Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Men Who Planned the War PDF full book. Access full book title The Men Who Planned the War by Paul Harris. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Paul Harris Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1134808100 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
During the Allied victory celebrations there were few who chose to raise a glass to the staff. The high cost of casualties endured by the British army tarnished the reputation of the military planners, which has yet to recover. This book examines the work and development of the staff of the British army during the First World War and its critical role in the military leadership team. Their effectiveness was germane to the outcome of events in the front line but not enough consideration has been paid to this level of command and control, which has largely been overshadowed by the debate over generalship. This has painted an incomplete picture of the command function. Characterised as arrogant, remote and out of touch with the realities of the front line, the staff have been held responsible for the mismanagement of the war effort and profligate loss of lives in futile offensives. This book takes a different view. By using their letters and diaries it reveals fresh insights into their experience of the war. It shows that the staff made frequent visits to the front line and were no strangers to combat or hostile fire. Their work is also compared with their counterparts in the French and German armies, highlighting differences in practice and approach. In so doing, this study throws new light upon the characteristics, careers and working lives of these officers, investigating the ways in which they both embraced and resisted change. This offers evidence both for those who wish to exonerate the British command system on the basis of the learning process but also for those critical of its performance, thus advancing understanding of British military history in the First World War.
Author: Paul Harris Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1134808100 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
During the Allied victory celebrations there were few who chose to raise a glass to the staff. The high cost of casualties endured by the British army tarnished the reputation of the military planners, which has yet to recover. This book examines the work and development of the staff of the British army during the First World War and its critical role in the military leadership team. Their effectiveness was germane to the outcome of events in the front line but not enough consideration has been paid to this level of command and control, which has largely been overshadowed by the debate over generalship. This has painted an incomplete picture of the command function. Characterised as arrogant, remote and out of touch with the realities of the front line, the staff have been held responsible for the mismanagement of the war effort and profligate loss of lives in futile offensives. This book takes a different view. By using their letters and diaries it reveals fresh insights into their experience of the war. It shows that the staff made frequent visits to the front line and were no strangers to combat or hostile fire. Their work is also compared with their counterparts in the French and German armies, highlighting differences in practice and approach. In so doing, this study throws new light upon the characteristics, careers and working lives of these officers, investigating the ways in which they both embraced and resisted change. This offers evidence both for those who wish to exonerate the British command system on the basis of the learning process but also for those critical of its performance, thus advancing understanding of British military history in the First World War.
Author: James C. Gaston Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc. ISBN: 0898750598 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
Even if it hadn't been used, the United States' air war plan for World War II would have been uniquely significant. It marked the first time that airmen in the Army Air Forces were permitted to do their own planning; thus it was a crucially important step in their move toward independence. Further, it raised seriously the question of whether a major industrial nation could be defeated solely through air bombardment. For these reasons and others, the plan deserves attention from all who concern themselves with strategies for national defense.But plans don't write themselves, and the planning process, rather than the finished document, is the focal point of this study. The author uses the plan as a lens for studying that process. He looks through the document to follow events on the floor of the planners' arena.What he finds is that the arena is far from an impersonal, purely intellectual environment. Intellect counts there, he says, but so does the political savvy of a Hal George, the abrasive intransigence of a Ken Walker, the icy persistence of a Laurence Kuter, and the quiet urgency and forethought of a Haywood Hansell. Even a noisy hallway or a foggy bay in Newfoundland can sometimes influence the process. Life isn't always quiet and clear while planners make national choices that shape world history.Though the people and events in this narrative were important to the development of the Air Force, this isn't merely an Air Force story. It's a unique look at the characteristically human process of planning. All who concern themselves with national defense can learn from what four men did in nine days in 1941.James C. Gastons refers to his book as "an inside narrative." His reason is that he is watching the planners from inside the planning room. He is also trying to narrate a story in a way that reveals the human context of an event, much as Herman Melville was doing when he called Billy Budd "an inside narrative.Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gaston learned about war plans in Southeast Asia in 1969-1970. After flying more than 130 combat missions, he was chosen In-Country Fighter Representative for Headquarters Seventh Air Force War Plans. He was responsible for various contingency plans, and he assisted in the massive planning effort for withdrawing U.S. Air Force units from their Vietnamese bases.Since then he has earned a master's degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate at the University of Oklahoma. In addition to flying and teaching, he has published two books (dealing with such diverse topics as airpower and eighteenth-century literature) and contributed to several others. When he wrote this narrative, he was a student at the National War College and a Senior Fellow and Associate Professor of Research at the National Defense University. In 1982 Colonel Gaston was (Acting) Head of the Department of English, U.S. Air Force Academy.
