Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Fall of Berlin: The Final Days of Hitler's Evil Regime" (Sirius, 2024)

In this deep and incisive study, General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan and former CIA director, and the prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts, explore over 70 years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories and strategies. Among the conflicts examined are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two Gulf Wars, the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia, and both the Soviet and Coalition wars in Afghanistan, as well as guerilla conflicts in Africa and South America.  Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (Harper, 2023) culminates with a bracing look at Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, yet another case study in the tragic results when leaders refuse to learn from history, and an assessment of the nature of future warfare. Filled with sharp insight and the wisdom of experience, Conflict is not only a critical assessment of our recent past, but also an essential primer of modern warfare that provides crucial knowledge for waging battle today as well as for understanding what the decades ahead will bring. General David Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and widely respected as a leading warrior intellectual. He graduated with distinction from the US Military Academy and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He served for 37 years in the US Army, culminating his time in uniform with 6 consecutive commands as a general officer, 5 of which were in combat, including Command of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He then served as Director of the CIA. He has held academic appointments at six universities and currently is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Yale. He is a prominent commentator on contemporary security issues, military developments, and global affairs. He is currently a Partner in a major investment firm and chairs that firm’s Global Institute. Sam Canter is a strategic planner, a PhD candidate in Politics and International Relations, and an Army Reserve intelligence officer. His views are his own and do not reflect any institution, organization, or entity with which he is affiliated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

12 Huhti 202434min

From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue operations doomed to fail. And yet, no useful theory exists to explain this common tragedy. All over the world, people and states clash violently outside their established political systems, as unfulfilled demands of control and productivity bend the modern state to a breaking point. Jonathan W. Hackett's Theory of Irregular War (McFarland, 2023) lays out how dysfunctional governments disrupt social orders, make territory insecure, and interfere with political-economic institutions. These give rise to a form of organized violence against the state known as irregular war. Research reveals why this frequent phenomenon is so poorly understood among conventional forces in those conflicts and the states who send their children to die in them. Jonathan W. Hackett is a U.S. Marine with two decades of experience. He has held positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Marine Forces Special Operations Command, and the Marine Corps operating forces prior to teaching full spectrum human intelligence operations and security cooperation in Dam Neck, Virginia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

7 Huhti 20241h 6min

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history reveals how country music's Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to service members. Beginning in the 1950s, the military flooded armed forces airwaves with the music, hosted tour dates at bases around the world, and drew on artists from Johnny Cash to Lee Greenwood to support recruitment programs.  Over the last half of the twentieth century, the close connections between the Defense Department and Music Row gave an economic boost to the white-dominated sounds of country while marginalizing Black artists and fueling divisions over the meaning of patriotism. This story is filled with familiar stars like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, and George Strait, as well as lesser-known figures: industry executives who worked the halls of Congress, country artists who dissented from the stereotypically patriotic trappings of the genre, and more.  In Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (UNC Press, 2024), Joseph M. Thompson argues convincingly that the relationship between Music Row and the Pentagon helped shape not only the evolution of popular music but also race relations, partisanship, and images of the United States abroad. Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University. Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

6 Huhti 20241h 6min

From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation "Geronimo" used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and images referring to Indians have been indelibly linked with US warfare.  In Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire (U California Press, 2023), Stefan Aune shows how these and other recurrent references to the Indian wars signal a deeper history. Indian Wars function as a shadow doctrine that influences US military violence.  The United States' formative acts of colonial violence persist in the actions, imaginations, and stories that have facilitated the spread of American empire, from the "savage wars" of the nineteenth century to the counterinsurgencies of the Global War on Terror.  Ranging across centuries and continents, Indian Wars Everywhere considers what it means for the conquest of Native peoples to be deemed a success that can be used as a blueprint for modern warfare. Stefan B. Aune is a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Williams College.  Eleonora Mattiacci is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of Volatile States in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023). She is on X (formerly known as Twitter) @ProfEMattiacci. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

