Verdun PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Verdun PDF full book. Access full book title Verdun by John Mosier. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.

Verdun

Verdun PDF Author: John Mosier
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451414632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of history’s greatest clashes. Perfect for military history buffs, this compelling account of one of World War I’s most important battles explains why it is also the most complex and misunderstood. Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, historian John Mosier’s careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach. From the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged there. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command. Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great War’s most important battle.

Verdun

Verdun PDF Author: John Mosier
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451414632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of history’s greatest clashes. Perfect for military history buffs, this compelling account of one of World War I’s most important battles explains why it is also the most complex and misunderstood. Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, historian John Mosier’s careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach. From the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged there. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command. Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great War’s most important battle.

The Wehrmacht Retreats

The Wehrmacht Retreats PDF Author: Robert M. Citino
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700623434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Book Description
Throughout 1943, the German army, heirs to a military tradition that demanded and perfected relentless offensive operations, succumbed to the realities of its own overreach and the demands of twentieth-century industrialized warfare. In his new study, prizewinning author Robert Citino chronicles this weakening Wehrmacht, now fighting desperately on the defensive but still remarkably dangerous and lethal. Drawing on his impeccable command of German-language sources, Citino offers fresh, vivid, and detailed treatments of key campaigns during this fateful year: the Allied landings in North Africa, General von Manstein's great counterstroke in front of Kharkov, the German attack at Kasserine Pass, the titanic engagement of tanks and men at Kursk, the Soviet counteroffensives at Orel and Belgorod, and the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy. Through these events, he reveals how a military establishment historically configured for violent aggression reacted when the tables were turned; how German commanders viewed their newest enemy, the U.S. Army, after brutal fighting against the British and Soviets; and why, despite their superiority in materiel and manpower, the Allies were unable to turn 1943 into a much more decisive year. Applying the keen operational analysis for which he is so highly regarded, Citino contends that virtually every flawed German decision-to defend Tunis, to attack at Kursk and then call off the offensive, to abandon Sicily, to defend Italy high up the boot and then down much closer to the toe-had strong supporters among the army's officer corps. He looks at all of these engagements from the perspective of each combatant nation and also establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt the synergistic interplay between the fronts. Ultimately, Citino produces a grim portrait of the German officer corps, dispelling the longstanding tendency to blame every bad decision on Hitler. Filled with telling vignettes and sharp portraits and copiously documented, The Wehrmacht Retreats is a dramatic and fast-paced narrative that will engage military historians and general readers alike.

The Ardennes

The Ardennes PDF Author: Hugh Marshall Cole
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ardennes, Battle of the, 1944-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 754

Book Description


Lost Opportunity

Lost Opportunity PDF Author: Simon J House
Publisher: Helion
ISBN: 9781804514689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
On 22 August 1914, on a battlefield one hundred kilometers wide, stretching from Luxembourg to the River Meuse, two French and two German armies clashed in a series of encounters known collectively as the Battle of the Ardennes. On that day 27,000 young French soldiers died, the bloodiest day in the military history of France, most of them in the Ardennes, and yet it is almost unknown to English-speaking readers. There has never been an operational study of the Battle of the Ardennes, in any language, at best a single chapter in a history of greater scope, at least a monograph of an individual tactical encounter within the overall battle. This book fills a glaring gap in the study of the opening phase of the First World War the Battles of the Frontiers and provides fresh insight into both French and German plans for the prosecution of what was supposed to be a short war. At the center of this book lies a mystery. In a key encounter battle one French army corps led by a future Minister of War, General Pierre Roques, outnumbered its immediate opposition by nearly six-to-one and yet dismally failed to capitalize on that superiority. The question is how, and why. Intriguingly there is a six-hour gap in the war diaries of all General Roques' units, it smacks of a cover-up. By a thorough investigation of German sources, and through the discovery of three vital messages buried in the French archives, it is now possible to piece together what happened during those missing hours and show how Roques threw away an opportunity to break the German line and advance unopposed deep into the hinterland beyond. The chimera of a clean break and exploitation, that was to haunt the Allied High Command for the next four years in the trenches of the Western Front, was a brief and tantalizing opportunity for General Roques. The final part of this book seeks to answer the question "why?" The history of both French and German pre-war preparation reveals the political, economic and cultural differences that shaped the two opposing national armies. Those differences, in turn, predicated the behavior of General Roques and his men as well as that of his German opponent. With a clear understanding of those differences, the reader may now understand how the French lost their best opportunity not only to stymie the Schlieffen Plan, but to change the course of the rest of the war. The author's text is supported by a separate map book containing 60 newly-commissioned color maps.

