Military History

Rats alley

A unique and gritty account of D-Day told by eight Ulstermen - some of the last surviving veterans of the 1944 D-Day invasion of France. Mark Scott delves into the veterans' testimonies, revealing previously-untold stories of courage, triumph and tragedy endured by ordinary men who each played their part in the greatest invasion in history.

This book examines the dynamics of intelligence practices in the Scandinavian culture of high social cohesion and high trust.

This book considers different stages of Kurdish history, oppression, and genocide, through a critical lens offering an historiography of Iraq and of colonialism.

Heroes are hard to come by - but there's one man whose legend has stood the test of two centuries, and whose name sits on Australia's highest peak. Tadeusz Kosciuszko: freedom fighter, friend of Thomas Jefferson and champion of liberty on two continents. Bestselling author Anthony Sharwood finds out why he's the hero the world needs right now.Kosciuszko - our iconic highest mountain - is a name familiar to all Australians. But how many people know who the mountain is named after?Tadeusz Kosciuszko , who lived from 1746 to 1817, is the most famous person Australians probably know absolutely nothing about. A military engineer, freedom fighter, and champion of human rights, this extraordinary revolutionary was crucial to the success of the American War of Independence, then bravely led an uprising against Russia and other invaders in his native Poland, promising freedom and equality to all who joined his cause.In his day, Kosciuszko was loved and respected across Europe and America. His great friend Thomas Jefferson called him 'as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known', while Kosciuszko would later challenge Jefferson to live up to the famous words 'All men are created equal' by bequeathing his American funds to free enslaved people, including those on Jefferson's plantation.Bestselling author Anthony Sharwood (From Snow to Ash; The Brumby Wars) has spent a lifetime walking, skiiing and writing about Kosciuszko National Park. Now he sets off on the trail of the man himself, travelling across the USA, Poland and Switzerland to key sites in Kosciuszko's life. Returning to Australia where a potential name change from Mt Kosciuszko to an Indigenous name is hotly debated, he walks with the area's traditional owners and discovers the ancient history of Australia's highest peak.Kosciuszko's life and legacy is enthralling, inspiring and indispensable. But is that reason enough to keep his name on the mountain?

This book sheds new light on the intertwined history of music and politics through an exploration of Dutch political songs. In the emotionally charged climate of the Dutch revolutionary period at the close of the eighteenth century, songs became a powerful voice, speaking directly to people's bodies to engage them in political action. Emphasizing the performative nature of the songs and the interplay between imagination and embodied expression in singing practices, this book shows how beyond merely creating communities, the songs were also instrumental in mobilising, imagining, and affirming these collectives. It uncovers the diverse roles of these songs, showing how they were used to polarize and unite, to mourn and celebrate, and how they were employed to imagine and to embody togetherness throughout the Dutch revolutionary period, thereby creating a fixed repertoire of feelings on which various political regimes of that time relied.

What the years have buried, is about to be exposed... On the Scottish coast, lies the gloomy fortress of Gallondean. Local legend has it that if the heirs to the house hear the howling of a spectral hound nearby, their death will quickly follow. The current owner of the house is Jacob Beresford who, up until the unexpected death of his father, had never set foot within its crumbling walls. Jacob, already haunted by his own demons, has no need of more ghosts, but as the First World War staggers through its last terrible months and he uncovers unsettling details of his new home's past, the shadows seem to be growing around him. Then he meets Esther, a young volunteer nurse, and one of her patients, who was wounded in mysterious circumstances, and their lives come to intersect in horrifying and unexpected ways. Danger stalks the woods and coast around them, but it soon becomes clear that the gravest threats are within.... Both unsettling and evocative, deeply atmospheric and brilliantly engaging The Unrecovered is an unforgettable historical debut inspired by a real life legend and marks the arrival of an outstanding new talent.

