Military History

The book focuses on tourism, memorial sites of the Holocaust and the Pacific War and the management practices for the visitors that they attract.It provides an account of landscapes of violence as millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe, China, Japan and the United States were affected by wars, conflicts and crises.

The Royal Marines had the distinction of serving in every major land campaign of the First World War, as well as participating in most minor ones. They also served afloat as an element of the Royal Navy. For the greater part, the morale and esprit de corps of the formation was second to none, wherever its men found themselves and whatever challenges they faced. This new history examines the participation of the corps in actions such as the Defence of Antwerp, the Gallipoli landings, the Battle of the Somme, the Zeebrugge Raid and the Allied intervention in North Russia. It covers the Marines in action aboard ship at the Dardanelles and Jutland, and throws a spotlight on the little-known Royal Marines presence in the West Indies. Flying Marines operated with the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Flying Corps, often with noted bravery. Wherever possible the words used are those of the men who were there, and these eye-witness accounts (some never before published) offer an immediacy and freshness to this story.

Until 1943 there was little effective resistance to the German occupation of The Netherlands. Though numerous small opposition groups had formed immediately after the German invasion in 1940, there was no concerted movement or over-arching organisation. Gradually, though, as the Germans introduced harsher measures against certain groups, opposition grew, particularly in the urban areas. These met with very limited success due to poor security which was to plague the Dutch resistance movement in general. As is made clear in this official account, individuals were often members of more than one resistance group at the same time. This inevitably meant that when one cell was compromised others quickly met the same fate. Nevertheless, in 1941 the Netherlands, or N, Section of the Special Operations Executive under Major Seymour Bingham started sending trained agents to The Netherlands. These operatives were dropped by parachute or infiltrated into the country from France or Belgium. Unfortunately, poor discipline continued to hamper the resistance movement. Preparation was poor, security was lax, and codewords were forgotten or ignored. As a result, fifty-four of N SectionâEUR(TM)s agents were captured by the Germans; fifty of these were subsequently executed. Despite its egregious failings, SOEâEUR(TM)s N Section, could count on some successes. Its agents were able to coordinate the various groups and help maintain communications with the UK. They also undertook valuable weapons training and gave instruction on demolition techniques. The people the agents assisted in active resistance were usually ordinary Dutch citizens, often working in respectable jobs under the very noses of the Germans, their only precaution being the adoption of a false name while operating undercover. The SOE agents themselves had to adopt the cover occupations of those professions which would not be subjected to conscription, such as teachers, medical personnel, or police. Usually, they would take the identity of brave individuals who had volunteered to have their information duplicated. In addition, the agents would be thoroughly briefed on their adopted personas so that they could provide convincing accounts of their movements if stopped and interrogated. This official account of the development and activities of SOEâEUR(TM)s Dutch Section was written by a Staff Officer prior to SOE being disbanded in 1946\. It was based on information, reports and documents provided by those involved in the campaign. It details how SOE agents were recruited and trained in the UK and gives information on safe houses, contact addresses, secret telephone exchanges, training premises and methods of communications in The Netherlands and externally to London. In essence, it provides all the apparatus and procedures used in the establishment of the underground movement which sought to obstruct and oppose the Germans at every turn.

_Operation Telic and the Liberation of Iraq_ is an anecdote-packed daily diary recounting the authorâEUR(TM)s experiences as a reserve officer and media handler with 7 Armoured (the Desert Rats) and 19 Mechanized Brigade during Operation TELIC in Iraq in 2003. A journalist in uniform, Abbott provides an insider-outsider account of British Army media ops in southern Iraq during the immediate post-conflict phase. With a sharp eye for detail, Abbott provides a behind-the-scenes account of the highs and lows of serving two âEUR¿mastersâEUR(TM) âEUR" his demanding military commanders on one hand and a voracious press on the other. One of his first missions is dealing with a barrage of media questions following the brutal murder of six Royal Military Police by a crazed mob in Majar-al-Kabir. Abbott recalls the adrenalin-filled atmosphere when the British Army garrison at Basra Palace is surrounded by a crowd firing mortars and unleashing hundreds of rounds from their AK-47s. ItâEUR(TM)s only after a tense stand-to that the nervous troops discover that they are not under attack: the crowd is celebrating the demise of Saddam HusseinâEUR(TM)s sons. There are plenty of lighter and un-woke moments, too, as Abbott tells stories that fortunately didnâEUR(TM)t make the news at the time. The author admits how criminal thoughts might just have crossed his mind over the $30 million flown in by the US government each week and stored feet from his camp-bed. Above all this is a vivid account of a controversial operation that cost many lives and severely tarnished the reputation of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Unconvinced of the merits of military action before arriving in theatre, Abbott ends his tour in a positive mindset despite the failure to locate WMD. His diary is more SOS than SAS, with little of the derring-do of an Andy McNab adventure. Yet it's just as un-put-downable. More in the tradition of Leslie Thomas' Virgin Soldiers than Bravo Two Zero, itâEUR(TM)s an honest, authentic and often funny read which has the potential to appeal beyond a niche audience. There has been no account of the British in Iraq quite like this.

