Tag: Nonfiction

Review: Invisible Armies

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Invisible Armies

Author, historian, and (sadly) political commentator Max Boot takes the reader through thousands of years in Invisible Armies, his chronicle of irregular and asymmetric war throughout history. Let’s just say that I’m no fan of either his past or current viewpoints on contemporary politics and leave it at that. Not just because I don’t want to get political here, but because it’s basically irrelevant to the actual book. (Which is a huge point in its favor, I might add.)

Said book is a masterwork of popular history. It has the weaknesses of its format in that by design it can’t go into too much detail, and no doubt there are some inaccuracies that I couldn’t tell but which someone more invested in the subject matter could. But it also has the strengths of it in that the facts are presented in an extremely engaging way.

There’s one central point made throughout the book, which is that contrary to both recent high-profile examples with small sample sizes and “fourth-generation war” thunderers, the default outcome for an insurgency is loss. Most of the time, it either fails completely or can’t progress past its initial strongholds. There’s also the less novel reminder of almost all successful ones having the support of an outside state.

As something that both explains and demystifies unconventional war, I highly recommend this book.

Review: Mercenaries in Asymmetric Conflicts

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Mercenaries in Asymmetric Conflicts

I hate being disappointed by a book. But Scott Fitzsimmons’ Mercenaries in Asymmetric Conflicts was one of the most disappointing nonfiction books I’ve recently read. Or disappointing books in general, to be honest. It sounded good-studying the military cultures of different groups. When I started it, the stated influence of Kenneth Pollack made me even more interested.

Then the actual content emerged. The book is written in one of the thickest and least pleasant versions of academic-ese I’ve seen. If this was stylistic, I could forgive it as writing style is one of the most “natural” things and hardest to change. Plus, you know, it is an academic text.

But it also applies to more than that, which tips it over the edge. The book only talks about military performance in terms of different “theories”, as if they were some abstract phenomenon. It was one of the least helpful ways of approaching the matter, and almost the opposite of how Pollack did so in his own books.

Once the walls of jargon are slogged through, the final conclusion basically amounts to…. Well… Ok. The final conclusion is basically “Better trained and skillful armies with a good internal culture perform more capably, even if they’re at a material disadvantage.” That’s not exactly a big shock.

There is some good information on obscure in the Western Hemisphere African conflicts, but there are undoubtedly better sources on those that don’t involve huge amounts of pretentious analysis. I just can’t recommend this book.

Review: Tomorrow’s Soldier

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Tomorrow’s Soldier

David Alexander’s Tomorrow’s Soldier is a book that you’d expected to be dated based on its subject matter. It’s a 1999 popular account of the WARS AND WARRIORS OF THE FUTURE. And it is dated. It’s also somewhat shallow even by the standards of the time.

It’s still interesting, but isn’t really a rigorous study. The descriptions basically consist of trends that were obvious even at the time (ie, more digitization/etc…) and the obligatory description of wunderwaffe like power armor. This is a little less triumphalist than some other books of its nature, but it isn’t really more substantive.

This felt like a throwaway book even when it was written. And now it’s an older throwaway book. So I’m not really recommending it except as a curiosity. I do wonder if the same “David Alexander” who wrote this was the same “David Alexander” who wrote the ultra-middling Marine Force One. If so, it would be fitting.

Review: Secret Luftwaffe Projects

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Secret Luftwaffe Projects

Through diligent research and the uncovering of the original drawings and plans, Walter Meyer sheds some light in Secret Luftwaffe Projects. As a basic guide to the Luftwaffe wunderwaffe napkinwaffe, this is excellent. It also doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not, and doesn’t extrapolate or make wild claims.

But what it is is (deliberately) broad, shallow, and focused entirely on the basics. Each wunderplane gets a very short description of its role and a sheet of its (intended) stats. There’s no context or even reasonable speculation, but this isn’t the kind of book for this. It’s an encyclopedia of planes that never were, and in that role succeeds beautifully, complementing rather than competing with other books on the same subject.

And besides, it’s very fun to see all the crazy contraptions one after another. I recommend this book to any aviation enthusiast or anyone interested in the bizarre, because a lot of the planes here are just weird. But what did you expect?

Review: An Untaken Road

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

An Untaken Road

Steven Pomeroy’s An Untaken Road is officially a book explaining why mobile ICBMs never caught on with the US military the way they did elsewhere. It’s that, but it’s also a history of the many, many, many different proposals for missile basing of all sorts. That alone makes it very good, especially since there’s a huge synergy with Nuclear War Simulator (after all, you can easily build and uh, “test-fire” a lot of the platforms described here).

At times the central argument can get a little pretentious and a little too focused on abstract themes. But as a pure source of information, this is excellent. There were a lot of nuclear missile base proposals right out of cheap thrillers, and this book is a great resource on them. It’s also a serious and informative look at nuclear war strategy. So I highly recommend it.

Review: Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders

One of the biggest treats I’ve read is the translated 1980s Chinese document called the “Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders”. Exactly as it implies, the document is a hundreds of pages long and highly deep look into the Cold War’s least advanced and most secretive major army. Because of this, it’s an excellent resource not just for the Cold War PLA, but also many of the client states/units equipped, trained, or even just inspired by it. As well for less-advanced (compared to major powers) armies in general.

