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Creating the Modern Army - William J. Woolley - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

Creating the Modern Army - William J. Woolley - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

Winner: Army Historical Foundation Award for Excellence in U.S. Army History WritingThe modern US Army as we know it was largely created in the years between the two world wars. Prior to World War I, officers in leadership positions were increasingly convinced that building a new army could not take place as a series of random developments but was an enterprise that had to be guided by a distinct military policy that enjoyed the support of the nation. In 1920, Congress accepted that idea and embodied it in the National Defense Act. In doing so it also accepted army leadership’s idea of entrusting America’s security to a unique force, the Citizen Army, and tasked the nation’s Regular Army with developing and training that force. Creating the Modern Army details the efforts of the Regular Army to do so in the face of austerity budgets and public apathy while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by the new and revolutionary mechanization of warfare. In this book Woolley focuses on the development of what he sees as the four major features of the modernized army that emerged due to these efforts. These included the creation of the civilian components of the new army: the Citizen’s Military Training Camps, the Officer Reserve Corps, the National Guard, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps; the development of the four major combat branches as the structural basis for organizing the army as well as creating the means to educate new officers and soldiers about their craft and to socialize them into an army culture; the creation of a rationalized and progressive system of professional military education; and the initial mechanization of the combat branches. Woolley also points out how the development of the army in this period was heavily influenced by policies and actions of the president and Congress. The US Army that fought World War II was clearly a citizen army whose leadership was largely trained within the framework of the institutions of the army created by the National Defense Act. The way that army fought the war may have been less decisive and more costly in terms of lives and money than it should have been. But that army won the war and therefore validated the citizen army as the US way of war.

DKK 309.00
1

The Red Army and the Great Terror - Peter Whitewood - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

The Red Army and the Great Terror - Peter Whitewood - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union’s most talented and experienced army officers. There followed a massive military purge, from the officer corps through the rank-and-file. Peter Whitewood advances a new explanation for Stalin’s actions - an explanation with the potential to unlock the mysteries that still surround the Great Terror.

DKK 491.00
1

General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army - Mark T. Calhoun - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army - Mark T. Calhoun - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

George C. Marshall once called him “the brains of the army.” And yet General Lesley J. McNair (1883-1944), a man so instrumental to America’s military preparedness and Army modernization, remains little known today, his papers purportedly lost, destroyed by his wife in her grief at his death in Normandy. This book, the product of an abiding interest and painstaking research, restores the general Army Magazine calls one of “Marshall’s forgotten men” to his rightful place in American military history. Because McNair contributed so substantially to America’s war preparedness, this first complete account of his extensive and varied career also leads to a reevaluation of U.S. Army effectiveness during WWII. Born halfway between the Civil War and the dawn of the 20th century, Lesley McNair—“Whitey” by his classmates for his blond hair–graduated 11th of 124 in West Point’s class of 1904 and rose slowly through the ranks like all officers in the early twentieth century. He was 31 when World War I erupted, 34 and a junior officer when American troops prepared to join the fight. It was during this time, and in the interwar period that followed the end of the First World War, that McNair’s considerable influence on Army doctrine and training, equipment development, unit organization, and combined arms fighting methods developed. By looking at the whole of McNair’s career–not just his service in WWII as chief of staff, General Headquarters, 1940-1942, and then as commander, Army Ground Forces, 1942-1944–Calhoun reassesses the evolution and extent of that influence during the war, as well as McNair’s, and the Army’s, wartime performance. This in-depth study tracks the significantly positive impact of McNair’s efforts in several critical areas: advanced officer education; modernization, military innovation, and technological development; the field-testing of doctrine; streamlining and pooling of assets for necessary efficiency; arduous and realistic combat training; combined arms tactics; and an increasingly mechanized and mobile force. Because McNair served primarily in staff roles throughout his career and did not command combat formations during WWII, his contribution has never received the attention given to more public—and publicized—military exploits. In its detail and scope, this first full military biography reveals the unique and valuable perspective McNair’s generalship offers for the serious student of military history and leadership.

DKK 534.00
1

The Russian Army in the Great War - David R. Stone - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

The Russian Army in the Great War - David R. Stone - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

