Disputed Decisions of World War II

Disputed Decisions of World War II PDF Author: Mark Thompson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476638381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
A former Harvard professor of decision science and game theory draws on those disciplines in this review of controversial strategic and tactical decisions of World War II. Allied leaders--although outstanding in many ways--sometimes botched what now is termed meta-decision making or deciding how to decide. Operation Jubilee, a single-division raid on Dieppe, France, in August 1942, for example, illustrated the pitfalls of groupthink. In the Allied invasion of North Africa three months later, American and British leaders fell victim to the planning fallacy: having unrealistically rosy expectations of an easy victory. In Sicily in the summer of 1943, they violated the millennia-old principle of command unity--now re-endorsed and elaborated on by modern theorists. Had Allied strategists understood the game theory of bluffing, in January 1944 they might well not have landed two-plus divisions at Anzio in Italy.

Disputed Decisions of World War II

Disputed Decisions of World War II PDF Author: Mark Thompson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476638381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
A former Harvard professor of decision science and game theory draws on those disciplines in this review of controversial strategic and tactical decisions of World War II. Allied leaders--although outstanding in many ways--sometimes botched what now is termed meta-decision making or deciding how to decide. Operation Jubilee, a single-division raid on Dieppe, France, in August 1942, for example, illustrated the pitfalls of groupthink. In the Allied invasion of North Africa three months later, American and British leaders fell victim to the planning fallacy: having unrealistically rosy expectations of an easy victory. In Sicily in the summer of 1943, they violated the millennia-old principle of command unity--now re-endorsed and elaborated on by modern theorists. Had Allied strategists understood the game theory of bluffing, in January 1944 they might well not have landed two-plus divisions at Anzio in Italy.

Fateful Choices

Fateful Choices PDF Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141915048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
In 1940 the world was on a knife-edge. The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe’s Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II PDF Author: Herbert Feis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400868262
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book discusses the decision to use the atomic bomb. Libraries and scholars will find it a necessary adjunct to their other studies by Pulitzer-Prize author Herbert Feis on World War II. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Command Decisions

Command Decisions PDF Author: Kent Roberts Greenfield
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description


No Ordinary Time

No Ordinary Time PDF Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

Disputed Decisions of World War II

Disputed Decisions of World War II PDF Author: Mark Thompson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476680043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
A former Harvard professor of decision science and game theory draws on those disciplines in this review of controversial strategic and tactical decisions of World War II. Allied leaders--although outstanding in many ways--sometimes botched what now is termed meta-decision making or deciding how to decide. Operation Jubilee, a single-division raid on Dieppe, France, in August 1942, for example, illustrated the pitfalls of groupthink. In the Allied invasion of North Africa three months later, American and British leaders fell victim to the planning fallacy: having unrealistically rosy expectations of an easy victory. In Sicily in the summer of 1943, they violated the millennia-old principle of command unity--now re-endorsed and elaborated on by modern theorists. Had Allied strategists understood the game theory of bluffing, in January 1944 they might well not have landed two-plus divisions at Anzio in Italy.

Forgotten Ally

Forgotten Ally PDF Author: Rana Mitter
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 054784056X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
A history of the Chinese experience in WWII, named a Book of the Year by both the Economist and the Financial Times: “Superb” (The New York Times Book Review). In 1937, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, Chinese troops clashed with Japanese occupiers in the first battle of World War II. Joining with the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, China became the fourth great ally in a devastating struggle for its very survival. In this book, prize-winning historian Rana Mitter unfurls China’s drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue as never before. Based on groundbreaking research, this gripping narrative focuses on a handful of unforgettable characters, including Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, and Chiang’s American chief of staff, “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell—and also recounts the sacrifice and resilience of everyday Chinese people through the horrors of bombings, famines, and the infamous Rape of Nanking. More than any other twentieth-century event, World War II was crucial in shaping China’s worldview, making Forgotten Ally both a definitive work of history and an indispensable guide to today’s China and its relationship with the West.

Potsdam

Potsdam PDF Author: Michael Neiberg
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465040624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The definitive account of the 1945 Potsdam Conference: the historic summit where Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met to determine the fate of post-World War II Europe After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt, while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July of 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace: a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt. The award-winning historian Michael Neiberg brings the turbulent Potsdam conference to life, vividly capturing the delegates' personalities: Truman, trying to escape from the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, who had died only months before; Churchill, bombastic and seemingly out of touch; Stalin, cunning and meticulous. For the first week, negotiations progressed relatively smoothly. But when the delegates took a recess for the British elections, Churchill was replaced-both as prime minster and as Britain's representative at the conference-in an unforeseen upset by Clement Attlee, a man Churchill disparagingly described as "a sheep in sheep's clothing." When the conference reconvened, the power dynamic had shifted dramatically, and the delegates struggled to find a new balance. Stalin took advantage of his strong position to demand control of Eastern Europe as recompense for the suffering experienced by the Soviet people and armies. The final resolutions of the Potsdam Conference, notably the division of Germany and the Soviet annexation of Poland, reflected the uneasy geopolitical equilibrium between East and West that would come to dominate the twentieth century. As Neiberg expertly shows, the delegates arrived at Potsdam determined to learn from the mistakes their predecessors made in the Treaty of Versailles. But, riven by tensions and dramatic debates over how to end the most recent war, they only dimly understood that their discussions of peace were giving birth to a new global conflict.

Strange Victory

Strange Victory PDF Author: Ernest R. May
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466894288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description
Ernest R. May's Strange Victory presents a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.

Decisions for War, 1914-1917

Decisions for War, 1914-1917 PDF Author: Richard F. Hamilton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521545303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
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