This is, without doubt, the finest book about the crucial role that artillery played in the two World Wars of the Twentieth century. The authors, both former artillery officers who saw action in Word War Two, describe the development of their neglected, inadequate and class-ridden arm through the battles of the First World War and the eventual war-winning role that artillery played, to the culmination of professional military deployment in the Second World War.
Harris's Brandywine is the first complete study to merge the strategic, political, and tactical history of this complex operation and important set-piece battle into a single compelling account.
Saratoga weaves together the political, strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of this decisive Revolutionary War campaign. Supported by original maps, engaging appendices, and extensive end notes, Luzader's magisterial study is simply history at its finest--Cover.
Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.
Detailed profiles of forty-three military commanders of the twentieth century, from Patton to Rommel, Yamamoto, and Zhukov, written by top historians. In The War Lords, Field Marshal Lord Carver has assembled an engrossing series of short, detailed biographies of forty-three of the dominant military commanders on the twentieth-century world stage, written by such prominent historians as Alistair Horne, Norman Stone, Stephen Ambrose, Lord Kinross, and Martin Middlebrook. Included are: Field-Marshal the Earl Alexander, E.H.H. Allenby, Claude Auchinleck, Field-Marshal Sir, Omar N. Bradley, General of the Army, Andrew Browne Cunningham, Admiral of the Fleet the Viscount, Karl Doenitz, Admiral, Hugh C.T. Dowding, Air Chief Marshal, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General of the Army, Ferdinand Foch, Bernard Freyberg, Lieutenant-General Lord, Heinz Guderian, General, Douglas Haig, William F. Halsey, Fleet Admiral, Ian Hamilton, Arthur Harris, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir, Paul von Hindenburg, John Rushworth Jellicoe, Joseph Joffre, Alphonse Juin, Marshal, Mustafa Kemal, Ivan Koniev, Marshal, Erich Ludendorff, Douglas C. MacArthur, General of the Army, John Monash, Bernard L. Montgomery, of Alamein, Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, George S. Patton, General, John J. Pershing, Philippe Petain, Erwin Rommel, Field-Marshal, William Joseph Slim, Field-Marshal the Viscount, Carl A. Spaatz, General, Raymond A. Spruance, Admiral, Joseph W. Stilwell, General, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, Hugh Trenchard, Erich Von Falkenhayn, Erich Von Manstein, Field Marshal, Gerd Von Rundstedt, Field-Marshal, Archibald Wavell, Field-Marshal Earl, Isoroku Yamamoto, Admiral & Georgii Zhukov, Marshal.
A modern, scholarly account of the most decisive campaign during the American Revolution examining the artillery, tactics and leadership involved. The siege of Yorktown in the fall of 1781 was the single most decisive engagement of the American Revolution. The campaign has all the drama any historian or student could want: the war’s top generals and admirals pitted against one another; decisive naval engagements; cavalry fighting; siege warfare; night bayonet attacks; and much more. Until now, however, no modern scholarly treatment of the entire campaign has been produced. By the summer of 1781, America had been at war with England for six years. No one believed in 1775 that the colonists would put up such a long and credible struggle. France sided with the colonies as early as 1778, but it was the dispatch of 5,500 infantry under Comte de Rochambeau in the summer of 1780 that shifted the tide of war against the British. In early 1781, after his victories in the Southern Colonies, Lord Cornwallis marched his army north into Virginia. Cornwallis believed the Americans could be decisively defeated in Virginia and the war brought to an end. George Washington believed Cornwallis’s move was a strategic blunder, and he moved vigorously to exploit it. Feinting against General Clinton and the British stronghold of New York, Washington marched his army quickly south. With the assistance of Rochambeau's infantry and a key French naval victory at the Battle off the Capes in September, Washington trapped Cornwallis on the tip of a narrow Virginia peninsula at a place called Yorktown. And so it began. Operating on the belief that Clinton was about to arrive with reinforcements, Cornwallis confidently remained within Yorktown’s inadequate defenses. Determined that nothing short of outright surrender would suffice, his opponent labored day and night to achieve that end. Washington’s brilliance was on display as he skillfully constricted Cornwallis’s position by digging entrenchments, erecting redoubts and artillery batteries, and launching well-timed attacks to capture key enemy positions. The nearly flawless Allied campaign sealed Cornwallis’s fate. Trapped inside crumbling defenses, he surrendered on October 19, 1781, effectively ending the war in North America. Penned by historian Jerome A. Greene, The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 offers a complete and balanced examination of the siege and the participants involved. Greene’s study is based upon extensive archival research and firsthand archaeological investigation of the battlefield. This fresh and invigorating study will satisfy everyone interested in American Revolutionary history, artillery, siege tactics, and brilliant leadership.
