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15418 results in Military history

Page 308 of 771

  • 1 - British military strategy

  • from Part I - Grand Strategies
  • Edited by John Ferris, University of Calgary, Evan Mawdsley, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 28-50

  • Summary

    In the eighteenth century, the British developed a grand strategy that was designed to minimize their weaknesses and play to their strengths. France signed an armistice, with the result that the foundation of British military strategy, the assumption that the French army would at least be strong enough to hold the Germans in the west, had collapsed. In the second half of the year British gained allies whose combined military strength, when it was fully mobilized, meant that the defeat of the Axis Powers would only be a matter of time. Tensions between British and American military strategists about the future course of the war first emerged in April 1942. In November 1943, the War Office had earmarked a dozen divisions for OVERLORD. The British effort in the war against Japan focused on the Burma front and the defence of India. British military strategy reflected the strategic culture that its policy-makers had developed since the eighteenth century.

  • Introduction to Part III

  • from Part III - Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 377-384

  • Summary

    The rapid conquests in Western Europe of April, May and June 1940 expanded German occupation to Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and France, countries which were not the focus of German ambitions, but which promised far greater industrial resources. The first wave of serious scholarship on occupied Europe tended to emphasize German economic exploitation and to look to the conscription of West European workers to work in Germany as a key motivation for joining the resistance. This chapter singles out food and sex as issues which crossed all national boundaries in occupied Europe, were profoundly influenced by German actions and, in turn, became key to the changing moral values and commitments of occupied Europeans. The dynamic effects of transferring both food and labour to Germany pushed the new colonial supply zones into a spiral of starvation and increasing mortality.

  • 4 - Controlling resources

  • from Part I - Political Economy
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 122-148

  • Summary

    A fresh material history of the Second World War can throw into relief neglected questions of meaning and understanding of the nature of modern war, and of the basis of military power. In older treatments and tabulations of the material side of war, two sets of numbers stand out: first, the comparative production of various weapons, and second, measures of control of certain raw materials. This chapter focuses on the three great raw materials of the twentieth century: coal, in a class of its own, and iron ore and oil. There were close connections between coal and iron ore, and some between coal and oil. There were good economic reasons for consuming bulky and cheap raw materials close to centres of production, but all typically travelled long distances. The history of the control of raw materials in wartime is as much a history of the control of transport, as of production.

  • 13 - Hors de combat

  • from Part II - The Social Practice of Peoples’ War, 1939–1945
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 363-384

  • Summary

    Food has always been a weapon of war. The Second World War was no exception. Indeed, the impact of the conflict on food supplies was as deadly in its effect on the world population as military action. In order to withstand the strains of the Second World War a nation ideally required a large and well-equipped army which could be fed with a steady stream of food, medicines and arms. It therefore needed a strong industrial base which could produce these supplies and a logistical apparatus to deliver them to the front. A flexible capitalized agricultural sector which could adapt to wartime difficulties and still produce increased quantities of nutritious food was an enormous advantage. Food, particularly American food, has been especially crucial in the present war, because it has been essential to the fighting efficiency of our allies as well as our own military forces.

  • 20 - Filling the ranks

  • from Part III - Fighting Forces
  • Edited by John Ferris, University of Calgary, Evan Mawdsley, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 585-607

  • Summary

    Britain and the USA, the largest holdouts from routine conscription in peacetime, adopted volunteering before going to war in 1939 and 1941 respectively. The USSR identified manpower as a strategic resource, and in 1941-42 tried to evacuate military-age males ahead of German advances. The Germans retained men who had suffered severe frostbite in Russia, stationing them on the Western Front, and formed security divisions from oldermen to police rear areas. Similarly, the US Army retained men for limited service who had useful skills even though they were not fit enough to recruit. Politicians were good at strong rhetoric, but weaker at taking action. For instance, US politicians talked of a policy of work or fight, but they never forced national service. No country found a permanent solution to manpower problems, not least because those problems were dynamic. Strategy, tactics and diplomacy played their roles, as did timing, politics and the needs of industry.

