Five Frenchmen go off to war, two of them leaving behind a certain young woman who longs for their return. But the main character in 1914 is the Great War itself. Jean Echenoz, the multiawardwinning French literary magician whose work has been compared to Joseph Conrad and Lawrence Sterne, has brought that deathtrap back to life, leading us gently from a balmy summer day deep into the insatiableand still unthinkablecarnage of trench warfare.
Through history armies of occupation and civil power have been repeatedly faced with the challenges of insurgency. US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has highlighted this form of conflict in the modern world. Armies, sometimes reluctantly, have had to adopt new doctrines and tactics to deal with the problems of insurgency and diverse counterinsurgency strategies have been developed. These have ranged from conventional military operations to a combination of military and political strategy including propaganda, Psy-Ops, and other approaches.
Although the twentieth century is now best remembered for two world wars, in the future it may be at least equally well-known for its profusion of little wars against great opponents. The trend began long before mujahideen took up arms against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. From China and Vietnam to Palestine, Algeria, and Ireland, Daniel Moran explores the nationalist insurgencies that have characterized much of recent warfare.
More than three and a half centuries have passed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48); but this most devastating of wars in the early modern period continues to capture the imagination of readers: this book reveals why. It was one of the first wars where contemporaries stressed the importance of atrocities, the horrors of the fighting and also the sufferings of the civilian population. The Thirty Years’ War remains a conflict of key importance in the history of the development of warfare and the ‘military revolution’.
Big Bertha, Germany’s World War I top secret mobile artillery piece, easily destroyed French and Belgian forts, helping set the stage for trench warfare.
