A Forgotten Front

This book explains why the United States' local allies are often as much of an obstacle to success in counterinsurgency as the insurgents themselves.

An examination of the understudied, yet significant role of Florida and its populace during the Civil War. In many respects Florida remains the forgotten state of the Confederacy. Journalist Horace Greeley once referred to Florida in the Civil War as the “smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.” Although it was the third state to secede, Florida’s small population and meager industrial resources made the state of little strategic importance. Because it was the site of only one major battle, it has, with a few exceptions, been overlooked within the field of Civil War studies. During the Civil War, more than fifteen thousand Floridians served the Confederacy, a third of which were lost to combat and disease. The Union also drew the service of another twelve hundred white Floridians and more than a thousand free blacks and escaped slaves. Florida had more than eight thousand miles of coastline to defend, and eventually found itself with Confederates holding the interior and Federals occupying the coasts—a tenuous state of affairs for all. Florida’s substantial Hispanic and Catholic populations shaped wartime history in ways unique from many other states. Florida also served as a valuable supplier of cattle, salt, cotton, and other items to the blockaded South. A Forgotten Front: Florida during the Civil War Era provides a much-needed overview of the Civil War in Florida. Editors Seth A. Weitz and Jonathan C. Sheppard provide insight into a commonly neglected area of Civil War historiography. The essays in this volume examine the most significant military engagements and the guerrilla warfare necessitated by the occupied coastline. Contributors look at the politics of war, beginning with the decade prior to the outbreak of the war through secession and wartime leadership and examine the period through the lenses of race, slavery, women, religion, ethnicity, and historical memory.

The First World War began in East Africa in August 1914 and did not end until 13 November 1918. In its scale and impact, it was the largest conflict yet to take place on African soil. Four empires and their subject peoples were engaged in a conflict that ranged from modern Kenya in the north to Mozambique in the south. The campaign combined heroic human endeavour and terrible suffering, set in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. The troops had to cope with extremes that ranged from arid deserts to tropical jungles to formidable mountains and almost always on inadequate rations.Yet the East African campaign has languished in undeserved obscurity over the years with many people only vaguely aware of its course of events. Indeed, Humphrey Bogart’s famous film, The African Queen, inspired by an episode of the campaign, often provides its only lasting image.The Forgotten Front is the first full-scale history of this neglected campaign. Ross Anderson details both the fighting and the strategic and political background to the war and the differing viewpoints of the principal protagonists

The first book-length study of two overlooked engagements that helped turned the tide of a pivotal Civil War battle. By May of 1863, the stone wall at the base of Marye’s Heights above Fredericksburg, Virginia, loomed large over the Army of the Potomac, haunting its men with memories of slaughter from their crushing defeat there the previous December. They would assault it again with a very different result the following spring. This time the Union troops wrested the wall and high ground from the Confederates and drove west into the enemy’s rear. The inland drive stalled in heavy fighting at Salem Church. Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front is the first book to examine Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church and the central roles they played in the final Southern victory. Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have long appreciated the pivotal roles these engagements played in the Chancellorsville campaign, and just how close the Southern army came to grief—and the Union army to stunning success. Together they seamlessly weave their extensive newspaper, archival, and firsthand research into a compelling narrative to better understand these combats, which usually garner little more than a footnote to the larger story of Stonewall Jackson’s march and fatal wounding. Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front offers a thorough examination of the decision-making, movements, and fighting that led to the bloody stalemate at Salem Church, as Union soldiers faced the horror of an indomitable wall of stone—and an undersized Confederate division stood up to a Union juggernaut.

With The Forgotten Front, George H. Cassar intends to demonstrate Italy's vital contribution to the Allied effort in the First World War. His account of the war in Italy covers the strategic considerations as well as the actual fighting.

Although much has been written about the Western Front in World War I, little attention has been given to developments in the east, especially during the crucial period of 1914--1915. Not only did these events have a significant impact on the fighting and outcome of the battles in the west, but all the major combatants in the east ultimately suffered collapses of their political systems with enormous consequences for the future events. Available for the first time in English, this seminal study features contributions from established and rising scholars from eight countries who argue German, central, and eastern European perspectives. Together, they illuminate diverse aspects of the Great War's Eastern Theater, including military strategy and combat, issues of national identity formation, perceptions of the enemy, and links to World War II. They also explore the experiences of POWs and the representation of the Eastern Front in museums, memorials, and the modern media. The scholarship on the First World War is dominated by the trauma of the modern, technologized war in the west, causing the significant political events and battles on the Eastern Front to shift to the background. The Forgotten Front illuminates overlooked but vital aspects of the conflict, and will be an essential resource for students and scholars seeking to better understand the war and its legacy.

A U.S. Army Signal Corps combat photographer, the author spent the winter of 1944-45 documenting the Gothic Line campaign, the Florence to Bologna to Bolzano operation that held in check 20 or so crack German divisions. He focused particularly on the brutal infantry battles in the Apennies, the desperate fighting of the Fifth Army in the Po Valley, and the severe weather and terrain that challenged the Allied troops. His memories and photographs of the operations reveal the harsh fighting and sometimes poignant moments of the men engaged in a battle that was overwhelmed by events at war's end and has been largely forgotten by history.