Published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, this sweeping narrative details the six turning points that ensured victory.For eight gruelling years, American and British military forces struggled in a bloody war over colonial independence. This conflict also ensnared Native American warriors and the armies and navies of France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and several German principalities. From frozen Canada to tropical Florida and as far west as the Mississippi River, the Revolutionary War included hundreds of campaigns, battles, and skirmishes on land and sea in which soldiers and sailors fought and died for causes, crowns, and comrades. In this masterful, yet accessible narrative of America's fight for liberty, John R. Maass identifies the decisive events that secured independence for the 13 hard-pressed but determined colonies. Maass details six key turning points that were crucial to eventual Patriot victory. These include not only the obvious military victories such as Trenton and Princeton or Yorktown but also the harsh conditions of the winter of 1778 and King Louis XVI's decision to supply Washington's troops with desperately needed soldiers, arms, money, and fleets. These turning points, without which defeat was likely, ensured a victory for the new United States, and established its place among the nations of the world.

A groundbreaking new history of the wars of the Ottoman Expansion, a truly global conflagration that crisscrossed three continents and ultimately defined the borders and future of a modern Europe. The determined attempt to thwart Ottoman dominance was fought across five theaters from the Balkans to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, from Persia to Russia. This intercontinental melee is expertly re-told in this fascinating new history by historian Si Sheppard.But this is not the story of a clash of civilizations between East and West as you might assume. Europe was not united against the Turks; the scandal of the age was the alliance between King Francis I of France and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Meanwhile, the resistance of the Saadi dynasty of Morocco to Ottoman encroachment played a critical role in denying Constantinople direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. By the same token, though religious imperatives were critical to the motivations of all the key actors involved, these in no way fell neatly along the Christian Muslim divide. Crescent Dawn expertly shows how the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V desired nothing more than to eradicate the Protestant heresy metastasizing throughout his domains, but the threat of Turkish invasion forced him to stay his hand and indulge his Lutheran subjects to ensure a common defense. Nevertheless, the collective effort to constrain the expansion of the Ottoman superpower did succeed with the ultimate victory in 1571 the tipping point in reordering the trajectory of history.Crescent Dawn features some of the legendary figures of the era - from Mehmet the Conqueror, and Suleiman the Magnificent on the Ottoman side, to Charles V and Vasco de Gama on the other - and some of the most exotic locales on Earth - from the sumptuous palaces of Constantinople to the bloody battlefields of the Balkans to the awe-inspiring mountains of Ethiopia. This is a colorful history that brings the great battles of the age to life and clearly shows how the western struggle against the Ottomans constituted the first truly world war.

In many countries around the world, the end of the First World War, far from leading to a new world order of stability, ushered in an era of uncertainty and economic decline. To solve the problems of unemployment, high inflation, low wages and poor working conditions, many turned to the political right for a solution - to leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler. But it was not only in countries such as Italy and Germany that people saw fascism as an alternative to democracy.It is sometimes said fascism in America first manifested itself as a reaction by a native-born population to the surge in the numbers of European immigrants in 1830. It went on to find a voice at least another four times up to the outbreak of the Second World War, most obviously in the formation of the German American Bund.American politicians and commentators have traditionally avoided applying the label of 'fascist' to any movement, preferring instead to describe extreme right-wing groups as 'nativist', money-making rackets exploiting gullible followers, or simply the 'lunatic fringe'. For many years this denied them the opportunity to examine the possibility that American fascist ideologies or social structures were rooted in patterns of the American past, as opposed to being a foreign import.The Ku Klux Klan has been described as the world's first fascist organization and this book looks at the arguments for and against that assertion. It also examines how the philosophy behind that movement remained as a potent undercurrent in American politics up to the start of the Second World War. There is also an examination of how American racial policies were used by the Nazis when drawing up their own.while argument persists over whether movements such as the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany were truly fascist, it is undoubtedly the case that personalities behind them, individuals such as William Dudley Pelley and Father Charles Coughlin, exhibited all the classic characteristics of fascism. And they were by no means unpopular. A proponent of many of Hitler's policies, during the 1930s, when the US population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners, for example, tuned in to Coughlin's weekly radio program.This book compares the ways that both the United States and fascist regimes, especially that in Germany, tackled the immense social and economic problems resulting from the Great Depression. It also explores the way that European fascist regimes, especially that in Nazi Germany, tried to influence the American political process both legally and illegally and analyses the level of success they achieved in both.

