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This book examines the capabilities and performance of the Italian army in the North African campaign and its significant contributions to the Axis effort there.

The little know story of the CIA-recruited Cuban exiles' covert operation in the Congo during the 1960s. It relies on their personal testimonies, on government archives, on declassified documents.

This book investigates several controversial issues regarding the role of the Soviet Union and the performance of the Soviet government and Red Army, to which the author provides some provocative answers. The primary question explored by the author, however, regards the effectiveness of both the Red Army and of the Soviet military economy. Dr. Sokolov argues that the chief defect of the Soviet military economy was the disproportionate emphasis on the production of tanks and aircraft at the expense of transportation means and the means of command and control. This leads the author to look at the role of Lend-Lease during the war. Through the delivery of radio sets, trucks, jeeps, locomotives, fuel, explosives and so on, the author concludes that Lend-Lease was critical to the Red Army, and that the Soviet Union would not have been able to wage a long war against Germany without the Lend-Lease supplies - a conclusion that defies decades of Soviet claims to the contrary. Finally, the author looks at the still very controversial and hot topic of Red Army losses in the war, which was taboo for decades, arguing that this is an effective measure of the Red Army's military performance. He and other scholars have estimated that the Red Army's losses were on the scale of 27 million, three times larger than the official estimates, and approximately 10 times greater than the German losses on the Eastern Front. He argues that such horrendous casualties and such an unfavorable ratio for the Red Army were the result of the relatively low value placed on human life in both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and the much more destructive nature of the Soviet totalitarian regime as compared with the Third Reich, which cowed the Soviet generals and officers into total subservience. Due to the elimination of all political opposition and the total control over people's lives, soldiers and civilians could not protest against the crude tactics that resulted in such a very high rate of losses.

An exclusive and thrilling story of the crews of 22 warships, submarines, anti-submarine-warfare helicopters, and Nimrod submarine-hunter aircraft involved on both sides of the Falklands/Malvinas War, their intensive and advanced training, and their dramatic combat experiences.

This book examines through historical and archaeological research the sieges of Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury during the First Civil War (1642-1646).

The first inclusive history of the war between the US-led coalition and Iraq, fought 1991, largely based on data released from official archives, and spiced with content acquired in the course of dozens of interviews.

Explores how the Great War affected the religious faith of British soldiers and civilians.

A brief survey of the history of naval advising, as well as historical and analytical case studies.

Nazi Germany's fall is regularly depicted through the dual images of Adolf Hitler directing the final battle for Berlin from his claustrophobic Führerbunker, and the subsequent Soviet victory immortalized by the flying of the 'Hammer and Sickle' over the burnt-out Reichstag. This popular view, that Germany's last battle of World War II was a deliberate, yet fatalistic, defense of Berlin planned and conducted by Hitler, is largely a historically inaccurate depiction that fits a popularized characterization of the Third Reich's end. Germany's final battle began when Generaloberst Gotthard Heinrici took command of Heeresgruppe Weichsel (Army Group Vistula) on 20 March 1945, not when the massive Soviet offensive intended to capture Berlin was launched on 16 April. Heinrici, not Hitler, decided that there was only one strategic course left for Germany-hold the Soviets back along the Oder Front long enough to entice the Western Allies across the Elbe River. Heinrici knew two things: the war was lost and what remained of Germany was destined for postwar Soviet occupation. His intent was that a protracted defense along the Oder Front would force General Eisenhower to order the Western Allies into the postwar Soviet Zone of Occupation outlined in the Top Secret Allied Plan known as 'Eclipse', thereby sparing millions of Germans in the east the dismal fate of Soviet vengeance everyone knew was at hand. Berlin, Heinrici ordered, would not be defended. The capital of Germany would not become another 'Stalingrad' as Heinrici told his subordinates. A decision by OKW on 23 April to defend Berlin in a final decisive battle forced Heinrici into direct conflict with his superiors over the conduct of operations along the Oder Front -a conflict that undermined his capability to defend against the Soviets and ultimately cost Heinrici his command. In a companion volume to his successful and highly-regarded study of the Soviet assault on the city of Berlin, Bloody Streets, author A. Stephan Hamilton describes the planning and execution of the defense of the Oder Front, reconstructing it day-by-day using previously unpublished personal diaries, postwar interviews, Heeresgruppe Weichsel's war diary and daily command phone logs. Operations of the 3.Panzer Armee, 9.Armee, 12.Armee, and 21.Armee are covered in detail, with their unit movements depicted on over 60 wartime operational maps. The narrative is supported by an extensive selection of appendices, including translations of postwar narratives relating to Heeresgruppe Weichsel penned by senior German officers, biographical notes on notable officers of the Heeresgruppe, and highly detailed orders of battles. In addition to a number of b/w photographs, this study features 64 pages of operational maps reproduced in full color.

