Download or read book Supplying the British Army in the Second World War written by Janet Macdonald and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The noted military historian reveals the fascinating history of British Army logistics during WWII in this scholarly study. Armies have always required large amounts of material, but by the Second World War the numbers of men involved had grown exponentially, their equipment had become mechanized, and their deployment was global. Elaborate planning and administration at every level had to ensure that items of all kinds were collected, transported and handed out in every theatre of the war. But how were these items selected, ordered, produced, and delivered? Following her previous volume, Supplying the British Army in the First World War, Janet MacDonald continues her study of how the British Army kept its soldiers fed, clothed, and ready to fight. The scale of the operation was enormous, and it had to be performed to critical timetables. Often threatened by enemy action, it was vital to the army’s success. MacDonald describes the necessity for central advanced planning for each expeditionary force as well as those engaged in home defense. She then elucidates the complex organization of personnel who performed these tasks, from the government and military command in London to those who distributed the equipment on the battlefield.

Download or read book Nigeria and World War II written by Chima J. Korieh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sophisticated history of colonial interactions in Nigeria during World War II drawing on hitherto unexplored archival resources.

Download or read book Browned Off and Bloody Minded written by Alan Allport and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport’s rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.

Download or read book Fighting the People s War written by Jonathan Fennell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

Download or read book A Nation in Arms written by Ian F. W. Beckett and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2004-12-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War was the first conflict to draw men and women into uniform on a massive scale. From a small regular force of barely 250,000, the British Army rapidly expanded into a national force of over five million. A Nation in Arms brings together original research into the impact of the war on the army as an institution, gives a revealing account of those who served in it and offers fascinating insights into its social history during one of the bloodiest wars.

Download or read book The British Army at Mackinac 1812 1815 written by Brian Leigh Dunnigan and published by [Lansing, Mich] : Mackinac Island State Park Commission. This book was released on 1980 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Book: Reports in Mackinac History and Archeology: This series is designed to provide a format for the publication of substantial reports relating to the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan. As the continued research efforts of the staff of the Mackinac State Historic Parks produce studies of the history and archeology of this region, they will be published in this series. Relevant papers by non-staff members will also be included. Research by the Mackinac State Historic Parks is primarily directed toward the restoration, reconstruction, and interpretation of the historic sites of Fort Michilimackinac, Fort Mackinac, Mill Creek, and other historic structure in Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. It is also the purpose of our program to present the results of our research to both the general public and the scholar. Museum displays, live interpretation, and attractive publications serve to accomplish this goal in their own unique ways. This report illuminates another aspect of our heritage in a way we trust will be interesting and informative. David A Armour, General Editor.

Download or read book X Troop written by Leah Garrett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE MONTH "This is the incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now." —Wall Street Journal “Brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler.”—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter and The Liberator The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad. Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis. “Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies

Download or read book Farthest Field An Indian Story of the Second World War written by Raghu Karnad and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-08-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I have not lately read a finer book than this—on any subject at all. . . . A masterpiece.” —Simon Winchester, New Statesman The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother’s house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India’s fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby’s pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront. The years 1939–45 might be the most revered, deplored, and replayed in modern history. Yet India’s extraordinary role has been concealed, from itself and from the world. In riveting prose, Karnad retrieves the story of a single family—a story of love, rebellion, loyalty, and uncertainty—and with it, the greater revelation that is India’s Second World War. Farthest Field narrates the lost epic of India’s war, in which the largest volunteer army in history fought for the British Empire, even as its countrymen fought to be free of it. It carries us from Madras to Peshawar, Egypt to Burma—unfolding the saga of a young family amazed by their swiftly changing world and swept up in its violence.

Download or read book India at War written by Yasmin Khan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in Great Britain in 2015 as The Raj at War by The Bodley Head"--Title page verso.

Download or read book The Second World War written by Antony Beevor and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 829 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful and comprehensive chronicle of World War II, by internationally bestselling historian Antony Beevor. Over the past two decades, Antony Beevor has established himself as one of the world's premier historians of WWII. His multi-award winning books have included Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945. Now, in his newest and most ambitious book, he turns his focus to one of the bloodiest and most tragic events of the twentieth century, the Second World War. In this searing narrative that takes us from Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 to V-J day on August 14, 1945 and the war's aftermath, Beevor describes the conflict and its global reach -- one that included every major power. The result is a dramatic and breathtaking single-volume history that provides a remarkably intimate account of the war that, more than any other, still commands attention and an audience. Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, Beevor's grand and provocative account is destined to become the definitive work on this complex, tragic, and endlessly fascinating period in world history, and confirms once more that he is a military historian of the first rank.

