The Two Front War

Sir Arthur Wellesley's 1808–1814 campaigns against Napoleon's forces in the Iberian Peninsula have drawn the attention of scholars and soldiers for two centuries. Yet, until now, no study has focused on the problems that Wellesley, later known as the Duke of Wellington, encountered on the home front before his eventual triumph beyond the Pyrenees. In Wellington's Two-Front War, Joshua Moon not only surveys Wellington's command of British forces against the French but also describes the battles Wellington fought in England—with an archaic military command structure, bureaucracy, and fickle public opinion. In this detailed and accessible account, Moon traces Wellington's command of British forces during the six years of warfare against the French. Almost immediately upon landing in Portugal in 1808, Wellington was hampered by his government's struggle to plan a strategy for victory. From that point on, Moon argues, the military's outdated promotion system, political maneuvering, and bureaucratic inertia—all subject to public opinion and a hostile press—thwarted Wellington's efforts, almost costing him the victory. Drawing on archival sources in the United Kingdom and at the United States Military Academy, Moon goes well beyond detailing military operations to delve into the larger effects of domestic policies, bureaucracy, and coalition building on strategy. Ultimately, Moon shows, the second front of Wellington's "two-front war" was as difficult as the better-known struggle against Napoleon's troops and harsh conditions abroad. As this book demonstrates, it was only through strategic vision and relentless determination that Wellington attained the hard-fought victory. Moon's multifaceted examination of the commander and his frustrations offers valuable insight into the complexities of fighting faraway battles under the scrutiny at home of government agencies and the press—issues still relevant today.

A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared. Now, in this thrilling alternate history, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? In this action-packed chronicle of the war that might have been, Harry Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell the story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China and ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory—and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast. A tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, at once brilliantly imaginative and hugely entertaining, Hitler’s War captures the beginning of a very different World War II—with a very different fate for our world today. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Harry Turtledove's The War that Came Early: West and East.

During the Vietnam War, young African Americans fought to protect the freedoms of Southeast Asians and died in disproportionate numbers compared to their white counterparts. Despite their sacrifices, black Americans were unable to secure equal rights at home, and because the importance of the war overshadowed the civil rights movement in the minds of politicians and the public, it seemed that further progress might never come. For many African Americans, the bloodshed, loss, and disappointment of war became just another chapter in the history of the civil rights movement. Lawrence Allen Eldridge explores this two-front war, showing how the African American press grappled with the Vietnam War and its impact on the struggle for civil rights. Written in a clear narrative style, Chronicles of a Two-Front War is the first book to examine coverage of the Vietnam War by black news publications, from the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 to the final withdrawal of American ground forces in the spring of 1973 and the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975. Eldridge reveals how the black press not only reported the war but also weighed its significance in the context of the civil rights movement. The author researched seventeen African American newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the New Courier, and two magazines, Jet and Ebony. He augmented the study with a rich array of primary sources—including interviews with black journalists and editors, oral history collections, the personal papers of key figures in the black press, and government documents, including those from the presidential libraries of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford—to trace the ups and downs of U.S. domestic and wartime policy especially as it related to the impact of the war on civil rights. Eldridge examines not only the role of reporters during the war, but also those of editors, commentators, and cartoonists. Especially enlightening is the research drawn from extensive oral histories by prominent journalist Ethel Payne, the first African American woman to receive the title of war correspondent. She described a widespread practice in black papers of reworking material from major white papers without providing proper credit, as the demand for news swamped the small budgets and limited staffs of African American papers. The author analyzes both the strengths of the black print media and the weaknesses in their coverage. The black press ultimately viewed the Vietnam War through the lens of African American experience, blaming the war for crippling LBJ’s Great Society and the War on Poverty. Despite its waning hopes for an improved life, the black press soldiered on.

Captain Calhoun and the crew of the "U.S.S. Excalibur" are on Thallon when their sensors detect strange vibrations coming from beneath the surface of the planet.

It is 2022. India's economy is poised for high growth in its 75th year of independence. China and Pakistan have serious economic and domestic problems, exacerbated by India's policies. They decide to collude against their neighbor and rival. A victory over India in a carefully planned, limited war, would hurt the weak Indian government enough to lose a mid-term election and bring in a government more amenable to make concessions on trade and Kashmir. India's Prime Minister heads an unstable coalition government, which falls, compelling him to face mid term election as his enemies want. He had allowed his national security team to reform the military. Faced with the country's gravest crisis, he gives them the freedom to devise a proactive strategy to face and defeat the China-Pakistan threat. Over several months, events in each nation lead the three nuclear armed countries towards war. A war that India's national security team wants and believes will be a final round - leading to lasting peace. Along with the preparation for military action, there are other wars each country fights in the run up to war. The war for political control, with factions in each country having different agendas. The war to shape public opinion and diplomatic battles. The second half of the book combines a very detailed and realistic portrayal of how war is likely to be fought and what its objectives might be. The 2022 war is an intense week-long war. Two million combatants fight on a front stretching from Afghanistan to the Burmese border, from the Malacca strait to the Red Sea and from Tibet to Sri Lanka. All units and weapons featured in the book are real and expected to be used in a 2022 war. Every division in each country is accounted for, on each day of battle. The battles on land move from mass tank battles in the Punjab, to special forces behind enemy lines, to fights for individual mountain ridges. Aircraft carriers and submarines try to destroy each other and the enemy's trade. Air wars feature advanced radar and missile systems, while cyber and unconventional warfare become an integral part of strategy.In each sector, limitations of terrain and logistics influence strategy. Maps and background information help the reader better understand the strategy and flow of battle in each sector.As important as the fighting, is the constant effort to control the narrative for the media. With the objectives of the war no longer being the capture of territory or casualties inflicted, but economic losses and political survival, the question for over a third of humanity is - who will prevail in this final round ?

In 1944, William Mann, an American mercenary, finds himself stranded in Nazi occupied Germany. Although he has tried to maintain a low profile, he is suddenly thrust into the middle of the war after he inadvertently saves a high-ranking member of the Nazi party. Now reluctantly working in Hitler's service, he struggles to free himself and return home. As the war begins its closing act, William is assigned a final task that the Germans believe will reverse the fortunes of a war that is going very much against them. Will demons from William's past prevent him from completing his task and returning home?

On June 22, 1941, Hitler began what would be the most important campaign of the European theater. The war against the Soviet Union would leave tens of millions of Soviet citizens dead and large parts of the country in ruins. The death and destruction would result not just from military operations but also from the systematic killing and abuse that the German army, police, and SS directed against Jews, Communists, and ordinary citizens. In War of Annihilation, noted military historian Geoffrey P. Megargee provides a clear, concise history of the Germans' opening campaign of conquest and genocide in 1941. By drawing on the best of military and Holocaust scholarship, Megargee dispels the myths that have distorted the role of Germany's military leadership in both the military operations themselves and the unthinkable crimes that were part of them.

U.S. military historian analyzes the origins and breakdowns of Hitler's Barbarossa plan to attack Russia, and appraises Allied failures during the period.