The Crookenden brothers - Henry, Napier and Spencer - were born into a military dynasty. Their father, Arthur, was a renowned Cheshire Regiment officer and had served as a Brigade Major in Gallipoli and on the Western Front during the First World War. Napier followed in his father's footsteps - becoming an officer in the Cheshire Regiment - and saw action during the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936. On the outbreak of the Second World War, Napier's brothers followed him into the army for war service: Henry in the Queen's Westminster Rifles and the King's Royal Rifle Corps and Spencer in the Royal Engineers. Spencer and Henry's wartime service took a different course to their brother. While Napier languished in a succession of unrewarding posts in Great Britain, his brothers fought across North Africa and into Italy. Napier - desperate to see action - joined the new airborne arm and, as a Brigade Major, arrived in Normandy by glider on D-Day. Promotion followed rapidly and he took over a parachute battalion before returning to England. As the pace of the war increased, Napier found himself continually in the front line. His battalion fought in the Battle of the Bulge and he parachuted at its head during the Rhine crossing operation. Napier pursued the German Army across its homeland - reaching the Baltic, where he finished the war facing down the Russian Army in Wismar on VE Day. With the war over, the brothers' fortunes once again took different paths. Henry and Spencer left with the effects of wounds and illness sustained during the war, and returned to civilian life to pursue full careers and lives. Napier stayed with the army and saw operational service in Palestine once again and Malaya. He retired in 1972 as a three-star General. Ever Glorious is written through the letters exchanged between Henry, Napier, Spencer and their father, Arthur. The book takes the reader from Gallipoli to the Baltic; North Africa to the Ardennes; Normandy to Palestine; and from Italy to Malaya. Often gripping - sometimes amusing and always insightful - these letters reveal the experiences, thoughts and emotions of a family involved in war across the 20th century.

Historians consider the Battle of Rzhev "one of the bloodiest in the history of the Great Patriotic War" and "Zhukov's greatest defeat".

The book will show how counterinsurgency succeeds or fails at the local level (at the level of tactical decisions by small-unit leaders) and that these decisions cannot be successful without understanding the culture and perspective of those who live in TRMEs.

For almost 43 years three school notebooks lay in obscurity in the County Armagh home of sixty two-year old James McRoberts. The closely-filled pages recorded just over two years in his life in uniform as he played his part in what was then known as the Great War. During the Home Rule crisis of 1914, one of several in Ireland's history, James McRoberts, like many other men, joined the Young Citizen Volunteers, an organization that eventually became the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, a battalion of the 36th (Ulster) Division. These notebooks, written at the time and with footnotes added some forty years later, record his Army service between 8 January 1915 and 3 April 1917. They tell, with remarkable immediacy, of his time at Randalstown, County Antrim and the move to Seaford in East Sussex. From here, after further training, James moved with his Battalion to the trenches of the Western Front. Written with a degree of humor and some detail his story covers the mundane routine of camp life, recreation behind the lines, the horrors of enemy shelling, the deaths of good friends and the momentous events of 1 July 1916 on the Somme, when his unit was in the thick of the action. On 1 November 1917, while acting as a scout for a night patrol at Messines Ridge, James was seriously wounded and evacuated to hospital - for him the War was over. Nevertheless, he continued to record what was happening around him both with humor and in detail. Classed as 80% disabled, he was eventually discharged and returned home to enjoy a postwar career as a surveyor in County Armagh. This is a remarkable memoir that is, by turns, lively, candid, humorous, poignant, and above all a window into the world of an Ulsterman who found himself both witness and participant to a series of remarkable events. His descriptions of army life, both daily routine and the inferno on the Somme in July 1916, add greatly to our knowledge of this most climactic period of history.

