(Part 2) Top products from r/WarCollege

>I don't think so. Britain, France, Germany, and Italy obviously stood no chance of challenging Japan in its own sphere. The Soviet Union could eject them from the Asian mainland but didn't have the navy to challenge Japanese influence in the Pacific. Only America posed an existential threat - and that really wasn't evident until America decided to get its shit together and mobilize all its resources.

The UK was perfectly capable of dealing with japan as long as it didn't have to fight a war in Europe simultaneously. France I'll give you. the russo/japanese border conflicts showed how much stronger the USSR was than the Japanese, and while they had no fleet, they also had no interest in pacific power projection.

>Which was a great power. Not of the first rank, but definitely counted among the great powers.

By courtesy and tradition only.

> Japan's strategic position was much better than Italy's, and like Britain, their navy was capable of offsetting whatever army or industrial weakness they had.

the first half of this is true, Japan's geographic distance from the other great powers was a large advantage. The second half, however, is not. naval warfare depends absolutely on industrial/financial/maritime base. far more than land warfare, sea wars are won with money. The UK in 1939 was not industrially weak. It had several times the industrial capacity of Japan, twice that of France, and was on a level with with the USSR and Germany, with a much higher per capita level than both.

>The large industrialists opposed Roosevelt at every turn and his agenda was severely rolled back by the time the 1939 elections came around - it was the closest he came to defeat. Those same industrialists largely had sympathies with Nazi Germany as well, seeing "national socialism" as a much more palatable form of stability than regular democratic socialism.

this is very bad history. First, roosevelt was not, at first, some sort of anti-fascist crusader. the early new deal was, in fact, explicitly modeled on italian fascist ideas. If you were a fascist sympathizer in the US in the early 1930s, you SUPPORTED Roosevelt, you didn't oppose him. Roosevelt only became an anti-fascist crusader when it became politically useful for him to be in the later 30s, when the blush wore off the early love affair with Mussolini.

Second, FDR's agenda was not "rolled back" by 1939. There were some reversals of his policy around '35, but following his court packing scheme and the death of a few judges, he managed to re-impose much of his initial efforts in slightly modified form from 35-37. The wagner act, for example, was largely a rehashing of the labor half of National industrial recovery act, and it explicitly inherited all the labor legal precedents established under the NIRA.

>IMHO, if American chose a voluntary war with Japan, I don't know if the public will would have survived 6 months of defeats, like what occurred beginning with Pearl Harbor. A voluntary war would require a string of victories to motivate the people.

The first 6 months of the pacific campaign were able to go as well for the japanese as they did because they began at the time of japanse choosing, and they chose right after their plans for said campaign were ready to go. A war launched by the US would have started with both sides ill-prepared instead of just the US, and would have been a much more even affair.

I'd like to recommend first as a sterling source John English's On Infantry. It covers all of your questions in excellent detail, including the (in)accuracy of infantry fires, and the motivation for shifting between closed-order (what you describe as linear tactics) and open-order.

Now, it seems you're asking two questions; infantry accuracy, and the transition in tactics. I'll attempt to answer them in turn.

To begin, modern infantry weapons are very accurate, and are only getting more accurate. An AR-15 family weapon can easily hold a 2" group at 100 yards, which is good enough to hit a standing man out to 600 yards. The mass-issuing of 4x and 6x optical scopes only helps this. The primary issues that limit the accuracy of infantry fires are then shooter skill, as you allude to, and then the difficult of detecting and engaging targets who do not wish to be seen and are anything but static. While modern methods of training such as shooting pop-up silhouettes at unknown distances have certainly helped, rifle fires are still far below the mechanical accuracy of the weapons. The US ACR program trials documented this quite well, in my opinion. Obviously these are rifles without optical sights, but the research is still insightful. Even simply seeing a target long enough to aim and hit him reduces the effective range. Anecdotally, the rule of thumb to measure this has been that rifle fires are only truly effective within 100 yards, and the US Army has a decent body of research supporting this, especially drawing from Korea. (Reproduced in The Black Rifle: M16 Retrospective, my copy of which is not with me at the moment.) The Army was so disappointed with the accuracy of its rifle fire that radical programs such as SALVO and SPIW were devised, which aimed at delivering multiple projectiles with a single trigger pull in order to compensate for the rifleman's inaccuracy.

