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15418 results in Military history

Page 312 of 771

  • 18 - War planning

  • 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 533-555

  • Summary

    Strategic war planning involves two activities. The first is anticipating the requirements of war and preparing operations for its initial phases. The second task is intrawar planning, adjusting to the new circumstances that invariably develop, and drafting campaign plans to replace those rendered obsolete by events. By the late 1930s, the basic system for warning and command and control had been laid out, ready for the injection of a new technology, radar. The British were the first of the Western Allies to recognize the scale on which it would be necessary to build air forces. Before the Second World War, the main form of joint operations consisted of amphibious operations at the Dardanelles in 1915, the result was a notable and bloody debacle. The initial successes of the Germans and Japanese owed less to masterly planning than to the strength of their military organizations and tactical cultures, the excellence of their technology, and the sheer audacity of their operations.

  • 10 - Asia-Pacific

  • from Part II - Diplomacy and alliances
  • 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 253-275

  • Summary

    Hitler launched policies independently of his partners, who followed their own aims in the wake of German victories and defeats, and he did so within the context of asymmetrical bilateral relationships that Berlin preferred, rather than through multilateral diplomacy. This chapter is organized by the phases of Germany's war between 1940 and 1945. The first is the defeat of France in 1940, which opened the possibility of reshaping the European and overseas colonial maps. The second is Germany's attack on the USSR, the preparations for which demanded the remapping of Eastern Europe and a closer relationship with Japan, which resulted in global war. A third is the German murder of all Jews within reach, a project in which Germany's European allies were expected to help. The fourth is Germany's defeats in the Soviet Union, North Africa and Western Europe, combined with Japan's defeats in the Pacific, during which the Axis eroded.

  • 12 - The diplomacy of the Grand Alliance

  • from Part II - Diplomacy and alliances
  • 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 301-323

  • Summary

    The working hypothesis of the high command was that Spain's principal enemies were Britain and France, and that the main objective was to expand the North African empire at expense of French. Franco was near to taking Spain into war on Axis side in summer of 1940 and on several subsequent occasions. Franco's alleged services to Spain and the Allies as the man who heroically held back the Nazi hordes were to be a central theme of his propaganda until his death. On 29 May 1942, addressing the Women's Section of the Falange, Franco compared his regime with that of Isabel la Catolica, praising her expulsion of Jews, her totalitarian racial policy and her awareness of Spain's need for Lebensraum. It was hardly surprising, as German ambassador Eberhard von Stohrer remarked to General Krappe in October 1941, that Fuhrer should concluded that Spain was more useful to Germany under the mask of neutrality, as its only outlet from British blockade.

  • 3 - The Soviet Union and the international left

  • from Part I - Ideologies
  • 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 68-90

  • Summary

    The significance of propaganda in the Second World War cannot be found in its contribution to victory or defeat, but in the way key narratives shaped the subsequent representation of the war, particularly for the victors. State propaganda circulated in a complex and unpredictable environment, alongside rumours, gossip, informal news networks and enemy propaganda, all of which affected the reception of particular appeals. Its success was also determined by its correlation with fundamental values, ingrained belief systems and individual subjectivity. This applied in both liberal democracies and totalitarian dictatorships. Propagandists faced a difficult task in September 1939: the memory of the Great War contributed to a lack of enthusiasm about the prospect of another, and most people entered with a sense of 'reluctant loyalty'. After 1945, propagandists re-mobilized the master narratives of the war in the service of new conflicts or to mitigate change.

  • 12 - Battles for morale

  • 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 329-362

  • 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.

  • 22 - Intelligence

  • 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 637-663

  • Summary

    From 1942, the balance of intelligence and power turned simultaneously and systematically toward the Allies. Intelligence did little to cause Axis defeat, but much to shape how the Allies achieved victory. The cooperation between the Western Allies in intelligence was imperfect, but better than anything ever known before. German spies against Britain, the USSR and the United States were controlled by its enemies. The effect of intelligence on the Eastern Front was constrained because tyrants who were military micromanagers, poor as strategists and consumers of information, dominated policy for both sides. The USSR led the world regarding intelligence in peacetime, but that strength had little value for war. More than any other power, spies gave it strategic intelligence, but against allies rather than enemies. The United States won the Pacific War because of the quality of its forces and commanders and the scale of their resources, but intelligence let it win far speedily and cheaply than could have happened otherwise.

  • 9 - Death and survival in the Second World War

  • 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 252-276

  • 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.

Page 312 of 771