Books in the Cambridge Military Histories series

When Operation Banner was launched in 1969 civil war threatened to break out in Northern Ireland and spread over the Irish sea. Uncivil War reveals the full story of how the British army acted to save Great Britain from disaster but, in so doing, condemned the people of Northern Ireland to protracted, grinding conflict.

Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in the balance until relatively late in the war. Using new evidence from diaries, letters and memoirs, he fundamentally revises our understanding of German strategy from the decision to go to war and the failure of the western offensive to the radicalisation of Germany's war effort under Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the ultimate collapse of the Central Powers. He uncovers the struggles in wartime Germany between supporters of peace and hardliners who wanted to fight to the finish. He suggests that Germany was not nearly as committed to all-out conquest as previous accounts argue. Numerous German peace advances could have offered the opportunity to end the war before it dragged Europe into the abyss.

A ground-breaking study of German operational command from November 1916 to the eve of the third battle of Ypres. Tony Cowan's detailed analysis of the German defeat of the 1917 Entente spring offensive sheds new light on how the army and Germany were able to hold out so long during the war against increasing odds.

Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States has baffled generations of historians. In this revisionist new history of those fateful months, Klaus H. Schmider seeks to uncover the chain of events which would incite the German leader to declare war on the United States in December 1941. He provides new insights not just on the problems afflicting German strategy, foreign policy and war production but, crucially, how they were perceived at the time at the top levels of the Third Reich. Schmider sees the declaration of war on the United States not as an admission of defeat or a gesture of solidarity with Japan, but as an opportunistic gamble by the German leader. This move may have appeared an excellent bet at the time, but would ultimately doom the Third Reich.

This is the first truly multi-perspective and in-depth study of anti-colonial resistance and counterinsurgency in the Malayan Emergency. Drawing on oral history, memoirs and documents from the UK and Asia, Karl Hack sheds new light on terror and violence, how insurgency and decolonisation interacted, and how revolution was defeated.

More than just a military history of Britain's suppression of the Arab revolt in Palestine, this is a dissection of how the British empire worked to supress dissent and how subject peoples resisted colonial rule.

What for revolutionary France started as a war for liberty in the Rhineland became a war for conquest. Jordan R. Hayworth shows how French foreign policy and military strategy became influenced by the idea of attaining the natural frontiers, causing much confusion in the war and helping undermine France's democratic experiment.

Antulio J. Echevarria II reveals how successive generations of American strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of twelve leading theorists, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist's critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war.

Explores the diverse intra-ethnic violence that gripped the country in the months prior to Germany's defeat, and examines the interplay between the Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party to shed important new light on the roles both played in shaping German society at the end of the war.

This is a major new study of the role of communications in shaping the outcome of British military operations on the Western Front during World War 1. It argues that communications were not only a leading cause of the trench stalemate of 1915-17, but were also crucial in helping break the deadlock in 1918.

This is the first comprehensive history of the campaign that determined control of Germany following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia. Michael Leggiere reveals how, in the spring of 1813, Prussia, the weakest of the Great Powers, led the struggle against Napoleon as a war of national liberation.

A new perspective on the British army and learning and innovation during the First World War, detailing the challenges and opportunities faced by an organisation in a time of crisis. Suitable for military practitioners, scholars and students interested in military history, the First World War, and civil-military relations.

The first book-length study of morale in the Italian army during the First World War. Vanda Wilcox reassesses Italian policy and performance from the perspective both of the army as an institution and of the ordinary soldiers who found themselves fighting a brutally hard war.

Why was the German army defeated on the Western Front? Did its morale collapse? Or was it beaten by the improved military effectiveness of the British army? Jonathan Boff offers an innovative, comparative analysis of these key issues during the 'Hundred Days' campaign of 1918 which challenges existing interpretations.

For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of British Army soldiers during their counterinsurgency activities in Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. He uncovers the uneasy relationship between official notions of minimum force and colonial traditions of using exemplary force to terrorise the civilian population into submission.

The first comprehensive history of the decisive Fall Campaign of 1813 that determined control of Central Europe following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia the previous year. Michael V. Leggiere reveals how the defeat of Napoleon in Germany was made possible by Prussian victories and highlights the breakdown of his strategy.

Drawing upon archival research in four continents, Timothy C. Winegard delivers the first comprehensive comparative history of how the indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa experienced the Great War. He also explores the current and evolving socio-economic and political ramifications of their service and sacrifice.

This book comprehensively revises our understanding of the development of military theory and doctrine in the German army between the wars. It shows that military planning concentrated primarily on a defensive war against superior enemies with the German army too weak for most of the period to effectively repel invaders.

This book is an absorbing account of secret operations and political intrigue in wartime Thailand. It sheds light on Thailand's clandestine relations with Britain, the United States and China, each of which had ambitions for post-war influence in Bangkok, and on the rivalry between the SOE and the OSS.

This is the first study in English of the French general who led the Allies to victory in 1918. Elizabeth Greenhalgh sheds new light on how Foch grappled with the enemy, with his allies and with his political masters, and how he learned to wage modern industrial war.

This book examines the Habsburg Army's occupation of Serbia from 1914 through 1918, arguing that it was different from other great power colonial projects.

Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond the war minister, Enver Pasha, and that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public.

A biography of Sir Douglas Haig, one of the most controversial commanders in British military history. Paul Harris decisively answers the contested issue of whether Haig's tactics cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers during the First World War or were essential to the Allied victory.

This unique account of how German and British soldiers endured the horror of the First World War argues that at the heart of armies' robustness lay natural human resilience. It explains why the British outlasted their opponents by examining and comparing German and British soldiers' motivation, morale and coping mechanisms.

Before 1815 Britain established a global empire, achieved naval domination, and laid the foundations of the first industrial revolution. This book explains the central and often underestimated role of the British state in providing the money and infrastructure to support its maritime ascendancy and develop expertise in overseas expansion.

This book presents a new way of looking at twentieth-century military history and Britain's decline as a great power. G. C. Peden explores how from the Edwardian era to the 1960s warfare was transformed by a series of innovations, including dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft, tanks, radar, nuclear weapons and guided missiles.