While I'm less comfortable discussing the open-order transition (seriously, read John English's book), one of the main advantages of moving in an open-order is that individuals can find cover and concealment as best as possible. Drawing from what was said earlier, this can make it harder for the enemy to see, engage, and hit them, negating the inherent accuracy of modern weapons. The sheer weight of fire modern weapons can produce, demonstrated quite well in the water-cooled machine gun, certainly makes avoiding these fires more important. It's worth noting that the belt-fed weapons of an infantry squad are considered its prime casualty producer, as they can produce a beaten zone of sustained fire, and are obviously less reliant on single aimed shots than an infantry rifle.

(That may be a touch incoherent, please feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes.)

If you're interested in The Eastern Front, David M. Glantz's are the campaign books to read. He's got books out on most of the major offensives up to '43, and his single volume monograph, When Titans Clashed is fantastic. His writing can be a little dry, but it's what you get with an author who puts substance above all else.

As for the War in the West, Russell Weigley's Eisenhower's Lieutenants is fantastic, though it starts with Normandy. You could get the book and flip through his Bibliography, Weigley's books are all very well researched.

That's a very complicated topic and I don't feel qualified to give answers based off my recollections.

The best books I've read on the Spanish Civil War - https://www.amazon.ca/Battle-Spain-Antony-Beevor/dp/014303765X and https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Civil-War-Revised-Paperbacks/dp/0375755152 don't go into detail on the command structures of each side, but it will give you a very good idea of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the Republican forces in Spain, the extent of Soviet, German, and Italian involvement (as well as their relative effectiveness). Beevor's book is more recent and I'd say a bit more readable and does a good job of criticizing the response of the democratic powers, while at the same time giving context to their hesitance to get involved. Thomas' book is older, does a better job of staying neutral on the Republican/Nationalist debate, but goes a bit softer on the democracies than Beevor.

Truth be told, I don't know of a source that details how the left was organized. The war was very chaotic, and the Republicans were deeply divided into factions. Catalan anarchists wanted nothing to do with communists, the Republican government itself was divided about how much involvement with the USSR it wanted, the Basques were seeking independence and collaborated out of necessity more than anything else, the Soviet advisors increasingly infiltrated the main Republican forces, until the Republican's gold started running out.

http://www.amazon.com/Napoleonic-Wars-Smithsonian-History-Warfare/dp/006085121X

I read this book a while back and, while it's not particularly a thorough study of the Napoleonic Wars nor long, it's rather dense and a really fun read. There are tons of strategic and tactical maps scattered throughout. I don't know you level of understanding of the Napoleonic wars nor what you're looking for in a book but this is more of a comprehensive introduction than a deep study.

Accidental Guerilla: https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Guerrilla-Fighting-Small-Midst/dp/0199754098

Counterinsurgency: https://www.amazon.com/Counterinsurgency-David-Kilcullen/dp/0199737495

Joint Publication 3-24 Counterinsurgency: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_24.pdf

FMFRP 12-18: Mao Tse-tung on Guerilla Warfare

Its funny Overy tackles the Speer Myth in another of his books that came out in the 1990s:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Economy-Third-Reich-Overy/dp/0198205996
Tooze even mentions him in the foot notes when discussing Speer despite claiming that he, Tooze, first debunks Speer.

Tooze is alright, he's still got problems with his analysis, but overall he's got the single best 1 volume study of the German war economy. Probably the best work on the German war economy is still the 'Germany and the Second World War' series from the Bundeswehr's historical studies department.

It is MASSIVE.

Edit: removed the wikipedia link to the series in question, it wasn't a reference about any point, just a link to the series and what it covers.

