This is one of the most valuable books in the armoury of the serious student of British Military history. It is a new and revised edition of Arthur White's much sought-after bibliography of regimental, battalion and other histories of all regiments and Corps that have ever existed in the British Army. This new edition includes an enlarged addendum to that given in the 1988 reprint. It is, quite simply, indispensible.
Traditionally the military community held the intelligence profession in low esteem, spying was seen as dirty work and information was all to often ignored if it conflicted with a commander's own view. Handel examines the ways in which this situation has improved and argues that co-operation between the intelligence adviser and the military decision maker is vital.
When Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, Churchill called it the “largest capitulation in British history.” Till today, the myth persists that this was due to the British forces’ being caught off-guard, with their guns facing the wrong direction—towards the sea. This book offers an alternative insight into why Malaya and Singapore were captured by the Japanese. The question of the landward defence of Singapore and Malaya was first raised as early as 1918, eventually taking the form of Operation Matador, the elaborate planning and preparations for which amply demonstrate that the British fully expected the Japanese to attack Singapore from the rear, and had formulated a plan to stop the Japanese at the Kra Isthmus. Yet, when the Japanese forces landed, they found Malaya and Singapore defended by an emasculated fleet, obsolescent aircraft, inadequate artillery and no tanks. The battle for Malaya and Singapore was lost even before the first shot was fired—in the corridors of power at Whitehall. Churchill’s half-hearted support for Operation Matador meant that Malaya was starved of the necessary reinforcements, and the commanders on the spot were expected to “make bricks without straw.” The question that remains: If implemented, might Operation Matador have stopped the Japanese?
Shortly after midnight on 8 December 1941, two divisions of crack troops of the Imperial Japanese Army began a seaborne invasion of southern Thailand and northern Malaya. Their assault developed into a full-blown advance towards Singapore, the main defensive position of the British Empire in the Far East. The defending British, Indian, Australian and Malayan forces were outmanoeuvred on the ground, overwhelmed in the air and scattered on the sea. By the end of January 1942, British Empire forces were driven back onto the island of Singapore Itself, cut off from further outside help. When the Japanese stormed the island with an an-out assault, the defenders were quickly pushed back into a corner from which there was no escape. Singapore’s defenders finally capitulated on 15 February, to prevent the wholesale pillage of the city itself. Their rapid and total defeat was nothing less than military humiliation and political disaster. Based on the most extensive use yet of primary documents in Britain, Japan, Australia and Singapore, Brian Farrell provides the fullest picture of how and why Singapore fell and its real significance to the outcome of the Second World War.
Using archival, oral and literary sources, Blackburn and Hack, along with an impressive team of international contributors, rectify the obscured picture of the Japanese captive by bringing together, for the first time, a collection of essays covering an extremely broad range of forgotten captives.
John Ferris' work in strategic and intelligence history is widely praised for its originality and the breadth of its research. At last his major pioneering articles are now available in this one single volume. In Intelligence and Strategy these essential articles have been fundamentally revised to incorporate new evidence and information withheld by governments when they were first published. This volume reshapes the study of communications intelligence by tracing Britain's development of cipher machines providing the context to Ultra and Enigma, and by explaining how British and German signals intelligence shaped the desert war. The author also explains how intelligence affected British strategy and diplomacy from 1874 to 1940 and world diplomacy during the 1930s and the Second World War. Finally he traces the roots for contemporary intelligence, and analyzes intelligence and the RMA as well as the role of intelligence in the 2003 Gulf War. This volume ultimately brings new light to our understanding of the relations between intelligence, strategy and diplomacy between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
In this complete military history of Britain's pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Matthew Hughes shows how the British Army was so devastatingly effective against colonial rebellion. The Army had a long tradition of pacification to draw upon to support operations, underpinned by the creation of an emergency colonial state in Palestine. After conquering Palestine in 1917, the British established a civil Government that ruled by proclamation and, without any local legislature, the colonial authorities codified in law norms of collective punishment that the Army used in 1936. The Army used 'lawfare', emergency legislation enabled by the colonial state, to grind out the rebellion. Soldiers with support from the RAF launched kinetic operations to search and destroy rebel bands, alongside which the villagers on whom the rebels depended were subjected to curfews, fines, detention, punitive searches, demolitions and reprisals. Rebels were disorganised and unable to withstand the power of such pacification measures.