  • 6 - Sea transport

  • from Part I - Political Economy
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 174-195

  • Summary

    This chapter on seaborne transport in the Second World War pursues four thematic lines of development. First, in accordance with the scope of the conflict, it places the history of transport on a global and often globally interlocked scale. Second, to capture the distinctive challenges of the Second World War, the chapter compares the two world war experiences. Third, while the story of the maritime Allied nations dominates, it comprehends Axis cross-sea traffic. Finally, the chapter places the experience of the war within a broader temporal perspective which looks back to pre-war maritime infrastructures of knowledge, expertise, networks and installations and forward to the post-war maritime consequences of five years of global war at sea. Two matters cloud any discussion of global transport in the Second World War. One is the ultimate victory of the Allies. The other is the cornucopia of statistics trumpeted in nearly all the histories of that triumph.

  • 1 - The economics of the war with Nazi Germany

  • from Part I - Political Economy
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 27-55

  • Summary

    This chapter explores how the major powers of Europe and the USA mobilized their economies when war came in 1939, and how at the end of the Second World War they once again wrestled with the problem of how to restore economic peace. Viewed in terms of strictly economic metrics it is conventional to draw a sharp line in 1945 separating the troubled interwar era from the 'post-war' era of triumphant growth. In terms of economic success the difference is undeniable. But the moniker of 'post-war' is seriously misleading when applied to the 1950s, a period of intense military confrontation in the early Cold War and violent decolonization struggles. Alongside the famous welfare state initiatives of the 1940s, the warfare states that had first taken shape in the First World War were more entrenched than ever. Recognizing this casts new light on the nature of the 'post-war' international economic order.

  • 6 - Feigning grand strategy

  • from Part I - Grand Strategies
  • Edited by John Ferris, University of Calgary, Evan Mawdsley, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 159-188

  • Summary

    Geography, the nature of the Japanese government structure and the character of military leadership, all shaped how grand strategy was formulated. This chapter investigates the changing perceptions of the strategic function of geography between 1854 and 1945. It has four sections. The first assesses the literature, focusing on how the difficulty to 'name' Japan's war has limited analyses of Japanese grand strategy. The second part engages with the mechanics overseeing the development of grand strategy, exploring who were the 'makers of strategy' and what drove their interactions. The third part investigates the 'visions of strategy' articulated by Japanese military elites as the Second World War evolved, until the end of 1942. The fourth part looks at how, from 1943, unresolved issues among the army and navy and the inability to adjust grand strategy led to defeat, examining the 'failures of strategy'.

  • 7 - Knowledge economies

  • from Part I - Political Economy
  • Edited by Michael Geyer, University of Chicago, Adam Tooze, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 196-219

  • Summary

    The Second World War marks the transition to a new mode of warfare, one in which scientific and technical knowledge transformed the fighting of war. Most historical studies have focused on the outputs of national R&D systems and asked what made them succeed or fail. Instead, this chapter highlights the global character of these developments and their disrespect for the temporal end of the war. It explores national innovation systems as individual experiments within a larger landscape of war-relevant R&D. Second World War research crystallized a societal configuration that had been forming since the second industrial revolution. Knowledge and its bearers were understood as the key agents of change in the new social order. The theorists of knowledge economies were looking at post-1945 America, which meant they were observing that setting where the fullest effects of wartime R&D mobilization carried forward into the post-war order.

  • 21 - Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, 1941–1945

  • from Part III - Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
  • Edited by Richard Bosworth, Jesus College, Oxford, Joseph Maiolo, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Second World War
    Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    23 April 2015, pp 533-557

  • Summary

    The story of the British Empire's war is one of imperial success in contributing toward Allied victory. On the one hand, egregious imperial failure, as Britain struggled to protect people and to feed them, and failed to win the loyalty of colonial subjects; many of whom viewed the end of British rule with an indifference that shocked the British, or anti-British political leaders in Burma, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq and Malaya, men prepared to court the enemy in their desperation to get the British out. The British Empire was an integrated economic, political and military zone, a veritable imperial state. Britain's international political and strategic posture rested upon its alliance with the semi-autonomous Dominions, and its possession of India and a vast colonial empire. The British Empire suffered from the scourges that afflict all empires: internal opposition and external rivalry. The military contribution of the British Empire was a key facet of the 'British' war effort.

Page 308 of 771