A People S Army

A People's Army documents the many distinctions between British regulars and Massachusetts provincial troops during the Seven Years' War. Originally published by UNC Press in 1984, the book was the first investigation of colonial military life to give equal attention to official records and to the diaries and other writings of the common soldier. The provincials' own accounts of their experiences in the campaign amplify statistical profiles that define the men, both as civilians and as soldiers. These writings reveal in intimate detail their misadventures, the drudgery of soldiering, the imminence of death, and the providential world view that helped reconcile them to their condition and to the war.

Insiders view of the Army of Israel, its structure, its men and women and its most memorable actions.

The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) had its beginning in 1930, in a mountain cave near the China border, with Vo Nguyen Giap and thirty-three others. Giap, with Ho Chi Minh's help, built up this minuscule army from a semi-guerrilla status into a force numbering over one million in the regular army and another three million in paramilitary elements. Pike discusses in depth the relationship of this small, underdeveloped country to Russia, to Marxist-Leninist doctrine, to China. He also accounts for Hanoi's victory in the Vietnam War and discusses the North Vietnam strategy that has proved so successful against three of the world's greatest powers.

This book investigates the origins of the North Korean garrison state by examining the development of the Korean People’s Army and the legacies of the Korean War. Despite its significance, there are very few books on the Korean People’s Army with North Korean primary sources being difficult to access. This book, however, draws on North Korean documents and North Korean veterans’ testimonies, and demonstrates how the Korean People’s Army and the Korean War shaped North Korea into a closed, militarized and xenophobic garrison state and made North Korea seek Juche (Self Reliance) ideology and weapons of mass destruction. This book maintains that the youth and lower classes in North Korea considered the Korean People’s Army as a positive opportunity for upward social mobility. As a result, the North Korean regime secured its legitimacy by establishing a new class of social elites wherein they offered career advancements for persons who had little standing and few opportunities under the preceding Japanese dominated regime. These new elites from poor working and peasant families became the core supporters of the North Korean regime today. In addition, this book argues that, in the aftermath of the Korean War, a culture of victimization was established among North Koreans which allowed Kim Il Sung to use this culture of fear to build and maintain the garrison state. Thus, this work illustrates how the North Korean regime has garnered popular support for the continuation of a militarized state, despite the great hardships the people are suffering. This book will be of much interest to students of North Korea, the Korean War, Asian politics, Cold War Studies, military and strategic studies, and international history.

The Chronicle of a People's War: The Military and Strategic History of the Cambodian Civil War, 1979–1991 narrates the military and strategic history of the Cambodian Civil War, especially the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), from when it deposed the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 until the political settlement in 1991. The PRK survived in the face of a fierce insurgency due to three factors: an appealing and reasonably well-implemented political program, extensive political indoctrination, and the use of a hybrid army. In this hybrid organization, the PRK relied on both its professional, conventional army, and the militia-like, "territorial army." This latter type was lightly equipped and most soldiers were not professional. Yet the militia made up for these weaknesses with its intimate knowledge of the local terrain and its political affinity with the local people. These two advantages are keys to victory in the context of counterinsurgency warfare. The narrative and critical analysis is driven by extensive interviews and primary source archives that have never been accessed before by any scholar, including interviews with former veterans (battalion commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders, commanders of provincial military commands, commanders of military regions, and deputy chiefs of staff), articles in the People’s Army from 1979 to 1991, battlefield footage, battlefield video reports, newsreel, propaganda video, and official publications of the Cambodian Institute of Military History.

For more than fifty years, the combined armed forces of the United States and the Republic of Korea have faced down the North Korean People's Army (NKPA) along the world's most militarized stretch of land known as the demilitarized zone. Despite the prolonged standoff, much remains unknown about the world's third largest army. In this authoritative study, James M. Minnich blends academic knowledge with nearly twenty-five years of military experience to explain the NKPA's origins, military ideology, strategy, combat formations, and tactics to ensure a full understanding of this reclusive belligerent. At the outset, Minnich examines the first crucial years of the North Korean state and its army. Solidly grounded in primary sources and buttressed by the judicious use of secondary sources, his work traces the formative elements of the Korean partisans, Soviet Army, and Chinese communists to show how each group contributed to the NKPA's development and its ability to mount the first shooting campaign of the Cold War. This timely book then presents a vitally relevant examination of the NKPA's current military tactics, including its seven forms of offensive maneuver, two forms of defense, and tactical artillery groupings. Required reading for military planners and personnel who must remain prepared to rapidly deploy to Korea, this concise profile will also appeal to students of Korean history and those seeking a deeper understanding of the NKPA.

Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.