Reconsidering Gallipoli
Reconsidering Gallipoli

Author: Jenny Macleod

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2004-09-04

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780719067433

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In Australia, Anzac Day, the anniversary of the first landings at Gallipoli, is one of the most important dates in the national calendar. Yet in Britain, the campaign is largely forgotten. The key to this contrast lies in the way in which the campaign's history has been recorded. To many Australians, the Anzac legend is a romantic war myth that proclaims the prowess of Australian participants in the campaign. It is an exercise in nation-building. In Britain, the campaign is also remembered in romantic terms, but the purpose here is to assuage the pain of defeat. Reconsidering Gallipoli broadens the debate over the cultural history of the First World War beyond the Western Front. The final chapter traces the influence of the early accounts on subsequent portrayals including Alan Moorehead's 1956 book, Bean's post 1965 rehabilitation, Peter Weir's 1981 film, and revisionist attacks on the legend.

Desert Hell
Desert Hell

Author: Charles Townshend

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-07-31

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0674061349

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The U.S.-led conquest and occupation of Iraq have kept that troubled country in international headlines since 2003. For America's major Coalition ally, Great Britain, however, this latest incursion into the region played out against the dramatic backdrop of imperial history: Britain's fateful invasion of Mesopotamia in 1914 and the creation of a new nation from the shards of war. The objectives of the expedition sent by the British Government of India were primarily strategic: to protect the Raj, impress Britain's military power upon Arabs chafing under Ottoman rule, and secure the Persian oil supply. But over the course of the Mesopotamian campaign, these goals expanded, and by the end of World War I Britain was committed to controlling the entire region from Suez to India. The conquest of Mesopotamia and the creation of Iraq were the central acts in this boldly opportunistic bid for supremacy. Charles Townshend provides a compelling account of the atrocious, unnecessary suffering inflicted on the expedition's mostly Indian troops, which set the pattern for Britain's follow-up campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next seven years. He chronicles the overconfidence, incompetence, and dangerously vague policy that distorted the mission, and examines the steps by which an initially cautious strategic operation led to imperial expansion on a vast scale. Desert Hell is a cautionary tale for makers of national policy. And for those with an interest in imperial history, it raises searching questions about Britain's quest for global power and the indelible consequences of those actions for the Middle East and the world. -- Book Description.

Five Years, Four Fronts
Five Years, Four Fronts

Author: Georg Grossjohann

Publisher: Presidio Press

Published: 2005-01-25

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0345476107

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After Hitler’s invasions of Poland and France came the Russian Front–and that’s when the real war started. An infantryman who rose from the enlisted ranks to regimental command in combat, Georg Grossjohann fought on four different fronts during World War II, but saw most of his fighting–from 1941 to 1944–against Russians in the Soviet Union and Romania. He provides shattering glimpses of the horror and chaos of the war, as well as profound insights into everyday life in the Wehrmacht. Five Years, Four Fronts chronicles the combat experiences of Grossjohann and his men as they triumphantly roll across Poland, France, and the sunny steppes of the Ukraine, only to ultimately sustain grinding defeats in the endless, freezing plains of the Soviet Union and the grim, dark Vosges Mountains of France. Grossjohann was a soldier’s soldier, respected by his men, undaunted by his superiors, and, as can be observed in this raw, brutally honest account, not afraid to call the shots as he saw them.

Bloody Red Tabs
Bloody Red Tabs

Author: Frank Davies

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-04-30

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1473812518

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Long before that ghastly and quite unnecessary slogging match in the mud which we now call the First World War had dragged to its blood-soaked conclusion the belief that most of the senior officers had spent their time in comfort and safety in chateaux far behind the lines with no idea of the conditions in which the men they commanded were fighting was firmly embedded in the public mind. As the years pass by that belief has, if anything, become more deeply held, gaining strength from plays like Oh! What a Lovely War, itself based on Alan Clark's book The Donkeys.It is the purpose of this book to show not only how the myth was born and grew but how totally at odds it is with the facts. Biographies of over 200 officers who held the rank of Brigadier-General or above who were killed or wounded during the war show how closely involved the men at the top were with the men at the front. Ironically, as the authors point out, this was more than just a waste of blood, for these were the very men whose experience was vital to the successful prosecution of the war. Had they actually stayed in their chateaux, as Lloyd George alleged, they might have done much more to hasten the end of the conflict.This is not only an invaluable work of reference but a tribute to those gallant senior officers who have been so unfairly traduced by many who should have known better.As featured in Essence Magazine.