For the American Civil War:

Jean Edward Smith's Grant biography goes into some detail regarding logistics, as Grant's experience as a Quartermaster during the Mexican-American War, in particular when Scott's army was cut off from supplies during the Mexico City campaign, influenced actions like Grant's mule train to Chattanooga to relieve Rosecrans, and Sherman's March to the Sea.

However, it's not purely about the logistics of the war, which is covered in some more detail in McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, especially the comparisons of the economics of the Union and Confederate states.

And regarding World War II, the US Army Center of Military History has published two free books:

• Global Logistics and Strategy - 1940-1943
  
• Global Logistics and Strategy - 1943-1945
  
  > What college departments usually offer logistics courses? Business Administration usually?
  
  Or a dedicated logistics department. MIT has its Logistics and Supply Chain Management course available online.

Thanks!

>There's so much of this that it seems doomed to be forgotten, tragically, all these stories and so on

It is true - Afghan's war, its veterans - "афганцы", "афганки" - had drifted away from public consciousness in Russia quite a while ago.

That's normal. There are still some who keep memory going and memoirs coming - мы помним. As passions subsided now and a lot of archives are accessible (not all, of course), more and more serious books will be published, including in English - see Rodric Braithwate - Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89.

One subtle cultural thing: in Russia, veterans of local wars are often named after a place they fought in, thus 100% identifying themselves with local populace - e.g. "afgantsy", "chechentsy" or taking local name - e.g. "shuravi" ("soviets" in Dari).

It's a complex and multi-faceted problem.

The shitty schedules and sleep deprivation are just symptoms of deeper issues.

The heart of it really is professional standards and accountability though.

Basically, senior leadership in the military these days is by and large yes men fuckups that have no real skills other than playing with military bureaucracy. "Self licking ice cream cone" is a great term I heard thrown around. Military leadership these days exists just to perpetuate itself, rather than actually meet mission.

There have been a few great books written on the topic.

https://www.amazon.com/Bleeding-Talent-Military-Mismanages-Revolution/dp/0230391273

This is my favorite.

If you're a Naval officer, and all you want to do is drive ships and kill bad guys, you're never going to make Admiral. Even if you don't care about making Admiral, it's literally impossible to have a career where you spend 20 years doing nothing but driving ships and killing bad guys. This means that the Admiralty really doesn't have a great idea about the fine details to really run a ship. They don't build training programs that build proficiency for running ships. They don't have realistic expectations on what a ship can actually do long term. They haven't selected the correct people to run these ships and as a result, quality of life has become so fucking bad that anybody with any aptitude bails at the earliest opportunity.

If you have aptitude and get recognized as someone who can get things done, then you get to learn the phrase "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down". You'll soon be doing the work of 5 people and sleeping even less, while the fuckups that aren't trusted to do anything have a pretty chill and easy life.

Who do you think is going to commit to more years in service? The guy that just spent the last 3-5 years grinding themselves to dust working 100+ hour weeks dealing with no-shit life or death consequences for mistakes? Or the guy that's not trusted to do anything, and just sits in berthing on an x-box all day?

https://www.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/5kknw9/whats_the_worst_case_of_complacency_youve_seen_in/dbozvcs/

This is the sort of shit I'm talking about.

Not everybody is sleep deprived. Only the people that are trusted to make important decisions are sleep deprived, and a lot of those are un-trustworthy fuckups that are in those positions by virtue of pure attrition.

It's a fucking mess.