Author: Richard F. Hamilton Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 113948169X Category : History Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The major European powers drafted war plans before 1914 and executed them in August 1914; none brought the expected victory by Christmas. Why? This tightly focused collection of essays by international experts in military history reassesses the war plans of 1914 in a broad diplomatic, military, and political setting for the first time in three decades. The book analyzes the war plans of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia on the basis of the latest research and explores their demise in the opening months of World War I. Collectively and comparatively, these essays place contingency war planning before 1914 in the different contexts and challenges each state faced as well as into a broad European paradigm. This is the first such undertaking since Paul Kennedy's groundbreaking War Plans of the Great Powers (1979), and the end result is breathtaking in both scope and depth of analysis.
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476756929 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1232
Book Description
“This e-book box set includes the following books by Stephen E. Ambrose, bringing into focus the men and women who fought in World War II: The Victors: A breathtaking work that follows the momentous events of the war from D-Day through to the final days, centering this epic drama on the citizen soldiers, the boys who became men as they fought, proving eventually unbeatable. A compelling celebration of military genius and heroism, and of camaraderie and courage. Citizen Soldiers: A riveting account that follows the individual characters of World War II, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, this is the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it. Wild Blue: Following this exceptional band of brothers, the young men who flew the B-24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds, Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship with the vivid detail and affection.”
Author: Anna Koivusalo Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 1643363069 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
A fresh biography of a neglected figure in Southern history who played a pivotal role in the Civil War. In the predawn hours of April 12, 1861, James Chesnut Jr. piloted a small skiff across the Charleston Harbor and delivered the fateful order to open fire on Fort Sumter—the first shots of the Civil War. In The Man Who Started the Civil War, Anna Koivusalo offers the first comprehensive biography of Chesnut and through him a history of honor and emotion in elite white southern culture. Koivusalo reveals the dynamic, and at times fragile, nature of these concepts as they were tested and transformed from the era of slavery through Reconstruction. Best remembered as the husband of Mary Boykin Chesnut, author of A Diary from Dixie, James Chesnut served in the South Carolina legislature and as a US senator before becoming a leading figure in the South's secession from the Union. Koivusalo recounts how honor and emotion shaped Chesnut's life events and the decisions that culminated in the cataclysm of civil war. Challenging the traditional view of honor as a code, Koivusalo illuminates honor's vital but fickle role as a source for summoning, channeling, and expressing emotion in the nineteenth-century South.
Author: Blaine L. Pardoe Publisher: Fonthill Media ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Every major government’s military makes plans for waging wars, hoping that they never have to be employed. In the early part of the last century the US government prepared a number of war contingency plans for invading a number of nations—both hostile and friendly. These color-coded plans were designed for various political and military events, some of which actually unfolded in the Second World War. Never Wars: The US War Plans to Invade the World explores and provides details on a number of these key military invasion plans, their triggers, units involved, etc. Some of these plans, if executed, would have altered the globe or changed the events of the twentieth century and beyond. Included with this was the 1914 war plan against a triumphant Germany, a 1935 plan to attack Great Britain, the 1920s US plans to land forces in Mexico to topple their government, a plan for invading China and even a 1905 strike into the heart of Canada. From a plan to invade the Azores to an incursion into Cuba, Never Wars presents never before published plans for the US to strike out at the world.
Author: Thomas J. Wolfenden Publisher: Permuted Press ISBN: 1618684272 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Seven years ago, a star died in a distant part of the galaxy, sending its deadly gamma rays towards Earth. When the rays reached our planet, they killed virtually all of the human population overnight, leaving only a handful of survivors. Sergeant major Tim Flannery was left to fend for himself in a dead and decaying world. He thought he’d fought his last battle for humanity on the atoll of Volivoli. Now he only wants to be left in peace, with his new family and a growing new society in northern Arizona. But he faces another battle. A new evil has risen from the ashes of a dead United States, threatening to take what little he has left and destroy his small enclave. Flannery must again take up arms to preserve what little sanity is left in a world gone mad.
