Chester Nimitz

In modern times, ten Americans rose to five-star rank: Pershing (who chose to wear only four stars), Leahy, Marshall, King, Arnold, MacArthur, Nimitz, Halsey, Eisenhower, and Bradley. In concert with the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, and Sir Winston Churchill, they were at the helm as the world transformed from the machinations of regional despots to an era of global war. With few exceptions, these men exercised their responsibilities with remarkable integrity and ability. The first part of this book reviews the biography and military highlights of each five-star; the second analyzes and compares the ten to identify common features of the elements of command and leadership. While studying the careers of these distinguished men, Hall also provides an insight into the analysis of war. He explains that war operates on five levels of perspective: heroism, tactics, operations, theaters, and national purpose. When these levels conflict, even the best leaders are fortunate to escape with their reputationsintact. This volume details how these commanders achieved success by understanding and properly maintaining these different perspectives almost unfailingly. Consequently, they reached the pinnacle of power in the military profession.

The qualities of commanders and their ideas are more important to a general theory of command and control than are the technical and architectural qualities of their computers and communications systems. This theory separates the art of command and contr

Focusing on 45 military leaders from four continents and 13 countries, spread across four centuries, this study paints, for the first time, a collective, comparative portrait of high-ranking military officers. The authors develop an interactional theory of military leaders, stressing the interplay between sociodemographic variables, psychological dynamics, and situational factors. They examine age and birthplace, socioeconomic status, family life, ethnicity and religion, education and occupation, activities and experiences, and ideologies and attitudes. They find military leaders to be a remarkably coherent and homogeneous group of men propelled toward the military by a combination of nationalism, imperialism, relative deprivation, love deprivation, marginality, and vanity.

World War II was a truly global conflict, fought in every one of the five continents. The players included not only soldiers and statesmen of orthodox background, but three dictators of world stature, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin; demagogues such as Goebbels and ideologues like Alfred Rosenberg; politicians of charismatic power, like Roosevelt; prophets of national resistance, like Charles de Gaulle and of national liberation like Mahatma Ghandi. Who's Who in World War II:* brings together over 300 of the most important characters from every sphere of responsibility* provides a unique reference source about the life, career, and personality of each character.

This single volume reference contains over 1000 key figures who took part in the history of the period militarily or politically and is fully cross-referenced with pertinent bibliographical information.

Originally designed for military professionals, this landmark work is now made available to the general public. Solidly based on the nine principles of war currently recognized by the U.S. military, this is the ultimate nuts and bolts approach to military campaigns, with emphasis on the tactics and challenges of each era.

British naval strategy east of Suez is shown to have had an enormous impact on overall British naval planning during the 20th century. These essays marshall new evidence, fresh approaches & map out avenues for future research in this field of study.