How Great Generals Win PDF Download

Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393323160
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Here is a narrative account of decisive engagements that succeeded by brilliant strategy more than by direct force. The reader accompanies those who fought, from Roman legionaries and Mongol horsemen to Napoleonic soldiery, and Douglas MacArthur's Inchon invaders. Maps. Illustrations.

Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307421031
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Even as we head into twenty-first-century warfare, thirteen time-tested rules for waging war remain relevant. Both timely and timeless, How Wars Are Won illuminates the thirteen essential rules for success on the battlefield that have evolved from ancient times until the present day. Acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander’s incisive and vivid analyses of famous battles throughout the ages show how the greatest commanders—from Alexander the Great to Douglas MacArthur—have applied these rules. For example: • Feign retreat: Pretend defeat, fake a retreat, then ambush the enemy while being pursued. Used to devastating effect by the North Vietnamese against U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. • Strike at enemy weakness: Avoid the enemy’s strength entirely by refusing to fight pitched battles, a method that has run alongside conventional war from the earliest days of human conflict. Brilliantly applied by Mao Zedong to defeat the Chinese Nationalists. • Defend, then attack: Gain possession of a superior weapon or tactical system, induce the enemy to launch a fruitless attack, then go on the offensive. Employed repeatedly against the Goths by the Eastern Roman general Belisarius to reclaim vast stretches of the Roman Empire. The lessons of history revealed in these pages can be used to shape the strategies needed to win the conflicts of today.

Author: Cathal Nolan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

Author: Richard A. Gabriel
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473859107
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The military expert and author of Philip II of Macedonia presents 9 profiles of exemplary leadership from the ancient world. Of all the military commanders throughout history, only a few are remembered as great leaders of men in battle. Is there a combination of personal attributes and historical circumstances that produces great commanders? Professor Richard A. Gabriel analyses the biographies of ten great generals, all of whom lived between 1481 BC and AD 632, in order to identify the characteristics of intellect, psychology, personality, and experience that allowed them to tread the path to greatness. Some of the names included in Gabriel’s selection, such as Moses and Muhammad, will surprise many readers—as will the historical figures Gabriel chooses to omit, including Alexander the Great and Atilla the Hun. But Gabriel is not merely interested in famous military exploits. A retired soldier and professor at the Canadian Defence College, he distils the timeless essence of military leadership through the examples of Julius Caesar, Philip II of Macedonia, Thutmose III of Egypt, and others

Author: Bevin Alexander
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393082024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
“The world’s most fascinating battles and how they were won or lost, according to the Chinese sage.”—Kirkus Reviews Imagine if Robert E. Lee had withdrawn to higher ground at Gettysburg instead of sending Pickett uphill against the entrenched Union line. Or if Napoléon, at Waterloo, had avoided mistakes he’d never made before. The advice that would have changed these crucial battles was written down centuries before Christ was born—but unfortunately for Lee, Napoléon, and Hitler, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War only became widely available in the West in the mid-twentieth century. As Bevin Alexander shows, Sun Tzu’s maxims often boil down to common sense, in a particularly pure and clear form. When Alexander frames these modern battles against 2,400-year-old precepts, the degree of overlap is stunning.

Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 160819163X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Moving portraits of five commanders whose dynamic leadership styles changed the course of warfare and history trace the stories of Themistocles, Belisarius, William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgway and David Petraeus, evaluating their pivotal military roles and the controversies that marked their careers.

Author: Paul F. Braim
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 9781591140498
Category : Generals
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Called the Army's "greatest combat general" by President Truman, James Van Fleet led American and allied forces to battlefield victory during a career that spanned World War I and the Cold War. In this biography, a military historian who once commanded a rifle company under Van Fleet in Korea tells the legendary leader's unique story and draws parallels to the U.S. Army's history of diverse challenges met in the twentieth century. Defining the root of Van Fleet's success as devotion to his men and dedication to rigorous field training and mental conditioning, Paul Braim describes Van Fleet's ability to inspire his men with the will to win through two world wars and in the limited wars that followed. He chronicles Van Fleet's command of III Corps in its drive into the heart of Nazi Germany in World War II and his training of allied soldiers in the Cold Wars, including his development of the Greek National Army into a fighting force capable of driving off a strong communist insurgency. He tells how as commander of the Eighth Army in Korea Van Fleet applied his winning tactics so successfully within the constraints of the limited war that the South Korean Army was able to assume a major fighting role. Finally, he explains that Van Fleet was one of few senior military leaders to argue for training the Vietnamese instead of committing U.S. combat forces in Vietnam. This tribute to an outstanding American--a poor boy from rural Florida who rose to the rank of four-star general--will fascinate everyone who enjoys reading biographies and those who like military history. It is presented in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army.