From the German Perspective:

Robert Citino's quadrilogy:

• The German Way of War: From the 30 Years War to the 3rd Reich
  
  
• The Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942
  
  
• The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943
  
  
• The Wehrmacht's Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944-1945
  
  From the American perspective:
  
  Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy:
  
  

1. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-43
   
   
2. The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-44
   
   
3. The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-45
   
   From the Soviet Perspective
   
   Glantz and House's When Titans Clashed is an in depth and authoritative single volume study. If you want to dive into the deep end, expand with:
   
   
4. Stumbling Colossus
   
   
5. Colossus Reborn and it's Companion
   
   
6. Glantz and House's Stalingrad series is a mind-boggling work in and of itself, and constitutes the only Five-Volume trilogy I know of:
   To the Gates of Stalingrad
   Armageddon in Stalingrad
   Endgame at Stalingrad, Book One
   Endgame at Stalingrad, Book Two
   Companion to Endgame at Stalingrad
   
   Glantz has written extensively on the bulk of the war, and his work is quite solid. Punch his name into Amazon for further reading.
   
   There's other books I would recommend, but they're not the sort of flowing and sprawling narrative of the war you seem to be looking for.

Except in publications released by the Eritrean regime, there was never any kind of some 'enormous shock caused by the Eritrean War' - at least not in Ethiopia.

The problem was as follows: during the last decade of the... well, let's call it '1st Eritrean War' (fought 1960-1991), for reasons of simplicity, the Ethiopian political leadership - in close cooperation with its Soviet advisors - de-facto destroyed the Ethiopian military.

Original Ethiopian military was created in the 1940s - 1970s period with extensive help from Sweden (1940s-1950s), some by various other countries, but especially the USA. The resulting Ethiopian military was actually small, voluntary service, led by virtually hand-picked officers and NCOs. By early 1970s, and especially in period 1972-1974, nearly all of these were trained in the USA.

In 1974, Emperor Selassie was overthrown. There followed a period of political turmoil and bloody struggle for power. By the time the 'Derg' - led by Haile Mariam - prevailed (by de-facto summarily executing almost whoever dared challenging them), in 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia and brought nearly all of the federal state of Ogaden under its control.

The Derg - and especially the Ethiopian military - were curious to continue cooperating with the USA. Correspondingly, they placed significant orders for F-5Es, M60s etc. However, Carter's admin introduced the policy along which (roughly) arms deliveries were tied to human-rights record of the government in question. The Derg thus only got a small part of what they've ordered from Washington. While this proved enough to enable them to stop the Somali advance into Ogaden, it was insufficient to liberate the state.

That's why the Ethiopians ended trying to buy arms from the Soviet Union. The Soviets were already supporting Somalia, actually curious to instrument a union of Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen, and not the last keen to have two of countries using their arms fighting each other. Therefore, they said 'nyet'. Haile Mariam then took an indirect route: eh made friends with Fidel Castro, and convinced him he would be leading something like 'Marxist revolution' in Ethiopia. When even that didn't impress the Soviets, Mariam travelled to Moscow where he issued something like a corresponding public statement. At that moment, in November 1977, the Somali dictator Siad Barre lost nerves and kicked the Soviets out of his country. That in turn enraged Soviet leader Brezhnev, who ordered prompt deliveries of whatever war material Ethiopians needed.

...and so it happened that in late 1977 and through most of 1978, the small, US-trained Ethiopian military was wastly expanded through the massive influx of Soviet arms. Furthermore, over a dozen of new divisions of various militias was trained by Cuban advisors. The Cubans also deployed the personnel of two of their mechanised brigades and one fighter-squadron to Ethiopia, and these helped Ethiopians kick Somalis out of Ogaden in a high loop...

Through the same period, Eritrean insurgents brought most of what is nowadays Eritrea under their control. Thus as next, the Ethiopians re-deployed most of their military to that area, and launched a major counteroffensive, in 1978-1979. This proved largely, but not completely successful: at least the northern part of Eritrea remained under isurgent control. The result of this partial failure was a bitter war of attrition that was to last until 1987 - further extended by de-professionalisation of the entire Ethiopian military.