A lot of this contains basic stuff that any field manual reader won’t find surprising. The layout, at least of the translated version, leaves something to be desired. And there are a few translation quirks like keeping the romanized Chinese word “Fendui”, instead of just saying “units” or “subunits” (as would be appropriate for the context.) In fact, the document has the worst of both worlds in that it shows “Fendui” but not the original characters, making it confusing for both English and Mandarin native speakers.

Still, this is an excellent study of not just that specific army at that point in time (mid-1980s), but also of many principles applicable to all forces at any time. If you have the time to dig through four hundred pages of field manualese, it’s well worth your while.

Review: Children of the Night

On By coilerxiiIn Review1 Comment

Children of the Night: The Strange and Epic Story of Modern Romania

With All Union and my Soviet-Romanian War project, I figured getting a good one-volume history of the Southeast European country would be nice. And Paul Kenyon’s Children of the Night delivers. It starts in 1442 with Vlad “Dracula”, or “The Impaler” Tepes, and more or less concludes with the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. The book is a magisterial epic of Romania’s frequently bizarre and violent history.

One consistent theme is Romania being perched on an unsteady point and being tugged on in multiple directions for centuries. Whether it be the Hungarians and Turks, the Russians and Turks, or the east and west in the Cold War, Romania always feels like an odd one out, a Latin enclave in a Slavic realm. The most blatant example of this was Romania spending the first part of World War I figuring out who it should support (it sided with the Entente eventually), but this was shown throughout history. The most ghoulish is Ion Antonescu’s regime conducting some of the worst massacres of the Holocaust, but suddenly changing its mind on the deportation of Jews-conveniently right after the encirclement at Stalingrad.

But it’s its postwar history where the book shines. Ceausescu’s reign of terror is well documented, and the scenes of his fall and execution read like they could have come straight from The Death of Stalin. It also shows that his tendencies towards what can be called “independent totalitarianism” started under his predecessor, Gheorge Gheorghiu-Dej.

If you could only read one book on the history of Romania, this would be a good contender for the choice. It’s definitely worth reading.

The Ultimate Trench and Dugout Building Guide

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

I stumbled into this 1920s American training document on building fortifications with the lessons of World War I in mind. The full piece has detailed guides on everything from “the kind of thing you build when you have only a few hours” to “the kind of thing you build when you have a few years”. Both fighting positions and gargantuan medical/residential/command underground dugouts (or “cave shelters” as the document calls them) are there.

There are a couple things I found interesting in particular. The first is that antipersonnel mines, despite becoming a hallmark of later fortifications, are only mentioned very briefly and dismissively. According to it, they take too much effort to emplace for something that’s going to be knocked aside/detonated by the big artillery preparation already. (Antitank mines, including ones rigged to be sensitive, are treated somewhat more favorably.)

The second is that what became known as an overpressure system (ie, higher pressure in the area than out of it, pushing clean air out instead of poisoned air in) is talked about as a counter to poison gas for large bunkers. I didn’t know it was talked about that early, and thought it was a Cold War invention. So that was interesting.

The third is that while machine guns were present, very few of the later infantry support weapons were. Besides indirect mortars, the only thing talked about for forward emplacement is the 37mm infantry support gun. So this was a very interesting time capsule, and some of its TTPs (techniques, tactics, and procedures) are still relevant. After all, artillery hasn’t exactly gotten less lethal since the 1910s.

Review: Small Unit Infantry Ambush Tactics

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Small Unit Infantry Ambush Tactics

It’s very rare that I find a book that’s essentially a “strictly worse” version of another one. Where another work exists that can do literally everything it can and do it better. Yet that is the case for Small Unit Infantry Ambush Tactics, a how to fight guide about-look at the title.

By itself it’s not too bad, showing different ambush types and critiquing rote training. But it’s just that Special Reconnaissance and Advanced Small Unit Patrolling has everything it does and so much more. Plus the latter book has a far better tone, giving credit to the establishment where the author thinks it’s due instead of the more overly critical one of this book. So I feel comfortable in saying: Get Wolcoff’s masterpiece instead.

Review: A History of Cavalry From The Earliest Times

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

A History of Cavalry From The Earliest Times

Now long since in the public domain (the first edition was in 1877 and later ones were published to 1913), George Denison’s A History of Cavalry From the Earliest Times was a look back at thousands of years of mounted operations. It’s an interesting time capsule. The aim was a sincere chronicle of cavalry and a look forward into an age of increased firepower. It’s a successful one given the limitations of the time.

The biggest problem, besides a 19th Century perspective on the world, is that Denison only had famous text sources to work with. Still, you can’t blame someone for being a product of their time or not having resources that only emerged later on. And he gets both important analyses essentially right. The first is how the role of mobile forces hasn’t really changed for thousands of years. Even if they swapped their horses for motorized vehicles. The second is how firepower and lethality was increasing, with him citing vastly higher casualties in recent (as of publication) battles compared to earlier ones with muzzleloaders.

Of course, the flame of cavalry would be briefly extinguished when offense against it rose massively by 1914 while defense did not. But another vehicle would soon pick up the torch. In any event, this is a good piece of classical military history.