Bøker av Andrew Rawson

The Balkans witnessed several bloody conflicts during the twentieth century. New nations emerged in 1913, after 500 years of Ottoman rule, only for them to go to war just weeks later. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 sparked the series of events that led to the Great War. Most of the belligerents would be drawn into the region, while the post-war border changes created tensions. Italian designs on the Balkans resulted in the occupation of Albania in March 1939, but it failed to take control of Greece over the winter of 1940-41\. A German blitzkrieg quickly defeated both Yugoslavia and Greece in the spring of 1941, and the population of both countries then suffered terribly as the occupying forces encouraged collaboration and punished resistance. The area was rife with guerrilla activity, as monarchists, nationalists and communists fought each other as often as the occupying troops. This, in turn, led to communism sweeping across most of the region in the post-war years, while Greece was taken over by a fascist regime. Communism eventually ended, but ethnic troubles resulted in a ten-year conflict across Yugoslavia. It would be divided into Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, at the end of the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Operation Detachment, the US invasion of Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945, was the first campaign on Japanese soil and resulted in some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific. Diary extracts and quotes give you a soldier's eye-view of the battle.Orders of Battle reveal the composition of the opposing forces' armies.

The men who went to war in August 1914 fought completely differently to those who survived until the Armistice on 11 November 1918. This is a study of the bloody learning process the British Expeditionary Force had to go through on the Western Front.The development of the tactics is explained as is the impact new weapons and ammunition had on the battles. The challenges presented when the Germans changed their defensive tactics or upgraded their fortifications is also looked at.Each battle and campaign is studied in turn, starting with the first lessons learnt by the Old Contemptibles who served 1914 and the rigid attack plans of 1915. Next comes the rapid evolution of infantry and artillery plans during the Somme campaign in the summer of 1916 and the changes made to accommodate the tank in the autumn.The important developments in combined arms warfare, and the German reactions to it, are followed through as the 1917 campaigns of Arras and Ypres are discussed. The year ends with a look at the Tank Corps¿ successes and problems which were highlighted at Cambrai.The year 1918 starts with the huge German offensives across the Somme, the Lys and on the Aisne. The strategic mistakes made before the battles, and the tactical decisions made during them, are looked at in turn.Finally, we see how the art of combined arms warfare matured during the offensives of July and August 1918, culminating with the breaking of the Drocourt-Qu¿t Line and the Hindenburg Line in September.

Poland was re-created as an independent nation at the end of the First World War, but it soon faced problems as Nazi Germany set about expanding its control on Europe. The Wehrmacht's attack on 1 September 1939 was followed by a Red Army invasion two weeks later.

An in depth account of Third Army s attack against the Hindenburg Line in November 1917.

An in-depth account of the Battle of Messines Ridge in June 1917.

A fully illustrated study of the notorious Nuremberg rallies and the part they played in the Nazis' quest to establish the 1000 Year Third Reich.

President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided the strategies for the Mediterranean and the Far East at the Arcadia conference in December 1941, reconvening in Casablanca for the symbol conference in 1943. They then considered the European campaign at the Trident Conference in May and the Quadrant conference in August.

Medieval Europe is a dark and dangerous place. It is a place where love clashes with ambition and violence rules - enemies are blinded, rivals are murdered and heretics are burnt at the stake. As the Black Death sweeps the continent and the Mongol hordes threaten its borders, can the kings of the old world survive the dawn of a new era?