Author: Albert Castel
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Make no mistake, the Confederacy had the will and valor to fight. But the Union had the manpower, the money, the matriel, and, most important, the generals. Although the South had arguably the best commander in the Civil War in Robert E. Lee, the North's full house beat their one-of-a-kind. Flawed individually, the Union's top officers nevertheless proved collectively superior across a diverse array of battlefields and ultimately produced a victory for the Union. Now acclaimed author Albert Castel brings his inimitable style, insight, and wit to a new reconsideration of these generals. With the assistance of Brooks Simpson, another leading light in this field, Castel has produced a remarkable capstone volume to a distinguished career. In it, he reassesses how battles and campaigns forged a decisive Northern victory, reevaluates the generalship of the victors, and lays bare the sometimes vicious rivalries among the Union generals and their effect on the war. From Shiloh to the Shenandoah, Chickamauga to Chattanooga, Castel provides fresh accounts of how the Union commanders--especially Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Meade but also Halleck, Schofield, and Rosecrans--outmaneuvered and outfought their Confederate opponents. He asks of each why he won: Was it through superior skill, strength of arms, enemy blunders, or sheer chance? What were his objectives and how did he realize them? Did he accomplish more or less than could be expected under the circumstances? And if less, what could he have done to achieve more--and why did he not do it? Castel also sheds new light on the war within the war: the intense rivalries in the upper ranks, complicated by the presence in the army of high-ranking non-West Pointers with political wagons attached to the stars on their shoulders. A decade in the writing, Victors in Blue brims with novel, even outrageous interpretations that are sure to stir debate. As certain as the Union achieved victory, it will inform, provoke, and enliven sesquicentennial discussions of the Civil War.

Author: Andrew Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698192664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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From the New York Times bestselling author of War Letters and Behind the Lines, Andrew Carroll’s My Fellow Soldiers draws on a rich trove of both little-known and newly uncovered letters and diaries to create a marvelously vivid and moving account of the American experience in World War I, with General John Pershing featured prominently in the foreground. Andrew Carroll’s intimate portrait of General Pershing, who led all of the American troops in Europe during World War I, is a revelation. Given a military force that on the eve of its entry into the war was downright primitive compared to the European combatants, the general surmounted enormous obstacles to build an army and ultimately command millions of U.S. soldiers. But Pershing himself—often perceived as a harsh, humorless, and wooden leader—concealed inner agony from those around him: almost two years before the United States entered the war, Pershing suffered a personal tragedy so catastrophic that he almost went insane with grief and remained haunted by the loss for the rest of his life, as private and previously unpublished letters he wrote to family members now reveal. Before leaving for Europe, Pershing also had a passionate romance with George Patton’s sister, Anne. But once he was in France, Pershing fell madly in love with a young painter named Micheline Resco, whom he later married in secret. Woven throughout Pershing’s story are the experiences of a remarkable group of American men and women, both the famous and unheralded, including Harry Truman, Douglas Macarthur, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Teddy Roosevelt, and his youngest son Quentin. The chorus of these voices, which begins with the first Americans who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion 1914 as well as those who flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, make the high stakes of this epic American saga piercingly real and demonstrates the war’s profound impact on the individuals who served—during and in the years after the conflict—with extraordinary humanity and emotional force.

Author: Mungo Melvin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429967498
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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From the preeminent British military strategist comes this riveting biography of Manstein, Hitler's most controversial general. Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war's most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein's life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career.