Description |
viii, 284 pages : maps ; 22 cm |
Contents |
1. The background of two centuries -- The tyranny of plunder -- Rise of the magazine system -- The age of linear warfare -- 'An umbilical cord of supply'? -- 2. "An army marches on its stomach!' -- The end of siege warfare -- Boulogne to Austerlitz -- Many roads to Moscow -- 3. When demigods rode rails -- Supply from Napoleon to Moltke -- A joker in the pack -- Railways againt [sic.] France -- Logistics of the armed horde -- Did wheels roll for victory? -- 4. The wheel that broke -- State of the art -- Logistics of the Schlieffen plan -- The plan modified -- Logistics during the campaign of the Marne -- State of the railroads -- Strength and reinforcement of the right wing -- 5. Russian roulette -- Problems of the semi-motorized army -- Planning for 'Barbarossa' -- Leningrad and the Dnieper -- 'Storm to the gates of Moscow'? -- 6. Sirte to Alamein -- Desert complications -- Rommel's first offensive -- 1942: Annus Mirabilis -- Supply and operations in Africa -- 7. War of the accountants -- The pitfalls of planning -- Normandy to the Seine -- 'Broad front' or 'knifelike thrust'? -- 8. Logistics in perspective |
Summary |
Why did Napoleon succeed in 1805 but fail in 1812? Were the railways vital to Prussia's victory over France in 1870? Was the famous Schlieffen Plan militarily sound? Could the European half of World War II have been ended in 1944? These are only a few of the questions that form the subject-matter of this meticulously researched, lively book. Drawing on a very wide range of unpublished and previously unexploited sources, Martin van Creveld examines the 'nuts and bolts' of war: namely, those formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration, so often mentioned - but rarely explored - by the vast majority of books on military history. In doing so he casts his net far and wide, from Gustavus Adolphus to Rommel, from Marlborough to Patton, subjecting the operations of each to a thorough analysis from a fresh and unusual point of view |
Analysis |
Army operations Logistics history |
Notes |
Includes index |
Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages [239]-249 |
Subject |
Logistics -- History.
|
|
Military art and science -- History.
|
|
Military history, Modern.
|
LC no. |
77005550 |
ISBN |
052121730X |
|