The Last Battle

The Last Battle PDF Author: Stephen Harding
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
The incredible story of the unlikeliest battle of World War II, when a small group of American soldiers joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops May, 1945. Hitler is dead, the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble, and no GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. The Last Battle tells the nearly unbelievable story of the unlikeliest battle of the war, when a small group of American tankers, led by Captain Lee, joined forces with German soldiers to fight off fanatical SS troops seeking to capture Castle Itter and execute the stronghold's VIP prisoners. It is a tale of unlikely allies, startling bravery, jittery suspense, and desperate combat between implacable enemies.

To Lose a Battle

To Lose a Battle PDF Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141937726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 736

Book Description
In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry. To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).

The Lost Battle

The Lost Battle PDF Author: C. A. MacDonald
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780330490597
Category : Crete (Greece)
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
A highly intriguing and moving account of this significant and wasteful battle. The invasion of Crete in 1941 should have been a textbook battle for General Kurt Students German troops, a swift and decisive blitzkrieg based on technical surprise. In fact it was based on a series of misjudgements which resulted in large and bloody losses and Crete became the graveyard of the German parachute troops.

Battle Cruiser

Battle Cruiser PDF Author: B. V. Larson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781515076223
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
One starship will either save Earth or destroy her.A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, Humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the Solar System. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet. The lost colonies have survived-but the reunion isn't going to be a happy one. Our descendants are vastly superior in the art of warfare. Worse, there are other beings undreamed of beyond the human frontier: strange, unfathomable...alien. Battle Cruiser Defiant, the first capital ship to darken Earth's skies, is tasked with exploring new passages to the younger planets. Old Earth must reunite with her children...but can humanity survive the inevitable conflicts? Captain William Sparhawk, determined to follow a path of honor and truthfulness, dares to rise to the challenge.BATTLE CRUISER is a military science fiction novel by bestselling author B. V. Larson.

The Allure of Battle

The Allure of Battle PDF Author: Cathal Nolan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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.

The Book of War: Includes The Art of War by Sun Tzu & On War by Karl von Clausewitz

The Book of War: Includes The Art of War by Sun Tzu & On War by Karl von Clausewitz PDF Author: Sun Tzu
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0375754776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1024

Book Description
Two classic works of military strategy that shaped the way we think about warfare: The Art of War by Sun Tzu and On War by Karl von Clausewitz, together in one volume “Civilization might have been spared much of the damage suffered in the world wars . . . if the influence of Clausewitz’s On War had been blended with and balanced by a knowledge of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.”—B. H. Liddel Hart For two thousand years, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has been the indispensable volume of warcraft. Although his work is the first known analysis of war and warfare, Sun Tzu struck upon a thoroughly modern concept: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Karl von Clausewitz, the canny military theorist who famously declared that war is a continuation of politics by other means, also claims paternity of the notion “total war.” On War is the magnum opus of the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Now these two great minds come together in a single volume that also features an introduction by esteemed military writer Ralph Peters and the Modern Library War Series introduction by Caleb Carr, New York Times bestselling author of The Alienist. (The cover and text refer to The Art of War as The Art of Warfare, an alternate translation of the title.)