Certainly enough, the Ethiopian military continued its massive expansion through additional influx of Soviet arms, in the 1980s. The army grew to about 30 divisions, all of which were suffering from a severe lack of trained officers and NCOs (not to talk about support services etc.). Indeed, the Ethiopians could never man all the weapons and units. The Soviets continued selling arms, but were delivering only obsolete systems, and did whatever was possible to prevent the Ethiopians from developing ability to maintain these at home. Furthermore, Soviet advisors proved more interested in an ideological re-education of the entire Ethiopian military, than in helping Ethiopians actually win the war against Eritreans. Finally, what the Soviets were advising was essentially the same they were doing in Afghanistan of the same time (or in Chechnya and Syria ever since): a colossal destruction and cleansing of the Eritrean population from insurgent-controlled areas.

On the top of that all, the Derg distrusted the military and introduced an unviable system of tripple command of every unit: in essence, no military commander could do anything without an order from above, plus agreement from his political commissar, plus that from his security service minder. Combined with unusually long tours of duty (for Ethiopian circumstances) - which cost the Ethiopian government and its military all the support it used to enjoy in its own population - this led to the self-destruction of the Ethiopian military: by 1987, there was deep mistrust between various of its commanders, political commissars, and security services, and some of units were more busy fighting each other than the Eritreans.

The weakening of the Ethiopian military not only resulted in defeats that enabled a massive growth of the Eritrean insurgency, but the latter became capable of supporting the Tigrean insurgency in parts of (northern) Ethiopia outside what it claimed for Eritrea. The combination of these two insurgencies, and the collapse of the Ethiopian military resulted in the downfall of the Derg regime, in 1991.

Now, Eritrea then declared its independence, while the Tigreans installed themselves in power in Addis Ababa. Their government de-facto completed the destruction of the Ethiopian military.

However, during the second half of the 1990s, the friendship between two governments turned into enmity, which prompted Addis into imposing economic sanctions against Eritrea. In turn, the Eritreans invaded and occuppied the Badme region, in 1999.

That's where the 'reforms' you mentioned came into being: facing a defeat, the Ethiopian government scrambled to rebuild its military. Thousands of 'Derg officers' that were either purged from the military, or even jailed, were recalled to serve: they not only helped overhaul available military equipment, or train new units, but also took over the command, and were partially re-qualified to operate new equipment acquired from Russia. Ultimate result was an Ethiopian counter-invasion, in 2000, during which the Eritreans suffered a catastrophic military defeat.

Now, whether the Ethiopian government ever overcame its own corruption and nepotism is a matter of quite some (and often fierce) disputes. Certain is that since the end of the Badme War, and despite its victory, it soon found itself at odds with its own military, and especially what many of Tigreans still consider would be 'Derg officers'. That's what resulted in dozens of high-profiled defections (like when most of one of FDREAF's Su-27-squadrons left the service in different ways).

But, it could be said that - at least for the period 1999-2001 - the Ethiopian government found the way to not only 're-introduce', but indeed 'impose' professionalism over everything else in its military.

Considering the same military continued to act quite competently in Somalia ever since, it could be said that this 'left lasting impressions', i.e. resulted in something like creation of the competent and combat-effective Ethiopian military as we know it nowadays. At least there's no doubt that the country is the military power-house on the African horn, ever since.

Regarding references for all of this:

• Harold Marcus' 'A History of Ethiopia' is providing geo-political backgrounds in well-organised, easy-to-read fashion;
  
  
• Fantahun Ayele's 'The Ethiopian Army: From Victory to Collapse, 1971-1991' is providing an excellent, in-depth, even if often too complex review of the Ethiopian military during the given period;
  
  
• various of books and articles by Gebru Tareke are offering exclusive and well-supported insights into Ethiopian military operations of the 1970s and 1980s (indeed, they might be a sort of 'self-sufficient read', perfectly enough on their own);
  
  
• alternatively, take 'Wings Over Ogaden' and Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars, Volume 1 (about to be published in 2-3 weeks), as a summary of all the above-mentioned, plus many other sources (including plenty of interviews with participants and eyewitnesses, and then quite a lots of cross-examination with Somali and Eritrean sources).
  
  AFAIK, currently there's no decent military history of the Badme War, but this is to follow in Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars, Volume 2 late this, or early the next year.