This book analyzes how the cultural memory of women's participation in the Yugoslav People's Liberation Struggle (1941-1945), especially female soldiers, was treated in socialist Yugoslavia's popular printed press, and how it contributed to the creation of the figure of the Yugoslav New Woman.

This book examines Latin narratives produced in the aftermath of the First Crusade and challenges the narrative of supposed brutality and amorality of warfare in this period - instead focusing on the moral and didactic concerns surrounding warfare and violence with which medieval authors wrestled.

This book is the first study of the mentality of anti-Communist underground fighters and presents, detail, their thinking, ideals, stereotypes and customs.

This book argues that the Nubian kingdom of Dotawo and the Latin Christians became increasingly more connected between the twelfth and early fourteenth centuries than has been acknowledged.

This book offers a multi-disciplinary and multi-national approach to identifying the key elements required to define power within the maritime domain.

This book explains the dynamics and nature of Iraqi Kurdistan's de facto statehood since its inception in 1991, in particular the vicissitudes de facto independence since then.

America's Arab Nationalists focuses in on the relationship between Arab nationalists and Americans in the struggle for independence in an era when idealistic Americans could see the Arab nationalist struggle as an expression of their own values.

This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century.

This book focuses on the Korean People's Army (KPA) - the armed forces of North Korea - covering its history, structural organisation and lives of the soldiers and officers within its ranks.

This book will appeal to researchers and students alike studying Jewish communities in Poland and Jewish-Polish society and urbanisation, as well as all those interested in Jewish-Polish Culture.

This book analyses policy and programming challenges in gender mainstreaming in counter-terrorism policy, with examples from comparative case studies.

This study challenges the rose-tinted view of the interwar period in Romanian history, which is often judged against the darkness of almost five decades of Communist rule.

This book investigates how borders in former Soviet Union territories have evolved and shifted in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War. It will be of interest to researchers across border studies, politics, geography, social anthropology, history, Eastern European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and Caucasian Studies.

This book explores the discourse on conflict prevention and peacebuilding by bringing together researchers from China and Switzerland over a series policy dialogues.

Maintaining the importance of socio-economic issues in devising transitional justice mechanisms, this book examines the widespread practice of land grabbing in Afghanistan.

In February 1917, German U-boats launched a savage unrestricted campaign against both Allied and neutral shipping. At its peak in April, 860,000 tons of Allied merchant shipping was sunk. BritainâEUR(TM)s supremacy at sea was being severely challenged and with it the chances of victory in the wider war. Taking up the challenge was BritainâEUR(TM)s new First Sea Lord, Sir John Jellicoe, until the previous December C-in-C of the Grand Fleet âEUR" famously described by Churchill as the only man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. The battle he now faced was equally critical, although the timeline of defeat was a matter of days rather than hours âEUR" BritainâEUR(TM)s food stocks were dangerously low with wheat reserves down to six weeks and sugar to only two, while wide-scale shortages were crippling the industrial economy. Jellicoe outlined the gravity of the situation with total candor to Rear Admiral William Sims, USN, sent over before America officially declared war by Franklin Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The two men already knew each other from service together in China during the Boxer Rebellion, so JellicoeâEUR(TM)s plea for urgent American assistance was taken seriously by Sims. After the USA joined the war in April 1917, together they lobbied Washington for aid, addressing their needs directly to two reluctant Anglophobes at the head of the USN, Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels and Chief of Naval Operations, William Benson. Clearly, a radical new approach to anti-submarine warfare was called for, and Convoy was the leading contender. There were many objections to protecting shipping in this way, some ideological but most practical âEUR" a workable system, for example, effectively required state control of both shipping and distribution networks, something inconceivable in normal circumstances. However, Convoy had powerful advocates, including the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, who later claimed he had personally forced its adoption on a reluctant Admiralty. This self-serving political myth cast Jellicoe as an opponent of Convoy: nothing could be further from the truth. As both Jellicoe and Sims understood, the key requirement was a rapid increase in the number of destroyers for escort duties. America provided them, the first arriving in Queenstown, Ireland on 4 May and by June 46 were operating in European waters. This was the first step in an Anglo-American campaign that gradually brought the U-boat threat under control and led to its ultimate defeat. This book takes a fresh look at the undersea war as a whole and all the complex factors bearing on the campaign, only one of which was convoy. Its analysis is original, and its conclusions thought-provoking âEUR" an important contribution to the naval history of the Great War.