Military History Strategy

Since September 11, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered is one crucial assumption: that state and nonstate actors fight very differently.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, one of the turning points of World War II. Within six months, the invasion bogged down on the outskirts of Moscow, and the Eastern Front proved to be the decisive theater in the defeat of the Third Reich. Ever since, most historians have agreed that this was Hitler's gravest mistake. In Hitler's Great Gamble, James Ellman argues that while Barbarossa was a gamble and perverted by genocidal Nazi ideology, it was not doomed from the start.

Abraham Lincoln began his presidency admitting that he knew "but little of ships," but he quickly came to preside over the largest national armada to that time, not eclipsed until World War I. Naval historian Craig L. Symonds' Lincoln and His Admirals unveils an aspect of Lincoln's presidency unexamined by historians until now, revealing how he managed the men who ran the naval side of the Civil War, and how the activities of the Union Navy ultimately affected the course of history.

Since the Cold War, outer space has become of strategic importance for nations looking to seize the ultimate high ground. World powers establishing a presence there must consider, among other things, how they will conduct warfare in orbit. Leaders must dispense with "Buck Rogers" notions about operations in space and realize that policies there will have serious ramifications for geopolitics. How should nations view space? How should they fight there? What would space warfare look like and how should strategists approach it?

Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out. Always ready with a drink and a story, Clarke was a well-known figure in Cairo social circles and nightlife. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Those who knew didn't tell—and almost no one really knew at all.

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership. In First Man In, he shares the core lessons he’s learned over the course of his fascinating, exhilarating life. Special forces training is no walk in the park. The rules are strict, and they make sure you learn the hard way, pushing you beyond the limits of what is physically possible. There is no mercy. Even when you are bleeding and broken, to admit defeat is failure.

The battle zone on and behind Sword witnessed on 6 June some of the most dramatic and tumultuous scenes, the greatest human stories, of the entire war in the West embracing 30,000 paratroopers, infantry, commandos and of course aircrew and sailors – not to mention the German and French participants. Although the core facts of Sword Beach are familiar, Max Hastings will explore new angles and fresh personalities in this new history of what was perhaps the supreme military achievement of the Western war.

A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy is a deliberately compact introductory work aimed at junior seafarers, those who make decisions affecting the sea services, and those who educate seafarers and decision-makers. It introduces listeners to the main theoretical ideas that shape how statesmen and commanders make and execute maritime strategy in times of peace and war.

More than 2,500 years ago, a confederation of small Greek city-states defeated the invading armies of Persia, the most powerful empire in the world. In this meticulously researched study, historian Paul Rahe argues that Sparta was responsible for the initial establishment of the Hellenic defensive coalition and was, in fact, the most essential player in its ultimate victory.

The era of modern warfare introduced in World War II presented the Allied Powers with one of the more complicated logistical challenges of the century: how to develop an extensive support network that could supply and maintain a vast military force comprised of multiple services and many different nations thousands of miles away from their home ports. The need to keep tanks rolling, airplanes flying, and food and aid in continuous supply was paramount to defeating the Nazi regime.

In June 1944, the attention of the nation was riveted on the events unfolding in France. But in the Pacific, the Battle of Saipan was of extreme strategic importance. D-Day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan is a gripping account of one of the most dramatic engagements of World War II. The conquest of Saipan and the neighboring island of Tinian was a turning point in the war in the Pacific, making the American victory against Japan inevitable.

War-organized violence against an enemy of the state-seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington's call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years.

World War I was the stage for a new form of mass destruction and violent chemical warfare. When the Bolsheviks pulled Russia out of the war in 1917, the Germans turned their offensive moves to the eastern front in hopes of winning the war in 1918. But as fresh American troops entered the front, the scales tipped against Germany.

Pundits have long predicted the end of conventional warfare but for the foreseeable future, it is here to stay. Counterinsurgency, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, peace enforcement, policing. All these forms, like conventional warfare, are as old as mankind. Modern militaries claim to be professional bodies, responsible for the education, control, and discipline of their members. But at least one aspect of this claim is poorly executed: tactics are not taught to junior leaders, which is why this guide is essential for all junior leaders, officers, and NCOs alike.

Under orders of the Fuhrer, the German General Staff reluctantly drew up a lackluster plan of invasion for France. Yet it was the audacious scheme of three of Hitler’s top generals that brought down France’s military force, Rather than simply move troops to engage the enemy, for the first time they would unleash the tank and drive straight into the heart of their foe.

The Hitler Youth division was assigned the mission of the Führer's Ardennes offensive: Capture the main highway to the primary objective, Antwerp, whose seizure Hitler believed would end the war. Had the Germans taken the Belgian port, it would have cut off the Americans from the British and perhaps led to a second, more devastating Dunkirk. Author Steven Zaloga describes how American foot soldiers faced down Hitler's elite armored spearhead - the Hitler Youth Panzer Division - in the snowy Ardennes forest during one of World War II's biggest battles, the Battle of the Bulge.

The theories and observations in this abridged version of Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz's magnum opus have been heeded by military strategists for nearly 200 years. Most have considered this to be the "Bible" of military strategy and tactics.

GCHQ is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the UK, and has existed for 100 years - but we still know next to nothing about it. In this ground-breaking book - the first and most definitive history of the organisation ever published - intelligence expert Richard Aldrich traces GCHQ’s development from a wartime code-breaking operation based in the Bedfordshire countryside into one of the world leading espionage organisations.

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

No single sea battle has had more far-reaching consequences than the one fought in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March 1862. The Confederacy, with no fleet of its own, built an iron fort containing 10 heavy guns on the hull of a captured Union frigate named the Merrimack. The North got word of the project when it was already well along, and, in desperation, commissioned an eccentric inventor named John Ericsson to build the Monitor, an entirely revolutionary iron warship.