Before the first shots were fired at Gettysburg - for many, the most significant engagement of the American Civil War - a private battle had been raging for weeks. As the Confederate Army marched into Union territory, the Federal Forces desperately sought to hunt them down before they struck at any of the great cities of the North. Whoever could secure accurate information on their opponent would have a decisive advantage once the fighting started. When the two armies finally met on the morning of 1 July 1863 their understanding of the prevailing situation could not have been more different. While the Rebel Third Corps was expecting to brush away a group of local militia guarding the town, the Federal I Corps was preparing itself for a major battle. For three brutal days, the Rebel Army smashed at the Union troops, without success. The illustrious Confederate General Robert E. Lee would lose a third of his army and the tide of the rebellion would begin its retreat. Robert Lee himself would begin the argument on the contribution of military intelligence to his defeat by seeking to blame his cavalry. Generations of historians would debate into what factors played a decisive role, but no one has sought to explore the root of how the most able General of his era could have left himself so vulnerable at the climax of such a vital operation. Much Embarrassed investigates how the Confederate and Union military intelligence systems had been sculpted by the preceding events of the war and how this led to the final outcome of the Gettysburg Campaign. While the success of the Confederate strategy nurtured a fundamental flaw in their appreciation of intelligence, recurrent defeat led the Federal Army to develop one of the most advanced intelligence structures in history. Lee was right to highlight the importance of military intelligence to his failure at Gettysburg, but he would never appreciate that the seeds of his defeat had been sown long before.

A major gap in the body of work available in print to researchers into the military history of the English Civil War is army lists of the New Model Army. Reconstructing the New Model Army, of which this is the second volume, presents for the first time listings by regiment of the commissioned officers who fought in the New Model Army from the invasion of Ireland in August 1649 to the disbandment of many of its units in 1660 and the embedding of the remainder into the new royal army in the years that followed. In Parts II and III of the volume snapshots are provided of the army in June 1650, October 1651, Autumn 1656, April 1659, September 1659 and April 1660, and for the army in Ireland in 1649-50, 1651-3, 1653-5, 1656-9, and 1659-60. What happened to the officer corps in between the snapshots is provided by extensive notes all of which are fully referenced. This division into two armies is largely because they were very largely distinct from one another. Regiments stationed in Ireland stayed there and there was very little movement of officers between the Irish army and the army in England and Scotland. Part I of the volume contains a number of short essays reflecting on aspects of the army on which the snapshots shed new light or cause earlier historians' work to be questioned. They include reflections on changes in the officer corps over time, on whether or not the New Model could be described as a meritocracy, on its new Imperial role post 1650, and on the survival of New Model Army units beyond the winter of 1660, which was more extensive than has been supposed. At the end of the volume there are a number of appendices the most extensive of which contains listings of the regiments raised for or during the Scottish campaign of 1650-51 and disbanded immediately afterwards.

Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in Poland and Eastern Germany, 1945, offers a panoramic view of the Soviet strategic offensives north of the Carpathians in the winter of 1945. During the course of this offensive the Red Army broke through the German defenses in Poland and East Prussia and eventually occupied all of Germany east of the Oder River. The book consists primarily of articles that appeared in various military journals during the first decade after the war. The General Staff's directorate charged with studying the war experience published these studies, although there are other sources as well. A particular highlight of these is a personal memoir that offers a rare insight into Soviet strategic planning for the winter-spring 1945 campaign. Also featured are documents relating to the operational-strategic conduct of the various operations, which were compiled and published after the fall of the Soviet Union. The book is divided into several parts, corresponding to the operations conducted. These include the Vistula-Oder operation by the First Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts out of their respective Vistula bridgeheads. This gigantic operation, involving over a million men and several thousand tanks, artillery and other weapons sliced through the German defenses and, in a single leap, advanced the front to the Oder River, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin, from which they launched their final assault on the Reich in April. Equally impressive was the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts' offensive into Germany's East Prussian citadel. This operation helped to clear the flank further to the south and exacted a long-awaited revenge for the Russian Army's defeat here in 1914. This effort cut off the German forces in East Prussia and concluded with an effort to clear the flanks in Pomerania and the storming of the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg in April. The study also examines in considerable detail the First Ukrainian Front's Upper and Lower Silesian operations of February-March 1945. These operations cleared the army's flanks in the south and deprived Germany of one of its last major industrial and agricultural areas.

The Revd P.B. Tubby Clayton may lay claim to have been one of the most charismatic and influential Anglican priests of the twentieth century. This is a modern assessment of the career of this remarkable man, using his personal papers, family papers, Toc H archives and Church Archives. The life and times of Tubby Clayton encompass the most interesti

4 August 1914 saw the British declaration of War on Germany and, in his 'digs' in Hampton, Middlesex, nurseryman James Sadler resolved to enlist to serve and play his part in what was to become known as the Great War 1914-18. 28 August 1918 saw the same man, now infantryman Sgt. James Sadler M.M, being stretchered away from the battlefield at Hardecourt aux Bois in France, his part in the conflict complete. During the interim period, James Sadler had seen action on a number of the major battlefields on the Western Front, including Armentières, Ploegsteert, Loos, the Somme, Arras, the German Offensive of 1918, and the Allied Advance in the final 100 Days. In Gardener to Fusilier: The story of James Sadler M.M., 9th Royal Fusiliers (Service) Battalion, 1914-18, his son, James Sadler, takes the record that his father made as he convalesced in the family home in Swanage on return from France, and combines this with his own research into his father's experiences. These are coupled to those of the 9th Royal Fusiliers (Service) Battalion, the unit in which his father served during that period, forming part of Kitchener's First Army in the 36th Brigade and the 12th (Eastern) Division. The story of one infantryman's experiences are intertwined with those, often brief, details given from his Battalion's War Diary, giving insight into what he and his comrades faced in the campaign. This account not only includes the first hand recall of the thoughts and aspects of facing battle, but also includes one man's personal comments on what he was asked to undertake, those whom he served with and under and the, often ignored, aspects of the routine and drudgery which were also part of the experience. Gardener to Fusilier makes no attempt to generalize about the British Tommy of the First World War; it aims at being the honest recall of one man and his fighting unit in a conflict which, even today, leaves its mark on our society and world.

Throughout the author's life in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) his father was a member of the Northern Rhodesia Police and the author sets about recording various incidents in the life of a youngster growing up on the numerous towns and police stations at which his father served.

The General Staff Division of Fremde Heere Ost (Military Intelligence Service, Eastern Section) which from 1942 was led by Reinhard Gehlen, was the nerve center of Hitler's military reconnaissance on the Eastern Front. This department worked professionally and was operationally and tactically reliable. However, at a strategic level there were clear deficits: the industrial capacity of the Soviet arms industry, the politico-military intentions and the details of the Red Army's plans for their offensive remained for the most part hidden from the department. When the Second World War ended, Gehlen put the documents and personnel of Fremde Heere Ost at the disposal of the Americans. With their support he was able to build a new foreign secret service which later evolved into the Federal Intelligence Service. In this book, military historian Magnus Pahl presents a complete overview of the structure, personnel and working methods of Fremde Heere Ost based on a tremendous array of archival sources. This work includes an extensive case study of the East Pomeranian Operation 1945. Pahl's study is a significant contribution to our understanding of German strategic, operational and tactical thinking on the Eastern Front 1941-45.