A history of British attitudes to battlefields and their commemoration over the last 700 years. The book explores and links memory-making practices from across the period to reconsider the ways in which battlefields are commemorated and re-commemorated, both in the immediate aftermath of war and across centuries thereafter.

How democratic regimes should engage with authoritarian regimes, or self-proclaimed authorities in states under occupation, has long been a subject of debate. The work examines Canada's relations with member-states of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Central and East European communist states were nominally independent but established under occupation. Canadian leaders explored whether engaging in foreign relations with these countries would encourage liberalization or embolden dictatorships. Over time, Canada's position evolved as a policy of encouraging bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, while calling for the respect of human rights. However, Canada's economic relationship with East European states was at times at cross-purposes with its democratic principles. Andrea Chandler concludes that while Canada did play a role in encouraging democratization, the country's leaders did not sufficiently consider the impact of these policies on the citizens of Warsaw Pact countries. This book treats Canada's engagement with Hungary, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakiaduring the Cold War, in which the Western countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (including Canada) had an adversarial relation with the Soviet bloc nations.

Secret Mission tells the tale of the secretive reconnaissance units assigned to the United States Air Forces in Europe that flew covert reconnaissance aircraft and specialized jet aircraft from bases in West Germany during the Cold War, keeping an eye on communist developments behind the Iron Curtain. A glimpse of this intriguing history is compiled by Jan van Waarde with the help of John Bessette, 7499th Group Association Historian.

During the postwar era, the Soviet Union emerged as America's sole threat, rendering the U.S. Army and Navy impotent against its vast military power. The anticipation of war stemmed from a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe, supported by the Soviet Union's substantial military capabilities. Acknowledging the impossibility of stopping the Soviet Union in a conventional war, the U.S. developed a series of war plans outlining scenarios of massive nuclear retaliation. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff released the war plan Pincher in June 1946, calling for land and sea forces to retreat before a Soviet offensive. Simultaneously, the Army Air Forces would drop atomic bombs on twenty Soviet industrial, government, and military centers from bases mainly in England. After strategic bombing damaged the Soviet Union, U.S. forces would be mobilized for a counteroffensive. In August 1947, the war plan Broiler reflected an increasing reliance on the atomic bomb, hoping the nuclear air offensive would stabilize the war in the first six months and possibly convince the Soviets to surrender. However, these plans remained theoretical due to the inadequacy of the U.S. atomic stockpile. The Strategic Air Command (SAC), reliant on B-29s, faced limitations. Because of the B-29's limited range, SAC depended on overseas bases. Additionally, only a single group was able to deliver the atomic bomb. Soviet awareness of American shortcomings prompted their expansion in Eastern Europe and escalated the discord among the Allies over Berlin. The Soviet blockade of Berlin in July 1948 and the Western reaction marked a turning point in the Cold War. Cees Steijger explores the circumstances that brought the world close to a third world war. Throughout the Cold War, humanity lived on the edge of collapse, narrowly avoiding apocalypse multiple times.

Der Rückblick auf die Jahre des Ersten Weltkrieges würde unvollständig bleiben, wenn man das Landvolk, das damals noch überall die Bevölkerungsmehrheit ausmachte, nicht berücksichtigen würde. Diesem Thema widmet sich der vorliegende Sammelband, der aufzeigt, wie sehr sich die Lebensumstände der ländlichen Bevölkerung drastisch änderten und eine Fülle von Emotionen aufkommen ließen. Der Schwerpunkt der Beiträge liegt auf dem Alpen-, Donau- und Karpatenraum, doch kommt auch die Westfront (Frankreich/Belgien) zur Sprache.

The book will provide the first substantial study of Israeli national intelligence culture, based on elite interviews with acting and former national security practitioners.

This book examines hybrid threats within the broader context of a security crisis in Europe.

This book examines hybrid threats within the broader context of a security crisis in Europe.

Muslim Eurasia (1995) looks at the Muslim states that came into being on the ruins of the Soviet Union, and their complex legacies of Russian colonialism, russification, de-islamicization, centralization and communism - on top of localism, tribalism and Islam.