A Worker’s Way Of War: The Red Army’s Doctrinal Debate, 1918–1924 PDF Download

Author: Major Matthew M. Hurley
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786250519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

View

Book Description
Following the October 1917 Revolution, the leaders of the fledgling Red Army embarked on a debate concerning the nature, form, and function of military doctrine. A group known as the ‘military communists,’ including M.V. Frunze, M.N. Tukhachevsky, K. Voroshilov, and S.I. Gusev sought to formulate a ‘proletarian’ military doctrine based on the lessons of the Russian Civil War (1918-21) and purged of supposedly outmoded, bourgeois military thought. Their doctrine, they claimed, would be based overwhelmingly on maneuver and the offensive, which they felt best represented the ‘active’ nature of the working class. Against them stood Commissar for War Leon Trotsky, supported by ex-Tsarist military specialists, notably A.A. Svechin. Trotsky and his allies, noting the Soviet Union’s backwardness relative to the West, professed a policy of expediency in military affairs. Though Trotsky and Svechin proved their position correct both in reference to military affairs and orthodox communist thought, the ripening political struggle eventually secured Frunze’s and Tukhachevsky’s domination of the Red Army and Trotsky’s eventual ouster and exile.

Author: Matthew S. Muehlbauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136756043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 559

View

Book Description
From the first interactions between European and native peoples, to the recent peace-keeping efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, military issues have always played an important role in American history. Ways of War comprehensively explains the place of the military within the wider context of the history of the United States, showing its centrality to American culture and politics. The chapters provide a complete survey of the American military's growth and development while answering such questions as: How did the American military structure develop? How does it operate? And how have historical military events helped the country to grow and develop? Features Include: Chronological and comprehensive coverage of North American conflicts since the seventeenth century and international wars undertaken by the United States since 1783 Over 100 maps and images, chapter timelines identifying key dates and events, and text boxes throughout providing biographical information and first person accounts A companion website featuring an extensive testbank of discussion, essay and multiple choice questions for instructors as well as student study resources including an interactive timeline, chapter summaries, annotated further reading, annotated weblinks, additional book content, flashcards and an extensive glossary of key terms. Extensively illustrated and written by experienced instructors, Ways of War is essential reading for all students of American Military History.

Author: E. M. Delafield
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

View

Book Description
This story is set in England during World War I and revolves around Miss Vivian, a 29-year-old woman. In this novel, Miss Vivian is the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt. She lives with her parents at their rural estate 'Plessings'. It is to be admired that Vivian, who has never done a day's work in her life, has a tenacious spirit that propels her in organizing, supervising and directing the Midlands Supply Depot with great efficiency. Meanwhile across the street the 'war girls' live in a very overcrowded hostel, here they share rooms with hardly any hot water and pretty much unpalatable food.

Author: John Grenier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139444705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

View

Book Description
This 2005 book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged against Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US 'special operations' in the War on Terror.

Author: Thomas G. Mahnken
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231517882
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

View

Book Description
No nation in recent history has placed greater emphasis on the role of technology in planning and waging war than the United States. In World War II the wholesale mobilization of American science and technology culminated in the detonation of the atomic bomb. Competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, combined with the U.S. Navy's culture of distributed command and the rapid growth of information technology, spawned the concept of network-centric warfare. And America's post-Cold War conflicts in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan have highlighted America's edge. From the atom bomb to the spy satellites of the Cold War, the strategic limitations of the Vietnam War, and the technological triumphs of the Gulf war, Thomas G. Mahnken follows the development and integration of new technologies into the military and emphasizes their influence on the organization, mission, and culture of the armed services. In some cases, advancements in technology have forced different branches of the military to develop competing or superior weaponry, but more often than not the armed services have molded technology to suit their own purposes, remaining resilient in the face of technological challenges. Mahnken concludes with an examination of the reemergence of the traditional American way of war, which uses massive force to engage the enemy. Tying together six decades of debate concerning U.S. military affairs, he discusses how the armed forces might exploit the unique opportunities of the information revolution in the future.

Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307831558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

View

Book Description
The Greeks of the classical age invented not only the central idea of Western politics--that the power of state should be guided by a majority of its citizens--but also the central act of Western warfare, the decisive infantry battle. Instead of ambush, skirmish, maneuver, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks of the fifth century b.c. devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages. In this bold, original study, Victor Davis Hanson shows how this brutal enterprise was dedicated to the same outcome as consensual government--an unequivocal, instant resolution to dispute. The Western Way of War draws from an extraordinary range of sources--Greek poetry, drama, and vase painting, as well as historical records--to describe what actually took place on the battlefield. It is the first study to explore the actual mechanics of classical Greek battle from the vantage point of the infantryman--the brutal spear-thrusting, the difficulty of fighting in heavy bronze armor which made it hard to see, hear and move, and the fear. Hanson also discusses the physical condition and age of the men, weaponry, wounds, and morale. This compelling account of what happened on the killing fields of the ancient Greeks ultimately shows that their style of armament and battle was contrived to minimize time and life lost by making the battle experience as decisive and appalling as possible. Linking this new style of fighting to the rise of constitutional government, Hanson raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the history of war.