Author: Alexander Rose Publisher: Random House ISBN: 0812996860 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 496
Book Description
In the grand tradition of John Keegan’s enduring classic The Face of Battle comes a searing, unforgettable chronicle of war through the eyes of the American soldiers who fought in three of our most iconic battles: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. This is not a book about how great generals won their battles, nor is it a study in grand strategy. Men of War is instead a riveting, visceral, and astonishingly original look at ordinary soldiers under fire. Drawing on an immense range of firsthand sources from the battlefield, Alexander Rose begins by re-creating the lost and alien world of eighteenth-century warfare at Bunker Hill, the bloodiest clash of the War of Independence—and reveals why the American militiamen were so lethally effective against the oncoming waves of British troops. Then, focusing on Gettysburg, Rose describes a typical Civil War infantry action, vividly explaining what Union and Confederate soldiers experienced before, during, and after combat. Finally, he shows how in 1945 the Marine Corps hurled itself with the greatest possible violence at the island of Iwo Jima, where nearly a third of all Marines killed in World War II would die. As Rose demonstrates, the most important factor in any battle is the human one: At Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima, the American soldier, as much as any general, proved decisive. To an unprecedented degree, Men of War brings home the reality of combat and, just as important, its aftermath in the form of the psychological and medical effects on veterans. As such, the book makes a critical contribution to military history by narrowing the colossal gulf between the popular understanding of wars and the experiences of the soldiers who fight them. Praise for Men of War “A tour de force . . . strikingly vivid, well-observed, and compulsively readable.”—The Daily Beast “Military history at its best . . . This is indeed war up-close, as those who fought it lived it—and survived it if they could. Men of War is deeply researched, beautifully written.”—The Wall Street Journal “A brilliant, riveting, unique book . . . Men of War will be a classic.”—General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army (Retired) “The fact is that Men of War moves and educates, with the reader finding something interesting and intriguing on virtually every page.”—National Review “This is a book that has broad value to a wide audience. Whether the reader aims to learn what actually happens in battle, draw on the military lessons within, or wrestle with what actually defines combat, Men of War is a valuable addition to our understanding of this all-too-human experience.”—The New Criterion “A highly recommended addition to the literature of military history . . . [Rose] writes vividly and memorably, with a good eye for the telling detail or anecdote.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Using the firsthand accounts of brave soldiers who fought for freedom, Rose sheds new light on viewpoints we haven’t heard as widely before. It’s a welcome perspective in an era where most people have no military experience to speak of.”—The Washington Times “Rose poignantly captures the terror and confusion of hand-to-hand combat during the battle.”—The Dallas Morning News “If you want to know the meaning of war at the sharp end, this is the book to read.”—James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The War That Forged a Nation
Author: Daniel Thompson Publisher: First Edition Design Pub. ISBN: 1937520242 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
Rich Man's War - Poor Man's Fight, is the story of two Scot - Irish families who left Ireland for the promise of a better life in America. While accurately set in time and place, this is not a battle by battle account of Civil War history. It is the story of a determined people who were pressed into a war by a country who spurned their kind and used them as pawns so their wealthy sons could be kept out of harm's way. One family, a young man who hoped to use his family trade as a sword smith entered through the port of New York in 1862. New York was in the midst of the conscription riots as Abraham Lincoln's cabinet desperately fought to fill the ranks of an Army to hold the Union together. A second family left Dublin for New Orleans. They arrived as organizers tried to convince young Irish men that the South's fight for independence from the federal government is a struggle that the Irish should understand. Fate brings the young men together on opposing sides of a Virginia battlefield where they collapse in exhaustion and come to realize the irony of their meeting and the cruel circumstances that brought them together as enemies.
Author: Paul Harris
Author: Paul Harris
Author: James C. Gaston
Author: Richard F. Hamilton
Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Author: Anna Koivusalo
Author: Blaine L. Pardoe 
Author: Thomas J. Wolfenden
Author: Alexander Rose
Author: Daniel Thompson
Author: John Howell