Strategy
Star Wars and Tank Wars
On the evening of March 23, 1983, a long black limousine pulled up to the south gate of Ronald Reagan’s White House. In the back sat Edward Teller, now seventy-five years old. Teller was not exactly sure why he was here. He had just flown in from California, where he lived, because the aide who called him three days earlier…
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British Middle-East Strategy WWII
The Iranian warship Babr (Tiger) after being shelled and sunk by the Australian sloop HMAS Yarra during the surprise attack on Iran in August 1941 With the German push eastward during Operation Barbarossa, Britain believed that Hitler’s aim, in addition to destroying the Stalin regime, was to take control of…
SUICIDE WEAPONS AND TACTICS IN THE FINAL DEFENCE OF JAPAN
As early as January 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy reached agreement (although their cooperation was, as always, limited by inter-service rivalry) on Ketsu-Go (“Operation Decision”): the final defence of the Japanese home islands against Allied invasion. A single phrase from the Precepts Concerning the Decisive Battle issued on…
Military Practice in Prussia: 1740-1763 Part I
THE STRATEGIC LEVEL The strategic level Prussian war aims and strategy changed in the course of the three Silesian Wars from territorial expansion in the first two wars to the survival of Prussia as a great power with the Hohenzollern dynasty at its head in the Seven Years’ War. Frederick…
Military Practice in Prussia: 1740-1763 Part II
Deep penetration into Austrian territory, either in order to take the enemy’s capital or to force battle on the enemy by threatening his capital, was hardly possible. Frederick had to overcome the Bohemian mountains first and was then stopped by fortresses such as Brünn or Olmütz. He could bypass a…
The Most Perilous Moment of the War: ‘I am convinced that man is mad’ July–November 1942 Part I
It is well that we should avoid unwarranted complacency and remind ourselves that if we did win the last war it was not without moments of extreme peril. Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke at a Unionist luncheon in Belfast, 1949 No sooner had one great argument between the British and Americans…
The Most Perilous Moment of the War: ‘I am convinced that man is mad’ July–November 1942 Part II
It was Stalingrad that finally, in Stimson’s words, ‘banished the spectre of a German victory in Russia, which had haunted the Council table of the Allies for a year and a half’. It also greatly reduced the likelihood of a German attack through Spain, cutting off the American forces from…