A full century later, our picture of World War I remains one of wholesale, pointless slaughter in the trenches of the Western front. Expanding our focus to the Eastern front, as David R. Stone does in this masterly work, fundamentally alters—and clarifies—that picture. A thorough, and thoroughly readable, history of the Russian front during the First World War, this book corrects widespread misperceptions of the Russian Army and the war in the east even as it deepens and extends our understanding of the broader conflict. Of the four empires at war by the end of 1914—the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German, and Russian—none survived. But specific political, social, and economic weaknesses shaped the way Russia collapsed and returned as a radically new Soviet regime. It is this context that Stone’s work provides, that gives readers a more judicious view of Russia’s war on the home front as well as on the front lines. One key and fateful difference in the Russian experience emerges here: its failure to systematically and comprehensively reorganize its society for war, while the three westernmost powers embarked on programs of total mobilization. Context is also vital to understanding the particular rhythm of the war in the east. Drawing on recent and newly available scholarship in Russian and in English, Stone offers a nuanced account of Russia’s military operations, concentrating on the uninterrupted sequence of campaigns in the first 18 months of war. The eastern empires’ race to collapse underlines the critical importance of contingency in the complete story of World War I. Precisely when and how Russia lost the war was influenced by the structural strengths and weaknesses of its social and economic system, but also by the outcome of events on the battlefield. By bringing these events into focus, and putting them into context, this book corrects and enriches our picture of World War I, and of the true strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and successes of the Russian Army in the Great War.

DKK 572.00
1

America's School for War - Peter J. Schifferle - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

America's School for War - Peter J. Schifferle - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing AwardWhen the United States entered World War II, it took more than industrial might to transform its tiny army—smaller than even Portugal's—into an overseas fighting force of more than eight and a half million. Peter Schifferle contends that the determination of American army officers to be prepared for the next big war was an essential component in America's ultimate triumph over its adversaries. Crucial to that preparation were the army schools at Fort Leavenworth. Interwar Army officers, haunted by the bloodshed of World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive, fully expected to return to Europe to conclude the ""unfinished business"" of that conflict, and they prepared well. Schifferle examines for the first time precisely how they accomplished this through a close and illuminating look at the students, faculty, curriculum, and essential methods of instruction at Fort Leavenworth. He describes how the interwar officer corps there translated the experiences of World War I into effective doctrine, engaged in intellectual debate on professional issues, conducted experiments to determine the viability of new concepts, and used military professional education courses to substitute for the experience of commanding properly organized and resourced units. Schifferle highlights essential elements of war preparation that only the Fort Leavenworth education could provide, including intensive instruction in general staff procedures, hands-on experience with the principles and techniques of combined arms, and the handling of large division-sized formations in combat. This readied army officers for an emerging new era of global warfare and enabled them to develop the leadership decision making they would need to be successful on the battlefield. But Schifferle offers more than a recitation of curriculum development through the skillful interweaving of personal stories about both school experiences and combat operations, collectively recounting the human and professional development of the officer corps from 1918 to 1945. Well crafted and insightful, Schifferle's meticulously researched study shows how and why the Fort Leavenworth experience was instrumental in producing that impressive contingent of military officers who led the U.S. Army to final victory in World War II. By the end of the book, the attentive reader will also fully comprehend why the military professionals at Fort Leavenworth have come to think of it as the ""Intellectual Center of the Army.

DKK 316.00
1

Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers - Roger R. Reese - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers - Roger R. Reese - Bog - University Press of Kansas - Plusbog.dk

Under Joseph Stalin''s iron-fisted rule, the Soviet state tried to forge an army that would be both a shining example of proletarian power and an indomitable deterrent against fascist aggression. In reality, Roger Reese reveals, Stalin''s grand military experiment failed miserably on both counts before it was finally rescued within the crucible of war.Reese greatly expands our understanding of the Red Army''s evolution during the 1930s and its near decimation at the beginning of World War II. Counter to conventional views, he argues that the Stalinist state largely failed in its attempt to use military service as a means to indoctrinate its citizens, especially the peasantry. After 1928, the regime''s recruits became increasingly disenchanted with Stalin''s socialist enterprise-primarily due to the disheartening changes brought on by collectivization and dekulakization. In effect, these reluctant soldiers turned their backs on both the army and Communist Party leadership, neither of which regained credibility until after World War II.The soldiers'' alienation and hostility, Reese demonstrates, was most clearly manifested in the highly volatile tensions between officers and peasant recruits following the military''s chaotic expansion during the 1930s. Those tensions and numerous internal conflicts greatly undermined the regime''s effort to create a well-trained, cohesive, and politically indoctrinated army. In place of this ideal, the regime stumbled along with a disunited and ineffective fighting force guided by outdated doctrines and led by an undeveloped officer corps. All of those elements made the Soviet Union particularly vulnerable to the devastating military disasters of 1941.Along the way, Reese persuasively dispels a number of myths. He shows, for example, that the Red Army''s humiliating defeats at the start of the war were not, as many still believe, due to Stalin''s bloody purges of the officer corps during the 1930s nor to overwhelming German military and economic superiority. Stalin, Reese argues, was only one of many key influences on the Soviet''s disorganized effort to field an effective fighting force. And, while the Red Army was actually technologically superior to the Wehrmacht, the Germans made far better strategic and tactical use of their forces to overwhelm the poorly-led Soviets.A fascinating portrait of an army at war with itself, Reese''s study illuminates the daily lives of soldiers, officers, and civilians and forever changes the way we look at the relation between political motives and military needs in the early Soviet state.

DKK 496.00
1