In 1940-43 North Africa saw the first major desert campaign by modern mechanized armies. The British, Italians, German "Afrika Korps" and US Army all addressed and learned from the special problems - human, logistical, mechanical and tactical - of the desert environment, most significantly a terrain[...]
Following the early battles of 1914 along the Marne and in the Ypres salient. World War I rapidly transformed from a war of movement into one of attrition, with the opposing sides entrenching themselves in a line of fortified positions from the Flanders coastline to the Swiss border. This title deta[...]
This book will provide a careful analysis of the preparation of the French troops from manual regulations to the training ground, as well a study of the changing quality of command and control within the army. Initially this ensured that the French infantry were virtually unstoppable and for several[...]
Historians have portrayed British participation in the Great War as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, untried new military technology and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book Paddy Griffith, a renow[...]
"Was the Civil War really the birthplace of modern battlefield tactics? Paddy Griffith argues that despite the use of new weapons and of trench warfare techniques, the Civil War was in reality the last Napoleonic-style war. Rich in description and analysis, this book will be of interest both to mili[...]
The first edition (1981) took a critical look at the accepted wisdom of historians who interpreted battlefield events primarily by reference to firepower. It showed that Wellington's infantry had won by their mobility rather than their musketry, that the bayonet did not become obsolete in the ninete[...]
Paddy Griffith (1947- 2010) was a leading British military theorist and historian, who used wargaming as part of his tool set to critically analyse operational and tactical military history. This book includes two previously unpublished COunter-INsurgency (COIN) wargames from 1976 to 1980 and an exa[...]
In Battle Tactics of the Civil War, Paddy Griffith argues that, far from being the first 'modern' war, it was the last 'Napoleonic' war, and that none of the innovations of industrialized warfare had any significant effect on the outcome. "Provocative, challenging and intelligent. Griffith's knowled[...]
This volume reappraises the events, the weapons used, the men of the novice armies, their leaders and the strategies employed in the Civil War - which was fought with a new generation of weapons and trench systems similar to those of World War I.[...]
A best-selling study of the Vikings' genius for war explodes myths and reveals the facts behind their fearsome reputation . . . This groundbreaking study of the Vikings establishes the facts behind their rise to prominence, and cuts away the myths about their military and seafaring skills, reputatio[...]