This revisionist history convincingly argues that the Regia Marina Italiana (the Royal Italian Navy) has been neglected and maligned in assessments of its contributions to the Axis effort in World War II. After all, Italy was the major Axis player in the Mediterranean, and it was the Italian navy and air force, with only sporadic help from their German ally, that stymied the British navy and air force for most of the thirty-nine months that Italy was a belligerent. It was the Royal Italian Navy that provided the many convoys that kept the Axis war effort in Africa alive by repeatedly...

The U.S. Army supply organization for the Normandy Invasion, although very impressive, should have done a better job in the summer of 1944. The supply system suffered from several serious shortcomings which should have been avoided. The purpose of this work is to examine an aspect of military history which, as many military historians have pointed out, has received little attention. As the Gulf War demonstrated, logistics, the supplying of armies, is crucial to achieving victory.

This book describes how the growing awareness of the strategic importance of science in the 1930s caused the Allied and German leadership to build scientific information supply systems that survived into the postwar era. Using archival materials from five countries, Richards traces the successes and failures of these early scientific intelligence agencies. She focuses on the OSS unit supplying copy for the US government's wartime program to reprint current German scientific journals. She describes as well the methods used by the OSS to spirit individual journal issues from inside the Reich...

The Specht Journal is one of the major diaries written by Braunschweig military personnel during the Burgoyne campaign of the American Revolutionary War. From the departure from Wolfenbuttel on February 22, 1776 to the end on Winter Hill near Boston on November 9, 1777, the narrator faithfully accounts for each day of the ill-fated campaign. He describes the astonishing affair at Ticonderoga, the short battle at Hubbardton, and the toilsome march south to Fort Miller via Forts Ann and Edward. The campaign ends after two indecisive battles at Saratoga, where Burgoyne, without...

This book describes the logistical systems and requirements of the North Korean People's Army and Chinese Communist forces during the Korean War. The author examines the performance of the Communist logistical system from June 1950 to July 1953, explaining the failure of the United Nations air interdiction campaign in terms of the constant improvement of Communist logistical capabilities. The author concludes that the United Nations air force damaged, but was unable to destroy, the Communist distribution system. The North Koreans and Chinese Communists were able to supply their front line...

This study is one of the rare contributions to the very small library of genuine strategic studies. Strategy here covers all military activity. The broad purpose is to show how strategy works, using air power and special operations as substantial case studies, but also addressing sea power, nuclear deterrence, and information warfare. Although this book says interesting things about the future of air power, the reliability of non-nuclear deterrence, the true character of joint warfare, the utility of special warriors, and the limitations of excellence in information warfare, the primary...

The reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725), long regarded as the turning point in the Europeanization of Russia, witnessed the establishment of Russia's first modern navy, the Azov Sea fleet. Its creation evokes a fundamental question about the era: was Peter a reformer or a revolutionary? This three-part study examines Russia's maritime experience in the 17th and early 18th centuries in order to address this central question. The author argues that Peter's development of the navy was revolutionary in the scale and level of technology brought to fruition through the reform of existing...

Using newly released documents, the author presents an integrated look at American nuclear policy and diplomacy in crises from the Berlin blockade to Vietnam. The book answers the question why, when the atomic bomb had been used with such devastating effect against the Japanese Empire in 1945, American leaders put this most apocalyptic of weapons back on the shelf, never to be used again in anger. It documents the myopia of Potomac strategists in involving the U.S. in wars of attrition in Korea and Southeast Asia, marginal areas where American vital interests were in no way endangered....

The first comprehensive account in English of how the Portuguese Armed Forces prepared for and conducted a distant counterinsurgency campaign in its African possessions with very limited resources, choosing to stay and fight despite the small odds for success. The Portuguese military crafted its doctrine and implemented it to match the guerrilla strategy of protracted war, and in doing so, followed the lessons gleaned from the British and French experiences in small wars. The Portuguese approach to the conflict was distinct in that it sought to combine the two-pronged national strategy of...

The first biography of one of George Washington's most able and controversial generals examines the military career of William Maxwell from British army commissary to commander of the New Jersey Continental troops in major northern battles and campaigns and numerous confrontations with British incursionary forces into New Jersey. As Washington's first commander of the light infantry troops, Maxwell had crucial roles in the battles of Cooch's Bridge (Iron Hill), Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Springfield, and led the New Jersey brigade in the Sullivan Indian expedition. Maxwell and...