検索キーワード： 制作 "Charles River Editors" 戦争・紛争

Though Germany was technically Russia’s ally, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had no delusions that they were friends. Instead, he used this time to build up his forces for what he saw as an inevitable invasion.

It was one of the 20th century’s most decisive wars, but also one of its most influential. In the wake of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, America led a coalition of dozens of nations that repelled the Iraqi attack and smashed Iraqi forces, much of which was captured on live television as global networks broadcast the images back home.

One of his biographers called him "a complex man: a born leader, a brilliant soldier, a devoted husband, a proud father; intelligent, instinctive, brave, compassionate, vain, egotistical, and arrogant." As that description suggests, every account of Erwin Rommel's life must address what appears to be its inherent contradictions.

On August 1, 1945, a month before the formal end of World War II, the British War Office announced the disbanding of a small, eclectic unit, the Long Range Desert Group. Since its founding five years earlier, in June 1940, the LRDG had pioneered and refined the concept and tactics of deep penetration, covert reconnaissance in the North African desert, and later as a more varied special forces operations unit in the Aegean, Italy, and the Balkans.

One of World War II's most crucial struggles happened in the realm of the unseen, inside the human mind, and amid the invisible flow of radio waves. Every war is a battle of wits as intelligence-gathering, tactics, and strategies clash, from the level of individual action up to the grand, overarching schemes of generals and statesmen. Intelligence took on a freshly urgent aspect in World War II, however, as the fate of nations came to hang on the struggle to decrypt vital enemy communications.

World War II was the culmination of a quarter century of tank development, and it would also be the first major test of tanks in mobile warfare. However, many of the tanks were constructed with the static warfare of the Western Front in mind and were thus slow and had short operational ranges. Others were too light to face opposing tanks or the new generation of anti-tank weapons that hadn’t existed in World War I. The unsuitability of these tank models for this new kind of warfare was quickly recognized, and the belligerent powers scrambled to create better designs.

East Germany: The History and Legacy of the Soviet Satellite State Established after World War II examines the controversial country and its place in the Cold War. The history of East Germany was a remarkable one, from its chaotic origins through its ossification as a Stalinist regime, until the country collapsed with the Berlin Wall. Not only is Germany still marked by the division, but the old frontier still represents different expectations, social conditions, and worldviews.

To possess and develop western North America became a high priority for the United States government even before its Constitution had been complete. Railroads were still some decades off, and passable roads were all but nonexistent. No familiar institutions of power were suitable for creating a foothold in the continent's interior, especially in the Rocky Mountain region. The US Army eventually made inroads to the Great Plains and beyond, but the first true explorers of the far west’s interior arose from within a relatively small culture embodied by the American mountain man.

A swift, sudden attack from the ocean, putting soldiers ashore on a hostile coast at some point weakly defended by the enemy, has been a powerful tactical and strategic tool since the late Bronze Age. Utilized by the Sea Peoples against New Kingdom Egypt and the Greek city-states in their internecine wars, amphibious warfare combined high mobility with a strong chance of complete surprise. World War II, however, witnessed a sudden explosion in the scope and metamorphosis in the methods of amphibious warfare.

He was recognized by many as a curious scholar and archaeologist, brilliant linguist, British soldier, extraordinary adventurer, and avid writer, though he called himself an "ordinary man". T. E. Lawrence, more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a seminal figure in the shaping and reshaping of the politics of Arabia in the early 20th century, serving as an expert in Arab affairs in the British military and playing a key role in the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.

Among the proponents and practitioners of armored warfare, the brash, bold, arrogant, and eccentric George S. Patton remains the world's greatest armored commander by the one yardstick that really counts: the battlefield. Patton was a fascinating, complicated and controversial man whose life story ranges between genius, folly, and tragedy, with absolute determination the one constant theme.

World War II was an entirely different story. The Germans were angry after the First World War, and using public sway and anger, Adolf Hitler took power in the 1930s. Unlike the earlier army, the German Army of the Second World War committed some of the most grotesque and unforgivable atrocities in the history of mankind. This isn't to say that the German commanders and soldiers were all bad, and of all the men who fought for the Reich, the one with the most sterling reputation is Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox. Rommel rose through the ranks of the German Army in the years preceding the outbreak of World War II, and he proved to be a cunning and insinuative soldier who was one of the most brilliant cavalry commanders in the history of warfare. Eventually, the evil that surrounded him engulfed him, and his pure brilliance went untapped.

Although Harpers Ferry was always a small, sleepy town, its industrial capacity to manufacture weaponry for the US Army made it important, and ultimately ensured its legacy thanks to John Brown's raid. After his activities in Bleeding Kansas, Brown spent the next few years raising money in New England, and in 1859 he began to set a new plan in motion that he hoped would create a full scale slave uprising in the South.

Of all the great cities in the world, few personify their country like New York City. As America's largest city and best known immigration gateway into the country, the Big Apple represents the beauty, diversity and sheer strength of the United States, a global financial center that has enticed people chasing the "American Dream" for centuries.

Nazi Germany's North African defeat opened up the possibility of taking the war in the West to the European continent for the first time since France's lightning conquest by the Wehrmacht in 1940. The British chose Sicily as the target for military operations in the summer of 1943. The preparations included bombing missions over Italy ahead of an amphibious landing, and on April 4, 1943, one of the planes that took off from Libya to bomb Naples was the Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator bomber with a crew that had never flown a combat mission.

In the 19th century, the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle famously wrote, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men", popularizing the "great man" theory that the course of history is shaped by a select few heroic individuals. While historians and others continue to debate the accuracy of the "great man" theory of history, there is no question that the course of history is permanently altered by decisive moments in time, where a different result would have produced drastically different outcomes.

Mosby, the "Gray Ghost" of the Confederate lore that celebrates the Lost Cause, has an image that has proven nearly impossible to corrupt or change, and time has done little good against it. Unlike the vanished 19th century code of honor that he represented, Mosby has retained the image and all its connotations. But that image, which he helped fashion, was mostly an invention

The ‘60s closely reflected the glossy, idealistic portrayal of John F. Kennedy. But the idealism and optimism of the decade was quickly shattered, starting with Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. By the time Bobby Kennedy was killed, references to the infamous “Kennedy Curse” became more common. But if such a curse did truly exist, it originated with the oldest brother and the one originally expected to achieve a preeminent place in politics, Joseph Kennedy, Jr.

By the time the war ended, the period of internment of Japanese immigrants and citizens, lasting from 1941 to 1945, was considered one of the most unfortunate episodes of American history. In this audiobook, you will learn about the decision to intern Japanese Americans like never before.

When people think about the Second World War, they seldom think in terms of silence and small acts. This was a war in which the industry of entire nations was rearranged to feed fighting, and it was fought on a scale in which battles could include hundreds of thousands of combatants. Whole cities and populations were destroyed, with millions of casualties occurring at places like Leningrad.