Download or read book From Boer War to World War written by Spencer Jones and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British Expeditionary Force at the start of World War I was tiny by the standards of the other belligerent powers. Yet, when deployed to France in 1914, it prevailed against the German army because of its professionalism and tactical skill, strengths developed through hard lessons learned a dozen years earlier. In October 1899, the British went to war against the South African Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State, expecting little resistance. A string of early defeats in the Boer War shook the military’s confidence. Historian Spencer Jones focuses on this bitter combat experience in From Boer War to World War, showing how it crucially shaped the British Army’s tactical development in the years that followed. Before the British Army faced the Boer republics, an aura of complacency had settled over the military. The Victorian era had been marked by years of easy defeats of crudely armed foes. The Boer War, however, brought the British face to face with what would become modern warfare. The sweeping, open terrain and advent of smokeless powder meant soldiers were picked off before they knew where shots had been fired from. The infantry’s standard close-order formations spelled disaster against the well-armed, entrenched Boers. Although the British Army ultimately adapted its strategy and overcame the Boers in 1902, the duration and cost of the war led to public outcry and introspection within the military. Jones draws on previously underutilized sources as he explores the key tactical lessons derived from the war, such as maximizing firepower and using natural cover, and he shows how these new ideas were incorporated in training and used to effect a thorough overhaul of the British Army. The first book to address specific connections between the Boer War and the opening months of World War I, Jones’s fresh interpretation adds to the historiography of both wars by emphasizing the continuity between them.

Download or read book The Ghost Army of World War II written by Rick Beyer and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way—ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Tom Brokaw The first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives—now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—artists, designers, architects, and sound engineers, including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, along with maps, official memos, and letters, accompany Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’s meticulous research and interviews with many of the soldiers, weaving a compelling narrative of how an unlikely team carried out amazing battlefield deceptions that saved thousands of American lives and helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions also offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. This updated edition includes: A new afterword by co-author Rick Beyer Never-before-seen additional images The successful campaign to have the unit awarded a Congressional Gold Medal History and WWII enthusiasts will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.

Download or read book The Ardennes written by Hugh Marshall Cole and published by U.S. Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1965 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Borrowed Soldiers written by Mitchell A. Yockelson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenburg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war’s end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps has received scant attention from historians. Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force—more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that constituted II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the bloody battlefields of Europe. Despite cultural differences, General Pershing’s misgivings, and the contrast between American eagerness and British exhaustion, the untested Yanks benefited from the experience of battle-toughened Tommies. Their combined forces contributed much to the Allied victory. Yockelson plumbs new archival sources, including letters and diaries of American, Australian, and British soldiers to examine how two forces of differing organization and attitude merged command relationships and operations. Emphasizing tactical cooperation and training, he details II Corps’ performance in Flanders during the Ypres-Lys offensive, the assault on the Hindenburg Line, and the decisive battle of the Selle. Featuring thirty-nine evocative photographs and nine maps, this account shows how the British and American military relationship evolved both strategically and politically. A case study of coalition warfare, Borrowed Soldiers adds significantly to our understanding of the Great War.

Download or read book Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars written by Mark Frost and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag

Download or read book Royal Artillery in the Second World War written by Richard Doherty and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, the Germans considered the Royal Artillery to be the most professional arm of the British Army: British gunners were accurate, effective and efficient, and provided fire support for their armoured and infantry colleagues that was better than that in any other army. However, the Royal Artillery delivered much more than field and medium artillery battlefield support. Gunner regiments manned antitank guns on the front line and light anti-aircraft guns in divisional regiments to defend against air attack at home and abroad. The Royal Artillery also helped to protect convoys that brought essential supplies to Britain, and AA gunners had their finest hour when they destroyed the majority of the V-1 flying bombs launched against Britain from June 1944. Richard Doherty delves into the wide-ranging role of the Royal Artillery, examining its state of preparedness in 1939, the many developments that were introduced during the war – including aerial observation and self-propelled artillery – the growth of the regiment and its effectiveness in its many roles. Royal Artillery in the Second World War is a comprehensive account of a British Army regiment that played a vital role in the ensuing Allied victory.

Download or read book Raising Churchill s Army written by David French and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2001-07-05 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first serious analysis of the combat capability of the British army in the Second World War. It sweeps away the myth that the army suffered from poor morale, and that it only won its battles thorugh the use of 'brute force' and by reverting to the techniques of the First World War. David French analyses the place of the army in British strategy in the interwar period and during the Second World War. He shows that after 1918 the General Staff tried hard to learn the lessons of the First World War, enthusiastically embracing technology as the best way of minimizing future casualties. In the first half of the Second World War the army did suffer from manifold weaknesses, not just in the form of shortages of equipment, but also in the way in which it applied its doctrine. Few soldiers were actively eager to close with the enemy, but the morale of the army never collapsed and its combat capability steadily improved from 1942 onwards. Professor French assesses Montgomery's contributions to the war effort and concludes that most important were his willingness to impose a uniform understanding of doctrine on his subordinates, and to use mechanized firepower in ways quite different from Haig in the First World War.