Pen & Sword, £20.95 ISBN 978-0691008530 One thousand Soviets died on average every hour from June 1941 until May 1945. Modern studies of the Second World War have tended to focus on the western theatres of conflict and the role of the American and British armies. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union […]
Books
Haig, Master of the Field by Maj Gen Sir John Davidson
Pen & Sword, £19.99 ISBN 978-1848843622 It was Erich Ludendorff, who, in writing his memoirs in 1923, christened Haig ‘Master of the Field’; a telling and honest tribute paid to the Field Marshall by his most redoubtable opponent. Davidson’s account, first published just before his death in 1954, represents a valuable corrective to the popular […]
Empire and Espionage: Spies in the Zulu War by Stephen Wade
Pen & Sword, £19.99 ISBN 978-1848841802 This book provides an analysis of intelligence gathering and implementation during the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879. The author has correctly identified this as an overlooked area in the recent burgeoning of intelligence studies. A wide of range of individuals are covered in this engaging study, from commanders and diplomats, […]
The Origins of the Second World War by A J P Taylor: a Military Times Classic
Continuing our review of military classics, Military Times looks at A J P Taylor’s controversial publication on the causes of the Second World War. For a book about events a quarter of a century in the past, the storm raised by the publication of A J P Taylor’s book on the causes of the Second […]
The Command of the Air by Giulio Douhet : a Military Times Classic
The Command of the Air is the greatest military treatise on air war ever written – a dogmatic manifesto promising victory through strategic bombing. Giulio Douhet (1869-1930), air war’s greatest prophet, ought to have been a First World War fighter ace. In fact, he may never have learnt to fly. He was an army officer, […]
Bouncing Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis
Ian Murray Haynes Publishing, £25 ISBN 978-1844255887 Barnes Wallis came to the public’s attention with the release of The Dam Busters, the 1955 film that illustrated the success of bouncing bombs in the destruction of German dams in 1943, and the heroism of the men of 617 Squadron. Little else was generally known about the […]
Great War Lives: A Guide for Family Historians – Paul Reed
Fuelled by TV shows such as Who Do You Think You Are?, interest in family history has exploded in recent years. And because it was the first British war in which the whole nation – women workers, nurses, and ambulance drivers, as well as men; volunteers as well as conscripts and professional soldiers, sailors, and […]
Small Wars by Colonel C E Callwell : a Military Times Classic
We review Colonel C E Callwell’s famous Late Victorian counter-insurgency manual, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice. The military academies are buzzing with counter-insurgency theory. Recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere are putting a premium on anti-guerrilla doctrine. Little wonder, then, that Colonel C E Callwell’s Small Wars, a century-old manual […]
Military Times’ Book of the Month: The Kill Zone, by Chris Ryan
Book Club: The Kill Zone Chris Ryan is ‘the one that got away’: the one member of the famous Bravo Two Zero SAS team dropped into the north-western desert of Iraq in 1991 who succeeded in escaping across the Syrian border. Of the others, three were killed and four captured. Ryan’s story of the military debacle […]
Cultures of War, By John W Dower
‘A date which will live in infamy’ was the iconic phrase coined by President Roosevelt to describe the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The same phrase was frequently used in the media after the 9/11 attacks. Prof. John Dower, whose previous works include a Pulitzer Prize winning study of post-war Japan, uses this as a […]