The story of British Forces Broadcasting began officially on 1st January 1944 in North Africa. Mobile stations were used in the advance northwards through Italy, and followed closely behind the troops after D-Day as they fought their way across Europe into Germany. However, this approach was not suitable for the war east of Suez. The India and South-East Asia Commands (SEAC) covered such a huge area that other means were needed to deliver programs to the forces in that theater. A start had been made in Delhi in 1944, where a station had been set up which used air time provided by All-India Radio on one of its transmitters. Efforts to improve welfare facilities were made by Vice-Admiral Mountbatten, soon after he arrived to take up his appointment as Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia. He set up a forces newspaper, and started experimental radio transmissions, but found there were financial constraints on what could be achieved. Friends and relatives back home became unhappy about the forces' living conditions, and articles appeared in the English press. These came to Churchill's notice, and he was persuaded to send Lord Munster on a fact-finding tour to establish what improvements were needed. His report was made available to M.P.s just before Christmas 1944, when Churchill addressed the Commons on the situation. Lord Munster had noted the station in Delhi, but wrote that transmitters were needed for forces broadcasting, and that many more receiving sets were required. Discussions involving the War Office and the BBC reached the conclusion that the best option was a powerful short wave transmitter, supported by another with less power. This was approved by the War Cabinet, along with most of Munster's recommendations. What was much more difficult to resolve was the disagreement between those who wished to have the station in Delhi, and Mountbatten who wanted it under his command, in Ceylon. The text of a signal is included in which he set out his reasons. The furious argument was decided in his favor, and the result was Radio SEAC. Early estimates of targets for when the station might go on the air proved to be optimistic. They underestimated the difficulty of shipping, from England to Ceylon, the components of a big transmitter, complete with its own power supply. Several aerial towers (300 feet high) had to be dismantled, shipped and re-erected. In order to provide some broadcasting as soon as possible, the small transmitter was used for about a year before the powerful one went on the air in May 1946 - long after the war was over. Even readers with some knowledge of the technical details of radio receivers may be surprised by photographs showing the sheer size of the components used in the big transmitter. One could justify the huge expense of the transmitting station on the grounds that when it was not longer needed for forces broadcasting it could serve as a relay station for the BBC. This would mean, for example, that the BBC Overseas Service would be received well in Australia. It was used in this way for a short time, but independence for Ceylon led to the station being handed over to the country's new government. The story of Radio SEAC, and Mountbatten's pivotal involvement in it, has remained untold until now. Eric Hitchcock presents a balanced and fascinating account, blending military, social, political and scientific history together to produce an important account.

The Seven Weeks War of 1866 occurred during a golden age of military music in both Austria and Prussia. This study will examine the background to this music, the role of military bands in contemporary culture, their repertoire and their exploits on the battlefield.PART ONE Prussia: the Wieprecht era - the development of military music, the three types of music (infantry, Jaeger and cavalry), and the composition of the respective bands, the Army March Collection, Berlin's golden era: concerts, parades and competitions. PART TWO Austria: the Leonhardt era, bandsmen as "musical missionaries", reforms after 1848, types of music, drum majors and drum dogs, regimental marches, Prussia's unrequited love affair with Austrian music. PART THREE Musicians at war, what came before: the campaign of 1864 in Denmark, Nachod and Skalitz, Koniggratz: the 57th are played into action, Koniggratz: Gottfried Piefke restores his king's morale, the Koniggratzer March: myth and reality, Piefke goes on parade. PART FOUR The repertoire: a brief guide to identifying Prussian and Austrian marches known to have been played at the time, some familiar, some less so. PART FIVE Biographical sketches - Brief biographies of important personalities (Wilhelm Wieprecht, Andreas Leonhardt, Gottfried Piefke, Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt, Heinrich Saro, Georg Faust, Albert Lorenz, Johann Christian Meinberg, Johann Carl Neumann, Gustav Bock, etc). BIBLIOGRAPHY. Fascinating insight into military music in mid-19th-century Europe, and the part it played in the Campaign of 1866. Researched from original German sources, bringing to light many facts hitherto unknown or neglected for many years. Includes a list of recommended CDs and records. This special hardback edition will be produced in a limited numbered edition, signed by the author, of 250 copies!