Command In War
Download Command In War full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Command In War ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
| Author | : Martin Van Creveld |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 356 |
| Release | : 1987-01-01 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0674257219 |
Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.
| Author | : Philip Langer |
| Publisher | : Indiana University Press |
| Total Pages | : 304 |
| Release | : 2004-05-12 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0253110939 |
Why do military commanders, most of them usually quite capable, fail at crucial moments of their careers? Robert Pois and Philip Langer -- one a historian, the other an educational psychologist -- study seven cases of military command failures, from Frederick the Great at Kunersdorf to Hitler's invasion of Russia. While the authors recognize the value of psychological theorizing, they do not believe that one method can cover all the individuals, battles, or campaigns under examination. Instead, they judiciously take a number of psycho-historical approaches in hope of shedding light on the behaviors of commanders during war. The other battles and commanders studied here are Napoleon in Russia, George B. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign, Robert E. Lee and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, John Bell Hood at the Battle of Franklin, Douglas Haig and the British command during World War I, "Bomber" Harris and the Strategic Bombing of Germany, and Stalingrad.
| Author | : Mark Moyar |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Total Pages | : 384 |
| Release | : 2009-10-20 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0300156014 |
Moyar presents a wide-ranging history of counterinsurgency which draws on the historical record and interviews with hundreds of counterinsurgency veterans. He identifies the ten critical attributes of counterinsurgency leadership and reveals why these attributes have been more prevalent in some organizations than others.
| Author | : LAWRENCE. FREEDMAN |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2023-12 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9780197694572 |
Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman shows that successful military command depends on the ability not only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the political circumstances in which they are operating. Command in war is about forging effective strategies and implementing them, making sure that orders are appropriate, well communicated, and then obeyed. But it is also an intensely political process. This is because of the importance of war aims and how they are set, as well as the need to work with other command structures, including those of other branches of the armed forces and allies. In this innovative study, Lawrence Freedman explores the importance of political as well as operational considerations in command with a series of vivid case studies, all taken from the period after 1945. Over this period the risks of nuclear escalation led to a shift away from great power confrontations, and towards civil wars. The chapters cover defeats as well as victories. Pakistani generals try to avoid surrender as they lose the eastern part of their country to India in 1971. Iraq's Saddam Hussein turns his defeats into triumphant narratives of victory. Osama bin Laden escapes the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK struggles as a junior partner to the US in Iraq after 2003. We come across insubordinate generals, such as Israel's Arik Sharon, and those in the French army in Algeria, so frustrated with their political leadership that they twice tried to change it. At the other end of the scale Che Guevara in Congo in 1966 and Igor Girkin in Ukraine in 2014 both try to spark local wars to suit their grandiose objectives.
| Author | : Eliot A. Cohen |
| Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
| Total Pages | : 312 |
| Release | : 2012-04-17 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 074324222X |
“An excellent, vividly written” (The Washington Post) account of leadership in wartime that explores how four great democratic statesmen—Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion—worked with the military leaders who served them during warfare. The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show—the politicians or the generals? In Supreme Command, Eliot A. Cohen expertly argues that great statesmen do not turn their wars over to their generals, and then stay out of their way. Great statesmen make better generals of their generals. They question and drive their military men, and at key times they overrule their advice. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds—backwoods lawyer, dueling French doctor, rogue aristocrat, and impoverished Jewish socialist. Yet they faced similar challenges. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners, who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conflict with military men. All four triumphed. The powerful lessons of this “brilliant” (National Review) book will touch and inspire anyone who faces intense adversity and is the perfect gift for history buffs of all backgrounds.
| Author | : Jörg Muth |
| Publisher | : University of North Texas Press |
| Total Pages | : 377 |
| Release | : 2011 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1574413031 |
Muth examines the different paths the United States Army and the German Armed Forces traveled to select, educate, and promote their officers in the crucial time before World War II. He demonstrates that the military education system in Germany represented an organized effort where each school provided the stepping stone for the next. But in the US, there existed no communication about teaching contents among the various schools.
| Author | : Donald Vandergriff |
| Publisher | : Naval Institute Press |
| Total Pages | : 325 |
| Release | : 2019-09-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1682471047 |
In September 2010, James G. Pierce, a retired U.S. Army colonel with the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, published a study on Army organizational culture. Pierce postulated that "the ability of a professional organization to develop future leaders in a manner that perpetuates readiness to cope with future environmental and internal uncertainty depends on organizational culture." He found that today's U.S. Army leadership "may be inadequately prepared to lead the profession toward future success." The need to prepare for future success dovetails with the use of the concepts of mission command. This book offers up a set of recommendations, based on those mission command concepts, for adopting a superior command culture through education and training. Donald E. Vandergriff believes by implementing these recommendations across the Army, that other necessary and long-awaited reforms will take place.
| Author | : Nigel Hamilton |
| Publisher | : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Total Pages | : 549 |
| Release | : 2014 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0547775245 |
An in-depth analysis of FDR's leadership during the Second World War reveals how he assumed control over key decisions to launch a successful trial landing in North Africa to shift the war in favor of Allied forces.
| Author | : Harry Laver |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 295 |
| Release | : 2008-10-17 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0813173124 |
What essential leadership lessons do we learn by distilling the actions and ideas of great military commanders such as George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Colin Powell? That is the fundamental question underlying The Art of Command: Military Leadership from George Washington to Colin Powell. The book illustrates that great leaders become great through conscious effort—a commitment not only to develop vital skills but also to surmount personal shortcomings. Harry S. Laver, Jeffrey J. Matthews, and the other contributing authors identify nine core characteristics of highly effective leadership, such as integrity, determination, vision, and charisma, and nine significant figures in American military history whose careers embody those qualities. The Art of Command examines each figure’s strengths and weaknesses and how those attributes affected their leadership abilities, offering a unique perspective of military leadership in American history. Laver and Matthews have assembled a list of contributors from military, academic, and professional circles, which allows the book to encompass diverse approaches to the study of leadership.
| Author | : D. Clayton James |
| Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
| Total Pages | : 322 |
| Release | : 2010-06-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1451602375 |
Distinguished historian D. Clayton James offers a brilliant reinterpretation of the Korean War conflict. Focusing on the critical issue of command, he shows how the Korean War is a key to understanding American decision-making in all military encounters since World War II. Korea, the first of America’s limited wars to stem the tide of world communism, was fought on unfamiliar terrain and against peasant soldiers and would become a template for subsequent American military engagements, especially Vietnam. And yet, the strategic and tactical doctrines employed in Korea, as well as the weapons and equipment, were largely left over from World War II. James, the master biographer of MacArthur, uses studies of military crises to examine the American high command in the Korean War. He explores the roles, leadership, personalities, and prejudices of five key commanders—President Harry S. Truman; Generals Douglas MacArthur, Matthew B. Ridgway, and Mark W. Clark; and Admiral C. Turner Joy—and then looks at six crucial issues confronting them in that conflict. From the decision made by Truman, without congsessional approval, to commit United States forces to combat in Korea, to MacArthur’s persistent fight for approval of his dangerous plan to assault Inchon, to the judgment to finally open truce negotiations, these turning points illuminate the American way of command in wartime. James analyzes the ground-level results and long-term implications of each choice, and sensitively explores the course that might had followed if other options had been taken. Probing the nature and consequences of these military resolutions, James shows how the conduct of the Korean War, like every new war, bears the imprint of the preceding one.
