Search results for ""author david t. zabecki""

Known as the War to End all Wars and the Great War, World War I introduced new forms of mass destruction and modern technological warfare. When the Bolsheviks pulled Russia out of the war in late 1917, the Germans turned their offensive efforts to the Western Front in an attempt to win the war in 1918. But as fresh American troops entered Europe, the strategic scales tipped against Germany.Much of how World War I played out turned on the plans and decisions of the senior-most German and Allied commanders. The Generals' War explores the military strategies of those generals during the last year of the Great War. These six very different men included Germany's Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff; France's Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Pétain; Great Britain's Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig; and the United States' General John Pershing. Although history remembers none of them as great captains, these six officers determined for better or worse how World War I was fought on the battlefields of the Western Front between November 1917 and November 1918.The Generals' War is a landmark exploration of the generalship that shaped the very framework of modern warfare as we know it today and provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis on the senior commanders of the Great War.

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World War I had a profound impact on the United States of America, which was forced to ‘grow’ an army almost overnight. The day the United States declared war on Germany, the US Army was only the 17th largest in the world, ranking behind Portugal – the Regular Army had only 128,00 troops, backed up by the National Guard with some 182,000 troops. By the end of the war it had grown to 3,700,000, with slightly more than half that number in Europe. Until the United States did so, no country in all history had tried to deploy a 2-million-man force 3,000 miles from its own borders, a force led by American Expeditionary Forces Commander-in-Chief General John J. Pershing. This was America's first truly modern war and rising from its ranks was a new generation of leaders who would control the fate of the United States armed forces during the interwar period and into World War II. This book reveals the history of the key leaders working for and with John J. Pershing during this tumultuous period, including George S. Patton (tank commander and future commander of the US Third Army during World War II); Douglas MacArthur (42nd Division commander and future General of the Army) and Harry S. Truman (artillery battery commander and future President of the United States). Edited by Major General David T. Zabecki (US Army, Retired) and Colonel Douglas V. Mastriano (US Army, Retired), this fascinating title comprises chapters on individual leaders from subject experts across the US, including faculty members of the US Army War College.

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