Military history as told through the lives and deeds of warfare's most famous commanders, from ancient Greece through the World Wars, Vietnam, and the end of the twentieth century. Beginning with Leonides of Sparta, who died at Thermopylae in 480 b.c.e., and ending with General Giap, a Vietnamese leader; Moshe Dayan, commander of the Israeli Defense Force during the 1967 Six-Day War; and Colin Powell, Military Commanders provides an informative overview...

Great battles mark history's turning points, occurring as they do where cultures and ideologies clash. While some battles have been won by the superior force, others have been won by a sheer dogged refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. Superior weaponry has sometimes brought victory, as at Plassey, while the superior generalship of a Napoleon, a Wellington, or a Marlborough has won the day on other occasions. All the great battles...

The Second World War was the final global conflict of the twentieth century. It involved more combatants, and a wider range of battlefield terrain than any other conflict in history, from the frozen plains of Russia to the baking Libyan desert, and from the atolls of the Pacific to the skies over Britain. In Turning the Tide, Nigel Cawthorne has taken a fresh look at the crucial battles which decided the outcome of the Second World War, beginning...

The air war waged by the Luftwaffe agaon the RAF in the summer and autumn of 1940 was the key event of the World War II. If it had been lost, Hitler would have added the British Isles to his portfolio of subject nations. It was Churchill who coined the phrase 'Battle of Britain' to underscore the peril facing the nation and prepare it for the 'total war' that Hitler was about to unleash. During the campaign the British people were, in...

World War II was the greatest conflict in human history, involving over 100 million people serving in the forces of the Axis and the Allies and resulting in 50 to 70 million deaths. This book covers war in Europe, war in the Pacific and war across a number of other fronts between 1939 and 1945. • Features the leading protagonists in the conflict, their ideological positions and the strategies they employed. • Focuses on the Battle of Britain,...

The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But we don't ask for their love - only for their fear - Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS were the armed division of the feared Schutzstaffel, and the private army of Adolf Hitler. They developed a reputation as brutal soldiers, willing to carry out any order, no matter how terrible. Fanatically devoted to Nazism and unswervingly loyal...

Die spannende Geschichte der klassischen Freibeuter wird hier erzählt. Wer waren die verwegenen Männer, die mit ihrer Totenkopfflagge Angst und Schrecken verbreiteten? Dieses Buch lässt das Zeitalter der Piraten und das Leben an Bord wieder lebendig werden.

Vietnam was the longest war in American history. US ground troops and their Australian, New Zealand and Korean allies were committed there for eight long years. In all, the American commitment in Southeast Asia lasted 15 years. During that time over 46,000 US servicemen died in battle. The Australian and New Zealand troops who fought there lost 496 dead and 2,398 wounded. But these figures pale beside Vietnamese losses, which totaled over a million....

According to Winston Churchill, Alan Turing made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany with his code-breaking machine. The world is also indebted to Turing's genius for the modern computer. It was clear that Turing had a remarkable mind from an early age. He taught himself to read in just three weeks. At his first school, the headmistress said, 'I have had clever and hardworking boys, but Alan has genius.' In 1954,...