4 Huhti 202429min

Why do great powers go to war? Why are non-violent, diplomatic options not prioritised? Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Powers Cope with Status Decline (McGill-Queen's Press, 2024) by Dr. Matthieu Grandpierron argues that world leaders react to status decline by going to war, guided by a nostalgic, virile understanding of what it means to be powerful. This nostalgic virility - a system of subjective beliefs about power, bravery, strength, morality, and health - acts as a filter through which leaders articulate glorified interpretations of history and assess their power and their country’s status on the international stage. In this rigorous study of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Dr. Grandpierron tests the theory of nostalgic virility against the two more common theoretical frameworks of realism and the diversionary theory of war. Consulting thousands of newly declassified government documents at the highest levels of decision making, Dr. Grandpierron examines three specific cases - the early years of the Indochina War (1945-47), the British reconquest of the Falklands in 1982, and the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 - convincingly contending that status-seeking behaviour and nostalgic virility are more relevant in explaining why a leader chooses war and conflict over non-violent, diplomatic options than the dominant frameworks. Looking to the recent past, Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War considers how this new model can be applied to current conflicts - from the Russian war in Ukraine to Chinese actions in the South China Sea - and provides surprising ways of thinking about the relationship between power, decision makers, and causes of war. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

2 Huhti 202451min

The pages of Battle Surgeons are inscribed with the 371 days of front-line duty worked by medics of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Set within the epic of European airborne missions, Battle Surgeons animates their band—the stalwart surgeons, their happy-go-lucky chaplain, and the youthful dentist—as they navigate World War II. Up the gray peaks of Italy they trod, where Captain Sheehan was shot; and in the marshlands of Anzio, where Captain Sheek withstood the worst malaria could throw; and the Dutch lowlands, where Captain Shapiro crossed broad rivers; and through Belgium’s frozen forests, where Captain Halloran lamented the injury of a friend; through all this and more the doctors were in it, at places whose names echo through history: San Pietro, Anzio, Nijmegen. In the wake of Sicily, the book’s sub-plot opens. Casualties were a struggle to evacuate and clear due to deficiencies in equipment, organization, and training. It ignited a series of reforms within the 82nd Airborne Division which the book picks up again during the English interlude. They reach their high water mark in Operation Market Garden, made famous by A Bridge Too Far. Grizzled with experience, casualty care in the 82nd was at its most efficient. Battle Surgeons offers a penetrating look at the airborne medical service, the 82nd Airborne Division, and provides a touchstone for the big impact of a small detachment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

29 Maalis 202439min

It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspace aboard matching Panther jets. John Glenn was an ambitious operations officer with fifty-nine World War II combat missions under his belt. His wingman was Ted Williams, the two-time American League Triple Crown winner who, at the pinnacle of his career, had been inexplicably recalled to active service in the United States Marine Corps. Together, the affable flier and the notoriously tempestuous left fielder soared into North Korea, creating a death-defying bond. Although, over the next half century, their contrasting lives were challenged by exhilarating highs and devastating lows, that bond would endure. Through unpublished letters, unit diaries, declassified military records, manuscripts, and new and illuminating interviews, The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams (Citadel Press, 2023) reveals an epic and intimate portrait of two heroes—larger-than-life and yet ineffably human, ordinary men who accomplished the extraordinary. At its heart, this was a conflicted friendship that found commonality in mutual respect—throughout the perils of war, sports dominance, scientific innovation, cutthroat national politics, the burden of celebrity, and the meaning of bravery. Now, author Adam Lazarus sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter in these legends’ lives—as singular individuals, inspiring patriots, and eventually, however improbable, profoundly close friends. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

27 Maalis 202453min

A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social history of the area in southwestern Ukraine under Romanian occupation during World War II. Transnistria was the only occupied Soviet territory administered by a power other than Nazi Germany, a reward for Romanian participation in Operation Barbarossa. Vladimir Solonari's invaluable contribution to World War II history focuses on three main aspects of Romanian rule of Transnistria: with fascinating insights from recently opened archives, Solonari examines the conquest and delimitation of the region, the Romanian administration of the new territory, and how locals responded to the occupation. What did Romania want from the conquest? The first section of the book analyzes Romanian policy aims and its participation in the invasion of the USSR. Solonari then traces how Romanian administrators attempted, in contradictory and inconsistent ways, to make Transnistria "Romanian" and "civilized" while simultaneously using it as a dumping ground for 150,000 Jews and 20,000 Roma deported from a racially cleansed Romania. The author shows that the imperatives of total war eventually prioritized economic exploitation of the region over any other aims the Romanians may have had. In the final section, he uncovers local responses in terms of collaboration and resistance, in particular exploring relationships with the local Christian population, which initially welcomed the occupiers as liberators from Soviet oppression but eventually became hostile to them. Ever increasing hostility towards the occupying regime buoyed the numbers and efficacy of pro-Soviet resistance groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

26 Maalis 20241h 14min