Krig

This compendium looks at pen portraits of a selection of soldiers on the Western Front who never returned home.

Despite China's alignment with Russia being one of the most significant factors shaping international order, the dynamics of their historic relationships and the sources of China's alignment policy remain under-explored. This book investigates this by analysing the changes in China's national role conception from a cross-level perspective.

Motin examines the intricate relationship between the rise of new powers in bipolar international systems and the policies of the existing great powers; exploring the understudied problem of the rarity of armed emergence after 1945, he proposes a novel theory of why and when states resort to military conquest to become great powers.

From the streets of Petrograd during the heady autumn of 1917, to Mao's stunning victory in October 1949, and Fidel's triumphant arrival in Havana, in January 1959, the history of the twentieth century was transformed in dramatic and profound ways by the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions.Here, the stories of these epoch-defining events are told together for the first time. At the heart of each revolution was an epic journey: Lenin's 1917 return to Russia from exile in Switzerland; Mao's 'Long March' of 1934-35, covering some 6,000 miles across China; and Fidel Castro's return to Cuba in 1956 following his exile in Mexico. Told in tandem with these are the corresponding journeys of three extraordinary journalists - John Reed, Edgar Snow and Herbert L. Matthews - whose electric testimony from the frontlines would make a decisive contribution to how these revolutions were understood in the wider world. Together, these six journeys changed the course of the twentieth century. Here, in Simon Hall's masterful retelling, these exhilarating events are brought vividly to life. Featuring a stellar cast, extraordinary drama and an epic sweep, Three Revolutions raises fundamental questions about the nature of political power, the limits of idealism and the role of the journalist - questions that remain of utmost urgency today.

Prague as a vital Cold War hub for South Asian artists. During the Cold War, the Central-European capital of Prague, alongside other locations in the polarized post-war world, emerged as a key site where an art world of particular importance for artists from South Asia developed. By emphasizing cultural mobility as a catalyst for exchange and network building, this book challenges and complicates assumptions about Cold War binaries of East and West and the polarization between so-called totalitarian regimes and free cultures. Positioning Prague as a nexus where South-Asian modernisms intersected with multiple peoples, histories, and ideologies in the post-World War II era, it offers a narrative of decolonization that rejected rigid systemic alignment in favor of participation across blocs by prioritizing migratory aesthetics over nationalist parochialism. Well-researched and rich in archival materials, this book proposes new ways of writing art histories and makes a significant contribution to both Cold War studies and critical global modernism studies.

On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."While the threat of mutually assured destruction kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry. Russia, China, and North Korea threaten nuclear aggression; India and Pakistan are locked in ongoing nuclear competition; and more countries than ever-such as Iran-have come within perilous reach of acquiring nuclear arms.In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is pertinent as ever.In this thrilling global history of nuclear arms, Plokhy examines the motivations of key players and confronts the crucial question of our age: what can we can learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one?

The action-packed story of the British Army's Long Range Desert Group in WWII, from one of the UK's most storied special forces operators.

An expansive study of the brutal rites of initiation at elite institutions that shaped young men into military leaders Informed by his own experience as a cadet at West Point, John Morris offers the first transnational history of student life at elite military preparatory institutions in Europe and America and the unofficial, underground rituals, practices, and codes that formed a crucial part of the education there. Comparing British public schools, the monarchical cadet schools in Imperial Germany, Austria, and Russia, and the US Military Academy over the course of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century and the world wars, Morris presents critical insights on the unsanctioned methods employed to transform young students into leaders of men. Extracurricular traditions--including but not limited to severe hazing--Morris argues, shaped the officers-in-training much more than their official courses of study. He also shows how romantic and sexual relations between boys facilitated the cultivation of hypermasculinity at these institutions. Students to Soldiers offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the budding military elites of Europe and America, both unpacking the arcane rituals that eventually became codified into honored traditions and analyzing their influence over the long term.

In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands.How was this relatively small and inexperienced army able to wage wars in Cuba and the Philippines and occupy them? American soldiers depended on tens of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, both for military operations and civil government. Whether compelled to labor for free or voluntarily working for wages, Cubans and Filipinos, suspended between civilian and soldier status, enabled the making of a new US overseas empire by interpreting, guiding, building, selling sex, and many other kinds of work for American troops. In The Work of Empire, Justin Jackson reveals how their labor forged the politics, economics, and culture of American colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines and left an enduring imprint on these islands and the US Army itself. Jackson offers new ways to understand the rise of American military might and how it influenced a globalizing imperial world.

ADLERTAG. Eagle Day, Operation Eagle Attack, 13 August 1940. Hitler has ordered the destruction of the RAF in preparation for the invasion of Britain.