The International Brigades

The International Brigades

Author: Giles Tremlett

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 1408854007

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

** Shortlisted for the Military History Matters Book of the Year Award ** 'Magnificent. Narrative history at its vivid and compelling best' Fergal Keane The first major history of the International Brigades: a tale of blood, ideals and tragedy in the fight against fascism. The Spanish Civil War was the first armed battle in the fight against fascism, and a rallying cry for a generation. Over 35,000 volunteers from sixty-one countries around the world came to defend democracy against the troops of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Ill-equipped and disorderly, yet fuelled by a shared sense of purpose and potential glory, these disparate groups of idealistic young men and women formed a volunteer army of a size and type unseen since the Crusades, known as the International Brigades. Were they heroes or fools? Saints or bloodthirsty adventurers? And what exactly did they achieve? In this magisterial history, Giles Tremlett tells – for the first time – the story of the Spanish Civil War through the experiences of this remarkable group. Drawing on the Brigades' archives in Moscow, as well as first-hand accounts, The International Brigades captures all the human drama of a historic mission to halt fascist expansion in Europe.


Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy

Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy

Author: Mark A. Drumbl

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-01-26

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0199592659

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.


Soldiers of Empire

Soldiers of Empire

Author: Tarak Barkawi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-06-08

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1107169585

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.


What Soldiers Do

What Soldiers Do

Author: Mary Louise Roberts

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-05-17

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0226923096

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.


The Lincoln Brigade

The Lincoln Brigade

Author: William Loren Katz

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-05-15

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1620329018

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

THE LINCOLN BRIGADE The day after Christmas in 1936, a group of ninety-six Americans sailed from New York to help Spain defend its democratic government against fascism. Ultimately, twenty-eight hundred United States volunteers reached Spain to become the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Few Lincolns had any military training. More than half were seriously wounded or died in battle. Most Lincolns were activists and idealists who had worked with and demonstrated for the homeless and unemployed during the Great Depression. They were poets and blue-collar workers, professors and students, seamen and journalists, lawyers and painters, Christians and Jews, blacks and whites. The Brigade was the first fully integrated United States army, and Oliver Law, an African American from Texas, was an early Lincoln commander. William Loren Katz and the late Marc Crawford twice traveled with the Brigade to Spain in the 1980s, interviewed surviving Lincolns on old battlefields, and obtained never-before-published documents and photographs for this book.


Transnational Soldiers

Transnational Soldiers

Author: N. Arielli

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-11-28

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1137296631

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Warfare in the modern era has often been described in terms of national armies fighting national wars. This volume challenges the view by examining transnational aspects of military mobilization from the eighteenth century to the present. Truly global in scope, it offers an alternative way of reading the military history of the last 250 years.


Secret Soldiers

Secret Soldiers

Author: Philip Gerard

Publisher: Dutton Books

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780525946649

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Secret Solders" reveals how an extraordinary group of American artists, designers, and engineering wizards became America's unsung heroes of the Second World War. Photo inserts.


The Military Balance 2022

The Military Balance 2022

Author: The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-02-14

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 1000619729

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Published each year since 1959, The Military Balance is an indispensable reference to the capabilities of armed forces across the globe. It is used by academia, the media, armed forces, the private sector and government. It is an open-source assessment of the military forces and equipment inventories of 171 countries, with accompanying defence economics and procurement data. Alongside detailed country data, The Military Balance assesses important defence issues, by region, as well as key global trends, such as in defence technology and equipment modernisation. This analysis is accompanied by full-colour graphics, including maps and illustrations. With extensive explanatory notes and reference information, The Military Balance is as straightforward to use as it is extensive. The 2022 edition is accompanied by a fullcolour wall chart illustrating security dynamics in the Arctic.


The Stuff of Soldiers

The Stuff of Soldiers

Author: Brandon M. Schechter

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1501739816

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Stuff of Soldiers uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon M. Schechter attends to a diverse array of things—from spoons to tanks—to show how a wide array of citizens became soldiers, and how the provisioning of material goods separated soldiers from civilians. Through a fascinating examination of leaflets, proclamations, newspapers, manuals, letters to and from the front, diaries, and interviews, The Stuff of Soldiers reveals how the use of everyday items made it possible to wage war. The dazzling range of documents showcases ethnic diversity, women's particular problems at the front, and vivid descriptions of violence and looting. Each chapter features a series of related objects: weapons, uniforms, rations, and even the knick-knacks in a soldier's rucksack. These objects narrate the experience of people at war, illuminating the changes taking place in Soviet society over the course of the most destructive conflict in recorded history. Schechter argues that spoons, shovels, belts, and watches held as much meaning to the waging of war as guns and tanks. In The Stuff of Soldiers, he describes the transformative potential of material things to create a modern culture, citizen, and soldier during World War II.