diaries and letters contain vivid descriptions of numerous skirmishes and battles over four years. This volume interleaves Taylor's words with narrative.

In their initial effort to end the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to lever concessions from Hanoi at the negotiating table with military force and coercive diplomacy. They were not seeking military victory, which they did not believe was feasible. Instead, they backed up their diplomacy toward North Vietnam and the Soviet Union with the Madman Theory of threatening excessive force, which included the specter of nuclear force. They began with verbal threats then bombed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia, signaling that there was more to come. As the bombing expanded, they launched a previously unknown mining ruse against Haiphong, stepped-up their warnings to Hanoi and Moscow, and initiated planning for a massive shock-and-awe military operation referred to within the White House inner circle as DUCK HOOK.Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for "e;tactical"e; nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent.In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a "e;special reminder"e; of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a "e;long-route"e; policy of providing Saigon with a "e;decent chance"e; of survival for a "e;decent interval"e; after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina. Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international "e;nuclear taboo,"e; and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.

The definitive account of the most famous African American fighting unit in World War I and their quest for equality in the United States.

The only full account of the British Indian Army's most remarkable transformation and turnaround from serial defeat to victory and war winning triumph in the Asia/Pacific theatre of World War II.

During its struggle for survival from 1954 to 1975, the region known as the Central Highlands was the strategically vital high ground for the South Vietnamese state. Successive governments, their American allies, and their Communist enemies all realized early on the fundamental importance of this region. Paul Harris's book examines the struggle for this region from the mid-1950s to 1965.

Continuing his magisterial account of the Eastern Front campaigns, David M. Glantz focuses here on the Red Army's operations from the fall of 1943 to April 1944. Glantz chronicles the Soviet Army's efforts to further exploit their post-Kursk gains and accelerate a counteroffensive that would eventually take them all the way to Berlin.

The most comprehensive and most readable account of the Battle of Shiloh.

A new English translation of Ardant du Picqs classic Battle Studies, introduced by a new biographical essay. Battle Studies is one of handful of books which address the experience of combat directly.

An intimate history of the lives of ordinary Japanese during World War II. Among others readers are introduced to housewives in provincial cities struggling to feed their families while supporting the war effort, a conscript who endured the harshest and most abusive training imaginable, and a Kyoto octogenarian whose inability to contribute to the war effort leads him to contemplate suicide.

The war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) has been called ""the Soviet Union's Vietnam War"", a conflict that pitted Soviet regulars against a relentless, Afghan guerilla force. In this work, the Russian general staff takes a close critical look at the Soviet military's performance in that war.

The German offensive on Stalingrad was originally intended to secure the Wehrmacht's flanks, but it stalled dramatically in the face of Stalin's order: 'Not a Step Back!' This title looks at this most iconic military campaign of the Eastern Front and Hitler's first great strategic defeat.

The confrontation between German and Soviet forces at Stalingrad was a titanic clash of armies on an unprecedented scale - a campaign that was both a turning point in WWII and a lasting symbol of that war's power and devastation. This book provides an account of the opening phase of this iconic Eastern Front campaign.

One of the least-known stories of World War II, Operation Mars was an epic military disaster. Designed to dislodge the German Army from its position west of Moscow, Mars cost the Soviets an estimated 335,000 dead, missing, and wounded men and over 1,600 tanks. But in Russian history books, it was a battle that never happened-a historical debacle sacrificed to Stalin's postwar censorship.

In the twenty years since When Titans Clashed was published significant new sources of information on the Soviet-Nazi war have come to light and are now incorporated into this new and expanded edition.

Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces.

In the face of the German onslaught in World War II, the Soviets succeeded, as Molotov later recalled, in relocating to the rear virtually an entire industrial country. It was an official declared one of the greatest feats of the war. Focusing on the Kirov region, this book offers a different and considerably more nuanced picture of the evacuations than the typical triumphal narrative found in Soviet history. In its depiction of the complexities of the displacement and relocation of populations, Stalins World War II Evacuations also has remarkable relevance in our time of mass migrations of refugees from war-torn nations.The citizens and government of Kirov, some 500 miles northeast of Moscow, provided food, clothing, and shelter to the people and institutions that descended on the region in numbers far exceeding prewar plans or anyone's imagination. But as they continued to share their already strained resourceswith adult evacuees, Leningrads children, wounded and ill soldiers, factories, and commissariatsthe people of Kirov became increasingly resentful, especially as it grew clear that the war would be prolonged, and that their guests demanded privileged treatment. Larry E. Holmes reveals how, without directly challenging the Stalinist system, they vigorously advanced their own private and regional interests. He shows that, as Kirov and Moscow pursued their respective agendas, sometimes in concert but increasingly at cross-purposes, they exposed preexisting and highly dysfunctional dimensions of Soviet governance at both the center and the periphery.The dictatorial center and the periphery literally came face-to-face in the evacuation to Kirov, allowing for a new, informed understanding of the tensions inherent in the Stalinist system, and of the power politics of the wartime Soviet Union.

For Frederick the Great, the prescription for warfare was simple: kurz und vives (""short and lively"") - wars that relied upon swift, powerful, and decisive military operations. Robert Citino takes us on a dramatic march through Prussian and German military history to show how that primal theme played out time and time again.

Chronicles the costliest battle in American military history--in terms of the totals of American troops involved, the number of casualties suffered, and the length of time it lasted. Masterfully portrays America's culminating campaign in World War I in all of its complexity while never forgetting the very human side of the people who planned and fought the battle.

During the Civil War, thirty-six officers in the Army of the Potomac were assigned corps commands of up to 30,000 men. This book looks at this command cadre, examining who was appointed to these positions, why they were appointed, and why so many of them ultimately failed to fulfill their responsibilities.

In 1847, General Winfield Scott's military campaign helped pave the way for victory in the wider war against Mexico and also posed new challenges for discipline and logistics. This work highlights the visionary command of this general, the toughness of the troops he led, and the emergence of the United States as a potential global military power.

Focuses on 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'.

The dramatic story of the 1945 war crimes trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who was charged with atrocities he neither committed nor ordered--and of which he likely had no knowledge. Even so, he was convicted and, following a Supreme Court review, executed for having failed to control his troops.