Author: Eugene Jarecki
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416565329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 511

View

Book Description
In the sobering aftermath of America's invasion of Iraq, Eugene Jarecki, the creator of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight, launches a penetrating and revelatory inquiry into how forces within the American political, economic, and military systems have come to undermine the carefully crafted structure of our republic -- upsetting its balance of powers, vastly strengthening the hand of the president in taking the nation to war, and imperiling the workings of American democracy. This is a story not of simple corruption but of the unexpected origins of a more subtle and, in many ways, more worrisome disfiguring of our political system and society. While in no way absolving George W. Bush and his inner circle of their accountability for misguiding the country into a disastrous war -- in fact, Jarecki sheds new light on the deepest underpinnings of how and why they did so -- he reveals that the forty-third president's predisposition toward war and Congress's acquiescence to his wishes must be understood as part of a longer story. This corrupting of our system was predicted by some of America's leading military and political minds. In his now legendary 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" that could result from the increasing influence of what he called the "military industrial complex." Nearly two centuries earlier, another general turned president, George Washington, had warned that "overgrown military establishments" were antithetical to republican liberties. Today, with an exploding defense budget, millions of Americans employed in the defense sector, and more than eight hundred U.S. military bases in 130 countries, the worst fears of Washington and Eisenhower have come to pass. Surveying a scorched landscape of America's military adventures and misadventures, Jarecki's groundbreaking account includes interviews with a who's who of leading figures in the Bush administration, Congress, the military, academia, and the defense industry, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and longtime Pentagon reformer Franklin "Chuck" Spinney. Their insights expose the deepest roots of American war making, revealing how the "Arsenal of Democracy" that crucially secured American victory in WWII also unleashed the tangled web of corruption America now faces. From the republic's earliest episodes of war to the use of the atom bomb against Japan to the passage of the 1947 National Security Act to the Cold War's creation of an elaborate system of military-industrial-congressional collusion, American democracy has drifted perilously from the intent of its founders. As Jarecki powerfully argues, only concerted action by the American people can, and must, compel the nation back on course. The American Way of War is a deeply thoughtprovoking study of how America reached a historic crossroads and of how recent excesses of militarism and executive power may provide an opening for the redirection of national priorities.

Author: Ian C. Hope
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803277180
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 350

View

Book Description
While faith in the Enlightenment was waning elsewhere by 1850, at the United States Military Academy at West Point and in the minds of academy graduates serving throughout the country Enlightenment thinking persisted, asserting that war was governable by a grand theory accessible through the study of military science. Officers of the regular army and instructors at the military academy and their political superiors all believed strongly in the possibility of acquiring a perfect knowledge of war through the proper curriculum. A Scientific Way of War analyzes how the doctrine of military science evolved from teaching specific Napoleonic applications to embracing subjects that were useful for war in North America. Drawing from a wide array of materials, Ian C. Hope refutes earlier charges of a lack of professionalization in the antebellum American army and an overreliance on the teachings of Swiss military theorist Antoine de Jomini. Instead, Hope shows that inculcation in West Point’s American military curriculum eventually came to provide the army with an officer corps that shared a common doctrine and common skill in military problem solving. The proliferation of military science ensured that on the eve of the Civil War there existed a distinctly American, and scientific, way of war. Purchase the audio edition.

Author: Antoine J. Bousquet
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197655939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

View

Book Description
Bousquet's landmark book examines the impact of key technologies and scientific ideas on the theory and practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. Spanning the entire modern era, from the Scientific Revolution to the present, it offers a systematic account of modern warfare as the constitution of increasingly complex assemblages of bodies and machines whose integration rests upon a military assimilation of scientific thought. Reflecting the pervasive influence of scientific conceptual frameworks upon warfare, modern armies have been successively organised by reference to the paradigmatic technologies of the clock, engine, computer, and network. Conversely, major scientific developments and technological breakthroughs have become intertwined with the experience of war, especially since the Second World War's unprecedented mobilisation of scientific rationality and technical expertise. This increasingly tight symbiosis between science, technology, and war is at the heart of both the tremendous powers and enduring pathologies displayed by the contemporary military machine. In this new and revised edition, Bousquet extends the analysis to encompass the latest developments in the scientific way of warfare in the midst of renewed great power competition and a wave of technological innovation in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Author: Seth Mattison
Publisher: Train to Be Clutch
ISBN: 9780692827574
Category : Interpersonal relations
Languages : en
Pages : 164

View

Book Description
On a quiet night in the C-suite of Axis Medical Group, Brian Kelly holds a ten-pound sledgehammer, standing in front of a massive corner office. Staring back at him is his own name, etched across the door in polished block letters. He worked for twenty-five years to get it there, but tonight that has to change. And so, with every ounce of his strength... Brian starts to swing. We're entering the age of the Network, a world of hyper-connectivity and constant flux, where disruption is the norm and autonomy, empowerment and meaning are basic expectations of the new workforce. Organizations are being forced to execute and perform today while simultaneously maintaining the discipline to reinvent themselves for a very different future. Successfully navigating the challenge of thriving in two very different worlds is the mandate of the modern day leader. This book will show you how. The fact is, we live in a half-changed world, where everything from communication and etiquette, policies and procedures, where and when work happens, and "paying your dues" are still influenced by a long list of "unwritten rules" established by the world that preceded the Network: the Hierarchy. Responsible for the creation of incredible efficiencies and scale over the past 150 years, the top-down structures and culture of the Hierarchy are still deeply embedded in our organizations and leadership ideologies today. Drawing from their experience guiding everyone from Fortune 500 executives to major-league coaches through the new world of work, Seth Mattison and Joshua Medcalf combine timeless truth with timely strategy in THE WAR AT WORK, a fable grounded in two leaders' introspective journey from the top down world of the Hierarchy to the hyper connected world of the Network. For anyone seeking to embrace the future, find meaning, purpose, and mastery in their career and leadership capacity, this story is a compass, providing new perspectives and practical solutions to navigate the disruptive waters of change, unleash human potential, and bring genuine transformation to a world that desperately needs it.