"From June 1941 through September 1944, German forces fought the Soviets in the Arctic and sub-Arctic as allies of the Finns. This work compares German, Finnish, and Soviet tactics, equipment, and organization and discusses the unique terrain features"--Publisher's website
"From June 1941 through September 1944, German forces fought the Soviets in the Arctic and sub-Arctic as allies of the Finns. This work compares German, Finnish, and Soviet tactics, equipment, and organization and discusses the unique terrain features"--Publisher's website.
In his book Magnus Nordenman sets out to explore the emerging competition between the United States and its allies in NATO and the resurgent Russian navy in the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic played a key role in the two world wars and the Cold War as the strategic link between the United States and Europe that allowed reinforcements and supplies to flow to embattled allies. Nordenman shows that while a conflict in Europe has never been won in the North Atlantic it surely has been lost there. However the North Atlantic fell away from attention as the Cold War ended the Russian navy fell into decay and the United States and its allies turned to counter-terrorism and expeditionary operations in the far corners of the earth.With Vladimir Putin's Russia threatening the peace in Europe since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 the North Atlantic and other maritime domains around Europe are once again coming into focus. But this battle will be different Nordenman shows due to an overstretched US Navy disruptive technologies a NATO that woke up to the Russian challenge while essentially unprepared for high-end warfighting in the maritime domain and a Russia that commands a far smaller but more sophisticated navy equipped with long-range cruise missiles that have already been used in operations in Syria. Nordenman concludes that the new contest in the North Atlantic will not be about keeping the sea lanes open or facing down a Russian anti-shipping campaign in the vast expanses of the ocean. Instead the Russian threat comes from submarines operating in the far North Atlantic where they can strike at targets across Europe using long-range cruise missiles.Nordenman's book describes the evolution of warfare in the North Atlantic in the 20th century and points to the enduring strategic factors and dynamics in that maritime domain that must be kept in mind as the United States and NATO devises new strategies for defense and deterrence in the North Atlantic. He also highlights how the strategic and operational environment has changed since the end of the Cold War with the coming of new technologies new players in the North Atlantic and the new Russian way of war in the maritime domain. He concludes with a set of recommendations for the United States and its NATO allies on how to build an effective approach to ensuring that the North Atlantic remains an open bridge between North America and Europe in both peace and war.
Far North is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn. Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps last citizen—patrols a city's ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair. Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism. What Makepeace finds is a world unraveling: stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace's journey—rife with danger—also leads to an unexpected redemption. Far North takes the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity's origins to its possible end. Haunting, spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world's fragility and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst trespasses.
This is a reprint of the final volume of the acclaimed 'Jagdwaffe' series. This title was first published only last year. The 'Jagdwaffe' series represents one of the most comprehensive pictorial accounts of the air war in Europe between 1939 and 1945 from the standpoint of the Luftwaffe, its aircraft and its crew. Each volume incorporates more than 200 rare images, many previously unpublished, alongside specially commissioned colour artwork, detailed narrative and personal reminiscences. As such, the books provide a unique insight into the men and equipment of the Luftwaffe during this period.This final volume in the series covers the final phase of World War 2 in Europe, with the German forces on the retreat in Italy and on both the Western and Eastern fronts. For the Luftwaffe, increasingly short of serviceable aircraft and more importantly trained pilots to fly them, it was a period when supremacy over the sky was ceded to the victorious Allies.Although the recently-introduced jet aircraft promised a great deal in terms of performance against more traditional aircraft types, production was limited and their arrival was too late to swing the tide of war in Germany's favour. With the might of the Allied bombing fleets appearing regularly over the skies of Germany and with raw materials, in particular aviation, fuel, increasingly scarce, the last months of the war represented a struggle for the aircrew, where few expected to survive.
In the past the German General Staff had taken no interest in the military history of wars in the north and east of Europe. Nobody had ever taken into account the possibility that some day German divisions would have to fight and to winter in northern Karelia and on the Murmansk coast. (Lieutenant-General Waldemar Erfurth, German Army). Despite this statement, the German Armys first campaign in the far north was a great success: between April and June 1940 German forces totaling less than 20,000 men seized Norway, a state of three million people, for minimal losses. Hitlers Arctic War is a study of the campaign waged by the Germans on the northern periphery of Europe between 1940 and 1945.As Hitlers Arctic War makes clear, the emphasis was on small-unit actions, with soldiers carrying everything they needed food, ammunition and medical supplies on their backs. The terrain placed limitations on the use of tanks and heavy artillery, while lack of airfields restricted the employment of aircraft.Hitlers Arctic War also includes a chapter on the campaign fought by Luftwaffe aircraft and Kriegsmarine ships and submarines against the Allied convoys supplying the Soviet Union with aid. However, Wehrmacht resources committed to Norway and Finland were ultimately an unnecessary drain on the German war effort. Hitlers Arctic War is a groundbreaking study of how war was waged in the far north and its effects on German strategy.
"Among the crucial problems that confront mankind today are those associated with a degraded environment. This book examines the extent to which warfare and other military activities contribute to such degradation. The military capability to damage the environment and to cause ecological disruption has escalated, and there is no sign that the level of conflict in the world is decreasing. The military use and abuse of each of the several major global habitats -- temperate, tropical, desert, arctic, insular, and oceanic -- are evalusated separately in the light of the civil use and abuse of that habitat"--Dust jacket.
Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.