Military History

The chapters always have more than one dimension: they speak of interrelation, entanglement, collaboration, diffusion, in general, put the different dictatorships (essentially: Francoism, diverse Fascisms and Communism) in context and comparison.

The intended audience includes readers at the graduate level in the fields of history, political science, and anthropology, general readers interested in the history of communism. It is hoped that research questions inspire new research for exploring convergent and divergent elements in social transformation in former communist countries.

Contributors to this book provide an Asian women's history from the perspective of gender analysis, assessing Japanese imperial policy and propaganda in its colonies and occupied territories and particularly its impact on women.

Holocaust vs. Popular Culture debates and deconstructs the binary responses to the representation of the Holocaust in European and non-European forms of Popular Culture.

Exploring Outremer Volume II is a collection of 15 original essays by the leading scholars in the field on the history and archaeology of the Latin East.

This volume of essays inspired by that conference, suitable for students, researchers, and anyone interested in Cold War culture, makes vital contributions to understanding Bond as a global phenomenon, across traditional divisions of East and West, and beyond the end of the Cold War from which he emerged.

An Archaeologist in Rome at the Service of the Order presents the so far completely unknown letters between the Grand Masters (Alof de Wignacourt, Luís Mendes de Vasconcellos, Antoine de Paule) and Antonio Bosio.

This volume offers a broad overview of the conditions, motives, and practice of violence during the most prominent intra-state conflicts in Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

This volume offers a broad overview of the conditions, motives, and practice of violence during the most prominent intra-state conflicts in Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

Enriching the existing scholarship on this important exhibition, Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today (1950-53), this book shows the dynamic role art, specifically sculpture, played in constructing both Italian and American culture after the Second World War.

One of the most difficult security challenges of the post-Cold War era has been stabilizing failing states in an era of irregular warfare. A consistent component of the strategy to address this problem has been security force assistance where outside powers train and advise the host nation's military. Despite billions of dollars spent, the commitment of thousands of advisors, and innumerable casualties, the American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq failed catastrophically. Nevertheless, among those colossal military disasters were pockets of success. The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) held back the Islamic State in 2014 long enough to allow American and allied forces to flow back into the country, and many Afghan commando units fought to the bitter end as their country disintegrated around them. What made those units successful while the larger missions ended disastrously? Author Frank K. Sobchak explores security force assistance across five case studies, examining what factors were most critical for U.S. Special Forces units to build capable partners like the ISOF and the commandos. More specifically, the book assesses the impact of five components of Special Forces advisory missions: language training and cultural awareness of the advising force; the partner force-to-advisor ratio; the advisors' ability to organize host-nation forces; whether advisors are permitted to guide in combat; and the consistency in advisor pairing. Based on the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces in El Salvador (1981-1991), Colombia (2002-2016), the Philippines (2001-2015), Iraq (2003-2011), and Afghanistan (2007-2021), Sobchak argues that the most crucial factors in producing combat-effective partners are consistency in advisor pairing and maintaining a partner force-to-advisor ratio of twelve special forces soldiers advising a company-sized force or smaller. Intriguingly, and counter to conventional wisdom, at first glance language training and cultural awareness do not seem to be critical factors, as most of the Green Berets that trained units in Iraq and Afghanistan lacked both capabilities. Despite an orthodoxy that argues the opposite, there is little evidence that combat advising is decisive in producing effective partners and there is conflicting evidence that language training and cultural awareness are important. Many of these findings, while focused on Special Forces operations and doctrine, could be used to improve the odds of success for larger security-force assistance missions as well.

This book combines social science concepts, history, and transitional justice studies to examine the social dynamics, specific actors, and ideologies involved in the genocide in Rwanda, and examines what makes this genocide a unique case of mass violence and political transition compared with other cases of mass violence.

Combining poems by contemporary Burmese poets along with their life stories. The book demonstrates the power of the written word and is both a parallel story of Burmese political turmoil and the life-affirming power of literature.

This book improves our understanding of battlefield coalitions, providing novel theoretical and empirical insight into their nature and capabilities, as well as the military and political consequences of their combat operations.

This volume helps us understand the transformations of terrorist organisations, as well as the conflicts they are involved in, by broadening the perspective on what is considered terrorist learning.

This book explores unit cohesion in ancient armies using military and social approaches, and how this contributed to the making of war in the Mediterranean world. Suitable for students and scholars of ancient warfare, military history, and military studies.

The book attempts to deconstruct the monolithic regional-level approach through a methodical study of Central European states. It will be useful for scholars and interested individuals who want to understand why and how individual states in the region participate in NATO and EU security and defence initiatives and policies.